Helping hands

So last night began the initiative our guild leader calls "Guild Improvement Week". The basic idea being that the better geared people help the lesser geared people get better gear and work with them to improve their play.

Fantastic idea in theory, not so much in practice.

Now maybe last night was an abberation, but there were 2 total people asking for help. Most of the people we have identified in the guild as needing help were not online.

One of the people asking for help was Robella, a gnome Rogue. He wanted help finishing up a questline in Shadowmoon Valley called the Cipher of Damnation. This is a quest line that Honors has not finished yet. When I was leveling and just after I hit 70, I concentrated on quests and quest lines that led to the better tanking rewards I would need for Kara. This line was not one of them, and I haven't made the time to go back and finish yet.

We got a group together and flew out to Shadowmoon to start the event. As we engage the boss, our Elemental Shaman (Wichita) healer gets jumped by a Blood Elf Rogue from . Cynosure is the most advanced Horde guild on our server. Peachy.

So we call in for backup, and most of MewMewPewPewAndABubble shows up. They watch our backs and will kill the boss and get Robella a nice new offhand.

Next up wanting help was Schmedlap the hunter. He needed to run Steamvaults for rep, so I volenteered to go as a Tank or a Healer, whichever he needed. We grabbed Calexis, a fantastic priest. Unfortunately, there were two guild 5v5 teams trying to get their points, so we couldn't do the run. Maybe tonight, we'll get it done.

I have no problem helping someone out. I don't even mind running an instance where I've gotten everything I could possibly want out of it, and I like to think of myself as a helpful guy.

However, I think the idea that we need to pick people, armory them, and figure out what specific upgrades they need to go get is asking a bit too much. I want to help people not handhold them. At some point, the motavation needs to come from the player. The player has to say to the themselves that they want to improve, and figure out how to improve their character.

I don't want to drag a bunch of people into an endgame they really have shown no desire to see.

When the idea of set teams for Kara was floated, it was quickly shot down. While the idea of set teams for Battlegrounds has been pushed.

We do up to 3 nights of PVP a week (Arena + 2 battlegrounds). We do 2 nights of Kara at best. Most people will only see Kara 1 night a week due to scheduling. The idea of making a more flexible schedule for Kara has also been shot down.

This isn't my guild, and those decisions are well within the leaderships right to make.

Maybe people think 2 months to get 4 bosses down in Kara is a fine progression. Maybe I'm not representive of how most of the guild feels.

I hope that's not the case. I hope other people are also wanting to continue to progress through the endgame as well. I hope I'm not pushing people, railroading them into something they don't want to do.

I want to join with a group of likeminded individuals, who want to join together and combine our skills to experience the full range of content the game has to offer. We haven't seen half of Kara, nor any of the cool stuff beyond it. I'm not looking to compete for server firsts or any of that nonsense. Leave that to people like Different Strokes and Bloodsky. I'm not looking to run Kara 5 nights a week.

I don't want to leave Heroes; I've made a lot of friends within the guild. There aren't a whole lot of options for me even if I decided to leave. There aren't a whole lot of guilds who accept Protection spec Paladins.

I just know that I'm getting frustrated by the situation, and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Comments

Origami said…
Honors, you're not alone. I understand what Ferth is trying to accomplish (I've been harrassing him that the guild wasn't helping the undergeared enough) but his execution is somewhat off.
When he first talked about Guild Improvement Week I mentioned that we can only help people who asked for help. His response was that it was untrue because some people don't know that they need help and that he's looked up people's armory and then approached them and offered help with success.
That's fine on an individual basis and if you have the interest. However, when you throw out a whole guild event centered around this and then highlight people as "Needing Help", they'll likely get intimidated.
And besides, asking guild members to go find people and look at their gear and then run them through instances or quests to get them better gear, all when they don't even ask for it feels very much like hunting someone down, clubbing them on the head and dragging them to NY City so that you can dress them in better clothes.

We aren't here to handhold people and certainly not force them into gearing the way we think. What if someone doesn't want to run kara? What if levelling to 70 is the only accomplishment they care about and then they're just going to roll an alt and level that one up? This should certainly be about helping people who ask for it and setting aside time for the like of Robella or Cetra is great. But so far, we've had 3 people ask for help and 1 person (who was new) that was identified as needing help. I don't know what we can or should do about the others.
Bacon said…
Points well made Origami. And I am on page with both of you. A good example is that I spent 45+ minutes last week talking to our new druid, Rhamza. He linked me all sorts of gear and asked me what was better for healing. He had bought alot of gear (Wild Draenic set and stuff) that has alot of +healing/spell damage and some other things. I finally told him about my post on the forums and that most good healing drops come from instances.
After we got done talking about healing gear, he asked me alot of questions about specs (he has put all his points into resto). He finished with asking me about the possibility of him rolling on feral/DPS drops. I asked him why he wanted to. He replied that the only way he could get into Heroes with Schmed was to go resto, but he still wants to do feral combat. So I think alot of what we talked about became a mute point.
Additionally, I see only a few "veterans" helping these people, while others go on with their own business. I have ran SV and BM so many times to help people get keyed or drops that it's become as Regolas says, "running on autopilot" for those instances. If you have these same veterans constantly do things like this for people, you'll burn them out.
Lastly, we are helping some people when we need to be locating some more healers. All this improvement is doing is increasing the number of DPS people that will have to sit on Kara runs. Saturday night we were missing 2 healing specced priests and then Sevenn and I showed up late. I doubt our kara progression will get much further until we get more healing classes.
Unknown said…
Woot! I can actually read something related to the guild while at work! My company blocks me from viewing the Heroes' forums so it is hard for me to keep up with things :-(

I want to once again thank you and everyone else who helped Robella last night with the final stages of that LONG quest chain.

Overall, I agree with your post. I believe most people in the guild want to progess through the end-game but at their own pace. There is a lot to do in the game and having variety makes the game more fun, imo. Running the same instance over and over again would take the fun out of playing for me. Don't get me wrong, I would like to try out Kara one day but I am in no hurry.

Regarding Ferth's Guild Improvement week, I think it is a great idea. I don't know about everyone else, but I rarely ask for help because I don't want to bother people who are doing their own thing. Most of the guild has already completed the quests that I have remaining so I kind of feel bad asking for help (I finished all the solo quests I could find in the Outlands and only have group quests left to do). By Ferth making this a Guild Improvement week, I felt more comfortable in asking for help.

As a side note, I am always happy to hear other peoples' suggestions about my gear and on my play style (trust me, I won't be offended). Since I mainly have soloed with Robella, my group skills are a bit lacking. I do spend time researching gear and tactics for my rogue but I am not nearly as well versed in all the game mechanics as some of you. So if I am ever in a group with any of you, feel free to offer any pointers!
Bacon said…
Robella,
I don't mind helping people if they have put in a little time to see what it is that they need. And it sounds like you have done that. Please don't hesitate to ask to run an instance in guild chat or ask for help on a group quest, chances are most of us need to do some of those as well. I have some sitting in my quest log for about 3 months now. I've just been waiting to get some people together to do them.
Honors Code said…
Bacon, (and anybody else for that matter), you ever need a group for anything, just say the word. I'd be more than happy to help you out.
Origami said…
I too have group quests sitting in my log waiting to be done. I know what it feels like to ask for help and get no reply. I also know how bad it feels to ask in guild for help when it's obvious everyone else has plans already (the uncomfortable silence).

That's why the forums are becoming more and more pivotal to guild communications. You don't need to feel bad make a post "LFG for 5 man quest in SMV". Look at DarkDescent's post. Sometimes you don't get a lot of response but you just gotta try again - especially if you choose a bad night or too early/late of a start time for most other people. This is something people need to realize.

I don't know what to do about our healer situation. We did recruit a few healers but I don't know what's going on with them. It's almost getting to the point where some of us could get alts to L70 and gear them up before we can recruit a few more consistently played and geared healers.

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