Built-in Parsers

[Hruodig]

Look, any type of raiding at some point is work, because it boils down to showing up at a predetermined time, being ready for your job by a lot of practice or research, and then doing a single fifteen minute instance over and over dozens of times to clear it, then dozens more to farm it. It is not something you do for fun because the fun is generally leeched out of it after the tenth wipe. You succeed by going past that and treating it professionally, in the same way you treat a job or a sport professionally. If you base it solely on it being fun, that's when people suddenly up and leave one day. To spend time practicing your rotation is work, too; it's not fun to be in front of a training dummy repeating the same old motions till they are ingrained.

No matter if you raid 3 hours a week or 30, at some point if you are even the slightest bit serious about clearing, it becomes work to you in terms of your mindset. It's actually scary at times, because it winds up being so much like work that you even have "company" events to blow off steam, like drunk runs or gag runs. And people talk about raiding like it was money...we have welfare gear and there are people who don't deserve things, as if you "deserved" to have a token in Monopoly or to win at tag.

The fact that people here want parsers is a subset of the idea of game as work. It is necessary for raid play, I won't argue that. Because raid play ultimately is this game as work. People worry though when parsers are legitimized because the people who raid seem to want sometimes the entire game to be similar work. But a lot of people dislike the whole raid culture in general, because it's become a job-substitute for people. You already have hard times convincing new people to work for you in your statics, can you imagine if it spread to all parts of the game?

This is one of the most bizzare appraisals of the raiding scene I've ever seen. "I don't enjoy it, therefore it's work and it's weird"

[RiyahArp]

"I don't enjoy it, therefore it's work and it's weird"

Sigh. Answer me this. Does your static have the following things?

-an attendance policy
-punishments for poor performance, including discipline and even dismissal if the person doesn't change or meet standards
-various requirements to get hired, including aninterview process and background check
-an expectation you don't work for others, i.e. run the raid or get clears with other people

Surprise! Games generally don't have these things, unless the game itself is work (i.e. professional sports)

It's even worse in other games, where you literally get pay, i.e. dkp and gold, and seniority (people longer in the group get priority on drops). But if you've raided for a bit and are thoughtful, the parallels are there. And a lot of the skills you need to run a successful static are simple management skills you use in business daily. It has nothing to do with enjoyment or not.

[Hruodig]

Sigh. Answer me this. Does your static have the following things?

-an attendance policy
-punishments for poor performance, including discipline and even dismissal if the person doesn't change or meet standards
-various requirements to get hired, including aninterview process and background check
-an expectation you don't work for others, i.e. run the raid or get clears with other people

Surprise! Games generally don't have these things, unless the game itself is work (i.e. professional sports)

It's even worse in other games, where you literally get pay, i.e. dkp and gold, and seniority (people longer in the group get priority on drops). But if you've raided for a bit and are thoughtful, the parallels are there. And a lot of the skills you need to run a successful static are simple management skills you use in business daily. It has nothing to do with enjoyment or not.

You find these things in any extracurricular activity that involves teamwork in order to achieve a goal. Believe it or not, working with a like-minded group of people towards a common goal is an incredibly gratifying and rewarding experience. While they do share commonalities with a "job", you're making the mistake of seeing that as what defines a job or not. I can guarantee you that neither I nor any of my static members see raiding as a job. Why is that?

1. We don't get paid to do it.
2. We enjoy it.
3. We all agreed to do things this way as a collective group. No one is being forced to do anything they don't want to do.

There's also no "punishments", and the idea that you think that there's disciplinary actions going on in your average midcore raiding static is incredibly strange and betraying of your ignorance. The vast majority of statics are made up of a group of friends who want to accomplish a goal together. Do you "punish" your friends when they keep dying in a game? No? Of course not, that's weird as hell (unless you're into kink).

The expectation to "not work for others" is mainly due to the way this game does weekly lock outs, wherein if you "work" for another group, then you're actively sabotaging your own group. If this restriction wasn't in place then it wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal as it is.

Tl;dr you're trying to push a weird narrative that doesn't have basis in general reality. Do groups like you describe exist? Of course, the possible permutations of human beings out there is infinite. However that's absolutely not the norm.

[RiyahArp]

You find these things in any extracurricular activity that involves teamwork in order to achieve a goal. Believe it or not, working with a like-minded group of people towards a common goal is an incredibly gratifying and rewarding experience. While they do share commonalities with a "job", you're making the mistake of seeing that as what defines a job or not. I can guarantee you that neither I nor any of my static members see raiding as a job. Why is that?

1. We don't get paid to do it.
2. We enjoy it.
3. We all agreed to do things this way as a collective group. No one is being forced to do anything they don't want to do.

A volunteer job is as much a job as anything else. And increasingly team activities that require that kind of teamwork are professionalized; it's a huge issue with things like little league or high school sports for example.

There's also no "punishments", and the idea that you think that there's disciplinary actions going on in your average midcore raiding static is incredibly strange and betraying of your ignorance. The vast majority of statics are made up of a group of friends who want to accomplish a goal together. Do you "punish" your friends when they keep dying in a game? No? Of course not, that's weird as hell (unless you're into kink).

The expectation to "not work for others" is mainly due to the way this game does weekly lock outs, wherein if you "work" for another group, then you're actively sabotaging your own group. If this restriction wasn't in place then it wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal as it is.

Tl;dr you're trying to push a weird narrative that doesn't have basis in general reality. Do groups like you describe exist? Of course, the possible permutations of human beings out there is infinite. However that's absolutely not the norm.

oh, come on. Let's say one member of your static is holding you back. You're at a wall because of this guy. Maybe his dps is too low, or he keeps messing up. Or he shows up late. What are you going to do?

You're first going to try to mentor him, i.e. find out what's going wrong, and work on some kind of plan to fix it.

OK, he does this, but he's not hitting the dummy or not changing his timing to show up on time. So you're going to at some point have to escalate it in ways eerily similar to managing at a job. Not entirely, but if he shows up late, you do the static without him. If you see he isn't trying to up his DPS, you warn him verbally. Pretty much tell him shape up or ship out, but in much gentler terms. Again you're trying to work with the guy if possible, but you can't stay at a wall because of this one guy because there's seven of you and one of him.

Worst case, he can't do it or won't do it.

If he can't do it, he quits and you find someone else. No hard feelings. If he won't, you pretty much fire him. It's the same thing as being dropped from a sports team. Otherwise in this game the team breaks up if you don't.

I mean..midcore doesn't change this. If you're sinking any decent time into raiding you want to clear, and midcore statics shed people as much as hardcore.

[Hruodig]

A volunteer job is as much a job as anything else.

It does drastically alter your mindset however. It changes from "I have to do this to get paid so I can feed my kids/pay bills/not be homeless", to "this is something that I want to do with my free time"

You do see the difference?