Gaiscioch Family Conquest Nights (Mon @ 6PM) - Then, Now, Future - What to Expect

Greetings,

I know the past couple times we've taken to the field there has been some vocalness about "not winning" durring our family events. I know in the first few nights I explained how this would all go down but to avoid having to give a lengthy speech each week I'll post it here.

Our Plan:

Yes there is one even though it doesn't look like it.

1. Teach Players How To Survive - We spent most of our first few events teaching terrain awareness, how to fight facing your enemies approach, how to read the map, and how to see the zerg before it's on top of you.
2. Teach Players How To Kill - The majority of our warforce only PvP's when the family is running an event together. We have a LOT of unexperienced players that fall into the as soon as you see red spam every key on your keyboard as fast as you can and hope they die category. We've spent the past month teaching people to only engage those who are targets. Don't linger too long in one place unless you're in a fortified location and can fight a force 3-5 times your size.
3. Equip Players With Better Gear - Anyone that says gear does not matter has not played conquest long. We have gone up against groups half our size and have been vaporized by fully geared players. The Gaiscioch did not take part in the spawn camping phase and did not gain 6 PR levels a day. We are for the most part underequipped and will require some time before we have the levels we need to stand against forces equal or larger than our own.
4. Teach Players How To Take That Which Has Already Been Destoryed - The white flags on the map denote contested objectives. A couple weeks ago we spent the evening hunting them to steal objectives away from the capturing party. Let the other players do the work and then sweep in for the kill and steal the objective. This keeps your force moving and not in one place thus reducing the chances of being caught by the mega-zerg.
5. Teach Players How To Take Multiple Objectives At The Same Time - This one we're almost ready for. We have been splitting on occassion into 2 units to attack two targets at the same time but we still have work to do before we can devide into single groups to attack 8 targets at the same time. This is our endgame goal but we are not quite there yet. As we get stronger and more aware of our surroundings and frequent travel paths we will be able to split our force to conquer a large portion of the map at the same time.
6. Winning - At the very last stage of our development we will focus on Winning the match. Without proper training, gear, awareness, and rank we are cannon fodder and will be easilly disposed of. Through challenge comes strength, through strength comes victory. For us to be in a place where we as a family can win we need to be perseverant and focus on the lessons and mission at hand. As we grow stronger winning will be a more viable option.

What To Expect:

We will not be staying in 1 place for long, we will be continuously moving. If you get separated from the pack it will be up to you to find your way back. If we find that a member of our raid refuses to regroup or follow orders we will remove them to allow someone that will to join our raid. Our focus for the time being is not on winning but on drawing out the engagement for the full 3 hours of our event. We will try to attack the winining side to keep both sides below the 60% mark. Winning will not be our focus until we have the firepower to make it happen. So if you want to "Win" now, please join the zerg not us. You have 165 hours a week where you can zerg surf and gear up, gain your marks and win win win. These 3 hours a week are about helping the rest of our family get the gear and ranks they need to survive while having a fun and engaging battle along the way. Please keep in mind we are out here to have fun and do whatever we can to stand against a foe much more powerful and capable than ourselves. In the process, we will grow stronger.

Foghladha's Rules Of Combat Participation:

1. Stay With Your Group - If we can't count on you being there when battle errupts we will remove you from the group to allow someone else who will stay with the group.
2. Follow Orders - Don't question them, don't argue with them, if the leader says jump you jump. If you have an issue with said order wait until after the event and pull the leader asside afterwords. I don't have time to explain the entire plan, I only have enough time to get you in possition to execute it. In the time it takes to explain, opportunity has already passed.
3. Suggestion's Welcome, Snide Remarks Are Not - If you have an idea and it's a quite moment feel free to share it. However if you have a sarcastic remark or snide remark do no utter it. We will kick anyone who acts our against the unit. Morale is essential in combat and anyone that jeopardizes that will be removed immediately.
4. Don't Expect Us To Wait For You - If you go AFK on the battlefield, your on your own. We will not risk leading our warforce to death sitting in one spot. If you must go AFK please find a hidden spot to hide and then regroup with us when your back. We try to move positions every 1:30 so if you take longer than that to do something we will be moving.
5. No Negative Comments - Again if you mess with our Morale we will kick you. We must build unity and anything that stands in the way will be removed.

War is not predictable. We can do our best to encourage our enemy to attack where we want them to but in the end PvP is random and unpredictable. This is not like a boss fight in a dungeon where you know whats going to happen next. Therefor commands will change on the fly, you will change directions a lot, change focus a lot, and be lead off cliffs randomly. This is an unavoidable truth with PvP so please don't complain about going west then east then north then west again. War is dynamic and the battlefield continously changes.

I hope this clears the air on what to expect durring our family conquest nights.

*Salute* Yes sir, very clear sir. Well said.

I can see your points in some aspects but I still largely don't understand our tactic. When we queue with a large group, we open up spots for more people to enter on other sides as well, so while sometimes zergs may flock to try to kill us, I think in general we'll be hurting people who legitimately want to win (as in non-guildies) just by queuing up unless we play to win. Sure, we may not have the gear, and some of our players may not have the experience, but how are we going to teach them open field combat if we never go into the field? First hand experience is the best way to learn, and I think we need to get out there in the field and do that. Also, people need to see how conquest works by actually going around and capping objectives. Whether we avoid the zerg or not, at some point we have to cap objectives or we are just giving away a win to one of the other sides. Furthermore, if we're trying to get a good understanding of the terrain, we need to have people keep an eye on the % of other factions, where the zerg is, and how close the objectives are to being capped. You mention that we should go for white flag areas, but its important to have seen when the area was destroyed and how many were there, otherwise if we cross the map to get to one, it will already be taken by the time we get there and there may be an entire zerg waiting for us, if we didn't look at who was there before it turned to a white flag. Most importantly though, if you're going to try to make good use of the terrain, it is absolutely imperative to use it to your advantage. Last night we clustered into a doorway, and we got slaughtered. When you put a zerg in a doorway it makes it that much harder to heal the AoE damage. I've seen many underdog zergs win because they flanked the other, pushed, and got the other side on the run so they could just mow them down, but fighting in the door almost always goes badly. It also goes without saying that if you fight for a port area, you should cap the port so you don't get reinforcements constantly streaming in to stop you. My number one complaint for last night though is that we sat in the tower and essentially waited for the 60% mark to happen, and chased down objectives we could not effectively use for a win afterwards. While we may not be playing to win, we shouldn't just throw away the game with an obvious disregard for tactics to prolong the game and/or overcome a disadvantage. Sorry for the wall of text, and sorry if I came off as rude during any of that, just merely trying to express opinions because I feel like the way conquest was handled last night was not what it should've been, even if our goal isn't to win there are many ways we could've made it better for us.

Lucent, last night was not an optimal example. All 5 of the previous nights we capture objectives and ran the field against the 2 zergs. Last night however I got 4 blue screens, and 3 hard freezes in the first hour of play to the point i ended up doing a full disk recovery at the end of the night and finished out the night on a dual core 2.1ghz with a geforce 8500GT in it. I was getting 1 to 3 frames per second most of that event. It's hard to lead troops when you cant see. That is why most of the night we sat in one spot. Most the time it was waiting for me to get back in. By the time i said screw it im going to play on the slow machine they had already locked it down. This is not normally how we operate. Please read the above message, in there i state that we continuously move and stay nowhere longer than 1.5 minutes. That is how we normally operate. I have been leading troops each week against smaller groups to teach them the above principals. Last night being the exception.

Understandable, as long as we normally get out there and do stuff :D. Winning isn't even a big deal honestly, I just like to get out and do stuff, and last night felt like we were just giving the match away, but I understand the issues didn't really make it easy for us to do much as a cohesive group. I'll look forward to next week though :)

I completely agree with the overall strategy for Conquest. Last night's run in conquest is only one of our strategies that we use and due to technical difficulties that was our best strategy. We normally capture a bunch of extractors and control and area. It is a learning process for everyone involved. I encourage anyone who has ideas on how to run in Conquest to form up their own groups and hit em hard.

I find Fog's rules fair and perfectly reasonable. They may seem a bit drill sergeant-like at times but the parallels cannot be ignored. This is combat and I, as a soldier, go where I'm asked to go and shoot what I'm asked to shoot. At some point in the future if I think I know better, rest assured I'll let it be known but, as pointed out, I will do so privately as anybody in such a position should do. I will readily admit that I don't know jack squat about Rift PvP (though I was ranked arena in WoW) and I for one appreciate any and all we do and frankly don't care if our objective is to win or to farm or even to be farmed. Point of fact on my first Conquest run with Fog, we sat on top of that tower and did something over 300 kills. Though again I don't know much about Conquest, I'm pretty sure I earned far more points to spend on gear that night then I would have getting half that many kills and yet winning. I need the gear. I need to learn the strategies. I need to learn where to go when he calls out a location (rather than always bleating and waiting to see where the herd goes). With all due respect meant, we all have our preferences and play styles and if yours is to win, I would kindly ask that you join as an individual because I suspect that your desires may run counter to what Fog is attempting to accomplish. In the meantime, I'm off to graze...

I love the family night conquests and I agree with the strategy. One thing I have noticed the last few events is how few healers we have in the ranged group. Two weeks ago we had 2 for the whole raid and the other day there were only three. They did a great job, of course, but we need more like 6 of them. We could be able to take on a similar sized zerg with a much better chance of success. Even if we are under geared, we would still have an upper hand on organization, especially as people start to know their roles and what they are expected to do, like using a main assist to focus fire, tactical silences and spell reflects, saving mass betrayal instead of blowing it too early like a noob (that would be me) etc... So break out those heal specs and lets keep evolving into a team! Half the fun of this stuff is learning to become a cohesive unit.

Healers would be nice. I usually split them between groups. Last couple we had 6 total.

Fog has one of the best minds for consistently leading against pvp warfare that I've seen. I've ran with Gaiscioch for a while now and can verify there is a method behind it all, and Fog always has good reasons for what he does. That said, Monday night was a fluke, like people have said. Just hang in there and try it again next Monday. If you still find it frustrating, take Don's advice and lead another group, we could use the backup elsewhere on the field :)

I have a suggestion for the que / organization part. Why don't we form 5 man groups instead of a raid. the que will pop for us easier and we can assign "sergeants" to each group also it would insure a group balance more equitable for success. These group would still stick together and still follow fog. for example. form a 5 man with 1 healer and 1 support in each, have it lead by a sergeant for objectives that fog calls out for us. this insures group balancing over all and easier que times. also allows for fog to easily split and reform the group. he could ask 2 of the sergeants to lead their groups to a certain objective wile the remaining protect or move to another. for them most part well all end up in the same raid group anyways for raid buffs and such, but let the system form the raid will make the que work in our favor. could put an experienced/geared pvper in each group as a sergeant or however you see fit. Just a thought... Ive pvped and raided successfully in most every major MMO in the last 16+ years. not terribly worried abut winning the match per say just want people to get the favor/ranks/source stones so they can gear effectively.

We will be playing on the underdog side to avoid this issue and ensure plentiful targets of opportunity. I don't have enough confident leaders to break off 8-10 groups at this point. Plus the idea of a Family Event is to have us together not sporadically inserted and possibly divided between teams. I'd rather have us all together until our troops become comfortable with the situation.

i'll be hitting 50 on my cleric by this weekend, are fresh 50's welcome and if so are there any roles that seem to be needed more?

But fog is it better to take all the small objectives then castle or castle first then small objectives ?

The possibility of gear normalization will change the gear progression. Be interested in a CQ run during the live test prior to SL.