The GearScore fallacy

Vacation time means catching up with one thing. Gaming, and sleeping. Two things. Vacation time means catching up with two things: Gaming, sleeping and blogging. Three. Three things…

Before this ventures too far into the surreal world of Monty Python, something completely different.

I read Gevlon’s blog. Most of the time I don’t agree with him, for the simple reason that I don’t think he ‘gets’ why people play games and his poor understanding of what ‘being social’ means. But that is not the point at hand. Occasionally, I come across a post that I do agree with. In this case, a rather old post, titled GearScore Failure.

He proposes that, in a casual environment (pugging, in his example), GearScore is actually inversely proportional to player skill. The reasoning – in my own words – is thus.

Acquiring gear is mostly a function of time spent. While time spent also equals experience (as a player) gained, this ratio varies wildly. A skilled player is someone with a high ratio of time spent to skill gained. An unskilled, carried player is someone whose ratio nears zero. Both type of player, though, acquire roughly the same amount of gear.

Now for context. In a casual environment, what type of player is more likely to apply for a pug? A skilled player that is himself more likely to be in an actual raiding guild? Or a player whose applications get turned down again and again because of a lack of actual playing skill? You can’t see the skill. But you can see the GearScore. And since time spent equals gear, skill equals time spent to skill gain and skill gain means higher probability of raiding guild membership – high GearScore in pugs means probably not much playing skill.

Probably. Of course there are a ton of exceptions. It also depends on how high you set the bar for being a skilled player. Or an okay player at the least. But factoring in other outside elements, such as character name and general demeanour in chat, you should be quickly able to discern into which category the player falls.

Why am I posting about this, anyway?

Enter the casual player.

Time spent means gear. Or rather, time spent raiding means gear. Time spent questing means less gear. But time spent no matter what means skill gained. Granted, the ratio is potentially higher when raiding, but still. Skill gained, in this case means nothing at all for guild membership. To get that gear, though, a casual has to spend more time questing and soloing instances. Whether soloing instances is still casual is open for debate, I say yes. More time spent means a higher potential skill gain. Soloing can be quite stressful, and a good training ground for improvisation and quickly adapting to new situations.

So, since a skilled raiding player won’t apply to pugs (he will, but for the sake of argument, he’ll be the exception), we have two players applying for the pug run: One with a high GearScore and dubious guild membership and one with a medium to low GearScore and no guild membership. Unless both have the same dismal outside factors in chat, the low-GearScore casual is not only much more pleasant to run with, but also probably more skilled. Go with the casual. You’re doing yourself and everybody else a big favour.

Gnome at heart

The world cup craze is getting slightly more sane – there are now only two games per day instead of three. And unlike other nations (England *cough* France), Germany is still in the running.

So what does a casual gamer do during a thirty minute break between two matches of football? Fire up World of Warcraft of course! But thirty minutes is quite a short time, even if you only want to grind a few mobs and maybe do a quest or two. Thank god the auction house is available on the iPhone, or thirty minutes would be gone without getting any actual playing done!

The question still remains, however. And I found a perfect answer – for me at least. Macro design and PowerAuras.

Now, I have a history with macroing in games. Back in my Counterstrike days, way, WAY before it went commercial or Steam, a long time before anybody at Valve thought of including favourites or predefined sets of equipment, I built a whole inventory / shop system, complete with intelligent decision what side you were playing, memorising your selections and able to preset your next buy during play and then just committing it with a single button. And all that with nothing more available than the ‘keypress’ command (for selecting menu entries), the ‘alias’ and ‘bindkey’.⁰

So when I found out that WoW includes a nice macro language, I was ecstatic. And I’m not even talking about the ability to run LUA scripts directly from within the game, something that I as a software developer find particularly interesting. No, the very basic macro commands, with their simple conditionals and modifiers and no logic at all. In my opinion, how much you can achieve with these simple tools is nothing short of amazing.

Everybody has written the odd castsequence for their mage. But how about a macro for their warrior to execute either Overpower or Revenge, depending on your stance? Still a simple line of ‘code’¹, but it merges two of your skill buttons into a single one. Of course you can also page your action bar, but if you’re like me, then even the best paging has its limits when there are simple so many things to put on bars.

PowerAuras are another thing. I like them. They’re shiny. They remind me of things I need to do. They’re casual, although not trivial to set up correctly. I use a mix of global auras and ‘personalised’ auras for each character – very effective so far – basically, the goal is to not have an aura on screen. If there’s an aura, there’s something I should do about it. Either an ability goes unused, a buff un-buffed or maybe I should consider my options of retreat and regroup.

You can even chain several auras together to check for multiple conditions – something that I use on my warrior to show the correct auras only when I’m in a stance that could use them.

However, where it really gets amazing is the combination of PowerAuras and macros. Specifically, the ‘ability usable’ part of PowerAuras. What counts here is, according to the documentation, the name of the ability on the action bar. Or the macro. That means that you can set up a few auras to check for combat status and stance. Then your macro has one or two conditionals that ‘branch’² for two different abilities. And your final aura checks for the aura chain and your macro.

Congratulations, that’s a hell of a lot of logic you were able to create for displaying the correct symbol on your screen and then doing something about it by reflexively pressing a button – no matter what stance you are in. And you can delete the unneeded abilities themselves from your action bars.

Yes, I am a software developer, so I find these things almost, if not more, fun than actually playing the game. But maybe I’m just a Gnome at heart – tinkering with things, in the case of auras often on the fly while in combat to see if they behave correctly, and watching things blow up in my face when they don’t.³

_{0) Actual names of the commands may have been slightly different, this was 11 years ago.
1) Macro writing is not writing code. Not is writing HTML, but that is an issue for another day or blog.
2) That’s not really a branch, but it is an abbreviated if statement, or case statement.
3) There’s actually a pretty funny story how I nearly TK’d a teammate during a critical league match because I set my controls to the wrong ‘mode’ in the initial buy phase. But that is definitely a story for another blog.}

Key skills

A colleague, who also plays WoW, asked me a while ago how I manage to adjust constantly from one character to the next, seeing as I have no definite ‘main’ character. In particular, how I manage to keep my hotkeys straight.

I’m just about to switch again, so this is the chance to share my thoughts on that matter.

Switching characters

Yes, I have a lot of alts. But I don’t switch between them constantly. I play them a few days, maybe a week at a time, or until they hit the level I set myself before switching again. That means I do have some time to adjust to a specific character.

Hardware setup

More specifically, my mouse. A Logitech MX Performance, which allows me to map ALT, CTRL and SHIFT (as well as ESC) to mouse buttons. So instead of twisting my fingers on the left hand, trying to hit CTRL-SHIFT-F11, I just press F11, while having my right thumb on the two mouse buttons. A lifesaver, really.

Actionbars

Bartender. More action bars, automatic paging, for example when stealthed, or when shapeshifted. I currently have 4 ‘normal bars’ – set up as bars running straight from 1-´, plus modifiers, and 4 ‘action squares’, which are grouped F1-F4, F5-F8… for each row. You can see this setup on the screenshot to the right.

Skill selection

Soloing WoW has an advantage here. I can safely ignore all skills that are only useful in groups. Resurrection? Not making the list. One less skill to memorise and place on a bar.

Skills

Or rather, ordering of skills on the bars. I use the same system for every character. Again, you can see part of it on the screenshot, although I have made some changes since then. Generally, the right-most actionsquare is for trivial stuff – hearthstone, fishing, etc. the next is for macros – I’m currently thinking of moving macros into the right-most square as well so I have one more free keyset.

The two actionbars on the right are my health and preparation bars. Potions go to the top bar, always in the same sorting (least to most effective), drink and food to the lower. Scrolls, flasks, elixirs go into those two as well – they aren’t time critical, I just like to have them ready on the main interface so I don’t forget about them.

The left-most action squares are special abilities and panic keys. Healing, Stoneform, Lifeblood… anything I can hit more or less blindly and know it’ll help me survive. Again, the fact that I have the modifier keys on my mouse help immensely, on my rogue F1 is Evasion, SHIFT-F1 is Stoneform. Whether I hit the thumb-button on my mouse in time doesn’t really matter, I usually want to blow both cooldowns anyway. On my shaman, totems go here, sorted vertically by element, so I can simply hit the row F1-F4 in sequence and know that the most helpful totem of each element will be up.F5-F8 would be the next, and when I get to F9-F12 I know those are speciality totems that I normally have to place in preparation.

The left actionbars are a bit more tricky. The top bar auto-pages through bartender. Those are my most used skills, what I call ‘active’ skills. Heroic Strike. Sinister Strike. Arcane Shot. Sorted by frequency of use, usually. Interrupts go here as well.

The lower bar is for DoTs, CC or AoE effects. Basically anything that I use fairly often, but which need a little bit of thinking before applying the effect. Again, sorted by importance and utility. A few skills are far off to the right, for example the meelee skills of my hunter. I don’t really need them, but if I do, they are right there.

The pet bar is a separate bar, thanks to bartender, and doesn’t factor into this. Although again, it’s sorted by frequency and importance.

Summary

And that’s it. Really. Maybe if you are struggling to adjust between main and alts, look at your bars, look at the skills. Categorise the skills. Active, situational, panic button, preparation. Set up your bars exactly the same for all characters. Sure, the skills themselves will differ, but if you know that you can hit ALT-(1 to 4) any time and there will most likely be a healing potion of varying quality there, it’s one less thing to think about. And thinking about which key you hit is what gets you killed.

I’m under the impression that I’m doing fairly well for a casual, switching between characters on a more or less weekly basis. Then again, even when I’m complaining that I didn’t get any WoW-time any given day – that usually means I only had two or three hours.

Caveat: Mapping ALT-1 to ALT-´is fine. Mapping ALT-F1 to ALT-F12 usually leads to some hilarity when you reach ALT-F4. True story.

Noblegarden debriefing

Noblegarden is over, as is my vacation. I had a lot more fun doing the world event dailies than I anticipated, I’m now actually looking forward to the next celebration. So how did I do on my self-imposed to-do list?

• FAIL: Solo the Deadmines
• FAIL: Get at least half my chars up to level 30
• CHECK: Get over ten companions on my two “nature boy / girl” chars
• CHECK: Buy a guild tab
• CHECK: Upgrade several of my self-made items

I tried soloing the Deadmines with my paladin instead of my hunter. Maybe that was a mistake. Nevertheless, at level 26, the first time I died was to Mr Smite. His stun attack is quite brutal on solo players – it took two tries to kite him far enough away from his weapon chest. By the time he was back with new weapons, I had recovered AND had time for a quick heal. The mobs on the ship weren’t a threat, but van Cleef himself still remains. His first summoning of adds I could deal with – basically ignoring them, his health was going down fast enough. But the second summon simply was too much. And by that time I once again had lost the race against the clock – trash mobs started respawning and my supply of potions and food was running low.

So he lives to die another day. I think level 28-30 is the most at which I’d try Deadmines, above that it becomes too easy. Already no mobs give XP and the loot isn’t an upgrade over my equipped gear any more. At levels 26-28 it is a nice challenge for soloists, and actually beyond what I’d call ‘casual’.

Project Thirty – almost. I managed to get my paladin up to 30, hunter to 27 and warlock to 25. In the end, there were simply other things I had to do on vacation than play WoW – most notably the first bike tours this season. So it is with only little regret that I ‘fail’ this. Maybe if I had decided to not try the Deadmines and continue questing instead. But the challenge was too tempting.

On a few brighter notes:

In addition to my engineer upgrading a few items, I was able to craft an entire new set of armour with my blacksmith, which was actually an upgrade to several items. The guild tab is there and already filling up with crafting mats for later use by different alts. And of course my hunter earned the Plenty Of Pets achievement.

Overall, three out of five isn’t too bad.

Next step: Complete leveling of all alts to level 30. The pace picks up considerably after level 25, and so far the quests have been a lot of fun. I’ve also mapped out my progression over different zones for most of my alts so I get as much content and as little repetition as possible. Let’s see if this plan holds up in the future.

The definition of fail

While the first chunk of 3.3.3 is downloading, I get time to read some more blogs. One word that I find mentioned fairly often, in blogs or on the official forum, is “fail“.

But what exactly is fail? Or, more precisely, what do I mean, when I call something “fail”?

Fail is, simply put, not achieving your goals. So the basic premise is that without knowing another person’s goals, it is hard to declare someone “fail” on pure observation. It has always to be in context. The most prominent goal is survival. We can all agree on that – if you’re dead, you’re hard pressed to do anything in-game. But being dead doesn’t mean you “failed”, because there’s bad luck, honest mistakes, or just plain learning experience. So we have to look further than that. Fun seems a good point. But what determines fun? For me it’s definitely something else than for a high-end progression raider. Am I fail? Is he? Either could be, depending on the point of view.

Group play is a bit easier to judge. The goal of the group is to clear the boss, preferably with as few wipes as possible, and for all members to have fun. That last part is important. I know that I, personally, enjoy a relaxed style, quite possibly suboptimal equipment because it fits the character and what I want to achieve. But if I were to join a raid, things would probably change, because the goal is suddenly bigger than just me. So yes, that tank in full ICC-whatever gear that can’t keep aggro, fail. The newly-dinged 80 that hasn’t had a chance to gear up yet? Not fail, as long as he’s doing the best he can.

Solo play, however, I find it hard to call anybody honestly “fail”. Only in interaction with others, because, again, suddenly it’s not only them, but they affect others as well:

That level 80 in front of the auction house, advising some newbie to install Gearscore because they “need it for raiding”? A wonderful fail, unless you want to be part of the Gearscore crowd. Personally, I’d even call it a success, because I now have two more people to avoid.

The priest I met, dying to some mobs because he asked me in chat about grouping instead of fighting when I had already started to taunt mobs off him? Fatal mistake, but not really fail.

The people who just pop up the join group dialogue in the middle of combat? Fail. And annoying.

Thank god for Autodecline. As a side note, you might think that they get the hint after two or three declines – I have set it up to only accept invites from people I have whispered to. But I have had as much as a dozen invites in succession, thankfully only flying by in the chat window. Fail.

The level 80 Death Knight at Northshire abbey, “helping’ newbies by killing any mob they have targeted and trying to impress them? Fail on so many levels… but that is a post for another day.

Larísa has a wonderful story today about her fresh experiences on an RP server. She is enjoying things that she would have never done on her normal server. This, for me, is the essence of what I am trying to say. Change the context, and suddenly your definition of success and failure change, while the goal “have fun” stays exactly the same.

If you find your fun-factor in World of Warcraft declining, why not try something completely different? Stop being hardcore. Roll on an RP server for a week or two. Take your time to do wacky things that you wouldn’t normally do. Laugh as Gearscore junkies call you fail and know, that, from your perspective, you’re a huge success – having fun.