Quick Poll on Microphones

[fusional]

It is implied.

that can be argued to death in itself

I consider myself "serious" about raiding, and you assert that it is impossible to be "serious" about raiding without voice chat. Therefore, if I identify as a serious raider, you would hold me to (and already have held me to) an unclear objective rule about being a serious raider; that is, not a truly serious raider, which you claim to be.

here it gets even more murky. i never actually made that claim- however *now* you could argue that it's implied and be mostly correct. (but then we also have to qualify under which context/s i am or have been a 'serious raider' since i used "modern MMOs" as my reference rather than FFXIV specifically)

in this case, you're equivocating "true" and "serious"- but they're not the same. "true" is an X/O qualifier. something is true or it isn't. the fallacy comes in saying a person who is a scotsman isn't a scotsman when they in fact are, no matter how you attempt to qualify it.

however, a true scotsman doesn't necessarily have to be a serious scotsman. see the difference? i can be american without taking it seriously. the seriousness with which i take something has nothing to do with what i am (or what i'm not).

trying to split hairs over how "true" someone is or isn't in relation to something isn't the same as splitting hairs over how *serious* they are about it. and that said- i would've been fine in questioning *how* serious a person could be about ________ in relation to ______, but i've admitted it was wrong to say it is "impossible to be serious" without allowing for any gradient in between.

My team carried out a play and scored a touchdown, if you don't mind me using your football analogy.

which is fine, but some people aren't happy with just a touchdown. they want to score first, and they want to win in the end. while the game rules don't care about preferences, it does allow for a winner and a loser- and in relation to that, people will always keep statistics on who scores first most often, who racks up the highest scores, who wins the most games, etc.

that said- there are different forms of winning. finishing content at all is the most basic form of winning. however, finishing it first and/or fastest (etc.) is also a form of winning, as evidenced by the development team making reference of it via twitter and the forums on numerous occasions. (doing the most DPS is also a commonly pursued form of winning)

But the game, the ultimate objective standard, doesn't care about preferences.

the game doesn't, but the devs seem to. not only have they posted about it, but they've spoken of possibly adding achievements for it in 2.0 and almost definitely having timed leader boards. this goes beyond the scope of simple "win or don't win"

The disconnect comes from BG's elitism--and yes, that's the first time the e-word has ever been used correctly on this board.

i would say it's the second time, but your point stands

You all are not satisfied with completing the game's objectives as written and instead invent your own. You push to the limit. You challenge yourselves more than is expected of you. I admire that. However, no matter how you choose to contextualize it, that's your preference.

My standard for success is in line with the game's proposed standard. Yours is the BG Standard: not merely exceptional, but elite. And that's just fine! The problem (yea, the bad elitism) is when you conflate the game's standard with the BG Standard and impose your arbitrary expectation on everyone else, calling them less-than-serious if they can't meet it.

what about in situations where game objectives show up after we've set them for ourselves? ie: we ran 17 minute AVs before it was a necessary requirement for relic. you could certainly argue it was simply our preference at first (shared with numerous JP LSs and a couple other NA LSs at the time), but what happens when devs learn about this then add new challenges based upon this?

More importantly, we were serious about it--something you claim is impossible without voice chat. This contradicts my experience. I recall being serious about Darnus, and now some guy on the internet is telling me I'm wrong in that.

but again- i never specifically referenced FFXIV, so i didn't actually tell you anything of the sort. while, granted, saying "modern MMOs" is a generality that leaves room for quite a lot of ambiguity, if i were pressed to qualify my statement i could very easily use endgame from several other well-known MMOs where difficult endgame content *is in actuality* all but nearly impossible without voice chat coordination (and sometimes even certain information-gathering add ons)

however, in spite of very frequently using ifrit extreme and darnus hard as examples of actually challenging content in XIV, i was careful not to use XIV or either of those as an example in reference to 'serious raiding'/voice chat. that was intentional.

Turns out this "serious" of yours is pretty subjective.

as i've acknowledged. but the more raiding communities you talk to outside of XIV, the more you start to see how common that same idea of "serious" is among them. this is an important distinction, and again, a major reason why i referenced modern MMOs in general

If you were serious about killing Darnus in 8 minutes, you could do so.

while i get your point, it's actually not as simple as wanting to do it in ~8 minutes (or less) or not. once you get under the 10 minute mark, no matter how insane your DPS is there are luck factors in the fight which can prevent you from scoring a faster time no matter how perfect your performance is. going purely by numbers, we could have done it in 7:00-7:30, but that would assume *zero* teleports on top of perfect performances from each of 5 dragoons. 100% perfect luck, zero errors.

and even when the performance aspect was nearly as perfect as it was going to get, luck destroys your chance of a good time when he teleports around like a goon for 3 minutes, or when we dps so fast (with just 4 dragoons, mind you) we actually break the mechanics of the fight and he hangs around an extra few minutes at 0.1% health, invulnerable, refusing to transition into the next phase.

but anyway, i digress!

Shit. This has gone way beyond voice chat, hasn't it?

yeah, and i can see how you'd link my comments on the difference in how people experience the same game/content to the subjectivity of the word "serious"

but like i've said quite a lot by now, my definition of serious (and/or the degrees of seriousness or lack thereof) could absolutely be debated and isn't at all an objective thing. i generalized incorrectly and acknowledge being wrong in doing so.

i only take issue with being accused of resorting to the 'no true scotsman' fallacy when i never said you weren't a true (end)gamer. the implication was simply that, in the context of modern MMOs- by opting out of voice chat you weren't *serious*- which ties back in with the paragraph just above this one.