[PODCAST] Dracast - Episode 6: The Bashening - How to adapt to change.

pzschrek

Derra wrote: »

And now for the next podcast: Why do you think people do not bother to create/manage a guild capable of doing large group pvp?

There are a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is that it's really, really hard work.

Everyone wants to be in the badass guilds but nobody wants to really commit to it. The load often falls on a few people's shoulders to theorycraft builds, come up with tactics, lead raids, divvy up who is running what group buff set, and organize training, and the few people with both the will and competence as well as gravitas within the community to pull it off get tired and stop carrying the load. Then people regret it's passing but don't step up themselves and the guild dies down and the members who are still playing go solo/small scale or otherwise do their own thing.

When too many of us expect other people to manufacture our fun for us, the big, good, elite medium scale guilds slowly die out. I'm not pointing fingers here, as I'll quite freely admit being guilty of some of the above. I have work and family and I don't want my ESO guilds to become yet another chore instead of a time of fun and relaxation. But taken cumulatively this can have a pretty negative impact on the tightly-organized guild community.

Vilestride

Derra wrote: »

And now for the next podcast: Why do you think people do not bother to create/manage a guild capable of doing large group pvp?

Don't know if we will be covering this specifically but feel free to discuss it Here and I agree with alot of what Joy and Pscek are saying. We will be doing an episode on leading and what it takes to lead a raid both on the field and off.

Lack of leadership is definitely something I think heavily attributes to the dimishing number of guilds.

asneakybanana

It's a lot of work and takes a ton of commitment to organize everything. While I haven't lead a PvP guild I have lead a top tier pve guild and I can honestly say it can feel like a part time job sometimes. You raid 3 or 4 times a week for 3 or 4 hours and when you're not raiding you're farming gear because rng, or working to get some of the people who are struggling up to speed with everyone else. Also you probably spend an hour before raid organizing everything and who is coming, while this is made slightly better with use of availability tools and messaging outside of game it can often be extremely stressful of you need to replace someone that wasn't able to make it and trying to find the last DPS because you feel like you're letting everyone down if you don't. Then there's the stress of performing in a guild like that, if a guild fails to perform as the best then members may begin to lose interest which can lead to a death spiral of the guild.

While it's a big task to do, watching your guild perform at the highest level and succeed at whatever they are trying, whether pve or PvP, is exceedingly satisfying and worth the frustration. I think more people would be willing to play in medium to large organized groups if there was more competition which comes from having more leaders. Being able to fight 2 or 3 competent enemies on each faction is a lot more exciting than having maybe 1 competent enemy to fight and then just dealing with fighting 5x your numbers as the only real competition.

Satiar

Leading is a second job is you plan for longevity. I recommend hiring an HR officer.

Vilestride

Satiar wrote: »

Leading is a second job is you plan for longevity. I recommend hiring an HR officer.

Mhmm. The off the field side of things is as much a heavy load as the actual gameplay itself.

Agrippa_Invisus

Joy_Division wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

And now for the next podcast: Why do you think people do not bother to create/manage a guild capable of doing large group pvp?

Don't think a video is needed for that.

• Poor performance (lag, loadscreens, disconnects, etc.) drives away too many core members
• Group compositions are overly narrow and boring, i.e. low number of viable builds
• Little variety / boring gameplay (just bomb with destro/sleets/negate or move out of the way)

To that can add lack of incentive for winning campaigns, not many opposing guilds to fight in the first place, and to be a strong/impactful guild takes a lot of experienced players. Lot of factors. It's just easier and usually more fun to do something else.

I really wish they'd add Master Weapons back into the loot list for end of campaign rewards.

Dump the RFTW garbage gear and give us bags of crafting mats, siege equipment, occasional motifs, etc.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Satiar wrote: »

Leading is a second job is you plan for longevity. I recommend hiring an HR officer.

I disagree tbh. Whilst it's good to delegate tasks I don't think recruitment is one of them which should be. Making sure you get the right people into your group (depending on your groups goals) is the main part on determining success needs to be a clear voice on what the expectations are etc and that normally comes best from the main lead.

Brining people up to speed however is something which should definately be delegated not only for class knowledge reasons but also time.

It entirely depends how you structure your guild though. Mass recruitment vs Referral etc

Most guilds fall apart due to lack of performance(results not lag). People get discouraged/rage and stop attending and slowly the guild fades. (Especially if the leader is the one to be discouraged)

pzschrek

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

People get discouraged/rage and stop attending and slowly the guild fades. (Especially if the leader is the one to be discouraged)

I'd second this. At the end of the day, guilds ARE their main crown.

People will not follow someone who doesn't deliver them victories and AP, and crowns will in the end refuse to crown groups who are too squishy and lack the dps or skill or group composition to get the job done, since while the highs are higher as a crown, the lows are lower. I confess being guilty of both of these sins.

And building a competent, well-compositioned group is a real slog except for a few cases where you're a very established name in the community, and even then it is hard.

But even so it's much easier to recruit a new competent player than it is to find a competent crown, seeing as the whole entire game right now has like maybe 15-20 "okay-to-good" mid-size PVP crowns, and I may be being generous.

Also, tangentially but also important to this, a lack of true PuG/progression guilds contributes I think. This is a sysiphean task, as you get someone in for a few weeks, gear them, teach them a few things, then they stick around for a month or two and ghost or move to another guild with a better reputation. It's thankless and you always lose the people you help. You do this enough times and you decide "screw it," you just want to focus on regulars and veterans. Then the pipeline dries up.

Agrippa_Invisus

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Leading is a second job is you plan for longevity. I recommend hiring an HR officer.

I disagree tbh. Whilst it's good to delegate tasks I don't think recruitment is one of them which should be. Making sure you get the right people into your group (depending on your groups goals) is the main part on determining success needs to be a clear voice on what the expectations are etc and that normally comes best from the main lead.

Brining people up to speed however is something which should definately be delegated not only for class knowledge reasons but also time.

It entirely depends how you structure your guild though. Mass recruitment vs Referral etc

Most guilds fall apart due to lack of performance(results not lag). People get discouraged/rage and stop attending and slowly the guild fades. (Especially if the leader is the one to be discouraged)

I spent a lot - and I do mean a lot - of effort trying to build up and train secondary players who could be crown in Hijinx before I retired from guild leadership. It gave the guild a bit of longevity past my retirement, but in the end it still faded and those players dispersed to the guilds we know today.

It's really, really, really hard to get a guild comfortable with secondary, tertiary, etc raid leaders. At the same time the need for other guild officers (such as myself in the past) to sit down, shut up, and let crown be crown is very hard to sit comfortable with. The desire to provide input, to say 'you didn't quite do it the way I would', etc. Avoiding a clash of personalities is a huge endeavor.

In the end, I just take pride in the personal accomplishments of those whom I've helped step up and take the reigns.

As an aside -- Can we also talk about how incredibly stressful that being crown in a high end guild is in this game? Due to how split second some of the decisions need to be, with a wipe or a victory just a hair's breadth away from each other at times, and how fast paced everything can be and how overwhelmingly large the enemy numbers can be, it is absolutely brutal at times.

There's a reason I had to retire. For my own good.

Satiar

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Leading is a second job is you plan for longevity. I recommend hiring an HR officer.

I disagree tbh. Whilst it's good to delegate tasks I don't think recruitment is one of them which should be. Making sure you get the right people into your group (depending on your groups goals) is the main part on determining success needs to be a clear voice on what the expectations are etc and that normally comes best from the main lead.

Brining people up to speed however is something which should definately be delegated not only for class knowledge reasons but also time.

It entirely depends how you structure your guild though. Mass recruitment vs Referral etc

Most guilds fall apart due to lack of performance(results not lag). People get discouraged/rage and stop attending and slowly the guild fades. (Especially if the leader is the one to be discouraged)

You run a small guild of long-time players, Iz. I don’t know how much experience you have keeping 80 people happy and working well together, but for my part I found it out exhausting over the long term.

My experience is the exact opposite of yours: guilds tend to fall apart along personal lines. In my time gaming I’ve seen many, many top end guilds collapse due to interpersonal issues or the loss of a community pillar. Managing a large group takes time and effort, keeping it at a high level of play even more. I know very few established guilds that collapsed because they were sad they sucked: I know plenty that collapsed because the GM kicked someone popular or didn’t handle a rift properly or just let cliques form and reach critical mass.

I suppose experience may vary tho.

zyk

I think the reason it's so hard to build and maintain a PVP guild in ESO is because the community is so tiny. Why is it tiny?

- The kind of player who enjoys ESO instance-based ezmode PVE probably doesn't like open world AvA.
- No modern cheat mitigation tools or policies. If I was a hardcore PVP gamer, this would make ESO a non-starter.
- AvA has been left to rot by ZOS.
- Promiscuous guild culture. So many players are part of multiple guilds/factions and join/leave guilds on whims or when things become challenging.

If ESO AvA was played regularly by hundreds of thousands of players, maintaining a hardcore guild wouldn't be as difficult.

Satiar

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Leading is a second job is you plan for longevity. I recommend hiring an HR officer.

I disagree tbh. Whilst it's good to delegate tasks I don't think recruitment is one of them which should be. Making sure you get the right people into your group (depending on your groups goals) is the main part on determining success needs to be a clear voice on what the expectations are etc and that normally comes best from the main lead.

Brining people up to speed however is something which should definately be delegated not only for class knowledge reasons but also time.

It entirely depends how you structure your guild though. Mass recruitment vs Referral etc

Most guilds fall apart due to lack of performance(results not lag). People get discouraged/rage and stop attending and slowly the guild fades. (Especially if the leader is the one to be discouraged)

I spent a lot - and I do mean a lot - of effort trying to build up and train secondary players who could be crown in Hijinx before I retired from guild leadership. It gave the guild a bit of longevity past my retirement, but in the end it still faded and those players dispersed to the guilds we know today.

It's really, really, really hard to get a guild comfortable with secondary, tertiary, etc raid leaders. At the same time the need for other guild officers (such as myself in the past) to sit down, shut up, and let crown be crown is very hard to sit comfortable with. The desire to provide input, to say 'you didn't quite do it the way I would', etc. Avoiding a clash of personalities is a huge endeavor.

In the end, I just take pride in the personal accomplishments of those whom I've helped step up and take the reigns.

As an aside -- Can we also talk about how incredibly stressful that being crown in a high end guild is in this game? Due to how split second some of the decisions need to be, with a wipe or a victory just a hair's breadth away from each other at times, and how fast paced everything can be and how overwhelmingly large the enemy numbers can be, it is absolutely brutal at times.

There's a reason I had to retire. For my own good.

I never minded the combat pace. I disliked certain metas but overall I think the pace made it exciting. It was absolutely work though. I think you would have enjoyed leading the destro meta even less than when we were dodging ground oils together.

Agrippa_Invisus

zyk wrote: »

I think the reason it's so hard to build and maintain a PVP guild in ESO is because the community is so tiny. Why is it tiny?

- The kind of player who enjoys ESO instance-based ezmode PVE probably doesn't like open world AvA.
- No modern cheat mitigation tools or policies. If I was a hardcore PVP gamer, this would make ESO a non-starter.
- AvA has been left to rot by ZOS.
- Promiscuous guild culture. So many players are part of multiple guilds/factions and join/leave guilds on whims or when things become challenging.

If ESO AvA was played regularly by hundreds of thousands of players, maintaining a hardcore guild wouldn't be as difficult.

There are days I really, really miss DAoC's old school RVR system.

Seeing groups with matching cloaks swooping down on you meant something. You knew it was a guild group, and guilds were tightly knit. If you had a toon on one realm, the other two were locked to that account on that server.

And some of the biggest controversies were about CSRs finding and stepping on cheaters. And they were not quiet about it either. A cheater got banned and Mythic would TELL you why that dude was gone. A few people had their reps utterly ruined on my server, and glad to see it.

Magus

zyk wrote: »

I think the reason it's so hard to build and maintain a PVP guild in ESO is because the community is so tiny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKie-vgUGdI

Vilestride

zyk wrote: »

I think the reason it's so hard to build and maintain a PVP guild in ESO is because the community is so tiny. Why is it tiny?

- The kind of player who enjoys ESO instance-based ezmode PVE probably doesn't like open world AvA.
- No modern cheat mitigation tools or policies. If I was a hardcore PVP gamer, this would make ESO a non-starter.
- AvA has been left to rot by ZOS.
- Promiscuous guild culture. So many players are part of multiple guilds/factions and join/leave guilds on whims or when things become challenging.

If ESO AvA was played regularly by hundreds of thousands of players, maintaining a hardcore guild wouldn't be as difficult.

I think I've heard you talk about it before but another aspect lacking in ESO pvp is the almost non existent competitive fights. And the less top end guilds there are this effect snowballs and becomes even more of a deterant.

The game lacks any incentive to find fights against players relative to your skill level. Which again doesn't help the population of new players starting out.

It means nothing to fight 10v40 in a keep against people who are not organized and yet it's more AP. Where as if you were to travel cross map to seek out another 10 man group you heard were doing the same thing you would get half as much actual reward.

Of course the latter is far more personally rewarding but it would be nice if the game had some mechanical element that promoted this competitive parity.

Etaniel

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

I think the reason it's so hard to build and maintain a PVP guild in ESO is because the community is so tiny. Why is it tiny?

- The kind of player who enjoys ESO instance-based ezmode PVE probably doesn't like open world AvA.
- No modern cheat mitigation tools or policies. If I was a hardcore PVP gamer, this would make ESO a non-starter.
- AvA has been left to rot by ZOS.
- Promiscuous guild culture. So many players are part of multiple guilds/factions and join/leave guilds on whims or when things become challenging.

If ESO AvA was played regularly by hundreds of thousands of players, maintaining a hardcore guild wouldn't be as difficult.

There are days I really, really miss DAoC's old school RVR system.

Seeing groups with matching cloaks swooping down on you meant something. You knew it was a guild group, and guilds were tightly knit. If you had a toon on one realm, the other two were locked to that account on that server.

And some of the biggest controversies were about CSRs finding and stepping on cheaters. And they were not quiet about it either. A cheater got banned and Mythic would TELL you why that dude was gone. A few people had their reps utterly ruined on my server, and glad to see it.

Yeah, maybe if we'd been locked to our factions from the start and unable to communicate with the others, then we could have had a healthy pvp environment. There would always be hardcore guilds trying to defend their realm's honour and fighing for the top spot.

Sadly it was not the case.
On the other hand, this system allowed us to meet a lot of nice people on all sides.
But then again that argument isn't even worth much, as there are plenty of people on DC that I didn't meet and who could've been as good friends as those I met on AD side !

HaroniNDeorum

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

As an aside -- Can we also talk about how incredibly stressful that being crown in a high end guild is in this game? Due to how split second some of the decisions need to be, with a wipe or a victory just a hair's breadth away from each other at times, and how fast paced everything can be and how overwhelmingly large the enemy numbers can be, it is absolutely brutal at times.

There's a reason I had to retire. For my own good.

Agree, always thinking in do the best for your guild and in some point of certain fights as crown, you lose the "i need to have fun" part and just focus in "my guildies needs to have fun, performance very well and win this fight"; i dont know if it happens to other crowns but it happens to me very often, also i am relatively new as group/guild leader (maybe 1 year); Someone said about its like part time job, i agree, it feels like a part time job.

Agrippa_Invisus

HaroniNDeorum wrote: »

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

As an aside -- Can we also talk about how incredibly stressful that being crown in a high end guild is in this game? Due to how split second some of the decisions need to be, with a wipe or a victory just a hair's breadth away from each other at times, and how fast paced everything can be and how overwhelmingly large the enemy numbers can be, it is absolutely brutal at times.

There's a reason I had to retire. For my own good.

Agree, always thinking in do the best for your guild and in some point of certain fights as crown, you lose the "i need to have fun" part and just focus in "my guildies needs to have fun, performance very well and win this fight"; i dont know if it happens to other crowns but it happens to me very often, also i am relatively new as group/guild leader (maybe 1 year); Someone said about its like part time job, i agree, it feels like a part time job.

Yup. Speaking from experience --

1) Get a second. Someone you trust to be crown a healthy portion of the time. Train someone if you have to. You need time off from time to time, and someone to pass the torch to if you lose the ability to spend as much time in the game.

2) Take time off for yourself. Do stuff that you want to do for fun. Play another video game sometimes. Go solo from time to to time. Do a dungeon. Watch a movie. Whatever.

3) Don't lead for too many hours in a row. Too long with too much stress in one sitting is unhealthy.

4) Do stuff you think is fun when leading, not just what everyone else wants. At least from time to time. More than once we went to a buff / dead server and played 'juggle the scroll' in the home keeps of the dominant faction. No stress because who cares what the final result is, and lots of fun silly fights.

5) Surround yourself with people you like. Don't keep the jerkface around who is irritating to deal with but is a decent healer. Just move on and train a new player instead of dealing with drama. The alternate version of this rule is: NO DRAMA. Get rid of the folks who cause it toot sweet.

KamoChameleon

I can answer that @Derra .....because people want to 1vX large groups of people and think that they should be able too.

MipMip

Etaniel wrote: »

Yeah, maybe if we'd been locked to our factions from the start and unable to communicate with the others, then we could have had a healthy pvp environment. There would always be hardcore guilds trying to defend their realm's honour and fighing for the top spot.

Sadly it was not the case.
On the other hand, this system allowed us to meet a lot of nice people on all sides.
But then again that argument isn't even worth much, as there are plenty of people on DC that I didn't meet and who could've been as good friends as those I met on AD side !

I disagree... I feel that the independence of my guild from a faction (yes of course we play in a faction, but we could just as well play in another, and we could even change on a daily basis if we wanted) strengthens my identification with my guild, and my wish to see it succeed (because my allegiance is unambiguously to my guild)

I also feel that being able to play on different sides (even during the same evening) adds a lot of 'spice' to ESO PvP and creates many good and fun situations.

And being unable to communicate with players in the other factions... to me that would feel more like PvE (fighting 'something') than PvP (fighting someone, a contest of will and skill). It's unlikely that I would play such a game.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

MipMip wrote: »

Etaniel wrote: »

Yeah, maybe if we'd been locked to our factions from the start and unable to communicate with the others, then we could have had a healthy pvp environment. There would always be hardcore guilds trying to defend their realm's honour and fighing for the top spot.

Sadly it was not the case.
On the other hand, this system allowed us to meet a lot of nice people on all sides.
But then again that argument isn't even worth much, as there are plenty of people on DC that I didn't meet and who could've been as good friends as those I met on AD side !

I disagree... I feel that the independence of my guild from a faction (yes of course we play in a faction, but we could just as well play in another, and we could even change on a daily basis if we wanted) strengthens my identification with my guild, and my wish to see it succeed (because my allegiance is unambiguously to my guild)

I also feel that being able to play on different sides (even during the same evening) adds a lot of 'spice' to ESO PvP and creates many good and fun situations.

And being unable to communicate with players in the other factions... to me that would feel more like PvE (fighting 'something') than PvP (fighting someone, a contest of will and skill). It's unlikely that I would play such a game.

I think the time for faction pride is somewhat over currently as well unless many changes were made to the game.

Agree with much of Mips post.

Basically if you can find good fights on a faction it's nice to stay there if fights start to become stale switching faction for an evening can help a lot to make the game feel fresher and give you different challenges to face.

Aelakhaii_De_Mythos

Nice initiative and interesting to listen to.

You folks should do one about what changes you think is needed in open world pvp to make it more enticing for the general player base. Could be anything from offensive/defensive siege scenarios to campaign rewards, changes to overall gameplay or whatever.
Having in mind the developers philosophy of making open eorld pvp casual friendly.


If the developers should listen to anyone it's you folks.

Lexxypwns

wtb forum pvp thread... we either need some VE vs Drac drama or some NA vs EU drama please, thanks

Vilestride

Aelakhaii_De_Mythos wrote: »

Nice initiative and interesting to listen to.

You folks should do one about what changes you think is needed in open world pvp to make it more enticing for the general player base. Could be anything from offensive/defensive siege scenarios to campaign rewards, changes to overall gameplay or whatever.
Having in mind the developers philosophy of making open eorld pvp casual friendly.


If the developers should listen to anyone it's you folks.

We have something planned that should suit your liking but it's a ways off coming to fruition. Hold tight.

Jawasa

@Lexxypwns there allready is one running as we speak.

Lexxypwns

Jawasa wrote: »

@Lexxypwns there allready is one running as we speak.

It's like 4 posts away from being locked. If we get this one started now it'll be extra salty when I need it

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Back home and finally got my pc to work rendering this (even without a graphics card)

Episode 3: How to train your dragons.
https://youtu.be/qYAJ5Ev-NXM

Hope you like it and apologies for the delay.

Vilestride

Slacking.

Rohamad_Ali

Good quality video and good dialogue . I am not going to knock large raid PVP commentary because Cyrodiil was built for large battles and those can be fun . ..when the server can handle it lol . This was a nice new form of entertainment and thank you for posting these .

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Good quality video and good dialogue . I am not going to knock large raid PVP commentary because Cyrodiil was built for large battles and those can be fun . ..when the server can handle it lol . This was a nice new form of entertainment and thank you for posting these .

Glad you enjoyed it. Agree about the performance concerns that's why unstacking from your faction is important to not only create interesting fights but less of a performance hit.