groupcraft Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Working as a Group

June 21, 2014 by Belghast

Different Expectations

Lately there has been some discontent in the guild, and it has made me painfully aware that different people are looking for vastly different things. There is no right or wrong answer here, but simply a case of wildly different expectations of what they have come to expect out of a guild and MMO relationship. I am not speaking for the guild or anyone in it in making this post, but I thought it might be useful for me to outline how I personally view a guild. Like I said just because I see something this way doesn’t mean there are not a wide variety of other opinions on what is proper and good in guild etiquette. However I’ve learned the fastest way to resolve any rough spots is to simply outline what you are expecting out of an arrangement.

Each of us comes to MMO gaming and guilds from a different set of past experiences. While some of these overlap many times they do not, and that is where the misunderstandings stem from. Massively Multiplayer games are not this monolithic experience, regardless of how we might think of them as such. For me I come from a raider background, and even though I am mostly “casual” these days it still colors everything about my gaming experience. Some players approach a guild from a PVP standpoint and then get frustrated when not everyone embraces the aspect of the game they enjoy the most. Similarly role-players could feel left out in the cold when the guild as whole does not share their interest for deep personal character development. While we might all think we play exactly the same game… that is almost never the case.

Working as a Group

I love doing big epic things with my guildies like raids or dungeons or even some pvp encounters. The problem is… that while I love grouping up for these few cases… I don’t ever want to quest with another person. I did Star Wars the Old Republic as a dedicated Duo… and found the experience to be both rewarding on one hand, but deeply claustrophobic on another. I’ve always found the group leveling experience, and especially the group questing experience to be extremely chafing. Someone is always a quest ahead of the group and someone is always one or two quests behind. There is a constant awkward struggle to try and keep this many armed abomination moving forward efficiently. As a result my preference will always be to quest alone, and have my personal time.

That is not to say I am not willing to group up at a moments notice… but I want there to be a “purpose”. If you need help killing this or that objective, or if there is an over world dungeon that you just can’t quite survive by yourself… those are awesome times to group. That said I like there to be a fixed duration of the grouping and a fixed goal in mind. I am a truly horrible group mate, because I will wander off on my own constantly. I’ve spent so much of my gaming time with other people depending on me for this or that, and when I level it is my time where I get to not give a shit about the needs or wants of others. When we are in a dungeon and I am tanking however… I am all about the needs of the group and the goal of getting us through the dungeon successfully.

The Reality Check

For most of my gaming experience I figured most players felt like I did, and preferred to quest alone. However over the last few weeks I’ve come to the realization that there is a specific group of player that wants to literally be grouped up 24/7 and working together towards everything. I think this is both noble and cool to have a leveling buddy like that… but I want no part of it at all. What is cool is that there are enough of these folks that they should be able to form their own little “band of brothers” and conquer the world together, but they lack the spark to do just that. I guess in part I didn’t even realize players wanted this since the ability to solo at all for me at least feels like a hard fought battle. In the early generations of MMO games, grouping was required to do anything at all, and it often meant a multiple hour long commitment.

I cut my teeth playing Everquest, and as a Dwarven Cleric… trying to solo anything was an act of futility and my nights were often dictated by whoever happened to be tanking for the group. I felt helpless and completely out of control, being forced to depend on someone else for my fun. It was a feeling I did not like one bit. So when I entered more modern games, I would pick whatever archetype could solo well and be relatively self sufficient. Thankfully these were almost always tanks, since they mostly had the survival ability to take whatever the game threw at them. So I decided that I actually liked being able to solo on one hand, and being the cornerstone of a group on the other. The further into management I have gotten in my real life, the more I have craved my “solo” time in MMOs, where I can just do whatever the hell I want to do without having to worry about the needs and wants of the many.

Role of a Guild

So I am sure at this point you are asking yourself… why do I focus so much on the importance of guild and community. Well honestly the guild gives a foundation and friendly faces that I see on a daily basis. It gives me the sense that even though I am off on my own doing whatever I want to do… that I am working together with others towards a common goal of progressing the guild. It is both friendly chat group and a constant source of inspiration and support when you need it. Additionally it gives you access to a lot of really great people when it does come time to group up and do something meaningful in an MMO. The guild shines when it comes time to run an Ship quest, Adventure, Dungeon or PVP match. The other night we had a grand night of doing pvp and it was extremely fun… even though I traditionally shy away from player versus player gameplay.

I’ve always seen my role as a community organizer to be that of laying the ground work and collecting the awesome people all in one place, so that they too can take fate into their own hands and do cool stuff together if they choose to. There lies the problem however, is that so many players want to sit back and have a “Cruise Director” plan events for them to attend. I on the other hand counter that it is the responsibility of each player to take responsibility for their own fun. If you want to do something, do it and convince people to come along with you. I’ve posted a few times about what I term the art of Groupcraft, but I will link it here again. One of the most empowering things you can do for yourself is to learn how to be confident in the assembly of a team that will work.

There are absolutely more successful ways of pulling together a group and making something happen when you want it to. Essentially in my experience you have to talk to people directly to get them to actually notice that you are trying to do a thing. This is much easier on voice chat, since you get the immediate feedback, however I did this same thing for years without the advent of voice chat. The critical knowledge however is what exactly you need to be successful. If you are a tank, then you need to find a healer and a few dps. In order to find the healer, you have to know what classes CAN heal and who in the guild falls within those search parameters. Basically for me a good guild is a friendly group of people that you like chatting with, but also a way to ease the finding of people to do something with. A hand crafted guild group will always be more enjoyable than a PUG, and usually more successful.

Just My Point of View

WildStar64 2014-06-20 22-30-01-908 Please note, like I said before this is just my point of view on the subject and what I am looking for out of a guild and the people in it. This is not some maxim that I will not cross, because lord knows I am liable to turn around this afternoon and end up grouped with someone for a long period of time and enjoy myself. These are just my tendencies and I thought it might be useful to open a dialog about what folks are expecting, by outlining what I am actually expecting. The Alliance of Awesome has been an interesting experiment because it is this big glorious amalgam of a bunch of different communities with their own rich traditions. House Stalwart had a shared guild culture that had been built up over the course of a decade, and it was pretty much expected that everyone in the guild felt the same way.

Going forward into this new experiment, we can no longer afford to expect that. Each of us comes from potentially different backgrounds with some shared and some disparate experiences. We have to come up with a brand new cultural norm as a result. I don’t feel this is the time for anyone to throw their hands up and walk away in a huff because they did not get whatever it was they were looking for. Instead it is time for folks to talk clearly about what exactly they are expecting out of this larger relationship. I think we are on the precipice of having something truly amazing, that we can all benefit from. We just need to take the time not to nurture it as it grows. I would not have poured so much effort into it so far, if I didn’t think it could be great for everyone involved.

Groupcraft Revisited

April 16, 2014 by Belghast

Dusting Off Skills

One of the very first features that got my blog noticed years ago was a series I called Groupcraft. In it I outlined the general theory I take when trying to make a group happen out of thin air. This was a process I had streamlined since when I first started trying to make groups happen back in Burning Crusade, and still continue to do this today. This advice predates the existence of the dungeon finder tools, and even in a world where you can push a button and get a group… I still find most of it extremely useful. Based on a discussion over on twitter yesterday, I feel like it might be time to dust off this topic and revisit it. The Elder Scrolls online has grouping tools, but once again I find that a custom built group is far more successful as the queue times seem to be pretty extreme for anyone who is not a tank or a healer.

Taking Responsibility

The very first step in the process is to take responsibility for your own happiness. You can sit around in guild chat hoping a group will happen upon you and whisk you away to a dream land of epic loot… or you can make one happen yourself. Massively Multiplayer games are the refuge of introverts, and since I believe it or not am one of them… this was a hard step for me to move past. In other games I have hung out hoping things would evolve into a group… and then wound up disappointed when I pissed my night away waiting for it to happen. In games like Everquest it was easier, simply going to a specific place in the world meant it was pretty easy for you to get into a group. However in the post wow world this is just not something that works.

Be Specific

It is simply unrealistic for you to expect that someone will form a group for you. As a result you need to be the catalyst that makes sure the groups happen, and it really isn’t as hard as you might think. Once you’ve decided you are going to step up to the plate and form a group… you need to know what you intend to do. This can be a pretty flexible mission of “run a dungeon”, but in doing so you need to know which one and what the requirements for that dungeon are. The first dungeon you are likely to run in the Daggerfall Covenant is Spindleclutch. It requires some kind of sturdy tank, some form of a healer, and then the rest of the party is pretty flexible. By healer and tank, there are many different things that can work but they need to be able to take some damage and heal some damage. Simply throwing a few points into healing staff is generally sufficient at least for the first tier of dungeons.

Surveying the Scene

Now that you know what you want to do you need to lock down some people. With the goal being Spindleclutch the sweet spot seems to be around level 14 with it technically being able to support people in the 12-18 range generally speaking. While I took this screenshot from my own guild this morning when nobody much was on, you would hopefully see some names lit up and available. What we are focusing on is the 12-17 section of the screen. For example in Stalwart we have an entire screen worth of people to choose from. If you can find at least four people on in the list then bam you likely have the makings of a group. If you can find two or more, then you can shift focus and go do a public dungeon since those tend to be design for two or more players and are loaded with all sorts of goodies similar to instanced dungeons.

Communication

This step is absolutely key to making your group work. So many people simply broadcast to guild a message similar to “anyone want to do something?”. These are NEVER successful, or moreso are only successful if the person on the other end is also trying to build a group. Saying “I need one more person for Spindleclutch” is a bit more successful, but that still requires that someone is watching guild chat and comfortable in their own abilities to speak up and sign up for your mission. What I find instead works so much better is to directly message players. So if I were to be building this hypothetical group I would start pinging folks in the sweet spot with something like this. “Hey noticed you were in the level range for Spindle Clutch, going to be pulling together a group. What roles can you fill?”.

At this point the player is going to do one of two things either say they cannot go, which is perfectly cool… or respond back with a list of roles they can provide. You are already one step closer to a group than you were a few minutes ago. I tend to just assume players want to run dungeons, and I skip the step of even asking if they want to go. It might seem presumptuous but over the years I have come to realize that most players are waiting for something interesting to happen. If you give them the opportunity, they more than likely will jump at the chance… unless they simply do not have the time to do “whatever” that night.

Lock Down the Required Roles

Now comes the trickiest part. We know that we need players between the levels of 12 to 18 with a sweet spot being around 14. We know that we need a tank of some sort and a healer of some sort. If you are yourself a tank or healer, it becomes a lot easier… as you need to only find the other half of the required roles. As a more dpsy player you need to find two people before you have a viable group. An instanced dungeon group cannot really happy before you’ve found both a tank and a healer, so those are the slots I tend to fill first. Once you have locked down both positions, you have a viable dungeon group and can fill the last slots. If you cannot find a tank or a healer remember you still have a perfectly viable public dungeon group. Public dungeons are pretty awesome, and every one I have gone too has been a loot bonanza quickly filling my inventory.

Start Up the Group

So at this point you’ve locked down the required roles, and identified a three other players who are ready to dungeon together. One of the nice things about Elder Scrolls Online is that all that really needs to happen now is for a single player to zone into the dungeon. At that point all of the other players can choose the “teleport to player” option which will pop them into the dungeon as well. Hopefully your custom group will go smoothly. However inevitably you will hit a snag, or a boss encounter you simply were not ready for. I believe in a blame free dungeon environment, where you assess what is going wrong and try and fix it however you can. Dungeons are hard, and they require complex skills. Try and be open to assistance and provide blameless advise for what might be going on in the dungeon. If you do all of these things, I think you are pretty much guaranteed an enjoyable night of dungeoning.

The fringe benefit of all of this is you begin to know more members of the guild, and what each player can bring to the table. The more you do this, the easier it becomes to pull together groups on the spur of the moment. You shift from feeling like you are forced to only solo, to being someone who has control over their own destiny. The truth of multiplayer games is that the players generally would like to group up and do big things. Not everyone has the time to do this all of the time, but folks come into this genre with at least the intent to do things larger than they can do on their own. You just have to be willing to take your fate into your own hands and start the ball rolling. Even today I get super self conscious at times when I step out into a new social environment that I did not bring with me a ton of familiar faces. But this basic framework for making groups happen has never failed me.

Better than Dungeon Tools

So I will throw out a final thought for the day before closing this up. I first outlined my process for making groups happen in an era when we did not really have the grouping tools that exist today. So this is the way you HAD to get groups, and relied heavily on social channels and guilds. Now that we have role based dungeon tools… quite simply we have gotten lazy. Building a group like this means you have to communicate with other players to make it happen. The one thing that makes “pugging” so generally terrible is that players simply do not communicate freely. How many times have you been in a pug and it is a silent train careening off the tracks? No one is talking, and no one is trying to discuss what is going wrong. The only time anything is said is when it is to curse out the tank or the healer for being “fail” at the game. By talking to the players to form the group you have already broken down that crucial barrier to success… communication.

Almost every game that has a “push a button, get a group” type tool also has other tools for you to try and build groups around. So I always try and fill my groups the “old fashioned” way, and then if we are a single person short go ahead and queue us all together for the dungeon filling that last slot. Even absolute assholes tend to behave better when they are out numbered in a guild group. I feel like the modern grouping tools are best used to augment building a group from scratch. Get as close as you possibly can to a full team, and then use the tool to fill the rest. You can always pop into a public dungeon while you wait in the queue. While I have mostly focused on Elder Scrolls Online, this general theory pretty much applies to every game I have played. The most critical step is really telling yourself that you can do this.

#ElderScrollsOnline #ESO #GroupCraft #Dungeons