Greedy Goblin

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Prizes and the new alt rules

The most criticized rule of the guild is the alt rule. I originally started with no alts at all, relaxed to one.

My reasoning is simple: if you spend time with alts, you spend less time with your main. The result is a bunch of useless lol-characters, motivated by the false sense of progression. I think it's still true in a sense that there is a strong correlation between number of characters and the strength of the main. However there is no point using correlation, when you have access to the data itself. Also, while I could surely not gear 3 characters ready to raid, others play more, or don't PvP, or don't make gold or do better than I and can. No point locking them out.

So the new idea (idea means something under discussion) is to allow as many alts as you want, but from those, only one can be incomplete. It would be managed with the following ranks:
  • Lowbie: technical rank for rerollers who did not get their 100g yet as they are below lvl 20/60
  • Member: everyone who keeps the chat rules can have a character in the guild, just like it was in the first version of the rules. No performance demands made to members.
  • RaiderRbg: these characters proved to be "ready". You can have as many characters in this rank as you want, as long as they are ready. Being in this rank is not necessary to come raid or rbg, but give priority, except on 4.0 boost raids which are called boost for a reason.
  • Alt: this will be an obsolete rank and will be removed after a month. In this month you can promote your main to RaiderRbg and your alt to member, or the alt to RaiderRbg. After a month the remaining alts will be kicked.
To get promoted to RaiderRbg you must have:
  • All pieces gemmed and enchanted (top gem/enchant not needed)
  • All glyph slots filled
  • Gathering professions maxed for the bonus, crafting professions leveled to the point where they give the bonus, and use the bonus too
  • For raiders: 340 average ilvl with PvP pieces counting -1 average, for rBG players 3000 resilience. It's really not a high demand
  • Participation in one raid/rbg without spectacular fails (some fails are OK, everyone fails, even me, there is difference between CCing the wrong healer and leaving a base alone
There would be no separate alt rank, as it doesn't really matter who sits behind the character, if the character itself has proven to be useful. The name of the "main" will be still written to the officer note, so when /guildinfo shows that the newly invited char is an alt, the main must validate the alt, to prevent socials to get several "members" invited.

10 comments:

nightgerbil said...

I dont know what the point is of this? I had to read it twice to "get it". I use alts for two reasons: a) I am crap at making gold so having the professions leveled on alts means I am independent and can function. b) I am current on the state of various deadly enemies (ie warlocks) so I am a better pvper. Under your rules your basically saying an irregular player like myself can have 1 char in the guild, the rest of my alts have to stay in the lolsocial guild I house them in, but someone who can kit every alt out to raid ie the livia/yrene combo can bring in as many as they like? with the demand they bring them to a raid/rbg on regular occasions. Why? what does the guild gain from this?

I have been in hardcore guilds that insist all my alts belong to them, that way theres no hiding and I will always be on their guild chat. I have seen guilds saying no alts (or just one) to prevent the distractions as you yourself point out. When I played and lived and breathed a hunter I was better for it by far. Then again, when I was doing that I had guild crafters propping me up in ways you wouldnt tolerate(ofc I crafted for "free" as part of that).

Still my question Gevlon: why cant the guild use my blacksmith and the gold it will generate doing its molten front dailies? in return for which I get the guilds bountiful bags (its also my miner). I dont want to raid with it. I suck at pvp with it, not least as its in terrible gear. It would still benefit the guild to have it in it to some degree though, so why the arbitary line?

If your going to relax your alt rule (something that did make sense by the way the more I thought about it) you made the right call by saying one only. Now this new rule... I dont see it frankly. I dont think it makes sense and I think you should think again about either a strict no alt policy or just allow all alts within the guild.

Gevlon said...

Generating gold via dailies is a terrible waste of time. You should make gold with some business. You should learn to make gold. I gladly help. The point is exactly to keep low effectivity "lol" alts out of the guild.

Squishalot said...

Why are PvP gear for raiding requirements only -1 average? There's a much bigger stat difference than -1, for the purposes of being 'raid ready'.

For what it's worth, I think you've struck a good balance with this change. It's a bit complicated to manage and enforce, but it's suitable for the needs of your guild.

Trelocke said...

@squishalot re: ilvl

Not really. The honor PvP pieces generally provide you significantly more of your primary stat than JP PvE pieces. In exchange you lose a secondary stat worth about 60% of your primary stat. It means you have to gem/enchant for things like hit cap, but the tradeoff isn't *that* significant, especially if it's only a few pieces. Non-bear tanks see the most significant loss while healers see the least.

As a mostly PvP guild, we run troll heroics all the time in full/nearly full PvP gear and roflstomp the place. I would say -1 ilvl per pvp piece is fair.

The one major exception to all this is trinkets. A PvP trinket in the place of a PvE trinket is almost always a very significant stat loss. I haven't run the numbers or seen comparisons but I wouldn't be surprised if PvP trinkets were worth half or even less than comparable PvE trinkets...even the primary stat on-use ones.

Eun said...

I like this idea. I have 3 level 85's all whome are ready for raiding 365 ilvl and above. I don't always have time to spend where I can commit to raiding, specially at usual raid times, thats when the people I care for in real life are all around together, I can't always be sitting on the computer having to ignore them and everything they say because I'm in the middle of a "game". My point being I make lots of characters ready to raid, so I have many alts.

I've often seen raid leaders in the guild asking for certain types of classes for runs, whether it be healers, DD or tanks and often my main character who's in the guild is saved and I offer to come on an alt but Im refused. That makes no sense to me, my alt is geared just as well as my main. (almost) and most of the time far better than other players in the raid.

PVP Gear is acceptable for raiding. Especially so for DD. I can make 17k single target dps consistently in full PVP gear on my PVP specced arms warrior. I can also do the same and more on my Death knight. Both are PVE specced fr tanking and generally take a lot less dmg than most main tanks from other guild I pug with who have nearly 200k. People often see my 150k UB health pool and think Im a "noob", then in a boss fight such as the new boss in baradin hld (no its not a hard fight but just as an example) I will take the fisrt breath and the last one, yet I'll take 15% less overall dmg than the higher ilvl geared tank who has 40k HP more than me.

Characters are what the players make of them. Whether Im on my best geared main or my 3rd geared alt. I always pull my weight to the best of my ability. Whether Im n my main or my alt, I'm gernerally always top 3 on the meters for healing/damage, I do this while ccing, peeling, snaring.

If you invite a player to the guild who is capable, chances are he/she will be on their alts equally as capable (s long as they are greared), more chice of classes available, more chances of success, less chance of failed raids due to insufficient players and more money to guild bank.

WIN - WIN if you ask me.

Anonymous said...

From my calculations a ilvl 371 pvp item will roughly resemble a 353 pve one (as resilience is a "dead stat").

-Yuliya

Samus said...

You are not addressing the key reason you had to relent on alts in the first place. That is, you cannot stop people from having alts, you can only stop those alts from being in the guild.

I think you need to be more clear on what benefit you see from excluding these alts from The PuG. Your rules will not stop their existence or how much time people waste on them, they will simply find another temporary guild for their alts.

Anonymous said...

Seems reasonable. Clearly there's an ongoing demand for alts to be allowed into the guild, and I applaud Gevlon's attempts to accommodate players.

This rule change, if it goes through, will allow additional, capable characters into the guild, while still maintaining some barrier to entry.

@nightgerbil, it doesn't look like you'd need to raid regularly to get the rank, just once to demonstrate competence.

The PvP -1 avg ilvl penalty makes sense, too, the new 371 honor gear gives a pretty decent primary stat bonus over 346/353/359 gear, and the "proper gemming" requirement will prevent toons from rolling into raids with 4200 resil.

I'd like to echo Trelocke in his assessment of PvP trinkets, though. They are really very poor compared to PvE alternatives.

Alrenous said...

Didn't you start the PuG before guild XP?

Before that system, swapping toons in and out of the guild was a minor consideration. Now, toons lose significant advantages by doing so.

Before, if you got bored of one main and wanted to swap to another, you could just do it. Now, it's a huge risk.

Similarly, before, getting kicked for inactivity was just an accounting move. Re-join at your convenience. Now...

So yeah, alts good.

Ermak said...

For now I don't see anything bad with the new version. Am I allowed to have 2 (maxed) gathering professions on my Raid/RBG ranked?
When will it be applied?