Originally Posted by
Anarchy
Prepare thyself.
FC has been much worse off. The notion that we're a dying dog with 3 legs is mostly said by either those who joined during the massive influx of recruits we got at the beginning of Halo 4, or by those from way back when who see a less militarized community as a less successful one.
Agree, sort of. The "I'll wait till MCC" is common, happened in reach with people waiting until Halo 4. 9 times out of 10 it's just an excuse to leave with a timeline. Not that it's necessarily bad, but trying to imply that the community will fundamentally change due to a new game's release is absurd.
That's debatable. One of the most common ailments this community has, is that people focus way too much on their battle night success. FC, this community, is about a lot more than showing up on Sunday and expecting close games. One of our jobs as leaders of this community is to provide everyone with a plethora of activities, events, and general "content" for members to be a part of. Of course battle nights are our main act, but it should in no way be anyone's end-all deciding factor on if they're enjoying FC itself as a community.
We have side-wars, squad events, practices, forum games, easter eggs on the website, discussions, events on other games, chats, tournaments, competitions of any sort, LARP, forum RP, and yes of course battle nights.
Not to get too in depth as to the logistics of "why", because it would open up a huge can of worms that no one well ever agree with, but the wars will never be 100% even, squads will never be 100% equal in skill, there will always be a diverse member-base for which we rely and survive on, and in many ways that diversity is the key to our success. To assume we can create such an artificial landscape, and to expect such a thing from those leading the community is preposterous and would only be remotely possible in a situation where War Directors and/or FMs are given ultimate control on master designing squad makeup and the like.
You don't go into matchmaking and always find people 100% the same skill as you, so you can't expect the same from a community that accepts anyone regardless of skill. If you're REALLY getting angry about losing halo games on battle night, priorities need to be re-aligned. No one inherently likes losing, but assuming that because someone's losing there's a fundamental problem in leadership and community health is not looking at what we truly are.
Yes, infusing some lower skilled squads with some higher skilled members/recruits would be a nice change, and when squads don't make a full team mixing units of opposite skill levels to equal things out would be an even better boon. Actually, that would help a lot. But there's zero room for expecting 50% or more of the games we play to have a miniscule 10% score difference, because there's zero room to actually make something like that possible.
Mythonian, myself, and (sorta) phoenix keep our eyes on the prize on a constant basis. There's a plethora of forces that push and pull things like this, and of course no one knows the entire picture 100%, that's impossible. But those who are active in War Council do what we can. Unfortunately, perfection is never an option. Nor has it ever been accomplished.
We'd have to measure how willing we are to force people to a place they don't want to be just for master design, a master design that may or may not work in our favor. As a community we need to be sensitive to everyone's wants and desires.
This should be assumed, growth is survival. There will always be turnover that needs replaced.
One of the hardest things about getting to the end of a game like this is finding willing leaders to take up the mantle and grow the community. As interest in a game dies out, so too does the motivation of potential leaders.
This ends up going one of two ways. Either more people are given leadership titles to over-saturate leadership positions, so that there's enough firepower in terms of leadership to survive, though the quality of each tends to go down and many inexperienced people are given spots. Also, it lowers the general value of having an officer position.
OR, you simply deal with less leaders, putting a lot of the weight on a lone few people with its own host of obvious problems. We can see both of these situations with both our current armies, and though I have my own bias as to which is the lesser of two evils, the general theme is that we have to put value back into leadership positions, mentor new leaders, and have those with experience step up in general.
Even those who do step up in situations like we're in right now usually aren't as enthused as they could be.
What needs to happen to, supposedly "fix" things:
1. Stop worrying about winning. No, I'm not talking about the competitive wanting to win too much, I'm talking about the casuals who for some reason can't find a way to have fun in a community of MANY MANY different activities because they lost 2-3 games on a battle night. WHEN POSSIBLE, mix low and high skilled people to counter it out, but really if you're losing games come up with something non-traditional to try. Please stop asking for a tier system, please stop hating another squad because they're doing well and winning a lot, and please stop demanding change if your squad doesn't get as many wins as you think they should on a battle night.
2. Enthused leaders, and enthused members wanting to be leaders. So long as no one wants any leadership position, those positions will continue to be filled with inexperienced or unmotivated individuals just serving as a placeholder, doing the job minimum to get the community by. A rock could become a HC member in 2 months if they spent 30 minutes a day on something FC related 5 days a week.
3. A push towards an atmosphere of growth everywhere. We should all be aiding one another, allowing each individual squad the chance to grow themselves and have proper leaders, regardless of army lines. A squad getting close to death is something needing addressed frickin' immediately.
4. Finally, stop acting like FC is a goddamn cesspool for poor leadership and mismanagement. FC is what it has been for a long ass time, we wont change what we fundamentally are ANYTIME soon, definitely not before Halo 5. For gods sakes, people have no problem mentioning that Myth didn't make this week's maps until Friday, but no one has any inclination to see the fact that the guy donated $150+ on our fucking anniversary event for prizes for everyone.
We will never go anywhere, ANYWHERE, so long as everyone thinks of FC as a shitty place to be, and sees leadership as the fucking anti-christ. Productive thinking, productive action. There are small things to change, but FC being what system FC is, there's no reason to change the general formula that got all of you here in the first place.
The "Holy shit holy shit everything is falling apart!" notion is completely false and is the leading cause of our downfall.
As for actual plans for MCC, anyone can contact myself or Myth on things that are in the works, on hold, and in the thought process.
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