Possible solutions to "competitive" raiding

Angrybaldman

TL:DR at the bottom


Hi CG. First off, for better or worse I love the raid. It has its hiccups, but it's fun and brings the community together. Here are the biggest problems my guild (FTB) is facing:

-The way in which raid rewards are structured incentivizes guild members to be competitive, and work against each other instead of together. For example, many people will exhaust all their attempts on Phases 1 & 2 of the raid because these are the max damage phases and give them the best chance at finishing at the top of the leaderboard.

-Raid start times. Even if everyone lived in the same timezone, it is still nearly impossible to organize a raid at a time that fits everyone. There are always going to be a handful of individuals who get left out of the raid due to RL conflicts. This is a major cause of frustration and leads lots of players to quit and join other guilds.

-In a competitive guild, everyone wants to be #1. This is especially present in P2P guilds, where there are a lot of players who have invested heavily in the game and don't want to be shafted for their efforts.

Here's a possible solution, and I would welcome feedback from other players and devs if possible.

Structure the raid damage into "tiers". Thus, if you raid and hit the top tier, you will get the top reward. This will keep the zerg-fest in phases 1 & 2 to a minimum and will incentivize players to (A) not kill the boss as quickly as possible and (B) play more cooperatively. Think about it. If you hit the top tier damage for raiding you won't be incentivized to keep damaging the boss, which will give other players at least one set of attempts before character reset. It also incentivizes guildmates to be more cooperative in sharing their strategies with the team because they don't fear losing their spot.

I realize that this is not a perfect solution. All of the problems listed above will still persist to some extent, and rewards would have to be restructured because you can't hand out the current #1 prize to 20+ people every raid. But I feel this would greatly help in mitigating their damaging effects and promote more guild unity.


TL:DR

Establish damage "tiers" for raiding. This will incentivize players to not heavily zerg the boss to the point where other guild members in different timezones don't get a chance to raid. It will also incentivize players to be more cooperative and share their strategies with guildmates because they don't have to worry about that player stealing their spot on the leaderboard.