Proposal

[Tbone]

I submitted these ideas to the staff for some discussion. Now I figured I'd open it up to everyone to debate. Here is what I proposed:

So obviously I've been busy as hell the last few months with moving to DC and working five jobs. Anyway, I was trying to think of a way to keep things operational even when those of us "at the top" get distracted or busy. Here was one of my ideas.

The members we have left are pretty hardcore devoted and have been around for a while. We also all play different games since MxO has kinda gone by the wayside. Since we're expanding anyway, what if we opened it up for the members we have right now to submit games to add to our roster and put them in charge of recruiting for that game.

As an example, let's say Anamodiel plays WoW and would love for FA to be in that game somehow. Ana would say "I would like to be put in charge of the WoW division of FA". So we create a sub-forum for WoW and maybe a news module or whatever else Ana may need, as well as a new member group to set up the permissions. Ana would then kinda act as the "Tbone" of that game for us, having the final decision in people we let in as well as settling other disputes. We'd have a general area where all the members of the different games could meet each other, and TS would be available for everyone, but other than that we keep it seperate.

Ultimately things would still have to go through me. I'd be the one adding the accounts and maintaining that end (simply because we don't need that many people to have complete access to admin), so that would keep it in check. If members wanted to join us in other games, they'd have to go through whoever was in charge of that particular division (if they wanted to join one of our main ones, MxO or The Agency, they would have to go through me, for instance).

The reason I propose this is I want to see people in TS having fun and I want to see activity on the forums and get our community buzzing again. At the same time, I have other priorities in my life I have to focus on at the moment, so I alone cannot put forth the energy needed to keep those wheels spinning. I know a lot of our members are probably members of other guilds in these other games, and that might slow this process down a bit. If we do decide to try this idea, I'd make it clear that the game leaders try to uphold are ideals of hardcore, mature gamers. If this place started to look like a zoo, we'd come down on the person recruiting the animals and clean up if necessary. A majority of our resources would still go towards what we choose to be our main game of focus (I.e. The Agency), so hopefully this would not cause our strength in that game to be compromised. Let me know what you guys think.


Speaking of the Agency, my other idea concerns our new challenge we've been attempting to build. We all got busy with other things when it has come to that, so I think we need to streamline it a bit. We should probably focus on a condensed version of what we originally wanted to do - maybe three or so steps of the RP. Enough to get people interested before we try to rope them in. Once we finish this short version, we can start adding to it and making it more elaborate. I just want to make sure we have SOMETHING ready in case The Agency community website/etc. goes live tomorrow, ya know? Not ideal, but practical.

So there ya have it - sorry I've been on an extended hiatus. I just finished two of my acting gigs that I was doing at once, and I'm getting settled into two of my part time jobs and just have to interview for the third one. This will potentially make my schedule a lot more steady and predictable, and give me more time to breathe and not feel guilty about piddling around online with you guys.

[Tbone]

Concerns brought up so far:

-risk of losing our "niche" style
-perhaps should wait for next big game instead of trying to force it
-recruitment into other games would still need monitoring
-maybe look at one or two possibilities instead of several games
-fear of getting too relaxed with recruitment

[Lits]

We need to add to that list of concerns the worry that this may divide us. We'd have to take extra precaution and effort to keep engendering the 'FA Team' feeling, especially if it's spanning two or three games.

[Tbone]

While I agree, we don't want to go corporate, I also feel we shouldn't be afraid of meeting new people. There's a lot of nice, mature gamers out there, and we don't want to be so cynical that we are too afraid to find them. The real question is do you trust each other's judgement enough to pick nice people who would fit and contribute to our community?

[NoCry]

I like it T; as to the concern of recruiting monkeys I do think that our exclusivity, whilst a strength when we are in an established game could hinder us in downtimes.

[Anamodiel]

I think that if we are going to do any serious recruiting, we should hold it off for The Agency. We've held off for this long; it isn't like a few more months are really going to change our outlook on the Faction. Like you said, it isn't like many of the members here are suddenly going to get up and leave because we haven't been doing much recently; many others and I see everyone here as family. We're not going to turn on each other just because we've had a lull in activity for a while. Once we get something going in The Agency (or some FPS/MMO in the meantime), and we see people returning into TS, the recruitment phase of everything will naturally transition into its own, and we will see the activity of everything increase even further.

With that being said, that doesn't mean that we aren't allowed to recruit people into the Faction while we play our different games and such. I just don't feel that we should make a concentrated effort to do so. I always wear my [FA] tag while playing Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2, and, if anyone asks me about [FA], I'm sure to tell them as much as I can about our faction (and not just tell them to "Follow the Angel"). With that being said, I don't advertise our faction and whore us out like some of the many other people do in different games. If someone sees me being a mature player, they'll ask about me if they're interested. If not, it's no skin off of my back.

That's all that I can think of for now. If this project were to go ahead, I would be cool with it. As well, I would do my best to do any recruiting I can, within reason, of course. I'm sure I'll think of more things to say as time goes on...