Clans, what I gotta do to bring it back?

Discussion in 'Clans' started by Lazybum, Sep 22, 2016.

  1. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Help a fella out y'all, I'm off the deep end and want to make clan vs clan scrims a thing again.

    That said, I don't want to make a new clan, as far as I am concerned we have enough clans they just ain't doing anything at the moment.

    So that said, what should I do? Do I gotta get each clan to practice, to want to not just do better but play on that competitive level? Do I need to get more pugs going to give people a taste they can't get in pub games, wanting more and more? Do I gotta lead a squad every weekend to show players what team work is all about like destroyer? Do I need to seriously apply myself and just make empires a better game to play? Do I gotta get the word out that there's this great one of a kind game out there and they need to play? I'm all ears and I'll do what's needed to get it going again, I got the time, I can do the commitment, I ain't terrible at empires(nor the best but whatever) so I know I can do a decent job of showing people what needs to be done.

    Help me help you help each other to bring back clans. Savvy?
     
  2. A-z-K

    A-z-K Member

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    Its a pretty tall order to be honest.
    2 teams isn't enough for a proper scrim scene, you need like 3 or 4. Otherwise there is usually gonna be one clear winner and nobody likes getting stomped repeatedly.

    So then you are going to need 3 or 4 teams worth of people that actually want to play Empires competitively.
    That means not just old players who are going to show up for a pug once in a while - it means like 20 odd players per team who play regularly, who are going to put aside maybe a minimum of 1 day a week for it & put scrims before pretty much any of their other plans.

    The other thing is that Empires clans mostly grew out of people who played together ALOT. I mean guys would spend hour and hours playing almost every day with each other in pubs.
    Before anyone was invited to a clan they were very much a known quantity, even friendly you might say. Nt that it needs to be that way now - but you petty much knew that everyone was going to get on in the group. That combined with the fact that Empires was everyone's main #1 game made it easy. Practising and such weren't chores, people really loved to play and wanted to win scrims.

    Besides that you would want to have teams setup with people who were really dedicated to getting better or being the best. From top to bottom, spending ime together making a playbook weeks before scrims, practising defending and breaking choke points, reviewing each other's demo files, etc. Obviously you also need people who can lead, people who can listen & some scrim class commanders, of which there are few.
     
  3. Paradox

    Paradox I am a gigantic asshole who loses people's hard wo

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    - get people to get better -> understand the game
    - get people to love the game again
    - get old players to not get frustrated playing the game because other people suck too bad
    - get more people to play the game

    theres only like 4 things you gotta do, sounds easy enough
     
  4. Avatarix

    Avatarix Member

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    Lrn players so we can have more fun without making pubs and scrims.
    I had idea of making 'learning clan' but I guess no one would help with it because learning newbs may be frustrating.
     
  5. Xyaminou

    Xyaminou Member

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    As much as I admire the effort I believe this one is out of our hands.

    To have clans you need people who are interested in the game, loyal to the game, and who will show up when needed.

    But as I have said before, regular players nowadays don't come to play the game seriously they just come to fuck around.

    99% of the new player flow does not understand what this game is about so there is no hope for a growth of the competitive part of our community. Which is what would be needed.

    I don't agree with Paradox, you don't even need "people" to understand the game you only need a few. Once you have 1 commander and 4 squad leaders for each clan you can have newbies, it doesn't really matter.

    I have had the same wish for a long time, and if I ever thought I could find newbies who are interested and serious enough to be worth my time, I would have done it. But there aren't nearly enough.

    TL;DR: not enough players on Empires, not gonna happen.
     
  6. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    I can only really explain this from my own perspective. EPIC existed as pretty much the only constant scrim team for around 5-6 years. That is to say, virtually no scrims happened where EPIC wasn't one of the 2 teams participating. If there were occasionally some half-assed teams cobbled together by other clans to scrim eachother, you could be pretty sure there would be EPIC members ringing for both sides. The problem was that with only 2 teams, it would generally mean we scrimmed them 1-5 times, usually winning all the games. After this, the other team would probably get demoralised and that would be that.

    That's the problem you're going to have if you make 2 scrim teams or clans. You can put the effort into building them up, but one team will likely be stronger than the other. That's not a huge problem if both teams have leaders willing to put the time in to improve, but I just don't know who in the community can take that position. Sure Lazy, you can take 1 clan, but I have no idea who would set themselves up opposite you.

    It's worth mentioning that unfortunately, I sort of pushed the scrim setup in a direction that provided more enjoyable and intense games over the years, but unfortunately made it very difficult for teams to start up. That is to say, when I first started scrimming, 11v11 was standard, with 14v14 being a large game. By the time I was done, 16v16 was basically a bare minimum, with 24v24 being the target I aimed for. I don't know how the game would play at 11v11 now with all the changes, but that's worth looking into because it's a lot more achievable.

    Honestly I think overall it's doable, but if you want the teams to last over a long period of time as clans, rather than just "scrim teams", then sustaining just 2 clans will be difficult. What you might have better luck doing is forming one clan, keeping it pretty exclusive as far as numbers go, and relying on a 2nd team to just form every now and then to scrim you. That's what EPIC did and while it wasn't ideal, it was the best option given the limited players.

    Back when I started, we had shitty forums and just a steam group chat that people occasionally dropped into. Mostly though, we just kept in contact ingame because we were all playing so much. We'd get free Ventrilo servers for 2 hours from shitty trial services just for scrims. Later on we got a permanent Ventrilo and then a permanent Teamspeak, but only a small amount of people idled in it. Discord however, is a game changer. It's a fucking amazing piece of software for keeping in contact with people. You have a constant group chat that's always there. You can drop in and out of voice comms whenever you want, but as far as text chat goes, it's just one long never ending conversation. It's great for keeping people together as a group. Assuming they don't change it, it'll boot automatically on PC start, and people can even have it on their phones. It's honestly been one of the best things that's ever happened to our group of people who play games, I can't imagine how much more useful it would be for an active clan.

    If you want any more help I'm more than happy to give it. I think getting clans back is one of the best things you can do for the health of the game and I'm willing to help out in any way I can. The problem is that if I post everything I can think of here, this will become an (even more) unreadable text wall, so it's probably better done over steam or something.
     
  7. Xyaminou

    Xyaminou Member

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    I should probably have mentioned that as much as I think this is impossible, if you ever give it a try I would be happy to help.
     
  8. Avatarix

    Avatarix Member

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    In what context? You mean scriming or clanning?
     
  9. Z100000M

    Z100000M Vithered Weteran

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    Go back in time
     
    A-z-K and Xyaminou like this.
  10. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    A problem with our clans is that there's absolutely nothing above our clans.
    Nobody can stop someone from forming a super strong clan and just rekt everyone and their will to play a scrim.

    How to form a clan in Empires?
    1: Message every single tier-1 player.
    2: ???
    3: profit.
    That's fucking lame if you ask me.

    We might have to make scrims official, set up a league, set up official scrim/clan bureau(that executes rules) and of course, official rules.

    I have a few ideas here.
    First, we have to ignore all our current clans
    We have to start new "scrim clans".
    People can still create EPIC/JPL/CW/BSID..etc, but then they have to recruit new members, can't just go with old players.

    1: One player will NOT be allowed to join two scrim clans.
    2: Once the clan has reached 15 players, it can only "detele/add" 3 members a week.
    3: A scrim clan must not contain more than 30 players.(or 35 if you want 26v26)
    4: Scrims must be 11v11 16v16 21v21. (26v26 is controversial if you ask me, it's fun, but is it suitable for scrim?) <- So the games are more or less "normalized".
    5: Scrims must be BO2. (BO3 is lengthy and should be saved for important games)
    6: After every single round, clan leader can replace no more than 2/4/6 players. (players have to leave/sleep...etc) if you have to replace more it's auto-forfeit. <-- so you don't fight a completely different team in round 2.
    7: Ringers are prohibited, if you can't field enough players then just delay the game. <-- I honestly think ringers are extremely unhealthy for scrims, people even kicked his own members for ringers.
    8: If a player disconnects, he will not be allowed to rejoin that round, unless he's commander/squad leader.
    9: If clan A wins 2-0 against clan B(BO2/BO3), clan A will have to drop off a player in the next set against clan B specifically, if clan A wins 2 set consecutively, clan A will have to drop off 2 players, and so on, the number of dropped players will not exceed 1/2/3 for 11v11 16v16 21v21. This rule only applies to regular games.

    You need people to take scrims seriously for a clan to work, or it's just a buddy group.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2016
  11. blizzerd

    blizzerd Member

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    The clans have the same problem as the banks in the US

    too big to fail, break those suckers up into smaller clans and bring back competition...

    im starting a new clan, the "Kleine Kameraden Klan" only 5 spots available as of now and the rest we will staff with pubbers

    Im not sure about our tag but im thinking about ✝KKK✝
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2016
  12. Avatarix

    Avatarix Member

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    yeah, you bring a good point here
    as Spike said once, JFR is really good clan but there really isn't any of the 'claniness' like in other games, because some people even detest the other init
    your rules @Sgt.Security are pretty solid, but:
    why would EPIC stay?
    2. this would be pretty hard to check, and at the beggining of the clan somewhat disturbing
    3. that amount is discussable

    And also, here comes my idea that I had recently:
    Clan Organization
    Clans are either under NF or BE
    5 people can form a Squad, which can be under 2-3 clans of the same faction
    when you have at least 2/3 Squads, you can form a Clan
    ///eventually you could form a Fireteam from 2 Squads with no Clan Leader chosen, it could play in minor scrims
    and there would be rules like: in pubs no squad can stack one team until there's another one in the game, they have to be registered on the forums etc. ...
     
  13. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    Yeah, not gonna lie, most of that is dumb as shit. You're adding so much bureaucracy to something people want to do for fun. This isn't an eSport, it's people trying to play the game at a higher level in organised games. If I had a clan and you were "enforcing" those rules, I'd just say "yeah, so I'll scrim you guys but I'm not interested in those terms, take it or leave it".

    Put simply:
    You can't enforce limits on how often people can join/leave a clan.
    You can't enforce limits on how many members a clan has.
    You can't enforce limits on playercount in a scrim to strict amounts. If anything, 11v11 and 16v16 are actually shitty setups, you usually want something like 14, 19 or 24 because of the practicalities of how scrims play out.
    Scrims have always been BO2 on the same map, but that's just to ensure fairness for both sides.
    Limiting replacement players is dumb. If a team has to swap out a lot of players, it's usually because the other side showed up light on players. EPIC's a pretty good example of this, I used to spend 75% of our vote time working out who could drop for round one, sometimes having to swap out 4 people per round.
    Ringers are sometimes necessary for a team to make numbers. I've very very rarely ever encountered a team dropping players for ringers, it's usually me finding the other team ringers just so they have the numbers, so I don't have to make so many of my own players sit out.
    You can't enforce players not rejoining. You have no proof they weren't a squad leader and besides that, that's actually the most stupid fucking rule I have ever heard. The game crashes, people's internet dies, sometimes emergencies happen and you have to actually swap the player himself out mid-game with someone else.
    Punishing teams for winning is equally dumb, all you're doing is making it so less people can participate in the game.

    Like I'm sorry but you're so far off the mark here. Scrims are about fun and maximising the amount of people who can participate while making sure the level of play is as high as possible. Punishing teams for doing well, for having disconnects, for lacking or having too many numbers is just stupid. People do not set aside their free time to be told "sorry, your team won too much, you need to sit out".

    Finally, you have absolutely no possible way to enforce rules such as that. There aren't 10 teams in rotation here. If one team chooses not to play under those rules and you try to refuse them the ability to play, then everyone loses out. There literally won't be a scrim. Sure, some people abuse this position of power, FN certainly used to strong-arm me into certain terms I wasn't always happy about because he knew I wanted to scrim and his team was my only chance, but that's just life. You compromise, negotiate and come to agree on what will happen.





    Scrims in my experience have always followed a very simple set of rules:

    Best of 2 on the same map. Generally speaking, one team has server, other has map. If you know you're going to play the other team a bit more often though then there's leeway to organise it differently.
    Don't pick shit maps. Seriously, you play commander maps and avoid chokepoint maps like the fucking plague, they have so little room for high level tactics that they just become a war of attrition. Scrims don't happen often and they take a lot of organisation, so just play standard maps that are known to play relatively well: Mvalley, Cyclopean, Duststorm, Isle, etc.
    Ringers are fine as long as they're not from the team you're playing against, the team you're playing against is ok with that specific ringer and you do NOT drop your own players to make room for a higher skilled ringer. The aim is to include as many people as possible, having people drop out on either team is a last case scenario and something you really want to avoid after they've set their night aside for the game.
    Don't be a dick. This covers any shit talking, out of game harassment or ingame exploiting. Just play fair and have some decency.

    That's it.
     
  14. blizzerd

    blizzerd Member

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    i generally feel rules should be self enforcing as much as possible... any rule that fixes a clear problem and does not require effort from a referee to enforce is a good rule.
     
  15. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    I can fully understand why you prefer old ways.
    But please, let's not act like it was utopia.

    1: There's always one clan that's dominating all other clans, I am fairly sure this has killed a lot player's interest in scrims.
    Because there's no limit whatsoever, you just PM every single tier 1 player first and it's a free win for you.

    Winning is fun, but there's no fun if there's no game at all, like now.

    2: Ringers, ringers everywhere, it's like the world would end if you delay the game. This is one of the drama generators as well, it's all about if you can get a tier-1 ringer to play for you.

    I ringed for MEG and I got top kill, do you think the other team enjoyed that?

    Scrims need to be more normalized, that's all I can say.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2016
  16. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    It's not about preferring the old ways, and you can't just use that to nullify everything I just said without countering a single one of my points. You have absolutely no way of enforcing the rules, you have no basis for half of them.

    I don't even know where you have this hard-on for ringers from. You literally exclusively played in games either against or later for EPIC. We never used ringers but we openly encouraged the other team to so as to make numbers. And if you remember anything from every single scrim that has happened literally ever, there are ALWAYS delays. A scrim starting at 9pm regularly did not get underway until gone 10pm due to issues with numbers. If people are not available, no amount of delaying will fix that short of rescheduling the match entirely after people already set aside their night.

    The issue with clans was never even the scrims to be honest, that was literally one of the few things that actually functioned well. It was everything outside of that. Teams, or more specifically clan leaders, were not willing to put in the legwork required outside of the games in order to maintain their clan, or even get them to show up to games in the first place. I would personally speak to every single member of EPIC asking him to show up to the scrim, and then speak to every single one after to appraise him, thank him for playing or if they didn't play, at least let them know how it went. Other leaders (looking at you Spike) literally just want to schedule an event on steam, or make a forum post on their steamgroups community forums, expect people to show up, play for them, then just turn up next time. That's not how it works. It's about making your clan your friends, about creating a sense of community and actually giving your team a reason to play. Like say what you like about the way I ran things, but I honestly believe that in nearly every game EPIC played, every player involved played their fucking ass off and gave everything they had to pull out the best performance they could. They'd try to win until the bitter fucking end of every game, and it worked most of the time. I saw other clans crumble time and time again due to morale problems, due to the fact they had no motivation to even win. If they lost, there was no debrief, no sitting down and working out how it happened. I even heard other clan leaders just berating their team for a poor performance, it was appalling.

    Scrims are for fun. No-one is being paid, there's no money on the line, it's not a job. They're a game at the end of the day, there for people's enjoyment. If everyone actually treated it like that, instead of trying to enforce strict rules in scrims, or even worse, bullshit hierarchies and frat-bro brotherhood with leaders you're too "lowly" to be allowed to communicate with (BSID), then there might have actually been other successful clans.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2016
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  17. blizzerd

    blizzerd Member

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    what are ringers
     
  18. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    People scrimming for a clan they don't belong to. If a team is short on numbers (say 14 when the other team has 16), the choice is either for the team with more players to drop down, or the team with less players to get a couple extra. Often these extras have to come from outside the clan, otherwise they'd be there already.
     
  19. blizzerd

    blizzerd Member

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    k, i learned
     
  20. Xyaminou

    Xyaminou Member

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    You can do that?!?
     

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