Blood Red Arachnid

Trying to pin this all about whether or not snowglobe's is particularly crucial to the matter is like trying to blame any one drop of water for a flood. There exists a degree inbetween in which personal contribution and group contribution overlap to create the situation present. Though Snowglobe isn't someone who is wholly responsible for all the problems that I personally encounter, it isn't accurate to say that he is wholly irresponsible either. The servers in the game are undoubtedly linked, through the forums, global channels, global friends, in-game e-mail, and other media that I may have not mentioned. It is quite accurate to say that Snowglobe does have an effect, even though it isn't a direct one.

Since trial leaders are quite rare, it isn't an unsafe assumption that their actions have quite an impact on their server. Impact on the server translates to a lesser impact on the game as a whole. For example, I myself am not a social person in the game. But I lead trials, and as time went on I now have people who address me personally and recognize my global, going all "It's a trap!", paying compliments and asking me to host their trial for them while I am still wondering who they are and how they know about that whole Ackbar thing. I don't know many other players that get that kind of recognition without even trying. I'm getting more and more famous just because I don't want to sit around and wait for someone to start forming a trial. I'm certain that I have an impact on the server and the game as a whole, albeit a small one. Just another droplet of water.

Now, as for trying to find the exception, this whole thing about no one running other trials for the rest of the day reminds me of something that I was taught pertaining to affirmative action in the real world. I don't know if this has a particular name, so I'm going to have to spend awhile explaining it. There is form of "soft discrimination" is a case where discrimination becomes such a widespread and recognized that society just develops a status to it and ceases trying to fight it. The example I was given was about how some town's police force was all white. When investigated, the police force showed all of the resumés to... whomever was investigation (damn I wish I didn't have the memory of a 60 year old man), saying "Look, the only people who apply here are white. We can't hire minorities if they don't apply". This, of course, didn't prove that discrimination wasn't occurring. There had to have been a reason why it was like that. It turns out that the oppressive nature of the police force had made it so minorities in the town wouldn't even try to apply to the police force. After enough minorities being turned away, they got the message and just stopped trying.

Now take this "soft discrimination" applied to the game. If we consider this phenomena, then the lack of people trying to form alternate hard trials without the requirement isn't a clean bill of health for the server. It could be that the server population's will to do otherwise is broken. Too timid from the scorn of failure to take risks, too unsure or insecure to host the trial, not knowedgeable enough to adapt to different situations, not enough free time to take a shot, and no one there to encourage them. If the stringent requirements would be a detriment to whom hosts the trials a different way, then those stringent requirements would be discouraging people from trying. It isn't widely considered that the playerbase is a finite commodity, and if the phenomena I described happens, then the player who hosted the mixed league isn't likely to attribute their failure to the league that came before them. They're likely to go with the level shifts, because it is easy to see and it does have an effect. This would just be a way that the problem would perpetuate itself...


It's kind of funny, but I actually did this to myself today. I hosted a MoM -> DD earlier today with one of my toons. We thrashed them, hard. Got all of the badges sans nightmare on MoM without even trying, marched through the MoDD without so much as a hiccup. I barely had to do anything in those leagues. I just got done hosting these two trials again, and on what was arguably a more capable toon. The MoM was a lot harder, took longer, and we didn't get the badges. Funny thing, I had to tank it with a peacebringer. The DD that formed immediately after that got team wiped by the Sentinel at 55% HP, and we failed it. I had to try it again consecutively, where only 5 players stuck around with me. This second run, same requirements with a very underdog team (4 blasters, 5 scrappers, a stalker, 2 brutes, two trollers, corruptor, PB, and a Warshade) managed to get through, but we didn't get all of the Mo badges, and a few players abruptly quit in the middle. I was worried we were going to fail it when people kept dying at Diabolique, but regardless we pulled through. I feel kind of sorry for the guy who started forming a MoM trial immediately after my MoM trial queued up.

I am pretty sure that I have been clear that the stringent requirements isn't all somehow all Snowglobe's fault. I mention about how it isn't exclusively about triumph to emphasize that this isn't all about Snowglobe. It never has been all about Snowglobe. The mentality exists, and it is self-perpetuating, but it is not degenerating. This never was a problem about what might happen in the future. It is an issue now, not later. Even my assumption as to how the requirements form indicates stasis.


I must iterate the imminency the issue. Could it better? Of course. Could it get worse? Of course. I experienced the issue just 5 hours ago, so if anything the problem is in stasis rather than any slippery slope. Now, if the whole case against the limited player commodity is that certain servers are scarce enough that no one would host another relevant trial within 20 hours, this isn't actually debating my case. It is trying to find an exception to my case. This would imply that the conditions I outlined are correct, but not ubiquitously absolutely applicable.

Somehow this aspect has been lost, but when I was talking about bringing +3s to the trials, the "particular trials" were MoM, DD, and UG. This doesn't have an effect of causing other trials to limit players, nor have I said that it would.

Finally, stating the slippery slope and ending it at that is something known as the fallacy fallacy: Characterizing an argument based on flawed premises doesn't immediately mean that the argument is incorrect. I.E. if I say "2 + 2 = 4 because my uncle steve said so", the statement itself isn't incorrect while the reasoning for it is. Likewise, I am not saying that the issue is self-perpetuating because things that are bad get worse. I never actually gave a full explanation that the problem would be self perpetuating since I didn't think it would actually be an issue. But alas here I go: The reason why the stringent requirements are self perpetuating is ultimately due to the tendency of people in general to stay in the comfort zone. A team of all +3s does have an improved chance of succeeding at a trial, and if this succeeds then there must be an outside motive that would cause players to stray away from that guarantee. People who join these trials that succeed and see these trials that succeed and talk about these trials that succeed perceive the obvious difference between successful runs and failed runs and then assume it to be the determining factor. It is just simple pattern recognition. When this ideology became widespread it became a norm, and thus people both consciously and subconsciously abide by the normal standard.

It was a very weird sight today when I formed a MoM -> DD run to get all of the AV resists. I said my normal requirement of "51+" and left it at that. And yet, all the players who wanted to join up would say things like "I'm 52. Is that O.K.?", and "Can I join? I'm a blaster." or "Do you want me to try and see if I can get myself up to 53?". My response was always "just bring what you want". I never told them that you have to be 53 to or have specific ATs to join up, and yet they all acted as if I was broadcasting the common "53s, widows/dark manipulation preferred, have your IO sets" that I see on the server every day. It took half an hour to get 15 more people together, and this happened at 5:00 PM EST.

I guess we'll just have to disagree here. Elitism is practiced under the perceived need.


I never said it makes a slippery slope to increasingly higher restrictions. That was Tyger42. As for people who are saying that they should run trials the way Snowglobe does, that is Wing_Leader (at least I think that was what he was saying in a roundabout way). That is the whole "incarnate trials are unfair and need these" argument I've had. I also am not talking about people emulating snowglobe in any sense. The idea of having stringent requirements for particular trials isn't anything new as much as it is a reoccurring trend that has a habit of self-reinforcing. If people keep going around saying, and not just specifically in this topic, that you need +3s only and then only host with +3, it makes it so forming mixed teams is a whole lot harder. Not just because the 53s get eaten up by the other trials, but because people won't bring anything else to the trial other than a 53, compounding the effect.



EDIT: Oh yeah, the UG. I actually find that to be the trial with the highest failure rate, mostly because the UG trial is one of the few cases where you can try to do everything right and still not do well. The effects of the AVs can't be "negated" as much as they can be lessened. Even while air-taunting you get those stray targets. The avatar is nasty on all accounts, with possibly the most detrimental effect I've seen any AV ever have.

That discussion is over. Quit trying to pick a fight.


Wrong. Quit trying to pick a fight.


Wrong Quit trying to pick a fight.


Wrong Quit trying to pick a fight.


Wrong. That discussion is over. Quit trying to pick a fight. It doesn't make sense.

Wrong. Sports teams go with the bet because they are heading against other teams where they are going for the best bet, and in this case one team must lose to another. Trials run independently of each other, so there is absolutely no reason for one trial to hoard all of the higher levels. BTW, that discussion is over.


Teams win against other teams, where one's success necessitates the other's failure. Trials don't do that, or at least they don't need to do that. However I digress: that discussion is over.


So elitism isn't elitism if the elitist doesn't think they are elitist...


Then don't look at it that way.


All leagues but MoM and DD: Everyone is welcome.
MoM and DD: +1 required. DD not set in stone yet.


Seriously. You don't get it, do you? That discussion is over. So cry moar, even though it doesn't help anything.

I suppose that is the reason why I asked at what the line would be. From the sound of it, it seems like you're saying that elitism can't exist as far as trial requirements go. I'm certain that it does/I'm mistaken in my assumption here...

Though something I wonder about experiences is whether or not players are taking different steps to deal with the same problem. To take the UG as an example, a big hurdle to climb for a lot of teams is pulling the Lichen-Infested WW into a corner. Players will stand in front of it and keep attacking, their temp pets will get into the way, players will spam taunt on it despite orders not to, ect. The way that I deal with this problem isn't to have more level shifts. What I do after broadcasting and using league chat is click on that character, then send them a tell or two in private telling them what to do and if I am league leader a warning that I will kick them for otherwise. It is a copy/paste, so it goes really quickly for each of the players. If I am not the league leader, then I suggest to them after the tells fail that they should be kicked. Thankfully the problem player has never been a team or league leader. This tactic so far works like a charm; in all of the dozens of UGs I've been on, I've only had to kick one other player and I've seen a player get kicked maybe twice in total. Now, the ancillary benefit of this is that the player who I've "dealt with" has promptly learned their error, and in future events will know what the correct procedures are. In a mini-UG run once I saw something that was just beautiful: once the LIWW spawned, all of the players cleared out like a flock of sparrows taking taking flight, leaving only me and the head tanker to pull it into the corner. This wasn't a team of 53s, either.

I've seen other tactics, too. I've seen players make others buy or even give other players a stack of red inspirations for the sentinel fight to blitz it down as quickly as possible. I've recommended bringing yellow insps for tougher AV fights. With trial teams, the less confident I feel about their autonomy the more active role I take in leading it. I've evens seen frequent league leaders take Incandescence in case they ever need to herd the group for some reason. It is rare for me to encounter an issue that required more DPS via levels as its only solution, whereas for the numerable failed trials I have been on I can always pick out some flaw in tactics or actions or some weird circumstance and go "Yeah, that is definitely why we failed".

Now that we're breaking into experiences, there has to be a reason for the circumstances that causes these experiences. Whenever the pool of 53s gets drained by someone when I host a trial I see an increase in the time it takes to complete those same trials. For the harder trials (MoM, UG, DD), I see an increase in failure rate due to various circumstances other than raw damage output (IMO player survivability is more an issue with level shifts than just their ability to kill things). But even those failures can be accommodated with better strategies. I wonder what exactly is going on to make players so hesitant to have something other than 53s on those three trials. My suspicion is that, after a few failures, they put down a high requirement then never budge from it, not realizing that you can relax that requirement quite a bit while still winning the vast majority of trials.


The TPN, MoM, and DD give half the merits after the first completion. Don't know about the UG, since I've never been able to run it successfully consecutively on the same toon within 20 hours. More on that later...


This isn't a proposed behavior. It is an observed one: There have been numerous times where I have tried to host consecutive hard trials, or I have tried to host a hard trial within an hour or so of another person launching that trial. It never goes well: Most people break away from the consecutive hosting to do another trial that gives emp rewards, or even to host the other one to get the rewards. A few will alt, less still will stay on board, but at the end of the day I have to reform well over half of the league, and this isn't always immediate. The second league rarely performs as well as the first. For the non-consecutive trials I still see a performance decrease if I host it after someone else has run a 50+3 trial, and less 53s in my own league.

Now, on Virtue these trials are organized quite regularly. I'd say it is around 3 a day for MoM and DD, and 2 a day for UG. I've seen a lot more hosted than that in a single day, though. As for the minor trials, I see players opt out of those all the time, too. Running the Lam > BAF > Keyes > TPN series is quite common, but when run late in the day a quarter to half the league drops after each trial. Those minor trials are a lot more common than the three big ones, and it is those that players run over and over again despite their diminishing rewards. I believe the only "marathon" trial run that I've seen last more than a few iterations was the TPN.

Now, this may be just a server issue where beggars can't be choosers on less populated servers. This also may be a self-reinforcing issue, where the requirements make it so it isn't hosted as often due to having such stringent requirements. This is probably a combination of those two issues, however.

No. Quit trying to pick a fight.

It never was nor is it never meant to be a strictly defined standard, and that is not a problem in any sense. The whole point of mentioning player skill is to include the fact that there are players who are incompetent through means that are not related to numbers. Players who can't follow directions, players who grief trials, players who openly leech, all of those things are not some form of statistical data yet bear heavy consideration when team building. The inability to determine this beforehand doesn't matter; it is still something to consider when making a team. Usually it has to be done through prior experience with this individual. Sorry to say, but you have to get to know someone before you can accurately judge them.

No.

This is a classic issue in psychology that rears its head: no one ever thinks they are in the wrong for their actions. If you ask someone who, say, robs stores or beats their spouse or spray paints a neighborhood or sells drugs, they'll always have some sort of explanation for their action. Some will deny that such an action takes place and when pressured they'll join the others that deny that such an action is incorrect, and then when all are pressured further they'll say that their actions are justified through some circumstances. To this end, since elitism is undoubtedly viewed negatively here, it will follow the same line of reasoning. Merely saying "I'm not being elitist" doesn't accomplish much.

As far as that particular should-no-longer-be-being-discussed-between-us issue goes, other actions don't suddenly neutralize the requirements. The issue of perception is also another subjectivity, since by default an elitist perceives their actions as necessary for their perceived justifying circumstances. If someone consciously thinks they are going overboard, then they wouldn't abide by that standard because of its overboard nature.



No.


No. Again, not a definition.


No. This doesn't make sense.


Already made that distinction.

Trials are not competitive between each other. The analogy doesn't apply.


No. Understand != agree. You're still going on about the previous discussion, which as I have said before is futile. The requirements were elitist, not the person.

No. Never said you were elitist. The whole time, and at every mention of elitism, I have been talking about the trial requirements. Now, granted others have said that you are elitist, but I am not somebody else. You're still beating a dead horse that you refused to listen about.


No, no, no, no, no. You're not even listening. You couldn't even get my trial requirements right.

This reminded me of a special I saw about zombies. It was about how there is a group of people who are making sure that everyone else has enough supplies, knowledge, and skill to survive a zombie outbreak. Their reasoning for this wasn't that there was going to be a zombie outbreak and we were all going to die, but that if you have the ability to whether a scenario as apocalyptic as a zombie outbreak, then you'll be able to handle pretty much any natural disaster that comes your way.

And that... is pretty cool.


EDIT: BTW I think that if you include the time that leap years take away we are well in 2013 already, so there is no worry about everyone dying off on that day.

Our discussion is now over.



My litmus test is not a definition in any sense.. Did you honestly think when I mentioned elitism that I was talking about not discerning between intolerable behavior, or regular team building? The whole context was in the topic of performance in the game, and extending it beyond the issue of performance doesn't make sense. I even mentioned that the mere existence of requirements to succeed aren't themselves elitist in the second paragraph (although it can easily wander into that territory). I'm surprised I even have to bring that up. Now, the other things, like what is "good enough" and "superficial" aren't clear cut. Superficial accomplishments certainly aren't superficial to the elitist, which is why they discern as such. Of course, this does fit the litmus test I used since it would be discriminating against players due to their badge count and not their performance, so I am not sure how that resemblance is lost. Likewise, a players capability to play the game is a merit of sufficiency. It cannot be put on a numerical scale, but regardless it exists.

I am also not talking about mere preferences. The key feature of elitism that I use in the litmus is exclusion applied to other players. If a team needs a tank and they don't let you join because you can't fill that role that as a blaster, this isn't based upon exclusion. To reach such a predicament, it would require them to include many others who already cannot fill that role. By contrast, if a player is forming a team and doesn't let you join as a blaster because "Blasters suxxorz", then that is a completely different predicament.

Elitism in practice requires that players who possess the skills are not being used, and this is done by excluding those players. To check to see if elitism occurs, you see if someone is excluding players. Elitism not in practice has no effects, so it really isn't a problem. Though if there is a better way to determine elitism that doesn't involve the very tool elitists use to enforce elitism, I would love to use it. Though honestly I think we've been using the same definition for elitism. I have a habit of describing things by their results, so I think this is where the confusion is coming from.

• No. It assumes that the player has only one level 53 character that they are trying to get better salvage for, and/or they have the time to run the trial with that one character. This, a very safe assumption, since level constraints and time constraints are quite real, and I have come into conflict with these while hosting trials countless times. I've already made mention of the exception several times now, but exceptions are just that; not the general flow of the players.
• This is also a very safe assumption. If you run a trial and then run it again immediately afterward, the vast majority of the players quit. I did it just last night when I hosted two consecutive UG trials. Want to know how many out of the original 16 others that formed the trial with me stayed? 3. The rewards are like a constant pressure that mold people toward a certain behavior, and this creates a general trend requiring effort to go against. In this sense, you are talking a lot about people wasting your time, but expecting others to run the trial more than once without the rewards is a time waster for that person themselves. These are in direct conflict with each other: Either you care about people wasting your time, or you do not care about people wasting your time
The players that are concerned about the rewards table run the BAF and LAM over and over again. They do not run MoM over and over again. They don't even run UG over and over again, and that guarantees a rare and 60 threads on completion. No, they run the UG for experience, and they run the MoM/DD trial for their Emp reward. Once that reward is granted, they go do other things. This should be self evident: you say yourself that an UG forms once every couple of months. Little hint: If players enjoyed the trial so much that they would run it over and over again, then it wouldn't be that rare.


Keyes and TPN do not give guaranteed rares like the UG and the easily obtainable MoDD does. TPN only gives double Emp merits once, so it is more efficient to run MoM and DD once that day and then run the other trials more often than that. The UG is one of the best ways to unlock slots and get shifts, since it combines so many things together in a single trial. The fact is that if you host a trial and exclude someone who is trying to make progress on their toon because they don't have the level shift, then you are hindering their progress. It is because of the iXP and drops and astrals and inf that even a failed trial gives progress. BTW, this whole one trial = another trial analogy is useless because it actually doesn't give a scale to how hard things truly are.


Because letting more players get into these trials to progress further is selfish...




And I have been saying that this is wholly incorrect on account of many people being able to successfully form their trials without those stringent requirements, and that failures on these trials are never from lacking those stringent requirements. Since success does happen, once again you have to explain away this wizardry that lets people win these things without an elite team of 53+.

Now, the Devs can't really put another mechanic into the game that would discriminate against players while making the trial have a level of challenge. Increasing their resistance would require shifts to overcome, increasing their damage would require shifts, increasing their accuracy would require shifts, increasing their HP would require shifts, increasing their defense would require shifts, and giving them heavy debuff powers would require shifts. Even with these shifts the majority of their power comes from gimmicks that ignore shifts in the first place. The only way to increase difficulty would be to increase the precision and teamwork needed, and those are idiot-prone tactics since it makes it easier for one player to ruin it for the team. All-inside TPNs didn't become popular because fighting Telepathists and Maelstrom was easy to coordinate.



Thankfully public discussions are for other people's viewing instead of whomever I'm arguing with. There's never been a situation where some guys argued online and one changed their opinion.


It isn't about the raw numbers. It is a proportional example. Of course, this ignored the whole "getting rewards from those trials" thing, which I mentioned above, so you're dodging the point.




I'm talking with Aracanaville about what classifies as elitism. Though it isn't directed toward you, you're welcome to join in on the discussion.




"Lucky" would've been having more than one clarion . It wasn't luck, and it wasn't some form of sorcery. Everyone else had their own boosts that weren't clarion, and with a few inspirations we exterminated the avatar.


That doesn't make sense. You are saying that you aren't working for a goal during your play unless there is someone who isn't optimally suited for your play. Does the goal only exist once that player shows up? If not that, then you're saying that you are always working while playing the game, and this constitutes a problem in itself.


(Note, this paragraph has been relocated slightly for writing purposes. It was originally below the next one).

My failure rate with mixed teams is not only less than 100%. I'd argue it is far less than 20%, especially when I am hosting. Now, in all seriousness, have you considered the possibility that, just maybe, Triumph is doing something wrong during these trials?


I suppose that liberators from a dictatorship are themselves just being selfish in contrast to what their dictators want to do. If you do something for someone else sake, then that is not selfish. My playstyle does just that, so by definition it can't be selfish. What I am doing is giving these trials to more than the 1%. This info may have been lost, but it isn't just you and you alone that is causing this problem. I get into arguments on my own server about this. The entire mentality is to blame. Now, you are having an indirect effect on the problem: When a player goes to these forums and they see someone like you saying that you need +3s or else you'll fail miserably, then what are they going to do? It certainly isn't "rebel against the forum and host it with different requirements". Your statement is that players who aren't level shifted are only so because they're being lazy, and that is just plain incorrect.

You're changing the subject. I have been talking about your play style asking for certain things in the league that are a detriment to others, and how the trials aren't themselves necessitating these requirements. I take issue when someones says they do something because it is possible, as if their actions are from some great free-existing uncaused event beyond comprehension, consequences, or need for explanation. Possibility != cause, no matter how you slice it. This is an anti-intellectual line of reasoning that shuts out logic, so there is no other way to deal with it other than to strong-arm someone (which forumers lack the ability to do to each other) or bring up their problems to make them feel uncomfortable in doing so.

You keep dropping things then doubling back. You can't say that level requirements are necessary than say it is just a preference that doesn't need justification, then keep bringing up how the trials are supposedly to be too hard. You can't say that this needs no justification in the face of the fact that it is far from necessary to have these requirements while still saying that it is necessary to have these requirements. You can't say that other trials that succeed without these requirements needs no explanation in contrast to the argued necessities of the unfair system. This is paradoxical and unreasonable. If you keep dropping points then circling back to them, then our discussion is over because a discussion is impossible with you.