Buukala -Let me start this off by saying that I do not have all the answers, and that I think Furro and Ssark, and the rest of the leaders of the Freelance raid team do an absolutely admirable job. I enjoy contributing where and when I can, and I have a good time for the most part.
Thanks, I speak for all of Freelance when I say, it's good to have you as part of the team. Your insights, steady play, and frank chats have been an asset to Freelance.
However, it seems to me that some things need addressing, the biggest of which is getting attendance to be a bit more uniform. As anyone who has spent any time working with FL knows, there seems to be a core base of players that show up regardless, and then the loot and scooters. With the new raid currency it is obvious that most loot scooters are more interested in doing Sarith/Valley/Beasts than anything else. With all that in mind, I have a few questions/suggestions that I'd like to propose, feel free to tell me to shut up and sit down, but I was just having some thoughts and figured I'd ask.
I think in any organization (workplace, social group, or raid team!) people want to be around other people who have the same qualities. I mean, it's not so strange right, people tend to congregate with people like themselves. And what you're suggesting, I think, is: I want to be around more people who are willing to work hard, even if it means we don't get an immediate reward.
As a Freelance member, I hope to attract more people who value the same things I do. I want people who log in to raid because they want to raid, they want to beat the challenges set before us by the developers. They want to experience all the content, even the end of Underfoot when the loot is just so-so. They want that sense of accomplishment that comes from being part of a team that faced a challenge and succeeded. They want to improve their individual skills and improve as a team. They're humble, they're disciplined, they're honest, and they have a sense of personal responsibility. They don't expect their buffers to just buff them correctly -- they take it on themselves to get buffed. They don't expect a free ride to the raid -- they go to the zone the day before, they figure out how to get there before the raid is called.
And I think many members of Freelance are exactly like that. And they stay, they log in each night and raid, because they like being around people who are like that. People who spend hours pounding away at Creation or Decon, Ritual of Terror or The Library, or Resplendent or Argath (no one seems to remember the weeks we died over and over to it), get to take great satisfaction when we do beat those challenges. They take pride in what they accomplished. And
that is why they raid. (Oh, and maybe for the Huevos/Furro entertainment too, ok.)
The "loot and scooters", as you put it, deprive themselves of that special feeling of pride and accomplishment. I feel bad for them, I really do. They want loot out of the game, and that's
exactly what they get. And when the next expansion comes out, and the only thing they value in Everquest (loot) loses its value, and they are forced to chase the next bauble... they completely miss what makes the game fun. And invariably to them it feels like a rat race, and they quit.
I don't worry much about those people any more. I used to. I used to complain to Furro about it while I'm doing invites. I used to be uptight about it. And then I realized, they don't last anyway. They're not worth my energy.
Ok, enough Ssark Soapbox action. Let's get to your specific suggestions.
1) Spread out the farm, and make it the last event per night. Do whatever raid you want to work on (RT?, Fear/MC, etc), for a bit, and then, if it just isn't going to happen tonight, finish off with a quick Valley run. That way people feel like at least their efforts got some reward, and you increase attendance because people want to get their chits. True, some people won't join raid until you head to Valley, but if they know that you're likely to do at least one currency-winning raid per night, it increases the likelihood that they join raid earlier, saving their spot. If you do Valley/Sarith/Argath all on a Wednesday night, it lessens the motivation for a section of the raid base to join for the rest of the week.
I understand what you're trying to do here, and it makes sense if the only reward you get out of Freelance is DKP and loot. Given what I said above, you're thinking,
he doesn't really care about loot/dkp anyway, but I do and know it's a part of the game, so let's run with your idea for a minute.
The primarily problem with this approach is efficiency. Because we are an open raid team, we don't have the advantage of having 12 people pop in somewhere, put down a banner, and
BAM! we're in Sarith and ready to go. Logistics around moving the raid from one place to another are huge for Freelance, and that's also why certain raids are grouped together on the same night. In addition, Furro can't fully put the strat and groups together until we know what we've got, so there's some prep time delay as we gather (that's why the first gather is typically slower to start that subsequent raids btw).
We also just can't afford to lose the last 60-90 minutes of a night for a "reward raid" when we could have gotten in 2-3 more runs at the tough raid. And yeah, it really is 60-90 minutes, because those T2 raids can take a good half hour to gather, prep, and run with another half hour on loot distribution.
However, moving
raid sets around between the different nights is not a bad idea, to give those folks who have regular real life schedules a chance to experience different content (and get flagged). By
raid set I mean a collection of raids that efficiently fit together, like Valley/Sarith and Miraguls/Al'Kabor.
Believe it or not, Furro reviews stuff like this because he's sensitive to it. We did MN/ALK last night (Saturday) because there are people who don't have the hidden flags, and are never online Wed/Thu nights when we do those raids. Some people aren't getting the chance to finish up what they need in VoA-T2 because they're busy on Wednesdays. I think you'll see us move the raid sets around a bit more, but not split them up, just for the efficiency reasons I outlined above.
(That said, even
I don't know what Furro is about to call for a raid most of the time until about 30 seconds before you see it as an MOTD! )
2) Provide some sort of dkp incentive for learning events and first time wins (especially helpful for taking down encounters that no longer offer desirable loot). Right now, as FL DKP works, we earn the most dkp on the farmable events, thereby increasing the desirability of the already most desirable raids, while nothing is done to increase the desirability of the least desirable raids. Look at 6/30 raids (nothing but RT attempts) vs. 7/4 raids (farm). On 6/30, if you spent your entire raid night busting your hump trying to learn the ins and outs of a difficult new event, you earned a whopping 5 dkp. On 7/4, we did 2 current farm events, and one HoT key event for a total of 22 dkp. It is my humble opinion that something should be offered to those folks in the trenches night in and night out learning the new, hard, events rather than earning the victory over night after night of little earnings, just so that when we finally do get it on farm, the lootscooters can then join the raid, earn more dkp in one night than those who toiled to win did in all the attempts at trying to win, and benefit far more. It would also help to have a bonus for first time wins to incentivize those to join raid when doing obsolete raids that yield no desirable loot like HoT raids with no CoP/M/L/G clickies, OH clickies, Hate masks, etc, etc.
This is a tough one, especially if the only reward you get from raiding is loot/dkp. Because, from that point of view, you're right -- it feels like effort isn't matching reward. Sleep through Valley/Sarith, get 22 dkp, bust tail in RT, get 5.
That said, it's also difficult to provide incentives for failure! Does it really feel right to earn a reward just for trying? We didn't win, we lost. This isn't little league where everyone gets a trophy. Heck, I was amazed when I started that Furro grants 1 dkp for a failure. It felt like I was stealing his pie!
Also, we did take some steps to protect people who show up more often on biddable loot by implementing a 20% RA policy on current expansion targets. A loot-n-scooter might earn 22 dkp, but he'll never have the chance to spend it by showing up for just Valley and Sarith. Last weekend (6/30), we did 14 raids, 2 of which were Valley and Sarith, or 2/14 = 14%. Even if they showed up at every VoA T2 raid for 3 months, they'd still be at 14%, and could never bid. (Conversely, if a person showed up at all FL raids for about three weeks, they'd hit 20% RA, so it's not an insane wall to climb, and those same folks gear up in HoT nicely.)
As far as the obsolete raids, let me make a bold statement that is just my own feeling, no one else's (and it's not directed personally at you, Buukala!):
If you can't dig yourself out of your hole to come help a few of your teammates get flagged, I really don't want to be raiding with you anyway. Do me a favor and get out of the channel.Usually I'm a nice person, but it had to be said.
I understand though there are times people don't want to raid, by the way. They have a bad day, Sepulcher (or their boss) kicked them in the butt, and they're not up for it. That's cool, and not what I'm talking about here. Or they can't do a raid, because they're locked out, or their guild will get all prissy on them for doing the raid with our team. I get it. Those peeps are cool too, they come to whatever they can, even come back after the blocked event, idling while waiting for us out to finish. That's the
beauty of the open raid system, and another reason people stick with us.
3) More pie. All this talk about pie, and I have yet to see a single slice.
That's because there are some serious hoarders in Freelance. Most of the time these people are kind and helpful, but when it comes to pie, they don't share. They get greedy. You can usually tell by the size of their feet, because that's where pie goes when it's eaten.
Anyway, like I said, I don't have the answers for everything, and running a guild (and make no mistake, this is a guild, it's just a guildless guild. ), is by no means easy. Just an observation or two. Feel free to tell me to go back to my hole.
Observations, thoughts, posts, are always welcome -- never stop asking, sharing observations or comments. Freelance always becomes better as a result of participation. Only go in your hole if you're fetching pies, and bring some out to share. You're not a halfling.
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