Guildmaster Raid Controls - A Proposal // April 30

V3NTR3SS

Many guilds here in GoH operate under the guise that everyone should have as much access and equanimity as possible in regards to both of the raids, and encourage and support the development of players working to build and expand their rosters.

Mine included.

I am most certainly am aware of the many methods and suggestions here on the forums to regarding damage gating, lockouts, registration times, winner rotations, damage stacking and enacting rules/guidelines regarding both the Pit and AAT raids - however, I am proposing a simple addition to the guild management tools to help avoid some hassle, unnecessary drama and animosity, as well as the need to maintain participation in 3rd party chat apps.

Why? It’s simple. Not everyone follows or even likes rules, not everyone participates in chat, and not everyone uses a 3rd party app to communicate with the members. Raiding in this game can put a lot of undue stress on players, and guild masters alike.

Personally, I am all for sharing the wealth and rankings in the Raids, in order to help everyone develop their roster, and as a group, move forward to running only Heroic level raids.

I have tried many, many different types of rules, DMG gates, in-game messaging to members, pinned chat notifications - all with varying degrees of success. I maintain a Discord chat room, with guild masters and members of several different guilds, as well as a fulsome standalone website powered with a phpBB forum, well moderated, currently with over 100 members. My guild can also finish a Heroic Rancor in about 30 mins, for reference.

However, the scores are very disparate, and discouraging for those developing rosters, especially when rules are not abided by. In my opinion, especially since members in my guild have been together across multiple games - booting someone is really only a last-resort option.

What I propose is as straightforward idea as possible, distilled down to its very essence. And, most importantly, something that the guild master can turn on and off, as well as amend in-flight vis-a-vis raid damage.

I’m hoping for a negligible amount of flaming; and some constructive feedback in the hopes this becomes something worth considering by the developers.

TL:DR - A configurable damage gate. Most of the UI already exists in other elements found in the game. I can provide mockups if asked or encouraged to.

Basically, the guild master controls would include three simple parameters:

1. Raid Damage Gate: ON / OFF
2. Maximum Damage: Slider (0 to 20 Million) (For example)
3. Raid Damage Gate Active Flag: On The Entrance Window To The Raid (For example, a red dot, or gold flag)

Caveats / Rules of the system are threefold:

1. Guild Master Can Turn Damage Gate On/Off
2. Guild Master Can Increase or Decrease The Maximum Damage Slider Whilst A Raid Is In Progress
3. You can continue playing your round/team after you hit the max damage setting, but incur no additional damage

As a guild master, there is no real need to provision for an area that details what the settings are configured to; as since you are already logged in, a quick update to the guild chat message is all that is required should you change the max allocated damage.

Blue Sky Additions:

1. Would allow players to continue to raid and/or test out ADDITIONAL teams after hitting the max damage allowed, without penalty, and without incurring damage, or burning up your roster further.

IMHO, this is fairly straightforward, and would be a most welcome addition to the game, solving a bunch of ongoing issues in one swoop. No one likes drama. No one likes rules. Moreover, enforcing them can be challenging, at the best of times.

Thoughts, comments and suggestions are most certainly welcomed.

Look forward to your feedback.

V3NTR3SS

iAmRyC

I love the suggestions, especially the damage gates. The only thing about having a maximum damage control is the current way they rank same damage output by Player ID. I'm the leader of a current top 40 Guild (Force Is Strong Between Us) and we all as a Guild voted to have no restrictions on the Pit other then just sending one team. The soloist just let the chips fall where they may via Player ID. Gear is just too random and there's not much difference in Guild Currency & Credits to warrant all the extra headaches of trying to track/get a certain damage output.

Sparrow

Personally what I would love to see is for any raid that had been beaten you get a 24 hour mode where each person can enter any phase they want and record their damage personally, but none of that damage is officially recorded until the 24 hours is up.

So in aat this would mean you can go in and attack each phase once, or put all your attacks on a single phase. When the 24 hours is up all that damage in each phase gets totaled up and the raid is open for additional attack in any phases that need it.

Thelegend27

Sparrow wrote: »

Personally what I would love to see is for any raid that had been beaten you get a 24 hour mode where each person can enter any phase they want and record their damage personally, but none of that damage is officially recorded until the 24 hours is up.

So in aat this would mean you can go in and attack each phase once, or put all your attacks on a single phase. When the 24 hours is up all that damage in each phase gets totaled up and the raid is open for additional attack in any phases that need it.

+1

McBee

I love these ideas, and they are ones that many of us have been screaming for for a long time. One addition to your ideas though - in order for damage gating to work and to be equitable, the scoring system must be overhauled and go to a tiered scoring system, instead of a ranking system. For instance, doing a certain amount of damage gets you into a tier of rewards, instead of an individual ranking. The reason being, what if several people hit the same amount of damage? It isn't fair that they be ranked 1, 2, 3... etc.

These numbers are arbitrary, but serve only as an illustration: Tier 1: 10 mil+ damage; Tier 2: 7.5 - 9.99 mil damage; Tier 3: 5 - 7.49 mil damage... and so forth.

PremierVenoth

You do know the real guild is with your arena partners? This "guild" for raids, as you call it, is just a mini leaderboard. I mean, with the Arena, you could potentially get 24 #1 Payouts a day for you 24 man Arena guild!

That's 168 a week if you work well.

You can get , what 3 rancors and 2 tanks a week? Pssshhh, 5 payouts among 50 people? It's a slaughterfest. Much better then Arena.

If you wanted to, IDK, make the official guilds more guildy, you'd need events that actually require teamwork., we should probably start there.

EDIT: I mean #1 payouts -- clearly there are other levels in guilds and Arena as well.

V3NTR3SS

@McBee - absolutely. I had written all of that down in a my original offline draft of this post - and neglected (total fail) to include it last night when I posted it. There would indeed need to be a re-work of the payouts into a tiered system involved. This is essentially what they have now, but as opposed to rank, it is by total score.

@iAmRyC - again, absolutely. Having payouts and ranking ordered by Player ID - is certainly not an ideal way to do so. The tiered system would work much better.

Also, I completely agree that there is not much difference between rewards and payouts in the raids - the issue is fundamentally that if you are "wanting" to have more equanimity - there is no real way to do so, or enforce any rules or gates to participation. Also, it's difficult (although I have tried) to explain to those at the bottom of the leaderboard, that this is the case. I have won dozens and dozens of raids, and have only received 2 full pieces.

One person, having a bad day could decide to go full Rogue One Zader and merc the whole raid. I have the 2nd deepest roster in my guild (arguably, the most flexible for all types of gameplay) and in the spirit of equality (I know, such Utopia) have held back on virtually every raid so that those working on their development have a chance at better rewards.

---

Again, not an entirely perfect idea - but remember - it is something that is opt-in, and not required, and can be turned on/off at any time.

Thanks for the great feedback! Keep it coming!

Hopefully @EA_Jesse et al can weigh in on this. We most definitely need some major QoL updates vis-a-vis guilds, guild and raid management.

Dark_Light

V3NTR3SS wrote: »

Many guilds here in GoH operate under the guise that everyone should have as much access and equanimity as possible in regards to both of the raids, and encourage and support the development of players working to build and expand their rosters.

Mine included.

I am most certainly am aware of the many methods and suggestions here on the forums to regarding damage gating, lockouts, registration times, winner rotations, damage stacking and enacting rules/guidelines regarding both the Pit and AAT raids - however, I am proposing a simple addition to the guild management tools to help avoid some hassle, unnecessary drama and animosity, as well as the need to maintain participation in 3rd party chat apps.

Why? It’s simple. Not everyone follows or even likes rules, not everyone participates in chat, and not everyone uses a 3rd party app to communicate with the members. Raiding in this game can put a lot of undue stress on players, and guild masters alike.

Personally, I am all for sharing the wealth and rankings in the Raids, in order to help everyone develop their roster, and as a group, move forward to running only Heroic level raids.

I have tried many, many different types of rules, DMG gates, in-game messaging to members, pinned chat notifications - all with varying degrees of success. I maintain a Discord chat room, with guild masters and members of several different guilds, as well as a fulsome standalone website powered with a phpBB forum, well moderated, currently with over 100 members. My guild can also finish a Heroic Rancor in about 30 mins, for reference.

However, the scores are very disparate, and discouraging for those developing rosters, especially when rules are not abided by. In my opinion, especially since members in my guild have been together across multiple games - booting someone is really only a last-resort option.

What I propose is as straightforward idea as possible, distilled down to its very essence. And, most importantly, something that the guild master can turn on and off, as well as amend in-flight vis-a-vis raid damage.

I’m hoping for a negligible amount of flaming; and some constructive feedback in the hopes this becomes something worth considering by the developers.

TL:DR - A configurable damage gate. Most of the UI already exists in other elements found in the game. I can provide mockups if asked or encouraged to.

Basically, the guild master controls would include three simple parameters:

1. Raid Damage Gate: ON / OFF
2. Maximum Damage: Slider (0 to 20 Million) (For example)
3. Raid Damage Gate Active Flag: On The Entrance Window To The Raid (For example, a red dot, or gold flag)

Caveats / Rules of the system are threefold:

1. Guild Master Can Turn Damage Gate On/Off
2. Guild Master Can Increase or Decrease The Maximum Damage Slider Whilst A Raid Is In Progress
3. You can continue playing your round/team after you hit the max damage setting, but incur no additional damage

As a guild master, there is no real need to provision for an area that details what the settings are configured to; as since you are already logged in, a quick update to the guild chat message is all that is required should you change the max allocated damage.

Blue Sky Additions:

1. Would allow players to continue to raid and/or test out ADDITIONAL teams after hitting the max damage allowed, without penalty, and without incurring damage, or burning up your roster further.

IMHO, this is fairly straightforward, and would be a most welcome addition to the game, solving a bunch of ongoing issues in one swoop. No one likes drama. No one likes rules. Moreover, enforcing them can be challenging, at the best of times.

Thoughts, comments and suggestions are most certainly welcomed.

Look forward to your feedback.

V3NTR3SS

+1, would also like to track donation requests thx