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OK, seeing as everyone else is chipping in, here's my two cents on why it failed.
Team Leaders - The one thing that shocked me was exactly how little info there was on the Hamidon channel. Babel, as raid leader, should have been organising and informing the team leaders of what to do(I assume there were two channels, one for general and one for team leaders). However, at LEAST one of those leaders should have then been keeping the rest of the raid team updated on developments. Thinking people are going to wait around in The Hive when they have no idea of what's going on and none of the team leaders can be bothered to update them is a sure way to get people thinking 'I'm not standing here for another hour when we don't even know what's going on. I'm off'.
During the last raid, Jiaozy was telling the team leaders what was going on and we were relaying that info to the general channel, even if it was just an update every 10 minutes along the lines of 'holding phase ongoing'. I pretty much kept up a continual stream of info based on what Jiaozy was telling us to keep every member of the raid team informed. Jiaozy also removed broadcast and tells from his channels so the only info he was getting was from the raid channels, anything on the other channels that may have been relevant, the team leaders filtered out and passed onto him ove rthe leader channel so he wasn't bogged down in junk and spam. Do not expect people to sit around with no idea of what's going on until they are called for like some sort of obedient pup.
Targetting
I've heard that singularities were used for people to target Hamidon through. My only question there is WHAT! Using an AI NPC, when there are mitos around and they've just as much chance of attacking them as Hami is a bad idea.
I know Hami fades from sight due to the lag at certain points but there's always someone who can see/target him. As soon as a power recharges, looks who's firing into the blob and target through them(if none of the designated raid targeters have a lock), not blindly through an AI bot that could be attacking anything.
The thought of how many crucial holds were wasted here is frightening and, IMO, this seems to be the single biggest cause of failure.
Too Many Chiefs
At the end of the day, this was Babels raid and all the calls were his to make, NO ONE ELSES, unless input was specifically asked for by previous raid/team leaders. Unless you had been a raid or team leader in the past, how much you had read on Hammi raids or how many successful ones you had been on in the past didn't mean squat, especially if you had never done one before but were suddenly full of your opinions on how it should be done. I refer you to my initial taunt team requirements before I had to withdraw from the raid.
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Must be willing to listen and follow orders.
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One of the biggest problems with Hami raids on Union is that there are a lot of people out there who think they know how things should and shouldn't be done. They may know the numbers in the game back to front, may have exhausted every bit of content in the game and have a list of lvl 50's as long as my arm but, here is the killer... NONE OF THIS MEANS A THING.
At the end of the day, if I had been on the raid, the only people who's opinions or instructions/orders would have held any weight for me would have been Jersey's, Jiaozy's, Babels and my taunt team members from the last two successful raids. Thankfully, I also know none of those would have issued orders outside their teams but would have passed any suggestions or actions to Babel as he was the leader and all decisions were his to make.
Hamidon is about being a team player. It's about knowing when to follow orders, when to communicate with the other raid members and keep them updated and, more importantly, motivated.
As for the future of Hami raids on Union? IMO, we'll never get to where Defiant are unless there's a major change in the way they are done.
People run Hami raids on here as 'the last big challenge'. Every successful raid, we've had a different raid and team leaders. When I put my taunt team together, I deliberately took as many members of the previous raid teams as possible but from what I've seen of the other core teams, very few had done Hami raids before. This meant when things went wrong, they were making decisions on second hand info. I only managed to get 3 previous taunt team members on my team, making four of us and was a little concerned about that. I would prefer two or three new members and 5-6 experienced ones so new people are learning without endangering the raid.
To see other teams led by people who'd never even been in a 'core' team for a Hami raid and where the rest of the team was made up of people in the same situation was quite a big concern.
I'm all for bringing new people into the key Hami roles as we need to get the knowledge shared around more but, as Defiant have shown, you still have to have a backbone of players who KNOW what they're doing, rather than have READ what they should be doing in the main roles.
The other reason I don't think we'll succeed? Ego. From what I understand on the Defiant raids, it's the fact that everyone listens to Xanthus and does what the hell they are told. From the reports I heard last night, that wasn't the case with people trying to issue their own orders.
Were I to put a raid farming team together, I would have Jersey(raid leader), Jiaozy(taunt team leader), Double(rad team leader), and Stagefright(PA drop leader). I would then fill 3 of the spots in each team with previous raiders and the others with new raiders. One member of each team would also be nominated as deputy to eventually lead the team in future raids. After 2-3 raids, I'd then look at promoting one or two deputies up for each raid, the leaders stepping down and new deputies picked to keep the continuity, rinse and repeat.
Hey presto, 8-10 raids down the road and you've suddenly got a dozen or so people who are all capable of leading a raid and KNOW how to react in them, rather than think they know.
Of course, this probably won't happen as the people who've been mentioned have all been there, done that, put up with the grief, aggravation, boredom, hard work needed to pull it off and probably have no desire to do it again.
Babel, Kudos to you for having the balls to organise one. Running a Hamidon raid is one of the few challenges I have left in the game but you'll sure as hell not see me anywhere near one in the near future as I've seen what a thankless task it is.
I'm gutted for you that it didn't succeed but don't feel too down as plenty of other people have failed.
[/ QUOTE ]Oh.. that's why...
