Counter to Elitism

[KaiTBF]

but good player over...less good ones.

Imagine if the "gambits" list a series of actions that "you should have done" while progressing in the dungeon. (Since it's a bunch of "If...then", it reacts dynamically). If you did 100% of what "you should have done", you get à 100% drop rate. If you "missed" 50% of the "good" actions, you get a drop rate of 50%, etc...Everyone will try to hit a "perfect score".

No. Everyone trying to hit a perfect score is terrible. Determining the worth of a player (and his likelihood of gettin lootz) based off how well he matched a predetermined set of values will do nothing but force people to gear and play their jobs in a single (and not necessarily the most effective) way. It would be the bane of innovative strategies.

Let's say a player finds a brilliant new method for tanking a fight on white mage, and he and his group come up with an effective strategy that allows them to win the fight more quickly and with less risk if they have him whm tanking and a couple paladins for their melee DD. What would this do to them? It would fuck them over, that's what. The paladins aren't keeping hate and the whm isn't curing anyone but themselves so both the paladin and the white mages suck according to the system, and none of them get rewarded despite the fact that they're accomplishing the fight more consistently than any of the normal groups. They're all good players who know their job so well that they can use it to its greatest potential in a fight, even if that means putting it in a strange role, but they will all be labeled as baddies by the system and be punished for being good.

That's not even the end of it either.
What if a white mage gets hit by a crack and dies? He's bad right?
What if dodging the crack would have interrupted his casting and caused the tank to die? The whm understood that the tank dieing would end the run, and that his buddy could raise him in a few seconds with little consequence. He made the right call, and is a fine whm, but the system can't tell that.

What if you have two different monks, one that did 50,000 damage and took 3,000, and one that dealt 65,000 but took 15,000? Is the one who took less damage better because he put less strain on the whm? or is the on who dealt more damage better because he kept the fight from dragging out despite putting more strain on the whm?

You can say that they'll have gambits determining this crap but there's just no way in hell a team can cover every variable. It's impossible. The system would either have to be progressively improving (in this case the changes would take a while and whether a set of players is good or not would be determined by a single set of subjective human minds) or it would have to be adaptively improving (The system itself would observe players and add values as players successfully did content or reacted to a series of actions differently and survived. Issue is this would be really fucking hard to make even a little effective, and it could encourage players to abuse glitches and get rewarded as the system may not know the difference between an off the wall strategy and an in the wall mob) One method takes resources, is slow, and won't see any significant results for a very long time, the other is pretty much impossibru at the moment. So basically the only ones who would really benefit from this sort of system wouldn't be the skilled players, but the testers (who I can assure you would find the hidden values within a month) and the mindless zombies who copy whatever they see the good players doing without ever questioning why they do it.

And on a side note...
The idea that they should make skill (which can mean any number of things: reflexes, knowledge, preparation, quick thinking, careful planning, etc. ) > time invested doesn't work in the mmo world anyways for the simple reason that for MMOs, time is literally money. Time invested is #1 on any company's list, ideally everyone in the world should be playing their mmo whenever they're not working to get the money to pay for their mmo. There's a limit on how quickly they can develop content, so they reduce your chances of obtaining something so that you have a carrot on a stick dangling in front of you. If it takes hardcore players a hundred runs to get all their shit (As you wished this could actually be because they got their asses kicked 99 times first, or because drop rates blow, or anywhere in-between) then they have some time to develop and release new content. Problem with making content difficult to stall people is it's either too easy and the hardcore player have it beat and have their loots within days, or it's so absurdly hard that only the best players in the game will be able to beat it at all, which is terrible for business because there's very few leets, and very many not so leets. So to keep people playing for the maximum amount of time you add a rng in there and balance the content so that it takes the leets a bit to figure it out and it challenges the average player, and everyone does the content a bunch of times to get all their shit and then, a couple months later something new and shiny comes out and everyone keeps the clink clink flowing into the company. In other words your time in the game is more valuable to the company than your skill in a game, and as such when you're playing the game you'll find that people who invest more time are better rewarded than those who just have leet skillz despite not playing much (all like, 4 of them).

[KoujiGeki]

No. Everyone trying to hit a perfect score is terrible. Determining the worth of a player (and his likelihood of gettin lootz) based off how well he matched a predetermined set of values will do nothing but force people to gear and play their jobs in a single (and not necessarily the most effective) way. It would be the bane of innovative strategies.

Let's say a player finds a brilliant new method for tanking a fight on white mage, and he and his group come up with an effective strategy that allows them to win the fight more quickly and with less risk if they have him whm tanking and a couple paladins for their melee DD. What would this do to them? It would fuck them over, that's what. The paladins aren't keeping hate and the whm isn't curing anyone but themselves so both the paladin and the white mages suck according to the system, and none of them get rewarded despite the fact that they're accomplishing the fight more consistently than any of the normal groups. They're all good players who know their job so well that they can use it to its greatest potential in a fight, even if that means putting it in a strange role, but they will all be labeled as baddies by the system and be punished for being good.

That's not even the end of it either.
What if a white mage gets hit by a crack and dies? He's bad right?
What if dodging the crack would have interrupted his casting and caused the tank to die? The whm understood that the tank dieing would end the run, and that his buddy could raise him in a few seconds with little consequence. He made the right call, and is a fine whm, but the system can't tell that.

What if you have two different monks, one that did 50,000 damage and took 3,000, and one that dealt 65,000 but took 15,000? Is the one who took less damage better because he put less strain on the whm? or is the on who dealt more damage better because he kept the fight from dragging out despite putting more strain on the whm?

You can say that they'll have gambits determining this crap but there's just no way in hell a team can cover every variable. It's impossible. The system would either have to be progressively improving (in this case the changes would take a while and whether a set of players is good or not would be determined by a single set of subjective human minds) or it would have to be adaptively improving (The system itself would observe players and add values as players successfully did content or reacted to a series of actions differently and survived. Issue is this would be really fucking hard to make even a little effective, and it could encourage players to abuse glitches and get rewarded as the system may not know the difference between an off the wall strategy and an in the wall mob) One method takes resources, is slow, and won't see any significant results for a very long time, the other is pretty much impossibru at the moment. So basically the only ones who would really benefit from this sort of system wouldn't be the skilled players, but the testers (who I can assure you would find the hidden values within a month) and the mindless zombies who copy whatever they see the good players doing without ever questioning why they do it.

And on a side note...
The idea that they should make skill (which can mean any number of things: reflexes, knowledge, preparation, quick thinking, careful planning, etc. ) > time invested doesn't work in the mmo world anyways for the simple reason that for MMOs, time is literally money. Time invested is #1 on any company's list, ideally everyone in the world should be playing their mmo whenever they're not working to get the money to pay for their mmo. There's a limit on how quickly they can develop content, so they reduce your chances of obtaining something so that you have a carrot on a stick dangling in front of you. If it takes hardcore players a hundred runs to get all their shit (As you wished this could actually be because they got their asses kicked 99 times first, or because drop rates blow, or anywhere in-between) then they have some time to develop and release new content. Problem with making content difficult to stall people is it's either too easy and the hardcore player have it beat and have their loots within days, or it's so absurdly hard that only the best players in the game will be able to beat it at all, which is terrible for business because there's very few leets, and very many not so leets. So to keep people playing for the maximum amount of time you add a rng in there and balance the content so that it takes the leets a bit to figure it out and it challenges the average player, and everyone does the content a bunch of times to get all their shit and then, a couple months later something new and shiny comes out and everyone keeps the clink clink flowing into the company. In other words your time in the game is more valuable to the company than your skill in a game, and as such when you're playing the game you'll find that people who invest more time are better rewarded than those who just have leet skillz despite not playing much (all like, 4 of them).

This. But reading more and more from Reynhart he just seems to be one of those gimme gimme players.

[Riv]

I've got your elitism counter right here: Stop being so touchy feely and sucking at the game.

[Hohenheim]

Don't they have the right to be though? They put in the work and time that is required to reach the Bis lists, I think as casuals we just need to be proud of what we can get accomplished in the time we have on the game.

I used to be one of the elites I grinded night and day for everything I had on Rift then I finally decided it was time to live my life and I fell behind so fast but I"m ok with that I think you need to realize that.

I'm happy with what I have on my toons and Yes Im a casual! and I love it gives me time to live my life and succeed in my career.

[Reynhart]

Ok, I give up.
Too many people consider that "random" equals "challenging" and "repeating the same content" equals "being a good player".

Good news is, every MMO is lazy enough to think that way too, so you'll be well served.

[SkyeWindbinder]

Ok, I give up.
Too many people consider that "random" equals "challenging" and "repeating the same content" equals "being a good player".

Good news is, every MMO is lazy enough to think that way too, so you'll be well served.

Well come on, Reyhart. Let's be honest here. The system we have works, and it keeps players coming back for more. Therefore, it succeeds. If you have a better system, you should present it. Note, I said "better" system. This is just my humble $0.02, but your paint by numbers gambit "things you shoulda done" system idea, well, it kind of... sucked. No offense meant, of course.

[ispano]

That's also part of the problem. What some see as challenging, others see as too hard. Then even others see it as something simple.

You see people wanting a "challenge" vs random chance and such in an MMO, and while I understand that one can have the ability to see a problem yet not have the ability to come up with a proper solution, it's all too difficult to come up with something, yet still attract enough people. The more FPS/Twitch you make the game, the less people will play. The more you deviate from what people are used to, the less people will play.

You then also have people that want their games to be "laid back" and/or have little effort, because if it involves work or effort they feel like it's a job. But on the other hand, you have people like me and others who feel if no effort is put in, there's no enjoyment. Then you have the ones that without a reward, it's not fun at all.

Coming up with a new working idea is actually far more difficult than some people realize.

EDIT: Also, random is not meant to replace challenge. It's there so it slows things down a bit. If you could get something every run for sure, well your party anyhow, it would take very little time til you stopped doing it. But even then, for some it IS challenging for some. Maybe they don't have the time to play all the time, so being able to get enough runs in for RNG to smile on them is difficult. It's like most things, an example: keeping a secret, for some they can do it forever, some find it difficult NOT to reveal it.

[Warlock]

For Yoshi-P confirming that people wont leave raids w/o a reward you can tell the fights and/or getting to the fight will be brutal...examples are Raven Nevermore and Garuda (hard)

[Montijin]

No last place anymore, everyone gets a trophy.

[Tatsuguy]

cry more
/10char