Bob's Perfect World- A wall of text regarding the raid scene on P99

[Skope]

hey, i had a thought that occurred to me about a million times over the last year...

if 4 day windows were introduced to prevent poopsock and we've spent more time poopsocking with 4 day variance than we've spent not poopsocking, maybe we should just go classic.

[Dr4z3r]

Originally Posted by Lazortag [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm not sure why you lumped me in the category of people who oppose GM involvement in the raid scene, since I think the GM's should be involved.

I lumped you in because you said this:

Originally Posted by Lazortag [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

players are willing to poopsock, which is not rational and is in no one's interest.

Put simply, 'socking is the dominant strategy. This is where the prisoner's dilemma becomes relevant: As soon as Guild A chooses Defect, Guild B must choose the same in order to have a chance at anything. You're right that it's not directly analogous to the Prisoner's Dilemma, but the Dilemma still serves as a simplified illustration of the dominant strategy. Given that raid mobs on P99 are all-or-nothing (your guild gets all the loot, or none of it), a decision matrix for a 2-guild standoff would look like this:

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Where the numbers represent the approximate chance to get the mob. So, can 'sock, with a chance of either .5 or 1 to get the mob, or you can not 'sock, and have a chance of either 0 or .5.

Given that the goal is to get the mob's loot, what is the correct strategy?

So, here we have our rational, self-interested decision. Of course, in the long run, everyone involved in 'socking mobs for a long period of time will be unhappy, burn out on the game, or just stop giving a fuck. It will detriment the lives of those players, those guilds, and ultimately the server as a whole. This is, of course, the Tragedy of the Commons.

[Agent]

Hmmm sounds really frustrating. WELCOME TO EQ

[Gwence]

Originally Posted by Duie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

look at it like this. If We in the Semi Casual raiding guilds allied together to force a rotation. what could you do about it? before you answer that, check the numbers of VD,Divinity, BDA, And Taken. Right now it is not to our best intrest to poopsock ,But if thats what it takes to get you guys to start talking, well We out number Both TMO and TR in manpower, Timezone and Telephones. and Im not just talking Trak either.

Bring it on carebear

[Lazortag]

Originally Posted by Dr4z3r [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I lumped you in because you said this:



Put simply, 'socking is the dominant strategy. This is where the prisoner's dilemma becomes relevant: As soon as Guild A chooses Defect, Guild B must choose the same in order to have a chance at anything. You're right that it's not directly analogous to the Prisoner's Dilemma, but the Dilemma still serves as a simplified illustration of the dominant strategy. Given that raid mobs on P99 are all-or-nothing (your guild gets all the loot, or none of it), a decision matrix for a 2-guild standoff would look like this:

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Where the numbers represent the approximate chance to get the mob. So, can 'sock, with a chance of either .5 or 1 to get the mob, or you can not 'sock, and have a chance of either 0 or .5.

Given that the goal is to get the mob's loot, what is the correct strategy?
...

Both socking and not socking may yield equal chances at getting mobs (in theory), but socking is still less rational because it requires such a huge time investment for the exact same payoff as both guilds agreeing to cooperate. In a prisoner's dilemma, you're encouraged to defect only because you're uncertain of what the other actor in the situation will do and because you're locked into whatever decision you make at first. In this situation you can foresee that guilds will poopsock raid mobs because the act of poopsocking happens before the mob spawns, and you can change your decision after. So really there's no benefit to defecting (ie poopsocking) if you're one of the top two guilds, because it forces the same behaviour from the other guild. Anyways, this is all kind of absurd. I'm sure we both have better things to do than to relate game theory to poopsocking.

[Shiftin]

Originally Posted by Duie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Youd Find Shaere and Zeelot reasonable people...

Let me know when your comedy central special is airing.

The rules are the rules. They're only a page long. Read them.

They need to either be enforced strictly or publicly removed for everyone, because the half assed nature of the last month is the source of more raiding angst and headaches than i could have dreamed possible and every guild is losing raiders who are getting tired of dealing with this nonsense.

[Skope]

Originally Posted by Shiftin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

They need to either be enforced strictly or publicly removed for everyone, because the half assed nature of the last month is the source of more raiding angst and headaches than i could have dreamed possible and every guild is losing raiders who are getting tired of dealing with this nonsense.

that sort of inconsistency has permeated the raiding scene for a long time now, it's the shitty decisions the last couple of weeks that has tipped people over the edge.

[GiavannaSK]

Im still new here, can someone explain Poopsocking to me? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Autotune]

Originally Posted by Shiftin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Let me know when your comedy central special is airing.

The rules are the rules. They're only a page long. Read them.

They need to either be enforced strictly or publicly removed for everyone, because the half assed nature of the last month is the source of more raiding angst and headaches than i could have dreamed possible and every guild is losing raiders who are getting tired of dealing with this nonsense.

meh it got edited so whatev.

[Dr4z3r]

Originally Posted by Lazortag [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Both socking and not socking may yield equal chances at getting mobs (in theory), but socking is still less rational because it requires such a huge time investment for the exact same payoff as both guilds agreeing to cooperate. In a prisoner's dilemma, you're encouraged to defect only because you're uncertain of what the other actor in the situation will do and because you're locked into whatever decision you make at first. In this situation you can foresee that guilds will poopsock raid mobs because the act of poopsocking happens before the mob spawns, and you can change your decision after. So really there's no benefit to defecting (ie poopsocking) if you're one of the top two guilds, because it forces the same behaviour from the other guild. Anyways, this is all kind of absurd. I'm sure we both have better things to do than to relate game theory to poopsocking.

I'm not trying to say that camping strategies == prisoner's dilemma, I'm saying that they have a similar Nash Equlibrium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_eq...er.27s_dilemma), becasuse 'socking is a weakly dominant strategy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strateg...ce#Terminology) in P99 raiding. Regardless of what other guilds do, poopsocking will always yield the same or better results as the alternatives.

This is why, given that the player's goal is to get loot from a particular mob, poopsocking any given window of that mob is rationally correct, even if it's not the best strategy in the long-run.

Oh, and as to whether we have better stuff to do... If the long-term goal is to make things better then I think a little rational discourse using game-theory is probably the best thing that could possibly happen in this thread.