Raider Punishment Advice

[JohnnyQuest]

Hey guys

I'm looking for a bit of advice from guild leaders about how they go about dealing with raiders who act out, when punishment may cause problems for the guild as a whole.

Background - Our guild is a guild of mostly "friends" that have been together for a few years. So we're not just gonna be guild kicking people that get annoying. We also have a pretty decent roster right now, so aren't looking to recruit. Anyway, on to the problem.

About a week ago my co-raid leader made a call during a boss encounter, and this particular raider called out over Teamspeak to do the direct opposite. This caused confusion for some of the other raiders as they didn't know what to do (let's not get into trying to get people to only ever listen to the RL). That confusion caused a wipe, and people were not too happy.

This is not the first time that people have had an issue with this guy doing this kind of thing, so a couple of people, myself included (co-RL), suggested to the raider in question that maybe it'd be nice if he didn't directly contradict a RL when a fight is in progress. We have no problem with talking on TS, or raiders giving opinions, but I think most people would be in agreement that you don't contradict your RL mid-fight, regardless of whether the call is correct or not.

Our raider didn't take too kindly to that suggestion, and logged off, causing us to have to cancel the raid 2 hours early.

The guild officers are in agreement that we can't let that kind of behavior go unpunished - you don't just log off and ruin 9 other peoples plans because you didn't get your way. This guy already thinks he's better than most of the other people playing, so we think it might be time for a reality check. We've pretty much agreed that we need to bench him for a while, and 2 weeks is sounding about right based on other factors.

The problem though is that while our roster is pretty decent, a surprising number of other raiders are unfortunately unavailable quite a bit in these coming weeks. So the reality check we have planned for this guy is backfiring: if we bench this guy now then we're probably going to be cancelling a bunch of raids due to not having enough people. Teach this guy a lesson and ruin our raid progress, or let his actions go mostly unpunished (apart from a stern "stop being a dick" talk) and we raid as normal?

Any thoughts or insights, or ideas we've not thought of, would be greatly appreciated.

[Freedom]

If he does it again, just say he gets bumped down on loot priority for tier, weapons or trinkets. Also, ask is he is Aspergers/ slightly Autistic - I am and my GM recently asked me to control my yabber better and I have, still cannot help but calling out certain things.

Is he dps, tank or heals?

[siegemaster]

tell him he will be muted for fights if he doesn't need to call things out.

[Minaah]

Talk privately to the person doing this, let him/her know its disruptive and undermines the authority, and respect of the actual raid leader. If they refuse to stop commenting or calling out opposite calls during a boss fight, then demote them, replace them on the roster etc. Depends on how progression focused your team is honestly, and if you want to keep putting up w/someone that is ruining the raid experience for the rest of your core raiders.

[Tziva]

If you need him because you don't have a replacement, don't punish him by benching him. That is not fair to the rest of the team, since they are paying for his melodramatic reaction by having their raids cancelled.

Have a private meeting with him before or after the raid and give him a warning that spontaneous logouts are not the appropriate way to handle things and is unfair to his teammates and that if he does it again, his reliability will be in question, and you will need to find a person for the spot that you can actually count on.

(just an aside, if your conversation that caused him to overreact was not done privately or at a good time, I'd say the leadership is partially at fault. Some people seem to think that yelling at someone for misbehaving mid-raid in front of the raid is a good method of communication. Always privately, never during raid, and ideally just one or two people; the raid leader and him, for example, and not all officers - otherwise it feels like you are ganging up on him)

Going forward, I suggest punishing him by revoking his voice chat permissions if he cannot keep his call-outs in check. Allow him to listen, but have an admin put him on mute if he is being disruptive and contradictory.

I have raided with some people before who were good raiders and nice people but just absolutely had no self-control when it came to shutting up. It caused a surprisingly large amount of drama before raid leader just learned to mute him.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Let him lead if he thinks he can do it better, replace him when / if he fails. Him acting up aside if the calls from rl are wrong most of the time then that's an issue aswell. During a pull you NEVER go against calls or change something on the fly (exceptions ofc) bencging him isn't needed imo... let the guy call for a while and let him feel the pain of doing so.

[darqhur]

Is the real question: will you continue to make progress with a team member who is acting in such a way as to cause wipes and have you cancel a raid for nine other people? How big of a problem is that for your team?

From that perspective it is probably better to work with the team players that you have instead of the one person who is jacking up the experience for the other 90%. Don't make any proclamations you can't back up. If you say you aren't going to use that player then you can't use that player. If you aren't going to use that player you should probably have a replacement lined up first. Otherwise you are just somebody who makes threats.

[Redpanda]

him logging out when you called him on it is him basically saying f u. Because of him you have to cut your raid short 2 hours. Its now a matter of respect and if he cant do that find someone else to do his job. If you decide to keep him he/she is last on the list for tier trinkets weapons imo.

[darqhur]

If you need him because you don't have a replacement, don't punish him by benching him. That is not fair to the rest of the team, since they are paying for his melodramatic reaction by having their raids cancelled.

Have a private meeting with him before or after the raid and give him a warning that spontaneous logouts are not the appropriate way to handle things and is unfair to his teammates and that if he does it again, his reliability will be in question, and you will need to find a person for the spot that you can actually count on.

(just an aside, if your conversation that caused him to overreact was not done privately or at a good time, I'd say the leadership is partially at fault. Some people seem to think that yelling at someone for misbehaving mid-raid in front of the raid is a good method of communication. Always privately, never during raid, and ideally just one or two people; the raid leader and him, for example, and not all officers - otherwise it feels like you are ganging up on him)

Going forward, I suggest punishing him by revoking his voice chat permissions if he cannot keep his call-outs in check. Allow him to listen, but have an admin put him on mute if he is being disruptive and contradictory.

I have raided with some people before who were good raiders and nice people but just absolutely had no self-control when it came to shutting up. It caused a surprisingly large amount of drama before raid leader just learned to mute him.

This is actually a fantastic idea. If you guys are all friends as you said, then putting them on mute could probably be the easiest way to solve it. If they get upset about being muted, then it is time to ask why they want to call stuff out. If they are interested in being raid lead then that is a different thing altogether. You can always unmute them after the fight so they can contribute to strategy talks and what have you (if you want that).

[Shamgar]

It's a tough question, especially if you are stuck in a situation where you depend on a certain person. My advice is to recruit a replacement as soon as possible. In my experience, one "bad apple" tend to make several other people miserable, and it's just not worth keeping them around. Especially if they get delusions of grandeur as in this situation. What you will end up with now, is that this person will make a "splinter group" of people who respect him more then you, and you will end up splitting your guild in two. It's clear that he neither respects nor believes in your leadership.

[Deleted]

I would speak to him ask him to stop, explain that it is disruptive and that if he carries on he will be muted during boss fights if he makes a habit of it.

Oh and if he starts to develop a diva attitude keep recriutment open for his slot (you don't have to accept recruits remember just keep an open mind), remember nobody is truly irreplacable.

[Sarella]

What are you punishing him for? You said he talks too much in raid, he gets annoyed at wrong calls and then logs off to cool off so what's he actually done to warrant punishment?

A lot of people will believe the above is wrong, instead of understanding it's another viewpoint. Those are the kind of people you don't want advice from. You also don't really want advice from me, because our group works entirely differently (we function by understanding you don't need to like the people you raid with, you just have to show respect).

Right now we're working on spirit kings heroic, and calling out the flanking orders on the first boss can be a pain. As the guy calling the shots on that (as the tank, not the raid leader) I told people they need to do what I say regardless of if it's wrong. It also helps they get to blame me when i'm wrong (I probably average 1% wrong calls and maybe 3% bad calls) but they understand it's not every man for himself - we have to function as a team.

Don't focus on this guy raging and logging, don't focus on what he did wrong. Understand his viewpoint, then completely ignore it. Focus on the "co" raid leader enforcing his calls - it's his job to make others follow him and punishing another player for thinking he's wrong wont fix anything. Then make the troublesome player do the calls while simultaneously getting on his case every time he's wrong until he understands nobody is perfect even if he thinks he is.

[clevin]

... We also have a pretty decent roster right now, so aren't looking to recruit.

... a surprising number of other raiders are unfortunately unavailable quite a bit in these coming weeks. So the reality check we have planned for this guy is backfiring: if we bench this guy now then we're probably going to be cancelling a bunch of raids due to not having enough people. ...

Do I really need to say it? You DO need to recruit precisely because you've screwed yourself. You do NOT have a "decent roster" if one person's absence fucks up the raid or if people are unavailable 'quite a bit' in the next few weeks.

What you need to do is obvious. Whether you'll do it is up to you.

---------- Post added 2012-10-29 at 09:48 AM ----------

What are you punishing him for? You said he talks too much in raid, he gets annoyed at wrong calls and then logs off to cool off so what's he actually done to warrant punishment?

A lot of people will believe the above is wrong, instead of understanding it's another viewpoint.

It IS wrong. The RL makes the call on what to do in raids. Period. If you have everyone chiming in, people don't know what to do. And getting pissed and logging - causing the raid to be called - is such an obvious over the line issue that it's not even up for discussion as to whether it's OK or not.

[JohnnyQuest]

Is he dps, tank or heals?

He's a tank, and in Vaults that pretty much means we can't mute him. You need tank communication.

(just an aside, if your conversation that caused him to overreact was not done privately or at a good time, I'd say the leadership is partially at fault.

3 of us who were in the raid have known each other for a number of years in real life outside of WoW. We're all close and have no problem telling each other how it is. We (as well as other friends that play) have a semi-private in-game chat channel that we use. The 3rd guy in this situation (not an officer of any kind) said in that channel, after we'd wiped, that the raider in question needs to cut that shit out because it is causing confusion. I then backed that up the senitment. So it wasn't public for the guild/raid, but it wasn't completely private, and it wasn't nasty or anything like that. All very pleasant until the raider decided he'd had enough.

Let him lead if he thinks he can do it better, replace him when / if he fails. Him acting up aside if the calls from rl are wrong most of the time then that's an issue aswell. During a pull you NEVER go against calls or change something on the fly (exceptions ofc) bencging him isn't needed imo... let the guy call for a while and let him feel the pain of doing so.

That is one thing that I have considered. He has expressed interest in raid leading as he thinks he knows everything, but I know he'd be terrible at it, so it'd just be a waste of everyone else's time. A good lesson for him perhaps, but probably just as disruptive as havig to cancel raids.

Calls from the current Raid Leaders are fine, this was a one off mistake on whether we had time to push a phase or not.

I'm liking the idea of just a warning for now, as it is looking like we really do need him for the next few weeks.

[Tziva]

What are you punishing him for? You said he talks too much in raid, he gets annoyed at wrong calls and then logs off to cool off so what's he actually done to warrant punishment?

Logging off at raid time to "cool off" and leaving the entire raid stranded without enough people to run is uncool. You sign up to a spot, you've committed to being there, short of an emergency or pressing real-life matter. Being in a bad mood is not an emergency.

I'm not sure it warrants a "punishment" but it's definitely the kind of drama that would make me wary of having particular people on the raid team. I want people who are reliable. I want people who are drama free. This guy sounds like he isn't either one.

That said, the timing of his reaction leads me to wonder if the discussion about his call-outs happened during raid time (perhaps following one of his comments). If it happened during raid time, did it happen on voice chat in the middle of the raid? Then the leadership fucked up - you don't do that. I don't think it justifies his reaction, but it sure doesn't help.

[Farabee]

Have you tried actually asking him if he's seeing something that your raid leader may not be?

[Freedom]

Since he is a tank, ask a class that can tank that is currently DPS to build a tank OS and that might scare him a bit.

Also I do not see an issue with raiders correcting the Rlead in between pulls on important mechanics, or even during a learning wipe. I do that infrequently as our GM researched HoF instead of MSV and missed some things like nullification barrier absorbing fire on Feng.

[MarizzaDraenor]

Open recruitment. Unless he is an idiot he ll get the message.

If you get a better app boot and replace. If you dont leave the recruitment open till you do or till he plays the way you want to.

[Tziva]

3 of us who were in the raid have known each other for a number of years in real life outside of WoW. We're all close and have no problem telling each other how it is. We (as well as other friends that play) have a semi-private in-game chat channel that we use. The 3rd guy in this situation (not an officer of any kind) said in that channel, after we'd wiped, that the raider in question needs to cut that shit out because it is causing confusion. I then backed that up the senitment. So it wasn't public for the guild/raid, but it wasn't completely private, and it wasn't nasty or anything like that. All very pleasant until the raider decided he'd had enough.

Yeah, sorry, you guys handled this wrong. Even if you were polite about it and even if you're all real life friends, don't do this. You need to talk him in privately and you need to do it outside of raid time.

You should have told the guy who complained that you would handle it later, and not to call people out on it. That's not his job, that is the raid leader's job.

Then you needed to talk to that guy privately after the raid. During raid is a bad time to start that kind of discussion because it holds up the team and because people are focused on other things. Unless it is a serious issue that will prevent you from continuing, always after. This is actually MORE true in a casual raid like yours; hardcore raiders will be used to that kind of constructive criticsm, as it is normal in that environment.

Second, you matter how cool you think you all are with each other, the fact he overreacted shows that you are overestimating how chill everyone is with semi-public criticism. Maybe some people are fine with it, but obviously not everyone is. Don't put people on the spot, don't embarrass them in front of their friends. In private, just him and the raid leader.

You can't go back and change the past, but in the future, you need to squash drama during raid by shutting down any comments from the peanut gallery, then ask to speak to the offending person after that raid to talk about the issue.

[Yunru]

Demote him off the guild rank to lowest and set the lowest to mute---he wont be able to chat with guild for a week. This trick kinda works sometimes.

(just vent is not enogh)