Accords Revision

[CAW0139]

Before joining FC I was in a clan for nearly 2 years. This clan experienced its share of low population, but remained a strong knit community. When the Xbox one launched, the clan slowly fell apart. Leadership became stagnant as most of the members moved to xbox one, a few going to ps4 and a small handful remaining on the 360. After nearly 6 months of this, they eventually disbanded. FC is experiencing very similar circumstances. The Halo community is not what it once was in Bungies glory days. We cannot change that. The Halo community is by no means lacking though, and blaming the short comings here on the games community as a whole is simply wrong. “The accords are the core documents upon which this community stands,” yet, we ignore a majority of it because it’s either outdated or no one cared. If they are what the community stands on, then we just took half the legs off the chair. Its time War Council stepped up and got with the times. We need change, if not, this community will only continue to lose people. A player draft WILL lose people. Not changing WILL lose people. A change to the Accords? Why would anyone leave because of this? So with that in mind, I present my thoughts on the Accords as a whole.

Article I

Article I needs no review, it helps maintain a respectful and fun community, which we all want.

Article II

The only thing I think needs mentioning is the wording used in section 1.5, “A member may not enlist in two or more factions,” why or more? Was there once a plan to have more than REDD or BLUE, or was this simply put in place to make it more generalized? Either way, phrasing is key, and that could be shortened to just “two factions”.

Article III

My main concern here is Section 2, the Voting Chamber. With low membership, we get a low leader count. Currently, BLUE army only has 3 members with the required rank to be voting in the Voting Chamber. REDD army has 4. If both armies were to vote, at any given point, REDD army would immediately have more votes. This prevents the War Directors from having any influence at all on the votes, even though they are meant to be a neutral party. They are all prevented from being a neutral party by being enlisted in a single army. It would be best if they rotated between both armies so as to prevent any bias towards one side whether they admit it or not. Also, my issues that I pointed out cannot be changed if the side with more votes doesn’t want them to due to section 2.7. On a less drastic note, the inclusion of records in this article seems unnecessary why not include them in their own forum or their one section of the accords.

Article IV

No changes seem necessary here, they don’t cause any problems.

Article V

This is where change SERIOUSLY needs to happen so I’d like to go through and say all my issues with each section.
1.1 – it’s a good idea, but we haven’t structured our current war map like it, not following these accords, or being selective with what we follow is a major issue here.
1.2 – Yet again ignored, but this one affects the rest of section 1, why are these the core of the community if we aren’t going to use them. The community is failing, and we aren’t making changes to fix it.
1.3 - Ignored
1.4 – Ignored
1.5 – Makes sense, and is still followed
1.6 – Ignored
1.7 – Ignored
1.8 – BLUE and REDD both only managed two FULL teams of 6 last night. Which is fine, both teams get at least two games in then if it’s a sweep one team from each side gets a third game. But those 2 full teams of 6 only translate to two full teams of 5 with a few extras, but this time they have to play more games, fine, we like halo. Teams of 4 now, each side has 3 teams, best of 17? I haven’t seen higher than best of 13 EVER and that was BARELY played all the way through. The 3 matches per person comes into effect and the entire BN doesn’t even get finished with these few numbers.
2 Section 2 is fine as is, it makes for a fun capital battle night, but if we aren’t actually earning a capital battle and just deciding, screw this we are tired of this war lets capital battle now and be done, it wasn’t earned, it was cut short, and it’s just not fun.
3 Section 3 is the unnecessary remnants of the past that doesn’t even need to be here, either follow it or drop it. We don’t need to invite our squad, they can join us. No one is EVER in game chat. We don’t need to report what gametype we want cause we are hosting ourselves. This entire section is COMPLETELY useless.
4 This one is fine, keeps the games honest, I have no problem with it being here.
5.1 – This one I like, if we had it actually applied properly. The wording here is poor, it doesn’t specify when the 15 minutes starts, it says “setup” but is that once the names are placed in the statbook? Or when the squad leader joins the game? Or once the whole squad is in the lobby? I’ve been starting my timer once my full team is in the lobby with over half of the other squads members, but again, we have no way of being sure when this applies. AND ITS IGNORED!!! I can site multiple times myself or others have waited longer than 30 minutes for a game without even mentioning the 15 minute rule.
5.2 – This is fine, if the 15 minute rule was followed and enforced and better written.
5.3 – We all know this rule, the 3 games per person rule. It isn’t needed here. With the low population and high number of games. It would be impossible for this to make the community any better. If the population was larger, as it used to be, this would make sense. But it’s not. The population is dwindling and this is only going to make matters worse.
5.4 This makes sense.

In general, there are parts of the Accords that definitely belong. Please feel free to correct me in the comments about anything I pointed out that may be wrong, such as rules I don’t think are followed but actually are. Please don’t complain, be constructive. Things need to change, I feel like this is only a minor step in the right directions because this won’t fix the numbers issue or the skills issue. It will help to keep players from leaving though. It’s time we weren’t selective with the accords, either follow them or don’t. New steps need to be taken to fix the other issues. New things need added to the accords. Personally I think we need to make an article dedicated to records, the statbook, and rosters. But this is just one of the many things that I think need fixed. First and foremost, the Accords need revised and redrafted. I will be posting an idea for a more drastic change to our community in the coming days as well.

[Houdini]

Article III

My main concern here is Section 2, the Voting Chamber. With low membership, we get a low leader count. Currently, BLUE army only has 3 members with the required rank to be voting in the Voting Chamber. REDD army has 4. If both armies were to vote, at any given point, REDD army would immediately have more votes. This prevents the War Directors from having any influence at all on the votes, even though they are meant to be a neutral party. They are all prevented from being a neutral party by being enlisted in a single army. It would be best if they rotated between both armies so as to prevent any bias towards one side whether they admit it or not. Also, my issues that I pointed out cannot be changed if the side with more votes doesn’t want them to due to section 2.7. On a less drastic note, the inclusion of records in this article seems unnecessary why not include them in their own forum or their one section of the accords.

I think you may be slightly confused with how the voting chamber works (which probably means the article needs to be written to make it more clear). Each army has 2 votes, one for the FM, one for the Gen. The War Directors combined form a single, hopefully neutral, vote. I do like your idea of having the War Directors rotate between armies each week though.

Article V

This is where change SERIOUSLY needs to happen so I’d like to go through and say all my issues with each section.
1.1 – it’s a good idea, but we haven’t structured our current war map like it, not following these accords, or being selective with what we follow is a major issue here.
1.2 – Yet again ignored, but this one affects the rest of section 1, why are these the core of the community if we aren’t going to use them. The community is failing, and we aren’t making changes to fix it.
1.3 - Ignored
1.4 – Ignored
1.5 – Makes sense, and is still followed
1.6 – Ignored
1.7 – Ignored
1.8 – BLUE and REDD both only managed two FULL teams of 6 last night. Which is fine, both teams get at least two games in then if it’s a sweep one team from each side gets a third game. But those 2 full teams of 6 only translate to two full teams of 5 with a few extras, but this time they have to play more games, fine, we like halo. Teams of 4 now, each side has 3 teams, best of 17? I haven’t seen higher than best of 13 EVER and that was BARELY played all the way through. The 3 matches per person comes into effect and the entire BN doesn’t even get finished with these few numbers.

Section 1 definitely needs a re-write. You are correct, almost all of this section is ignored.

3 Section 3 is the unnecessary remnants of the past that doesn’t even need to be here, either follow it or drop it. We don’t need to invite our squad, they can join us. No one is EVER in game chat. We don’t need to report what gametype we want cause we are hosting ourselves. This entire section is COMPLETELY useless.

3.1 is still relevant. 3.2 is clearly incorrect and ignored. 3.3 is still relevant. 3.4 is still relevant. We should probably add something to this section about the Battle Night Co-Op chat since we use that for most of the scheduling and organizational things.

5.1 – This one I like, if we had it actually applied properly. The wording here is poor, it doesn’t specify when the 15 minutes starts, it says “setup” but is that once the names are placed in the statbook? Or when the squad leader joins the game? Or once the whole squad is in the lobby? I’ve been starting my timer once my full team is in the lobby with over half of the other squads members, but again, we have no way of being sure when this applies. AND ITS IGNORED!!! I can site multiple times myself or others have waited longer than 30 minutes for a game without even mentioning the 15 minute rule.

I agree. We should either remove this rule or enforce it. Sometimes people (I'm guilty of this too), sit in lobbies longer than 15 minutes waiting because we are trying to be nice and let the other team get their people in. But delaying the game impacts more than just the people sitting in that lobby waiting. The entire battle night is delayed and squads who are off this rotation have to wait even longer before their next game is started. We definitely need to figure out when that time starts (when the squad leaders post in the Co-Op that they are ready?).

5.3 – We all know this rule, the 3 games per person rule. It isn’t needed here. With the low population and high number of games. It would be impossible for this to make the community any better. If the population was larger, as it used to be, this would make sense. But it’s not. The population is dwindling and this is only going to make matters worse.

I like the spirit of this rule. It is designed to award the army with more people some sort of advantage and also designed to prevent armies from only fielding teams that are highly skilled. Us enforcing it with this 3 game limit is clearly broken though.



Thanks for putting this together CAW!

[Nicholas Sapien]

What houdini said about article 3


I'll read the rest when I wake up

[Silko]

Well the accords are not going to change during the war but we do a major upkeep on the accords before every game change. Expect some changes as we transition to H5. I am sure that the WC will look at this thread and discuss some of the proposed changes you have suggested CAW as the accords are banged out during peace time. Good job