In my PVE incarnation in SWTOR, I'm an officer for a small PVE guild that currently (like many PVE guilds) has been feeling the lack of enthusiasm (and the bleeding of members) that the dearth of new PVE content has caused.
But on a couple recent occasions, my guildmaster and I have found ourselves helping out folks who wanted to see an Uprising or two, but who didn't otherwise have a friendly group to do them with. The experience reminded us that even when we can't be progression raiding ourselves, sometimes it's just really nice to be able to help others see some of the game's content. It's old hat to
us, but there are plenty of people who've never had the opportunity to see a lot of what the game's group content has to offer.
We talked it over and decided we'd both be willing to put together a team of "new raiders" and just have fun working through the group content with new folks. And so, I am here to pitch this idea to our BC RP community, to gauge interest!
The GoalTo give folks who have never had chance to see the game's Operations (and maybe some of the harder Flashpoints) an opportunity to experience this group content. This would be a learning experience, not "being carried" through the content.
The idea is to get as many totally new folks involved as possible, with a
minimum sprinkling of experienced raiders in key roles to help teach. If you've already seen all the content and would just like to offer to help, please mention as much when you respond. Depending on the level of interest and participation, more experienced players may be moved into a "reserve" pool so that the new folks get first priority.
The way I'm currently envisioning this, we would put together an 8 man team of folks who are interested in going the long haul. We would like, if at all possible, to keep the same group more or less intact as we progress through the content. In this respect, the group would become its own "progression raiding" group, as if we were back in the vanilla days of the game and tackling each new Ops in normal/story mode as it was released.
This means that if you're interested, while you are of course not obligated to stick to the group until the end, you might have more fun if you do - there's a sense of accomplishment that comes from knowing that you and your group stuck it through and downed all those bosses, even if it takes months.
The Road MapI thought it might be most fun to approach this from a story perspective. The game has its own timeline of events, and the Operations all fall into it.
This thread on the official forums has a great post (the second one down) wherein someone has outlined the timeline of the full game, slotting each Flashpoint and Ops from level 50 onward into its place.
The plan for this project would be to do all of the Operations, in the order as they are shown on that timeline. Depending on how people respond to some questions I'll pose later in this post, we may or may not also include the Flashpoints in the road map - but if we do, it would only be those Flashpoints that can
not be run with a solo story mode. (That means the Ilum FPs and the SoR FPs would not be included, but stuff like the Kaon and Czerka ones would be.)
ConsiderationsAnother wipe! As I mentioned earlier, the goal here is to teach folks the Operations, and to have a new batch of players learn and execute the mechanics. If you're new to raiding and group content, you should be prepared for failure. A lot of it. That's par for the course, and part of the fun! (Or at least, it's part of what will make it feel so rewarding when you do succeed.) But it's important to set your expectations accordingly, and to know that if you embark on this journey you're doing so as much for the agony of the learning experience as to see new content.
Move left! Left, left! No, your other left! To really teach and execute group content well, particularly if you're looking at "progression raiding," communication is key. It is much, much easier to give instructions in voice chat, not to mention faster. Therefore one of the requirements for this project would be for all folks to have voice chat; we would create a custom Discord server for our group to join. It would not be required for you to speak, if you don't wish to; we've had guildies in the past who choose to keep voice chat on audio only, and that's fine. But there's often a lot of information that needs to be conveyed to learn the mechanics of a raid, and often successfully getting through a fight requires that you be able to hear your raid leader calling out instructions or warnings in real time.
Same bat time, same bat channel? Even if we were to miraculously clear one Operation per night (we won't), you're still looking at a lot of nights. Factor in multiple attempts at the same Operation and this becomes a long journey. That means that people should be prepared to be at this for many, many weeks. We'll poll participants to find a time and day that works best for everyone. Depending on people's level of enthusiasm and availability, this might be one night a week, or one night every other week. But it will certainly be recurring.
So many numbers... what do they all mean? Gear. Yes, gear matters. No one needs to worry about having Galactic Command levels to do this, but when we begin (starting with the Eternity Vault Operation), everyone would need to be geared in at minimum the level 65 mods (rating 210) that you can buy from the Fleet vendor, and be sporting the correct stats for your Discipline. We will help folks determine what those are, if you need guidance, as part of the learning process. But you have to be willing to take that gearing step.
So, with all of the above being said, a few things to consider carefully if you think you'd be interested in joining such a group:
- Be prepared to die a lot! If you know that you're not the personality type who can embrace the cost of a learning experience cheerfully (or the repair bill), this might not be the group for you.
- If you are simply not comfortable getting into a voice chat channel, not even on just audio only, this might not be the group for you.
- Be prepared to dedicate weekly time to the project. Generally speaking this would be about two hours per scheduled night.
- Be willing to endure a little bit of gearing and numbers talk. It won't be overwhelming, but it does matter.
Interested? If you think you might be interested in participating in this project, please post here and let me know! Please take the time to answer the following questions:
1. What faction would you prefer to do this with?
2. What role would you prefer to do this with? (Tank, Healer, or DPS.)
3. Do you have the character flexibility to do this with a second-choice role if needed, and if so, which?
4. What's your level of experience with Operations?
- Total Newb (I've never seen the inside of an Operation.)
- Semi-Newb (I've poked my head in once or twice, but still mostly a Newb.)
- Rookie (I've been in there enough to know my head from my ass, but I could still use a lot of guidance.)
- Captain (Hey, I sort of remember this boss fight! Yeah, that's right, I shouldn't have jumped in that lava. It's coming back to me now.)
- Big Boss (I've been through all of the game's Operations on story mode and some of them on hard mode too, and actually mostly remember them.)
5. Are you interested in sticking it out for the full progression (all of those Ops in timeline order!), or mostly just peeking in on something here and there?
6. Would you want to include Flashpoints in the plan, or just Operations?
I'll give it a couple weeks to gather replies, and then see what we've got to work with. The faction we choose to go with will ultimately depend entirely on majority rule, with apologies to anyone who may not have characters on both factions. Similarly, not everyone may get their first choice of role, because - as with any raiding group - sometimes people have to be flexible for the needs of the group.
Priority will be given to people with less experience, but if you're an experienced PVE player and willing to sit in reserve it would be appreciated. Let me know in a reply!
