Alternative for minus-DKP penalties?

#0 - Sept. 8, 2008, 4:58 p.m.

Hey peeps,

Our guild is having a slight problem lately. We're a 7/9 BT, 5/5 MH raiding guild, we started off as a social guild 3 years ago and started raiding ZG, MC, BWL, etc. at some point. We never really wanted to become a real hardcore guild, so our progress speed ain't what you call very impressive.

The downside of being so-called 'soccial', 'casual' or 'semi-hardcore' raiding guild is that we can't push our people too much even though it's really needed.
With this I mean, for example, keep your members fully focusses during raids (which is the point of this topic), without using harsh methods.

We're sometimes having issues on bosses like Archimonde and Teron, where 100% focus is required from every single raid member. Though our raiders keep on making these silly mistakes ("oops, was too late with Tear" "agh crap, lag spike!" "I didnt do enough dmg on ghosts, sry guys").
The problem is that it's not just one or two persons who fail at this, but it can be just anyone. So replacing certain persons ain't a real option here.
To improve focus, we tried charging minus-DKP to those who fail at certain bosses (like Archi's Air Burst failure and Teron's Constructs failure = minus 25 DKP).
As we experienced, this ain't the best way to improve focus. People are afraid of failing and getting minus for that, so they either pass for those bosses or complain about the minus DKP system afterwards. This is the last thing we want to happen in a guild like ours.

My question to you, raiders, is:

What do your guilds do to keep the raid focussed? What to do with screw ups? I mean, SOMEthing has to be done after wiping an entire evening on Gorefiend -_- ...
Just give minus-DKP penalties then? Or are there any other/better ways to achieve what we all aim for: 25 focussed member for 3Â½ hours long, 4 evenings a week.

I'd like to hear from you. Please also add what kind of guild you raid with.

Posting on alt for some reason. ;-)

Vaneras

#22 - Sept. 10, 2008, 4:29 p.m.

This is actually a very interesting discussion to follow, so please keep posting your views and suggestions :-)

I personally think it is very true what someone else said in this thread, that sometimes the carrot works better than the whip, but it all depends on the people in the guild of course... If it is a guild with military like structure and discipline, then the carrot is most likely not going to work, whereas the whip will most likely the destroy a social and more relaxed guild.

I have seen plenty of long-time social guilds, like the one Sunray is a member of, run into this problem. Some members of the guild become more ambitious over time, and as such they want to raid and to progress more. Those progress-seeking members will usually at some point always get into conflict with the other guild members, who are very reluctant to change the workings of the guild, because they want to keep the guild relaxed and social in the spirit of which it was founded. So what is the best way to resolve such a situation then? Well that is a good question really, because there is no specific answer.

Many times guilds have fallen apart because no proper solution suitable for everybody in the guild could be found, which have often caused a lot of drama on the realm forums.

I have been in such guilds myself and I have seen quite a few approaches to this problem, some of which have been catastrophic, and others that have worked out pretty well. One of the best solutions, in my opinion, is to split the guild into two guilds; one which remains social and relaxed, and the other goes more hardcore and structured. Such a split can of course be devastating and lead to much conflict if not done right, but if it is being suggested and discussed very openly within the guild and people are given enough time to think about it before having to decide on staying casual or go hardcore, then a split can work out just fine in a way that everybody is happy with. The guilds that have made such splits successfully often keep similar names, and they also often have agreements to allow members from one guild to move to the other, if a member wishes to go from casual to hardcore, or vice versa.