What does this suggestion change/add/remove:
Revert the Squad and Company System
Possible Positives of the suggestion (At least 2):
See response below
Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
- Time needed to undo the changes with the Squad and Company System
Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
In the month following the update, it is clear that the Squad/Company System has been detrimental to the structure and organization of regiments, affecting things such as activity and player retention. I propose that we return to the old system. See my reasons below.
1. Squad and Companies are redundant.
They are redundant. Squad and Companies are only names written on a spreadsheet that is far removed from the majority of the community. I am confident in saying that a lot of players do not even know what their Squad or Company is and a lot of regiments do not enforce RP within them.
They lack any form of special duty, equipment, speciality and anything to that effect. Before I get told I can make them have specialities, Cloak himself said "They [Companies] also need to not imply that one company has a specific duty over the other, companies are just for organisation & management and not for saying one company gets to do things that another company doesn't (e.g. piloting in UAF/SWB)." Since the companies are only for "organisation and management". So, why do they even exist?
The numbers needed to justify the creation of individual companies and squads do not exist and just adds more paperwork for people to fill out.
2. The Squad system is too vulnerable.
Squads heavily rely on Leaders being active everyday to keep the numbers in their squads up. If the Squad Leader happens to be away on LOA for any reason, their Squad just dies with no one there to maintain it especially in the 4 Squads 2 Companies configuration. It is an unrealistic to expect Squad Leaders to keep their Squads alive only for it to fall apart as soon as they leave, especially when they are supposed to be the ones training Sergeants to do tryouts, keeping activity in check, tracking promotions etc. It is simply too much for one or two people to handle.
With the old system, all of the NCOs and COs can work together to maintain the regiment. For example, certain people can be assigned on tryouts, certain people can be doing trainings etc. In the new system, RP activities are incentivized to be done by the Squad Leader solely for their Squads, especially tryouts.
It gets even more ridiculuous when a Squad Leader leaves and there is no suitable replacement within that Squad. In most cases, you would have to take a Squad member from one squad to put them in another Squad to the deteriment of the transferred person's original squad. "Why don't you rank skip to fill trhose positions then?" Rank skips to fill positions have been discouraged by the Rank Skipping Memorandum as written below.
3. The new system deincentivizes players to stay long-term.
The new system ignores the fact that a lot of players come online and expect to be promoted as a reward for their efforts. When they inevitably cannot climb the ranks anymore, what would motivate those players to stay on the server? This is particularly important as it affects leadership of a faction in the long term, in the case where people who come into the server following this update and want to be High Command but can't because there are no rank slots left for them. That is clearly wasted potential.
I know the server has an emphasis on war, but it does get boring after a while especially after being sniped or bombed a hundred times over. If we were to revert back to the old system (in terms of rank slots, not the actual rank themselves), we can promote people - thus improving player retention. This time, the maximum number of people that can hold a rank can be enforced by a Memorandum.
4. There is no method to judge merit for promotions anymore.
Rank requirements and promotion cooldowns were removed (the latter being understandable). Whilst I understand that rank requirements "add paperwork" in the way that people need to log things, it is a superior method of determining who deserves a higher rank and allows people to know what their expectations are. Requirements were typically a certain number of tryouts someone needed to do (which were already logged anyway and counted automatically by the spreadsheet) so I do not understand why "removing paperwork" was a reason to remove them. I will be honest that I overlooked them sometimes when they were implemented (e.g. if they needed to do 5 tryouts but only did 3) but they did work.
The current system is open to bias (whether positive i.e. the Squad Leader wants them to do more in order to be promoted or negative i.e. an incompetent person is being promoted) and unless a CO is again, online 24/7 and constantly watching over someone amongst the 30 other people in the regiment they have to watch, there is no way current promotions are in any way fair.
Overall, this suggestion has come from what I have seen as part of 1stAL and NWO as a whole. I understand that this has come from a regimental commander of a NWO regiment so I would like to hear the perspective from NATO as well.
-------------------------------------------------------
Thus, I propose the following ('the Old System') with a little update:
I would like to mention that (to my knowledge) that no regimental command was ever consulted about the Squad/Company system change and only High Command were. I have given the new system a chance, but I cannot any longer. I am sure there are benefits or other drawbacks that I haven't thought of, so please add your thoughts below.
If a member of NL is reading this, it will be nice to create a poll in #changevoting-feedback to see whether or not people like the new system alongside posting the link to this thread.
Revert the Squad and Company System
Possible Positives of the suggestion (At least 2):
See response below
Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
- Time needed to undo the changes with the Squad and Company System
Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
In the month following the update, it is clear that the Squad/Company System has been detrimental to the structure and organization of regiments, affecting things such as activity and player retention. I propose that we return to the old system. See my reasons below.
1. Squad and Companies are redundant.
They are redundant. Squad and Companies are only names written on a spreadsheet that is far removed from the majority of the community. I am confident in saying that a lot of players do not even know what their Squad or Company is and a lot of regiments do not enforce RP within them.
They lack any form of special duty, equipment, speciality and anything to that effect. Before I get told I can make them have specialities, Cloak himself said "They [Companies] also need to not imply that one company has a specific duty over the other, companies are just for organisation & management and not for saying one company gets to do things that another company doesn't (e.g. piloting in UAF/SWB)." Since the companies are only for "organisation and management". So, why do they even exist?
The numbers needed to justify the creation of individual companies and squads do not exist and just adds more paperwork for people to fill out.
2. The Squad system is too vulnerable.
Squads heavily rely on Leaders being active everyday to keep the numbers in their squads up. If the Squad Leader happens to be away on LOA for any reason, their Squad just dies with no one there to maintain it especially in the 4 Squads 2 Companies configuration. It is an unrealistic to expect Squad Leaders to keep their Squads alive only for it to fall apart as soon as they leave, especially when they are supposed to be the ones training Sergeants to do tryouts, keeping activity in check, tracking promotions etc. It is simply too much for one or two people to handle.
With the old system, all of the NCOs and COs can work together to maintain the regiment. For example, certain people can be assigned on tryouts, certain people can be doing trainings etc. In the new system, RP activities are incentivized to be done by the Squad Leader solely for their Squads, especially tryouts.
It gets even more ridiculuous when a Squad Leader leaves and there is no suitable replacement within that Squad. In most cases, you would have to take a Squad member from one squad to put them in another Squad to the deteriment of the transferred person's original squad. "Why don't you rank skip to fill trhose positions then?" Rank skips to fill positions have been discouraged by the Rank Skipping Memorandum as written below.
3. The new system deincentivizes players to stay long-term.
The new system ignores the fact that a lot of players come online and expect to be promoted as a reward for their efforts. When they inevitably cannot climb the ranks anymore, what would motivate those players to stay on the server? This is particularly important as it affects leadership of a faction in the long term, in the case where people who come into the server following this update and want to be High Command but can't because there are no rank slots left for them. That is clearly wasted potential.
I know the server has an emphasis on war, but it does get boring after a while especially after being sniped or bombed a hundred times over. If we were to revert back to the old system (in terms of rank slots, not the actual rank themselves), we can promote people - thus improving player retention. This time, the maximum number of people that can hold a rank can be enforced by a Memorandum.
4. There is no method to judge merit for promotions anymore.
Rank requirements and promotion cooldowns were removed (the latter being understandable). Whilst I understand that rank requirements "add paperwork" in the way that people need to log things, it is a superior method of determining who deserves a higher rank and allows people to know what their expectations are. Requirements were typically a certain number of tryouts someone needed to do (which were already logged anyway and counted automatically by the spreadsheet) so I do not understand why "removing paperwork" was a reason to remove them. I will be honest that I overlooked them sometimes when they were implemented (e.g. if they needed to do 5 tryouts but only did 3) but they did work.
The current system is open to bias (whether positive i.e. the Squad Leader wants them to do more in order to be promoted or negative i.e. an incompetent person is being promoted) and unless a CO is again, online 24/7 and constantly watching over someone amongst the 30 other people in the regiment they have to watch, there is no way current promotions are in any way fair.
Overall, this suggestion has come from what I have seen as part of 1stAL and NWO as a whole. I understand that this has come from a regimental commander of a NWO regiment so I would like to hear the perspective from NATO as well.
-------------------------------------------------------
Thus, I propose the following ('the Old System') with a little update:
- Removing Companies and Squads and remaking the rank structure to be as such below (for NATO)
High Command: General, Lieutenant General, Major General, Brigadier General,
Regimental Command: Colonel, Major
Commanding Officers: Captain, First Lieutenant, Second Lieutenant
Enlisted: Sergeant Major, Master Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Sergeant, Corporal, Specialist, Private First Class, Private - Making licenses be obtainable at Specialist instead of Private First Class (Mastery Level 5 still the same) to allow us to promote players on their first day and incentivize them to comeback for more.
- Re-allowing promotion requirements and promotion timers to be put in place again, solely determined by regimental command allowing COs to be flexible in their regiment's standards.
I would like to mention that (to my knowledge) that no regimental command was ever consulted about the Squad/Company system change and only High Command were. I have given the new system a chance, but I cannot any longer. I am sure there are benefits or other drawbacks that I haven't thought of, so please add your thoughts below.
If a member of NL is reading this, it will be nice to create a poll in #changevoting-feedback to see whether or not people like the new system alongside posting the link to this thread.
Last edited:
Upvote
0
Donator
