41 replies to this topic

[Ghost_Sanguis]

Nothing against the guide writers themselves, but rather the people that request them. I mean, is it just me or have some people lost their ability to make their own decisions? I've been seeing a lot of this on this forum in particular, and I'm not sure about the other forums.

Ignoring the fact that it's funner to farm your own gear, what is the point in playing if you can't bring yourself to experiment with gear choices (the only thing we really can experiment with that has a negative consequence, losing gold)? We cannot screw up characters, and you can always get more gold/gear later if it's a bad choice.

Am I the only one who thinks this?

[Ultragrisen]

Dont think all people have the urge or time to calculate and experiment that much to be honest.

10% perhaps loves that and get appreciation when people give them credit for it after posting them.

[morbidlymystic]

*more fun not funner

[Bagstone]

I agree to some extent. What I like about these guides is that you can refer to them in discussions that go like "play class X, because class Y is so gear dependent and especially spec Z doesn't work unless you're a billionaire" - but then even the heaviest gear-dependent specs like Archon wizard get 1 million budget guides.

I disagree that everyone "should" spend the time and get themselves into gearing. I know that some people just don't like to spend hours on spreadsheets (something I like to do). That's why I took the time to write all that I've learned over the last couple of months and put it into my wizard gear guide. I hope to help these people who want to spend just a little bit of time (though to some extent I failed because my guide right now is a wall of text if you wanna read the whole thing - but that's why it has a TL;DR section).

Anyways, I'm not sure if you're referring to anything particular, but the last "50m CMWW guide" was a huge letdown, as I also expressed in the comment section. My huge problem is that it doesn't offer any room for alternatives, he doesn't provide any reflection on his purchases, he doesn't explain in detail all the stuff behind this. When I wrote my guide I figured that there are some thing that you just CAN'T explain with less words. It's just not always that plain simple (and this is also why despite the huge flaws in the current itemization, it's not completely unfixable, because for example gearing up a mid-budget CMWW wizard will always take some time).

I loved all of the previous guides of this guy, but imho the last guide was not only less useful, it did even a disservice to the community. When trying to buy similar stuff, I realized that the items from this 50m guide went up to about 100m by now, because many people (including AH flippers) have seen this guide and are flipping the items, as they know what a lot of people are looking for now. Again, would he have provided alternatives and not just go straight for "3pc Zuni set, Chanto set, Storm Crow, ..." but elaborate a bit more on other possible choices, this wouldn't have happened.

[shaggy]

Ghost_Sanguis, on 26 February 2013 - 01:47 PM, said:

Nothing against the guide writers themselves, but rather the people that request them. I mean, is it just me or have some people lost their ability to make their own decisions? I've been seeing a lot of this on this forum in particular, and I'm not sure about the other forums.

Ignoring the fact that it's funner to farm your own gear, what is the point in playing if you can't bring yourself to experiment with gear choices (the only thing we really can experiment with that has a negative consequence, losing gold)? We cannot screw up characters, and you can always get more gold/gear later if it's a bad choice.

Am I the only one who thinks this?

If people like it, who cares?  Clearly some people like taking a limited budget and seeing how far it gets them.  It's a game-within-a-game to them and it doesn't harm you or anyone else.  What I do find sickening is people who cop the "my way is the most fun way and anyone who doesn't play my way is ruining the game" attitude.  So you like to play self-found.  Great.  Why not make a guide to effectively playing self-found instead of hating on other peoples guides?

Why try to spin it as a bunch of video-makers pandering to a bunch of idiots?  Isn't it good that people are watching videos and better-understanding how to play?  I mean, let's be honest, not everyone starts out as an expert here.  Everyone has to start somewhere.  We should be happy for resources like this and encourage more "how to" videos that cover a broad spectrum of things and are easily-accessible on a site like this.

Without ElitistJerks there would be a lot of people struggling to play WoW.  It's the same thing, really.  Some people in the community are the theorycrafters and number-crunchers.  Some people just want to chill out and slaughter some monsters.  The two groups have an important relationship which we should encourage.

There *have* to be tools by which people can learn to do new/different things in the game without necessitating spreadsheets and other more-numerical utilities.

EDIT
I sware I know Engrish

Edited by shaggy, 26 February 2013 - 08:04 PM.

[GangusKahn]

Ghost_Sanguis, on 26 February 2013 - 01:47 PM, said:

Nothing against the guide writers themselves, but rather the people that request them. I mean, is it just me or have some people lost their ability to make their own decisions? I've been seeing a lot of this on this forum in particular, and I'm not sure about the other forums.

Ignoring the fact that it's funner to farm your own gear, what is the point in playing if you can't bring yourself to experiment with gear choices (the only thing we really can experiment with that has a negative consequence, losing gold)? We cannot screw up characters, and you can always get more gold/gear later if it's a bad choice.

Am I the only one who thinks this?

Why is it people are always so concerned at what other people are doing?  If you dont like the guides dont read them.  I like the guides, personally.  It allows me to learn more about the game and sometimes catch things I missed.

[maka]

I love the "if you don't like them, don't read them" argument. As if things exist in a vacuum. The fact that these guides keep popping up like mushrooms is more a reflection of the game itself than it is of the writers.
Try to think about things instead of just spewing some generic crap. The fact that all people wanna know is how they should be spending their gold is very revealing.

[Bagstone]

The AH has nothing to do with the number of guides popping up. The amount of guides in D3 is not even close to that from D2. I started playing a WD recently and after reading (ok, skimming) plenty of guides I didn't find out that IAS is crap for my WD until someone explained the issue to me (of course here in the forum, the community is just awesome). It also reveals that the WD has plenty of viable skills (unless you have awesome gear because then Bears dominate), as 80% of guides I've read just talked about specs and not about gear at all.

Edited by Bagstone, 26 February 2013 - 07:14 PM.

[GangusKahn]

maka, on 26 February 2013 - 07:07 PM, said:

I love the "if you don't like them, don't read them" argument. As if things exist in a vacuum. The fact that these guides keep popping up like mushrooms is more a reflection of the game itself than it is of the writers.
Try to think about things instead of just spewing some generic crap. The fact that all people wanna know is how they should be spending their gold is very revealing.

I think just fine thanks.  Sorry if something as simple as not reading something angers you.  I find them informative at times...yes people dont mind them.  As for a reflection of the game..yeah how about I wiki everthing and spend hours figuring out things in a game instead of using something someone has put time and effort into to help others out to learn also.

[Jaetch]

Guides are... well, a contribution to society, in some way or form no matter how well or poorly they're written (as long as they don't contain completely erroneous information). I would write guides except they're far too much work and I prefer making short videos of artsy explosions rather than explaining things the entire time (finally tossed out Camtasia Studio and bought Fraps instead).

The problem with "budget" guides is that prices constantly fluctuate. Yes, it's centered around the AH, but it's a shortcut people are willing to take to at least try out new builds for the "fun" now.

Edited by Jaetch, 26 February 2013 - 07:24 PM.

[Diavolo222]

So we are now complaining about budget guides really?Grow the fuck up.

[Bleu42]

I have to agree. All these 'help me find an upgrade' and 'what build to use?' threads are kind of annoying =D But, some people like to lead, some people like to be led.

[Shinna1989]

shaggy, on 26 February 2013 - 02:27 PM, said:

If people like it, who cares?  Clearly some people like taking a limited budget and seeing how far it gets them.  It's a game-within-a-game to them and it doesn't harm you or anyone else.  What I do find sickening is people who cop the "my way is the most fun way and anyone who doesn't play my way is ruining the game" attitude.  So you like to play self-found.  Great.  Why not make a guild to effectively playing self-found instead of hating on other peoples guides?

Why try to spin it as a bunch of video-makers pandering to a bunch of idiots?  Isn't it good that people are watching videos and better-understanding how to play?  I mean, let's be honest, not everyone starts out as an expert here.  Everyone has to start somewhere.  We should be happy for resources like this and encourage more "how to" videos that cover a broad spectrum of things and are easily-accessible on a site like this.

Without ElitistJerks there would be a lot of people struggling to play WoW.  It's the same thing, really.  Some people in the community are the theorycrafters and number-crunchers.  Some people just want to chill out and slaughter some monsters.  The two groups have an important relationship which we should encourage.

There *have* to be tools by which people can learn to do new/different things in the game without necessitating spreadsheets and other more-numerical utilities.

+1 for you sir!

[phuzi0n]

What I don't understand is how there are so many budget guides yet there are also so many "help me gear" threads by people just starting with zero budget that clearly have no understanding of their spec or even game basics like getting a minimum level of AR. You would think that with all these guides that noobs wouldn't need to ask for so much help.

Jaetch, on 26 February 2013 - 07:23 PM, said:

I would write guides except they're far too much work and I prefer making short videos of artsy explosions rather than explaining things the entire time (finally tossed out Camtasia Studio and bought Fraps instead).

OT but video streaming apps can usually be configured to save video locally and if you configure them to do a fast high bitrate encode then the result will be much smaller file size than anything fraps can do without putting much load on your cpu, and if your cpu can handle it then a medium processing encode will save you more space or give more quality. Xsplit has been the defacto streaming app for a couple years but the free version is limited (in ways that shouldn't affect local recording much) whereas OBS http://obsproject.com is becoming ever more popular, is FOSS, and is what I prefer. Both of them can save video locally and produce very nice results at 5mbps 1080p.

[Jaetch]

phuzi0n, on 26 February 2013 - 08:56 PM, said:

Jaetch, on 26 February 2013 - 07:23 PM, said:

I would write guides except they're far too much work and I prefer making short videos of artsy explosions rather than explaining things the entire time (finally tossed out Camtasia Studio and bought Fraps instead).

OT but video streaming apps can usually be configured to save video locally and if you configure them to do a fast high bitrate encode then the result will be much smaller file size than anything fraps can do without putting much load on your cpu, and if your cpu can handle it then a medium processing encode will save you more space or give more quality. Xsplit has been the defacto streaming app for a couple years but the free version is limited (in ways that shouldn't affect local recording much) whereas OBS http://obsproject.com is becoming ever more popular, is FOSS, and is what I prefer. Both of them can save video locally and produce very nice results at 5mbps 1080p.

Just in response to OT, I haven't found anything too troubling with Fraps at the moment. I'm going to attempt multiboxing and recording that to see how much work my CPU has to do, but as of now, everything is sparkly clean and smooth. I don't really mind the uncompressed massive file size when recording at 1080p. After I put everything together, I delete the clips from my hard drive anyway. I have XSplit, mainly for Twitch, but I absolutely hated ripping the videos off of there.

[morbidlymystic]

Bleu42, on 26 February 2013 - 07:25 PM, said:

I have to agree. All these 'help me find an upgrade' and 'what build to use?' threads are kind of annoying =D But, some people like to lead, some people like to be led.

So now we can't discuss builds either?  Cant talk about skills, cant talk about items, so whats left? Should we be speculating as to whether or not the scoundrel is banging the enchantress?

[Jaetch]

morbidlymystic, on 26 February 2013 - 10:59 PM, said:

So now we can't discuss builds either?  Cant talk about skills, cant talk about items, so whats left? Should we be speculating as to whether or not the scoundrel is banging the enchantress?

Don't be like that; that will make Kormac very sad.

[Bleu42]

morbidlymystic, on 26 February 2013 - 10:59 PM, said:

Bleu42, on 26 February 2013 - 07:25 PM, said:

I have to agree. All these 'help me find an upgrade' and 'what build to use?' threads are kind of annoying =D But, some people like to lead, some people like to be led.

So now we can't discuss builds either?  Cant talk about skills, cant talk about items, so whats left? Should we be speculating as to whether or not the scoundrel is banging the enchantress?

You can do what you want, I was adding that all the threads made with the specific intent of having other people tell the OP what build to use or items to get, are annoying.

[Elendiro]

Totally agree with OP. I'm so tired of them too. I also want to smash the computer screen when reading comments like "make a video about the patchnotes"... JUST READ THE DAMN PATCHNOTES YOURSELF. People these days just want to be breastfed everything.

[Ghost_Sanguis]

morbidlymystic, on 26 February 2013 - 10:59 PM, said:

Bleu42, on 26 February 2013 - 07:25 PM, said:

I have to agree. All these 'help me find an upgrade' and 'what build to use?' threads are kind of annoying =D But, some people like to lead, some people like to be led.

So now we can't discuss builds either?  Cant talk about skills, cant talk about items, so whats left? Should we be speculating as to whether or not the scoundrel is banging the enchantress?

I'm not saying that people need to stop talking about things, they do as they please. I'm just saying that I think it's stupid.