GuildOx - Guild, Character and Loot Rankings
 

Background

The Automated Guild Progress Ranking thread has become dominated by GuildOx discussions so I have had a chat with the admin team and received permission to break out to a specific GuildOx thread.

Introduction

The aim of this thread is to provide a forum in which we can discuss current and upcoming features of GuildOx.com - this includes the Guild Rank, Loot Rank and Toon Rank modules. Feel free to also add suggestions and feature requests.

As the creator of GuildOx, your feedback gives me a great insight into what challenges you are facing and provides me the guidance I need to make the best decisions about the features of the service.

This is not the place to post bug reports or any issues with guild updates. Please visit the GuildOx About page to contact me directly (don't post me a PM on these forums).

I can see why you are concerned about this and it is a very common issue that 10m strict guilds are facing. A similar and potentially bigger issue, is the one where you cannot even have alts running 25m ICC without impacting your 10m strict eligibility.

In a couple of days, I will be making a big announcement regarding a new 10m strict system that GuildOx will be using going into Cataclysm. It is a system that I have had running in the background now for a couple of months and it is looking extremely promising. It will allow you have guilded alts running 25m content without affecting your 10m strict eligibility. Edit: this is permanently on hold given Blizzard's plan to change the raiding system in Cataclysm.

Would you really run ToGC? This is the bit that surprises me a little. I was expecting a fresh new guild to go TOC -> ICC Normal -> ICC Heroic and not even bother with ToGC.

Intent may be there, but from personal experience ToGC quickly falls off as something that is done with regularity. I recently returned to the game after a considerable hiatus, and my guild re-formed at about the same time. Many of us were coming back from an extended break that began around the time Ulduar was released. We had the same progression idea of ToC --> ICC Normal/ToGC --> ICC Heroic, however we quickly scrapped the ToGC off the schedule as the quality of the loot (sans trinkets) was not worth the effort involved, specifically since the ICC Normal loot is much more accessible and is typically superior to ToGC loot. Now that we are focusing on ICC Heroic, ToGC is actually coming back into the conversation, specifically to get the trinkets. Whether or not we actually put in the time...we'll see.

I can't imagine a newly formed guild would really take the time to run ToGC.

Edit for clarity: My guild is a 10-man guild, though we aren't trying to be 10-man strict. The 10-man ToGC gear is the stuff that I was underwhelmed by, not the 25 man.

I'd like to add a few more things to what Glynn said. I'm the GM of <pug> and one of the issues we're having is that you cannot remove someone from your count once they are on there (if that is still true). Also, I was wondering about the numbers and why they are so large for some of the bosses and small for Marrowgar? Marrowgar has a trigger of 8 total but a lot of the other bosses have triggers of 14 or so. Also, the simultaneous triggers seem really high. If you have that many running from you guild its a lot more likely to be a guild run or a combined guild run.

As you said, a major issue is with alts also. We actually had to remove most of our alts because people wanted to pug 25 mans on them. It was actually one of our mages alts that pushed us over the amount of people clearing toc 25 that Mellas keeps referring to. Also, Mellas's guild had to reform because they dropped off the rankings. It does feel like it would be much better to not have to boot alts.

After looking at the guild rankings, it seems like there are only about 200 10 man strict guilds. (looked for even remotely new achievements). I don't know how this compares to 25 man, but it doesn't seem like a very large amount. I wonder if we are excluding so many that our pool is almost too small.

Finally, do you have any plans on rolling out your new system for ICC?

Yeah, we had to go to pretty extraordinary lengths to remain on the rankings. We were pushed off the rankings a few days after our LK kill due to too many alts/non-raiders going to ICC25 (admittedly, a couple of our raiders had ICC25 credit as well). In the end it didn't even matter, since a couple weeks later we lost a few more regulars and had to recruit, making it untenable to form a guild that met the requirements of the GuildOx ranking--a few more of my raiders had gone to ICC25 in the time between being bumped and deciding to reform the guild, since they figured it wouldn't do any harm.
I'm content doing a 'fantasy ranking' for the remainder of the expansion (that is, seeing where we would be on the strict rankings), but there is some disappointment from some of my more competitive-minded players.

I'm very interested to hear what your changes for Cataclysm are going to be, Polar!

Welp, looks like 10 strict is going to be less of an issue in WotLK anyway.

In short: 10 and 25 on the same lockout, similar to how heroic/non-heroic ICC works (switchable per-boss), with normal and heroic also working on the ICC per-boss switchable model (with heroic dropping the same style of scaled-up versions of the same items like ICC/ToGC).

Difficulty balanced so that they're as close as they can manage, and as a result, same items dropping from both versions - 25 man just gets somewhat more loot per-player, along with more badges and gold, in order to incentivize it somewhat.

Initial tier of raids will be split into several smaller raids (5-6 bosses per raid, with two raids, ala SSC/TK in TBC). They like gating, and are likely to continue to use it, but attempt limitations are mostly out, except maybe Algalon-style optional hardmodes. Heroic modes most likely available after beating normal mode.

As a 10 strict raider currently, i'm very happy with pretty much all of the changes (i've been saying it should work like this pretty much since they first announced the 10/25 change back during/before LK beta...)

Same here. And I believe those who think 25-man content will not be as prestigious are going to find themselves mistaken. This change will also probably solve most of the pending 10-man strict questions.

This was kind of how I was thinking/hoping it was going to work in Wrath, before we started hearing any details last time. I'm very pleased with this design decision. It will be very interesting to see how it affects the social aspect of 10 vs 25 raiding (we're better than X because Y), and also how many players/guilds who are not as good as they think they are. I do wonder how much of a backlash we'll see from middling 25 guilds who feel their status is threatened.

I think if they can get the balance right, it will certainly solve the "which is harder" question.

Doesn't it actually make the whole question moot? If 10m and 25m share the same timer, doesn't that just put an end to the "strict" notion? After all, a guild will have no other choice than to be 10 OR 25; the whole point of 10m strict was preventing guilds who did 25 from being ranked higher than guilds who only did 10 because of double-dipping. A single, common ID between 10 and 25 puts an end to this.

This is a pretty big announcement and quite a lot to take in.

I agree that it looks like it will remove the need for a separate 10m strict pool. Blizzard has stated that achievements will no longer be split between 10m and 25m - so the whole concept of 10m rankings (strict or otherwise) may also go out the window, especially if there is no mechanism to differentiate between a 10m and 25m kill.

The challenge I see is whether they can tune the 10m and 25m encounters to be of similar difficulty. We have seen in the past where the 10m and 25m difficulty has been wildly different. (Remember how much more difficult Sarth 3D was on 10m?)

If they can't get the tuning right then 25m guilds may gravitate to running 2x 10m teams just to get their progress achievements up.

It is still early days but exciting ones!

I was specifically referring to the first couple of weeks where a brand new guild of fresh 80s is trying to gear up ASAP. Because ToC and ToGC are different lockouts, for the first couple of weeks, I would definitely encourage this hypothetical guild to clear ToC and as much of ToGC and ICC as possible. Again, this is if you'd like to gear your guild up ASAP for LK & ICC hard-modes.

Also, as a 10m Strict raider who is clearing 11/12 hard-modes, I think it would make sense to loosen the criteria so that the first 4 bosses of 25m ICC normal no longer count against you. The advantage no longer matters and I know from experience that there is probably a lot of recruiting going on at the moment...

Finally, wow at the raiding changes! It is a lot to take in, that is for sure. The "Strict" notion would probably go out the door. I predict guilds like mine will get drummed by a guild like Paragon who will probably be running 5+ 10m raids, but us top 10m Strict guilds should still be competitive.

Thanks all for your comments on what constitutes raid progression. I will be removing TOGC and associated achievements from the progression calculations in the next few days. I will leave TOC (normal) in there to recognise that new level 80 guilds will be running that before ICC.

Note that all of the TOGC achievements will still be available for viewing.

If I do this then there is a chance that some 25m guilds that have only managed to run the first 4 bosses might start appearing on the 10m strict rankings. While it is not a big issue for those 10m strict guilds that are into the heroics, it might annoy some of the lower ranked strict guilds. What do people think?

I doubt it would cause much of a problem. I'm GM of a 10m only guild, ranked server 1st in 3.2 when we were eligible for 10m strict (I decided to let people pug ICC25 in 3.3, it was too much of a headache otherwise), and I seriously don't view the kind of 25m guilds who can't clear further than DBS as competition in 10m.

Heck, even Pr. Putricide on regular 10m is tougher than regular 25M DBS, and I won't even compare HM 10 to regular 25m. I think removing the 1st wing of 25m from 10m strict would really help a lot of guilds to recruit extra players.

Also bear in mind that with Marrowgar being a possible weekly raid target, you can get quite a few people tagged as 25m players whereas they only killed him in 25m, figuring that if they were going to do him, they might as well do him in 25m for the possible extra loot (I've done so on most of my alts personally).




Edit: a bit of extra emphasis on the fact that 25m guilds who can't clean any farther than DBS are really no threat to 10m strict guilds. Guilds who actually bother with following the stringent 10m strict criteria are 99% of the time guilds who aim to be competitive in PvE. I know guilds on my server who can't get any farther than DBS on 25, and I can assure you they aren't going anywhere in 10m. Fights like Sindragosa and Arthas aren't so much gear checks as "skill checks", and if you seriously can't pass the 1st wing in 25, you're not going to do any miracles in 10m - and on my server at least, they indeed do no miracles. These won't be a threat to 10m strict in any way.

Speaking as a lower ranked 10 man guild (3rd on our server in 10 man strict, but not very progressed relative to a lot of other servers), we'd rather have the 10 man strict list be just that. As GM of a 10-strict guild, we play with a tight roster of friends and would like to measure our progress against other guilds who also do 10 man content.

If a guild is doing enough 25 man ICC content to get knocked off the strict list, they're also accumulating enough drops to make 10 man significantly easier. It's not just the level of the drops, it's the range. Some stuff doesn't drop in 10 man until later on in the progression cycle (caster shields don't appear until Sindragosa, for example).

A 10 man strict list that also includes current 25 man content isn't really a 10 man list any more. I have no issues with a bit of flexibility (VoA certainly, possibly Ruby Sanctum when it arrives?), but I'd like it if the current progression content tier was reasonably separate.

I would say make DBS the limit (if you kill him, you are no longer strict 10) as a compromise. Possibly, even make it Deathwhisper. I agree the main reason for removing Marrowgar from the limit is the weekly raid quest. There are probably a lot of recruits that have that kill simply because they pugged it for the weekly. I can also imagine times when competitive 10 man strict guilds will want the flexibility to kill him in 25 when he is the weekly (so they can extend their 10 man ID, for example).