Phase 3: Profit !

I found that wowenomics had feature my post (month ago, I drafted this post for a long time ),
Since someone is interested, I’ll write another article about game theory and Wow.

You needta drink da bottle thingy ta kill me?

Consider a common case,
A PUG go for Normal Naxx 10 man for the first time, there are 2 tanks and 2 healers and 6 dps…

Let’s assume a tragedy setting, the DPS are all under-geared. But to remedy, if half of them takes flask (However they had no idea of this), they’ll had enough dps to down the boss before the rage timer.
After they wiped on Patchwerk once, They understand that they need more Dps.
And Every Dps had bought a flask in the bag.

Is it wise to drink the flask right away?

Your Inner-Goblin will yell “Hold it mate! if they all drink the flasks, we can save our flask and still get that boss down !“, and indeed, it will.

Say
L=Loot which is makes player Happy
F=price of the Flask, which makes player Sad
R=repair bill,which makes player Sad

In both case, if no-one change their mind, Play dumb will earn most (or at least loss less)

Enough people took flask : win-much vs win
Not enough people took flask : lose vs lose-much

If we ignore reputation/fairness, everyone had an incentive to skip using the flask. And if no-one enforce a every-dps-take-flask or all-low-dps-take-flask policy (for whatever reasons: social or careless), someone will become sneaky not using them.

Generalization

Isn’t the same apply for

• no-well-feed-buff
• gear-with-out gem
• none-enchant gear
• under-geared
• low-skilled

? Anyone will decieve if no-one announce it.(giving a social penalty for not taking flask, aka an incentive for taking one.)

Taking flask or not, is not very noticable, unless RL do not run a addon annouce who lacks the buff. (To Larisa’s question, the buff check addon actually let the respondsible player be praised. By pointing out the slackers)

There are incentive for players to decieve. In order to set it right, we must be provide a counter incentive for them to balance out (Same for crime penalty, So that robbing-bank is not profitable). I believe it’s work for the RL or Guild.

There will be another article on guild, but I guess it’ll take me much time