Ugmo Conversation

Babylonius — Today at 9:26 AM
So like I mentioned in the midweek channel, I’m reaching out to everyone to get their thoughts and opinions on a variety of things.  Before I get to the more targeted questions, is there anything you want to get off your chest about your own play, the team, the raid, the people, the game, anything?

Ugmo — Today at 10:27 AM
Hey Babs,

 Appreciate the reaching out. Hopefully you get some good feedback from the team. I think this will probably be a pretty valuable exercise. Just a few things to kind of address before we go into more targeted topics, I'll try not to be too long winded with them.

Personal Play - I don't feel really great about this tier. I don't think that I was the asset that I could have been, and left the tier feeling pretty disappointed with my personal play and survivability. I'm trying to work on putting myself in a better mindset before raid and calming myself down and put myself in a better headspace in to try and help offset any panicking, or tilting. I'm trying to correct snowballing of errors by working at getting better at shaking off personal errors and taking them as a learning lesson rather than getting down on myself. There's obviously more to it than just that, but I feel starting

The raid - I'm not sure if I'm in the minority of the majority, but Nathria feels like it lost it's lustre a little quicker than past raids. It's a little strange, because I like a good number of the fights.

The people - This is the best part of the game right now. I always have a good time raiding/dungeons/etc right now when I'm with the group. We have a good team of people, and I think the new(er) additions have all fit into the team well. Right now, I think people are a little stressed due to the difficulties in the past couple weeks. I feel like the first achievement/parse/what have you night will go a long way in just helping people blow off steam and release some of the pent up frustrations. Obviously some work needs to be done before that, but I think it will be big for the team's morale when it comes about.

I'm sure some other stuff will be spurred with questions and responses, but I guess that's it off the hop.

Babylonius — Today at 10:31 AM
Thanks for that. Based on talking to a lot of people, I think its about split with the people that have seen CN lose its fun and those that still enjoy it

Ugmo — Today at 10:42 AM
Yeah, I'm not 100% sure what's causing it either but it feels stale I guess? It's hard to really put my finger on exactly what it is

Babylonius — Today at 10:43 AM
Not sure, but its a global problem with the game right now I think

Ugmo — Today at 10:45 AM
I'd agree there.

Some of grinds (notably Torghast and the Maw) are just kind of a bummer to do

Babylonius — Today at 10:48 AM
I agree
So I'm glad you are still having a good time with the team and I think your assessment of your personal performance is accurate
Do you think there's anything that I could be doing, as the GM, or the other officers, could be doing more, less, or differently to help the raid be more successful?

Ugmo — Today at 11:33 AM
I think as a whole you guys do a really good job of supporting everyone and getting strats/WAs/etc up so I'm having a bit of a hard time thinking of anything really big to implement or change. Two things I g

- Timing for opening of conference channels. This is super small, but when the hunter one was opened this tier it was right at the very beginning of a raid. I'm guessing this was more of a one-off. Might just be best to try to avoid that timing to give people time to kind of relax/reframe it. It may be worth just reiterating somewhere that those channels aren't like a punishment/etc and try to get people more comfortable with that dialogue. I think there's definitely great value there, but as we saw in the hunter one, some people see it more negatively than others who may see it as more of a kick in the ass to spur discussion, and do a deeper dive.

- Kind of related to the same, but I think if someone had been in one of those threads, or struggles had been identified, just firing them a quick like 'hey we see the improvement, keep it up' or whatever just to try and set them at ease a little. Definitely nothing long, or super time consuming (since you guys already take so much time doing things) but I think little pieces of feedback like that for someone who was previously being scrutinized could go a long way for them, just even to set their mind at ease after some time of struggles

I think a big thing going forward (not directly related to you all) will be the team needing to be more comfortable asking questions. I know that you guys have been emphasizing this lately, but I think all of us could do with being more active in asking questions whether for clarification, reasoning, or anything. Chances are if one of us is asking, someone else needs it too. I tried to do more of that this tier, but it's still a WIP.

Babylonius — Today at 12:12 PM
I agree. One of the things I know we didn’t do as well as I would have liked is highlighting the good things and improvements that people made.

Ugmo — Today at 12:40 PM
And I think that's definitely understandable
It's a lot easier to highlight and notice when someone is making mistakes since it often leads to wipes, deaths, etc

Babylonius — Today at 12:41 PM
Yeah, but we can still do better.

Ugmo — Today at 12:42 PM
Oh, of course. We can never rest on our laurels anyway, especially if we want to continue to improve

Babylonius — Today at 12:45 PM
So understanding what you said about the conference rooms, how have you found working with the other hunters to be this tier?

Ugmo — Today at 1:22 PM
I think that when we get going we have some pretty good conversations. I think that we need to be more proactive in having these though. An example was the DR stuff on SLG, which if it had happened earlier probably would have saved us some time.

I think that just being more proactive about those conversations will be able to help us a ton going forward when it comes to playstyle, particularily with damage profiles. I know moving to 4-heal Sludgefist I needed to spur one of those since the damage profile is much more intense and it's more reliant on proper CD usage (this is kind of stemming back to my attempt to be more proactive with the question asking)

I feel pretty comfortable with asking either of them questions about what they're doing for certain pieces, without feeling like they'll use those opportunities to judge or throw me under the bus or anything. I have been in that situation before and it really sucks, but it generally feels like everyone here is willing to chime in to help each other out.

Babylonius — Today at 1:23 PM
That’s good

Ugmo — Today at 1:25 PM
Obviously there's still room for improvement there, but I think that we've become a bit better at the communication aspect and are starting to grow a bit as a team. I think that the open discussion work wonders once they get going, just that we may need to work a little on re-framing the discussion a bit into how we improve, and what we can do to most benefit the team and help each other out, rather than feeling defensive or anything.

Babylonius — Today at 1:41 PM
I think that’s a good point, and one that I’ve noticed before

Ugmo — Today at 1:50 PM
And I think a lot of that comes down to how the individual approaches those things which I'm not 100% sure on what would be the best way to tackle that. It may be sort of a level set message/reminder at the beginning of the conversation, or may just need to be private conversations when something turns that way a bit

Babylonius — Today at 2:05 PM
Right

Babylonius — Today at 4:49 PM
Those are good points and the conference room system is something we're still trying to refine and figure out for ourselves
Is there anything else you want to mention? I think i'm all out of questions

Ugmo — Today at 4:57 PM
Yeah definitey. It's something I haven't really seen done elsewhere, but I think once it's honed it'll be a huge benefit for us
Nothing else for right now, but I'll definitely toss you a message if I can think of anything
Thanks for doing this with everyone too by the way, I'm sure it's a lot of work, so hopefully it gives you guys a bunch of good information!

Babylonius — Today at 4:58 PM
It’s simultaneously more work and less work than I expected

Ugmo — Today at 5:03 PM
haha
I can imagine there's a fair bit of reading
Knowing our team and the tendency to expand on things

Babylonius — Today at 5:04 PM
yeah, but its something I should have been doing more actively over the last few months and have neglected

Babylonius — Today at 5:14 PM
But I appreciate your time and your thoughts