How do you motivate someone who isn't performing? What if they are an actual coworker?
Last night Darkfall ran SSC. It was an OK run. We downed Lurker and Leo in one shot each. But then wiped until we called it on Karathress. Basically because we were having coordination issues. Mostly due to healers not being able to keep the tanks up.
When we killed Lurker and Leo there was meter spam in the healer channel. As in an officer was running recount and used it to spam the /darkheals with healing done and overhealing done.
I don't like the meters. I think that they miss stuff, and can easily be biased if people are spread out. However despite that I do always run them myself, just to get a rough estimate of where I am. Last night I was doing an ok job healing, one of the wipes on Karahtress was my fault, I had a little bit of lag combined with a little bit of inattention and the tank I was healing died once. I also usually keep track of them as a dps. I know generally where on them I am supposed to be and if I'm not there, I'm missing something: buffs, food, oil, etc.
Anyway after the raid I asked the officer who had been spamming meters why he was doing that. He said they were trying to motivate people to perform better. There was a pally, who was at the bottom of the healing done meter and at the top of the overhealing meter. I asked why they don't just directly talk to that pally. He said that had and that he hadn't changed. This led to a rather large blow up between myself DraNgNon, the first officer and a second officer.
In general I like Darkfall, but there are two problems right now. First there are too many officers. I think there are more officers than raiders now. And really you don't need two officers each for rogues, or priests, or warriors. Too many officers leads to an us versus them mentality. The second issue I see, is they need to decide how they are dealing with people. Either we are all responsible for having good values, per the meters, and the people who suck will get booted. Or we aren't. The officers can't just use the meters to make one person shape up, things don't work like that. If the meters are used against one person they will be used against anyone else who is "underperforming", which hasn't been defined.
Also our old raid leader, who I miss, had a rule about no meters during the raids. he would look at them himself and talk to people as needed, but he wouldn't try to shame people in public. And that is what I feel like happened last night with the meters being spammed. Or was attempted anyway, I think that what really happened is that the person who was doing crappy healing just shrugged it off, and the rest of us started stressing about having an officer spam meters.
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3 comments:
Who was the old raid leader? I thought Drognin did all of that?
Meters don't "motivate" someone unless the person a) understands what the meters are saying, b) they have an expectation of where they should be, and c) have any idea about how to improve the situation.
(a) and (b) are the responsibility of officers/raid leaders to set. As for (c), well, that requires someone to know how to play their class, or an officer to tell them to improve.
"Last on the healing" meter is kinda wacked anyways. Someone always has to be last -- that's the nature of rankings. Maybe he had a lighter healing duty than the other healers, or was having lag/DC issues ... all of those would cause someone to "fall behind," and overheal (as someone would have covered for him before his heal landed due to lag). Using meters effectively, as you mentioned, requires more than just spamming numbers. They require thought and analysis. I'd expect more of "Hey, all the guys you are responsible for are dying on every pull" than "omg you are last on the meters" in terms of motivation/reprimanding. That, to me, seems like a failure in the officers/leaders.
I'm sorry that bummed you out. I don't think I would have liked it, were it me.
er, that 2nd paragraph should end "or an officer to tell them HOW to improve."
The old raidleader was Ironspike. He got burned out and now only pvps his warrior. He does still bring his pally, Warhammer, to raids occasionally.
Yeah, my beef with the healing meters being spammed was that it seems like the officers are failing. They can't motivate this person and so seem to be falling back on a public shaming method. Which will only stress everyone else out. Are we supposed to worry about our own healing? Are we supposed to harass the person who is under performing? Either result is no good.
And yeah, needing to spam the meters is definitely a failure to communicate. I can't tell if it is the case that the officers are communicating badly or this person just doesn't want to listen at all. I think it is mostly that this person doesn't make the effort to learn.
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