For those willing to humor me, I'd love to start a healthy dialogue about what makes a great guild great. I am talking both generally and specifically. I'm most curious about tactics for inspiring greatness in individual players. How do the best guilds go about doing this?
Are you talking about raid guilds, casual guilds? And what do you mean about greatness in individual players?
EverQuest is a game where knowing is 80% of the battle. So for a raiding guild having the guild full of players who can look at parses, look at Spell data, and logs on their own to be able to figure out things like the optimal disc/spell orders for burns, figure out what stacks optimally or the mechanics of specific AEs or emotes and how to avoid them, etc. The more people in your guild who are reliant on a single person to send them GINA triggers, can’t navigate through zones on their own without having a banner planted, and need every event explained to them before they see it, the worse off your guild is going to be.
What makes a guild great is: #1 the people #2 Active / helpful guildies #3 Content. (if their nothing to do then people wont log in)
Have a standard Enforce the standard You will lose more players from your roster by coddling mediocre player than if you cut them or forced them to apply themselves
Take away what they enjoy most. For a child, her favorite toy if she refuses to be a good listener (what I am going through with my daughter) For an athlete, playing time- they ride the bench, they get DNP- coach decision, they will shape up quick For an EQ raider, raid time. They cannot play with their friends. Loss of DKP as well. They will get better, or they will get replaced.
Most guilds that I have left was for this very reason. Mediocre players that the officer were coddling that was causing us to fall farther and farther behind.
Cat Herders... You need at least 2 in your guild that are good at this, because EQ players during a raid are definitely feline-like. I have been in two great raiding guilds, both have great cat herders for raid leaders. In other raiding guilds, the cat herding was lacking or the guild didn't enforce a standard. I am not nowhere near a great raider, but at least I was there to raid and raid only and not looking at my cellphone (never had one) or trying to watch TV or Netflicks at the same time. I had people in my groups even admit in group speak they screwed up because of TV watching. Very frustrating!! Also, my time is very valuable, so don't waste it. I am sure many of you value time more than anything else, especially if you are older and very active in many things. Even though I was a casualty of enforcing a standard lately, I appreciated the guild doing that. No room for crappy rogues!
1) providing a role model that they can learn to play better from(this would be the carrot), and 2) the constant looming threat of a performance review which if they fail, reduction in rank to casual(this would be the stick).
This is so beyond the truth. there are amazing people who are amazing raiders there are crappy people who are amazing raiders These 2 ^^ have the drive to BE excellent built in. they want to do better, be better There are some amazing people, who are good players, but not Great raiders. This one ^ may want to do better, but may need assistance just to show them little tips and tricks that would help them, but they still need to have the WANT. If the WANT is missing, you can't make them get it. I have an old friend. used to be a good raider.. but he has lost the Want. he doesn't care to put in the extra effort any more.
There is no formula for inspiration. One is either inspired or not. The definition of “great” is ambiguous. A guild can be two expansions behind and still be “great” to some of its members. A guild can be on the cutting edge of content and feel like a crap guild to some. Think of it as managing a ship of sailors. You’re in the middle of the ocean with nothing but one another and your wits to depend on. You have to keep morale up, but there are a couple of sailors spewing venom every day because they’re unhappy about being sailors. You gotta kill that stuff or morale falls. Low morale sinks ships quicker than a hurricane. Additionally, people underperform because of underperformance. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. How do you get the ship across the ocean? The same way a captain would - knock some heads around. Some people respond well to wake-up calls and enforcement of the chain of command. Some do not. Those who do not are not asked to return to the ship once in port. In short, it takes a leader. Leaders are forged. There’s no easy answer. It takes a nuanced approach. And anyone that says you can ignore nuance in leadership is either ignorant or a fool. SOURCE: Was a military leader.