Why it's rude to suck at Warcraft (on minmaxing and instrumental play)

[lazygecko]

 

This new video from Folding Ideas is kind of needlessly lengthy in its dissertation and the best part are the concrete anecdotes from the game rather than the abstract theory, but the topic itself on instrumental play is very interesting, and while WoW is used as the main example it's something that applies to gaming as a whole and especially how the modern internet has normalized this kind of trickling down of minmaxing attitudes that pervades even the casual sphere.

 

I think the most telling microcosm event is the one brought up relatively early about a guy who was ostracized by his entire guild for not spending more hours grinding over a given week for a minuscule chance to earn a trinket with a few more item levels that may have theoretically increased his performative output by around half a percent.

When Shadowlands launched I made an effort to get into mythic+ dungeon running for the first time. And I would say I was still doing it on a very casual level not that concerned with attempting to reach the higher keystone difficulty levels. But the pressure from the community still felt immense and downright unhealthy for me. And on top of that I was playing as an arcane mage which was not considered the absolute best of the best class/spec tier at the most hardcore level. This practically does not matter at all outside of that sphere of top players since we're talking about a few percents of difference in theoretical damage under the most optimal conditions, but the whole psychology of instrumental play that has been so heavily normalized in the community as a whole meant that I had a very hard time being invited into groups and was disproportionately scrutinized in the group dynamics.

 

So that's WoW but there's also the discussion about how it affects gaming as a whole. The video briefly touches on speedrunning which is sort of a different facet of instrumental play, and one I would instead describe as largely positive with very supportive communities and also pretty compartmentalized from how games are "normally" played.

 

I think single player CRPGs also factor into this and how you could notice a clear shift in design philosophies even in the modern throwback games that try to recapture the magic of Baldur's Gate and the likes. The normalization of online databases, video guides and theorycrafting (what the video describes as "paratext") feels like it has resulted in devs being very hesitant to put overtly overpowered items in their games for the players to find, like you often could in older CRPGs, since there's a kind of tacit expectation that word will spread very quickly on how to obtain these items and everyone will just be using them all the time.

The Souls games that kinda straddle the line between single player and multiplayer/shared social experienced have also garnered a reputation for having the most insufferable backseat gamers whenever someone streams these online and get yelled at for not using the absolute best strategy, build or item in any given situation.

 

And then there's just what I would describe as generally weird stuff like competitive Quake 3 players effectively disabling textures by setting them to the lowest possible mipmap values and making the game ugly as hell because it gives you an edge in raw readability.

[Rudolph]

I saw it yesterday! I love Folding Ideas and the topics he discussed in the video reminded me of the video game theory classes I took in university some years ago. I was thinking about sharing it here myself. Hopefully, this thread does not get derailed by the usual clique.

 

Anyway, I must say I never got into World of WarCraft despite loving (most of) WarCraft III and looking forward to see where Blizzard took the story next. Part of me went in expecting an experience similar to the Rexxar mini-campaign from The Frozen Throne, but instead I found myself being bored to tears by the early quests. The fact that I did not have any friends to play with certainly did not help to make the whole experience worthwhile.

 

Watching this video really makes me feel like I have dodged a bullet there.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Rudolph

[hybridial]

I know some people might disagree with my scorched earth policy of fuck online gaming at any and all levels, but you know, I don't think I've ever lost much by it. Playing videogames with other people was only EVER fun when done locally for me and well, it doesn't happen too often now but it's one of the primary uses of my Switch, I can take that thing over and play with my friend like we used to and that's nice.

 

And on the single player side of the coin, minmaxing only ever ruined my interest in such games. I'm playing Fell Seal again right now, a game I have to say I like a lot to play through again for a third time and it's like the only game I ever got all the Steam achievements for, and initially I started looking up some write ups on optimisation in the game, and well... I realised it was ruining my time with it so I didn't stop playing, I just started playing how I want to and started enjoying it again. As I've said before, Diablo 3 caused me to feel things that no other videogame ever had, resulting in all I can describe as extreme relief when I made the decision to stop playing it. And the game being what could be described as this weird obsession with optimisation being given what I see as a very unhealthy form. I mean, is the particular sub genre itself guilty of this in the same way? On that I'm not sure, but Diablo 3 itself, certainly that's how I experienced it. 

 

In the end I find competition in videogames completely worthless, and I don't want anything to do with it. For the people who do it and enjoy it, that's fine, but I would say there's plenty of people into it that don't have a healthy mindset, and certainly part of my choice is to just avoid contact with such completely. 

 

 

[Rudolph]

Huh, did not know about Fell Seal. I will check this out! Hopefully, it is more accessible than Tactics Ogre...

 

44 minutes ago, hybridial said:

As I've said before, Diablo 3 caused me to feel things that no other videogame ever had, resulting in all I can describe as extreme relief when I made the decision to stop playing it.

I am still not sure what it is about Diablo 3 that affected you more than World of WarCraft. In my experience, even at its worst (i.e. the Auction House era), Diablo 3 felt nowhere near as predatory as World of WarCraft with its monthly subscription model and its by-the-number quests.

 

That being said, I am with you with competitive multiplayer: I hate it, as too often it seems to bring the worst out of people - myself included. The only times I have ever truly enjoyed myself with that type of game is playing Mario Kart with friends.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Rudolph

[hybridial]

Just now, Rudolph said:

Huh, did not know about Fell Seal. I will check this out! Hopefully, it is more accessible than Tactics Ogre...

 

I got Tactics Ogre Reborn myself, never played any game in the series before. I actually like what I've played, I can't comment obviously on the differences, they seem to have changed the gameplay quite a bit from previous iterations, but I'd say it's quality. But it's also very heavy on micromanagement, and by comparison Fell Seal is a lot more chill and playful and the fun of it is mixing up classes as it's very heavily influenced by Final Fantasy Tactics. It gives you tonnes of options to play the way you want and that's how things should be in a single player focused game. 

 

And I never played World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and SMT Imagine were the only ones I spent time with and that was many years ago, so I never intended that comparison. 

 

[Rudolph]

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

I got Tactics Ogre Reborn myself, never played any game in the series before. I actually like what I've played, I can't comment obviously on the differences, they seem to have changed the gameplay quite a bit from previous iterations, but I'd say it's quality. But it's also very heavy on micromanagement, and by comparison Fell Seal is a lot more chill and playful and the fun of it is mixing up classes as it's very heavily influenced by Final Fantasy Tactics. It gives you tonnes of options to play the way you want and that's how things should be in a single player focused game. 

What made me give up on Tactic Ogre in panic was the game's horrible tutorial, where instead of letting you familiarize yourself with the gameplay by playing the game, it has a bunch of NPCs do everything for you. Also, for whatever reason, the developers thought it would be a good idea to force the player to endure a massive lore dump delivered through in-game books in order to even get the slightest sense of what the fuck is actually going on.

 

As for the World of WarCraft comparison, my bad. I take it that the other two games did not traumatize you in the same way? I have not played much when it comes to MMORPGs, so as far as I am concerned, they all look and play kind of the same. Outside of my brief attempt to try World of WarCraft, the closest thing to a MMORPG I have played was Path of Exile, which I got fed up with by Act 6, when the game had me revisit Act 2 locations to fight harder monsters. To be fair, though, what really killed my interest in the game was ultimately the latency issues and the constant disconnects; without them, I might have kept playing even if in hindsight I was not enjoying myself all that much.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Rudolph

[Amiga Angel]

thats why I dont play wow or similar games

[hybridial]

1 minute ago, Rudolph said:

What made me give up on Tactic Ogre in panic was the game's horrible tutorial, where instead of letting you familiarize yourself with the gameplay by playing the game, it has a bunch of NPCs do everything for you. Also, for whatever reason, the developers thought it would be a good idea to force the player to endure a massive lore dump delivered through in-game books in order to even get the slightest sense of what the fuck is actually going on.

 

As for the World of WarCraft comparison, my bad. I take it that the other two games did not traumatize you in the same way? I have not played much when it comes to MMORPGs, so as far as I am concerned, they all look and play kind of the same

 

Yeah, Tactics Ogre is, especially thanks to the quality voice acting presented very well, it feels like AAA RPG presentation... which doesn't mean the storytelling is done well. I'm not a big fan of the supplementary approach myself. When it comes to storytelling in games I will take standard and cliche if it's engaging and if it doesn't do anything stupid. And I find a lot of celebrated videogame storylines to break that second rule, like the majority of the Final Fantasy games. 

 

Guild Wars and SMTI I have to imagine were very different, because this is going back like 20 years, almost, MMOs were probably quite different then than is typical of them now. I think GW was more comparable to Phantasy Star Online where it's more small adventuring groups and instances, but I never played that really. 

 

[Gifty]

Dan Olson is a genius.

[yakfak]

im so asocial when it comes to these games anyway. i remember playing warhammer online thing and just being stubborn, hanging around teh edges of the game, or groupchatting in those semi-pvp zones you got dragged into now and then, running up to people and changing costume or whatever. i used to like muds, and i know that mmos inhereted a lot of their shit from muds, but the thing was that on a mud you were often *playing* solo, or dragging around someone in yr group who was talking but otherwise afking from the game... sociable but never forced to do activities together. then that got translated to everyone being manacled together in a stupid death train for the purposes of content and the content sucks

[Thelokk]

In the 17 years or so I've been playing WoW I did make a few bonds I'd call 'friendship' - ironically though, not with the people I played the most. Raiding was really a second job, which required me to do a lot of stuff I didn't care about for the group's sake, after which I could go and be silly with my true online friends.

 

Not very healthy, which is why I said fuck it all a few years back, and now I log on half hour a day if at all. That half hour of accomplishing nothing feels more 'fun' than the 3+hrs a day I used to. 

 

I also used to be huge into The Secret World, which I think struck a better balance between solo and group play (as well as the best storyline I've ever come across in ANY game), but required some insane minmaxing to do anything but the basics .

Edited November 26, 2022 by Thelokk

[ZethXM]

I think WoW was probably the best, most relatable fit for this topic of discussion, but it lacks the sheer drama and intensity of Everquest's raiding scene, which ultimately led to WoW's culture and this video as direct consequences.

 

He touched on it best when he got to the part about Cognitive Load.  EQ is mechanically very simple in comparison to WoW. Original EQ had nothing there to make your life easier, not even maps. All forms of play were emergent and then shaped live by dev decisions in an ongoing cascade of community-to-dev interaction, which in practice was poweruser-to-dev interaction.  Developers and GMs were already integral to instrumentalizing the game world back then.

 

The raiding scene as it has stabilized in Project 1999 reflects such severe instrumental distortion as to constitute a jagged break from reality; you will stand in a field staring at your screen for literally days waiting for a spawn, at which point you batphone your guild, which is to drop their lives that instant, log on, and haul ass to the raid to kill the boss before competing guilds could get to it.  Then, once the boss is dead, the real game begins: litigation between guilds with the GMs for mediation as to who deserves credit and whose star players should be benched with a suspension for pushing against the rules in order to bring home the bacon.

 

In the context of instrumental play, if WoW raiding is to construct a sport out of a virtual world, Everquest is the god damned Olympics, with all the seedy politics, corruption, and hegemony that entails.

[Rudolph]

So was there ever a MMORPG that managed to maintain a relatively healthy and welcoming community?

[Antkibo]

1 hour ago, ZethXM said:

I think WoW was probably the best, most relatable fit for this topic of discussion, but it lacks the sheer drama and intensity of Everquest's raiding scene, which ultimately led to WoW's culture and this video as direct consequences.

 

He touched on it best when he got to the part about Cognitive Load.  EQ is mechanically very simple in comparison to WoW. Original EQ had nothing there to make your life easier, not even maps. All forms of play were emergent and then shaped live by dev decisions in an ongoing cascade of community-to-dev interaction, which in practice was poweruser-to-dev interaction.  Developers and GMs were already integral to instrumentalizing the game world back then.

 

The raiding scene as it has stabilized in Project 1999 reflects such severe instrumental distortion as to constitute a jagged break from reality; you will stand in a field staring at your screen for literally days waiting for a spawn, at which point you batphone your guild, which is to drop their lives that instant, log on, and haul ass to the raid to kill the boss before competing guilds could get to it.  Then, once the boss is dead, the real game begins: litigation between guilds with the GMs for mediation as to who deserves credit and whose star players should be benched with a suspension for pushing against the rules in order to bring home the bacon.

 

In the context of instrumental play, if WoW raiding is to construct a sport out of a virtual world, Everquest is the god damned Olympics, with all the seedy politics, corruption, and hegemony that entails.

Hearing about the underbelly of EverQuest has always been more interesting than the game itself for me.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Antkibo

[Wyrmwood]

3 hours ago, hybridial said:

I know some people might disagree with my scorched earth policy of fuck online gaming at any and all levels, but you know, I don't think I've ever lost much by it.

 

I'll scorch the earth with you, I've tried plenty of online games usually inspired by the stories they used to write in PC Gamer, but my experience has still been sub-par at best, toxic at worst. Sure I had some fun with Quake 3 and Halo but that's about it, usually I'd at least be playing with at least one real friend even then. Maybe I'm just slighty anti-social but I know what I like and only ever play single player. Sometimes I'm a little sad about that, for example I love BloodBowl but the AI ain't great and it's designed for 2 players but I've yet to play a decent game online, they either rage quit or trash talk chat messages all of my turn.

 

As for min/maxing and all that, not my scene either. Guess Dark Souls and Diablo 3 but only because it's pretty obvious you don't really get to choose in those. Their purely decided by class.

[slugger]

47 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

So was there ever a MMORPG that managed to maintain a relatively healthy and welcoming community?

 

Runescape and Kingdom of Loathing. They're designed to be fun regardless of how much time and effort you put in. Solo play is just as popular as co-op and PVP. Also, they're free and humorous, which makes it hard to treat them like work.

[Rudolph]

Holy crap, RuneScape is still around? I remember a relative playing it for a while back during the good old Windows XP days. Damn, I sure feel old now.

[Daytime Waitress]

9 hours ago, lazygecko said:

while WoW is used as the main example it's something that applies to gaming as a whole and especially how the modern internet has normalized this kind of trickling down of minmaxing attitudes that pervades even the casual sphere. 

 

How much of this do you think is simply inherent in the modern localisation of, for lack of a better term, global achievements?

 

Back when most of us were kids, we'd make X progress in a game - maybe some of our friends would be further ahead or further behind, but if we all bought the game at roughly the same time, we'd be having similar experiences of a roughly equal level. Of course there was always some kid whose older brother went to a different school and they had found some stupid crazy OP item. And then there was the kid who read too many gaming mags, and they'd read about how to unlock the secret ending. So while there were outliers, there would be a roughly local parity of knowledge. And you'd do your best, but you'd still fall within that local spectrum of "having achieved a thing within X virtual world".

 

Now, anyone with an internet connection can look up guides and/or videos and see the "best strats" of how a game "can" be played and infer that's how it "should" be played - particularly when it comes to MMO's and their groups dedicated to busting Day One content the instant it drops. The strategically, mathematically correct way to do it is laid bare, instantly. So your options become... what? To step up to that level? Or realise that your piddling individual knowledge and experience aren't worth much?

 

Don't get me wrong, I think the pooling of knowledge has a capacity to create wonderful communities.

Spoiler

We're in one right now :3

And so I think that you were right to highlight the positivity of inherently competitive but still affirming speedrunning communities.

 

But is there something inherently negative about having peoples' psyches being exposed to and therefore compared to essentially Olympic-level achievements all the damn time?

 

Not saying I buy into the comparative mentality myself - heck, I just took a stab at @Bri's latest on HNTR and enjoyed every bit of it. I'm comfortable playing on lower Doom skill levels and gradually working my way through harder stuff, regardless of whether guys like Decino or Coincident exist.

 

But the creation of this thread and the ubiquitous "UV or bust" arguments within the wider Doom community makes me think that all the dick-measuring and negativity is an unfortunate by-product of being able to see the absolute pinnacle of human achievement whenever, wherever.

 

Edited November 26, 2022 by Daytime Waitress

[Rudolph]

It also helps that Doom is essentially a single-player game, so there is little to no incentive to engage in unhealthy competition. In contrast, as evidenced by the video, even more casual WoW players would find themselves having to adopt a competitive mindset in order to perform well as a team.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Rudolph

[Daytime Waitress]

2 hours ago, Rudolph said:

It also helps that Doom is essentially a single-player game, so there is little to no incentive to engage in unhealthy competition.

 

There's no direct competition (outside of the deathmatch or speed-running sides of things), but it doesn't stop some folks from belittling others for their choice of difficulty level. I guess I just see that as part of the same overarching "git gud" mentality.

 

2 hours ago, Rudolph said:

In contrast, as evidenced by the video, even more casual WoW players would find themselves having to adopt a competitive mindset in order to perform well as a team.

 

In that environment, many people would definitely take a competitive mindset... instead of a co-operative one to work as a team. I'm not accusing you of making a Freudian slip there - I think that's absolutely how people operate in such instances. For mine, I would've dropped FFXIV almost instantly if I got shouted at for not knowing how to heal or draw aggro - but I was lucky enough to always play it with the same two other mooks, and we supported each other.

Spoiler

(And probably made life hell for the unfortunate s-o-b who signed in to the fourth party slot and had to put up with us).

 

[Rudolph]

@Daytime Waitress Yeah, people take games way too seriously sometimes. I get that things can get intense, but to start screaming at your teammates when they are trying their best is so uncalled-for. Not that I am above getting frustrated over my team's incompetence, but unless I have good reasons to believe that they are playing poorly on purpose, I reckon I have no business getting verbally abusive towards them. As for Doom, while I have to deal with some jerks from time to time, I have had the privilege so far of never finding myself being belittled over my choice of difficulty level... Then again, I always play in Ultra-Violence, so I have usually nothing to worry about in that instance. :P

Edited November 27, 2022 by Rudolph

[dasho]

This feels just like the Old School FPS thread. Is there any other message in this hour and a half video besides "some games lend themselves to minmaxing especially at the upper tier and some people are assholes about it if you don't play along?
 

[heliumlamb]

ARPANET and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. it doesnt seem like it will improve at any rate.
toxicity over person to person competition, be it direct or indirect, by way of international computer networking is but one of ARPANET's many, seemingly endless consequences.

and even then, if you're not being belittled over the act of playing any game in whatever way you're playing, you're just as likely to end up being belittled for (gasp) asking questions and looking for answers, or for wanting to discuss the fact that there is a notable tendency for people to belittle others for not playing the exact way they're expected (expect even more belittling if a longform video is involved!). aint no way back.

last time i ever played CSGO, it ended with me muting all of my teammates, bunnyhopping around while chainsmoking and doing nothing for the last 30-odd minutes as my teammates were probably continuing to yell at me. all because i was inhaling and exhaling. i think we still won? i don't know/care. i went on a quake 2 FFA server a few months ago while uhhhh... feral... just to jump around and even that made someone furious despite providing them with free frags????

i played wow for around a month but after my first dungeon i went "i'd rather be playing a free roguelike" instead

only "competition" i engage in with video games these days is with my past self, only in tetris. it's better that way

 

Edited November 27, 2022 by heliumlamb

[Mr. Freeze]

What I said in the Halo thread is still true:

 

Stat tracking and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

Any games revolving around teamwork leave wide open the ability for you to blame anyone else but yourself for losing. 

Developers are largely OK with toxicity because toxic players on average play longer, and a mad player on the receiving end of toxicity more often than not thinks to themselves "I'll do ONE MORE game and show these assholes how it's done" thus increasing the desired metric of playtime. 

It's not enough that the game eats your wallet, now it's eating your every thought with dailies and battlepasses. 

 

I am right about this and have always been. 

[BGreener]

Most of my WoW experience was weird because it was as a "casual tank". I never got into the hardcore raiding scenes or guilds, mostly just dungeon and heroic queues. Most if not all of the people I played with were often happy enough just to have a tank show up. But one weird thing I found myself doing was looking up boss fights and encounters well in advance. Especially if it's a mechanic that could wipe the party, it was very beneficial for me to basically "spoil" myself of every upcoming encounter. That's the exact opposite of what I want out of a video game, and one of many things that started pushing me away from playing WoW and other similar games.

 

18 hours ago, Wyrmwood said:

 

I'll scorch the earth with you, I've tried plenty of online games usually inspired by the stories they used to write in PC Gamer, but my experience has still been sub-par at best, toxic at worst. Sure I had some fun with Quake 3 and Halo but that's about it, usually I'd at least be playing with at least one real friend even then. Maybe I'm just slighty anti-social but I know what I like and only ever play single player. Sometimes I'm a little sad about that, for example I love BloodBowl but the AI ain't great and it's designed for 2 players but I've yet to play a decent game online, they either rage quit or trash talk chat messages all of my turn.

 

As for min/maxing and all that, not my scene either. Guess Dark Souls and Diablo 3 but only because it's pretty obvious you don't really get to choose in those. Their purely decided by class.

 

I'm more of the "disillusioned" end regarding online gaming with random people, though it probably varies from game to game. Online gaming with homies and best friends, though? That's not going away for me anytime soon.

 

Regarding min-maxing and classes between Dark Souls and Diablo 3, D3 is much more strict with skills and such. The Souls games let you develop your characters however you'd want since the starting "classes" are more about what equipment and stat spreads you start with, it's simple but fluid and unrestricted - all the moreso if it's a Souls-styled game with respecs. Still though, some playstyles will benefit more from what classes you want to start with: If you play Dark Souls and say "I want to be a fireball throwing murderhobo" there's no clearer choice than the Pyromancer, which is just a great choice in general for that game.

[Wyrmwood]

3 hours ago, BGrieber said:

Online gaming with homies and best friends, though? That's not going away for me anytime soon.

 

Yeah I agree I just don't seem to find games we all want to play, most of my RL friends play ARMA 3 or Arc and neither appeal to me really. Still love local multi-player, was playing the Skywalker Saga with one of my sons earlier, now I just need to teach them Soul Caliber and Worms.

[insertwackynamehere]

I have this whole internal dialogue with myself whenever I play a game, lose, read about it, find information on how to minmax, proceed to still do badly, and then walk away feeling like a failure. It's basically:

- "Okay I want to play a game to relax and get lost in a fake world for a bit"

- "Darn, I suck like I suck at every video game as a casual 30-something video game player"

- "Lets see how I _should_ play"

- "Wow this person on Youtube is really good and is explaining their minmax strategy while effortlessly crushing everything on the hardest setting"

- "Hmm I still am terrible at this game despite now being acutely aware it is not really a game but a spreadsheet with win conditions"

- "I guess I should keep playing to get better"

- "Wait why would I try to get better? What is the point of playing video games anyway? What am I doing?"

 

The answer of course would be to just ignore the external stuff, but what happens really is you are forced to abandon the childlike mindset of a video game as a new world to explore (which is really all I enjoy about them) and remember that as an adult, video games are just sets of rules with nice art. I get ripped out of the enjoyment mindset by remembering what things actually are. I think maybe a lot of this is just adulthood, versus childhood of playing games with friends and talking about them and exploring them as genuine new worlds (and based on my age, without 50 million videos on how to play, but just strategy guides and vague rumors of easter eggs).

[LexiMax]

On 11/26/2022 at 2:53 PM, Rudolph said:

So was there ever a MMORPG that managed to maintain a relatively healthy and welcoming community?

Most of my friends who play MMO's have said that FF14 is far and away the least toxic MMO they've played, especially compared to WoW.  I played the game for a bit and have to agree.

 

In fact, doing a bit of googling, it seems like the surest way to tick off the average FF14 player is to either say something less than flattering about the game or to complain about how bad your teammates are.

[Rudolph]

2 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

In fact, doing a bit of googling, it seems like the surest way to tick off the average FF14 player is to either say something less than flattering about the game or to complain about how bad your teammates are.

The latter is great news, but the community reacting in a hostile manner to any criticism of the game strikes me as a worrying sign.

[LexiMax]

Just now, Rudolph said:

The latter is great news, but the community reacting in a hostile manner to any criticism of the game strikes me as a worrying sign.

 

A Realm Reborn can be kind of a slog to get through, and most of the complaints seem to be centered around that.  Apparently, the expansions are way better - I can't say yay or nay, because I haven't gotten that far yet, but people really like it.

 

That said, all other things being equal, I'd much rather a community oversell a game than complain about every little thing.  For how crabby WoW players are, Blizzard doesn't seem to actually listen to them any better.  And being angry at the game often spills over into being angry at other players - after all, if you feel like the developers won't listen to you, chasing other players away from the game by being toxic is the best revenge you can hope for.