#1 - Feb. 5, 2013, 10:09 a.m.
Background
This game, IMO, is about relationships. Personally I am a big PvE fan and relish progressing through new raid content with the friends I have been playing with over the past years. At the core of the success of this process is the guild. However raiding as it currently stands could be optimised so that the variability of the availability of guild members could match more easily to the lack of flexibility inherent in the current 10/25 system. Creating a system where raids a much less likely to be cancelled and avoiding the guild-death that can often occur as a result.
The problem
I used to run a 25 man raid team. This can quite quickly turn into a full time job recruiting/maintaining a suitable roster. However it has one main advantage, it makes filling raid spots a "smoother" process. Since you can over recruit and be able to more easily accommodate raiders not being able to attend. You can do this in 10 man, however it means often you spend a lot of time rotating members in and out and sitting out certain raids.
This is the crux of the problem, you have 13 active members to recruit to ensure you always have enough for a raid. One night all 13 turn up, suddenly you have members you really value and want in the raid not being able to. Your options of rotating members or sitting them can potential create divides in the guild and drops their motivation. A little like being picked last for that sports team, or not at all!
Some guilds try and have only 10-11 members and insist that members have 100% attendance. This may work for a while, but as soon as you have 9 members as a result of player burn out suddenly you have to pug/recruit someone who does not know your tactics and needs to learn the raid groups synergy.
So to recap, the FIXED raid group size creates several issues
- Needing to recruit more members than spaces, potentially creating demotivation and lack of player enjoyment as players need to sit out of raids.
Players not being able to make certain raids and deciding to cancel as a raid as they are only 9 and pugging a member is not suitable for progression. Essentially 9 ppl unable to play even though they really want to.
The solution.... Flex-Raid!
Instead of the size of raids being fixed around 10 or 25 you allow flexibility around these numbers. Now unlimited flexibility is not realistic, since mechanics are gauged around certain size of raid groups. However I am talking about flexibility +/- 10/20%.
What does that mean? Well in a 10 man group you could raid between 8-12 people. In a 25 man perhaps 22-28. The zone would then scale the damage/health pools by a corresponding amount, clearly there would need to be some judgement exercised as often 12 ppl will mean 2 dps or a dps/healer and 8 would mean prob 2 less dps since the amount of tanks and healers will be less flexible.
It would mean though that as a guild you can recruit 12 ppl, if all turn up? Great you raid as 12, if some don't turn up? You raid as less. What happens at end of patch/summer burn out? You raid as 8 potentially until you manage to recruit suitable people.
The big picture is that players who are doing the right things, turning up being motivated are nearly always rewarded with a raid spot and raids would be a lot more resilient to members going on holiday, needing to work w/e. I firmly believe this would make a substantive difference in the outcomes of players and guilds as a whole. It is also would help potentially in a 10 man guild making the step up to 25 man raiding as you could people more gradually to reach that step.
