59 replies to this topic

[Karl Marlow]

Captain Tristan The Lucky, on 19 August 2016 - 04:41 AM, said:

The only people i want to trash is Liao , can you offer something on that front?

Can Liao?

[Lily from animove]

Captain Tristan The Lucky, on 19 August 2016 - 04:41 AM, said:

The only people i want to trash is Liao , can you offer something on that front?

we cna surely arrange an innersphere tour and bat people elft and right we come across.

[Captain Tristan The Lucky]

ThomasMarik, on 19 August 2016 - 05:38 AM, said:

Can Liao?

Good point.

[Nicc Hunter]

Liao Is not very active right Now, so you better go for CJF

[Nicc Hunter]

The Only way The South can be alive again is If there is an event for davion, Liao and marik but all seems to be only Clan border action

[Captain Tristan The Lucky]

Nicc Hunter, on 19 August 2016 - 09:56 AM, said:

The Only way The South can be alive again is If there is an event for davion, Liao and marik but all seems to be only Clan border action

Indeed, we are all in this together.

[Ilithi Dragon]

I know many in the Widows would be down for inter-unit scrimmages. I'll talk to the guys when I get home tomorrow evening, and see when we might be able to get a full team on. I'm thinking some kind of two out of three or three out of five arrangement, to give everything a good go, and make it last a little longer.

I'll rattle some ideas around while I'm on duty today, and post more suggestions/thoughts on the problems we're having tomorrow.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

As a fresh unit leader I'm fully working on converting people to my unit but also convert the unloyal to the Marik cause.
If they sound friendly at least.
I'm always up for making groups either they may be invasions, scouts and recently I hope to also get quickplays going.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Couple quick thoughts: One of the things that I know has caused units to fall away in the past is time in getting them set up as members of the FWLM. A lot of that was during a period when we didn't have anyone with admin access on the back-end to set up new tags, new TS channels, etc. for new units coming into the community, which isn't so much of a problem these days, but our process for inducting new units into the community could stand to be streamlined, I think.

Currently, new units can only be formally approved for membership in the FWLM with a vote by the UCC every month, but as history has shown us, we don't always have enough people able to get on to have a UCC meeting (life, etc.), and that means that new units might have to wait for up to a month before they can even get approved to get tags, etc., not counting time until someone actually gets to the back-end work.
I do think that we still need to retain the formal approval system, but I think we can certainly stand to streamline it. Instead of holding unit membership applications until the monthly UCC meeting, why not use the forums we have at our disposal, and have applying unit COs send a message or make a post requesting membership, and then the UCC members vote yay or nay on it. Give it, say, a week vote time (I'm thinking the "sponsoring" unit leader or whomever makes an official "application review" post and use that as the vote period start time, or something along those lines), and after a week of review (or if all the votes are made), the decision is made yay or nay. That would allow us to streamline the approval process, and give unit leaders who might not have otherwise been able to make the UCC meeting and chime in a chance to vote/comment.

(In general, I think the unit leaders should make greater use of our forums, but that's something of a separate matter, and I'm not blameless there, myself.)


Another thought I had was that, in addition to reinstating the Monday Marik Madness, we could also institute another, new event specifically geared around recruiting. An LFG night, where we break into 4-man groups (give or take), and all hop into LFG, snatching up everyone we can. We'll get a lot of non-Mariks in the process, many of whom will already be in a unit, but we'll get a lot of recruits that way, many of them fresh to the game, and we might even convince a few non-Marik players to switch factions, because we're going out of our way to invite them to our community.


One of the other things we could do, to encourage player retention, is identify the anchor players, the guys who hold groups together, attract people to play with, the guys who, when they hop off for the night or for a while, the whole group falls apart because that one person or two was anchoring it all together. Identify those people, and find ways to encourage them to stick around. They tend to be unit leaders, but aren't always. Encouraging other members of the community to step up and take leadership roles, such as calling drops, etc., can also help form anchor players, because as people step into leadership roles, the ones who excel at it tend to become anchor players. The more anchor players we have, and the more active our anchor players are, the more activity we'll have.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Oh! Almost forgot!

Another thing that I wanted to suggest, but this will require a lot more in-depth discussion among unit leaders, and communication with other factions.

We have a Clan front, yes, but it doesn't see much activity, because, to be 100% honest, fighting the Clans isn't all that fun. They still have a substantial advantage (if they didn't, the majority of mercs wouldn't have joined them), and that makes IS vs Clan faction warfare battles unfair, especially since the changes PGI put through to make fighting to kill the objective instead of the mechs a lot harder (though once the Clans figured out how to use their advantages there, it wouldn't have made much difference). The whole purpose of this game is to have fun. We play it because we enjoy the game, we enjoy the fight. But if the odds against us are substantially unfair, consistently, time and time again, it stops being fun, so we stop playing. Especially when we have to bust our asses just to scrape out a few victories, that ultimately lead us nowhere.

Clan vs IS matches just aren't fun, consistently, from the IS side. However, IS vs IS, that's a whole different story. We're on a level playing field, and the results of the fight fall entirely on our own skills as mech builders, mechwarriors, strategists, and team players (plus a dash or two of luck to keep things interesting). Those matches are far more fun, because it's not an uphill slog against an enemy with superior technology. From the perspective of a gamer looking to play a game to have fun, that makes IS vs IS matches worthwhile.

My suggestions is that we reach out to the other houses, who I'm sure are having their own frustrations on the Clan front, and see if they would be interested in abandoning the Clan front entirely, at least for a day or two a week, and fight exclusively IS vs IS. PGI seems to be steadfastly refusing to balance IS vs Clans, and most if not all of the high-end mercs have jumped on the Clan side, so our chances of getting a real, fun, competitive set of matches vs the Clans are remote. But, if the other houses are willing, we can still get good, fun, competitive matches in IS vs IS fronts.

We'll have to talk about that, though, see if that's the direction we want to go in, and if so, reach out to the other houses and see if they would be interested, be it committing to saying, "**** the Clans, let them eat PUGs," or a community-wide "IS vs IS Night" weekly event.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

Ilithi Dragon, on 20 August 2016 - 01:24 PM, said:

One of the other things we could do, to encourage player retention, is identify the anchor players, the guys who hold groups together, attract people to play with, the guys who, when they hop off for the night or for a while, the whole group falls apart because that one person or two was anchoring it all together. Identify those people, and find ways to encourage them to stick around. They tend to be unit leaders, but aren't always. Encouraging other members of the community to step up and take leadership roles, such as calling drops, etc., can also help form anchor players, because as people step into leadership roles, the ones who excel at it tend to become anchor players. The more anchor players we have, and the more active our anchor players are, the more activity we'll have.

That is kind of the problem I have.
Not the identifying part but all anchor players in any clan, guild and probably also unit that I have ran before couldn't handle the weight of the ship so to say.
So if I would happen to leave for a long period of time it starts to degrade till everything goes away and gotta start over from scratch, well beside most key players I had in these groups that tend to return to me.
I do like to encourage the unit members to do all kinds of things but you brought me to an idea actually to expand on it.
-

As faction warfare goes maybe if you lot stop voting to attack Jade Falcon and poke Davions instead we could have more IS vs IS stuff going on.
As JohnTanner says we eat Davions for breakfast!
So please other Marikians stop starving us we wanna eat!

[Ilithi Dragon]

Yeah, I had some experience with that last year when work made me step away from the game for a few months. Thought I'd left the unit in good hands, but drama happened and the unit had almost fallen apart by the time I got back. Fortunately, I made sure the unit was in good hands when I work pulled me away again this year, and the unit did well while I was away.

[Liquid Leopard]

Ilithi Dragon, on 20 August 2016 - 01:38 PM, said:

We have a Clan front, yes, but it doesn't see much activity, because, to be 100% honest, fighting the Clans isn't all that fun. They still have a substantial advantage (if they didn't, the majority of mercs wouldn't have joined them), and that makes IS vs Clan faction warfare battles unfair...

I can see where you're coming from, because the first phase of CW my faction took a beating from a bunch of tryhard and P2W players, and PGI let these players have some fun before nerfing their $200+ mech packages.
In fact, I didn't participate for a while, because I have a finite tolerance for being seal-clubbed. 4 or 5 losing matches in a row, and I'd go back to the PUG cue.

Then, one day I tried CW again, and it was more of an even fight.
Then, another day, I saw the Space Viking wannabes win more matches than they lost.

Lately, the FRR has a fairly even chance of beating Clan teams, partly because Clan "skittles" are much more common than before. It helps that we can put together a team with 10 or 12 tryhards that all know each other. (Not me: I'm a filthy casual.)

You can see for yourselves if you help defend a planet that just needs a PUG or 2 to fill out the team.
...Or perhaps some of you would like to join our faction for a while, be part of a 12-man on our TS3 hub, and earn some FRR mech bays.

[ShaneoftheDead]

Quote

Ilithi: Instead of holding unit membership applications until the monthly UCC meeting, why not use the forums we have at our disposal, and have applying unit COs send a message or make a post requesting membership, and then the UCC members vote yay or nay on it.

</p>

I was thinking something similar myself. Getting all the unit commanders or their reps to be online at that exact same moment in time is, as we see, rare. I'd just as soon see the UCC meeting transition over to a UCC Forum and the votes could be polls. Has the advantage of being a-synchronous, which compensates for time differences and personal schedules.

As for speeding up the New Unit process, that's tough. We can speed up the approval process, but actually making the unit on the Website and on the TS3 server can't. Ramses says it takes about 40hrs of work to make a new unit. Some of which is on the New Unit themselves by providing graphics and icons and such. So he'll do that and then a month later that unit does not show up any more (HoM, DoA, etc.) Very frustrating from his POV. Would be easier to just re-use the old uniforms.

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Ilithi: An LFG night, where we break into 4-man groups (give or take), and all hop into LFG, snatching up everyone we can.

I think you are on to something here. I will definitely speak to my unit about this...I think I have a few members that would do a good job with it.

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Ilithi: One of the other things we could do, to encourage player retention, is identify the anchor players, the guys who hold groups together, attract people to play with, the guys who, when they hop off for the night or for a while, the whole group falls apart because that one person or two was anchoring it all together. Identify those people, and find ways to encourage them to stick around.

This was one of my first concerns when I was a new Unit Commander. It is why I created the Officer Rank Tags. In hopes to give them some recognition as I tend to commission my anchor players. And also to identify them to the rest of the community as leaders. I looked a little bit into seeing if I could automate the process in enjin so a unit command staff could assign them, but there seemed to be no easy way to do it. As of now, it is a manual process in the User Admin page. I was also pondering making Non-Com tags for Corporal on up, to give more active players a little reward.

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Ilithi: From the perspective of a gamer looking to play a game to have fun, that makes IS vs IS matches worthwhile.

I agree. The current voting system may inhibit this, though. You'd have to get enough Marik players to vote for that IS vs IS match, right? Right now, our War Council can suggest things but that does not guarantee it, even within the FWLM let alone all of Marik. Or are we talking about Private Matches?

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Lady Alexandra: So if I would happen to leave for a long period of time it starts to degrade till everything goes away and gotta start over from scratch

The bane of all small units... Only way around that is to put your unit in a good position to grow. When I inherited the 1FWG from Rohaan it was very dead. 32 members, mostly inactive. But was lucky in that I was able to build up fast as the Steam release happened a week later and I was able to get us up into the 60's within a month or two. That and we are located on a very good Teamspeak server (housemarik.enjin.com) with other Marik units. It really helps keep interest up, even though your unit members may not be around.

Edited by ShaneoftheDead, 21 August 2016 - 09:00 AM.

[Joshua McEvedy]

ShaneoftheDead, on 18 August 2016 - 05:07 PM, said:

However, I have never really understood why the 13OH continue to stay away. Yes, you were forming at a particular bad time administratively for the FWLM and I understand why McEvedy initially got your own server, but I believe that problem is gone now. Why not come back and bolster the ranks? As they say, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. At the moment there are 7 clients on the 13OH server and 28 on the FWLM server. 1/5th of the possible clients are staying away from the FWLM server on purpose. The 13OH can do what it likes and if I have offended McEvedy, we can meet at Apple-bees and the first round is on me as the start of an apology. I just think this issue is ironic coming from a 13OH member.

My apologies for being late to this discussion. I've been away for most of the summer on business travel, and Tristan has been doing an excellent job in running things in my absence. Many of the issues being brought up here I have already discussed at length with Ilithi, Shane, Stingr4y, and the other unit commanders over the past two years, so I won't rehash those old conversations except to say that it is disappointing that the FW game mechanics remain extremely unfriendly to House Marik after all of this time, and is the primary reason I believe for our low activity rates.

Concerning Shane's question above about why 13OH stays away, the answer is that the old tagging and permissions problem with the FWLM TS server has never been fixed, despite the best admin efforts to do so. Nobody seems to know what the issue is and Enjin apparently has no solution. About a month ago, six or seven of our 13OH tagged and non-tagged members tried to come over and mingle in the 1FWG drop bays but got stuck in the FWLM lobby. With no admins available at that time, they were unable to get in, so they just returned to our own server, which operates much more efficiently and is open to everyone without having to deal with those frustrating tags. And at this point, real money has been invested in it by our generous members and also our bays have developed a unit culture and camaraderie of its own, which I do not want to disrupt. This all could have been avoided if our old 4th OH unit tags had been handled properly three years ago, but they weren't so this is why we are where we are right now.

And no, you've not offended me at all. It goes without saying that I hold the 1st FWG in high regard and consider it as our sister unit. So no worries.

Edited by Joshua McEvedy, 21 August 2016 - 10:54 AM.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

So what does it actually take to change the target from Jade Falcon to one of the IS houses?
And with that I mean stop promoting to attack JF on the Marik site and get an other target going?
We had more success against Davion then Jade Falcon.

[Sazabi Steppenwulfe]

*cough* PvE content could have prevented this *cough*

*cough* it's Russ's fault *cough*

[Ilithi Dragon]

What is this "content" you speak of?

[Karl Marlow]

CW is the wrong thing to focus on. I know why people focus on it when talking about a faction but Marik was a strong faction before CW. We need to get back to that. CW should just be a part of what we do. Not the whole thing.

Getting out of the unit bays and into the general bays is a great start. When I log in that's the first place I look. Then I see if anyone is in the MGA bays. If not I log off and play other games. I usually ignore other units bays because as easy as it is to say everyone can join freely it still feels weird hopping into a units semi private channel. Plus there are a number of times where dropping into a unit channel is met with some flak.

I also feel you are misinterpreting a call for leadership as a call to set up an official faction leader. We don't need an official leader for people to just run events. By the same token people who are willing to stand up and run some events shouldn't be shunned as though they are trying to overstep their position.

Anchor players, as you call them, are good examples of Dr facto leaders in FWL. Tanner, Stingr4y, roadbeer(rip), and Stormeagle (rip) are good examples of people who would attract players just by showing up. That's half the battle. The other half is getting people to show up long enough to notice these anchor players are around. This is where events come into play. Set times people can plan to show up and get some good matches in with fellow Marik players. Could be CW or it could be QP. It could be gimmicky like MMM or it could just be a strait forward fight night.

Edited by ThomasMarik, 21 August 2016 - 09:12 PM.

[BaconTWOfourACTUAL]

Perhaps a complete reorganization of the FWLM?

As of now, we have 153 active players. (Active is being defined as "Last online" dating to the 1st of August)
As of now, we have 16 active units (According to the website)

Which leaves a grand total of 9.5 people per unit, if everyone enlisted into one of those 16 active units. However, this isn't the case. There are people who aren't in a unit, have created their own one person units...
There is no cohesion.

When we do QP drops, we often go up against 1 or 2 different tags on the other team.
With us, almost everyone of us has a different tag.

Perhaps its time to reorganize Marik into 1 or 2 units for now. That way, it has the possibility to increase organization, cooperation and recruitment.

Instead of having 16 units, each doing their own thing, we're a focused force able to field a 12-man or multiple.

Just my lack of .98 cents.