Would be curious to run a poll to see how many people have run operations cold. Our tiny guild went into scum and villany last night for very first time...was one person short. Warned the pickup person that we were exploring ,first time, like to figure things out on our own..... After wiping twice his comment was 'well if you are not going to do your research, I'm out'.

Next time after his dropping, we got dash down to 25 % and were pretty please with ourselves for first time in.

It's only after we play any boss 4-5 wipes that we will allow ourselves to start looking for tips for that boss so that we can experience the excitement of exploration versus playing just to win.

Seems though that the standard approach is to FIRST check with duffy :-) before running anything!

Well, most people don't like wiping I suppose, especially not on old content. So while I think the guy that joined you should have declined to go when you told him of your intentions. I can understand him leaving though, since he's likely donethe ops before. So for him it wasn't exploring anymore.

But I also do get your desire to experience things fresh, it can be very fun. My team (and as far as I know the other three raid teams in my guild, not sure though) do the story modes without reading up when a new operation is released and it's usually a laugh. We do switch over to "serious-mode" when we start doing HMs though and read up on the mechanics then.

I agree that it is fun to figure out boss fights for the first time without any prior knowledge. Because of that, I always like to test the new operations on the PTS where you are one of the first people to see the operation and no guides have been written yet.

The problem with guides is that they will recommend a certain strategy, but when you try a boss fight from fresh, you may discover a much easier strategy and you are much more prepared when NiM comes.

However, once the operation hits the live server, I want to know all the fights inside out when I am the raid leader, so that I understand why we are wiping and can make adjustments accordingly. Still, I will only explain the most basic mechanics and let everyone discover the boss fight on their own. Because no matter how hard you study the boss fight, you don't know it until you played it yourself.

I've never been one to do a lot of research when entering a new place in an MMO. If "ordered" to I will go over a guide for a specific boss, but chances are the information won't stick until I do the content and see the mechanics for myself.

What bugs me most though is when a raid leader goes over every detail of a given boss ad infinitum. Whether it is because someone in the raid was not paying full attention or because the raid leader/person describing the fight wants to be absolutely certain that everyone is on the same page...I just find that level of repetitive detail ANNOYING. Give me (and the group) what I NEED to know and have a little faith/trust in your teammates to understand and be able to execute.

In my opinion, if you know the fight and want to impart your knowledge on the rest, give the basics before it begins and then give on the fly instructions. If you have seven vets and one newbie (or any other combination), tell the newbie(s) what he/she needs to know about to fight specific to the role they are filling (i.e. As a tank: are there swaps to do, are there adds to agro? As a healer: will there be any AOE damage or debuffs that need cleansing? As a DPS: what is the agro situation (dumps, swaps, random table), are there adds to deal with? General: are there AOEs to avoid? The list goes on). Do not go into minute detail over HOW to deal with those factors, just let your team know what to expect and then let them figure out how to deal with it.

Two (of many) examples of what I am talking about:

- first time I was in SM EC we got to the last boss and were running out of time quickly (half the raid had already stayed later than planned), the raid leader said, "there are several phases to this fight, it will take too long to explain now. So, I will explain them as we go." And we came very close to winning. The next time we went, very little had to be explained and we one shot the boss.

- when CZ-198 was new, I ran the second FP (CCM) in HM. No one in the group had done it before, so when we got to the various bosses we simply agreed to just go in, pay attention, and hope for the best. On each boss, we wiped once, talked about what happened after the fact, and then killed the boss on the second attempt. Why? because everyone in the group had a high situational awareness and was able to figure out what to do when a given mechanic happened.

OP, I fully agree with you. To be honest, I hate (yes, hate) players who first read about everything, before they start the content. What does this have to do with playing? So, if you have the chance to be in a guild who is all with you in that exploring stance, you can be very happy imo.

Nowadays, it's not even only about OP, but people read Dulfy's before going to Oricon for the first time. I find it ridiculous!

It's a lot of fun exploring new bosses. On DF launch day, our guild ran it cold. Figuring out the Brontes fight was one of the most fun experiences I've had in a while.

You need to have a group of like-minded individuals for it to work, though. If you are pugging a person, it's only fair to them to mention that you guys are going in cold with no experience/knowledge (which it seems like you did). If they know the situation going in, and then have a change of heart a couple pulls in, that's entirely their fault.

Would be curious to run a poll to see how many people have run operations cold. Our tiny guild went into scum and villany last night for very first time...was one person short. Warned the pickup person that we were exploring ,first time, like to figure things out on our own..... After wiping twice his comment was 'well if you are not going to do your research, I'm out'.

 

Next time after his dropping, we got dash down to 25 % and were pretty please with ourselves for first time in.

 

It's only after we play any boss 4-5 wipes that we will allow ourselves to start looking for tips for that boss so that we can experience the excitement of exploration versus playing just to win.

 

Seems though that the standard approach is to FIRST check with duffy :-) before running anything!

Whether groups do run operations cold or not you have come across a person who was not intending to experience your 'first time'. For many there is no excitement in managing to get Dash down to 25%, but the agony of watching someone make 'mistake' after 'mistake'. Where mistake can be easily remedied by looking up the necessary information. Don't get me wrong, you can try all you want.

What bugs me most though is when a raid leader goes over every detail of a given boss ad infinitum. . Give me (and the group) what I NEED to know and have a little faith/trust in your teammates to understand and be able to execute.

 

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I think this sums it up for us. After wiping twice on dash with the pickup player, we were able to summarize the fight for the second person we picked up in about 3 text messges....'stay under shield, move with shield, if get lost, use your shield' and let them play their role beyond that!! We laughed over skype how we were giving advice like experts after wiping twice

Well most people are fine with "exploring", on the first couple weeks after new content is released, after that it's just an excuse for being lazy.

fortunately, or unfortunately, old content is new for our tiny guild...we manage to get 8 of us on at same time maybe once a week and we all just rejoined so we have 5 or 6 HM flashpoints and 4+ ops to get through on various difficulty levels....at this rate, we might get through everything once by next major expansion - into space!

I find a little exploration/discission etc. can be a good thing.

I pugged into a guild run of 16M DP SM the other night and when we hit dread council then things went down hill, the guild I think were inexperienced which is cool so were getting advice on the fight from another pug form another guild and that's where things went downhill ... the advice was clearly wrong and far too "by the book" for most people to even keep up with what the guy was saying. I don't use a mic so typed out the gist of where they kept going wrong ( It's SM, stop trying to do it like HM, just burn each boss 1 after the other it'll be no worries ) but no the guy on the mic basically said to ignore me since I wasn't on a mic heh. Suffice to say the mechanics were a mess and it wiped each time before even really getting past brontes/styrak.

Point being if the group took the time to discuss the wipes rather than just retrying the same failed mechanic they may have got somewhere.

Also makes me wonder when explaining mechanics/fights for the first time is voice really the best way to be doing it? How often are people like "err what did you say" "was that to me" yada ya etc. - yes voice is great for coordination and realtime directions but when it comes to planning a fight before it begins I really think typing it out is better e.g. "MT you will go here and taunt this boss and when you get X stacks up you need to tank swap with OT" meaning you can put clear directions that people can read ant their will and no confusion on who is talknig to who about what. I remember the first time running most fights when someone has put into chat what I'm supposed to do I've never had a problem with the fights e.g. "burn boss, if you get red circle run it to the outside" for a simple dps instruction is alot easier than reading an entire manual for 15 minutes to everyone over chat then going over it again as most people forgot the first 5 minutes of the diatribe.

fortunately, or unfortunately, old content is new for our tiny guild...we manage to get 8 of us on at same time maybe once a week and we all just rejoined so we have 5 or 6 HM flashpoints and 4+ ops to get through on various difficulty levels....at this rate, we might get through everything once by next major expansion - into space!

I understand that, but that is not the norm, and eventually if you pug a lot people will grow annoyed. This week I did 21 full run operations across all my characters. Can you imagine if all of them had to be explained/explored/discovered?