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plonq... or "when tangents attack". I started this off as a geeky post on games, but got side-tracked into a general post on human nature.
When people hear the term "DKP"1 in regards to a game system, their first though is of that famous clip of the raid leader on a European WoW server screaming, "THAT'S 50 DKP! MINUS!" at one of the members in his Onyxia raid. This morning I listened to a gamer podcast where they discussed DKP (rather, they railed against it) and it occurred to me that there are a lot of people out there who don't know what it is, or what it's for. The short answer is that it's a point system that rewards people for their efforts.
That's the entirety of it, really.
I was all prepared to rail against their ignorance, and how far they were off the mark when it occurred to me that I don't really care. If that's how they want to run their guild then I wish them no ill will, and in fact I'm curious to hear how it works out. They openly admitted in the podcast that their system isn't "fair". (Which brings to mind an infamous quote from Steve Case of AOL with respect to some of his company's skanky practises, "Life's tough, get a helmet.") Based on some case studies I've read over the years, though, they may be in for some hurting down the road as human nature kicks in.
Apparently the concept of fairness is hard-wired into humans. The two studies that I read found that the sense of fairness was pretty well balanced across all races and cultures.
The first study separated two people into adjacent rooms, out of communication from one another. A person in the first room was offered 100 units of currency, with the only catch being that it had to be shared with the person in the other room. The person in the first room would decide how the money should be split, and the person in the second room would then have the option of declaring deal or no deal.
On a purely rational level, there should never be a case where the second person nixes the deal, because both are in a position of no loss. If the first person announced (I'll exhibit my cultural bias and use dollars and cents) that they would keep $99.99 and give $.01 to the person in the other room, that other individual will still be $.01 ahead of the game just for saying "yes". In reality, though, the cut-off point appeared to be around the 70/30 mark. Apparently the lesson to be learned here is the inherent unfairness of life does not preclude our annoyance with the same. Whether we like it or not, we appeared to be hardwired to desire equity into an unjust world. The person in the second room was prepared to forgo any gain to punish the perceived greed of the first person.
In the second study, all of the members of the study group were given an equal amount of a fictional currency which they could invest in one of two funds. The more money you put into the funds, the more they paid out to everybody. The first fund increased its universal payout, regardless of who paid into it. Paying into the second fund, however, would generate penalties for the free-riders.
Initially most of the investors went with the first fund because it had a larger payout, but they found that over a fairly short period, the majority shifted over to the second fund. Why would people move over to the lower-paying fund? Again, from a purely rational viewpoint it doesn't make any sense. From the human side of it, though, it boils down to the simple fact that we hate freeloaders.
We look down on welfare recipients because they're getting "something for nothing". We resent the person who wins the big lottery payout because it should have been mine. We seldom revel long in the successes of others before we start trying to bring them back down to our level (and we've spawned a whole trash tabloid industry to that end). Why do we do it? Because good things happening to other people aren't happening to us, and that's not fair.
And as a species, we're all about fair.
Thus ends today's musings of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
plonq, amateur sociologist at large.
1DKP = Dragon Kill Points. Every time you help to bring down one of the bosses in one of the larger raiding instances you've also helped to gear up the guild, and facilitated everyone's advancement. Thus you are awarded good karma points for your efforts which you can save up or spend in future runs. It's a reward for loyalty and effort.
When people hear the term "DKP"1 in regards to a game system, their first though is of that famous clip of the raid leader on a European WoW server screaming, "THAT'S 50 DKP! MINUS!" at one of the members in his Onyxia raid. This morning I listened to a gamer podcast where they discussed DKP (rather, they railed against it) and it occurred to me that there are a lot of people out there who don't know what it is, or what it's for. The short answer is that it's a point system that rewards people for their efforts.
That's the entirety of it, really.
I was all prepared to rail against their ignorance, and how far they were off the mark when it occurred to me that I don't really care. If that's how they want to run their guild then I wish them no ill will, and in fact I'm curious to hear how it works out. They openly admitted in the podcast that their system isn't "fair". (Which brings to mind an infamous quote from Steve Case of AOL with respect to some of his company's skanky practises, "Life's tough, get a helmet.") Based on some case studies I've read over the years, though, they may be in for some hurting down the road as human nature kicks in.
Apparently the concept of fairness is hard-wired into humans. The two studies that I read found that the sense of fairness was pretty well balanced across all races and cultures.
The first study separated two people into adjacent rooms, out of communication from one another. A person in the first room was offered 100 units of currency, with the only catch being that it had to be shared with the person in the other room. The person in the first room would decide how the money should be split, and the person in the second room would then have the option of declaring deal or no deal.
On a purely rational level, there should never be a case where the second person nixes the deal, because both are in a position of no loss. If the first person announced (I'll exhibit my cultural bias and use dollars and cents) that they would keep $99.99 and give $.01 to the person in the other room, that other individual will still be $.01 ahead of the game just for saying "yes". In reality, though, the cut-off point appeared to be around the 70/30 mark. Apparently the lesson to be learned here is the inherent unfairness of life does not preclude our annoyance with the same. Whether we like it or not, we appeared to be hardwired to desire equity into an unjust world. The person in the second room was prepared to forgo any gain to punish the perceived greed of the first person.
In the second study, all of the members of the study group were given an equal amount of a fictional currency which they could invest in one of two funds. The more money you put into the funds, the more they paid out to everybody. The first fund increased its universal payout, regardless of who paid into it. Paying into the second fund, however, would generate penalties for the free-riders.
Initially most of the investors went with the first fund because it had a larger payout, but they found that over a fairly short period, the majority shifted over to the second fund. Why would people move over to the lower-paying fund? Again, from a purely rational viewpoint it doesn't make any sense. From the human side of it, though, it boils down to the simple fact that we hate freeloaders.
We look down on welfare recipients because they're getting "something for nothing". We resent the person who wins the big lottery payout because it should have been mine. We seldom revel long in the successes of others before we start trying to bring them back down to our level (and we've spawned a whole trash tabloid industry to that end). Why do we do it? Because good things happening to other people aren't happening to us, and that's not fair.
And as a species, we're all about fair.
Thus ends today's musings of
plonq, amateur sociologist at large.1DKP = Dragon Kill Points. Every time you help to bring down one of the bosses in one of the larger raiding instances you've also helped to gear up the guild, and facilitated everyone's advancement. Thus you are awarded good karma points for your efforts which you can save up or spend in future runs. It's a reward for loyalty and effort.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 03:49 pm (UTC)I was one of those that didn't know what DKP is
no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 04:05 pm (UTC)I did quite a bit of reading into the various DKP methods from a myriad of sources in an attempt to better understand that which I knew nothing about, and that which we have chosen not to employ. Many things I have never done, but by reading about them and researching them, I've learned enough about them to form a basic opinion. Granted, the platform of a podcast is such that droning on and on ad infinitum about the ins and outs of every DKP system would put an alpaca to sleep - but I'm glad there are many different people out there with different point of views about how things should and could be done.
I look forward to how our system works out as well. I like to think that we've fostered the kind of guild culture that will continue to reject the findings of the study you outlined above. So far, we've done very well.
We shall see! :)
Maybe "ignorance" was the wrong word to use.
Date: 2006-06-23 05:25 pm (UTC)I meant the word "ignorance" not as a slight, in its literal sense of "under-researched", but given the baggage that the word tends to carry with it, I'm thinking I could have chosen a different one in this case.
I really am curious to see if it will work for you. TPP really hasn't progressed to the point where DKP would be an issue with most guilds anyway, but you're at the door and knocking loudly. (I hear you guys took down the Spider Boss in ZG - grats!) You're either going to be an example of a failed experiment, or a role model for guilds who want to explore viable alternatives. I don't know how it's going to turn out, which puts me into the realm of ignorance as well.
I think that it was the tone of the segment set me off as much as the content. It came across as a group who had already made up their minds on a subject, and did just enough research to validate their viewpoint. More specifically, some of the examples brought forward had me taking time out of my work to gesticulate at the computer and say, "ZOMG people, that example is flawed, and the argument you are building around it is specious at best! You're all smart people - surely one among you can see this!"
While I still feel that portions of the segment were somewhat misrepresented to support their argument, by the same token there is no law out there that says one can't have bias creep into their podcast. And like you said, you have a clear view on the kind of guild culture you want to build. I really enjoyed my time in the guild - it put the fun back into the game for me - so who am I to argue on this talking point?
In any event, I'm not going to suddenly drop TC from my listening rotation because I disagreed with one segment. Similarly I frequently catch myself doing a /who on my ex guild to see what they're up to, and feel a twinge of regret that I can't be there. "Oh wow, look who finally hit 60!"
Re: Maybe "ignorance" was the wrong word to use.
Date: 2006-06-23 10:11 pm (UTC)That's a good point. Perhaps first-hand experience with DKP would have given us a different insight, in light of your post. Dunno. I'm as interested to see where we go as you are.
Thanks for listening, by the way. Hope you're enjoying it! :)