Dying guilds

[sugarspice]

I showed Obsidian Dragon how to do Memory Cloud for a few months then when Funcom changed the loot table, all interest in doing it evaporated for everyone.

I'm open to doing the same again, along with Entity which isn't really that hard, if enough semi-competent US raiders are willing to be dedicated in attending regularly, preferably Friday night.

As for Sheng thru Emp, it's enough herding cats in our guild raids to want to do it in a pug :P

Even T3.5 Archfiend and Zaal are pretty easy where a competent, dedicated pug could at least kill those 2 bosses with enough time.

I understand what your saying as far as Sheng thru Emp being the most difficult, but it can be done with enough strong players to help and teach the others. IT WONT BE EASY and it will wipe for a while, but it depends how much those folks really want to learn and if they are willing to bring their main toon. I am certainly not interested in holding a T4 pug for global, only a teaching T4 raid for guild leaders/raid leaders who wish to go back to their own guilds and help their guild progress thru T4. So the focus of the raid is not killing the bosses...of course we will, but teaching those there how to run the raid for the best chance at success. I would expect that the CORE group would have to be 12 Strong, well played full T4 toons who have lead t4 for their own guild. As I have stated earlier in the conversation its very possible to do and it will work.
Some raid leaders don't even set up groups correctly to optimize buffs, or insist that every class start maxing out team buff AA's, sometimes its all the simple things that folks don't understand that make raids work.

[Aylis]

I am in game as Sugarspice, Sugars or shout out for guild leader of Prophets. I do know that repeating T3 raid leading is really not what I would care to do. Prophets did do that for about 3 years thru the Coalition raiders of Set. The raid worked by starting with half a raid of Prophets members, teaching and wiping until the raid was killing THOTH every week and clearing lower after most nights, I don't think we need to repeat that process unless there is a huge need.
I would truly love to see the big US guilds help create a pug t4 for small guilds with the focus on teaching their leaders and officers how to lead T4, what classes are needed, and how much DPS they are going to need. Setting up tanks and door groups for Sheng, its not just carrying them thru the fight so they can see a kill, its about teaching them how to lead it and set up boss groups, door groups, Zodiac, General and Entity.

I know of at least 1 large US end game raid guild who was going to teach a smaller guild t4 and they didnt show up. No sense going to the dance alone is there...

[Aylis]

I showed Obsidian Dragon how to do Memory Cloud for a few months then when Funcom changed the loot table, all interest in doing it evaporated for everyone.

I'm open to doing the same again, along with Entity which isn't really that hard, if enough semi-competent US raiders are willing to be dedicated in attending regularly, preferably Friday night.

As for Sheng thru Emp, it's enough herding cats in our guild raids to want to do it in a pug :P

Even T3.5 Archfiend and Zaal are pretty easy where a competent, dedicated pug could at least kill those 2 bosses with enough time.

Tomuim read this quote!! Texan hits it on the nose! Mem cloud is great to learn t4 but no one wants to do it.

Go back to the devs and make mem cloud more relevant. It was a great place to start t4 training. It still is but no one wants to do it as the loot as it is currently isnt enough. Im not saying it should be reverted to the old loot table but it should be improved to the point where ppl want to do it again. If your people dont know what loot it would take ask someone like Texan or other raid leaders. A simple "Hey what would mem clound need to make it more appealing not for farming but for getting some new ppl some exposure to t4 ?" Then take that back to the Dev team. Is that something as a community leader you can do ? Do it in pm's Do it in game. That way ppl have no hopes getting up and let down. Maybe these same very expierenced guild and raid leaders would know what it would take to make this high end content more accessable as well. Just a thought.

Wow did this thread get derailed!!

[Caudilloo]

Go back to the devs and make mem cloud more relevant. It was a great place to start t4 training.

Memory cloud requires no serious coordination, no real tanking, no actual dps and can be done by a competent group of 6.

How is that a good introduction or training ground for T4? Besides it saying T4 and getting some fance T4 relics you won't gain much things that are of use in real fights.

I would consider T3 a better place to train your raidforce.

[sugarspice]

Memory cloud requires no serious coordination, no real tanking, no actual dps and can be done by a competent group of 6.

How is that a good introduction or training ground for T4? Besides it saying T4 and getting some fance T4 relics you won't gain much things that are of use in real fights.

I would consider T3 a better place to train your raidforce.

I agree that memory cloud was a loot piñata that folks did because it was easy, and they did it via a work around instead of having to get there, in no way is doing memory cloud a valid way to train T4.

I for one am not willing to do more T3, or train more in T3, We did that as a guild for the server thru the Coalition for three years. My offer only stands for T4.
There are a lot of guilds pugging T3 on the weekends, I see them all day Saturday and Sunday so I see no need to train there as they can learn from doing them with the pugs that are available.

[sugarspice]

I know of at least 1 large US end game raid guild who was going to teach a smaller guild t4 and they didnt show up. No sense going to the dance alone is there...

I know that Prophets as a guild and individual Prophets members have tried to help several smaller guilds with progression thru T4, but that concept doesn't really work well because they are not really drawing the raid force needed for it to happen, I know one guild we tried to help had a tons of folks who were wearing blue gear and under 7000 health, they were not able to focus and got tired after an hour of wipes. The raid leaders/guild leaders didn't understand that they had to tell folks that they could not come to T4 unless they had a toon that was capable of doing the instance.
The kind of set up I am talking about is 12 full T4 toons helping 12 guild leaders/raid leaders that have a T4 ready toon...so a toon that has full T3 or mix of epics from six mans. ITS NOT ABOUT GETTING LOOT FOR THOSE THAT HELP THIS RAID, it would be about teaching the folks who are leading the guilds/raids how to set up the raid force, what you really need as far as players skill level and commitment. Killing the bosses with that group should be fairly fast, but it would be a teaching tool, not a PUG RAID.

[weretiger302]

, I know one guild we tried to help had a tons of folks who were wearing blue gear and under 7000 health, they were not able to focus and got tired after an hour of wipes. The raid leaders/guild leaders didn't understand that they had to tell folks that they could not come to T4 unless they had a toon that was capable of doing the instance.
.

I'm sure there was more than 1...

Sugar hits the nail on the head. Don't blame GD for small guilds not being able to do T4- I have sufferred through enough of them to see the common thread that they were not willing to put in the time to clear T3 or Khitai instances to prep for T4. OD and TWD included- you can't go to T4 with 6 good players and 18 crummy ones. That's the whole idea behind progression. "But Were, such-and-such blue is better than purple..." No, it's not- take the time to gear your toon and progress, or else stop bothering big guilds to "teach" you. Keep T4 as it is, and if your guild can't handle it, then either suck it up, disband, or make a serious effore to progress. The last thing we need is a dumbing down of the content.

[Texan615]

I know that Prophets as a guild and individual Prophets members have tried to help several smaller guilds with progression thru T4, but that concept doesn't really work well because they are not really drawing the raid force needed for it to happen, I know one guild we tried to help had a tons of folks who were wearing blue gear and under 7000 health, they were not able to focus and got tired after an hour of wipes. The raid leaders/guild leaders didn't understand that they had to tell folks that they could not come to T4 unless they had a toon that was capable of doing the instance.
The kind of set up I am talking about is 12 full T4 toons helping 12 guild leaders/raid leaders that have a T4 ready toon...so a toon that has full T3 or mix of epics from six mans. ITS NOT ABOUT GETTING LOOT FOR THOSE THAT HELP THIS RAID, it would be about teaching the folks who are leading the guilds/raids how to set up the raid force, what you really need as far as players skill level and commitment. Killing the bosses with that group should be fairly fast, but it would be a teaching tool, not a PUG RAID.

The problem is these "other" guilds don't have the skill/knowledge/dedication/numbers to do T4. And they are too stubborn to realize this and either change their ways or move on to more progressed guilds where they will actually be expected to perform or will not be invited to raid. Instead they keep beating their heads against the progression wall trying to beat content they just can't beat cuz of their skill/knowledge/dedication/numbers. Sometimes you just have to realize something is beyond your current means and expand your horizons, that is swallow your pride and either merge with another guild with a similar progression level or with a more progressed guild. I guarantee if RA was hurting for numbers consistently, we would not keep pugging and failing week after week, just demoralizing our players, we'd merge with another guild with a similar progression level so there would be a healthy population to continue raiding at a level we are accustomed to. So that means we will eventually have to merge our guilds as people quit, Sugar :P

While I guess what I'm saying is sort of harsh, the fact is the less progressed raiding guilds should work on first consolidating with others at a similar progression level so they can stop the constant progression raiding while pugging, which can be just a mess, you need consistent raiders to truly progress. Yes, a few can learn the strats, etc from a more progressed guild, but taking that knowledge and try to export it to a guild that just does not have the infrastructure to succeed will just fail.

[sugarspice]

The problem is these "other" guilds don't have the skill/knowledge/dedication/numbers to do T4. And they are too stubborn to realize this and either change their ways or move on to more progressed guilds where they will actually be expected to perform or will not be invited to raid. Instead they keep beating their heads against the progression wall trying to beat content they just can't beat cuz of their skill/knowledge/dedication/numbers. Sometimes you just have to realize something is beyond your current means and expand your horizons, that is swallow your pride and either merge with another guild with a similar progression level or with a more progressed guild. I guarantee if RA was hurting for numbers consistently, we would not keep pugging and failing week after week, just demoralizing our players, we'd merge with another guild with a similar progression level so there would be a healthy population to continue raiding at a level we are accustomed to. So that means we will eventually have to merge our guilds as people quit, Sugar :P

While I guess what I'm saying is sort of harsh, the fact is the less progressed raiding guilds should work on first consolidating with others at a similar progression level so they can stop the constant progression raiding while pugging, which can be just a mess, you need consistent raiders to truly progress. Yes, a few can learn the strats, etc from a more progressed guild, but taking that knowledge and try to export it to a guild that just does not have the infrastructure to succeed will just fail.

I don't disagree with your argument, most of the raid leaders we could teach could not go back to their raid force and succeed, (but maybe just one or two and that alone would be a win!)
I know there was an argument in a different thread saying that the World boss is making players not as good when they go to T3, but I think its not the problem at all, the real problem is T1/t2 used to be hard, you had blue and green gear and no AA, crappy capes, rings, ect. Now you can take 5 decent players and everyone else can sit back for the loot, raiders don't learn how to raid in T1 or T2, IF they don't WANT to learn, they can in fact ride thru it on most any pugs shirt tails. I know the K6 format requires folks to move, have AA's and teaches them better than T1/T2 raid instance. (and the world boss helps folks be geared enough for most of those k6)

I really think there is a strong need for the guilds who run T1/T2/T3 as a focus, but to expect your player base to stay if you don't keep progressing is not being real, some will stay out of loyalty, but I don't know how many times I have read guild applications that say, "I love my old guild but I want to see and play the rest of the game."

The major problem is the end game, how many more times can we run t4 without going out of our minds, while its great to gear alts its also the reason so many leave, they are bored! Some of the six mans are stupid easy, some reasonable and a couple are damn nuts for the difficulty level vs. reward. With those you get a group, do it so you can say you can then forget it! We have a lot of content, but most is not used because of the difficulty. I recall back in the day we ran YAG day and night, not that it was fun after the millionth time, but because it was great reward, AA and was fairly simple once you understood how it all worked. (and you could relog your fail alt for the pants) THE REASON that was given for changing it and for changing the faction was to get rid of some of the feeling of grind...SO if your a t4 guild you GRIND T4, nothing else offers as much reward for the effort, I would love to do coils more often, but finding a good coils group is not easy, same with the time trial, and jade dugout and T3.5 and lurker, there is tons of good content, but its not as easy as T4 so its not used.

[Valicard]

T4 really isnt that hard. The real key to beating any raid isnt geared players or skill or even good raid leaders (although these things help) it's getting the same 24 people to login every week at a pre-designated time over and over again. After a couple months doing this, you can put anything on farm. The problem is at best you're getting half those numbers and PUGing out the rest.

The MMO industry after about 08' or so(right after Conan came out, go figure) changed dramatically, you're just not going to get people dedicated enough to logon every single week at a precise time like a second job. The problem with guilds like RA and prophets is that their out of touch with this fact... they through their sheer size/luck/whatever actually found 20 or so people that can logon at a predesignated time and run these raids. They don't understand that the reason most guilds still cant down keeper on a consistent basis much less put T4 on farm is that at best these other guilds are getting the same 6 people week in and week out with maybe a few random logons from in-guild filling up another 4 or 5 and then the rest coming from the lottery that is global.

If Funcom devised a way to create an in-game master signup sheet for raids with times/raid-leader(s)/slots where you can click and put your name down, backup slots for each slot with all this interface available on a press of a key in-game basis, we'll see the population on Crom close to double. And raids would not be stressful and actually be more fun.