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Post by
Ippon
Reading the last couple pages of this thread, I can't help but laugh at armill's contention that skill is nothing more than time spent.
Anyone that is actually good and has run with a true pug at any point knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that "skill" is real. I've had people that quit the game for
months
come back, join a raid they've never even seen, and execute correctly on the first try. Why? They're skilled. On the opposite hand, I've seen people who are in the same run every week still do completely retarded things. As we struggled with it last night, the particular examples I have in mind are biting and beams on BQL. Massively simple mechanics to execute, and yet people get mind controlled and fail to clear link
all the damn time
. Why? Because they're terrible. They have vastly more experience with the encounter, and yet they still can't connect the dots.
Post by
447547
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Post by
299264
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Post by
44284
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Post by
Ippon
I didn't say that, but spending time practicing is a large part of acquiring skill, much like learning to drive, or ride a bike, or play the piano.But it's pretty clearly not the most important factor, given the huge number of guilds that are still failing in ICC.
How many hours a week did those people who quit the game for months before coming back spend raiding on average, Ippon?Depends on the particular player, some 16, some less. On average probably 12 or so, since Ulduar was the last time we were really raiding a full schedule.
Would any of you say this is a game that is hard to learn how to play as long as you are making an earnest effort to improve?Do
I
think it's hard to learn? Absolutely not. Does the evidence clearly indicate that a vast majority of people find it hard to play? Definitely.
Skill = natural talent + practice.Some people lack the first part of that. All the practice in the world won't help you if you just inherently suck.
Post by
299264
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Post by
Ippon
It's true that practice won't help much if you inherently suck. A lot of practice at anything though helps immeasurably. If your friends were raiding 12 to 16 hours a week before they quit, then wouldn't you agree that it's fair to say that they've had substantial practice?
You're straining really hard to push this "time = ability" angle, but it's nowhere near as important as you think it is. I have a RL friend who has raided a few different times. In Vanilla through about half of BWL (then quit), in BC he quit during original ball-busting Gruul, in Wrath he played about 2 weeks of Naxx, and about 2-3 weeks of Ulduar. I could give him a geared 80, throw him into ICC with a basic explanation of the fights, and he'd be completely competent inside of a week. Time played is not the most important factor at all. People that still can't execute ICC fights
just plain suck at this game
.
By leveling 1 to 80, raiding once or twice, and maybe PvPing a couple times, you now have all of the base skills required to be good.
Things like "don't stand in the fire" are very, very simple. If you've seen one void zone, you've seen them all, and yet people
still
stand in them. This isn't a case of "wow I've never seen one of those before, didn't know they killed you", it's a case of "hurp derp-a-derp fire gooood".
Post by
299264
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Post by
Ippon
Things like "don't stand in the fire" are pretty simple. "Okay - when you have this one debuff, run out near the guy kiting the big slime around so that when your debuff is dispelled, the little slime spawned gets absorbed by the big one, but don't get hit by the big slime, and don't walk in the other slime, etc." starts to get a little more involved, and might take an attempt or two to get down. To be sure, many many pugs have a hard time with Rotface. When you combine this with how sketchy some pugs can be, is it surprising that some people who might otherwise have talent for the game, but have time constraints on their play time, might not be as far along?I've never once had problems with Rotface. The only thing you have to "do" is run the little slime to the big slime. If you know that the big slime has a PBAE, you won't run near it, and everything else is a version of "don't stand in stuff™".
When you get right down to it, the things that bad players lack are situational awareness, and reaction time. Both are important to various degrees, and playing the game more isn't likely to increase either one to any noticeable degree. As for the incredibly tired "I'm good but I can't play much!" defense, you have two main options: 1) Raid casually in a terrible guild that wipes to inane crap repeatedly. 2) Make friends with the people that run your server's successful semi-PuG, and do that instead. Not every server has one, so then you're left with transfer or suck, but that's neither here nor there.
Post by
93865
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Post by
HoleofArt
I'm confused now. If not standing in the fire is simple, then where is Skill required?
Almost every fight in this entire game have several easy mechanics. They consist of: "Don't stand here when ______ is there", "Stand here when _________ is happening". "Move out of bad stuff", "Priority kill list on adds", "Watch out for the ______ debuff", "Taunt when this happens".
Fights take several mechanics like this and add them to encounters. Each fight can be broken down to very, very
basic
mechanics that if you fail to them, you are indeed bad at this game. Skill is being able to handle many of those mechanics, stay alive, and still do your job. A raid group is skilled when after a few attempts of knowing what each basic mechanic is, they understand the fight, and make
progress.
Professor Putricide is a prime example of this. If you're dying repeatedly from Malleable Goo - it's because you're bad. If you see no progress, it's because you are bad. It doesn't take a group of smart people hours and hours to learn the actual fight, and if it does, changes need to be made.
I myself can relate to that. We've killed H 25m Sindragosa before, and when we did, it was fairly clean considering it was our first kill. We then took 2 weeks off from "progression" and got ourselves the 25m Meta-Achievement Drakes. This week rolls around and when we come to H Sindragosa, the whole fight goes to $%^&. We put in an absurdly amount of attempts this week, each of us knowing it was a few select people that were messing up and holding us back. They knew the fight, they've had hours of practice, and yet
they still died
. How then, does hours of experience, help at all when learning a fight? It doesn't.
Removing those bads is the only way to continue, which we're working on replacing (3 down, 2 to go) - and it's the same for you. It might not be
you
yourself holding the raid group back, but somebody is, and they have to go. Those people are what separates your guild from completing a simple
regular 25m Putricide encounter
with a
30% buff
, while others complete it on Heroic with no buff with ease.
The fact that you fail to see is that no matter how many times a player has seen or practiced an encounter, it still doesn't give them the ability to succeed.
That
is where skill comes in.
Post by
cloudp
just a very interesting note. Armill, you yourself don't seem too convinced on how to defend what you state. Have you realised the number of edits your posts suffer? Anyone can check this. There are almost as many edits from your posts alone than posts from the whole thread - if not more! Sometimes, even on extremelly small pieces of text. I don't really think this is about the English language perfection. You yourself know your arguments have some basis, but you're not explaining them as you'd like, and took too defensive a role in this argumentation. Most of what you state is than clouded by assumptions or misunderstandings - such as the skill issue. Aestu himself began this thread in a pretty shaky manner, but used increasingly stronger arguments, eventually getting the upper hand.
Also, I won't deny I'm enjoying this argumment immenselly.
Post by
Varaconn
When I first started learning piano, when I was 11, I was awful at it. I played one-handed, and barely, at that.
I started taking piano lessons, and did a lot of self-teaching. I stopped lessons when I first entered high school, until I adjusted to the change of pace. When I was 16, I started lessons again, in earnest. Something piqued my ambition, and I poured more time into it. I practiced about 2 hours a day, with scales, chords, arpeggios, and a variety of pieces.
I had classical, jazz, romantic, and blues pieces I worked on, to add variety and quicken my mind and fingers by keeping them guessing. After a while, with the scales and arpeggios, and playing these different pieces, I started to recognize recurring patterns. I could anticipate where a piece was going based on the previous notes and I found myself taking less time to piece together the various sections of a song.
At this point, I'm grade 10 certified (not the same as school grade 10, for those that don't know) and I'm at the point where I can pick up almost any average piece and sight-read it near perfect. More difficult pieces are decent on the first try, but after a couple of weeks, I have them close to performance level.
For the record, I didn't make this up for the sake of analogy, I actually do play piano regularly, and I am certified just below associate level.
Post by
obiwaynekenobi
People that still can't execute ICC fights
just plain suck at this game
.
Normally, I would argue this point and call you an elitist. However, after spending weeks with my guild bashing our heads against ICC25 Rotface because people
cannot figure out where to run when they get a little ooze
, or even that they have to run at all (after being yelled at by four people on Vent to get the f out of the raid), I'm inclined to agree with you.
It's one thing if you've never done a fight before, or have only done it once or twice; you might make some mistakes, and those mistakes might cause a wipe. I've never done Sindy or LK, for instance. I would obviously research the fights before even attempting to tackle them, but having never done the fight there's a chance I might screw up a few times; after that it's "Oh okay I was doing X wrong" and I'd learn and move on. Someone who, after doing a fight for weeks and months, still doesn't learn what they're doing wrong and WHY it's causing a wipe, or just plain incapable of doing what the fight requires, is pretty much a lost cause as far as I'm concerned and is a "baddie".
I've seen a lot of stupid stuff running with my current guild. People who:
* Don't even TOUCH bone spikes on Marrowgar but just focus on the boss
* Ignore DBM's warning that Blood Beasts are coming soon and still AOE
* Pally tank that can't hold aggro after taunting because he just uses Judgement and auto-attack
* Warrior tank who loses aggro the minute you hit something (Festergut)
* Even with the 30% buff down Festergut within seconds of his enrage timer
* Run out without saying anything when they get a Gas Spore, leaving the middle with nothing
* Ignore DBM flashing that a little ooze is attacking them and stay in the middle of the raid
* Run the opposite way from the OT and/or into someone else running to the OT, forming a second/third/fourth Big Ooze on Rotface
* Cannot output enough DPS to kill one of Putricide's adds before the second one shows up
* An okay-geared (kinda low for ICC25) DK doing
2.4k
DPS
* Attack Kinetic orbs once in a blue moon, allowing them to drop and kill people
This isn't lack of knowledge, this is just plain lack of skill.
Post by
Varaconn
Unfortunately, this is also all too true.
I don't really understand how, as said, after so many tries, and explanations, people still make these mistakes. Yes, they suck, but how can you be so bad that you cannot grasp something so simple? I have to believe that these people also, quite simply, do not care.
I've seen it, all too many times, as well. DBM yelling at you, 1 or 2, possibly more, people, calling out in Vent to take down a spike/add, etc, and they still don't switch targets. This is beyond a lack of skill or experience.
Post by
44284
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Post by
299264
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Post by
Varaconn
Oh, I wasn't refuting anybody. I agree completely with HoleofArt's post. There's a limit to how many times failing can be pinned on "lack of experience."
I feel like this thread is becoming so convoluted that people are trying to make overlapping points about the various issues being addressed, and we're mistaking who's addressing whom. Not to mention I'm having a particularly foggy-headed morning. and getting my thoughts straight into text is turning into an uphill endeavour.
I was alluding partially to the idea that for the most part, "practice makes perfect," and that experience gives you the natural ability to adapt to new encounters and evolved mechanics. In addition to that, I was trying to illustrate (through the mention of scales and chords in relation to pieces, parallel to heroics and old raids in relation to progression encounters) that if you want to make the connection, the game trains you to recognize mechanic patterns and gradually teach you ways to deal with them.
For example, Sjonnir in HoS (not anymore, mind you, but originally,) and Anomalus in Nexus are simple versions of your typical "switch to adds when they pop up," encounters, ie Putricide. On the flip side, sometimes exact mechanics are replacated in raids, to a much larger extent, like Keristrasza's Intense Cold going on steroids for Hodir.
Whether you consciously make the connection or not, through experience in other raids, and "training" in heroics, the game teaches you to deal with these mechanics on a higher scale when it comes to raids. In the end, the dividing line becomes whether the player learns to recognize these parallels and precedents, or if he continues ignore and/or not care.
Post by
obiwaynekenobi
Couldn't that last part be argued as the dumbing-down and now facerolling of Heroics has HURT the player base by not exposing anyone to those raid-like mechanics? Using your own examples, it's possible to destroy Sjonnir
without
even touching his adds. Anomalus I believe still goes immune so you have no choice. Intense Cold can be healed through with a geared healer (although Hodir is no longer relevant content so it's a moot point). Therefore new 80s gearing up are never exposed to mechanics such as "stop DPS on the boss and kill the adds when they appear" because there's no longer a reason to do that, you can just focus on the boss and kill him without worrying about the adds anymore due to everyone vastly overgearing the instance.
Post by
299264
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