Squads Discussion

cashto · Post by **cashto** » Tue May 20, 2014 6:47 pm

Keep in mind, sentinel, that if a squad only has 10 players, every single one of them must show up to every game. So realistically it takes around 15 active players to really keep a squad going.

And I don't really care if a squad has 30 players if half of those players are just hangers-on that only show up once in a blue moon, at least they can still participate if and when they do show up and that's good for Allegiance.

But yeah, it really is important for squads to be balanced, both in numbers as well as in strength.

Aeropagitica · Post by **Aeropagitica** » Tue May 20, 2014 10:43 pm

I will play, and continue to play. I am interested in joining a squad. I am interested in leading a squad too, once I get a little more experience.
As for a squad shuffle, I see two schools of thought:
In the last structure, SysX won, defeating all the other squads. You can reshuffle /remake other squads leaving SysX as the reigning champ, and let the new squads go again, with an eye on the champ,
or you can indicate : yay, SysX won, now we're reshuffling and starting over from scratch. Normally, I'd say 1 is the better option, but we don't have the people there once were.
In the interest of fair play, starting over completely may be for the best, giving SysX their timeless immortality in the annals of history.

Either way, I'm here to play!

cashto · Post by **cashto** » Tue May 20, 2014 11:17 pm

I should point out that the last time we had this discussion about six months ago, the idea of a full squad reset came up, and it had quite a bit of support.

And in that time I think we had a grand total of one squad game played. It was SysX and NI, NI had a weak turnout, SysX curbstomped yet again. Squads are dead.

So yeah. Enough jibber-jabber already. We're just going to do it. Clean slate coming up for everybody. Congrats to SysX for winning Allegiance.

raumvogel · Post by **raumvogel** » Wed May 21, 2014 12:20 am

Flashback to 2012

ryujin · Post by **ryujin** » Wed May 21, 2014 5:14 am

Some way to force trades every "x" months would be healthy imo... and require at least 3 players be traded or something. this will result in some lower skilled/newer players being traded much more often, but we could set up something to work this out (like one player can only be traded 3 times in 4 trading sessions)

peet · Post by **peet** » Wed May 21, 2014 7:15 am

Before you all happy start shuffling players in whatever "new" squad configuration, may I remind you of the continuous problem of the "sleeper player"? The (very lovable) player that plays a game or two a year, but hardly ever in a squad game?

Before we apply Greece style accounting to pump up the player numbers, maybe some strict rules can be applied to remove "dead" players from the squad? Prevent embarrassing situations where squads have to cancel events due to lack of players?

IIRC the statistics seem to indicate that a minimum squadsize should be 13-14 active players to ensure a 10 player squadgame turnup.

Keeping roughly the same squadsize also prevents large amounts of benchsitters during squadgame becuase 1 team showed up with much more players than the other.

Mastametz · Post by **Mastametz** » Wed May 21, 2014 9:47 am

With a shuffle like this I'd say more like 20-25 "Active" players to ensure 10 at a squad game.

Casnak · Post by **Casnak** » Wed May 21, 2014 1:40 pm

I agree that focusing on squads is probably an ineffective way to get a healthy player base... which is a prerequisite of squads.

That said, I voted "don't care" in the poll because I don't have the availability to commit myself to a squad these days.

Malicious Wraith · Post by **Malicious Wraith** » Wed May 21, 2014 2:04 pm

Casnak wrote:QUOTE (Casnak @ May 21 2014, 09:40 AM) I agree that focusing on squads is probably an ineffective way to get a healthy player base... which is a prerequisite of squads.

That said, I voted "don't care" in the poll because I don't have the availability to commit myself to a squad these days.

After having played again, I entirely agree with this. Allegiance is no place for squads in its current incarnation, we should keep them just for memory.

We should focus on inclusive events.

Dorjan · Post by **Dorjan** » Mon May 26, 2014 12:58 pm

An idea
Squad - Places to hang out with like-minded individuals
Wings - Teams of competitive players

This solution would be to change the Squads to be purely social and allow people to form competitive Wings at the desired amount of players (random numbers 5-7 / 7-10).

Pros
1) Bigger social clubs with no pressure to turn up at a specific time keeping retention in general players who just want to game every now and then with no pressure to turn up to a specific event (but will likely want to since they'll be once a month or something). Squads will naturally train their own guys in the basics, help them get into the game and set times to fly together in random games.
2) Players who want to compete at a different rate to their social club (Squad) can recruit from anywhere to compete in the tournaments!
3) There can be just two Squads for this to work! And of course more can be added with as many or little players as we want, it matters less.
4) We run social events for Squads once a month that will encourage those big pride squad vs squad situations, but make them fun like the FAZ games were!
5) The tournament teams could schedule their own times to play each other! They'll be more flexible with less people to worry about.

Cons
1)More complicated to run the tournaments.
- Players will need multiple Callsigns (already supported)

I would see it like this:

Dorjan@SF - Squad, my social club where I hang out, train and talk to people. If you're polite and nice, you get to come play with us because we're like that!

Dorjan_XENO - My competitive team where we ruthlessly kick ass! If you suck and are missing our trainings? Out on your ass and go train noob.

I use this as an example as that's what happened to me:
- I was leading SF just fine, but couldn't balance the need to win with the enjoyment of the causals
- This caused pressure on the entire squad to turn up to all events, and for everyone to be top notch!
- In hindsight, it wouldn't have been needed if we had set a LIMIT on the competitive team sizes and allow teams to form independently from their squads.

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The benefits here are multiple.
- Casual players feel less stress
- Commanders have less pressure outside of these moments as the "pro" and "not pro" matches are clearly defined for the avg person
- Less rage for the causal games as the "pro" players get to do that during their leagues / tournaments!

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What can I do to help this?

Throw in 100$ to a prize pool for the first league to get it started that can be opened up to the avg player to add to?

Just spitballing here!