Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Why Don't People Try?

Over the last few weeks I have taken it upon myself to keep track of everyone that wins something in the looking for raid.  Usually I would just look at the people that won what I was looking for so I could bitch to my guild mates about it but I started taking it further.

I am really starting to doubt the system is actually random.  I think there is some kind of hidden code in the system that will sometimes kick in and give items to the people it thinks needs it most.  Say there are two hunters that roll for the bow.  One did 45K on DW and the other did 15K.  Both need it, both hit need, the system check kicks in and sees that one hunter only did 15K and thinks he needs it more so it awards it to him.

I know, tin foil hat and everything going full force here but I am not kidding, I swear I have seen this happen over and over.

A couple of weeks ago three Maws dropped off deathwing, I was on my hunter so it meant nothing to me, and all the healers rolled need on it.  I'll admit I did not inspect them all to see if some had it already but that is beside the point.  One healer won all three, which is an error that is being address, but the reason he won them all has nothing to do with the random loot system, at least not in my mind, it had to do with the fact that he sucked so bad the system was trying to get him gear.

One healer was beast, doing nearly 30K HPS.  Two where in the 20s and the other two where 19 and 18 respectively.  The healer that won all three was doing 8K HPS.  Yes, a whooping 8K HPS.  Much less then 1/2 the second lowest and for god sake he was a paladin, the most OP healing class in the game.  His HPS was horrible and it can only be explained by one or more of three things.

One, he really sucks, which means he should not be there to begin with.  Two, he had really horrible lag, which means he should not be there to begin with.  Three, he gamed the system to get in and doesn't have the gear to do better, which means he should not be there to begin with.

The loot system awarded him all three.  Not one, not two but all three.  The system saw how horrible he was, it saw three healing items, it thought he needed help more then the others, so it gave them to him.

This is the hidden code I think exists in the system right now.  It tries to award the gear to the person it thinks needs it most.  If you look at my three reasons why he did that bad it would show you, he did not deserve it most.

I think the system is set up this way.  If people are all doing reasonable it does a true random but when one person is extremely below the average the system tries to help them out.  It is like it is awarding the item on a system where the person that it deems needs it most gets it.

If you wanted to award items based on some type of merit system as in who needs it most or who deserves it most you need to at least have a better system.

For example, if that top healing doing 30K HPS did not have it, or something better, then in all honesty, he needs it most.  He will get the most use out of it because apparently he knows what he is doing.  The system seems a bit ass backwards at the moment if you are going to say it is giving it to the person they think needs it most.  A healer doing 8K HPS in there vs a player doing 30K HPS.  I think the 30K person needs it more because the 30K person will actually get the most out of it whereas the 8K HPS person will still suck, even with it. 

So last night I went into a LFR with a buddy from guild and as usually we are destroying the charts, as DPS that is our job, we are both hunters.  Which brings me to another small point.  Hunters are near worst DPS in the game right now so how come every run I am in on any character I am on are hunters usually the #1 DPS?  Are all other people that play other classes that bad that the worst DPS class in the game at the moment can destroy them?  Sad state of affairs when your class is OP compared to hunters and you still can not beat them.

Back to the story at hand.  Nothing we wanted dropped from the first three bosses but the first three bosses we rocked it.  I was #1 on each boss in damage done, he was #2 on 2 and #3 on one.  We where doing what it is we are supposed to do.

Forth boss comes up and the agility ring drops, we can both use it so we both roll need on it.  Of course we lost and it goes to a Hunter that did 12K on that boss.  12K?  That is not even heroic ready.  12K with 25 man buffs is tank DPS, is less then tank DPS.  My bear does 18K on some bosses.

Second half the chest drops off the 5th boss, we both need it so we both hit need.  Who wins it?  A hunter that did 15K DPS.  I look at his numbers and see he is MM.  You know how I figured that out.  He used chimera shot.  Twice.  The whole damn fight he used Chimera shot twice.  Of course he was the lowest DPS, he was not even trying.  A head piece dropped for a warlock that run too.  Guess who won?  A warlock that did 0 DPS.  Yeap.  Never attacked at all.  Not even one dot, not even his pet attacking to protect him from the AoE.  Nothing.

6th boss and 7th boss we see the same thing, nothing dropped that we needed but we looked at everyone that won and everyone that won had no reason even being there.  Same as what we saw on the first three bosses in the previous run, even if we did not need anything on them we did notice.

We get to the DW fight and he says he gives up.  He has been trying too long and does not have the energy to do it any more. Why put the effort forward if the people that don't deserve the loot will always be the ones that win it.  So he just went into a basic, not really trying rotation on DW.

He still managed to hit 30K which is not bad for not trying, but he did not "not" try hard enough, there where people that did 20K and 18K.  He has to learn to not try better I joked with him.  He said he could not resist, he had to at least hit explosive shot when it was up and multi on the adds.

Nothing we needed dropped, neither of us need the polearm and only I need to bow.  The polearm did drop however and I pressed disenchant and he said, let me test something, and rolled need.  Guess what happened, he won.  Yeap, he didn't even try, put in minimal effort and he won the roll for the item because the system gave it to him because he needed it, in the games mind at least.

He said, from now on he is going to play like that.  That seems to be the only way you can win.  I really think it is.  While doing it on my Shaman last week I got lucky and saw the only three pieces I need drop.  Two where tier pieces won by a hunter that only did auto shot the whole run and the third was a tier piece he passed on, which I got lucky and won.  It helped that the only other hunter that was there passed and we had no warriors and no other shaman in the run.  So I was the only one that rolled need.  If he would have rolled need again he would have won all three.

My friend told me to just stop trying if I want loot but I have a small problem with that.  I can't not try.  It is just not in me.  I have to always try to do the best I can.  If I am doing bad on a character it is because that is what my skill level and gear on that character will allow me to do.   I don't just throw the fight so to speak.

Heck, I have still never run my mage through there even if he can do better then 80% of the people I see in there because he has a spirit piece on.  Sure, no one would notice as long as I am doing well but I will know and as long as I know I am not going to do it.  If I can not put what I believe to be my best foot forward I will not join the content.

The problem is I am seeing more and more people, even people I know, just going into the LFR and doing the bare minimum needed to get the job done and that is just not acceptable.

People should be rewarded for doing a job well, not just barely getting it done and then rewarding the people who did the least.

I think the loot system for the LFR should be redesigned.  Something that is points based instead of drop based.  People would get a set number of points per boss based on how much they contributed to the death of the boss and at the base of the temple would have a trade in place where you can exchange the points earned.  Make it so that if you perform at top level the best you can get is two pieces a week.

This would encourage people to play better.  Bad players and players AFKing or not contributing would end up taking 6 or 7 weeks to get just one piece.  That would force them to actually start contributing or at least force them to at least try a little better.

I am not going to become one of them, doing the minimum just so I can win loot.  They should become one of me and actually try to do the best they can do.

Why don't people try?

I have that answer.

Because Blizzard has decided to reward people for bad play.

13 comments:

  1. I've seen this theory on other sites and forum posts before, usually written with a 'ha, isn't it funny that this happened' air of mock tinfoil hatness. But that so many people are saying it, more and more often, its starting to very much look like its true. What state does a game have to be in when it rewards not playing the game properly. - by properly, I mean maximising your input in a raid situation in a given role - I can only hope that this doesn't get out to the great unwashed masses who will be trying to out-bad each other to get the loot.

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  2. There's a big problem with always rewarding the best performers. When in equal skill level, the person with most gear will always perform better which means that someone who's performing above average for his gear, might always be outperformed by someone who's performing above average with better gear. This system would always reward the person with better gear, making the gap in gear even bigger.

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  3. @Anon

    That is why performance should be assessed on the basis of the gear a person currently has.

    Lets use a hunter for example. Go to female dwarf and pump in any data for a hunter and give it 25 man buffs, if it says they can put out a max of 20K DPS then base their performance off that. So if they do 18K DPS that get 90% of the possible reward.

    Whereas someone else that when you put in their data and it says they can pull 40K if they do 28K, which is still way more then the 18K person they would only get 70% of the bonus.

    Do not give rewards to the best performance, but the best performance based on their maximum capability. Now that is how things should be rewarded.

    The 18K person getting more of a reward than the 28K person because statistically speaking the 18K person is actually the better player.

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  4. PS:

    One problem with that even is the fact that it is not all about DPS. Is the person using damage reduction cooldowns to help healers. Are they hitting the button to go out, even if they know it will not kill them when they stay in. Stuff like that, there needs to be a full way to judge it and not just purely on a number basis.

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  5. I have seen the same thing grumpy... you are not crazy. Lowest number person seems to get drops more often than not. Case and point, when we first got into LFR and all the Heroic raiders were there, I was at the bottom sometimes and I got a lot of loot that first week... I have not seen anything since then since I sit on top or middle of the meters now.

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  6. @Logtar

    Same for me, won stuff that first week and nothing since unless I am the only person that rolled need on it. Or at least it seems that way.

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  7. Purely tin-foil hat. I have not seen this play out in the LFR runs I end up in. I've seen "low performance" players not get loot and I've seen "good performance" players get loot. RNG is RNG and it sucks when you don't get what you want. :/
    So unless blizzard says "yup we do something like that", it is merely coincidental.

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  8. @Rooster

    It is tin foil hat, I even said so. However, and I must point this out, "IF" blizzard ever did anything like that they would never admit it. So do not expect a "yup we do something like that" comment even if it where completely 100% true.

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  9. Greedy goblin had a good tip to keep AFK-warlocks or people half-heartedly hitting one button on their toes - only go into LFR as a leader (queue with a group helps) and use your kicks on the person that does the lowest DPS on the trash. And then tell the group you'll be doing the same on the boss. Obv you need to keep some kicks up your sleeve for people that really need to be kicked, but just consistently booting the lowest DPS is a decent motivational tool.

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  10. I think the reason for your observation is that our brains are really good in seeing patterns in things - as opposed to not seeing patterns that are not there.

    I have seen the low DPS players or healers who did not heal well win items and even a healer who did very well and won nothing go DPS on Madness (he was angry because he thought he had to carry others who then proceeded to win items) and win Maw - but I've also had experiences when I did very well and won 90%+ of the things I rolled on or when the roll looked like the top of the meters. I believe it's easier for people to remember when they have been wronged (e. g. a person they think don't deserve the loot won it instead of them) so the instances when that did not happen are forgotten.

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    1. I agree. The mind has a way of remembering the bad but forgetting the good.

      That is why the forums are always filled with people complaining. If everyone posted all the good things they ran across in game I am sure the forums would look different.

      It is human nature. It is not something unique to this game.

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  11. I have seen the same thing many times over in LFR. On my hunter main, usually topping the charts, I only managed to get things when I ran with guildees who won things and gave them to me. On my mage, I had a phone call that took most of a run, so I was pretty distracted and lower mid pack, and won something from every single boss, including the staff from Madness when I was mostly afk for the first two platforms. I went on my pally as healer, and again won a bunch of items because there were guildee main healers not leaving anything for me to heal so I didn't really try. When people win something I want, a quick check determines that at least 80% of the time, they are among the lowest performers.

    It's really far beyond random, and the fact that so many people are talking about it happening so much proves it isn't just me that is noticing these things.

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  12. I've noticed the same pattern. My boyfriend and I make a weekly ritual of both queuing on our Warlocks in an attempt to get him an illusive Cunning of the Cruel; and in each week that it's dropped, it's gone to some afk Warlock doing 5k dps. Aggravating to say the least.

    Same thing happened with me when I was trying to get Maw for my Shaman healer. I go in, do 25% of the healing on that fight each time, and each time it's gone to the healer doing less than half of my healing.

    If there is such a system in place, intentional or not, Blizzard can at least say something. I know it would encourage people to not play to their fullest in order to get a piece they need; but it would also let us, that go in there ready to rock, know that there really is no point in queuing and getting our hopes up each week.

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