Community Spotlight: Our Awesome Mods
Hello Pizzas!
We’ve got a special interview today with two of the most important people in our first year+ as a live product, our amazing community moderators [Mod] Troburn (Blacklist) and [Mod] Kuratha (SotA).
If you’ve joined our Discord (Pizza Club Games) you’ve undoubtedly come across their helpful messages or guidance on the game or our Discord community. We at Pizza Club Games wanted to take a little time to shine some light on these two and thank them for the tremendous job they do for Raid Boss!
First off, tell us a little bit about yourselves and your gaming/community backgrounds.
Trogburn: (Michael)
I am an avid gamer in all genres and get way too competitive at times. I grew up playing on the OG NES so I love games that require understanding mechanics to succeed. I played the original CounterStrike competitively for a few years in High School (yep just dated myself there). I love RPGs mostly and played WoW from Classic all the way through Pandas (ugh) before I decided my marriage would die before the game did.
Now my time is mostly focused on work, family, and a much slower gaming pace (though Raid Boss, chatting on Discord and Modding take the lion’s share of that now).
For work, I have been in Software Quality Assurance, Quality Engineering and Development now for 15+ years, and I love anything and everything related to coding and automation.
I have traveled to 45 out of the 50 states in USA. I have been to Mexico 4 times, Canada 3 times, and to both Argentina and Israel 1 time. I lived in Mexico for 7 weeks to learn the language and meet new people. I love traveling but it is much harder with young kids now.
I have always wanted to help develop a game, so in my spare time I have helped out with a few different projects including one of the first MMORPGs ever made… it is a very unknown game called The4thComing. I served as both a Game Master and a developer for a while to help mod the existing world, create events, engage players, and deal with the riff raff causing problems and/or hacking. Maybe one day I might get a chance to add to the Raid Boss code as well 😜. For now, I am enjoying Modding, writing custom commands and bots, and creating guides and videos for the community.
Kuratha: (David *pronounced in the language of your country*)
-I have lived and traveled all over the world, have visited almost all of the States of America
-I greatly enjoy RPG games with a focus on strategy/tactics/skill. (I try to restrain myself but I have a very competitive min/max nature)
-I am an avid primarily reader with hundreds of books and series read, and several thousand different Manga/Manhua/Manhwa series completed
-I enjoy learning something new everyday and often spend hours researching things before trying to implement them into my life
-I love martial arts and am working towards mastering a half-dozen different types
-I am likely one of the youngest here between the Mods/Devs (still mid-20s)
-I am studying to do something in Cyber-security but lack any real technical skills outside of general computer knowledge
-I have spent several years: creating, moderating, and managing Discord infrastructure, etc as well as creating, generating, and posting guides, strategies, walkthroughs, etc for various games, communities, and companies
-I hate social media and am therefore generally fairly ignorant when it comes to forums/Blogs/etc
If you want to know anything else, ping or DM me~
Next I’m wondering, what drew you into Raid Boss and what made you want to become leaders in our community?
Trogburn: For me initially it was the challenge. Most mobile games require no skill other than min/maxing your efficiency, and you rarely fail at anything. I am a huge fan of punishing (but fun) games where mistakes can be just as fun and rewarding as the eventual learning and success.
After a short time in the game, the community in Discord became an even bigger reason I stuck around. We hands down have one of the best communities of players and devs. From day one we were having honest conversations with the dev team and each other about what amazing things this game could become even before world launch.
Since my joining I have seen countless instances of player feedback either being directly implemented in the game, or used as motivation and tools to refine the final implementation of new features. I personally wanted to help out as much as I could to encourage the game’s growth and player retention. I see great things ahead for the Pizza Club Games dev team and for the Raid Boss game, and I want to be a part of that journey!
Kuratha: As mentioned before, I absolutely love anything to do with strategy/tactics and skill of mind. A big part of my life has been spent as a leader and helping others. So after checking out the game for a while, I knew pretty soon that it was going to be something I would enjoy for a long time, something I look for in my life because I tire and grow bored of things quickly if they aren’t dynamic enough. I followed the in-game link to Discord, as I love Discord and all that it has to offer and was immediately drawn into the community with the great responses from both the members and the Devs. I saw a need and offered my services and experience but it was a little bit before they were taken up. The vision I saw of what RB could become and the tool that Discord could be used as were something I wished to pursue.
What advice do you have for new players just starting their journey in Raid Boss?
Trogburn: Join Discord! No really. Do it.
Our community is the best around. We have veteran and new players alike that are always willing to help out with advice for the game, your personal progression, or even just share life together. We have near daily interactions with the development team.
Play daily, even if in small increments. Daily interaction with the game will progress you the most overall, and the dev team has been very generous in the daily growth gains.
Don’t get discouraged by failures… instead enjoy the journey!!! It is a great one!
Kuratha:
- Join the Discord~!
- Join the Discord~~!
- Did I mention joining the Discord yet~?
But really, there’s various kinds of playstyles for each player. Some enjoy the blind experience, others like me enjoy the complete preparedness and destruction of content :D, others the communal aspect, and yet more enjoy the PvP functionality and competitive nature. Whatever it may be, the Game Discord is the place where everything can be discussed and built upon.
New Player guides- check
Boss Guides- check
Crazy Gedrans- check
Want to suggest something and see it end up in the game- check, we got you covered
We want you to stay around and enjoy the Raid Boss experience with all of us, so please do~
Who are your favorite guildies and boss fights in the game?
Trogburn:
Gedran – for the Memes
SailorGoon – the most fun kit in the game with poison spreading and healing through damage, but she needs a bunch of her skills before you really get to see how fun she is. As for actual game usage, sadly her damage can’t stack up, so I use her mostly for the fun factor.
BigBoned – still my favorite for game campaign progression. Love his kit with stuns and range damage, aoe damage, atk down reductions, and execute. All in all he finds the most play for me on new levels.
For Bosses, that one is tough for me because this is one of the biggest draws for me to this game. Boss fights with interesting mechanics and challenging execution always top my list, so with that said the bosses that really helped me see the potential for Raid Boss’s future and really revved me up are (in no particular order):
Hydra, Kraken, Titan Golem, Lich King, and Skeleton King
If I had to pick a favorite from those… I would probably go with Titan Golem or Hydra. The forgiveness factor on both of those is very low at the start, and you will see a drastic difference in your playthrough on them as you get better at the game.
Kuratha: Yesssss.
Toolshed– is gonna be my girl. Super fun, great utility, stronk in all aspects and content I focus on.
On to some others though:
Light: Although Nipps is my go-to, I actually really like Mysterion. Chi pull/stun, Yin-Yang, and 12 Zodiacs smash away. A true, in-your-face throwing out the garbage approach.
Mage: Toolshed aside, recently I’ve taken a liking to QoD, her RNG factors are totally working for me, adding an additional spice to the challenges I do.
Tank: Gonna go with HA on this one. He’s the stun lord. Giant ranged AoE stun, charges in and then smashes the ground for another Stun AoE. Taking too much fire, summon an ancient Tribal totem to pull enemies away before…yes, another giant ranged AoE
Support: Windsummers was my first healer…and none other was really needed.
Medium: I’m actually a big fan of MistaDarcy. I mean who doesn’t like a damage support character that can actually heal??? Good stuff
Ranged: Sterling or Willow…hmmm hard choice. Willow carried me for quite some time but sterling is my ranged girl now.
Boss: Hmm, quite a difficult choice. I think I’m actually going to say Skeleton King. As it was one of the most mechanically different fights up until recently.
You’re both in high-end alliances on the server, what advice do you have for newer alliances just starting out on how to get to the higher difficulty Raids?
Trogburn: Be consistent, available, and communicate with your fellow alliance members. Activity in Discord is a must. It is very hard to coordinate the later raids if you don’t at least have a core group of players that talk near daily.
Alliance raids tend to function better when most alliance members are near the same account level, gear level, tier level. For example: Star counts will be closer to an average and players won’t try to just snipe bosses.
Even though it is much easier if everyone is in or near the same time zone, an alliance with good communication and active players can still function very well with members spread across the globe. For example: some of our members like to fight raid nodes around 7am server time, others are highly active between 5-9pm, and some are highly active around 3am. We have pulled off some crazy things in raids because we always had a fresh string of members ready to jump in when others wrapped up.
Kuratha: Getting to the good stuff now 😉
1) I’m going to greatly stress the importance of an Alliance Discord with a strong, open, and coordinated Leadership
2) You’ll become a very close-knit group so when recruiting, you NEED to make it absolutely clear from the beginning that you all will be in it for the long-haul and need to be talking daily with expectations established upon founding
3) Plan things out in advance, you want to establish a routine with set times and dates so members know how to plan their game time around their schedules
4) Don’t be afraid to push yourselves but do keep in mind that 1 can’t do everything. Everything but Raids can be done solely on your own so that’s a hard change in mentality for some
5) To sum and finish things up: when starting, you want to be very aggressive with advertising, kicking, and establishing expectations. Players should all be around the same time because due to the nature of Raids, you’ll need to progress all around the same time and rate. So like-minded individuals should be the primary goal when recruiting.
Anything else you want to share with our players?
Trogburn: As with all games, Raid Boss is entirely what the community makes of it. If you feel it could be improved, then be active in Discord and speak up. The development team is actively listening and engaging with us, and your opinions and thoughts will definitely help shape this great game.
Ultimately, as most of us know, what will keep Raid Boss alive is community involvement. There are a bunch of awesome people both developing this game and playing this game. If you take the time to reach out and interact, you will be pleasantly surprised by the relationships you will form. For me when playing an RPG / MMO … that is the biggest win you could have.
Hit me up anytime! Can’t wait to meet you and swap stories from both the game and that weird IRL thing.
Don’t be a stranger!!!
Kuratha: In the end this is a game, albeit a very fun one. Great community, devs, and overall potential. Be patient and active and whenever your journey may end, you’ll always be looking back to the many amazing memories, experiences, and time you’ve made here.
Looking forward to continuing to work, play, and grow together with you all~!
Thanks again to Michael and David for all the hard work they do for the community and for sharing some of their insights with us here today! We look forward to featuring more members of our community in future dev blogs, thanks for reading this and playing Raid Boss!