[Guild] Casual and progression; How to find the right mix?

[Thundertom]

Hey guys,

I'm an officer in a casual, but progression oriented raiding guild.

We raid 3 nights a week. We basically have 2 types of guild members; Raiders and Members. Raiders are required to sign for 2 raids a week, members can also sign, but raiders will get first prio on picks. Raiders can be excused from 2 signs a week, but only if they make an afk post. We make raiders members if they consistently don't sign of afk post too much, which we track.

Here's the situation;
We have always stressed that we are a casual progression raiding guild, we've always stressed that people learn and improve, we've always stressed that people know their roles in a group, and know what to do and not to do in a fight. We hope people figure out their class specific stuff, such as stat prio's and rotations.

However it feels like we're hitting a brick wall. A couple of us really read up on fights and their specific roles in a fight, try to improve themselves, and if they don't know how to improve themselves aren't afraid to ask for help. And then there's people who don't. And that last set of people seems to be pretty big, or at least to big for us to progress. However this group of people is there for the fun bit, and they are all very nice people.

We've tried chatting them up with other guildies who play the same class and perform much better. We've tried offering links that offer class specific info, such as this one. However on fights like Cho'gall and Nefarian they seem to always get stuck under the lava, or stack up corruption fast.

This is really starting to annoy others (like myself) who do know where to stand, what to attack, what to interrupt and how to communicate.

With firelands approaching, we're thinking about a progression oriented group and a fun based group, however I don't think we have enough people to pull it off.

I'm not sure what to do, as these "fun based" people are what gives the guild atmosphere, but it's the "progression based" people that give us progress.

[Ghosty]

My guild was in the same position at the end of Wrath. We ran 25 mans that just couldn't get the job done because of 5 -10 ultra casual players that either couldn't grasp their class mechanics, fight mechanics or just couldn't show up consistently. As the raid leader I personally took some time off at the end of Wrath because I just could not deal with the frustration of trying to put together raids that could progress any more.

What we did for Cata was focus on the 15 or so players that were serious about raiding and set up a 10 man group rotating those folks around. The more casuals we allowed to pug or gave them the option to start up their own group (this really never panned out as they were not motivated enough to get a group going or there were never enough of them around to fill out a group). The ultra casuals eventually either stopped playing, moved on to other guilds or just do other things in game instead of raiding at this point. The 15 or so focused raiders are much happier with our current progression and the raids are much more fun and a lot less frustrating.

One thing I can say is that if you cater to the super casuals your better performing raiders will eventually seek out greener pastures instead of putting up with people who can't perform or slow progression. So if you are going to lose people anyway it's better to cut out the dead wood than piss off those that want to show up and perform at a high level. Either way you are going to lose people, you might as well try to cater to your better and more consistent players first.

[Ynna]

One thing you could do is tell the people that consistently fail to improve that they will lose the priority that comes from the "raider" rank. This might be the encouragement you need. Or otherwise tell them that they are fun people to be around, and you have no problems whatsoever with their personality, but that they aren't suited for the progression oriented part of the guild.

[Thundertom]

@Ghostly; I see what you're getting at. It's just that we don't want these "fun based" people to leave, since they are part of what makes our guild atmosphere, and they also want to raid.

@Ynna; Yeah we could do that, it's just that I've seen so many guild fall over when these decisions are made. Don't want this to happen. Also, some of the raiders seem to think they're doing fine, when they could be doing a lot better. FI holy priests that go full mastery, without even going for the 12,5% haste first, needing lots of innervates and other mana back abilities.

The thing that's going on right now is; We zerg all the bosses in BoT and then spend the rest of the night wiping Cho'Gall. Or we do BWD, zerg everything, and spend the rest of the night wiping Nefarian. We very occasionally kill Cho'Gall, but that's only because we have an extra "high dps" avaiable who can make up for the loss of others.

[Whoopsa]

Some people just don't have the raid awareness they need, or just don't care enough to read up their class and take advice to perform better. I'm sure you know exactly which people are the ones that always fail. Being casual is about playtime, whereas being bad is just plain being bad, like standing in stuff and not playing your class right. Some bads can be reformed, some can't, but if you want to succeed as a casual guild, you still need good players, or you'll inevitably get to "that boss" that people keep failing on and it will burn people out, even if they only raid twice a week.

[Ghosty]

@Ghostly; I see what you're getting at. It's just that we don't want these "fun based" people to leave, since they are part of what makes our guild atmosphere, and they also want to raid.

@Ynna; Yeah we could do that, it's just that I've seen so many guild fall over when these decisions are made. Don't want this to happen. Also, some of the raiders seem to think they're doing fine, when they could be doing a lot better. FI holy priests that go full mastery, without even going for the 12,5% haste first, needing lots of innervates and other mana back abilities.

The thing that's going on right now is; We zerg all the bosses in BoT and then spend the rest of the night wiping Cho'Gall. Or we do BWD, zerg everything, and spend the rest of the night wiping Nefarian. We very occasionally kill Cho'Gall, but that's only because we have an extra "high dps" avaiable who can make up for the loss of others.

I realize your situation, as I stated it's the exact same position we were in. What we've found is that you can't please everyone, so at some point you will have to choose which direction you want to go. The long and short of it is that if you want to progress, you need to ditch the the "riders" from your raids. It sounds very elitist, I know, and our officer corps struggled with the decision, but in our case we were either standing in an instance unable to get a 25 man raid going due to not having enough people show up, even though we had 35 so called raiders on our roster, or unable to down end wing bosses because the "riders" weren't skilled enough to complete the fight.

Anyone who is serious about raiding, even if they can't raid 3 nights a week, is going to at least take the time to study the fight from internet strats and videos and know their class. If they can't commit to doing that much, it becomes really hard to justify giving them a raid slot.

Edit: Just wanted to add, that if you decide to go with a progression raid group, you will loose a bunch of your more casual players. There is really no way around it. If they can't get into raids and get their purplez with your guild, they will look else where.

[Ynna]

@Ynna; Yeah we could do that, it's just that I've seen so many guild fall over when these decisions are made. Don't want this to happen. Also, some of the raiders seem to think they're doing fine, when they could be doing a lot better. FI holy priests that go full mastery, without even going for the 12,5% haste first, needing lots of innervates and other mana back abilities.

The thing that's going on right now is; We zerg all the bosses in BoT and then spend the rest of the night wiping Cho'Gall. Or we do BWD, zerg everything, and spend the rest of the night wiping Nefarian. We very occasionally kill Cho'Gall, but that's only because we have an extra "high dps" avaiable who can make up for the loss of others.

I know it's a difficult situation, and you feel that you need to choose between progression and your friends. I'm also in a rather casual guild that still wants to manage some progression but people that want to raid know they have to know their class and the fights if they want to raid. We have certain expectations of them, and if they can't manage that they could lose their raider rank (I lost my raider rank because of low attendance). If your raiders are really friendly and nice persons, they'll understand. You don't have to take action immediately. Talk it over. Start with general remarks about how things could improve. Open a discussion with your guild about what is needed to kill bosses. Talk about resources that are available to improve.

And by the way: there is no need to go for 12.5% Haste as a Holy priest. It does gives you an extra Renew tick, but you don't use Renew enough to base your gearing around.

[hyperionx]

The guild i'm in had a 25 man at the beginning of cata that basically forced some of us "good" players to play with some of the bad. I"m a casual player, but I will try and do my best simply because I don't like wasting 24 other people's time.

I complained about the 25man, but when I pointed out what would happen, I got the feeling that the GM was just happy running a 25man. They didn't care if it was a "bad" 25man, they just would wait until it all fixed itself. I also got the feeling that the attitude that prevelant in this guild towards the end of wrath when a bunch of people burned out, was still prevalent in the beginning of cata.

What ended up happening was the "hardcore" players who carried them in wotlk, formed their own 10m with other friends. The rest of the good players did the 25man and got burned out, while the "social" players were happy to just sign on and hang out with 25 other people and get carried to loot.

In the end, the good players burned out and quit running in the 25man, which then burned out more and more players. The GM had qo quit the game for a bit, and then the raid leader and a few other core members simply stopped signing on. It ended up freeing those of us casual players who cared about progression to form our own 10m and right now things are allright with the exception of missing a good shaman/priest healer. Though one that quit to join another guild might go ahead and rejoin us for firelands.

Your better off forming your own 10m of good players rather than burn them all out of the game by forcing them to run with people who would be just as happy playing mario kart or something. You can't mix people who have different values of raiding without consequences. Remember though, that casual does not equal seflish. Those who are just there for their own time wasting benefit, or just want to socialize and don't care about how the others feel, are selfish players who are usually mislabeled as casual.

This is a game. However, how you choose to play this game differs from individual to individual. A good raid team is players who all want to play the game similarly. A bad raid team is mix of players who are playing the same game differently.

You can expect to lose a few of the "fun" people, but in the end, you'll be better off. A few of them will probably stick around and still give your guild "atmosphere". The ones that leave were probably only there to be carried and for selfish reasons, let them leave and run somebodies else patience out.

[Deleted]

We're a -very- casual raiding guild (10 man) .. we raid 2 nights a week (6-7 hours total) and we're at 3/13 heroic atm.

The way we approach it is to have a raiding "core" of about 12-14 players who we know are capable of performing well in raids, and everyone else in the guild is a regular member .. RL friends, uber-casuals, former guildies, etc. People who enjoy the benefits of being in an active guild but, for whatever reason, don't raid regularly.

If we're a man short on raid nights, we'll invite non-raiders .. it's good for us as it provides a bit of a safety net in case raiders don't show up. I can't remember a single raid being cancelled due to lack of members; our raiders are happy as we're still progressing and the non-raiders often appreciate the opportunity to see something new and perhaps get something shiny.

The key (imo) is making the non-raiders of your guild 100% aware that they will only get asked to join raids if the raid team is short. If there's no expectation of raid spots then there's no disappointment when no spots are available and pleasant surprise when there is.

Also very important; don't ignore your non-raiding members! .. if you want to keep them happy, do non-raid events too. PvP, old content fun/rep/achievement raids, heroic/zandalar etc. Be generous with unwanted BoE raid epics .. if the guild is rich, spread the wealth and enable guild funded repairs for a while.

[Thundertom]

We're a -very- casual raiding guild (10 man) .. we raid 2 nights a week (6-7 hours total) and we're at 3/13 heroic atm.

The way we approach it is to have a raiding "core" of about 12-14 players who we know are capable of performing well in raids, and everyone else in the guild is a regular member .. RL friends, uber-casuals, former guildies, etc. People who enjoy the benefits of being in an active guild but, for whatever reason, don't raid regularly.

If we're a man short on raid nights, we'll invite non-raiders .. it's good for us as it provides a bit of a safety net in case raiders don't show up. I can't remember a single raid being cancelled due to lack of members; our raiders are happy as we're still progressing and the non-raiders often appreciate the opportunity to see something new and perhaps get something shiny.

The key (imo) is making the non-raiders of your guild 100% aware that they will only get asked to join raids if the raid team is short. If there's no expectation of raid spots then there's no disappointment when no spots are available and pleasant surprise when there is.

Also very important; don't ignore your non-raiding members! .. if you want to keep them happy, do non-raid events too. PvP, old content fun/rep/achievement raids, heroic/zandalar etc. Be generous with unwanted BoE raid epics .. if the guild is rich, spread the wealth and enable guild funded repairs for a while.

I'm liking these ideas.

However, this would apply if we didn't make our current "fun based" raiders part of our regular raiding team. These people joined us to raid, and to have fun while doing so. Now, we might have been a bit too generous with the "fun"part, so now were stuck with "fun" raiders that expect to raid, and have fun. While I think these can perfectly coexist, wiping for weeks and weeks in a row on Nefarian normal, because we cannot dish out the dps isn't exactly my idea of fun.

[Theadred]

if your raiders cant dish out atleast 15k dps on neffy replace em. heck even our alts manage 20k on dps encounters:P i know they are geard, but if your raiders are in 355+ 15k should easly be doable if they cant they need to L2P because they will hold u back no question. on my first neffy kill whole raid where in like 354-356 avg ilvl. so its not that much about gear but skill. so if u want progress simple tell your people who wanna raid and progress that they either shape up or do something else. because they are to retarded for raiding. no i am not elitist its the damn truth. a person is either capable to raid or not. u can practice and train to be a raider, but if they dont dedicate such training and practice period they wont be a raider EVER, and no ammount of gear will fix that. its like me playing on my alt shaman, i know i am a liability so i dont raid with him (i do heroics). but if i log one of my other 85s i will easly pull my weight etc. its all about ppl doing their job and if they cant perform either let em practice IF they are interested or just remove em from the raiding team and ur "raiders" will actualy have fun and less frustration. sometimes you need to cull the weak for the greater good

[Deleted]

Recently been having a similar problem in my guild.

I think most casual guilds get to this stage - the stage where you recruit and run teams in a fun social atmosphere, the less skilled people get to raid and they enjoy it even if you wipe on normal modes that you know you should be able to down, because compared to pugs, well they think it's awesome. They get to expect this level of awesome and look forward to raids and you feel bad putting them on standby or saying look dude, you just can't move out of fire, you can't raid anymore because you don't improve. If you do that, then some people will leave, the atmosphere may feel bad, you may have to recruit more people, who suck too, and it's a vicious circle. But, if you don't do anything at all, the really skilled people will get bored and tired and frustrated by wiping because they're carrying other people - on content they know they can achieve.

Getting that balance between "social" "fun" and "progression" is REALLY hard.

If you tell all the poor players that they can't raid anymore, your guild loses what are probably really nice people who create a good atmosphere. If you continue raiding with them, the better people get increasingly frustrated until they may stop signing or simply leave to go to a higher progressed guild. There's not really a winning solution for a guild that wants to be social/casual, but also get high progression.

For Firelands we have come up with the solution that we will go strict 10 man progression with one team; a team we know can do heroics and then on off nights, have a second team that one of the officers is willing to raid lead - this will primarily be then farming old content like BwD/BoT but Nef/Cho'gall and some hard modes and then going into Firelands when they're ready, but no rush... and this team will have some social/casual players but then also be bolstered by a few alts of the good players. It will be completely non-mandatory for the raiders.... whether it will work or not with keeping both sets of people happy, I don't really know, but time will tell.

This way everyone in the guild gets to raid, the good people can concentrate on progression, the "less skilled" people and some alts can still have fun and get some gear just not pushing progression content, more farm content, and everyone in the guild wins, hypothetically.

[Thundertom]

For Firelands we have come up with the solution that we will go strict 10 man progression with one team; a team we know can do heroics and then on off nights, have a second team that one of the officers is willing to raid lead - this will primarily be then farming old content like BwD/BoT but Nef/Cho'gall and some hard modes and then going into Firelands when they're ready, but no rush... and this team will have some social/casual players but then also be bolstered by a few alts of the good players. It will be completely non-mandatory for the raiders.... whether it will work or not with keeping both sets of people happy, I don't really know, but time will tell.

This way everyone in the guild gets to raid, the good people can concentrate on progression, the "less skilled" people and some alts can still have fun and get some gear just not pushing progression content, more farm content, and everyone in the guild wins, hypothetically.

This seems to be an awesome idea.

[Ghengie]

We're a -very- casual raiding guild (10 man) .. we raid 2 nights a week (6-7 hours total) and we're at 3/13 heroic atm.

The way we approach it is to have a raiding "core" of about 12-14 players who we know are capable of performing well in raids, and everyone else in the guild is a regular member .. RL friends, uber-casuals, former guildies, etc. People who enjoy the benefits of being in an active guild but, for whatever reason, don't raid regularly.

If we're a man short on raid nights, we'll invite non-raiders .. it's good for us as it provides a bit of a safety net in case raiders don't show up. I can't remember a single raid being cancelled due to lack of members; our raiders are happy as we're still progressing and the non-raiders often appreciate the opportunity to see something new and perhaps get something shiny.

The key (imo) is making the non-raiders of your guild 100% aware that they will only get asked to join raids if the raid team is short. If there's no expectation of raid spots then there's no disappointment when no spots are available and pleasant surprise when there is.

Also very important; don't ignore your non-raiding members! .. if you want to keep them happy, do non-raid events too. PvP, old content fun/rep/achievement raids, heroic/zandalar etc. Be generous with unwanted BoE raid epics .. if the guild is rich, spread the wealth and enable guild funded repairs for a while.

This is very much true for us too. I'm the GM of a 10 man 2 day raiding guild at 13/13. We have a core group of 13 and we're always offering players a social spot in the guild if we feel they could be a possible recruit if we will ever open recruitment. At the moment we've added a 3th raid day to round up the week's raiding. (13 bosses is a lot with only 2 raid days as long as you have to focus on progress) For this off-night raiders have prio, but as we all signed up for a 2 night/week schedual, raiders are allowed to decline if anything else is up. For this we have our social members, which we've brought along up to 11/13 so far. But, we constantly stress the 3th day is not an "official" day. It's about 2 raids/week with the 3th being a bonus if there's farm content left to ensure we are performing those 2 days.

The point you're at, we were at a long time ago around Ulduar times.
There are 2 camps in your raidgroup and they are impossible to keep together for a long time. Having fun while raiding is not equivalent to slacking/not performing! You can do both (and enjoy it like that a lot more), if the officer team is willing to put the effort in.

Unless you are very clear in your raiding goals, there will always be that clash between types of raiders. We went the dedicated route and now have a great social group that knows how to play the game. Given enough time, you can also build up a group that performes, while having as much as fun as those performance lacking players you have at the moment. What you're going to do is totally up to you, there's no right or wrong in deciding between your two options. I can only give you advice if you decide to take the progress route:

Improving a guild is a long term process, don't expect to have it sorted within a month or two. Recruitment will be up for ages before you're totally satisfied (and even then you will want to have recruitment open to possibly find those perfect players).

Define your raid days. With 3 days and your real raiders spread out over them, you're bound to head into trouble at some days because the performance level is lower. A 2/3th attendance level for all raiders is really low if you want to have constant raids at a non-frustrating level. How many raiders are sticking to 2/3th attendance?

Define your guild ranks. Once promoted, you're not a raider for life. Your performance has to live up to the rank. If there are players in your social member pool that would want to raid and are better than current raiders, promote them. Raiders that do not live up to your (newly) defined rules need a chat and a demote if they aren't stepping it up. With recruitment up, you should be getting new players in that will help you replacing those lacking players. Go slow on replacing players, don't take the step unles you're sure you have enough options to continue raiding. The speed at which you can replace players is dependant on the speed you recruit suitable replacements.

Going 10s with the core you want to raid with is an option, but this changes more than just your raid size. 10 man raiding is different in a lot of aspects.

Before taking any steps ingame, write down your goal and what rules come with it. A written set of goals and rules is the best way to prevent all drama. Make sure all your guildies can read it, give feedback on it and prepare before it's taken into practise. After all, your members = your guild. If the majority does not agree with your ideas, it's you that no longer fits in the guild

---------- Post added 2011-06-22 at 09:53 AM ----------

For Firelands we have come up with the solution that we will go strict 10 man progression with one team; a team we know can do heroics and then on off nights, have a second team that one of the officers is willing to raid lead - this will primarily be then farming old content like BwD/BoT but Nef/Cho'gall and some hard modes and then going into Firelands when they're ready, but no rush... and this team will have some social/casual players but then also be bolstered by a few alts of the good players. It will be completely non-mandatory for the raiders.... whether it will work or not with keeping both sets of people happy, I don't really know, but time will tell.

This sounds like a good and easy solution at first, but it can still cause a huge amount of potential drama. 10 man raiding needs relatively more players/raid spots unless you enforce strict attendance rules. You will have to cut down your raiding team, the players that are dropped out of the core group won't be pleased. Your core group will need back-up raiders which can't raid with the social group, or they'll be busy/saved if they need to step in. Most likely you'll be accused of favorism, giving friends the 10 man spots while other players claim to be the better player etc.

It is easier to cut down raid size than to recruit until you have a 25 man raid group of the desired level, but if that alone is what your decision is based on, you don't realise how different 10s and 25s is.

Think about that poor officer who's going to sacrifice his part in progress raiding to please the rest of the guild. I'm willing to do tons of work to keep my guild rolling as a GM, but I would never want to sacrifice my 2 progress orientated raiding nights as that is (for me) what I'm playing the game for.

We experimented with a 2nd raiding team at the start of Cata (mainly to boost guild leveling as it's slow with only ~15 active players in the guild). For us it didn't work, even after lots of "mentor" time with their raid leader and raiders. Setting up a full raid groups is almost as much work as building up a guild, especially in 10s were each player carries a larger part of the overall tactic vs. 25s were half the raid can focus on their rotation.

Again, going back to 10s is an option, just as opening recruitment to improve the level of the 25 man group. Without knowing all the details of your guild/raiders and social activity, it is hard to judge what your best option is.

[Thundertom]

Sorry about the late reply.

Thanks for all your replies!

Clear ranks and performance seems to be key. Looks like the rule "gotta break some eggs to make an omelet" still applies, even to WoW.

Thanks again.

~Tom

[cleotaurus]

I don't think you can help players improve at this game. Some people just suck at video games and always will. You can try to point them in the right direction or help them but the reality is you will "always" have to help them and tell them what to do on every fight, every trash pull, every patch, until the end of time.

The players that you are looking for are the ones that can figure stuff out for themselves. There is a huge wealth of resources available to help anyone play the game at the highest level. Bad players are just lazy and don't care to access these resources on their own.

For example, a warlock in my guild is a pretty mediocre player. He usually is good at doing mechanics, but his dps always blows. Watching his videos I see that he never maximizes uptime on his dots, and doesn't double dot effectively. My alt warlock which is considerably less geared blows him out of the water on any fight where you can abuse warlock mechanics to maximize dps. He didn't know he could BoH as magmaws head comes up, or shoot dot the other dragon on VT, or any of the other ways to max dps that I figured out just from reading a warlock forum for 20 minutes. His excuse? "Yeah its a dps gain but its just a hassle." Its this "good enough" mentality that will cause your guild to hit a wall in progression. Once you get to a fight where "good enough" is not longer good enough, and you need the "best possible" from the players that matter in that fight - that is where you will fail. And these players will never ever improve, its just their attitude towards the game that will never change no matter how much you try to tell them otherwise.