Idea: E.P.O.C.H Raid-Aid

Came up with another idea, even though my other one hasn't been given the green light on the airstrip to take off. So here it is: Raid-Aid.

Basically, it's the Agents of the E.P.O.C.H's promise to the community to help in raids if possible.

I'm going to go with an example here. Say Beskar is going for a raid at Nemro's Palace, they find out that Skippy and Sirgunsalot are out for the count, which is one of the big problems with raids. Instead of spending half an hour or more in General Chat trying to track down replacements, they give E.P.O.C.H a call who send over a couple of their guys who are available. Needless to say, Nemro gets a bullet in his brain, or two.

What does this mean for us though? Well, we'd have to advertise ourselves as giving out this system in the first place, so people know who to turn to. This doesn't mean that people would just be on standby, watching the screen with a cup of coffee. No, we'd be doing what we'd normally do but if the mood takes us and you're not doing anything to important, you can offer yourself up to help out.

What's so special about this system though? Well for a start, a quick look around other guilds shows that no one else will help another guild out in the same dedicated scheme (usually because they want to do it all themselves), so we're being unique with this. We're also solidifying our territory in the community. People will know we're about if they take advantage of this scheme. It's also a generally bounty-huntery thing to do, and it gets us closer with other guilds so they can scratch our backs if needs be. We'll also get more roleplay action, as we'll be on a roleplay server.

Other nifty ideas around this include "booking" people in. So if about a couple of days before hand, the Syndicate say they want five of our guys to join in, we can ask around who's interested and who'll be on at the time. Allies aren't missing out though because I think we should have a cap on non-ally guilds for 10 members. Any more and you'll need to be an ally.

And that's it
H2Woah

This has been the idea for the guild from the start Harly (Hence the "Available For Hire" section of the forums) but I appreciate you going into more detail about it.

Personally my idea was to go into a guild recruitment channel and type up a little semi-In Character description about offering our services to not just raids but grouping as well. The way I see it is that we'll meet a lot of the community this way and hopefully open up more possibilties for clients and of course RP. To be honest this would be a great way to improve the guilds reknown for being a mercenary guild and it's something a little bit different to the usual "Guild X are currently recruiting, please visit our site at blah blah blah.com".

I thought available for hire was about allying? Heh, aw well. Back to the drawing board.

Back on topic though, that's exactly my point. We'd put something up on our front page and every now and then have something up on the server channels. Getting into the community should be one of our top priorities because it would open up so many doors.

Well tbh Harly I'm glad you brought it up cause I think it''s about time I went into more detail about E.P.O.C.H's services on that section, both IC and OOC.

Harlequin2 wrote:

Getting into the community should be one of our top priorities because it would open up so many doors.

Here, here!

Yeah, probably something for the wiki I suppose. Still, even though this is already in place perhaps we should keep it up in case anyone has any thoughts pertaining to the subject?

Great idea H2!

I've already done some of that with the Wiki (being >>HERE<< and >>HERE<<) but I also fully agree we should put our services on display in more public areas, such as SWTOR.com as per your suggestion.

Would like to see how raiding is before we start putting people with a group of goofs. IMO guilds that don't have the people/skill/dedication required to be in a raid have no business raiding. Now I know how elitist that sounds but I’ve been in guilds that offer raid help for allies and I’ve seen it tare some alliances apart. Raiding can be a stressful enough environment without the addition of "outsiders". Another thing I don't like about stuff like this is if there are lockout periods then that’s x, y, and z members of our guild that can't come in if WE need them. however there are also times where I’ve seen a system like this work; primarily it’s when guild A has progressed so much further than guild B that members from A can no longer get items that they would like to have. In cases like this guild A will offer the members that still need an item a chance to go with guild B under the pretense that guild A gets first pick of the item they need. This allows guild B to progress and get the new items from the boss that A doesn't want and allows A to round out its members. Anything other than this I would be leery of what with ninjas and flamers out there it’s easy for a lie or miscommunication to break a good guild's reputation or for friends to part ways because of a bad raid night.

I'm quite agreeing with Random, shuldn't we wait to see how it's handled first?

Well tbh (and correct me if I'm wrong here) Harl is just throwing the idea out there for us to discuss and consider. We can't do much until the game actually launches with regards to this anyway because SWTOR may even redesign how raids will work (compared to other mmos) for all we know.

But saying it is something we can offer is O.K. because we can work out the finer points of how we'll promote such a service once we know what options we have available to us.

Caution is advisable, but the idea is sound.

Lunarwolf wrote:

Well tbh (and correct me if I'm wrong here) Harl is just throwing the idea out there for us to discuss and consider.

As with all my ideas, that is the truth.

But I agree as well, a lot of this is based on actually getting the system right. We'll have to wait and see how raids are handled and if indeed the majority of the community will need raid-aid in the first place.

We should come up with a list of roles we could carry out tbh, this is a good one to add along with elimintaions and spying etc

I wouldn't have thought of it as a role. More a group wide commitment to the community? Sounds strange but I don't think just a few select people should help others.

Harlequin2 wrote:

Lunarwolf wrote:

Well tbh (and correct me if I'm wrong here) Harl is just throwing the idea out there for us to discuss and consider.

As with all my ideas, that is the truth.

And as all my critics, it's based on my own input to the discussion.

I anyway feel it's too early to discuss this outside of the guild and use it as guild promotion. It's indeed interesting to discuss it within the guild as we'd like to know who will be interested in high-end PvE. For instance, I'll gladly help and tag along but don't espect me to be one of the mando from SWG who solo DWB or any big instance...

Harlequin2 wrote:

I wouldn't have thought of it as a role. More a group wide commitment to the community? Sounds strange but I don't think just a few select people should help others.

I mean like a guild Role Harl but I suppose 'role' is the wrong word more like service, like we discussed tracking people down as a service we could offer this would also be one !

Now apart from that I'm in both camps, a) I think its a good idea and could benifit both us and the community, we could get raid items and increase our reputaion get more RP events etc etc

but b) I'd say it to early to actively promote this yet, i know getting the foot in the door early would be good but I'd suggest just putting this info on our Frontpage inside our guild aims etc, I'd promote it activly alot closer the the games release with everything else that we do (spying etc) becuase we'll hopfully know alot more about servers and that way we can focus our resources and impress the people that matter.

Also we should also make some rules about it, yes we could do this but Mr Random has some good points, we should vet guilds so if we have a bad experience with one we black list them, make a timetable so no raids are overlapping with ours and make a roter of people who help so we dont have people feeling obliged to help out other guilds becuase we promise them to do so. (Which is my personal concern with a small guild we dont want to be over stetching ourselves timewise, we'll want to do our own things at times then level up/do missions with our level groups, + do our raids and our RP events, we dont want to then obligate ourselves to help other guilds raid at any time they ask).

Anyway I like the idea overall and I think we sould add it to the guild lore but update it and refine it as we go along and on a side note make an active promotion of the guild and its services towards game release on (hopefully) the server forum

Personally i don't like the idea of helping other guilds but if the idea is to help people numerous guilds i was in on WoW had pug nights where a few of their top people led a raid that they were well beyond and they would use these pugs to test potential new guild members as well as help gear alts and the general populace. I always liked this because you can't always tell skill with a gear check and it also gave the guilds a great pr spin cause they would build a reputation as compitent raiders that got the job done. That and just hosting a pug is a no stress type of thing, if people start getting nasty you can just walk out and if something comes up a pug is something your guild doesn't HAVE to do its just a polite gesture. When dealing with guilds a guild can end up leaning on another as if it were a crutch and though its suppose to be temporary it can cause problems between the leadership say group a cant help b for (insert reason) b's leadership then tells its raiders they can't raid that day/weekend because of it or maybe they pick up pugs to fill the spot then the raid turns into an all night wipe fest and b's raiders start to blame a for bailing. In general i just don't like inter guild work unless its pvp but also just to put such a thing together we would need: more raiders than average higher skill than average finish faster less wipes better gear - with the pug thing you just need more people than want to join the guild/be part of our raids.

I'd be 100% to help our allies guild like ROM or HoD...

@ Randomfest: Wow. Quite a mouthful. Well, this will be quite different to PUGs (or Pick Up Groups for those without a jargon dictionary handy), as our "hirers" would choose us to make up their group rather than make a PUG. With our option, you know who you're getting. With a PUG, you could get anyone from a wookie to a sarlaac.
For the guild leaning thing. Yes that is a very big problem that faces alliances such as ourselves (can't find a good example though). However, we're good with our friends and everyone is very independant. Cross-Guild events are entirely optional and and both guilds can function without them (such as PtS for example).
I'm also not sure how others feel on the subject but work between guilds should stretch from PvP as Random said to Roleplaying to Raids. We should be able to do it all and from my point of view it's better when you have more different people in the barrel (within reason of course).

@ Soude: Our allies would most probably be the primary recipients of "Raid-Aid". They'd be the ones who'd know most about it anyway. If you're saying you'd only help allies, that's very understandable although I believe we should be taking a look at the bigger picture with the entire community.

Harlequin2 wrote:

With a PUG, you could get anyone from a wookie to a sarlaac.

Wookies too need love... *sigh* Doshan slavers ^^'

Harlequin2 wrote:

@ Soude: Our allies would most probably be the primary recipients of "Raid-Aid". They'd be the ones who'd know most about it anyway. If you're saying you'd only help allies, that's very understandable although I believe we should be taking a look at the bigger picture with the entire community.

I've never hide to anybody that my main interest in any MMO is the RP interaction. I don't care much about dungeons, dragons and high-end stuff. But I'll help any guildie or ally in need as I think it's part of our duty within the guild. I'm not gonna say I won't do it reluctantly from time to time... as I'll surely be reluctant to grind my levels...
This is a side activity to me, first and main focus: RP

Just to add to the above comments, the hiring of your good selves to other guilds is entirely optional. At the end of the day you're paying for the game so play it as you wish. The only real requirement for this guild is that members are friendly, helpful, stay active and are prepared to RP regularly.

Personally I'll be jumping at most opportunities to make myself available for mercenary work as I feel thats a very important aspect of why I started the guild. I'm looking forward to meeting the community and I see it as a HUGE opportunity to open up cross-guild RP in general. That said I would prefer to quest and raid with the guild when the opportunity arises because I don't think I'd be doing my job right otherwise! Actually thats one of the reason we started the buddy system so that members can level one (or more) of their characters together on a regular basis without having to find PUGs.

i dunno i guess i'm just reluctant because i've almost never seen such a system when in use (typically its just an understanding between alliances that if you need 1-2 people for a night that people on the waiting list to get in can go to the other guild's raid) lead to anything positive and i can actually remember three seperate occassion where a guild i was in using such a system ended up getting bad blood between them and taking each others members eventually causing both guilds to collapse or at the very least the environment changed to creat a new guild under the same name. Its only due to my experience with these systems that i'm apprehensive, honestly i think its a cool system and i'd love to do it - on paper. Just because things should be cool though doesn't mean they are. I would just recommend going forward with extreme caution xP Thats another reason i suggested the pug thing because i've seen it work very very well for numerous guild. However most guilds i was in were either experienced raiding guilds ( top 10 ) and one hardcore pve guild xP ( top 3 ) and normally on PvP servers so the attitude was very cut throat having hardly played on PvE/RP servers i'm not sure how seperate the ideals are or how forgiving people are, we always did 3 strikes your out and could be lowered depending on severity of the mistake xP