So, today, a friend of mine (and a guild leader of one of the top guilds on our server) came to talk to me about his recruiting issues. This lead to a large discussion about various things.
I enjoy talking to him as it can usually get most of my own worries with my own guild off my chest and also hear his own insights on it–kind of like why he asked me for some advice on his recruitment strategies as he seemed to be scaring people off.
We ended up talking a little about how his guild and the guild I am currently in were possibly going to merge in the past, especially as I mentioned how some of the new rules and ways people were doing things were kind of messed up and I knew he was a good guild leader and could set things straight. He said part of the issue is he didn’t want just anyone in the guild and our GM said no. I kind of understand both parts–He has enough to work with, but at the same time it’d be hurtful to people in our guild to be rejected with a “you’re not good enough”–especially as there’s always a chance they could improve.
So, out of curiousity, I asked him what players in our guild he thought were subpar–in his response, he mentioned two of our top tanks which I found surprising (though, that isn’t to say I haven’t seen any of their flaws–one has an issue with his positioning and the other doesn’t really like trying out other ideas too often). In my response, I half-jokingly said I was afraid to ask what he thought about me, only to hear the response that he thought I was good.
Coming from so many things this week where it’s obviously my fault and that I’m such a sucky healer, hearing something like that made me feel a bit better. I just wish I could’ve thanked him before he went to bed!
So, even though you don’t read this, sir, if you ever do stumble across it:
The vast majority of the SWTOR playerbase is basically “bad”. This doesn’t mean much in itself, but then you have the players who believe they are good when they’re not. They usually fall into several categories.
1. The gearheads: in their minds, everything is about gear. If someone does better DPS than them, they’ll spend hours trying to figure out how to improve their gear; it never occurs to them the problem might lie elsewhere. Improving your gear is a great thing, but it’s only half the equation.
2. The anti-theorycrafters: those who are naturally resistent to the application of thought to the game. Somewhere along the way, the fact that a computer game is nothing more than a giant mathematical simulation escaped them. There’s not much you can do to help these people, unfortunately.
3. The tunnel-vision theorycrafters: theorycrafting is great, but it only takes you so far. There’s a perfect gearing balance for every character, for example, and it gives you great insight into the best way to play a character, but you can only process so much information ingame. People make mistakes, and sometimes you have to make judgment calls, which means keeping an open mind.
I’ve never seen you play, so I can’t judge you. But you exhibit a desire to learn and better your character, and that puts you ahead of the curve already. Life as a healer can be difficult, especially in progression: it’s often tough to judge whether failure lies with your own healing or your raid group inducing an unreasonable burden on you. It’s just one of those things you have to persist with; take a critical (but not unhealthy) attitude towards your performance and strive for improvement, and with the benefit of hindsight you’ll be able to look back eventually and understand what you could have done better and what was never your fault to begin with.
Aurojinn
Yeah, I always try really hard and to figure things out–why I often end up bugging a lot of healing friends or people I know in other groups with questions about their healers. I know I have a lot of trouble with positioning so that’s something that takes me a bit to learn (especially if they just throw me in and expect me to know where to go when they do things differently than I’m used to… :|). Regardless, I always try my best and have a fairly tight rotation. I think the main thing I need to work on is reacting better when I end up taking a good amount of damage so my rotation doesn’t fall apart.
At the very least, I’ve gotten better with that in some fights (Like the giant robot in Lost Island), but it’s still a learning process. Part of why I’m hoping to work on Livestreaming some stuff is so I can re-watch it later and maybe figure out what I did wrong, if anything.
But yeah, one thing I’ve run into a lot is people not willing to try other ideas/solutions. So the same thing keeps being done and we keep dying and then people get frustrated at one another and it sucks. I just wish people could be more open to stuff and not think that just because it worked before means it’ll always work–sometimes, especially with different people, that same thing may not work. That isn’t to say it won’t ever work again, but it doesn’t hurt to try something new either.
Marilea