Greedy goblin

Why don't they teach instead?

2012-01-27T07:00:00.077+01:00

Blizzard decided to nerf the normal and hard modes, despite the LFR feature was made exactly to those who look for an easy mode raid. Their explanation is "Believe it or not there are actually guilds and raiding groups that are attempting to progress through Normal and Heroic raids, but are hitting a wall, and have been hitting a wall. We have actually statistical date we base our changes on, we know exactly how many people are clearing these raids each week, we know exactly how many people are able to down just a few bosses, and how many were only able to down a few bosses every week for weeks on end and then stopped raiding altogether." "Your solution is ``Well then they should get better or quit`` and that's just not reasonable for a video game comprised of millions of people looking to just have some fun. It's still a computer game. "

The strange thing here is that Blizzard sees only two options "getting better" or "quit" and since they don't see the first happening and don't want the second, they hand out welfare. The obvious idea of helping these players to be better was not even mentioned.

Blizzard gives very little help in getting better in the game. During leveling abilities are given without quests that teach them how to use them and also you can get to max level facerolling. On max level you need to improve to raid, but you must either figure it out yourself or use third party tools. There is no damage meter in the game for example. Also there is absolutely no information about mechanic fails. You must install external addons to figure out if your DPS is OK or not, and to figure out why did you die. It's not a trivial issue, even with serious raiding experience. A new player can honestly think that he is good, and just met some internet trolls who badmouth him with some "below the tank" crap.

The bossfights could have result tables like battlegrounds with damage done, healing done and avoidable damage taken. Also, some friendly NPC could instantly whisper the player if he fails a mechanic like "Ysera whispers: Ultraxion just hit you with his devastating spell Hour of Twilight. You can avoid it by escaping the Twilight realm using your Heroic Will". They could also provide rotation info by a chart of your damage by spell vs a chart of the average of the top 1000 players of your spec, so the newbie fire mage could notice that those people don't use frostbolt.

Coding these would be trivial as addons are already doing it pretty well. I'm sure that those who want to raid would be grateful for such help and with that they could progress using the constant "buffs" coming from gear upgrades of the few bosses they killed and valor stuff. We did. We were those who kept wiping on Deatwing again and again and finally killed him.

So why do Blizzard avoids to give so simple tools as a damage meter and a fail warning? Because the players the nerfs are aimed at is still a small minority. WoWprogress says that at this moment Morchok was killed by 43.3K guilds. Deathwing was killed by 21K. With the usual 20 raider/guild approximation it's 870K and 420K. Out of about 8M players.

Those who killed Deathwing are the top 5%. Those who are stuck on Hagara because not standing in the ice wall is hard, are still in the top 10%. Yes. The guy who can't kill Hagara in late January is in the top 10%.

The people who are in the top 10% but not in the top 5% would love to have some help. They could use it. Such tools could stop them failing on mechanics and would help them increasing DPS from 85% of theoretical to 90%. But what about the rest? Who are those who are too bad to kill Morchok normal? They are the "fun ppl" who are not simply "bad" in the sense of don't know enough of the game. The "fun ppl" come with the unshakable belief that they are special snowflakes who deserve respect, love and reward just for being so awesome.

If the game would remind him that he is not awesome, he would simply quit. He is not here to be "insulted" or "criticized". He is here to be called a hero and showered in rewards. If he doesn't get it, he leaves.

The guy who fails on Hagara lacks knowledge and routine compared to us, but his "work ethic", his governing ideas are the same. He knows that there are tasks where you must perform and he tries. He knows that coming short of the challenge causes defeat. He accepts it, that's why he stops raiding. He doesn't throw a fit or ragequit the game, just don't raid anymore, and without raiding there isn't much to do in the game. The guy who fails on Hagara is maybe a bad player, but an intelligent person.

The lolkid who answers "fu nolifer prick" when I tell that he damaged less than me (resto shaman), isn't a bad player. He is a terrible person in the real life, whose terrible attitude manifests in the game. Blizzard wants to keep his subscription so they don't tell him that he sucks. And since they can't tell these failures the truth, they can't help those who are not failures, but simply uninformed.

We can help these players by writing blogs and by leading raids where we give numerically proven feedback to them, with tips how to improve. Also, we shall not whine over the nerfs or call them names. Having them in the game is good for the game and us as some of them will improve and join us. Having the unique snowflakes is bad for the game. And for the World.

You are not the player, you are the content

2012-01-26T07:00:00.049+01:00

Below you can find my results within the World of Tanks game using an ISU-152 tank destroyer with and without the BL-10 cannon (with BL = all - without): The difference is stunning. By upgrading the cannon my damage and kills doubled, my win chance increased from way below average to slightly above average and my XP/battle (XP needed for further upgrades) also increased significantly.

No doubt that this game is extremely gear dependent. OK, who cares, you get the BL-10 and enjoy! Except in the game experience is locked to the tank. You can only research the BL-10 by playing the tank without it. The BL-10 costs 55000 XP and it's heavy so you must first research a new suspension to be able to install it. That's another 15000XP. To collect 70K XP with my XP/battle you need to play 150 matches.

Or, you can just pay some real money and convert the experience of other tanks (which are already researched or even item-shop bought). From the fact that I had only 42K XP when I stopped using the old cannon, you can guess that I paid. On the top of the "subscription" that already increased my XP gain by 50% without it I'd have to play 225 battles with the old cannon.

OK, you might think that this system is the trick of the developers to force you into paying. However they could do it much more easily: the first 4 tiers of tanks are free to play, but you must pay to advance. Just like you can freely play the first 20 levels of WoW and must pay to continue.

However this system is not a demo mode, like the first 20 levels of WoW. Not only it allows evasion (after all, you could play 225 battles), but also frustrating which isn't the best way to get new customers. Imagine that on the trial account you could only play battlegrounds, naked. I doubt WoW would get many new players. Also a player who can't pay just ignores the game, while the one who hated it will make bad word of mouth. So why do microtransaction games allow freeloaders to linger and use server resources while frustrate them at the same time, alienating them from the game?

Because they are not players. They are the content. Their purpose in the game is to suck, therefore provide amusement to the real players: the ones who pay. The real players are having fun both killing them and being ahead of them on the meters. It's much more clever than PvE nerfs: everyone knew that WotLK "heroics" were faceroll, so the players said "meh I had to grind another 3 HCs for points" instead of "Yay I defeated those huge monsters!". Even those players said and believed that who were boosted and couldn't do even the WotLK "heroics" with 4 like-skilled fellows. On the other hand the player of World of Tanks who kills an ISU-152 without BL-10 with his Type59 tank could not know that his target couldn't fight back, he was tricked into believing that he is awesome, since other ISUs (ones ran by paying players) could kill him.

This is the reason why Free to Play increase the income of the companies. Most players are socials who just want to feel awesome. They can't pass challenges, they want easy wins, but in the same time they don't want grinds that are observed easy by peers. Free to play allows creating "NPCs" that look and act like players, but they are still just NPCs whose strength was designed to be easily defeatable by most players.

Te bright future of gold bid

2012-01-25T07:00:00.028+01:00

We tried 80+ on Deathwing extending the first week lockout. Couldn't kill him. We farmed a month and he went down in 5 tries.

This proves a significant shift from the WotLK and 4.0-4.1 design. Output now matters and dance is secondary. In the previous contents literally blue geared players could kill end season bosses as long as they did not fail in the various bizarre dance moves. While the Dragon Soul bosses still have annoying amount of dance, they also have performance requirements. You can wipe despite no dance fails if you have insufficient DPS and HPS.

This design works as you can see from the statistics of MMO champion. On the first month 67K players completed Firelands, but 175K Dragon Soul and 1.31M LFR. The content is clearly used by players but still not facerolled and spitted on. We have every reason to believe that this way of design will continue (success continues, failure fixed)

However such approach increase the importance of gear. In WotLK and 4.0 but especially in 4.2 gear was purely cosmetic or "quality of life" feature, providing only bragging rights and faster runs. In DS and probably MoP gear will significantly effect your performance and chance of kills.

However this rises the question of gear distribution systems. At first I'd like to point out that in a fixed-roster guild gear distribution is irrelevant. The piece will increase the future performance of the raid, regardless of who wield it. Besides loot whores (socials who want to show off their gear), no one will gives a damn who gets the drop as long as he doesn't quit instantly. If you don't get drops, you still enjoy their benefits as your raid can kill more bosses.

In non-fixed raids on the other hand gear distribution will be crucial. There you must mind your own gear as there is absolutely no guarantee that the other guy will raid with you again. He can stop playing, he can quit the guild, he can go casual, he can simply raid on other days as you and you can leave too. In such guilds the only gear that increase the performance of your future raids is your own gear.

So let's analyze the loot systems from the non-fixed perspective:

/roll: totally random, so totally "fair". Far from it! You can only roll on upgrades (and actually there is no point rolling for non-upgrades), so the more geared you are, the less items you can roll on. On the other hand the guy in starter gear who did half of your performance can roll on everything, including that last piece you want. /roll favors undergeared players seriously and give no incentive to players with gear to participate
Loot council: this is a complete nonsense in a non-fixed system even if the council is completely unbiased and fair (good luck finding such). The reason is that the "perfect" loot council distributes the loot according to the needs of the raid. But the very point is that there is no such thing as "the raid" in a non-fixed environment. So even the "perfect" council will decide based on the blind guess on "who will stay longer and be more active".
DKP: fair if the guild remains successful and active in raiding. You earn DKP according to your effort and you can buy gear from it. But in a casually raiding guild "successful and active" cannot be guaranteed by definition. If everyone comes and goes as he pleases no one can tell if there will be raid tomorrow. Or ever. So you just gather your DKP and then the guild stops raiding and your DKP worth zero. Also, just because some guy were raiding under this guild name longer, he'll have more DKP despite he did not do anything more for your success. He got his DKP raiding with other people.

Please also note that if the DKP and loot council would magically work (council is perfect, guild keeps on raiding actively), both will reward the more frequent players, turning the guild into a fixed-attendance one as they will soon seriously overgear everyone else, so even if the guild rules remain casual, the casual players only get spot when the alternative is 9-manning, just in a HC guild. However you are in the guild exactly to be able to raid without fixed attendance.

This leaves nothing but gold bid. Here you are instantly compensated for your performance. You get something that is not bound to the guild, something that you can use instantly by buying BoEs, consumables, enchants, gems. I believe gold bid will become the standard in non-fixed roster raiding guilds. We use it for more than a year without a single loot drama or even debate.

Why am I in such a fail team?!

2012-01-24T07:00:00.022+01:00

The PuG update:

Players often blame the "fail team" for a defeat. Bad players usually use it as an excuse, as the team is bad because of them. However good players also use this as an explanation for defeat. They use various metrics to prove that the team was "bad" therefore there was nothing they could do. They are right in what they say (I mean if you do 2x more damage than the average and the boss hit enrage you were in a fail team), but they are wrong in what they implicitly assume.

What they assume is that God has forsaken them and thrown them into a septic tank full of terrible people who make their life miserable and there is no way out of it.

This is not true. A GWPanter Self-propelled gun taught me that. Since then I'm much more optimistic and see the World in brighter light than before. Here its how it happened. I was on Himmelsdorf with my ISU-152 tank destroyer. Usually here I sit in the bottom right corner, waiting for scouts and mediums trying to outflank us. It's not far from the base either, so I can return if they got in some other lane: "Unfortunately" a pair of our Type 59 medium tanks messed up my plan. After taking a rather pointless circle around a block, they approached from my back and went up, right on the path I was camping. No point being there anymore, I followed them to shoot for them, and to shoot from the upper ground in case we capture it. So up we went. And up there we found the most bizarre sight: an enemy GWPanther. It's a Self Propelled Gun, a glass cannon with the ability to oneshot anyone from large distance, but being slow in movement, aiming and reloading, therefore easy pray in close combat. It was all alone. Type 59s destroyed it in a second and down they went on their merry way to the enemy base.

Thanks to the slow reload speed of the BL-10 cannon, I had time think about what I saw. A totally retarded enemy. And I was thinking how lucky I am to have this failure on the enemy and not our team. Then it hit me: I always see what my retarded teammates do, but rarely the enemy. Besides such obvious fails, I don't have the information to evaluate if the enemy I just shot down was an idiot, unlucky or a good player who got beaten by an even better opponent. On the other hand I have all the information to see that my teammate was a completely suicidal moron.

For this information asymmetry we implicitly assume that we are unfairly cursed with idiots who make the task ahead of us impossible. However all competing teams are suffering the same problem, so we are "fairly cursed". The enemy I have to defeat is just as much polluted with lolkids and morons as our team so I have every chance to win.

The same applies to PvE. While we are not directly fighting another team, the content is adjusted to the average. If my LFR team hits enrage because the average DPS is 12K then the other LFR teams wipe too, so the encounter will be nerfed soon.

For every good player, the statement of "I'm in a fail team" is literally correct. However it cannot be an excuse, as their presence is automatically implemented in the game difficulty. You can and shall win. Of course you must always keep in mind what you are dealing with and avoid being technical instead of anti-social. Getting epic gems have miniscule increase in the raid DPS compared to votekicking the lowest moron.

To be or not to be ... a barbarian?

2012-01-23T07:00:00.003+01:00

The recent Diablo III beta patch made significant system changes. They are widely discussed. However one change (probably without intention) will make or break our gearing and $-making in Diablo III:
Strength
* Increases Barbarian damage
* Increases Armor
Dexterity
* Increases Demon Hunter damage
* Increases Monk damage
* Increases Dodge
Intellect
* Increases Wizard and Witch Doctor damage
* Increases Health gained from Health Globes
Vitality
* Increases Max Health

There are 5 classes. Wizard and Witch Doctor will share gear, so will Demon Hunter and Monk. But Barbarians don't share (go figure!). This will create a serious gear imbalance one way or another: if Strength gear has equal chance to drop as Intellect and Dexterity, then Barbarian gear will be over-represented two-fold. This will make gearing a Barbarian easy and Barbarian gear prices low.

If the Barbarian gear has half chance to drop compared to Intellect and Dexterity gear, then a Barbarian has only 20% chance to find the next drop useful, while everyone else has 40%. Also a piece of Barbarian gear has 20% chance to be dropped for someone who can use it, while every other piece has 40%. This means that there will be more Barbarian gear on the AH (both gold and RM AH) and a Barbarian will both buy and sell more gear than any other class.

So either Barbarian will be easy to gear, or will need more AH-ing than other classes. Both ways mean that an AH-player should pick a Barbarian (unless hates melee).

Now let's consider droprate adjustments, as we can assume that Blizzard will try to balance classes. One way of adjustments is fix the drop chances to player activity percentages. So if 30% of the active players are witch doctors, 25% are wizards, 20-20% are demon hunters and monks and only 15% barbarians, then 55% of the gloves will have int, 40% dexterity and 15 str (vitality ignored). This case you should pick a class that belongs to the lowest percentage, which will most probably a Barbarian, unless it's so popular that there are more of them than the two int or the two dex classes combined.

Other adjustment possibility is that the loot is tailored to the player, which case all classes will be equal AH-wise. But that's unlikely as Blizzard wants you to use RMAH to pay them cut.

They are so gay!

2012-01-20T07:00:00.017+01:00

Some would say you can't have fun reading an encyclopedia. Yet I laughed a lot reading the description of the word "gay" on Wikipedia. I share it with you, not only to laugh but to provide munition against the "fun ppl". So Wikipedia says:

The term was originally used to refer to feelings of being "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy"; it had also come to acquire some connotations of "immorality" as early as 1637. The term's use as a reference to homosexuality may date as early as the late 19th century, but its use gradually increased in the 20th century... At about the same time, a new, pejorative use became prevalent in some parts of the world. In the Anglosphere, this connotation, among younger speakers, has a derisive meaning equivalent to rubbish or stupid (as in "That's so gay.")... When used in this way, the extent to which it still retains connotations of homosexuality has been debated and harshly criticized.

For most of its life in English, the word's primary meaning was "joyful", "carefree", "bright and showy", and the word was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. For example, the optimistic 1890s are still often referred to as the Gay Nineties... The word had started to acquire associations of immorality by 1637 and was used in the late 17th century with the meaning "addicted to pleasures and dissipations." This was by extension from the primary meaning of "carefree": implying "uninhibited by moral constraints." A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer and a gay house a brothel.

The use of gay to mean "homosexual" was in origin merely an extension of the word's sexualised connotation of "carefree and uninhibited", which implied a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage is documented as early as the 1920s, and there is evidence for it before the 20th century, although it was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles... this usage could apply to women too. ... Through the mid 20th century, the term "gay" commonly referred to "carefree", as illustrated in the Astaire and Rogers film The Gay Divorcee.

By the mid-20th century, gay was well established in reference to hedonistic and uninhibited lifestyles and its antonym straight, which had long had connotations of seriousness, respectability, and conventionality, had now acquired specific connotations of heterosexuality. In the case of gay, other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress ("gay apparel") led to association with camp and effeminacy. This association no doubt helped the gradual narrowing in scope of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures.

Whoa! Just whoa! The term "gay" orignially meant "fun peep" and turned to describe homosexuals as the bigots believed that homosexuals are just deviants who ignore proper conduct for fun. When something is called "it's so gay" it's not an insult in the sense as "it is as bad as the homosexuals" but in the sense of "it is as bad as the fun ppl" and this insult was used on homosexuals so often that it became their name.

When you meet someone (usually in LFR/BG/LFD) who claims playing terribly is OK since he plays for fun, remind him that he is so bad that the bigots insult the homosexuals with him and reference en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay. Since among lolkids homosexuality is a serious insult (losers are usually bigots as they need some fixed, non-merit based group to look down), this will definitely hit.

Cheating in non-endgame games

2012-01-19T07:00:00.012+01:00

Tobold considers cheating normal and prefers if some trainer program would allow getting power in Diablo III instead of real money transactions. However cheating isn't that normal behavior.

There are games where the end-game is different from the previous stages. For example you must level up doing quests in WoW if you want to raid or do rated BGs. You must also do dungeons or random BGs to get get gear. I understand (does not mean support or even tolerate) that someone want to skip these activities to get to the endgame.

However most games doesn't have such internal differences. Your first Starcraft match will be similar to the the tournament final. The first zone of Act1 in Diablo II isn't that different from Act 5. You do the same in the first Halo map as on the last. Of course the scenery is slightly different and the opponent is harder, but you play the same game for the same goal.

If you consider hack 'n slash fun, you will have fun playing Diablo III. You can always play that, regardless of gear and skill. These only determine which act and which difficulty you do the same fun activity.

So actually cheat doesn't allow you to experience anything "fun" that you can't get without. What does exactly cheat give you? Not the harder content as you just cheated it into easy.

Cheat allows the player to gain "score" that he can't get legitimately. He couldn't tell his friends that he completed the campaign without cheat. He couldn't show off "l33t" gear without buying gold. He couldn't have a "pro" place in the top charts.

Cheating has nothing to do with playing or enjoying a game. It's about disguising himself into a "good gamer" to impress peers. Of course this is what motivates the socials, so this is what game companies must produce. Nerfing did not really worked because it diminished the value of the "achievement". I mean no one can show off that he managed to level to 85 in WoW. Hard content do not work since the socials just leave the game.

Allowing them to cheat while paying extra works. This also explains why the RMAH is the only way it can be done properly. The social status of "good gamer" is not produced by game companies, it's produced by good players, so only they can sell it. If the game company would sell the good items, it would simply become "noob item shop stuff". It's just pixels after all and no one buys pixels. They buy the glow of "pro-ness" from the guy who acquired the item the proper way.

Strategy > killing, even in a deathmatch

2012-01-18T07:00:00.035+01:00

No one questions that in a WoW BG the guy on the top of the meters is much less useful than the one who defended an objective and may only killed 1-2 enemies who wanted to take the objective. Those who link damage meter in a BG are usually ridiculed even among randoms.

But most would think that this is a peculiarity of WoW BG system where "death" is nothing more than a teleport to the nearest GY and 1-30 seconds of being CC-ed. But what about a real deathmatch where the enemies must be killed and the dead enemy stays dead? There the guy with 2x more damage is 2x better, right?
Above you can see my results in the game World of Tanks with the SU-100 tank destroyer on the left and the results of my girlfriend on the right. She only plays this tank in platoon with me, so when she wins, I win.

First let's check the personal damage: She has 0.62 kills/battle and 448 damage/battle, while I have 1.13 kills and 831 damage on an average battle. We can clearly say that I'm about twice as "good" as her. Now let's substract her win data from mine to get my solo results and compare it with the results we earned in platoon: 48% win alone and 58% wins in platoon (draw = half-win).

Again: I alone, despite my way-above average performance (average is 0.74 kills/battle) my solo win-rate is below average. By adding a below-average player we suddenly get much more wins. What the hell?

The solution is in the "low chance critical" situations. Let me show them in an example: The green lines are the main attack lanes. The enemy attacks on the same lanes in the opposite direction. The thin red line shows a "suicidal path". It's suicidal as a tank taking it is easy prey to the tank hiding in the big green dot. However if no one is hiding there, he can get to the base, destroy the self-propelled guns which are glass cannons in the game. He can also start capturing the base, making the people panic and run back. Such situation is usually instant loss. However its chance is low, as it needs an intelligent enemy who is ready to take the risk. The lolkids who run in this lane at the start don't count as they run into the big tanks which are slow and simply couldn't get far enough yet. Only someone who waits for 3-4 mins, has a fast tank and risks being easily killed by a defender can use this tactic.

So alone I face the question: shall I wait in the base for that 10% chance event or shall I go with one of the big lanes? If I stay and no one comes, I was practically AFK, so the enemy has good chance of winning in the major lanes and arrive to me in large numbers. If I don't stay and someone comes on the sneaking lane, we lose the match. Every map has such "low chance critical" lanes and each can be deflected by a defender. I usually choose to stay, simply because a tank destroyer isn't really good in attacking. If we add that Tier 6 tanks are the weakest compared to the ones they are matched against, it's no miracle that I couldn't make my side win more often than random.

Enters my girlfriend and the situation is solved. She covers the "low-chance critical" lanes while I go on one of the main lanes. She takes out the sneaking ones, and if the other main lane collapses, she can slow the attackers down until I can return to the base or push that lane and capture their base faster. While she has less kills, those kills matter more. Surprisingly this strategy isn't "self-sacrificing" as the game rewards winning very well: her XP/battle isn't significantly lower than mine.

Of course this situation wouldn't exists if the weakest non-scout tank would automatically take the defensive position. A Tier 5 KV is "heavy" only in his name against Tier 8 mediums. Yet you can't convince it to stay behind, he will go with the attackers and die first. The reason is obvious: you are not telling a KV tank to not attack Type 59 tanks. You are telling a lolkid to stay out of "fun" and it won't happen.

Making the strategic decision usually works. However if you do it alone you can still lose and you are better off running with the zerg and hope. If you have just one intelligent partner, the chances of winning increase greatly. And when I say "greatly" I mean this: This "armory" page shows that she is (we are in platoon) #1236 out of about 600K active players. That's top 0.5%. Not bad from someone with 44% hit ratio and 0.8 overall kill/battle. And no, I'm not boosting her, as I'm "just" #7200.

PS: alone do the following: if you are relatively small tank defend the objective. If you are big, go with the zerg and hope. The zerg will miss a big tank much more than a small one.

"play 4 fun" people can't have fun

2012-01-17T07:00:00.046+01:00

The "i play for fun" is the favorite statement of bad players. It seems perfect in multiple ways. At first it's a conversion stopper: you can't argue with it. If I say licking windows and tilting my head left to right for an hour is huge fun for me, you can't tell it's not. You can tell at best that it's not fun for you, then I pull the "people have different priorities" joker and won. Secondly since we are people sitting front of a computer, the one who has fun definitely won over the one who didn't as the game items and achievements are worthless by definition. So the claim that I had fun and you didn't, imply that I am right and you are wrong.

People at this point use to come up with the "but your sucking is not fun for the rest of the raid", however it's a wrong argument. At first why should I care for your fun, secondly you should also "chill" and "have fun" instead of being an "elitist dick".

Finally I found the logical error in the "i play 4 fun and the srs players are loosers" statement: It implies that there are two ways, the fun (which is not serious) and the serious (which is not fun). They must be different as a "fun and serious" way would obviously chosen by everyone. The whole "i play 4 fun" can only make sense if there is a "not fun" way.

Why is this a trap? Because if we accept that the "fun" and the "serious" ways are exclusive, we must come to the conclusion that someone is either a sad no-fun person or a homeless bum in real life. After all real life is not a game, actions have consequences, so you either live seriously (without fun) or fun (as a drunk, junkie, hobo).

The "i play 4 fun" and "dun be srs ina game lol" people actually confess that they don't have fun in real life. They are slaving on the weekdays in the hope that they will have fun at the evenings and weekends.

It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend

Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend
This is how these creatures live their life, just as Rebecca Black sung in her internet viral "Friday" (Warning: watching this video can cause permanent brain damage). It was ridiculed by all critics, yet was a huge popular success, exactly because those who write critics are people who work seriously while the plebs has lot of "fun people" who felt Rebecca is singing about their life.

The whole "no lifer" term came from their basic experience, the distinction between "serious" and "fun". They believe that we can't loosen up even in a game, so we surely have no fun in our lives. The truth, that we simply find the "serious" way "fun" by deriving our fun from winning, is unbelievable for them. They can't believe that I can have fun defending Lumber Mill all match while I watch the scores going up and literally looking down on the bridge fighters.

If you hear someone talking about "fun activities" or "going out to have fun" or "doing something the fun way", you see someone who don't have fun most of the time, who experience his real life as a series of chores and slaving that can be spiced up by having fun sometimes.

The "play to win" attitude is part of the "live to succeed" attitude. When I see a project going well under my hands, see a new machinery starting to work that I designed, I have fun in real life. "Success is fun" is the underlying attitude of the "play to win" people and since we seek the optimal way everywhere, we have success, therefore fun.

If I had to give a criteria of a happy man, it would be: "one who enjoys Monday just as much as Saturday". I'm writing this post on Monday. I'm writing a blog post, a hobby of mine on Monday. You are reading a blog post on Tuesday. Where are the "fun ppl"? Are they having fun now somewhere or flipping burgers/studying something they hate?

Dancing causes yelling, berating and quitting

2012-01-16T07:00:00.037+01:00

Rohan, who once supported playing well and was raiding hard modes so is now fighting against the "elitists" who call out bad playing. He also claims that the ones who do the best are not surely right, which is a direct rejecting of meritocracy.

However I don't think Rohan is wrong. I think he bumped into some truth just can't formulate it. The problem, like lot with WoW raiding, is "the dance", aka responding to bizarre and unique boss abilities by some non-standard way (not by healing, damage, tanking). The dance has three consequences which turns a raiding guild a very unpleasant environment with yelling, whining and raging.

The first is the difference between "good" and "bad". On a Patchwerk fight DPS matters. The "good" does 1000, the "bad" does 900. 900 vs 1000 isn't a terrible fail, it's just slightly worse. In a dance boss you either did the mechanic or you are dead. Dead is not 10% worse than alive. It's 100% worse. If you failed the mechanic, you are literally as good as an AFK. If we'd replace you with Arthasdklol in his ungemmed PvP gear mixed with spirit cloth for higher ilvl, we wouldn't be in a worse situation. If we'd try 9-manning we wouldn't be in a worse situation. According to the hard data, you are a worthless waste of space. This alone moves people to berate you. People consider someone 10% worse much less of a problem than a 0 DPS corpse and react accordingly.

Secondly, the good is helpless to help you. If the boss needs 1000 DPS to die and you do 950, he can step up and do 1050 and get a win. If he can do 1040, he has a reason to improve his character. He can do something about the wipe. And if he does, he isn't just "good", he is a "hero", someone who went above and beyond the call and got the win. He is rightfully respected and self-respected. On the other hand he can't dance for you. There is nothing he can do to make the kill after you failed (in progression race, later he can 9-man it). He is powerless to affect the outcome and this causes frustration, which causes anger and yelling.

Thirdly, the good one is unable to teach you. If someone does 100 DPS where the good does 1000, the good can teach him rotations, tell how to gem, enchant, which gear pieces are terrible, where to go farm. Unless the bad is braindead, he can take the advice and improve significantly. You can't teach someone to dance. You can tell meaningless advices like "press the button on fading light" (of course he knows that, he just don't notice the debuff), or "move faster" (he can't). Practically all you can tell to the bad dancer is "stop failing", which is useless. Again: being powerless to gain improvement causes frustration.

The above make the good one both emotionally frustrated and rationally coming to the conclusion that he can't do anything else for the kill than forcing you to improve or kicking you.

While Dragon Soul is much less dancy then Firelands, it's still too dancy. The dance must be eliminated completely and from every level of playing including hard modes because it's completely anti-social (and not a-social): it supports yelling, cursing and kicking while Patchwerk supports teaching and helping (which can be done socially for friends or a-socially for gold or "until we find a replacement")

Pikachu!

2012-01-13T07:00:00.018+01:00

One of the new feature of Mists of Pandaria will be the pet battle system. It is completely vanity and detached from the main story, there won't be raidboss-pets, you can "PvP" with other pet collectors or "PvE" with "wild pets". The rewards of these "battles" are more pets.

OK, more fun for the lolkids, who cares, the best thing about it is that they won't pollute LFR/LFD while being useless with their silly pets. Well my beloved greedy little green things, it's not true! Read what MMO-Champion wrote! No, not the part that explains that you can get rare pets that only spawn "in the spring, when it's raining, in Elwynn Forest at night". The important part is: Most pets will become tradable, even after being leveled.

Yes, you can sell these little annoying wannabe-Pikachu-thingies. And above all, you can sell leveled, aka "elite" pets. The ones that "pwn" in the dead-serious pet vs pet battles that decide who is the coolest guy on the short bus!

The pet leveling system is yet unworked, but I'm sure that there will be an optimal way that allows mass-production of these buggers for sale to the "special" kids.

Remember, while we don't think of them too high, their gold is just as good as yours. So don't just ignore the "awesome" new feature of pet battles. Pikachu will fight hard for your income!

Hit them in the fun!

2012-01-12T07:00:00.024+01:00

There is a significant problem with the current encounter design: they hit the whole team for the mistake of a few. It is balanced with nerfs, turning the place into a faceroll if the team is competent.

If the bad player stands in the fire, that's a problem for the healer and not himself. If the healer can't heal him, that's the problem of the other damage dealers who have to kill the boss before the enrage. If they can't do it either, that's the problem of everyone but him, as for him "no luck lol". This either turns the encounter into a bizarre dance festival like Alysrazor, or a mindless faceroll like LFR.

Rodos commented the solution: instead of hitting them in their HP, they should be hit in their fun. Encounter mechanics should not damage players, but place "no fun" debuffs on them, like cast speed decrease that includes GCD increase, as it's not fun watching the cast bar filling up so slow or waiting for ages for a GCD. It can also be a stun that incapacitates the player for 10-20 seconds. It could be a flat damage decrease, making him watch 1/2-1/3 of the numbers he used to see. The boss could also whisper insults to the failed player.

While this would still affect the whole raid, as one member being stunned for 20 seconds is clearly a raid damage decrease, it's not so radical as having one dead. Also, fails wouldn't be binary where the options are "i ownd meters lol" and "FFS heal". The failer would have lower overall damage done which is also not fun.

I'm sure that such design would have quick results on the players, they would respond to mechanics much better. Also it would make learning easier: now if you fail a mechanic, you either don't even notice (the healer will notice), or you are dead and can't try again. With this design you surely see the failure, but after that you can try again and again during the same try. The boss will enrage, but you (and everyone else) faced the mechanic 10 times instead of one.

This design would also make LFR-normal-heroic balancing extremely easy. All 3 difficulties could be exactly the same, differing only in raid DPS needed to hit enrage and raid HPS needed to outheal the unavoidable and tank damage. The boss would stun the failers the same way, but on heroic if there are 3 people eating stun once the boss will hit enrage in the gear available during the progression race, in normal everyone can eat 3 and the boss still dies, in LFR the average player can spend half time stunned and still wins. It would also increase the learning value of LFR: you can prepare for heroic by aiming for 0 stuns and HC level DPS. Currently in LFR mechanics are missing or ignorable or even preferred to be ignored (Ultraxion is easier to kill if you don't press the button in the first 3 unstable stages, while the healers are bored but damage more and the boss dies before 5 unstables).

Why choose an intelligent girlfriend?

2012-01-11T07:00:00.086+01:00

Feminists fight for women to be valued after their inner qualities instead of sexiness. Doesn't really work, if you look at the media. Women are rarely more than sex objects in films, advertisements, magazine photos and even in gaming (just think of the full cover body armor that somehow changes to a string bikini if equipped to a female avatar).

The feminists keep telling that it's "unjust", "unethical", "unequal" with little result. Why? Because who cares if something is unfair if I'm on the overpowered side?! Why should men give a damn if women are oppressed? Their problem, not mine. My eye-candy > your freedom.

There is two way out of this. One is convincing women that they need no man, so they can ignore their wishes. Feminists actually tried this in the '70-es, these were the "you need men like fish need a bike" campaigns and "throw away your bras" performances, but they did not hold. The reason is simple: why women don't need men companion more than the other way, mothers need fathers much more than the opposite. Raising kids as a single mom is much harder than paying child support and hanging out with them on the weekends. If a woman is not rich (which is by definition true for most) and she wants children (which is true for most due to very strongly hardwired evolutionary subroutines), she must get a man, therefore must get the approval of men.

The other way, completely ignored by feminists is to show men why is it good for them to see more in women than a sex toy merged into a household robot. Let me give a pretty surprising reason: The first scoreboard is mine, the second was made by my girlfriend, both on tier 4 tank destroyers. The trick is that she only played this tank with me in a platoon, so her results are my results since I win when she does. Let's subtract the two pages to calculate my solo results with the usual "draw = half win": I reached 59% wins solo and I got 68.5% together with her.

The reason for the increase is quite obvious. 2 good or even OK players do much better than one. Buddies queuing up as a group since ages for this reason. However a girlfriend has a serious advantage over a buddy: her schedule can be perfectly matched to mine. We live together, can share the chores therefore make sure that we are online at the same time. Also communication is very easy when we can actually look at each others monitor. Due to the high intimacy of such relationship it's much easier to ask for help if you don't know something. Buddies, even good ones try not to look "noob" front of the others. You neither can "sorry have to log" against a discussion. You live in the same home, the one who screws up something can't run away from the other telling it him/her, which enforces improvement very well.

Obviously the game is just an example of "doing things that are important to me". Whatever we do, we do extremely effectively, due to doing it together. Having such a partner greatly helped piling up those dollars that are now lying happily in the safe.

So to the question: "why should I care about the internal qualities of a woman?" the answer is: "an intelligent, effective, non-lazy woman can increase your efficiency in practically every field greatly". The fact that a dumb eye-candy can't help you in such ways is obvious. Actually she is a luxury object, which just has costs. A lot.

Young people are more likely to change their core ideas than old ones. Also, young, gaming men are tend to lack women nor they have good chances getting one, so they don't really has the option of dating lingerie models. Their gaming is important to them. Telling them that they could "pwn" and have sex if only they could give up on the "D-cup, 18 BMI, always in make up and heels" idea is more likely to work than telling the same to an accomplished man who can actually afford a young and attractive wife in a single-earner household. Gaming young men could be an ideal target of campaigns to accept women as people instead of objects.

Why can't we have both, useful and sexy? - men might ask. Look at the mirror dude! Do you see Christian Bale in it? If you can't be like him, she probably can't be like the lingerie models.

Why Diablo 3 is beyond schedule?

2012-01-10T07:00:00.001+01:00

Diablo III is late. It was promised for 2011, then early 2012, currently 2012 Q1 without release date. What the hell is going on? I mean it's not so hard to estimate a release date. The engine is complete, graphics is complete, gameplay needs some tweaking maybe that could be done via hotfixes, release it already!

The people who think that way don't see the problem. The problem is RMAH. RMAH is much more than it looks like. It's a new business model. It's the new business model. The thing that will make Blizzard extremely rich. The thing that will be industry standard - if it works.

Let me explain: The subscription model is bad because players who bring additional content (leading guilds, organizing events, writing guides, forum posts, blogs) are not rewarded at all. Also, it excludes those who can't pay $15 (but would pay $10) and doesn't get an extra cent from those who would pay $50.

Microtransaction model is bad because it's practically "pay to cheat", so many players refuse to play such game. Remember when I wrote that "players must respect each other to have fun". Losing to someone who just paid more and clearly sucks is damn annoying. Also, it makes those who can't pay enough to get behind X barrier to leave, so the company loses their few $.

The "perfect" model is what Blizzard is trying to build. Players don't need to pay for progression, you can win the game without paying a single $ in the RMAH. It's not a theoretical "can" like "you can pay for a T10 tank by farming 10000 matches on your T5 in World of Tanks". It's a real "can", I mean 10-20% of players will do so, without extensive farming, just by playing the game. Those who are ready to pay can skip fast forward by buying gear. All the gear comes from other players, so no one can point at you and say "lol a n00b in item shop gear", so buying gear has no negative social consequences. No one can actually prove that you gained your gear such way. Pro players are also rewarded for being pro, therefore the game is able to cultivate a positive community, where everyone prefers everyone to be there. I mean when I see a moron in WoW I see someone worthless to me and treat him likewise. The same guy will be a valued customer of my wares and no one insults customers. Likewise the pros are not considered "elitist no-lifers" but players who sell me stuff I need. Also, the selling decreases the difference between players without the developers "handing out welfare epics". Finally you can't buy your way into the "elite" as you can only buy what the top players sell and they will sell only the stuff that they wouldn't use or replaced. You can only pay to keep up, and not to get ahead.

So far, perfect. But the problem is "how"? No one ever did anything like it in a non-loss game. I mean EVE has it easy with PLEX-paid ships: noobs keep buying them, goons keep shooting them. But how to manage the same in a game where the items are just keep collecting? Markco found this problem with gems. Every gem can be transmuted into higher ones up to lvl 14. But what will happen if everyone has L14 gems? Then the prices will drop and people stop paying money for them, they go to gold AH, no income for Blizz. The droprates need to be perfect. If it's too high, prices drop. If it's too low, people consider it unreachable and don't even try to get it. The maturation of the game must also be considered as the more you play the more gems you get but won't get more sockets. The same must be considered, modeled in all possible markets.

If it works, it will be the industry standard. To make it work, every possible item class, every crafting path must be perfect. There are also no second chances. To every loophole $-hungry goblins jump and exploit it. You can't "hotfix" it as you can't take away gear that people paid $ for without losing your customers. It must be perfect at launch. There is no previous experience about it. Are you surprised that they have no idea when will it be ready?

Goblinish advice on need-greed in LFR

2012-01-09T07:00:00.014+01:00

The PuG update: In 4.3 gear really makes difference. We cleared 7/8 farm content with a handful of wipes only.

The post of today is a further update on my gearing page, comment it here. It's a pretty short update, but extremely important. I copied it here:

Now the loot: you did not go to LFR for the fun. LFR is not fun. LFR ranges from "OK, we done it pretty well" to "one more like that and I uninstall the game". You came for loot for normal raiding. There is one and only one goblinish advice here: need on everything. If you win something you don't really need, you can trade it. The effect of this largely depends on group size. If you queued up with a large group, your group gets lot of loot, allowing you to get trades. Many randoms refuses to trade. Even without trade, "your shard/vendor gold > the BiS of some random". You can also pay well geared guildies to come with you and need for you.

Finally something funny: this weekend was IoC. On Friday and Saturday we chain-massacred the horde. But on Sunday we lacked people and were only 3-5 wanting to run IoC. And we lost. And lost. And lost. No matter what strategy I tried, we lost. Finally I found the solution and spammed "All to hangar." And we won. Why? Because Hangar is the only place where you don't need to drive vehicles. Driving vehicles is way too hardcore for most people who has a rich and happy real life. I mean, it's great that the keeps have only 3 doors, because out of 4 demolishers 2 will surely attack the same gate. Also, glaives are way too fun to be used to shoot boring doors when they can oneshot players! So if you are on IoC, hangar is the key. That can't be messed up by even the most "fun" players. You and your premade shall hold quarry and refinery and you'll be fine.

On the level of bots

2012-01-06T07:00:00.129+01:00

We seen that most of the scores in the game World of Tanks is made by the few top players, while the rest aren't really contributing. Today I post further evidence and reveal a the core problem of the M&S. I started a new account on the game and played 200 matches. Well, it didn't take so much time as it looks due to my "special" playstyle: I tried to act like a bot as much as possible. I did not bot, just acted as one.

My "script" was simple. I choose a lane during preparation time and start running on that lane without any strategic consideration. My "waypoints" weren't idiotic so I didn't cross the field of Malinovka or something like that. I kept travelling on that lane until spotting an enemy. Then I stopped and fired. I kept firing until the enemy or me was destroyed or he retreated behind an obstacle. If he was down or hidden, I resumed rushing to the enemy base. That's more or less how a cheap, couple hundred-line scripted World of Tanks bot would act. Behold my results: There is just one data on this result page that is not shocking: my pathetic survival ratio. Everything else is unexpected. At first, I had 0.37 kills/match. This is high. This is the average of the kills of the bottom 85% (coming from the data used in the previous studies based on 60 matches).

Secondly, my winrate was very high, if we consider draws half-wins, I won 48% of the matches, that's barely below the average 50%. Considering that I performed almost exactly half as good as the average player (remember, the average killrate including the top 20% is 0.74/match), I should have lost more. The reason for the high winrate is exactly the non-normal distribution of player skill. If we use the binary scheme of "bad" and "good" players and attribute the wins to higher amount of good players on the winner side, let's see how my crappy presence would cause a loss. The chance to get N good players on the enemy is G^N*(1-G)^(15-N)*combin(15;N), where G is the ratio of good ones in the population. The chance to get N good players on our team is G^N*(1-G)^(14-N)*combin(14;N), as one spot is surely mine. I built a table for all N-s and considered "equal amount of good players" 50-50, "more good ones" a sure win for that team, then plotted the win chance against G. I also plotted what would happen if our team surely gets an extra good player:
The direction of the curves is easy to explain: the more abundant the morons are, the less the team feels an extra idiot and more an extra good one. In the extreme case of everyone else is bad, having another bad makes no difference (50% winrate), while having a good makes sure win. Having my terrible performance shifted the win rate of the group to 48% which belong to the 0.1 good ratio. On my real account, the results of my Marder II, the tank I dare to call myself pro with is 65%, belonging to 0.2 good ratio. So all three results place the amount of good players to the top 10-20%, while consider the bottom 80-90 "bad".

OK, 80-90% of the WoT players are "bad". So what? The interesting point from this study is to define "bad". "bad" means "on the performance level of a simple bot". No one would notice a thing if 80-90% of the playerbase would be replaced by a bot that does nothing but follows pre-set waypoints until sees an enemy, then stops and fires.

The tragedy of the M&S is not that they are "bad" in a sense that "worse than us". They are so bad that simple bots could give the same results. While a game developer wants to provide fun to all customers so do their best to stop botting, a profit oriented company doesn't give a damn about the fun of its workers, so in real life, low quality workers are fired and replaced by "bots": machines.

By the way, this result forces me to cancel my previous statement that "Blizzard supports botting". The truth is that they can't really do anything besides seeking for the bot program in the computer memory. They can't have any bot behavior filter that seeks what bots do, because it would catch large amount of legitimate players who are just so bad that can't be distinguished from bots. I mean if we would ban everyone who do the same in a battleground what I did in WoT (running in some random direction and attacking the first thing with red letters), WoW would be below 1M subscribers overnight.

What is the goblinish advice for today? Be smarter than 100 lines of script! Simple isn't it? Well, results show that for 80% of our fellow humans, not so much.

Ending the no-farm project

2012-01-05T07:00:00.003+01:00

We killed the first 7 boss in 2 weeks. It's faster than our raid progression in any other season. We never cleared Firelands, killed Nefarian and the Lich King months after the start. Yet we couldn't kill Deathwing this way. After more than a hundred tries we managed to learn every dance and just got to enrages. The DPS of the players were very similar, showing that there are no bad players to replace, we simply reached our limits.

The right choice here is not sticking out to a lost cause but to change it. We will start farming to increase the average ilvl of the people and will surely kill DW in January, starting hard modes.

The major cause of the downfall of the project is that we expected 4.3 to be similar to 4.2. The project would have shined in 4.2, but in 4.3 dances are decreased and DPS/HPS requirements are introduced. Also, the "first bosses are piss-easy" design make farm raids much easier. I remember wiping with new people dozen times on "farm" Rhyolith. This week we were trying on DW and dropped the save only on the last day before reset, leaving only one farm day. Despite half of the raid did not kill these bosses and the other half did it once, we killed the first 5 bosses in one raid. So the difficulty of farming decreased while its importance is increased. The project was started to "kill the dance", but the importance of dance has decreased significantly, so it's no longer needed.

The following schedule will replace the project: Wednesday is the LFR/BH day to let guildies run these without having to commune with the terrible randoms. Of course no one is forced to participate, I just can't imagine why would someone suffer the randoms if he doesn't have to. On the following day we farm the first bosses. I'm not sure how Warmaster responds to better gear, he lives in our memories as a damned dance boss.

Remember: it's a social thing to stick to something that doesn't work. A goblin goes after hard results, if they don't come, change and ignore the trolls.

The rising tide lifts all boats

2012-01-04T07:00:00.037+01:00

Yesterday I wrote how most of the scores are concentrated in the hands of a few players, while a huge group has nothing.

The question of today is: what would happen if we would make the game harder or easier. The number of kills would increase/decrease of course, but what would happen with the distribution? The "common" sense would say that if the average kills would double, everyone would get 2x more kills. As always, social thinking is bad and proving it doesn't need a "nerfed" or "buffed" game as there is already an easy and hard mode in World of Tanks. If you are on the winning side, you get it easy. If you are on the losing side, it's hard. The winners have 0.93 kills/battle/player, while the losers only have 0.54.

Now look at the distribution:That's strange: practically every percentile group increased its income by an equal amount. It isn't that surprising: when things are easy, the result is rather time or effort-limited and not skill-limited. I mean when the enemy tanks zerg on us after they listened to some moron yelling "all rush lololol", the kills are for free to everyone around. I can't reload faster than the guy next to me (OK, I can as I bought rammer), so he can shoot them out just as much. When our tards die the same way, the superior positioning and enemy movement-predicting skill give the good ones kills while only death to the OK-ish (the terribles are already dead).

The same is happening in the real life economy. During booms there is low competition. There is buyer for every papers, jobs for everyone who wants to work, customer for even the most useless crap, so everyone who is ready to do some work will earn some. When things go bad, the competition increases, investors become suspicious, workers are laid off and customers are saving their money, so only the best can get good money.

The above chart shown the absolute distribution of scores, now let's see the relative, where the sum is 100% for both groups: As you can see the scores are concentrated in the hands of the top ones if the group is in bad conditions. So when the "99%" punks whine that "despite people are starving the top 1% is getting richer and richer", they are no different than the ones who claim "it's not enough that we need to wear raincoats the cars slip too". The bad times cause losers to go impoverished and the top ones to be more rich (relatively, they also lose in the absolute sense).

The lack of difference in absolute income for the 25-30% and 30-35% groups is artificial but not limited to the game. 1 kill is the "minimal wage" of the game, that cannot be decreased, except for zero, unemployment. The amount of minimal wage earners decrease (5 groups for winners, 4 for losers), but the wage is the same for those who can keep their jobs.

Why 20% owns 80%?

2012-01-03T07:00:00.032+01:00

It is a well-known phenomena that the top 20% of the population owns 80% of the resources, while the other 80% of people has only 20% of resources. This is often mentioned as clear proof of the "evil oppression" of the capitalist system.

In my blog I want to research and teach capitalist thinking through games that we play. They have the benefits of being known to people and being fair: you can't blame my score on the wealth of my family, as socialists always do on real life examples. This time the very important question: "Why 20% owns 80%?" will be answered trough a game, World of Tanks.

In this game 15v15 random matches are played between teams of equal strength. At the end one team wins by killing all opponents or taking the base and a result screen appears:

As you can see there are many players with no kills at all, while others have 1, 2 or more. I processed the results of 60 matches that I played with various tanks. There were no selection of results, after I started screenshotting the result pages I saved the next 60. 1800 players(60x15x2) appeared in the results, of course one could appear more than once, obviously myself appearing in all. I made the simplification of ignoring this and considering all 1800 players different.

During these matches 1332 kills happened, making the average kill/player/match being 0.74. Common sense would say that most players had 1 kill, while a smaller bunch had 0, and a few had 2 or more. Well, "common sense" should be called "social sense" as it comes from our prehistoric subroutines. The truth is very far from that:

58% had 0 kills
Only 23.5% had 1 kill
10% had 2 kills
8% had 3 or more kills.

Now let's calculate "kill ownership":

The top 10% made 45% of the kills
The second 10% group made 25% of the kills
The third 10% group made another 13.5% of the kills
The bottom 70% made only 16.5% of the kills.

Maybe it's just luck! - the social would say. Well, luck provides normal distribution. I calculated the mean (0.74) and the standard deviation (1.12) of the data and using these I plotted the kill distribution according to the normal distribution (0 point: F(0.5), X point: F(X+0.5)-F(X-0.5)), along with the measured distribution: As you can see, the two curves have very different shape. It's not luck, nor normally distributed player skill. Compared to these, there are way too much "poor", less "middle class" and more "elite". The difference is largest in this region. According to the normal distribution, only 0.6% should have 4 or more kills, while actually 3.3% have such results.

So the short answer is: the bottom 80% has only 20% because they are filled with "0-score" losers, who are just that bad and deserve no better.

Remember, my results came from a game where every match is a new round and previous results have little effect on this match. You can farm points with losses, so no amount of sucking can stop you from having equally strong tank as the best players. Still the top 20% had 70% of the "wealth". Since in real life, past idiocy (skipping school, crime) has serious effect on today, 80/20 can be considered a very modest and nice result.

Looking For Retards

2012-01-02T07:00:00.000+01:00

I welcomed LFR. I wrote how can you keep it stupidity in bay during running LFR. But it seems we are losing this feature to the mindless ones. We went with 10 people. 3 of us healers. I was a bit worried that Anfini just dinged 85 and cheated the ilvl with crafted blue PvP gear. I mean I assumed we can carry him but I wasn't happy about it. At Ultraxion we almost wiped. I checked healing done to whisper it to him and ask to step out as we have problems with him. I saw this:

Yes, all the 3 randoms healed less than the half of a recently dinged blue PvP gear wearing 333 weapon using paladin. How? How can someone be so terribly bad. Is it possible to do so low without being mentally retarded (in the medical sense)?

I already votekicked one punk for being on /follow during trash. I kicked these 3 and then 2 more DD for being way below the tank (2 others were below the tank too, but not too much). So I have only 1 kick left for the rest of the run. We killed DW, but with every possible nonsense. Warmaster at 10% when Goriona finally left? Check! 3 Hideous amalgamations at once? Check! Pulling DW before the spine loot is distributed? Check! Elementium bolts hit when Nozdormu still up? Check! Guy happily DPSing limb on wrong platform until AoE kills him? Check! 3 Elementium terrors? Almost check, last died 10 secs before new ones while the people happily DPSing DW. Every possible cooldowns were used to keep the raid alive. This raid was really on the edge, and we had 10 guildies.

The problem is fundamental: less and less good players need LFR gear while more and more M&S get enough ilvl to queue in. It's only a matter of time before LFR becomes unusable. However you can always offset it by collecting people and go with a pre-made. Just don't look for ilvl! A blue PvP geared guy is literally much better than a high ilvl M&S who couldn't hit the lake from the bottom of it.

Spreading investments

2011-12-30T07:00:00.022+01:00

A serious idiocy pollutes the mind of many people in the real world banking: spreading your investments for lowering your risks. A little bit of USD, little bit of YPJ, bit of gold, bit of state bonds, bit of CDS, bit of everything! This way you can't lose!

I wish I knew who was the first idiot who made this nonsense up and how could he find followers?!

By spreading your investments, your portfolio will more and more represents the average of the the instruments on the market. And by having an average instrument, by definition you will get average returns. Too bad that average returns on a negative-sum system is negative.

Maybe that's the problem. Many people still don't believe that trading with papers is a negative-sum action, despite it can be easily proven. You can't eat papers. You can't wear them either. They can't cure you when you sick. They are not goods. They are a form of money. Money is not wealth. Money is a measurement system for wealth. It can be printed endlessly with no effect. At the end of the day you need goods and if the amount of goods is fixed, then the average access to goods is fixed. Juggling with money and papers have two and only two effects: one is inflation, the average guy gets more money, yet no more access to goods, so the prices inflated. The second effect is wealth transfer: the average wealth of the players is the same, but one of them got richer at the expense of the others. Since the juggling itself has costs (infrastructure and salary of people running it), the above zero-sum actions turn into negative sum.

You can score big by juggling: you win the wealth of dumber jugglers. But the idea that "everyone" can increase his wealth, by letting "your money work for you" is a simple lie. It's told by those who score big. You are not a partner in this business. You are the mark.

Seriously! What were you thinking? You don't even do juggling, you don't pick instruments, you just sign some papers and get rich? Are you that stupid? Either do the research yourself and take a risk by buying the instrument you think the best or don't juggle at all, spend your money on goods you think will serve you well.

PS: No, I'm still not a "we are the 99%" punk. I'm all for free market and the unrestrained juggling with poisoned papers. Tomorrow I'll tell you why.

What makes democracy democracy?

2011-12-29T07:00:00.022+01:00

The word "democracy" is Greek, meaning "the rule of the people". It is believed to have several criteria:

Equality before law
Leaders are elected by the people (all 18+, non-convicted, non-insane people)
The separation of powers (checks and balances, judicial independence)
Rights of the individual

The funny thing is that none of the above is true to a gaming guild. Gaming guilds should be the purest form of democracy since there is absolutely no power objectively existing in a game that would force anyone to obey tyranny. I mean you don't need anything that the government would provide, and you can move without costs, so why would you accept anything less than perfect freedom? Yet people willingly form guilds that are openly tyrannic: one guy has all the power and he can do as he wishes, including kicking players for no other reason than he chose to. Why do anyone accept this in a game he plays at his own will? Please note that players implemented lot of systems outside the developers will, for example damage meters and GearScore, so you can't blame just clumsy developers. It wouldn't be hard to write voting addons, yet no one seems to wish to live in freedom.

Also, you can see several real world counterexamples: China doesn't fit to the criteria, yet it develops very fast (which is surely the interest of the people), while Hitler risen to power in a (moderately) fair election in a country that fit to the criteria more or less. The South African Apartheid regime last for almost 50 years, despite the criteria were upheld for the white people, and the "only democracy in the middle east", Israel is one of the biggest troublemakers of the World.

Current movements, the rise of the right wing extremism show that "democracy is in crisis". However I think only the bad definition is in crisis. Again, I'd focus of the gaming guilds: it should be perfect "people's rule". Now let's turn it upside down: as it must be democracy, if it doesn't fit to the criteria, it proves that the criteria is wrong. The other problem is that the criteria is a criteria and not a definition. It says "something is democracy if X,Y,Z are true", yet it doesn't tell what makes democracy democracy.

I believe I found the true definition: In a democratic system the power holders (government, jury, bureaucracy, armed forces) belong to the same demographics as the people. They are ones of the people therefore one with the people.

The criteria at the start is not so bad. Any democracy (by my definition) could implement them at the cost of some extra bureaucracy, while most non-democratic systems could not. However some non-democratic systems can operate within the criteria and for most democracies the criteria is just extra annoyance.

The gaming guild is democracy because the "tyrant" wants the same thing what his "slaves", therefore there is no point or need of oppression. In a raiding guild everyone wants to raid, so the rule of the leader is accepted and supported. The one who wants "freedom" against the rule is viewed as a "lazy moron" by the people. The unity between leader and leaded is created by the fact that the leader is just as much a raider as the leaded.

In every dictatorship you can find a demographic trait in which the leadership is different from the people. In the Middle East the leading party is usually one clan or religious sect while the people are not. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Arab, while 2/3 of Iraq are Shia in religion and 25% are not Arab but Kurd or Turkmen. In North Korea the leadership is the Kim dynasty, and majority of the people are obviously not belong to that family. Slobodan Milosevic and his leading party were ethnic Serbs while most of the people in Yugoslavia were not.

Dictatorships are not bad because John Doe has no power, he has next to zero in a democracy either (0.0000005% of votes in the USA for example). Dictatorships are bad because the leaders are different from John, don't understand or like him, see his wishes weird or outright evil. They know nobody like John, so they see no reason not to crush him. A democratic leader doesn't put for example women into slavery because he is nice or because some piece of paper says so. He doesn't wish to do so because he has a mother, sister, wife, daughter and he doesn't want them be slaves. But more importantly he cannot do so, because large portion of his power system (members of his party, bureaucracy officials, cops, judges, lawyers) are women and not only they would actively resist but if he would somehow succeed, his system would collapse due to the sudden loss of large portion of the people upholding it.

For this reason China can be a democracy assuming that the party members and officials are from various backgrounds of the country. Hungary has experienced it, before the 1956 revolution the country was lead by a bunch of communist who lived in the Soviet Union for decades (definitely different from the average Hungarian) and held a terrible oppression. After the revolution Moscow chosen leaders who lived in Hungary and the party was opened to more average Hungarians (at its peak it contained 10% of the adults), therefore the country was as good as it could be behind the iron curtain and was referred as the "happiest barrack in the Soviet prison". If China goes on that way I see no reason why shouldn't they succeed despite violating most of the criteria listed above.

Enforcing the criteria to countries in a will to "create democracy" actually create dictatorship. The leadership will be a bunch of people following western values while the leaded people are not following these, making a huge ideological discrepancy between them, which means they are not one of the people therefore by definition the system is not democracy, and the "creation of democracy" will naturally fail. The landslide victory of Viktor Orbán's party in Hungary was exactly this: the people always rejected the western values, therefore never considered the previous governments their own and violated their laws wherever they could. Because of this, the actions of Orbán are widely accepted and the criticism of Western leaders are considered "outsider troublemaking".

The one and only criteria of democracy is that the leadership has the same demographics as the leaded people. This can and should be internationally monitored, not the actual moves of the government. Of course it will lead to very different democracies, based on the very different cultures. While Iran is a dictatorship because the leaders are much more religious than the leaded people, a perfectly democratic Iran would still have Islam-based law and women would still have to cover their hair (not their full body), just as majority of them would think it's proper.

PS: please spare me from the "leaders are rich, so in an important demographics different from the people" comment. The ones you refer to are a 0.1% of the leadership, as for every rich senator there are thousands of bureaucrats, cops and soldiers who all together form the government as without them its rule couldn't be enforced. The average government worker does not earn more than an average guy and also a senator is not more rich than the top 0.1% of the private sector.

Playing strategy games and not noticing it

2011-12-28T07:00:00.103+01:00

Tobold whined how rare strategy games are. The funny thing is practically every game is a strategy game using his definition "a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim; the art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle."

Let's take World of Tanks that we both play. It's all about strategy. If you don't consider it, your win chance is totally random: 50%. If you consider strategy, you will have higher. If you master the strategy of your tank class: much higher.

Let me show the WoT strategy. It starts with choosing a lane. The maps usually have 3 of 4 lanes. Which will you choose? It depends on your class, but above all, depends where the others move. If you see the loading screen and you say "hey I like Steppes, let's go left side", you are a capital case moron. You must wait and see where the mindless sheep will go. Of course you can start moving a likely direction but must be ready to turn back if your lane is not the good one. Based on the amount of "teammates" and scouted enemies present on the lane, it can be "zerged" (teammates overpowering), equal and weak. Of course you can only guess here. If you see 9/16 go one lane, 3 on the second and 1 on the last (2 arties and 1 you) you have every reason to consider the first zerged, despite the enemy may all go this lane, making it weak and the other two zerged.

Based on your class and checking out the enemy composition you choose a lane:

Light: you go to the zerged lane and stay 100-200m ahead of the zerg. No, don't run away from them to the back! Your job is not to get that damn "scout" achievement, die, and then type "ffs arty why no shoot". That "strategy" is based on the assumption that the arty worth more than a heap of dung, which is unacceptable on a random match. The assumption that "one out of 9 can hit a lake from the bottom of it" is much safer, though there are no guarantees. Obviously, if they already have a scout, you can stay behind them and take the scout's place when he is down.
Medium: If unsure, or see lot of fast scouts at the enemy, stay back and defend the arty from the mindless zerg of T-50-es. Also, you can join the proper lane later as you are fast. Choose the balanced lane and win it. Press forward to the enemy base.
TD: Choose weak lane. Stay at the back, pick a nice bush and hide. The enemy will come into your cannon. If the weak lane has a defender (rushing idiot doesn't count), be forward enough to cover him. The hardest job for a TD is deciding who worth saving and who doesn't. If in doubt, choose to not save him and stay further back.
Heavy: Choose weak lane. If there is a TD or back-camping other tank, consider his line of fire when choosing cover.
Artillery: in a non-obvious spot where you can fire instantly. If you see morons rushing forward, stop where you are, aim on the enemy base to be ready when the moron arrives.

You may or may not choose your best lane. You are somewhere, where you must make difference. The main situation is something like this:

What can you do?

As the member of the zerg you must push. If the situation stalls, 6 of you and 3 of the enemy is out of combat. In some other lane they are clearly winning, you have no time, you must risk. If you have speed, run for the small obstacle, circle it. Shoot one on the back on the run. For God's name, don't stop to aim! If you are have armor, push to the mid. Make sure that if you die, your corpse won't be another obstacle. Don't stop to fire either, shoot from close range to a defender but don't stop for TD food. The zerg behind you will stop and fire.

As defender you must win time. Taking out 2 and dying in 1 minute is worse than just dying after 3. Hide. Every second you win for the team is a second the others can push on their lane. Don't even try to get to firing position, you'll fire when one move into your face. Ignore small tanks, they are just distraction. Always mind the line of fire of the TD, don't block it.

The thing you must understand on both side is that the random zerger on his own will not attack. He wants to "pwn" and not to move into the crossfire of 2 defenders and some possible TDs in the back (he can't see them). The typical scenario for a loss is a big zerg moving one lane, get blocked by 1-2 tanks while the enemy win all other lanes. I've seen a single light tank (+ me in the back as TD) blocking 8 morons as there were none of them who would move out first. If you are attacking, you must be the first, if you are defending, you must wait for the first and not provoke them by providing a target. The picture below show both the proper conduct and various types of moronic behavior:

(not written on the picture: 2 especially dumb TDs went with the right side zerg while the lane at 4-5 is totally uncovered)

One more thing: if you are alone in a lane with no visible enemy, consider yourself defender. Maybe it's totally empty and you could score big, but more likely you'll be TD food rushing.

The main point is that you must understand that you are not playing enemy tanks backed by allied tanks but against dumb people with dumb people. You must understand and predict dumb social behavior instead of tank parameters. You must plan your action and revise your plan often based on what you see on the map. Then you won't have random 50% win rate but significantly higher:

Considering draws a half-win, I have overall 59% wins. That includes every tanks, including the ones that I just ran underequipped to get the next one. Since there isn't much twitch and reflex in this game, this winrate is only determined by superior strategy, understanding how the social sheep will act.

Since I'm only controlling 6.5% of our tanks (1/16), it's a pretty good result. It unfortunately still can't give 100%, as most of the others are terrible morons and slackers and on the top of that they don't even speak English (and surprisingly not even ashamed of it, happily chatting on their gibberlish native language). No matter how good you are, you will lose several matches due to blocked-zerging tards, rushing or AFK arty, 5 scouts all dead in the first minute, moron standing in the open and other various nonsense behavior. If the enemy has more players with brain cells, they will win, no matter how good you position and how good you shoot:

But by having good strategy, choosing a good lane and moving properly, you can change your win:defeat from 1:1 to 3:2, and it isn't nothing. This, and most others are strategy games, granted you must carry out your strategy with your own clicks which can be felt grinding.

When ignoring the thinking of the socials leads to disaster

2011-12-27T07:00:00.045+01:00

I don't write about politics, because political opinion is like fart: everyone has it and no one wants to experience the other guys. I make an exception today. Not because I believe I will change anything, I won't. Only to foretell what will happen, maybe help some guys to save their own money and to increase my credibility by linking this post back from half year from now: "I told you".

The leader of Hungary, Viktor Orbán is clearly disliked in Europe and the US (and not without reason). However both the EU and US leaders are beyond mere dislike, they choose to make him go, like they did with Silvio Berlusconi and Georgios Papandreou. They made it clear to the whole leading elite that they will not help the country unless the leader is replaced. And they were. What works there should work in Hungary, right?

Wrong, because while Orbán clearly has no clue about the economy, he has an unmatched talent understanding and manipulating the socials, vast majority of the voters. For this reason, despite the country being in deep crisis and people getting poorer by the day, he would still win an election today according to all opinion surveys. The reason is simple: socials seeks responsibility instead of results. If you are totally unsuccessful but manage to shift the blame to others, you are clear, while you can reach any result if you are pictured evil in the head of the socials and they will still hate you. Orbán could clearly shift the blame for the crisis to the banks and "speculators" while picturing himself as a tragic hero who fights against the odds for the people. His narration of the situation is widely accepted by public. Please note that this setup was used many times in history, always with disastrous results, yet without the loss of popularity for the perpetrator, on the contrary, often elevating him to a legend.

What will happen? Since the Hungarian budget is clearly not self-sustaining and the investors are leaving (and forced to leave by their written standards to liquidate assets that are devalued by at least 2 rating company), the bankruptcy of Hungary (inability to pay their debts) will happen in half, maximum one year without external help. The EU and US leaders think that at this point Orbán will have no choice but to surrender, accept all their terms and leave. He won't. He will let the country go bankrupt.

When Hungary defaults, the 88000B HUF (about $360B) Hungarian dept is lost to the investors. They are mostly banks in the EU. And God knows how much papers running around with repacked Hungarian state bonds and CSDs. At this point the EU leaders can do two things.

One is that they surrender and help Hungary without conditions. This case Orbán would not only look, but be an epic hero, the first in history who won against the "evil speculators". The more likely scenario is they help their own banks, which is the same "paying instead of Hungary" without the loss of face. Hungary, due to having its own currency will auto-adjust, the HUF will fall to the point when the import of consumers goods is decreased enough and the export increased to make the budget balanced. In this case Orbán can uphold his narrative that "we" stood our ground and survived the brutal attack of the evil ones.

The above could be avoided if the EU-US leaders would understand the social animals who vote. They assume that poverty will make the Hungarians hate Orbán. Well, they will clearly hate someone but I'm 100% sure it won't be him. It will be the speculators, the EU, the USA, the capitalism or even worse, the jews. Seen it already, didn't we? For these reasons Orbán does not play chicken game, so he won't turn away in the last second. Simply he doesn't care if he is driving a car or owning a junkyard.

PS: "bankruptcy" has a bad name, due to for a person it means being without any property, for a company it means the end. For a country it merely means no more loans and maybe that they have to pay for imported goods in advance and in foreign currency. The investors can't come and confiscate the Parliament building or even the luxury cars standing front of it.

Can't back off

2011-12-23T07:00:00.040+01:00

Please look at this World of Tanks chart: As I wrote, penetration is a key feature in this game, if you can't penetrate the enemy armor, you do zero damage. The chart shows the armor of the heaviest tanks of the tier and the gun penetration of tank destroyers. The three thick lines show the ratio of average gun : average armor in the same, +1 and +2 tiers of tanks, as you are matched against tanks that are 2 tiers of your range. Please note that 100% means that the gun would just penetrate from zero range, ideal angle. To hit a sideways-standing, sloped armored tank from afar, you need serious overpower of gun.

As you can see the relative gun strength has a minimum in tiers 5-7. The lower tier and higher tier tanks are both more likely to score an effective hit. Why? Is it a design failure? Far from it. It's another way of abusing the socials into paying in the item shop.

In the start tiers you are effective so get hooked on the game. It's easy to "pwn" in lower tiers (of course it's equally easy to be "pwned" but a social is never pwned, just got a "fail team no1 hepled lol"). So the player starts to like the game. Then he reaches the higher tiers and he start to get ineffective hits. Of course the match is still balanced, since the enemy is equally ineffective, you can often see heavy tanks standing in close range, shooting at each other for minutes and still both standing. The social doesn't care about wins, he wants "fun", and having ineffective hits is not fun. Of course he could go back to T4 but it doesn't feel right. It's "lame" to back off.

Since he can't back off and T5-7 is not fun, there is only one way out for him: forward. He could only advance during "not fun" matches so he rather buys his way to the top tiers. If people wouldn't be stupid socials who want to "progress" and can't back off, the free-to-play model couldn't exist. The game would either be crap at start so no one would get hooked, or would be good and no one would leave the starting tiers, everyone would play there for free.

There won't be post on Monday as it's Christmas and people wouldn't read it anyway.