10m Progression Policy thread
Myrmidon
Baron von PuttenhamCalifornia Icrontian
Gentlemen and ladies,
Seeing's how we one-shot Garrosh in flex 4 twice now, it's probably about time we headed off into the great unknown.
Siege of Thunder Bluff 10m. Milk and Thunder, folks.
The worst part about this is figuring out who goes to what boss, and who has to sit out. For loot:
- We can just let the rolls decide.
- We can set up a fancy-schmancy loot matrix like we did in ICC (I'm fine with figuring this out, if that's what we want).
For sitouts:
- We can weight it based on who needs what item.
- We can do the fancy-schmancy loot matrix thing, which takes 'who needs what' into account.
I'm leaning toward option 1 on both, but I'd like to know what kind of policy YOU guys want. My only real concern is that nobody is sitting out an inordinate amount of time, and everyone is happy.
Side note: I would like to see us bring our off-server friends - Aalonz is Icrontic, and Kleio might as well be!
0
Comments
I would use judgement from the spreadsheet that is getting lots of attention since we have it.
AMR also has a robotic loot council that will programmatically make these decisions while prioritizing loot awards to yield the largest amount of good to the overall raid group.
I have no problem sitting out if there are people that need particular loot. I see the system that we are starting to put in place as quite fair.
The only thing about the system we are starting to put in place is it's based almost entirely on need for loot, thus penalizing those that have worked to overgear. Not an issue if nobody's bothered, but if someone who wants boss time gets victimized by it, I would like a way to put them in... that's why I wanted the discussion. If it's up to me, I'd say take it on a case by case basis.
My priority is folks' happiness, followed by loot efficiency. So... who wants to set up a Hearthstone tournament for those sitting out?
...The robotic loot council, however, sounds fucking awesome. I might get into that.
Yeah, that bit kinda bothers me. I'm not just raiding to get gear, I'm getting geared to raid. What's the point of getting geared and maximizing DPS if that just puts you on the sidelines? Of course, there's roles that need to be filled anyway, and if the entire party is undergeared and needing gear, that's not gonna help much either. I'd also prefer to not be sitting on my hands all night Sunday just waiting to jump in on a couple bosses. I assume others share that sentiment...
tl;dr raid shit's complicated, yo.
I am very flexible. I am good with being asked to sit out. I am good with raiding. My priority is having fun with my friends. I can do that in a raid, I can do that while solo questing working on loremaster.
I come from a different perspective:
I play WoW to have fun with my friends, and the one way I have fun is to raid. If I am not productively raiding, I would prefer to be offline doing another one of my hobbies.
After 10 years of play, this game offers me nothing without raiding.
Those three responses offer me a good chunk of clarity: @Thrax and @midga have 100% opposite opinions, meaning we DO need to come up with a boss policy that includes everyone based on more than just gear need, but that gear need must be a significant factor. @primesuspect's response is where I expect more than one person to sit, meaning this policy probably doesn't need to be mega-rigid.
So here's my suggestion: When I have a solid idea of who needs what boss via the loot table, I'm going to start the first night by maximizing loot efficiency. If I find there's an outlier - someone that has a lot of bench time - I'm just going to make a hard decision and swap them in, preferably into a fight where LOTS of people are gunning for the same piece of loot (that way someone in our raid will at least be able to use it if it drops).
As nights progress, I'm going to try to keep a chart of boss attempt percentages (how many times you were on any boss vs how many attempts were made in total) and upgrade acquisition (I will ignore the value of the upgrade acquired unless anyone objects, I feel we've built that into the raiding roster with our loot table). For each subsequent night, then, I should have enough data to say things like "@midga sat out a lot last week because he didn't need loot, so I'm giving him some extra priority this week."
And, to round it all off, it is TOTALLY acceptable to take shit on a case-by-case basis. And I fully expect to.
What do you guys think?
(Also: fuck all this 'official' sounding shit).
In a perfect world, it would be great to have the lineup figured out a couple days before Sunday.
For example, if you need Immerseus...and you know that you're sitting until Sha, you can PUG it earlier in the week. In fact, you could PUG up to your first planned Icrontic boss.
This would be difficult because we'd have to update the spreadsheet, know availability for Sunday, and set a lineup ahead of time.
In a world where people don't accept calendar invites regularly, I don't see that happening...
If people could block out their schedules and real life didn't get in the way, this would be feasible. Unfortunately, @cannonfodder hints at the unfortunate reality of this.
An example:
@midga is slated to run dork shamans. He pugs up to dork shamans. Sunday rolls around, and only 10 people (including @midga) have shown up because real life has happened, some people aren't available. We need @midga to be our 10th, but he's already locked.
"Doesn't sound bad," you say, "pug the extra until you make it to dork shamans, then swap @midga in." Sure, but you're missing the bigger picture - what if three people have pugged up to the right point? Four? Things get ugly fast... and these things do happen.
Here's the good news. Since this is progression, we'll be using a raid-lock method. After we clear Immerseus twice (or so), we'll consider him 'on farm.' That means our progression will be at Protectors. We'll do this by taking someone's alt for Immerseus and asking them to extend that alt's raid lock. Next week, then, everyone is free to pug Immerseus, and we'll use the alt's raid lock to get everyone to Protectors on Sunday, boot the alt, and resume.
In the event that we don't have an alt locked, when the week restarts, we'll just say 'Pug up to the progression point' and then on Sunday, we'll use whoever has the farthest lock. Effectively, once we've decided shit is 'on farm' (which should be fast, given the progress of the gearup raids), there will be a significant amount of pugging going on anyway.
All of this is pretty moot for Heroic, though, because it's tough to find a pug who's running heroics.
Yeah. Hence "In a perfect world" disclaimer. I realize the difficulty with committing to raids given RL priorities. Sounds like a decent workaround with the On-Farm / raid lock idea.
If we need to sit for a boss we really want, there's always OQ on Monday.
The thing that concerns me most is scheduling my Sunday evening for raiding, and then sitting in limbo for hours, or not getting in at all. I'm also well aware there's not a good solution to this =/
I wish there was, man, I wish there was. I remember being irritated with it when I first started progression raiding, too. This is "The Way It's Been Done" for a long time - not that that's a good enough reason for continuing to do it; we do it because it has stronger pros than cons. This option allows for faster progression and lets everyone get a shot at some loot per week while guaranteeing they'll be in a good group, but the obvious con is exactly what you've said. Another method is to pug 25s, but with only 13 raiders, that means we're HIGHLY at the mercy of the pug, waiting for the pug to form, and momentum problems with people taking breaks, plus other huge leadership concerns. Yet another method is to pre-select only ten people per week, but this biases against people who have lots of real life things that crop up on a whim (by generally making them selected less due to unreliability), and forces some people to pretty much raid on their own.
The most ideal ways to deal with it would be to have a perfect multiple of 10 raiders... but that is a serendipitous situation we simply don't have.
Now, having said that, I would LOVE to minimize sit-outs, and if anyone has any ideas, let's hear 'em and discuss 'em. Alternatively, I would LOVE if people had a secondary game going - maybe we could marry raid with arena teams or something so the sit-outs could still play with each other until it was their turn to come in? Or maybe someone would like to set up a point-based Hearthstone tournament for sit-outs that could go multiple weeks? I'd be happy to supply prizes. How about a minecraft server? Games of Hidden: Source? Something short and easy to quit.
By the way... if I have my druthers, nobody will be sitting in limbo for hours or not getting in at all. If one boss is taking an inordinate amount of attempts, we'll do a rotate so the sit-outs get some in-time.
I like that. And I agree with the rest of what you said. I'd definitely be down for some PvP or Hearthstone or even some HotS if anyone else is in the beta. Cool ideas for sure, and something to keep the momentum up for the people that aren't actively beating the shit outta some Orgrimmar bitches. Otherwise, what I'll probably end up doing is just Minecrafting until someone rouses me from block-punching hypnosis.