Battling Battle Fatigue

[mgriss]

DISCLAIMER: This is not a recruitment thread. I couldn't find much on the topic and wanted to know how these things work. If you or your faction is looking for another faction to employ these strategies, please use the recruitment forum to find them.


It's summertime, it's warm out, and each WD event keeps coming more and more quickly after the next.

To stay in a decent faction as a free player requires an enormous time commitment. To stay in a top faction requires an enormous money and time commitment.

I know top factions use "feeder" factions both as a proving ground for potential recruits, and as a respite center for the battle-fatigued. I always assumed my lowly top 500 wasn't worthy of such things, but I need a solution. I don't want to see any more of my soldiers burn out. I don't want them to feel pressured into battling when they should be spending time with their families. I'm tired of saying goodbye to my friends when they take a new job. I'm tired of the constant recruiting required to keep the faction full of active members. I think we need our own feeder/camper faction.

We're thinking of starting a camper faction for our battle fatigued, or merging with another active faction and designating one as the battle faction, and the other as the camper. <--- THIS IS NOT AN INVITATION TO DISCUSS RECRUITMENT.

What I need help with is the logistics. Has anyone done this successfully? What works, what doesn't? Did you do it with a merger or build the 2nd one from scratch? How many people do you need to make it work? If the battle faction is full and more people want to battle, how do you decide who makes it in and who doesn't?

Any advice on the topic would be enormously appreciated. I would love to hear your experiences, successes, failures, all of it. Thanks.

[HunterKiller]

After Greenland, the Universal Soldiers merged to Palringo, our leader at the time went and took over leadership of the new faction, then the rest of us moved over, leaving an officers clone behind to run the 2nd faction.
We took almost the whole team as Palringo had plenty of space for us, and we found we haven't had people wanting to move up to Palringo much, and we have since cut ties with our old faction.

We were looking at doing another merger with a top 25 faction after Ireland but it didn't work out, as we were 2 strong teams, and everyone wanted to keep most of their guys, and our top 75 faction has better bonuses than the top 25 faction, it is certainly far easier to merge when one team is significantly weaker than the other.

If you have enough people scoring 30-40k you could look at merging up to a top 250 or better team, if not, then try find a lower placed team.

Merging up is cool if you can do it, you don't feel burnt out if you are facing a new challenge, e.g maintaining top 250 or 100 rather than just muddling along in the top 500 like every other war. I know I felt burnt out in Columbia because our faction fell apart and we were only in the top 750, but now that I have rebuilt the faction and am looking at top 250 or better again, I am looking forward to the war.

Not sure how relevant all that was to you, but thats what works for me and my team.

[mgriss]

Thanks for the reply Hunterkiller.

We've had a couple successful mergers in the past too, but it's always been with teams that didn't have any more active members than we could absorb... the inactive members were left to do whatever they wanted.

I'd really like to keep the other faction around, either as a camper faction or a "B-team" for people who maybe want to make top 1000 but don't want to or can't fight as furiously that particular weekend.

I think it's a really good idea if it can work... the biggest problems would be working out a system for deciding who goes where when spots are limited, getting everyone to agree on that system, and making that system fair enough that the factions won't become estranged from each other.

Has anyone accomplished that? Or tried and failed? Currently working on it? I'd love to hear your stories.

[Bravo Zulu]

Thanks for the reply Hunterkiller.

We've had a couple successful mergers in the past too, but it's always been with teams that didn't have any more active members than we could absorb... the inactive members were left to do whatever they wanted.

I'd really like to keep the other faction around, either as a camper faction or a "B-team" for people who maybe want to make top 1000 but don't want to or can't fight as furiously that particular weekend.

I think it's a really good idea if it can work... the biggest problems would be working out a system for deciding who goes where when spots are limited, getting everyone to agree on that system, and making that system fair enough that the factions won't become estranged from each other.

Has anyone accomplished that? Or tried and failed? Currently working on it? I'd love to hear your stories.

I hope this will be helpful, as far as what my thoughts have been. We have not implemented this yet (DISCLAIMER) but it is something I have been putting some thought into.

The first thing that I want to point out is that while this is not the military, the military is structured in a certain way for a certain reason. Same can be said for companies, schools, etc. and what I mean by this is that one mistake often made is giving everybody a say. You don't have to come up with a structure that everybody agrees on. You just have to find one that works for your goals, and is fair (not in the way most people use the word, which is everybody gets the same. The real definition of fair centers around the ideas of impartiality and honesty).

What this means in this context is that you design a structure that truly meets your need of shelter for the war torn and battle fatigued, making sure that your idea doesn't get sidetracked an ultimately become a way to get rid of lower stat players in favor of those that fancy themselves the ultimate fighting machines (a bit of humor). That would lead to resentment and mistrust, and defeat your own goal. You can design a rotation system with a small think tank of officers and put it out to the masses so to speak. If it is well reasoned and balanced people will get on board. Too much input can be detrimental because when you fail to use the ideas of some, they also get disgruntled and can undermine the process.

You could make a mandatory "break" of one war every so often for everyone. You could make it for the gold spenders so they have the extra money to go on vacation that month, and rotate them out with another gold player that was on hiatus the oath before- thereby not losing the points earned. What I would suggest is thinking about the faction as "spots" at first. What jobs are needed and how many "spots" does that take? Are some "spots more prone to huge time commitments, money commitments, or both? And then how often would those "spots" need a break.

You don't want to set anything up that requires significant monthly reevaluation or like recruiting it will take up too much time and burn you out. Something that rotates, in a predictable way, will be the smoothest. It will also be the most balanced, be considered fair by common definition and would be fair in the context of the real definition. And you tweak it as it goes along without the need to entirely revamp your system.

If you think it is best, as the leader (if you are the leader) sometimes it is necessary to do what you think is best for your faction, lay the plan out there, and then people can choose whether the want to remain. It seems to me that if you out time and effort into deciding how to do this, and you have good intentions with helping your players in a way that is sustainable over the long term, the players will respond favorably to that. We all like to think people are looking out for us, and when they are it tends to work really well. The players with a problem can make their own decisions for themselves- but someone has to think about the good of the faction in the long run. Just my thought. :)

[mgriss]

Bravo Zulu-

That is some great advice, thank you. I do have another merger on the horizon, and if it works out we will be keeping the old one as a camper. Your thoughts about needing more executive leadership was especially helpful... this next merger is likely to be a big one and will require significant consolidation of power. In addition, I have probably been stressing out my officers by asking their opinions about possible big future changes. I already know that they all want this merger to happen, and they want to keep the other faction around as a camper and respite center. Rather than try and work out a detailed system that everyone agrees on in advance, it might be best to tackle issues as they arise, keeping their best interests at heart, with the number one goal of making sure everyone is still having fun.

That being said, I still want to toss around ideas about a long-term goal of creating a larger faction cooperative. If a system like this could be worked out between two factions... why not three? Four? Ten?

A faction cooperative where players move back and forth more freely than they do using the "faction recruitment" forum. Similar to how some top-ranking factions use feeder factions, where players who have proven themselves in battle can move up even if just temporarily, and others can move down when they need a break from the gold-spending. Except for free and mostly free players, where the fluctuating commodity is not gold, but your time. With GREE pushing out wars every other weekend, time and level of commitment for a war are going to become hot commodities for mid-ranking factions.

I know I'm not the first to think of it... I want to know why other's haven't tried.

If you've thought about it what kept you from trying?

If you've tried, what kept you from succeeding?

And please, please... if you've succeeded... even partially... HOW did you do it?

I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on the topic.