More and more, lately, I keep thinking about what the Year-1 Experience in Destiny was like, compared to what it is now. We were all new, we were all "Green," and just sort of fumbling our way through the end-game, after we beat the story-campaign. When Vault of Glass finally rolled around, many people had no idea what we we were doing when we first stepped-foot into the raid. The vast majority of us had no choice but to act as "Sherpas," for inexperienced players in the first month or two, and even though it was a struggle, it strengthened us as a community. It was at that was the time when I most felt like our community was of a better-quality than most. People were actively teaching each other, and sharing experiences and knowledge. We speculated together on possible tips and tricks and even "cheeses" to maximize our abilities as a team, and we thrived. Vault of Glass was, at the time, the most challenging experience in Destiny, but we conquered it as "Guardians." That wouldn't have happened if our community, then, was the way it is now. "Sherpas" are a dying breed, because few people have the patience to teach others how to do things properly. -- "If you don't know what you're doing, we don't want you in our team." This a vicious, self-destructive cycle, because if you don't know what you're doing, you can't LEARN with no one to teach you. Now, I've never really considered myself as a "Sherpa." I'm willing to help friends finish a Raid, even if I've already completed it, but as for diving "balls-deep" into the Raids with a team of completely inexperienced players? I've always thought that was too much of a hassle. Last night I got an Invitation to a Raid-Team who was stuck ar Oryx, and Iguided an entire team of people who'd never completed King's Fall through the final stage of the Raid. To take it a step further, 4 out of 6 of them were Destiny's dreaded [b]Squeakers.[/b] I won't lie, my first reaction when I hit the Party, and immediately was greeted with the words, "Miko! We don't know how to do this. Tell us what we're supposed to do!" made my skin crawl like someone was running sand-paper across my brain. My first instinct was: "Nope. Forget this shiitake-mushroom." But... Then I stopped. "I was the 'noob' on my first Raid Team. If our team-leaders had said 'Nope, -blam!- that.' I'd probably never have completed it." I stopped rolling my eyes and I began talking, and explaining the mechanics of the battle; I began explaining the importance of remembering "Counter Clock-Wise," with the Platforms, I explained the Spawn-Order of the Ogres, and the crucial importance of each-persons roles. You can imagine how deflated I felt when I realized I was the only person on the team with a ToM. the only other Titan didn't even have his Defender-Class fully completed. But I grit my teeth, and we did our first run... It ended in a Wipe, because somebody hadn't understood, "Two people go to Platform 1." Round 2 ended because someone didn't understand they had to [b]stay[/b] on the platform in order for the Runner to make it across. Rounds 3-4 ended in wipes, because somebody hadn't understood that Platform 2 is always going to be to the left of Oryx, and Platform 3 is always diagonal-across from Oryx, and the Runner couldn't handle the stress and kept losing his direction on the platforms. I took over as Runner, so we only had 1 bubble in the center. Rounds 5 - 9, we made it 2 or 3 passes, but then people would forget to kill Ogre 4, or would lose track of where Oryx was to shoot him. I was a little frustrated by now, but I didn't let it show. "No problem, you guys have made it past 2 cycles; you know what to do. You just need to do it [b]better[/b]." Round 10, we finally made it to the Shade round, so I began explaining in Real-Time what was about to happen, and what everyone's roles needed to be. We made it through 2 shades, and ended up losing it on the second-to-last round when two people got taken down by Ads. Everyone was frustrated by then, especially the Squeakers. It was hard not to be, but at the same time, I was really hopeful. I grant you, this was [b]Normal Mode[/b], but considering they'd never done it before, they were progressing well, especially for the presumably 10 - 12 years-old range. I told everyone to hang back for a few minutes, sometimes getting caught-up in the momentum of Raid-Cycle can be detrimental; you find yourself in ruts and patterns without realizing it, and because you're in that "just do what I did before" mind-frame, you make the same mistakes without meaning to. We sat, we went over the mistakes, we went over what we were doing right, and then we went at it again... And they did it. I say "They," because this was never about [b]me[/b] getting it done. I was 332, in a normal-mode Raid. I wasn't pulling my hair out waiting for 320-drops. I was there because I felt like I owed it to the community to try and help the inexperienced players improve. They remembered their roles, they stuck to them, they remembered their tasks and completed them. We finished Oryx with only 2 or 3 people dying through the entire round, between Orb-Detonations. It meant pretty much nothing to me, but to hear the excitement of the rest of them was almost better than getting Gear-Drops from the chest. Everybody was cheering, excited, hyped and happy. I don't know how many times everyone thanked me for "Saving them" after their original Team-Leader bailed. "I thought we were [b]never[/b] gonna get it done!" "Dude, you f-ing saved us! You're the total MVP of this Raid." I won't lie, it was an ego-booster. But more than that, I remembered being that happy when 3 people carried myself and 3 others through the Vault of Glass for the first time. I realized then that this is [b]largely[/b] what made Year-1 Destiny great to play. We might've been lacking in the content we have now. We might've had more bugs and glitches, and problems with Engrams and Drops, but as a new, growing community, we were more than just a group of "Elitists" avoiding the idea of "ruining our KD's" by "playing with noobs." We were all "Noobs," and we were all fumbling through the dark together. And we all [b]succeeded[/b] together. This is what we need, as a whole. We need to get back to what we were in the beginning. We need to be willing to help the inexperienced players, and we need to be willing to teach the "noobs" who've never completed a Raid. We need to stop caring about the significance of "KD/R" numbers; they're just [b]numbers[/b], numbers in a [b]game.[/b] A [b]Game[/b] that's supposed to be [b]Fun[/b]. Somewhere between The Dark Below and The Taken King, our community forgot about that. We started counting and tracking every little number of every PvP match and every Raid, and we lost the concept of having [b]fun[/b] when we play. Acting as a Sherpa last night helped remind me of that. If you haven't done it yet, maybe you should give it a try.