>We should not change the way how FFA works, but if we really want good FFA games, we have to include the webpage or manual more into the autohosts - easier to find.
Really, that won't work, and I'll tell you why:
I played WoW for a couple years. I started right before BC came out and quit right after WOTLK came out. I was an extremely pro 4-night-a-week Black Temple raider, complete with the top Tier 6 gear and enchants and all the other stuff. I played as a holy priest and rocked the healing charts raid after raid.
WoW is one of the most analyzed, documented games in history. There were so many tools, spreadsheets, and class guides that would allow you to spec out your toon to perfection. If you didn't feel like reading all that stuff, there were even easier class guides that would break it all down to the most basic level with tips like "for this class, use this exact spec tree and get hit rating to X first, get agility to Y next, then get nothing but Z and P stats". Then they would give a list of easy-to-get gear and where that gear could be found. Stupidly easy.
Despite all of that, raiders in my first guild (a pretty bad one) would show up to raid spec'd all wrong. They would have the wrong spec tree, the wrong gear, and would use the wrong spells and abilities at the wrong time. The better raiders in our group would frequently post guides (the super simple ones) and tell the bad raiders to follow the advice. The bad raiders would come back with bullshit excuses as to why their way was much better.
Now my best friend IRL was also in my guild. He played a Beast Master hunter and was freaking awesome. BM hunters at that time got about 1/3 of their DPS from their pets. As head healer, I would often heal his pet before I would heal certain people in the raid, because his pet did more damage and was more useful than many actual players. I still put priority on our best players, but his pet was still better than many.
One time in raid, the guild leader caught me doing this and called me out, blaming me when we all died. I posted damage charts showing that my buddy's pet did more damage than 3 of the people we had in the raid, the ones that died. Things blew up, there was a ton of drama, and I quit raiding for a week.
During that week, I realized that I had no reason to stay in that guild because it sheltered weaker players and would prefer to let them "do there own thing" instead of forcing them to respec and learn to play their class. I couldn't fault them for that, because there needs to be a place for weaker members. My friend and I applied for better guilds with higher standards, were accepted to our favorite after a test raid, and never looked back.
In that guild we were with like-minded people. People who were studious in their gameplay. People that developed their characters according to what the guild needed and were open to criticisms about gameplay and specs and strategies. Instead of trying to force a whole guild of people to meet my standards, I simply moved up to a better guild.
OK, that was a long story that I got carried away with. Anyways, if WoW's level of documentation and analysis wasn't enough to make many players better, there's little we can do. Some noobs will always be noobs because they don't want to listen. And that's cool. We just need to be able to seperate noobs from pros and that will make everyone happier. Noobs can continue to to play with people on equal footing and won't get crushed, and pros don't have to worry about screaming at noobs all the time (except for fireman, who always has someone to blame).
Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen until we get more players. ZK is continuing to grow and get better, so hopefully we will soon have enough players to start forming Elo-based leagues. In the meantime, FFA's will continue to have weird starts based on the mix of noob/pro players.
