FC Mission Statement?

[JamiDJ]

Originally Posted by Houdini
This type of solution is most definitely a choice of vision for the community. Do we want a community that is more closely aligned with absolute competition? I honestly don't know, but I do think we need a unified vision for what the community represents and should be. Right now, I feel like FC is being led by a multitude of ideas and all of those ideas cannot exist in harmony, thus the conflict.

Based off of the above post, I felt that even though FC has a simple statement we give: "Fun and Respect". What is it we hope to achieve as a community? What message do we reflect to those of us visiting us for the first time?

Thoughts and suggestions?

[JamiDJ]

Originally posted by Jam Cliche
It's the opening of the Accords xD

Even though the accords are a great opening to our rules and other guidelines, Accords here it does not depict an actual mission statement. Like what was previously stated, what are we centered around? Is it a competitive community that reks each other every Sunday? Or are we a casual community that gets toghether for sunday night battles. Do we have a plan on how we move forward? Or is this it - what you see is what you get. Most viable companies and other entities have a mission statement they present to new employees and investors. Even though we're not one of those, we should have the same thought process on how we move the community forward.

[Barry Soap]

Hmm... It's hard to encapsulate FC into one or a few sentences. We try to offer something for everyone, so it'd be good if we could explain that efficiently.

[JamiDJ]

Hmm... It's hard to encapsulate FC into one or a few sentences. We try to offer something for everyone, so it'd be good if we could explain that efficiently.

Mission statement never has to be confined to one or two sentences. A mission statement can be as long or short as needed, but in turn provides a brief statement of what we are about.

[Jam Cliché]

Hmm... It's hard to encapsulate FC into one or a few sentences. We try to offer something for everyone, so it'd be good if we could explain that efficiently.

Trying to offer something for everyone could be what got us into this mess. It's like what Myth said in the update thread. We have to decide what it means to be a warsim. If FC isn't the first or only community in Halo to define itself as a warsim, it certainly is the longest running and only remaining community in Halo that sticks to the format we started with.

With that in mind, I think we should start there. What was FC when it began? How did it change from one war to the next? Which wars and which leadership periods had the most participation?

Basically, we dig up the past to figure out FC's "identity crisis," and that mission statement will follow.

I've tried this before but it devolved into an argument about how to objectively offset factors that contributed to numbers. I don't wanna get that specific, though, I only take away some core tenants and a brief analysis of structure from war to war.

[JamiDJ]

Trying to offer something for everyone could be what got us into this mess. It's like what Myth said in the update thread. We have to decide what it means to be a warsim. If FC isn't the first or only community in Halo to define itself as a warsim, it certainly is the longest running and only remaining community in Halo that sticks to the format we started with.

With that in mind, I think we should start there. What was FC when it began? How did it change from one war to the next? Which wars and which leadership periods had the most participation?

Basically, we dig up the past to figure out FC's "identity crisis," and that mission statement will follow.

I've tried this before but it devolved into an argument about how to objectively offset factors that contributed to numbers. I don't wanna get that specific, though, I only take away some core tenants and a brief analysis of structure from war to war.

No arguments. If we think about this rationally and take our time, it should not be too difficult to create a mission statement. However, I do agree with you and Myth that trying to appease everyone is what originally got us into this.

I think we need to figure out our "identity" and proceed from there. Good starting point would be - what would FC's mission statement be when it first started? What about say during H3? How does that change to where we are as a community now?

I just realized i kind of repeated a lot of what you said Jam, Sorry... LOL

[Jam Cliché]

I think we need to figure out our "identity" and proceed from there. Good starting point would be - what would FC's mission statement be when it first started? What about say during H3? How does that change to where we are as a community now?

That's what I was getting at. Figure out FC's identity in the beginning, watch how that identity changed from war to war, and trim off the stuff that soured that identity. By the time we get to current, we'll have something that evolved from the roots of the community to redirect the FC of today.

[Houdini]

This is going to be a little bit more than just a "Fun and Respect" mission statement. I've tried to elaborate on a couple of actual "visions" for what the community could look like. I would expect there would be at least a few people who hate and who would like each individual vision. There probably are infinite variations or completely distinct visions, but these are ones I stole from other people or came up with that I think would fit the FC context.

1. Pure War Sim (i.e. ultra competitive)
Lore-ish: In a true war, squads are aligned based on talents. Not everyone can be a SEAL. The leaders of the armies are allowed to make strategic decisions to win at all costs.
For Us: No restrictions on squad stacking. No support for lower skilled squads. The winner is the winner and that is the army that should be victorious. If one army just has all of the good people, that army should be stomping on the other army.

2. Friendly Role Playing (i.e. non-competitive)
Lore-ish: Think about the people who go out an re-enact Civil war battles and what not. That culture doesn't have to deal with skill balance of conflict. Everybody is equal and both sides are more or less balanced.
For Us: The winner and the loser are not significant. People don't have strong affiliations with an army, but instead have affiliations for the war-sim as a whole. Everybody on battle night is divided equally to make the numbers/skill matchup for a neutral playing field balance.

3. Matchmaking War Training (i.e. matchmaking war simulation)
Lore-ish: Halo 4 did the Spartan 4 thing where there is a context for the matches that everybody is in some sort of training program. There are restrictions on what type of behaviors and balances are permitted to keep the simulation fair.
For Us: Matches are designed to be competitive in the scope that people are playing to win, but the context in which they play to win is inherently balanced by rules and guidelines. Matchmaking sometimes takes a long time and not everybody plays the same amount of games because not everybody matches well with other parties. People can still play with their friends and choose who they play with, but they are subject to the system to determine who they actually play against to ensure some minimal standard of fairness.

4. Singles Instance Wars (i.e. re-drafting/re-allignment during peacetime)
Lore-ish: Each individual war is considered a distinct scenario. There is no carry over between wars. Think about how you could be simulating a war in Europe and then the American Civil war. The factions are inherently different.
For Us: The beginning of each war there is "balancing" (probably a player draft) where players are assigned to a faction for the duration of the war. They build an army and train in that faction in a competitive structure with minimal restrictions on how the players can be aligned within a specific army. No matter how balanced or imbalanced the previous war was, when everything is done a new re-balancing is conducted before the next war.

5. Competitive Balance (i.e. maximize the balance at all costs)
Lore-ish: Individuals going into matchmaking without a party. (This actually doesn't really exist well in real life)
For Us: The beginning of each war there is a "balancing." In addition, there are strict guidelines imposed about how the squads and teams can be formed throughout the war. New recruits or returning non-drafted members have strict guidelines about where they can join the system. The goal is that every match will be as equally started as possible.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not talking about what FC did then. I'm talking about how it saw itself.

We're probably not going to get a good picture of that. Memories about what FC stood for are most certainly corrupted by Nostalgia and the general lack of people who are still around and active from all that time ago.

But your point makes more sense with that clarification.

[Houdini]

Trying to offer something for everyone could be what got us into this mess. It's like what Myth said in the update thread. We have to decide what it means to be a warsim. If FC isn't the first or only community in Halo to define itself as a warsim, it certainly is the longest running and only remaining community in Halo that sticks to the format we started with.

With that in mind, I think we should start there. What was FC when it began? How did it change from one war to the next? Which wars and which leadership periods had the most participation?

Basically, we dig up the past to figure out FC's "identity crisis," and that mission statement will follow.

I've tried this before but it devolved into an argument about how to objectively offset factors that contributed to numbers. I don't wanna get that specific, though, I only take away some core tenants and a brief analysis of structure from war to war.

I think part of the issue is that not everybody in the community wants to stick to those core of what the community did 10 years ago. A lot has changed since then and while the idea of a warsim is something that the community still holds strongly to, the actual execution of that idea is probably not the same and in my opinion probably shouldn't be the same as what it was back then.

Numbers of changed. People have changed. The culture has changed.

[JamiDJ]

I think part of the issue is that not everybody in the community wants to stick to those core of what the community did 10 years ago. A lot has changed since then and while the idea of a warsim is something that the community still holds strongly to, the actual execution of that idea is probably not the same and in my opinion probably shouldn't be the same as what it was back then.

Numbers of changed. People have changed. The culture has changed.

Agreed. Well said.