I saw this post this morning before I went to classes, and, rather than give a knee-jerking reaction, I've mulled it over and come up with some things I would like to discuss. Some of this can get pretty heavy, and I ask of you all to take the time to mull over what I'm saying before giving a gut reaction. I split my post into the short answer, which is simply answering your questions and giving my opinion, and the long answer, which contains some pretty heavy analysis of, specifically, the potential negatives of setting aside time for Guild FotM runs (I feel the positives are pretty obvious, but if we want to lay them out and maybe draw a pretty Venn-Diagram, we totally can). Here we go:
Short Answer:
I am on Fractal level 2 and am personally against setting up a formal 'Guild time' for dungeons (including FotM) due to group-size restrictions. This doesn't mean it can't or won't happen, but I feel a discussion needs to occur between, not just our administration, but all Jaded members. This is a family, not a dictatorship.
I would, however, like to see more groups form for FotM, but I hope that we, as a family, are responsible enough to help each other rather than simply have a small elite plow through to level 20 and whine about not finding other guildies at their level (which, to my understanding, is an issue in some guilds).
Long Answer:
I have mixed opinions about officially setting aside a time for the guild to gather to run content which is only accessible to a small group of people. It can very easily create situations where you have an extra person or two who don't get a group, or being one person shy of a second group who then has to work twice as hard to carry a PUG.
Or, perhaps more commonly, a natural group or two begins to form that feel like a separate clique of members. This is one of the issues I really disliked in WoW raiding. A group of players became "your" group, and you begin to focus on what happens within that group rather than the guild as a whole. This was an issue for my 10-man group I used to raid with: we eventually found ourselves with an identity separate from our Guild and transferred servers, which had it's own pros and cons I won't bore you with. A group secession seems to be a relatively small outcome percentage-wise; the more common end result seems to be that the players who aren't a part of any group feel left out and eventually leave the guild. Leave no Jadite behind!
There is another issue with Fractals, which I'm already beginning to see inside of Jaded, and that is the varying difficulty progression from member to member. For instance, I know Rae and I are at level 2, Shira is at level 5, General is at level 4, and you are at level 7 (likely higher now). FotM hasn't been out for that long. The longer it is out, the larger the spread of progression is going to become. For instance, I'm positive there are plenty of Jadites who haven't even set foot inside of FotM yet. Heck, we have members who haven't done an Explorable yet. Due to the nature of FotM, we will eventually find ourselves with a number of people who have plowed to the higher levels and a majority who haven't. Thankfully, we always receive Fractal Relics, but why run levels 1-3 when they only give 5 Relics per Fractal when you can do 21-25 and get 9 Relics, almost twice as much? It's like the difference between Story Mode and Explorable. Once people get away from Story Mode, they aren't very likely to want to revisit it.
As an aside, Jaded is, at its heart, a casual guild. A number of us, myself included, will frequently find other priorities aside from logging on at X time to do Y thing. We are still fairly small as well. I don't think it would reflect a good image of Jaded to its members if we set aside time for organized Guild runs, only to have two or three members show up due to life getting in the way. This particular issue is one I've been trying to wrap my head around for a solution, so if you have any, I'm all ears.
Just a brief review of my talking points for everyone, including myself:
-cliques tend to form when there is a designated time, which can make a clique feel self-important
-people feel left out if they can't get into a clique, which can lead to members leaving the guild
-groups of less than 5 people must search for a PUG and form what is likely to be a sub-optimal group, which can be frustrating
-the nature of FotM segregates players based on how much they have already done
-in a relatively small, casual guild, organized gatherings can have low turnouts and lead to a negative self-image as a Guild
Some final notes:I'm not saying that setting aside time for designated runs is out of the question; I simply have reservations and feel like an open discussion is important.
I personally believe, that, at this point in time, it's best to self-regulate runs, either as someone organizing a run in /guild chat right before they go, or a small group of players communicating within themselves that they want to go at X time (naturally, you are free to use the forums to form groups), rather than the collective Jaded saying, "Show up X and we'll do Y," because it can lead to messy situations caused by the nature of 5-man content.
. Furthermore, as we ran more people through the levels, the larger our list of potential participants would grow. It's not a perfect solution, but it at least helps.
