Raiding in RoI - Feedback needed!

Overview

With Isengard launching, we plan to stop organised raiding for a few weeks to allow us to get characters to the level cap and gear up to a decent level. Depending on how long this takes, we expect to start raiding again in about 3-4 weeks.

To improve our ability to raid succesfully and distribute loot in better way, we propose two major changes to the roster and loot systems in Isengard for the Draigoch raid:

• Rotation system. We will aim to put together a group of 13-15 raiders who will be generally available for most raids. If there are > 12 of these players available in any particular week, extra players will be rostered off each night on a forced rotation basis. All players will be on the rotation list. If members of the core group have long term availability issues, we will look for new members and any new raiders will be subject to a trial period of 3 raid nights.
  
• Combined armour/symbol loot ladder. Both armour tokens and worn symbols of celembrimbor will be on the same ladder and players will need to make a choice as to which loot they value more highly. Only members of the core group will be eligible for the ladder loot, but new raiders will be automatically added to the bottom position of the ladder rather than rolling in. While new raiders are on their trial period they can move up the ladder but can not win ladder loot.

Before any of this happens though, we need to get a solid and relatively core group of raiders. We've made good progress towards that obviously over the past few months, but we'll lose some familiar faces (eg. Nasda) and other things will surely come up so recruitment will be a key task in the coming weeks.

We also want to open up discussion on raid nights. In particular, Fridays seems to be causing issues with availablility for people but I'm not sure that we have any better options. Personally, I can't ever make Wednesdays or Saturdays, and Monday's doesn't work well because it's patch night and Thursday doesn't work well because it's lock rollover night. So really the only other viable option from my persepctive would be Tuesday.

[color=cyan]even if you don't read all of this, please read and respond to the questions at the bottom of the post!![/cyan]

Further details of these plans below.

Rotation system

The exprience with Ost Dunhoth showed that we need to have a larger core group of people with a guranteed raid position in order to motiviate people to commit their availability to the group and work on getting their characters to the necessary level. It was understandably difficult to motivate people to get involved and fill in when the best we could offer was an occasional raid slot and very limited loot eligibility. Having a group of > 12 people will let us cover the 1-2 people who usually can't make it in a particular week, and if we do have more people than raid slots then we have a transparent rotation process. The goal will be to rotate everyone, regardless of class considerations - classes are flexible enough especially in isengard that we should be able to make this work if we recruit a good balance of players.

To fill the list, we propose to initially run the raid at Tier 1 for a couple of weeks with as many people as we can possibly get together. Tier 1 allows you to take up to 24 players (it's not necessary to have 24, it just gets easier the more people you have). This initial period will essentially be a tryout period for everyone (there will be just free rolling on all loot during this period). At the end of this process, we will make offers to 13-15 players and seek their commitment for regular raiding. Once we have a set group, we will no longer do weekly sign-ups for raids; it will be assumed that if you are on the list and not rostered off then you are available. There will be a process for notifying the group if you are unavailable so the fill in can be arranged.

The rotation order will be determined initially by the leaders with an eye to keeping a class balance over the course of the rotation. It will be a ladder type system, where if you are on top then it is your rostered week off. If you are required to fill in that week, because someone is unavailable, then the ladder just doesn't move.

There are a couple of details about this system which we need to work out and want feedback on:

• We are considering the possibiliy of giving people who are given forced weeks off credit on the loot ladder for anything which drops. This means that people aren't penalised for missing, say, a week where there was a lucky number of loot drops if they were available but forcibly rostered off. We are interested to hear your thoughts on this.
  
• Do we rotate each raid night or each raid week? My preference is to do a rotation for each raid night, especially because we often have people who might be available one night but not another but I'd like to hear people's thoughts.
  
• We may have to re-consider the aim of rotating everyone equally if we do have issues with balance because we don't have enough of a particular class and missing that class hurts our chances of beating the raid. This will ultimately depend on how tough things are and how precise class balance is in the raid.

Loot ladder

During the initial stages of the raid, we will be doing free rolls on all loot. When and if we are able to settle on a stable roster of > 12 people, to begin a rotation system, we will move towards a loot ladder for the two most highly desired types of loot.

The main problem with loot in OD was that we didn't get enough of it because we were a new raid group only just starting to learn how to raid and so took a couple of months to even make a serious start on it, and a couple more months before we started T2. Even though we made pretty good progress once we did hit it, there simply wasn't enough loot to go around by the end which ended up causing some issues, especially when we rolled in new people.

We will be better prepared for the new raid in terms of raid skill, but to address some of the problems we will be changing things up a bit this time. By putting both armour tokens and symbols on the same ladder we force people to make a choice as to which loot they want to target. And by adding new members to the bottom of the ladder we ensure that they can't get a drop before the previous regular members have got something; but letting them earn ladder positions from their first raid night is a fairer to them too.

The initial ladder will be set once we have a core group, and starting positions will be determined by a /roll. I want to repeat that until we are able to get a core, committed, group of 13+ raiders we will not implement a formal loot system (and we probably won't move to the T2 raid until that either). Formal loot systems work well when you have a set group committed to the system who all have a chance to meaningfully participate in it; they cannot work when you have a shifting roster and players that you don't want to make a long term commitment to for whatever reason.

There is still the tricky question as to what to do with one-off PUGs who we might still be forced to rely on occasionally if there are a lot of regular members unavailable. We found it very difficult to get good fill-ins on a once-off basis without giving them a chance to roll on loot. I understand people have strong feelings about letting PUGs roll against the group though, but if we are unable to get high quality fill-ins on short notice in particular weeks when we have a few regulars unavailable then we will be canceling raids more often, rather than trying to push progression with characters that aren't up to scratch for the raid.

I should note, we have considered a more formal DKP or other loot system and are not at all prepared to go in that direction. Not only is it an administrative nightmare, but fundamentally we feel that if we have given you a position in our raid group then you are just as deserving of loot as any of our other raiders. Different players are given tasks of different level of difficulty in raids, any sort of performance-based loot system is fundamentally unfair to those players that are given highly visible roles. And if players are consistently failing in their role, or not coming to raids on time and prepared, or not improving their characters to the right standards etc. then those issues will be addressed with the players individually and they may ultimately lose their position in the core group if there isn't progress on the specific issue.

Questions

We want feedback on all of this this! In particular, please answer the following questions:

1. What raid nights would you prefer? Continue with Friday/Sunday or consider Tuesday as an option?
   
   
2. Do you support a formal rotation system as described?
   
   
3. If it proves to be necessary for class balance or in-fight-role reasons, would you be supportive of having some people being not eligible for rotation (ie always get a slot if they're available)?
   
   
4. Should people given forced rotations get loot ladder eligibility for the night that they are benched?
   
   
5. Should rotations be weekly or per-night?
   
   
6. Do you support the loot ladder proposal, including the treatment of new members and the inclusion of both types of loot on the same ladder?
   
   
7. Would you support allowing one-off PUGs to roll against the group for ladder loot if that was necessary to motivate good raiders to help us out on a particular night?

We are hopeful that these proposed changes will us continue to have fun raiding in the future, and help us reach our goal of being the best raid group on the server!

Wow seriously monster post there babble. I don't know if you'll get the slew of posts you want with this much to read through!


Firstly i'll just convert your question table into a C+P list so people don't have to format.


[list=1]
[*]What raid nights would you prefer? Continue with Friday/Sunday or consider Tuesday as an option?

[*]Do you support a formal rotation system as described?

[*]If it proves to be necessary for class balance or in-fight-role reasons, would you be supportive of having some people being not eligible for rotation (ie always get a slot if they're available)?

[*]Should people given forced rotations get loot ladder eligibility for the night that they are benched?

[*]Should rotations be weekly or per-night?

[*]Do you support the loot ladder proposal, including the treatment of new members and the inclusion of both types of loot on the same ladder?

[*]Would you support allowing one-off PUGs to roll against the group for ladder loot if that was necessary to motivate good raiders to help us out on a particular night?
[/list]

It's 3 raid nights not 3 weeks.... ie 1 1/2 weeks of twice weekly raids

Well, hasn't the feedback been overwhelming.... not.

What's up people, no one cares? or no one wants to raid any more?

Anyway,

1. What raid nights would you prefer? Continue with Friday/Sunday or consider Tuesday as an option?
   
   Friday/Sunday is still my preferred, but if it has to be Tuesday then I'll make it work.
   
   
2. Do you support a formal rotation system as described?
   
   Yes.
   
   
3. If it proves to be necessary for class balance or in-fight-role reasons, would you be supportive of having some people being not eligible for rotation (ie always get a slot if they're available)?
   
   While this will no doubt seem a little unfair at times for some people, there's no point in rotating out a main healer and then not being able to raid due to lack of healers. In this the medium term this should be much less of an issue, as more of us have 2 or more characters at lvl75.
   
   
4. Should people given forced rotations get loot ladder eligibility for the night that they are benched?
   
   Yes, since they were available and ready to, so would have been eligible had they not be 'forced' out.
   
   
5. Should rotations be weekly or per-night?
   
   The issue I have with this, is depending on the raid and if the rotation is per-night, someone could be with the group for the first half of the raid and then get bumped for the next night and not see/complete the raid. Not an issue for the new Dragon one, but could be for future ones.
   
   
6. Do you support the loot ladder proposal, including the treatment of new members and the inclusion of both types of loot on the same ladder?
   
   It sounds like a much more even system, which will work well for the Dragon raid and hopefully future ones, but it can always be tweaked a little if need be.
   
   
7. Would you support allowing one-off PUGs to roll against the group for ladder loot if that was necessary to motivate good raiders to help us out on a particular night?
   
   While not ideal, if it's a difference between raiding and not raiding, then I guess we take our chances on the roll. One thing I do then wonder about tho, is if everyone rolls and the person who is currently at the top of the ladder wins, does that mean they drop to the bottom. So even tho they have been present all the time, worked their way up the ladder, they then also won a raid roll and all of that then combined into getting a single item. Or of course, they just got an raid item the previous night, dropped to bottom of the ladder, then won a raid roll and got another item. That's bound to upset some people.
   
   

Check out some of the loot from Skirm raids: Isen Loot

So, that solves our problem of what else to do. Most of it seems to be T1 drops, as such, our group should be able to smash that, doing 2-3 on a night, plus you get a healthy lot of skirm marks as well, what's not to love.

EDIT, the raid skirms also drop the new symbol.... come on ppl, get excited!!!!!!!