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I don't think you are ever going to be able to get the entire community to willingly submit to the dissolution of squads that are all competitive or all casual. Many people may be willing to try and see what happens when you start adding new recruits with quantitatively or subjectively low skill to VbD, but when a squad has 8 people for a 4v4 do you really think they are going to play without their friends? Most likely it will be VbD 1 which will still be very good and VbD 2 which will have all of the new recruits. I don't see how this solves the squad polarization other than frustrating people when the more serious players are trying to go over strategies for a map during practice while less serious players are running around picking up weapons and driving vehicles.
I've highlighted the fundamental misconception that is seen as a flaw in my system.
No squad would be dissolved. No one would be forced anywhere. It doesn't take the "entire community" to "submit" to anything, it only takes a few souls volunteering to enjoy a different unit, and the skilled units being willing to take in recruits regardless of skill (WHICH btw, should be a requirement of being a squad in this community, this shouldn't even be negotiable from the beginning).
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I guess this is where our opinions differ the most. I would much rather have quality of match ups over variety. It doesn't make sense to me that we justify having a static rotation system for the sake of having variety in match ups when variety has so far led to many poor match ups that ultimately just break the morale of a suffering unit.
Maybe you will be able to convince me with a specific wording or example why variety is more important than the quality of the experience, but for now variety just seems like a cop-out for forcing weaker squads to play against strong squads for the sake of giving more average squads a break.
If we are trying to retain more casual players in the community to help with balancing, shouldn't we be providing every incentive to those causal players to stick around?
Throwing them into "this bucket over here" doesn't make them feel welcome.
Half the issue is that Divinity, Marauder, Kelevra, and to a lesser extent Bellator as well, feel completely left out because they're given such low-skilled people and really have had little opportunity to gain skill in their unit. Further isolating them isn't going to do anything, I don't get on every Sunday just to play the same team 6 times straight, that's not a war that's a weekly grudge match for zero reason.
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We shouldn't be basing this discussion around Divinity. Consider the broader picture of the potential new recruits who would have come from a more casual background. All of these truly casual gamers who once would have been in FC have left because we keep leaning more and more towards a competitive community with our gametypes. When the new casual players join the community they aren't going to have the same communication skills and teamwork intentions that our current casual players do. Having these new people join a more competitive squad is either going to make that squad frustrated and become inactive (bad experience for the new recruit) or frustrate the new recruit so they become inactive (bad experience for the new recruit). The reason we keep assigning players to squads based on their skill, activity level, and competitive/casual background is because it is a lot easier to retain a recruit when they are actually playing with other people who share the same fundamental Halo abilities and interests.
This response also hits the first quote above.
I've played with Bellator. I've played with Divinity. I've played with Kelevra. I've played with Marauder. To think that they try any less hard to win a game of Halo is not seeing the true image. They still practice, they still kill ingame, they still come up with strategies. I utterly refuse to put someone in a competitive unit because they're also competitive just to FURTHER feed the idea that we are a community that further promoted competitive groups like that, and partitioning off one part of the community as competitive is freakin' ludicrous. The culture we should be trying to promote should be one of Halo, FC, and a WARSIM. Your squad's primary purpose should be a social group to enjoy halo. Not to group people you purely want to win with. A competitive person refusing to play with animus, divinity, bellator, shouldn't even pass a goddamn bootcamp, because that's not the culture we should be promoting here.
Also, gametypes have zero to do with anything. If people quit because they had to play one game of Legendary Slayer, they weren't going to stay no matter what we do anyway. And stickies+PPs in BTB games aren't a competitive issue, actually those two loadout weapons further promote infantry competitive BR play and discourage vehicles which casual players use.
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Yes, not playing with everybody in the community means that there are fragments that you don't interact with as much (except on all of the community wide game nights and fun things the WC has planned), but what splitters the community the most is when a weaker squad faces a stronger squad and gets utterly decimated. I've been on both sides and in the middle. When the game is close everybody is happy and has nice things to say in the lobby afterwards. When the games aren't close you either get silence because people are too frustrated to say something polite or you actually have people venting their frustration (hopefully only with the other team muted).
By trying to solve the problem of squads sharing different interests, cultures, skill, etc. we are deciding that it is in fact a problem for squads to have those traits. For match ups and balance it would make it so much easier if all of the players and all of the squads where the same, but that never has been the case and never will be the case. People like playing with other people like themselves. We can't change that.
We're both aiming to solve the issue of some squads being super strong and others being weak. Your system does nothing to actually solve that, those matchups will still happen. Both situations of what we have now, and your system, will divide us all.
As for, again, combining skilled people into low skilled squads, we CANNOT condone higher skilled people to whine their way into a group with more high skilled people in a friggin' community like this. ANY system that allows that is continuing the problem we have and the problem you're stating. We have plenty of higher skilled people who don't give two shits what their squad's skill level is: You, W3z, Zeke, Dark Remalf, Raptor, Barry, Fernando. If we have people who are so culturally different than us that they cannot stand playing in a lower skilled unit, chances are they're assholes anyway. I've yet to meet anyone who will ONLY play with high skilled people, but still loved FC the way we do. It goes against our principals. Why even allow it? Isolating them in any way is... seriously, not getting to the point at all.
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That is great, but if only one squad (or worse one army) is willing to make this switch, is your system of depolarization really going to work? How many squads do you need to be depolarized to remove the balance issues?
Only takes a few heavy hitters to change a squad's morale, and their performance. Look at what happened to Marauder when they lost Barry.
Only a few individuals have to volunteer. That's it. All the squads themselves have to do is open other members with open arms, and if they can't do that, I give up.
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We actually do not have this because the armies are so unbalance that each army really lacks a squad that is around each others skill level...
This basically confirms my whole argument.
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I completely understand where you want to take this and personally would not mind a squad/player draft to fix the problem (I've even suggested things like that to fix the problem in the past only to be shot down). I just don't see a squad balancing program working unless you actually force all of the squads to participate. As soon as one squad becomes exempt or just doesn't participate in the balancing program, the entire system is flawed because there will still be one squad that will not just dominate a few weak squads but all of the middle skilled "balanced" squads.
HOLY SHIT THERE WILL BE NO DRAFT, NO FORCED TRANSFERS. EVER. A few volunteers is all it takes. If squads aren't welcoming of new people, we've got a whole new problem, because that's all it takes at the squad level.
And if one squad wants to be dicks and exempt themselves, they can feel free, but the other 90% of us will be balanced.
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What will happen when a squad grows and becomes a over skilled unit? A perfect example of this would be DarkSails.
I said this before... Higher skilled squads get lower skilled recruits and vice versa. Not exclusively of course, but the idea is not to let the polarization run rampant. Maybe you get 2 new guys who wanted to transfer from divinity. Idfk, the possibilities are endless, I wont sit here and explain the 50+ ways it would be solved, but I will say that NOTHING would be forced, ever.
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Would this not create bad experiences for the new recruits when they get assigned to a squad as a good player and find out that practices are fun custom games and just exploring around playing games on the battle night maps (don't say this doesn't happen because I have been in practices like this example). And what about the player who is just looking to have fun playing halo and gets assigned to a squad that wants him to strictly follow a predetermined role?
Zeke&Friends has practices that consist of fun custom games sometimes.
I've rarely been in a situation where practices have been entirely fun custom games.
Ideally there is a balance. Work hard, play hard. It's the squad leader's responsibility to provide a welcoming environment to anyone in the squad. After all, they're a squad in FC, they aren't an independent entity. Every squad should be practicing in some way, and every squad should have periods where they tone it down and do something fun/casual matchmaking. I don't see a unit right now that doesn't fit that.
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I don't know what the whole plan is for this voluntary depolarization, but how many players/units would need to be depolarized for your system to work?
3 Decent Players to Marauder, Bellator, and Divinity. 2-3 more casual players to the higher skilled units to replace them. That would work enough wonders. No one would be forced to leave their unit, but if no unit would be willing to take in new members, then again, that's a D move.
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Maybe we should extend this idea to the actual war, Fiesta Slayer?
No >_>
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I kinda addressed this in a earlier reply, but how does this mean/average logic hold when squads have more players than the minimum for team? How do we enforce that the average of both sub-units is the same and is balanced?
Proper leadership. FM should be looking at this and making sure teams are balanced and everyone is getting equal playing time. FMs sit out of playing on battles for these such reasons. If FMs can't do that, we're already fucked for leadership anyway. It's an FM-Squad Leader dynamic that need be kept in check. As with everything else, it's leadership's responsibility to ensure stability, balance, and growth. This falls under that umbrella.
Sorry if I got mad at some of these things, if I did it's probably because it was already answered.