This whom to roster for your spots, like wow.com talked about a few weeks ago – filling spots based on attendance, rotation, seniority, or proficiency. This is about when you fill your slots.
This tension occurred to me when I was reading about how Psynister’s guild does rostering (and how other guilds do rostering) versus how my guild does it.
My guild:
- People interested in a raid sign up.
- About 24 hours in advance, the raid leader marks raiders confirmed or standby, and locks the event.
- If you are on confirmed, you are expected to show up, or provide notice.
- If you are on standby,
- you can show up, earn EP, and be first in line as a sub if a confirmed player doesn’t show.
- you can choose to go to the movies instead.
Alternative system used by some other guilds
- You sign up.
- Nobody is confirmed.
- At raid time, you are invited or you are not. You need to be there, ready to go, though there is a chance you will not be called on to raid.
- Methods of selection/nonselection vary, as do “rewards” for being on standby.
It seems to me that our guild’s method is more respectful of raiders’ time and busy lives. However, it seems that the “select at raid time” method is more likely to produce a successful group.
If someone who is confirmed no-shows in my guild, we are kinda screwed, especially if it’s a tank or healer – even if we had plenty of people on “standby.” There’s no guarantee that the standby people will be online and ready to go. They’ve already made other plans for the evening based on the assumption that they will not be needed.
On the other hand, if we have to pick people at raid time, we don’t have to worry about no-shows. We simply pick from the people who signed up who happen to be online at the time. People who might have otherwise gone to the movies if they were certain they were not raiding will be showing up for a chance to raid. This method has a higher probability of getting a viable raid off the ground at go-time when spots are not assured.
Personally I think it’s disrespectful of raiders to pick at raid time. If you ask for sign ups, you are asking for a commitment from the raider to be there… but you are not willing reciprocate by making a commitment to the raider to tell the raider whether or not he has a spot. Further, I think stringing people along until raid time is incompatible with casual guild principles – because it doesn’t fully acknowledge the difficulty of casual raiders in devoting multiple nights to WoW.
One guy I raided with observed: “My wife gives me 2 nights to play WoW. If I login on one of those nights and the raid doesn’t happen, I’ve still ‘used’ one of my nights.” That’s the predicament of the casual raider: needing to know ahead of time, planning accordingly, and making each snippet of playtime count.
When does your guild choose raid members, and do you feel that it is fair?
We do it like your guild, except that subs are expected to be online on time as much as confirmed raiders. They'll get some EP, and once it's confirmed that they won't be needed, they can go off to do whatever. It strikes me as a good compromise, because it means that the subs are guaranteed to be there if you need them, but they can still do some planning ahead based on the assumption that they *probably* won't get to raid that night.
What happens if the subs are not there? What happens if the confirmed raiders are not there? Do you have penalties?
Yeah, though I have to admit I don't actually know what they are at the moment.
I think if you don't show and don't give a good reason afterwards either, you simply go down in priority when it comes to making the groups for the next couple of raids.
We raid three nights a week and raiders are expected to be available for all three nights or have it count against their attendance. We have a 70% attendance requirement.
Raiders are scheduled as Active or Alt a week at a time (three nights). If all 25 actives don't show, we pick from the alternates to fill the group roles. Whether you are active or alt, you are expected to show up for raid time or it counts against attendance.
We expect everyone to be there. If you can't make it, you post: it's sort of an inverse sign-up. If a player misses more than 1/3 raids per week (average) over a period of time, their status as a raider comes into question and we see if that player should be moved to casual (non-raider) status.
I am very happy with this set-up. It allows for vacations or emergencies without really harming the rest of the guild, and ensures that raids are filled most of the time (excepting major holidays, which generally just get canceled). When we have more raiders than slots, we rotate based on what roles are needed, or who needs drops from certain bosses.
When I ran with "sign up if you want to raid" guilds, we had more absentees than not, especially on nights where a boss didn't drop the loot most people wanted (but that some needed) or where players didn't want to put in the wipes learning new content.
When you say you had more "absentees" for the "sign up if you want to go" system – do you mean that (1) people didn't sign up for stuff they didn't want to attend or (2) people signed up for stuff but didn't show up when it was go-time?
For my guild's culture, it's their prerogative to not sign up for any given event, but no-showing is not ok. However, I completely understand having problems getting people to affirmatively sign up for "learning wipe nights." I've had that issue myself, that I wanted to log off and do ANYTHING rather than do Mimiron one more stinkin time.
My old guild used the "sign-up if you'll be there" method and my current guild uses "show up or signout" method. Both can work very well as long as it's tailored to the guild culture.
In my old guild, we had a lot of people who were on limited time, who could only be on x nights a week. They would pick their raids based on the content they wanted to do and sign up. And they would know a good 24 hours beforehand whether or not they would be going to the raid. Attendance was rarely an issue. New recruits who signed up but didn't show were given a swift /gkick. Older members knew the score and only signed up if they were planning on being there.
My current guild uses signouts. Everyone is expected to be online at raid and raid composition is decided during invites, but it's loosely based on seniority. Raid spots are earned. But with most of us being pretty young, we'd be online anyway, whether we plan on raiding or not. And since we don't over recruit, it doesn't take too long to get a raid spot.
That said, even though our 25 mans use the signout system, 10 mans or alt run systems are to the discretion of whoever's coordinating the raid.
We raid on the same two nights, every week. But we only have 12 people total who want to raid, and the eleventh and twelfth are a recent addition. The way we've worked it is you either have a slot in the raid group, or you don't. Those with a slot are expected to be available on raid nights (which are always the same), regardless of the content. If they're unavailable, they're to tell us as far in advance as possible so we can contact the others and see if they can sub in that night or not.
If you want into the raid group right now, because of how few of us there are, you basically have to wait for a current raider to die IRL, or quit for other reasons, or enrage us to the point of kicking them, or enough people in the guild hit 80 and express an interest in raiding that we can reliably run a 25 man.
It's not necessarily the fairest way to run it, but it's the only way given the number of people able/willing to make the 2-night commitment.
I think it's pretty safe to say that my guild's methods aren't the best. They certainly aren't the worst I've been in, but they're far from the best.
I don't know what the best system would actually be though, as I think every guild could differ in how each method could work. The size of the guild makes a difference, the play style of its members makes a difference, the play times make a difference, and so on.
The method my guild uses apparently worked great when there were only about 12 people in it, but the larger our numbers get, the more it just falls apart. I think it's probably time for a change, but unfortunately that's not my call to make.
We'll see how things go in the future.
I've kind of indirectly been put at the wheel of our guild runs, and raid leading, and in general the "tenative" population of my guild never shows at all. The confirmed raiders tend to show at a 75% rate, and the likelihood of having 9 other people signed up AND show up is just abysmal.
At this point I'm getting to the point where I just mass invite, lock the event. Say "show up if this interest you" and hope.
Poor social guild.