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Balance between socialization and performance
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Hey folks.
I wanted your opinion on a common issue my guild is trying to approach on World of Warcraft. I am pretty confident it applies to many other multiplayer games, though, and perhaps even in MU*.
This is the background. Our guild has been around for years with a relatively stable extended core of players, and as such, its roster includes both casual players who’re there to hang out and join the easier content as well as more hardcore, capable players who are skilled enough to advance towards the harder content.
In the beginning of each expansion/major patch everything is great. We’re all on the same page, gear- and goal-wise. We’re trying to complete Normal raids, low-end mythics, etc so there is no disparity and people are having fun. I suspect it’s that fun that’s the blue holding it all together, but I’ll revisit that point soon.
See, after those first few weeks the gap starts to register. Some folks are simply much better equipped (and, frankly, skilled) than others. To them clearing a Normal or even Heroic raid becomes a chore; there is little challenge involved and few if any opportunities for even minor gear improvements. They want the guild to spend its one major, inflexible resource (time - as measured in hours and raiding nights, of which we have two per week) chasing harder content.
At this point we’re split, and it’s a recurring issue. Not only is time a factor, as highlighted above, but also completing this content often requires external help. So not only are guild members not able to participate, but their spots on the raids are taken by outsiders who aren’t interested in socializing but only in completing the content.
Even smaller scale content follows that same pattern. Mythic Plus for example (groups consisting of 5 players, instead of raids which can easily include 20+ players) start to split our roster up; the skilled players play with each other, including geared tanks and healers who are in limited supply.
I suspect now the guild persists for as long as it has because we all keep in mind the fun times when we are all interested in the easier content simply because it’s all we can do, and then we settle back into familiar patterns that segregate the roster into the ‘good’ and the ‘rest’ of its players.
Have you encountered this issue before? Are there other forms of it across different kinds of games than MMORPGs?
And of course… what do you think can be done to address it?
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@Arkandel On several Saga Edition d20 games, I’ve seen the capability split “handled” by having multiple events at once, each for different levels of characters. In d20 language, this means you have one GM running an event for levels 4-7, and another running an event for levels 8-12. Unfortunately, this requires multiples of a finite resource (GMs in this case, geared-up tanks/healers in your case). Comics games likewise split into “street-level” and “high-powered” heroes for many scenes – again, this requires multiple GMs or multiple event times.
Theoretically, it seems like if you could get the guild together and have two Mythic Plus events running at the same time, you could all socialize together (maybe? I don’t know the WoW systems besides what I see looking over Blu’s shoulder), even if you’re running two different level-events.
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So it’s been ages since I played WoW, but I have seen the same thing there and elsewhere before.
I agree with @Roadspike’s suggestion about parallel events if the group is big enough. But I think a more fundamental question is: what is the “mission statement” for your guild? (Or for your game, in the MU context.)
- “We’re focused on hard-core raiding”
- “We’re focused on casual play”
- “We’re a group of friends here to help and support each other”
If I’m a casual in a hard-core raiding guild, I’m probably in the wrong place. If I enjoy high level raids but I’m in a friends-support-each-other group, I need to accept that some percentage of my time is going to be spent on raids where I’m not there for me, I’m there for others. In return, the casuals would find some way to support the others (for me, it was always crafting or grinding resources.)
There’s no right or wrong answer here, no style that’s inherently superior–but a clash of expectations will inevitably lead to drama of some form or another.
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The way that I have always addressed this is by handling my guild and my static as two different groups with two different calendars. The Guild doesn’t do hard content, this other group I run (that has a few guildies in it) does. The static team isn’t a function of the guild, even if the roster is mostly guildies. It’s easier in FFXIV because of linkshells being so built into everything, but I believe you can still do custom channels and such on WoW. Then the static folks/raid group/hard content people can be in whatever guild they want to be. Guild resources go to everybody. YOUR resources get drained a little more heavily, but.
For a long time my guild was Weasel War Dance, and my PVP team (which was mostly guildies) was in WWD. It was the same people, but their “pro” characters were tagged and handled a little different. If you want to keep everyone present, I’d recommend starting with a custom raid channel and direct ALL hardcore talk there. If the talk gets out of the casual players’ face, they’ll stop stressing out about it as much. If the “guild activity” doesn’t SEEM to revolve around it, things calm down. With the pvp team I had, everybody knew guild resources supported the team (grinding and such, potions and all of that), but we always pitched it as sort of like “this is a sports team we sponsor, look, our team is doing so good” and that went over waaaay better than people feeling like they were being excluded from something.
ETA: It’s actually relevant to note that this way came about because I had a guild/raid group fall apart to this EXACT problem, so that’s why I started this. I also burned out on it forever and ever doing it this way and don’t run so much as a 4 man any longer, so take it with a grain of salt.
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I went through a rift in what was, at the time, the most active FC on FFXIV over exactly this: we couldn’t support both casual and hard-core players in the same FC.
@Arkandel said in Balance between socialization and performance:
I suspect now the guild persists for as long as it has because we all keep in mind the fun times when we are all interested in the easier content simply because it’s all we can do, and then we settle back into familiar patterns that segregate the roster into the ‘good’ and the ‘rest’ of its players.
This is what I would suggest leaning into.
I don’t know WoW, but we kept our “casual” guild casual for years by doing completely non-content things. We…
- Took off all our armor and /followed each other around town.
- Jumped off the top of a tower and played “darts” by seeing where our corpses landed.
- Went into a noob zone and had a /dance party.
- Went into high-level zones on low-level toons to race and see how far we could make it.
- Turned off /names and put on costumes and made people guess who each other were.
- Rearranged the furniture in our FC house to play “the floor is lava.”
- Set up relay races where you had to /trade an item with someone at checkpoints.
- Took LOTS of family photos/screenshots.
Ultimately, even when the hard-core players sort of forked off to make their own Free Company about 18 months into the game (so they could get the raiding buffs), we stayed close with them as a group, and we all did a lot of “social” stuff together.
Looking back, I remember very little of the actual CONTENT of that game with fondness, but all of the GOOFING OFF is a good memory.
gl;hf
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@KarmaBum said in Balance between socialization and performance:
Ultimately, even when the hard-core players sort of forked off to make their own Free Company about 18 months into the game (so they could get the raiding buffs), we stayed close with them as a group, and we all did a lot of “social” stuff together.
The way this has worked for my guild over time - but over years of play, so the effect is fairly consistent - is that once the more hardcore players splinter off to do their own thing the overall activity plummets.
It’s both because the roster is segmented (how many raids are you going to run in one week, after all) but also because, once the better performing players become unavailable the rest can’t clear the existing content either any more. Many folks, if made to choose between lowering their expectations or doing something else with their time, will do the latter.
