05-24-2008, 08:41 PM
Quote:I suppose i didn't explicitly state this, but I meant to imply in my definition of "equal".
Which is fine, except that it's not what Dave Sirlin means by equal. When he talks about scaling down to 5/2/1 and getting the same rewards, it's clear to me that by equal he means same, while by equal you mean proportionate. Obviously I agree that proportionate is the right way to go.
The problem I have with Sirlin's argument is that he makes the logical leap from "there's a version that is easier to organize and one that is more work" to "one is fun and the other is unfun". I could use the rules for any two games I want; if you feel tic-tac-toe is overly trivializing, perhaps checkers and chess? The point I think we can all agree on is that sometimes fun things are more work and a little harder and it does not make them unfun.
More than that, he makes a terrible argument in assuming that people are either motivated by loot or intrinsic value in large-scale raids, whereas people are generally motivated by both in 10-man raids - a ridiculous double standard. Can't I like 25-man raiding and like the loot I get from it? Not according to Sirlin. He doesn't even address the idea that people might prefer 25-man raiding with proportionate loot. When he says something's wrong with 25-mans, he sets up the situation so that defenders of 25-mans have to justify continuing them when they provide no or less loot (and if people don't do 25 mans despite getting less stuff, something's wrong with 25 mans). The flaw in his argument is obvious.
Quote:I do not feel that you should be able to go into a 10 man and get X amount of loot and have that be equal to the amount of loot that you would get in the 25 man version. Just that the Tier of loot should be the same. If you can get 10 loot drops in a 10 player you should get 25 in a 25 player (and even slightly more from the 25 allowing people that do the 25 to gear up a bit faster than would in the 10).
That's a perfectly valid point of view to take. On the other hand, note that once you're making this argument, you're into a different kind of discussion altogether. You're no longer discussing whether it is right or not to give 25-mans more (which Sirlin is; he claims that giving 25-mans more implicitly implies inferiority, just as giving 10 mans more than solo content presumably does), but only arguing about the mechanics of how Blizzard is giving 25-mans more. That's a major difference; you've gone from principle to practice. Blizzard has a certain idea of how much is proportional, and yours disagrees, but again, this is quite different from Sirlin's post which is not a proportionality discussion.
Quote:I feel that blizzard's solution to the "25 player raids require more social effort and frustration" by giving them stronger items has only compounded the problem. And the end result is a weapons race of loot. Not only do you have to deal with the inherant social issues of getting 25 people together but you also have to deal with the fact that many people are there not because they want to be, but just because it is the next stop for them on the loot train. I think this shows in the epic collapse of DnT which was linked above.
Okay, I have to stop you here. This isn't an argument I prefer to deploy often, but unless you've been in a high end, bleeding-edge raiding guild, you really have no idea what the social situation within them is like. DnT's collapse had nothing to do with loot and it certainly wasn't because people didn't want to be there. It was 100% about ego, which is a problem that is magnified in higher end guilds not because of the gear, but because of relative position and expectations. To assert that DnT's death was because of loot is to fall into the stereotypical trap, as Dave Sirlin does, of assuming all high-end raiders (or an overwhelming majority) hate the game and raiding and are there only for loot. Nothing could be further from the truth, but non high-end raiders take it as such gospel that they merely assert it and do not offer arguments in its support, as Sirlin does in his article. Don't believe it.