Squads Discussion

cashto · Post by **cashto** » Tue May 27, 2014 9:37 pm

There is really not much value in trading for trading's sake. Indeed, it destroys any group unity / sense of loyalty to the squad. As practiced in AW5 it was just a metagame where SL's tried to fob their lemons / no-shows off on other squads.

In the new squad system there might be situations where a council might say, for balance reasons, "you can't have players X, Y, and Z all together on your team; pick which one you want to give up" and thereby force a (necessarily unequal) trade to happen. But even then, that's a tricky mechanic and should be used with caution. Ideally the community just self-polices the stack and such powers are used for enforcing the more egregious cases.

Funkmaster Rick · Post by **Funkmaster Rick** » Wed May 28, 2014 12:51 am

Heh, you say ideally, but this community rarely manages to practice the ideal solution. If you ask the community to self-police the stack, it'll turn into a big pile of whiny drama. All the good players will threaten to quit because they end up having to sometimes play with bad players, or iffy comms. We CAN'T let the community just self-police the stack - the community has been doing that for years, and it's only resulted in SysX dominating nearly everything.

Broodwich · Post by **Broodwich** » Wed May 28, 2014 1:01 am

you mean that community that existed for like 13 years?

I agree, terrible track record

ThePhantom032 · Post by **ThePhantom032** » Wed May 28, 2014 1:35 am

Funkmaster Rick wrote:QUOTE (Funkmaster Rick @ May 28 2014, 02:51 AM) Heh, you say ideally, but this community rarely manages to practice the ideal solution. If you ask the community to self-police the stack, it'll turn into a big pile of whiny drama. All the good players will threaten to quit because they end up having to sometimes play with bad players, or iffy comms. We CAN'T let the community just self-police the stack - the community has been doing that for years, and it's only resulted in SysX dominating nearly everything.

Aside from those 2 years RT dominated nearly everything after I self-policed myself from SysX to RT

(Though that really wasnt all about me)

I wish grav was still around to command

MrChaos · Post by **MrChaos** » Wed May 28, 2014 6:50 am

The community can and does self police itself about what is a "fair" game

It tends to do this an inordinate amount of the time, limiting a preceived advantage as long as there appears to be a chance for a "fair" and "balanced game".. everyone wants to win so there is almost always some kind of shennanigans taking place and occasionally we go through dark periods of winning over everything else I tend to call them the $#@!ed into a cocked hat times.

I just don't think it works well and never has worked well for any of a variety of reasons... *shrug* precception is reality and it trumps everything else... and I do mean everything else

Archangelus · Post by **Archangelus** » Wed May 28, 2014 9:19 pm

Squads are part of the game, not the game being part of squads. Right now considering the playerbase, your focus is at the wrong spot. Go get us more players plz. Then we can discuss about how squads gonna work.

Mastametz · Post by **Mastametz** » Wed May 28, 2014 9:24 pm

Archangelus wrote:QUOTE (Archangelus @ May 28 2014, 02:19 PM) Squads are part of the game, not the game being part of squads. Right now considering the playerbase, your focus is at the wrong spot. Go get us more players plz. Then we can discuss about how squads gonna work.

This.

Any attempts to reshuffle/reorganize/redraft the existing player base on a couple dozen people is a waste at best, and counterproductive at worst.
For the same reason that autobalance was a stupid idea from the very first moment it was mentioned, and a waste of time being worked on thereafter.

People want to play with and for the people they want to play with and for.

Period.

Or they'd rather not play.

Several of us are actively working on solutions for the playerbase problem. Stay tuned.

Archangelus · Post by **Archangelus** » Sat May 31, 2014 3:13 am

Here is a simple idea. Lock all squads that have 10+ active players showing up (decide w/e criteria u want, this is just an example). Forbid recruiting. This would keep the "guild" idea interesting.

If every new player that shows up, ask about joining a squad or making one, just tell them squads are locked untill we get X ammount of players playing regularly. once that mark is reached, new squads, and old squads gonna be unlocked. Ask them to get their friends playing, so they can make their own squads, and reach the mark of active players faster. ( We can even do a marketing campaign like the one Dome is doing).

This will probably bring a lower quality for the old dogs at start since almost every new squad/or old one that doesnt have enough ppl will rise again with a fresh rooster. But in the longer term, but its an alternative for player retention. And in the longer run, maybe something stronger or as strong as sysx rise again.

It will also need a lot of patience from the dinossaurs, not everyone come here knowing it all, so plz avoid complaining about high quality of squad games, when we lack the quality and quantity of players. Everything we plan here, wont solve alleg playerbase problem in just a few months. And this game has a deep curve, so dont expect ppl to master it in 3 weeks. Maybe, alleg will need another 3-5 years as the first time MS unplugged it, to rebuild itself.

Post by **Dome** » Thu Jun 19, 2014 9:46 am

Archangelus wrote:QUOTE (Archangelus @ May 28 2014, 02:19 PM) Squads are part of the game, not the game being part of squads. Right now considering the playerbase, your focus is at the wrong spot. Go get us more players plz. Then we can discuss about how squads gonna work.

We can do both at once. Portraying a dead game to new players is not attractive. We need events with longevity. We need the assurance of new players being trained to play the game. Competitive squads brings us that.

Imagine we have new balanced squads with an inviting website, a hi-res default installer, with a key-mapping that makes sense. Then also imagine a backbone of activity, something inviting new players to step up to the learning curve with the help of their squad-mates. This is what Allegiance can and will be.

Archangelus · Post by **Archangelus** » Wed Jun 25, 2014 5:17 am

Have you ever considered the fact that forcing ppl to play with ppl they dont want, will just bring more harm than good? Or just kill squads for good? Some ppl instead of playing squad games, may just want to stick to playing regular pugs (or not playing at all).

Like I said, squads are part of the game, not the other way around. You have many other options to get newbies trained by vets on how to play this game, I believe you have all acs material, cadet material & etc, just update everything and throw in a few more things. So far the tutorial for this game, is the worst of all games I´ve played, why not make a new with a deeper teaching of how this game is played?

Also events dont need to be squad based, you can make 2-3-5 teams events without it being squad related, and still make it enjoyable for everyone.