My Beef with eHarmony

I am sorry if this whole post comes across as bitter. I am enjoying the process of eHarmony for what it is worth, but there are some very glaring problems I see with this way of dating.

So, I've been subscribed to eHarmony for about 6 months; I signed up after my previous relationship ended, and I was looking for a way to alleviate the loneliness I was feeling at the time. I admit, it was probably not the best thing for me to do at that moment, but I was looking for a way to ease my way back into the scene and it seemed like a great way to meet people. So one late night (probably after a few beers) I took the personality test, and figured what the hell, let me sign up for a year and see what happens.

Let me say up front that eHarmony is not a great way to meet people. I have had various degrees of success with the model. I dated someone seriously during some of my tenure, I have sent numerous message requests, gone through the hand holding "guided communication" and had entire email conversations with people that eventually evaporate. There are artificial barriers up all over the place that actually prevent potential matches from communicating with each other, rather than getting people together. My main gripe is that by the time two people jump through all the hoops and stages of communication, reading reports on their personality, and speaking in messages, there is very little left to talk about between the two people; all the potential small talk has been smothered out of the equation. It is almost like I saw how the sausage was made before actually trying it.

One thing that differentiates eHarmony from other dating websites is the 29 dimensions of compatibility system that you are matched with other people. The matching system sends you several people per day that the system has matched you up with based on the personality profile you completed. After about 6 months, at a rate of ~6 matches a day, I now am matched with 340 women. I looked at that number one day, and thought "Wow this is depressing. There are 340 people that either I don't find particularly interesting or attractive, or they don't feel that way about me; either I am being way too picky, or there is something really putting off about my profile." I think self consciousness always sets in before rational thought, but now that I think about it, I am pretty sure the matching system isn't as good as they advertise.

When you set up your profile, you can setup a profile of likes/dislikes as well called "Something to Talk About." These are things like, what sports do you follow, what kind of music do you like, are you a dog/cat person etc. This profile is just the little goofy things that everyone likes/dislikes; It resembles a mini profile of you. What bothers me is that the system will match me with someone, and most of my matches will have zero or few matches in this mini profile. I would assume that if the system is matching me on 29 dimensions of my personality, almost every profile would have at least some of these little things line up as well.

The website also makes you choose your "Must Haves/Can't Stands" so that you can communicate to people you are matched with the things that you are unwilling to compromise with. I like this idea in theory, but I come across people that I start communicating with and as soon as I read their list and compare it with mine, I wonder why I was matched up with this other person in the first place. Is the model wrong? Is the model comparing or measuring the wrong things?

In fact, every other profile starts to look like a cookie cutter of the last one after a while. After looking at all the profiles I have seen, I can predict what the next girls are going to say: I love my friends and family, I am grateful for all the opportunities I have had in my life, and I want to meet someone who I can laugh with. It is starting to sound like these girls are writing to Santa. I think it has to do with the personality test that they give everyone to begin. You answer about a half hour's worth of questions and almost feel sedated at the end of it, so by then you brain can't really produce anything unique or expressive about who you are. Ok, maybe there is some hyperbole in there, but there also may be a kernel of truth.

There are some things that the website does pretty well. It is great at being a non-threatening place where singles can let a computer program take some of the burden off their shoulders in terms of looking for a date; however getting you in contact with another person is not one of those things that it does all that well. In fact I would argue that it does the opposite. I don't think that eHarmony has a real incentive to match people up with each other. They are a business after all. One of their motivations must be to make money at some point in the process. After 6 months in the system, it feels more like a trap than a place where I am supposed to be meeting others. Here are a few reasons why:

1) The system finds people for you, rather that letting you search out and filter people based on what you are looking for. This seems counter-intuitive to me.

2) The system delivers you a few new matches at a time, which keeps you coming back to the website every day, or at least frequently. It also delivers new people to you even though you may be getting to know someone, which could make you think the grass is greener somewhere if your current match starts to lose his sparkle.

3) The guided communication is actually a barrier to communication. It is fun the first few times to send lists with checkboxes back and forth the first few times. After you have been through it enough though, it get very tedious and starts to feel like jumping through hoops.

4) It is expensive. It can be argued that the cost of the service keeps it for people who are serious about finding a relationship, and keeps the lurkers out. I think that is very true, but it does cost much more than other services.

I would argue that the website has an incentive to keep you coming back to the website, impede the communication between people, and not allow you to browse and search the other people in the database, simply because it keeps you subscribed to the service and paying a monthly fee. Neil Clark Warren aint cheap.

Did Cataclysm shoot itself in the foot?

My spider sense is tingling lately about this expansion so far, and it boils down to the spectrum of difficulty in all of the content. It's not that the content is really hard, but that a LOT of the content is hard, and there is not much that one can coast and have some mindless fun.

My hat goes off to Blizzard. They did everything they said they would. There are no face roll player rotations anymore, heroic dungeons require a lot of attention (at least on the first few times through), raids are tuned and balanced (with some glaring exceptions on 10man) and the world and the stories are told where every zone is a nice complete package.

I was very excited going into this expansion. Things are going to be difficult again, things are going to be challenging I told myself. 10man and 25man are going to be equal progression paths, and I can lead a 10man with much less headache than I led our 25man in ICC. It's going to be great! I won't be a stressed wreck raid leader, and I am going to have a lot of fun!

While I am having fun with the raiders that I play with, I am already tired out by the raiding content. I am tired out given I am continuously recruiting replacements for raiders that flake. I am tired out by hotfixes and changes to classes and encounters that need to be relearned regularly. I am tired out by my complex rotation that I have to theorycraft and change when patches hit (I'm looking at you Holy Power CS/HOTR fuckery); compounding the problem is learning my new game pad which I specifically bought to combat the lack of real estate for all the new goddamn buttons that I have to push not just for my main spec, but for my offspec and my shaman's main and offspec. I'm tired of feeling like an inadequate raid leader when other guilds progress faster than we do, and I am tired of letting down my raiders when I fail.

So what changed? Why does this, the introductory tier of raiding, feel insurmountable? I think is has to do with the spectrum of difficulty in comparison to previous introductory tiers. In Vanilla and TBC, there was a LONG "training" you had to go through (leveling up) to get into dungeons and raiding and it was learned ad-hoc based on who you happened to come across in the "Looking for Group" chat. You have new abilities to learn and integrate, but the learning curve was pretty slow. I remember it taking months before I could call myself ready to step into a Karazhan.

Wrath took a little quicker pace. The leveling time was quicker than TBC, everyone got shiny new toys, learned how to use them and then jumped into raids. Rotations were more complex than TBC, but that was buffered by the ease of the first tier or raiding. A player could learn and hone their skills in an actual raid environment while getting that sense of fun and achievement.

I think where the breakdown for me is that Cataclysm is challenging for me on all fronts. Everyone got shiny new toys, and we got shot up the express lane to 85, reducing the time to acclimate to all the new hotness. Raiding has become juggling a 5+ button rotation/priority system, while managing your resources, while paying attention to boss mechanics and moving out of the bad. It is not that those things individually are terribly difficult, but doing them all at the same time is exhausting, not to mention the addictive nature of content progression "Oh grats everyone we killed that boss, now we learn the next boss".

I'm not sure what this means for the game as a whole. I'm not sure this translates to fun for the average player. If I am frustrated right now, I am not sure what this means for people that used to faceroll to loot.

I am having fun playing with my friends. I'm not sure I am having more fun raiding.

Failures of a Raid Leader

We pulled heroic Atramedes last night and failed. I think everyone was on top of their game and we did all we could, but at the end of the night my John Madden strategy just wasn't good. We all decided to stack the raid and move between two points to avoid sound discs. The problem with this was that if we were on the move avoiding discs and Atramades picked someone for Sonic Breath, that person had literally nowhere to go and either they died or the raid died. We even tried giving that person a speed boost and run it to safety, but even that did not work.

It really sucks to see something you thought about so hard literally go up in flames. I thought about it very hard, drew it up on a white board, heck I even put it up on Youtube for all my raiders to see. We all checked it out and thought it would lead us to victory. It also sucks when we tweak the bad strat and not get through the fight at all.

I felt really low at the end of last night. I felt like a failure, not only as a person, but as a leader. I didn't want to play this game ever again. I let myself down, and I let the people I play with down and wasted everyone's night. Nobody likes to fail. It stings even more to see other guilds downing content and bragging about how easy it is, when we struggle and have nights full of wiping. It's depressing how bad I feel right now because I feel like I wasted everyone's time.

Raiding is really starting to burn me out. I am taking way too much responsibility on my shoulders, and it the needle is getting dangerously close to the work spectrum of this game. Making raid strategies is really fun, and it is satisfying to see them work, and it grinds everyone's gears to fail repeatedly doing the wrong thing. I guess this is the part that frustrates all of us the most.

It's also fucking annoying when your 2nd in command yells at everyone about not fucking up, and the proceeds to wiping the raid with Sonic Breath. Good Job Burble.

Life and Love

This is probably the first time in my life where I don't have any interest in a relationship, and I am okay with that. I've loved, been loved, hurt lovers, been hurt, played the game, been played, been patient, been hasty, thought about children, thought about 5 years from now, thought about moving, rearranged my life for someone, considered changing who I am for someone, laughed, cried, given rings, had them thrown back at me, broken peoples trust, had my trust broken, had one night stands, had relationships not reach first base, had soul fulfilling great sex, had sex for the sake of fucking, had bad sex, had dry spells, been jealous, been not jealous when I should have been, been reckless, been needy, worn my heart on my sleeve, pretended like everything was okay, been naive, overlooked people's faults, been too critical, clammed up, held a grudge, felt rejected, been in a position of power, escaped, lied, been lied to, felt lied to, listened, not listened, not cared, had adventures, had unexpected adventures, cared for someone else more than myself, carried the weight, been a burden, been obsessed, been infatuated, and it seems like it was all for naught.

Would I do it all again? I am not sure. Would I have done things differently? Probably. Has it left me a better person? I don't think so, but I don't think I am any worse. Do I wish I still had love in my life? You betcha. Am I optimistic? Romantically yes, practically no. People get into new relationships because their previous or current ones suck.

The Hybrid Gap - PUGs and Raiders

If we are going to talk about the hybrid gap, we need to define our terms. In my eyes, there are two vastly different worlds in endgame WoW: The PUG world and The Raider World.

The raider world consists of organized guilds that have a team of raiders who plays with each other regularly and bring a balanced composition to every raid. All the raid buffs are accounted for, classes are represented fairly equally and a good balance of melee and ranged is achieved. Raiders are scrutinized to a higher level on how they spec, gem, enchant, gear, glyph, and a million other nits that get picked; this occurs when they apply to a guild and constantly by officers and other raiders.

The PUG world is a raid assembled ad-hoc depending on who is available in trade chat and who’s friend knows a tank or healer. There are competent people here and there are people who are seeing things for the first time. It’s a wiiiiiide rainbow of people from those who can play the game well and those who might as well be wearing their pants on their heads. Generally there is an 80/20 rule where 80% of the people carry the other 20% and generally the 20% soaks up the loot. PUGs are not doing progression content, and people are generally doing PUGs in order to gear up for applying to raiding guilds or to gear up and play alts. Generally when I think of the PUG world I am talking about the Looking For Dungeon system, because those groups are the purest random gathering of players where the biggest crapshoot of players can be found.

The hybrid tax is present in both situations, but where the rubber meets the road is in the raider world. Raiders understand more about their class than the average PUG, and can get the most out of their character in terms of damage throughput. In the raider world pure DPS has the edge and can typically put out 5% or so more damage than a hybrid DPS class. Things that can sometimes fluxuate are encounter mechanics, class nerfs/buffs, latency, and player skill, but in general if all other things are held equal, a pure DPS will come out on top.

However in a raiding environment, this gap becomes very small and almost unmeasurable due to random events that happen in any given raid encounter (movement being the most common); because of these random events the hybrid gap disappears for the raider. This is not a bad thing, because in a raiding environment, every player has a very specific role to fill and a pure DPS is just as valuable as a hybrid DPS. A hybrid cannot fill two roles at the same time, because the average hybrid does not have the gear or comparable skill set as his DPS, not to mention the overlapping of raid buffs that would need to be retooled on a fight by fight basis. Trust me, it’s a nightmare when we have to have a DPS caster heal for Sindragosa and fill in the missing raid buffs left behind.

The hybrid tax in the raider world is not all that interesting because it disappears due to the random nature of encounters. Until we get another Patchwerk or Brutalus type encounter, DPS throughput is secondary to survivability and how the player uses the other abilities they possess (CC, dispells). Where I find the hybrid tax the most interesting is in the PUG world.

The Hybrid Tax - GONE

This post is a continuation of the previous, and second in a series exploring "The Hybrid Tax" and how it shapes the game.

The heralded design philosophy of Wrath of the Lich king was “Bring the Player, not the Class.” This phrase might as well be stamped all over every square inch of the expansion, because I swear I have heard this more than 100 times from the developers over the last two years. This philosophy meant that while each talent spec had its own unique flavor and abilities, its throughput and performance would be roughly on par with other classes performing the same role. In addition to normalizing the classes, the developers took the raid buffs that were before isolated to one class, and gave them to two or more classes so that raid compositions could be more flexible.

The caveat is that the pure DPS classes would be tuned to push out more damage than any hybrid DPS class, simply because a pure DPS class doesn’t have the option of fulfill any other role in a PVE environment. While this gap between pure and hybrid still exists, it is vastly smaller than what it was in previous versions of the game. While this is good in theory, things kind of hit the fan when this gets put into practice.

Tanking and healing classes were normalized as well, but more in the sense that Bears, Tankadins and DKs were given versions of the tools that warriors had a monopoly on previously i.e. damage reduction cooldowns (Shield Wall) and temporary health boost (Last Stand). Healers also were given tools so that they could do their jobs more effectively. Each healing class could tank or raid heal to an extent where previously they were SOL.

Hybrid classes have ultimate flexibility in a PVE environment. If a hybrid class wants to change rolls in PVE, then it is a simple 50g and a visit to the trainer. When WOLK first came out, Dual Specialization did not exist. There was a barrier in place if you wanted to change rolls from DPS to Tank to Healing, albeit a small one. It was a pain in the butt to go to town, unlearn everything, re-talent, setup my action bars, and shift my mindset. On average it took about 10 minutes out of my playing time if I wanted to completely change roles. If a pure DPS class wanted to change roles, then there was a much larger time investment involved leveling up a brand new class, not to mention appropriate gearing so that they could compete in current content, and learning the class mechanics.

The class trainer was probably the most popular kid in town before patch 3.1 hit. If someone was playing at endgame, they were most likely carrying two sets of gear and fulfilling two roles, be it PVP and PVE, or carrying an offspec for PVE. Personally, I was respeccing 4-5 times a night during farming Sunwell due to paladins being overpowered at various roles for each boss.

Dual specialization was a boon to almost everyone who played the game when it was first introduced, but it began chipping away the benefit to being a pure DPS class. Everyone who had 1000g can now have fast access to two different sets of talents and glyphs. If a raid leader had a choice between bringing a hybrid DPS with a helpful offspec and a pure DPS to a raid all other things being equal, the hybrid DPS might present itself as a better option given that there is more flexibility in the roles that a hybrid can fill.

The question then becomes, is that marginal DPS between pure and hybrid DPS enough to tip the scales towards the hybrid DPS for that raid spot given that the Hybrid can perform more than one role in a raid? The short answer, maybe. The hybrid DPS could be a good replacement for a pure DPS in my eyes if one of the following are true:

1) The hybrid is completely competent in both of their specs and gear.

2) The pure DPS in question is on the margin either because of survivability or performance.

The long answer will come in the next post. The answer depends on how you play the game.

The Hybrid Tax: Why it matters.

Wrath of the Lich King did something (of many) very different than it did in the two previous versions of World of Warcraft. WOLK allowed hybrid DPS classes compete with the pure DPS classes directly in terms of how much damage they can push out. This was unheard of in Vanilla and Burning Crusade. I think the WoW community loved this change, myself included, but going into Cataclysm, I feel that it may be time to bring our friend “The Hybrid Tax” back in some form. The next few posts are going to be an exploration of the Hybrid Tax, how it shaped this expansion, and how it will affect the World of Warcraft going forward into Cataclysm.

History of the Tax

Every class in the World of Warcraft has the ability to deal damage to creatures, and by extension gain experience and complete quests via the killing of these creatures, but some classes are more effective than others. The gap in the damage throughput between pure DPS classes (Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Hunter) and hybrid classes (Priest, Druid, Shaman, Paladin, Warrior, Death Knight) is affectionately known as “The Hybrid Tax.” The hybrid tax is Blizzard’s sneaky way of hinting to you that while your character has the ability to deal damage to level up and quest, it could be more effective and useful by filling a different role while interacting with other people at max level in the world (of warcraft).

In Vanilla WoW, hybrid classes (Paladin/Shaman, Druids, Priests and to an extent Warriors) were expected to fill different roles if they wanted to raid and do dungeons. All the hybrid classes were expected to do something completely different compared to what those classes were learning to do from leveling 1-60. This came as quite a shock, given that they spent a significant chunk of time learning how to effectively kill monsters and quest.

The vanilla raiding game was vastly different from what it is today; Hybrids were expected to heal or tank, resistance gear was common depending on which instance you were raiding, and if you were a shadow priest, retribution or protection paladin, DPS druid, or DPS shaman: you were at the bottom of the list in terms of people that were able to be invited to the raid. Not only was your DPS incredibly low, but you had very little ability to sustain your mana, and therefore not able to DPS as long as fights would last; don’t even think about respeccing constantly either since 50g per respec is a scary chunk of gold at the time.

The Burning Crusade opened the door to hybrid DPS as a viable raiding spec. Shadow priests took front and center as the most popular and most important hybrid DPS support class in raids; while shadow priests DPS was not very close to what pure DPS classes could deal, they provided a very important resource back to healers and caster DPS: mana. The shadow priest returned mana to their party based on a percentage of their damage done.

The other hybrid DPS classes had a place as well in the new raiding machine, again not in terms of DPS throughput but by the buffs they brought to the raid to enhance the total overall DPS output of the rest of the raid:

* Feral Druid: DPS/Tank that could shift roles in combat and group wide critical strike buff (Leader of the Pack)
* Balance Druid: Melee hit boss debuff and group wide spell critical strike buff (Improved Faerie Fire and Moonkin Aura)
* Enhance Shaman: Melee group buffs (Windfury/Agility totem twisting and Bloodlust)
* Elemental Shaman: Caster group buffs (Totem of Wrath, Wrath of Air, and Bloodlust)
* Retribution Paladin: Group wide damage buff, boss debuffs: critical strike bonus, health/mana return (Sanctity Aura, Judgement's of Crusader, Light, and Wisdom)
* Protection Paladin: AoE tank that could hold threat on many targets simultaneously, Blessing of Sactuary

As an extension of the hybrid tax, feral druids and protection paladins, while viable tanks, were not the go to tank for Burning Crusade. Many of the encounters in the expansion were tuned for warrior tanks, and warriors alone possessed tools in their arsenals to counter specific encounter mechanics that would have left a paladin or druid out of luck (i.e. Reliquary of Souls’ Deaden, and Illidan’s Shear)