*Suggestion* PA team approved alliances.

[Kargool]

I have been talking about this idea of mine for some time now, and as of yet I probably need to tune it slightly but I think PA could benefit from it.

Now, what is PA team approved alliances?

PA team approved alliances is basically alliances that have axx to the #alliances channel, and who is by PA team seen as alliances able to benefit any member wanting to join it. Allready the PA team has "approved" some alliances by getting into said channel and forum access, now we only need to make this visible for the general playerbase. Me personally think there should be set higher demands for an alliance than it is now to get into #alliances, but for now lets only focus on the said one.

A mark of PA approved alliance could be put on the alliance score screen. And also on the choose an alliance on the alliance listing. Also an additional training alliance flag could be given to the ones who wants to say that they are an offical training alliance. Alliances CAN have both, but ONLY if they actually take up new players they can have the training alliance flag.

Why is this benefical?

This is benefical because each round we see alot of small alliances getting 10-15 members then nothing more happens. We also have some alliances that fold quite quickly. And with the PA approval we will then show new players wich alliances are "sustainable" giving them a better knowledge of wich alliance to choose.

Downsides?

There are some downsides to the suggestion of course. But I think the benefits outweigh the downsides. The downsides is that it might be harder to create a new alliance and succeed right away, but that also tells people that they actually need to put in an effort when creating an alliance. Hence hightening the quality of the alliances being made.

[Coltaine]

Well...
Sounds pretty pointless to me.
Also, regarding the problems this round has shown, i think this is one of the least things, PA team should spent time on.
Last but certainly not least, r20 stats have also been "PA team approved". Do i need to say more? If i want to join a totally fscked up alliance, i can do that with out PA team approval.

[Kargool]

Its not a pointless suggestion if you actually use more than two seconds looking on the suggestion. A new player will then be able to pick an alliance based on the basis that the said alliance is actually an alliance who is not gonna fold straight away.

Ofc, you have no guarantee of an alliance not folding, but the main idea here is to get new players into alliances where their intrest for the game is being spiked instead of them losing intrest because the alliance doesnt have anything to give.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Kargool

PA team approved alliances is basically alliances that have axx to the #alliances channel, and who is by PA team seen as alliances able to benefit any member wanting to join it.

Now, here's the first inherent problem. Planetarion Team's inability, and the evaluation of new alliances. For example, round 17 Insomnia was elected as an "approved alliance", and Omen was for several weeks into the round "disapproved" (if you use the access to the alliance representative mediums as a measure). What happened after the round? Insomnia disappeared, Omen is still around.

Why is this benefical?

This is benefical because each round we see alot of small alliances getting 10-15 members then nothing more happens. We also have some alliances that fold quite quickly. And with the PA approval we will then show new players wich alliances are "sustainable" giving them a better knowledge of wich alliance to choose.

Yeah, alliances nowadays come and go. Like Kitty, who, on the alliance discussions forums, swore that unlike a certain alliance from last round, Prehistoric Monkeys will not fold. Ironically, it happened exactly like the incident to the alliance she was mockering. But that's normal. Members come, members go, alliances come, alliances go. Really, the benefit of this all seems to be "ego boost" some alliances over others. Planetarion team first of all lacks judgement to make unbiased (and probably lacks time too) descisions regarding alliances that start up, second of all, the benefit is really next to zero, as all it does is add another ego niche.

I don't really see a point.

[Kal]

I actually think this is a very interesting idea. I don;t see it as a way of stopping alliances form forming in game, but having the ability to indicate to new players where might be a good place to apply would be VERY usefull.

Being an approved alliance (or training alliance) would also offer the benefits of #alliances channel & forum access and the ability to have an alliance p nick and channels. I think this would be very useful.

Before people start saying that PATeam would have no idea if what alliance should go in what category, we already delegate a lot of the running of #alliances to respected alliance HCs - so if they maintain the list for us (but we have to add it ingame and hence have the final say) I think this idea really could help.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Kal

Before people start saying that PATeam would have no idea if what alliance should go in what category, we already delegate a lot of the running of #alliances to respected alliance HCs - so if they maintain the list for us (but we have to add it ingame and hence have the final say) I think this idea really could help.

Yeah, this is why I explicitly gave an example of your delegate of whatsoever royally ****ing up evaluating what's respected and whatnot. Edit. And I reckon this is what Coltaine was going for too.

Originally Posted by Coltain

Last but certainly not least, r20 stats have also been "PA team approved". Do i need to say more? If i want to join a totally fscked up alliance, i can do that with out PA team approval.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Yeah, this is why I explicitly gave an example of your delegate of whatsoever royally ****ing up evaluating what's respected and whatnot. Edit. And I reckon this is what Coltaine was going for too.

fine, but do you not think that if the people in #alliances didn't agree with out choices that they might get rather annoyed and shout at us? To my knowledge there have been no major complaints about the people we picked to handle for example the alliance p nick stuff.

[Coltaine]

Originally Posted by Kal

fine, but do you not think that if the people in #alliances didn't agree with out choices that they might get rather annoyed and shout at us? To my knowledge there have been no major complaints about the people we picked to handle for example the alliance p nick stuff.

Imho that is all irrelevant. Please explain the benefit of this to me again.
Like there would ever be a guarantee of an alliance not fking up...
Spend your time on things that are crucial. This isnt.

[The Real Arfy]

Have a resource cost to start and/or join the alliance.

[JonnyBGood]

I'd probably rather seeing something like a listing of rounds the alliance has played (possibly with the option of final position that round). This is rather more objective and I'd imagine would serve much the same end. To what extent those 10-15 man alliances are just groups of friends moving into the game for a while I'm not sure, I imagine by looking at e-mail addresses used to sign up etc. you could find out (obviously I'm implying here that if it is this scenario manifesting itself the changes aren't going to have a huge effect).

[Kal]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

I'd probably rather seeing something like a listing of rounds the alliance has played (possibly with the option of final position that round). This is rather more objective and I'd imagine would serve much the same end. To what extent those 10-15 man alliances are just groups of friends moving into the game for a while I'm not sure, I imagine by looking at e-mail addresses used to sign up etc. you could find out (obviously I'm implying here that if it is this scenario manifesting itself the changes aren't going to have a huge effect).

thats one of the things we'd like to do with alliances and the passport - have it so that the alliance is in essence kept across rounds so you have access to all this sort of information.

[The Real Arfy]

passport

Kal, you have to realise. This game is dying. Its not improving. People will care at best about next round, nobody really gives a crap as to whats happening in the future. I appreciate this is the kind of negative thinking you need to remove, and that you probably are trying your best. However, the passport is never going to happen, however much we want to see it.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

passport

Kal, you have to realise. This game is dying. Its not improving. People will care at best about next round, nobody really gives a crap as to whats happening in the future. I appreciate this is the kind of negative thinking you need to remove, and that you probably are trying your best. However, the passport is never going to happen, however much we want to see it.

It will happen this year if I have to pay for it myself, it is something that is "red" in the team plan, but we have contingencies in place, so hopefully I won't need to pa myself and will be able to go on holiday to Japan.

[The Real Arfy]

I like your commitment in that case. But why should you have to pay for it? Seriously, you need to bitchslap jolt into place. Sure, you said there are contingencies in place - but that shouldn't even have crossed your mind.

[Heartless]

Alliances shouldn't be a regulated market. Due to this simple reason I am against PA Team controlling alliances.

[GReaper]

Originally Posted by Kal

thats one of the things we'd like to do with alliances and the passport - have it so that the alliance is in essence kept across rounds so you have access to all this sort of information.

Why does everyone think that some brand new system will help solve all the problems?

The game already has accounts. At the start of the round just wipe out all the scores, news, logs from every planet, whilst keeping all the data you want to keep between rounds. If you want alliances to be kept between rounds then leave them intact instead of clearing them.

Why spend hours of coding something new when the existing setup can be changed quite easily?

[Kal]

Originally Posted by GReaper

Why does everyone think that some brand new system will help solve all the problems?

The game already has accounts. At the start of the round just wipe out all the scores, news, logs from every planet, whilst keeping all the data you want to keep between rounds. If you want alliances to be kept between rounds then leave them intact instead of clearing them.

Why spend hours of coding something new when the existing setup can be changed quite easily?

I don't for one moment think it would solve all the issues. What it would do though is remove a lot of work for the admins and hence allow them to spend it on more useful tasks than they currently spend time on.

As I've stated in the past, the plan is not to use the core development team for a passport for precisly theese reasons - we want them to be sorting out the game.

One of the contingencies is a "cheap and cheerful" passport along thoose lines - though its a bit more complicated than you describe becuase of issues around account deletetion for inactivity etc.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Heartless

Alliances shouldn't be a regulated market. Due to this simple reason I am against PA Team controlling alliances.

I didn't think the proposal was for PATeam to "control" alliances - it was for us to add a stamp that would give some level of guidance to new players - sure it won't be 100% reliable - but surely its say better for a new player to join say f-crew than it is for them to join random sub-top 30 alliance?

[Wandows]

Why would you want to do that? Isn't the whole purpose of the alliance system to allow players to meet communities and get 'hooked' on the whole team effort idea? It is not the game admins job to tell ppl what alliance to join, there are plenty of obvious choices if players even spend half a minute doing a little research. For example a simple step would be to add a direct link to the Alliance Recruitment forum in the welcoming mail you get when signing up your planet (with a small note explaining why and how to join a alliance). Leave it up to the players to decide if and where they want to go, there is asolutely no reason to regulate that through PaTeam, infact you should care less, just build a decent platform for alliances to have a use in the game.

Not to mention new alliances that won't have a surperb score right away will get into trouble that way simply because they won't get a "Pa approval stamp", which won't get them the needed recruits to grow a alliance.

[Walldo]

Originally Posted by Kal

I didn't think the proposal was for PATeam to "control" alliances - it was for us to add a stamp that would give some level of guidance to new players - sure it won't be 100% reliable - but surely its say better for a new player to join say f-crew than it is for them to join random sub-top 30 alliance?

Why would that be good? So A new alliance without the stamp get lesser players to join and all new players are going to F-crew. It must be fair for every small alliance to get that new good player, not only the alliance with a stamp. cause new players will for sure only wanna join an alliance with a stamp. And the onces without will dry empty cause they can't get new blood. This is not the way to go!

We have a forum for this matter where new players can check for an alliance. No stamp needed for whatsoever in game.

[furball]

Agreeing with Heartless. More later.

[Kal]

I think people might be looking at this the wrong way and blowing it out of all proportion. For example the stamp could just be an indication of whether the alliance has a recruitment thread, whether the alliance has registered channels on NG. It could just be an inidcaiton of whether all the basic steps on starting an alliance that will contribute to the community have been taken.

Sure if people spent some time doing some research they could work that out for themselves - but I would strongly argue that in general PA should be designed so that they don't need to go off and do that.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Kal

I didn't think the proposal was for PATeam to "control" alliances - it was for us to add a stamp that would give some level of guidance to new players - sure it won't be 100% reliable - but surely its say better for a new player to join say f-crew than it is for them to join random sub-top 30 alliance?

No, it is even worse actually. If you start giving out such stamps you are actually giving incentives to not found new alliances and to not join newly created alliances. What you want to do is give people an idea about how to play, how to run an alliance (f.e. someone, I think Rob, once posted an excellent thread about that), and ultimately what to consider when choosing an alliancec. That's the best advice you can give to them.

Originally Posted by Kal

I think people might be looking at this the wrong way and blowing it out of all proportion. For example the stamp could just be an indication of whether the alliance has a recruitment thread, whether the alliance has registered channels on NG. It could just be an inidcaiton of whether all the basic steps on starting an alliance that will contribute to the community have been taken.

That does not require any kind of a stamp. Just build the required ingame tools.

[Rc mayhem]

Not sure I like this idea. This basically removes any chance for someone to build an alliance up over time. Not that long ago (ok like 2 years but still) F-crew was 20th+ with less than 10 members. With this system we would have been seriously stunted in growth.

I am not sure I would want a "Training alliance" tag next to F-crew either. It could well deter larger players from joining us. It is back to the "Training alliance" or "Alliance that trains" thing.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Heartless

That does not require any kind of a stamp. Just build the required ingame tools.

Its a question of terminology and implementation.

There are two extremes
1) PATeam vets all alliances and decides what stamps they should have - this is a bad plan
2) PATeam builds a tool into the alliance system that allows alliances to enter links to recruitment thread, name public registered irc channel etc. And then you can have symbols that indicate whether alliances have all theese things next to them in the list etc.

I think option 2 is something that we really should do - in essence allow alliances to have some info about themselves etc that potential recruits could look at. Perhaps one thing to do would be for alliances to enter their goal for the round e.g. rank X, beat alliance Y, just have fun, etc.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Kal

I think option 2 is something that we really should do - in essence allow alliances to have some info about themselves etc that potential recruits could look at. Perhaps one thing to do would be for alliances to enter their goal for the round e.g. rank X, beat alliance Y, just have fun, etc.

Thanks for re-iterating my point.

[wakey]

The basic idea is great, there is alot of what I call 'blackhole' alliances present that do more harm than good to the playerbase and weeding these out would help alot and boost numbers in some of the more promising alliances but as I said to Kargool when he floated this a few weeks ago in #alliances implementing it is the tough part.

For starters you have peoples biases and pre conceptions to deal with. Take F-Crew for example, we are a polarizing force, for every person in this community who will recommend us as a good solid alliance to people theres someone who will rip us to shreds and will wouldn't say a single good word about us. Now having someone in charge of handing out "approved" statuses your putting an alliances ability to function on the line, if the person handing them out falls on the pro side of the line your get it, on the con side and you wont.

Then you have the issue of what makes an alliance good. Is a member of PATeam really going to have time to seriously monitor an alliance. Theres that old saying of don't judge a book by its cover and PATeam would have to take a real interest in the alliances in question to judge them and keep this eye on them so if things change they can give or remove the stamp

Atleast when its the community doing this 'approving' we are playing alongside members of the alliances and have to have dealings with these alliances and hear members accounts of what the alliance is like and there the ability for a case for both sides to me made

What I would like seen done is simple having the ability to enter a postid into the member area to link to a recruitment thread. Then have a list of alliances somewhere formatted something like

Alliance Name Recruitment Thread
---------------------- --------------------------------
F-Crew Yes
Orbit Yes
TGV No

This would encourage everyone to make a recruitment thread and then its up to the rest of the community to make the recruitment threads work as they should. Rather than making the highly pointless bump posts of "gl" just to increase our post counts we should be quizzing them

How they respond to questions and constructive criticism actually shows alot about an alliance. There were a couple a few rounds back where i did this to, 2 basically ignored everything and wouldn't even respond, one said thanks for the suggestions and input and said he would address the issues but didn't and the final one made a noticeable attempt to take things on board and try and better the alliance.

From that people knew that the first 2 simply werent active enough or invested enough to be worth joining, the third one was all talk and no substance but the final one might be worth checking out. Information everyone else "gl" didn't bring but which got them members simple because it was at the top of the recruitment forum. As long as they are constructive and not just flames then making actual comments, suggestions and questions on a recruitment thread is a good thing

[jt25man]

Perhaps another good idea would to be actually posting non-biased information about the alliances on the Portal under the Alliance section which last time I checked was pretty much a blank page, even after the beginning of last round it was voted the number one thing people wanted to have more details, and yet nothing was ever done with it.

[Kargool]

Alot of input and alot of people simply not able to see the most clear point of them all.


The "blackhole" alliances are taking players away from the game, not contributing players.

And as stated in the initial thread if anyone bothered to read it before seing red. The new ACTIVE alliances are more likely to succeed because they are just that, active on irc, active ingame and attracts intrest because of that. They would have to make a rec thread, and get to join the #alliances channel.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Kargool

Alot of input and alot of people simply not able to see the most clear point of them all.


The "blackhole" alliances are taking players away from the game, not contributing players.

What makes an alliance what you call a "blackhole" alliance? Could you give an example of how they do this?

[wakey]

Seeing as its my term i'll answer that for him.

A blackhole alliance is one where the HC don't have the experience time and motivation to be serious about running an alliance. The reason such alliances are setup are vast but its normally one of the following

a) An attempt to feel important and an inflated ego that makes them think they can run an alliance without the effort
b) A misguided belief that running an alliance is easy

Youve been in enough alliance jester to know that a hc of an alliance needs to be fully committed, has to have leadership skills and knowledge and has to be motivated to continue plugging away not only at the good times but also the bad.

If they arent willing to do this the people who suffer are the members and while in an ideal world they would just up and leave and not let it effect them alot of people who end up in these blackhole alliance are never seen again as they only see the bad part of the game and assume thats what the games like on the whole

[Coltaine]

1. Anyone with half a brain, liking the game and an interest in playing the game properly will find his way to a decent alliance, as it is for his own good.
2. There'll never be absolute safety about an alliance not ****ing up
3. PA Teams insight in alliances vitality is questionable
4. Its a disputatious claim that what you call a "blackhole alliance" "takes away players from the game". Who says that? How do you backup that claim? Do we agree that there will always be good alliances and bad ones, no matter what you do?
You want a player who is not even arsed enough to investigate in what alliances are around and which of those seem good and which of them dont to be better advised into an oldschool top-alliance?

I still call this useless bureaucracy, i still fail to see the very point and i still dont think this will help the game evolve in any shape or form.
An initiative and attempt of players towards mouth-to-mouth advertisement and better marketing in various sources would solve far more problems as a side effect.
This game needs more players and less clueless admins in order to get the fk back on track, not more bureaucracy.

[Amycus]

Honestly the best thing for the game is to just remove alliances all together.

The poeple that want to cooperate will join bg's and it will force people to be more active as a gal and cluster, if you leave clusters in it.

Alliances are always a bitch-fest through every round and it just gets worse. It is kind of like american politics. Alexander Hamilton told a newly forming government to avoid the party system because it will destroy us. Now look at us. ^^

I'm telling you now, if allainces aren't taken out, the game will just continue to decline, and friendships will continue to break.

[Coltaine]

Originally Posted by Amycus

Honestly the best thing for the game is to just remove alliances all together.

No.

Originally Posted by Amycus

The poeple that want to cooperate will join bg's and it will force people to be more active as a gal and cluster, if you leave clusters in it.

Yeah, lets rename Alliance with Battlegroup.

Originally Posted by Amycus

Alliances are always a bitch-fest through every round and it just gets worse. It is kind of like american politics. Alexander Hamilton told a newly forming government to avoid the party system because it will destroy us. Now look at us. ^^

Yeah, it was so different r3 etc.

Originally Posted by Amycus

I'm telling you now, if allainces aren't taken out, the game will just continue to decline, and friendships will continue to break.

If the earth keeps rotating around the sun, rain will keep falling from time to time.

[Kargool]

Originally Posted by Coltaine

1. Anyone with half a brain, liking the game and an interest in playing the game properly will find his way to a decent alliance, as it is for his own good.
2. There'll never be absolute safety about an alliance not ****ing up
3. PA Teams insight in alliances vitality is questionable
4. Its a disputatious claim that what you call a "blackhole alliance" "takes away players from the game". Who says that? How do you backup that claim? Do we agree that there will always be good alliances and bad ones, no matter what you do?
You want a player who is not even arsed enough to investigate in what alliances are around and which of those seem good and which of them dont to be better advised into an oldschool top-alliance?

1: I know that it might sound silly for someone who have played alot of rounds and have forgotten how it was to be a new player. Me myself remembers little but I do remember spending time in a blackhole alliance who didnt use irc and who never did anything but write long posts to each other on a off based forum that didnt have anything to do with pa. (But it had porn advertisements!) Before you had some alliances that claimed they were it for people not using IRC, now you have some alliances that simply just exists and when new players comes around they tend to just click on an alliance saying it want to join. (TGV tends to get 3-4 of them each round) I can only imagine what others must be getting. When there is no activity in that alliance the said new player will think: "Hmm, maybe this is how all the alliances work." I know it might sound arrogant but some people need to be herded to the grass. A system like this can do it.

2: Ofc there isnt, but with this system a new player will be shown alliances whom are less likely to be inactive and useless. Ergo a better percentage possibility for it not happening to him.

3: PA team does get help from a few out of PA team to set up the #alliances and forums. Im sure I could offer to help with this too, if anyone is afraid it would lead to to much work for the admins.

4: I agree with the fact that there will always be "good and bad" alliances. In my opinion blackhole alliances isnt that. Blackhole alliances is made by people who has given up after just a week or so but unfortunally dragging other players with them because of that. They might not even be on irc, and not being able to help new players the way they need some guidance.

I dont think this will be much burocracy as u claim. (did you just put in the word so people would be scared of the suggestion?) I think this might show a helpful guide for people who might need a little more help in the start than some of the veterans who have forgotten how it is to be a new player seem to think.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Kal

but having the ability to indicate to new players where might be a good place to apply would be VERY usefull.

So, like AR does it already; a main thread which gives key information where a potential member can then look through to see one that more or less suits his/her desires, then can click on the alliance's own recruitment thread on that same forum and, judging from its quality and content, make a decision to apply to said alliance?

And/or reading some of the replies to those threads, which may potentially be something other than 'good luck'?

Being an approved alliance (or training alliance) would also offer the benefits of #alliances channel & forum access and the ability to have an alliance p nick and channels. I think this would be very useful.

Those "features" should be available to anyone who wants them, indeed i would imagine that there would be an argument to have that kind of information automatically done when an alliance is registered.

Before people start saying that PATeam would have no idea if what alliance should go in what category, we already delegate a lot of the running of #alliances to respected alliance HCs - so if they maintain the list for us (but we have to add it ingame and hence have the final say) I think this idea really could help.

So, its actually alliance approved by other alliance's HC suggestion?


Edit: look, i'm not trying to be counterproductive here, or pessimistic towards PA Team and/or alliances in general. My main concern is that you are introducing an extra layer of complexity for little apparent gain; namely access to channels and support that alliances really should have anyway. Wouldnt a better course of action be to make that information available to HCs when they form an alliance in-game? With perhaps a min number of members (ie, 2), to stop single man alliances from having the same status as F-Crew or whomever.

Maybe.