Hello,
first, since this section is called "Community Introductions", let me introduce myself a bit, even though I haven’t yet applied for membership. I’m a 28 year old unix sysadmin/programmer (computer stuff) and a fan of tactical operation simulations in general. I’ve been "with" the arma franchise ever since the original (czech) release of Operation Flashpoint (when rockets flew straight) and have enjoyed quite a few multiplayer operations, although joining random servers was mostly like looking for a needle in a haystack. Since then, putting aside the Resistance expansion (fast rockets!) and arma1/arma2 demos, I haven’t played much, which is something I want to change.
This led me here, with the About Us page describing pretty much exactly what I was looking for - the part I enjoyed about OPFL was the tactical planning, execution, re-planning, coordination, combined arms, serious tension during missions (no health bar or respawns + insane AI accuracy), the "pure juice" without the bureaucracy, humiliation and ego boosting of a military academy.
Then I started reading Rules and Regulations and my expectactions received a hit. A lot of the rules seem like something one would impose on high school freshmen or general public and not a specialized intelligent community. In general, it asserts and requires things that should be expected, but not enforced.
Buying someone’s book as mandatory reading (and assuming "what you read is what you know") instead of leaving this to everyone’s best judgement.
Applications, forms, qualifications, either you want me here regardless of whether I score 70/100 and fail three times on some arbitrary test, or you don’t, in which case just say so.
I either have to play several times a month, take a leave and be forbidden to play or join the reserves and be forbidden to participate over an arbitrary limit - why the artificial restrictions? I understand that being absent may put a member out of loop (new rules, etc.), but wouldn’t a more dynamic, people-minded system work better? You seem to be dealing with tens (and potentially hundreds) of members, not tens of thousands.
Why would you prevent people from advertising this community on their youtube/vimeo/twitch accounts, forcing them to use your youtube channel?
Why the restriction on other arma2/arma3 communities? Is this community a religious cult to require such a rule? Why would you restrict one’s personal life to such extent?
Some of the disciplinary actions (even the term itself) border with misuse of power unless very carefuly chosen/reviewed - discharging from a community is fine, but having someone do menial work they have done before isn’t far from cleaning the toilets.
Somewhere along the lines, I lost the concept of "fun", but then again - a community is run by people, not by a "piece of paper". I’d personally prefer rather informal fun (like ie. https://youtu.be/0AN8cbb14yM ), but watching your youtube videos, the more formal approach works too (and can be more powerful with combined arms).
Which leads me to my final question(s) - where do you want, as a community, to be? Would you put the focus on "tactical fun" over strict military protocol, or would you put the protocol above all? Would I need to keep a stick up my … when talking in-game?
(I understand that some protocol keeps things organized, but being disciplined for not using exact wording borders with an ATC job and not something I would do in my free time.)
I don’t have problems following orders, but I would like to do so due to respect (because I want to), not fear (of being disciplined).
It’s nice to see we keep attracting members like you, who are thoroughly reading what is provided to them. What it says on About Us page holds ground, those are our goals and ideals.
We are however not perfect and haven’t gone through courses how to lead and organise a Community. Clarke and I have gathered year long experience in former community (and almost year in current) where we began helping a community run as it should, helping with recruiting, mission making, etc. We started low, and then went high because of our dedication to streamlining all procedures and protocols, in attempt to make membership in and out of the game more fun and less tedious. Following certain set of events we decided we have to create our own community in order to continue improving members’ experience. And now here we are, more fun and with bigger events than ever in our experience, and less tediousness out of the game. But we’re nowhere near finish line. We ourselves notice where we can further improve and trim down the fat, but our members help us with that as well, something which in previous community wasn’t an option.
You’ve caught us red handed on rules and regulations. We’ve had a discussion on this topic couple of weeks ago and have concluded we have to change them. Pretty much same arguments you made were raised in the discussion. In our defence, Clarke and me wanted to prevent possibility of previous community’s history repeating to us. However, we underestimated our (then future) members, majority of the rules were never uttered as there was no need for it. Members here are friendly, helpful and respectful to each other.
On following points, some I do agree with you but for others, I think you’ve drawn wrong conclusions. Or maybe it’s our fault our documentation painted that picture.
We’re not judging your knowledge only on your score on some arbitrary test. Even before you are required to pass the test, we welcome everyone to attend as many of our events as he can while he is reading the book. That way, whoever is proficient with organised (arma) gameplay will through experience pick up how we differ from his previous experiences and how to adjust if he needs to. If someone is new to the game or this kind of gameplay, then it is again very useful for him to attend events while he reads the theory, so he can gain experience and see how theory applies in practice.
The score on the test, among other means, confirms you know what you will do when someone calls out e.g. "PEEL LEFT!", and will not endanger other member’s experience. If you’ve had only some little experience with previous communities or public servers, you can easily pass the test by using your experience and common sense. We are also not forcing anyone to buy any book. We also evaluate members’ knowledge in game through his actions, through a period of time.
Restrictions in attendance are here to prevent abuse of Reserves and LoA system. This is again, something we did to prevent abuse based on previous experience. However almost a year in this community has shown us it might be completely unjustified. This topic has also been raised on last NCO meeting, and we are currently working on updating these systems altogether.
On subject of video recording, afaik we nowhere restrict our member to upload their videos only on our channel (if we do please let me know where, so we can fix the error). That’s and option we offer them, but they’re still allowed to upload videos wherever they want. Only thing we do not allow is streaming, and the reason is pretty simple. When streaming, you have no control over what viewers are going to see or hear. Someone might have a bad day, or we might have some technical difficulties. Nothing that happens on regular basis, but a random stream viewer cannot know that, and can draw wrong conclusions.
When it comes to involvement in other communities, only thing we don’t allow is for someone to be a part of a community like ours (organised tactical gameplay with scheduled events). There are more reasons for it as for everything before mentioned, but two are very imporant. If a member is playing with other community during our events, he is not playing with us on our events. I’m sure you know how greater the experience is the more players are playing on an event. Second reason is for information stealing. We give our members virtually full access to all of our documentations. It would be easy for a member of another community to apply and get accepted in our community, and then just syphon the documents and information. We’ve already had occasions where (2 afaik) communities would copy paste our publicly accessible content and then use it as theirs. They didn’t bother changing anything except the names.
So far we never had to use any disciplinary action other than one discharge for racism, discrimination and general lack of interest for being a respectful member. That again tells us we were wrong in assuming we will need any other disciplinary measure. This goes to what I was saying for our rules and regulations, we are currently in process of slimming them down.
I don’t have a habit of watching other people play the games, except occasionally one of Dslyecxi’s videos. And yes, it is kind of weird considering I’ve published two videos of my own. But it’s useful to hear independent unbiased opinion of our videos. Some video have been recorded much earlier and published only now, which I don’t like because it might give wrong impression. But other videos are very up to date. I’m proud of UAV Down, because there you can hear how when everyone knows their stuff, we are very effective. And for me that brings a lot of much fun. (Even after I dc-ed fireteam leaders were able to complete the mission exactly because they knew what they need to do and how to communicate to each other, and didn’t need me to tell them)
Conclusion is; We are young community, still developing and accepting everyone’s help and critique. We have ambition to grow, lead by two most important ideals: Respect for everyone (regardless of rank, age, nationality…) and Serious Fun. One can be a member who only attend events, but one can also lend their time to develop this community according to those two ideals. One has to show that other members are able to rely on you in a firefight, not to risk other members’ experience of serious fun.
As I wrote on top, I would be happy to see another member willing to read thoroughly and provide critique, suggest and even help the community become better, for even more members like him to join and experience the fun. I think you should apply.
I hope I clarified few things, but if you still have questions, or would just like to talk and discuss, contact me on our TS.
Regards,
Ryujin.
P.S. If I’ve omitted something an made spelling mistakes, consider I’m writing in 4:30 am. I gave my best.
I’ve read your post and Ryujin’s as well and I think you would be glad to read from someone who’s been here for just a couple of months.
I’m a 28 year old husband and soon to be father. I am also in the software industry so the chance of us working together is greater than expected.
The thing that makes this community so great is the laidback but respectful attitude we have towards each other. What Ryujin said about all the redtape and regulations being there is really to reiterate our wish on being the best, nicest community, in written form. Like any society, family, organization, city or country, we have rules to protect each other, not to scare people away.
We don’t want to be just another community, we want to stand out by our values. At the end of it all, reading the aforementioned book, applying for a spot in our community and passing the test, amongst other things, have the sole purpose of filtering out those who really want to be part of a great community from the ones who just want to shoot some bad guys without caring for anyone else.
I am proud to say that I’m very happy to be part of what I consider a family, rather than an elite group. We care for each other, we value our real lives above all else and at the end of the day we just want to have … serious fun.
We are more than welcome to talk to you, should the opportunity present itself. Talk to you soon!
That sounds perfectly fair, thanks for the clarification.
In one of my previous communities (for a different, yet still strategic game), members would simply sign up for events at their own leisure, without minimum or maximum limits, however their attendance sheet would be visible to anyone and the event organisers had the power to prevent any member from joining (ie. because said member attended only 2 events half a year ago). This allowed us fine-grained per-event control, with some accessible to anyone, others only to active members. The key point was that members wouldn’t have to fear about missing an activity limit and getting kicked out - they were only obliged to attend what they signed up for. Most of them, however, reported planned inactivity in a dedicated forum section.
This may not be applicable here, maybe a similar system failed for you in the past, just mentioning it as a possible alternative to active/LoA/Reserves.
Ah, sorry, my bad. Rule 34 (no external reference intended) puts streaming in the same sentence as video making for your channel, which confused me. May I suggest an alternate wording?
I would think that’s covered by the minimum/maximum activity clause. If a person (for whatever reasons) enjoys playing organised tactical gameplay elsewhere (ie. on Arma 2), the rule requires them to make a split - this could mean leaving this community instead of being in the Reserves.
No rule is going to prevent this kind of stealing, however something like
would inform the well-minded majority about the limitations.
Strictly technically speaking, the current rule doesn’t prevent anyone from joining and then stealing the documentation, it just requires them to do it one-community-at-a-time.
You mentioned "more reasons" and I lack your experience in this area, so perhaps having the rule in its current form is the best option after all.
If the individual-based system becomes too cumbersome, I would suggest considering "strikes" for serious offenses. "3 (?) strikes and you’re out" kind of thing, with one strike being removed each month (or number of operations) if the person received no strikes during the month. This could allow players who made serious mistakes to mend their ways while not worrying about accumulating 3 strikes over the next few years.
I would say even the older videos are a very good example of coordination/cooperation/communication.
Once again, fair enough, thank you.
Please excuse anything that might come across as dictative, I (also) work professionaly as a Quality Assurance engineer, meaning I’m trained to provide feedback when I see something that could be problematic, so feel free to take anything above with a grain of salt.
In the meantime, the existing rules are not a deal breaker for me, so as soon as I sort a few technical issues out, I’ll try applying. See you soon on the battletraining field (hopefully).
I’ve read your post and Ryujin’s as well and I think you would be glad to read from someone who’s been here for just a couple of months.
I’m a 28 year old husband and soon to be father. I am also in the software industry so the chance of us working together is greater than expected.
The thing that makes this community so great is the laidback but respectful attitude we have towards each other. What Ryujin said about all the redtape and regulations being there is really to reiterate our wish on being the best, nicest community, in written form. Like any society, family, organization, city or country, we have rules to protect each other, not to scare people away.
We don’t want to be just another community, we want to stand out by our values. At the end of it all, reading the aforementioned book, applying for a spot in our community and passing the test, amongst other things, have the sole purpose of filtering out those who really want to be part of a great community from the ones who just want to shoot some bad guys without caring for anyone else.
I am proud to say that I’m very happy to be part of what I consider a family, rather than an elite group. We care for each other, we value our real lives above all else and at the end of the day we just want to have … serious fun.
We are more than welcome to talk to you, should the opportunity present itself. Talk to you soon![/quote]
Glad to hear that, I had my share of running into "battlefield 1942" people in OPFL and it wasn’t a pleasant one.
We have been discussing many of the points you mentioned internally over the past few weeks. At some point, someone thought I registered under a fake name to post this (I won’t disclose any names :LOL: ).
We are very open to suggestions and change and we know we’re not perfect. We have the tendency to remind our members to share their thoughts and feelings after each event, which we then catalog and discuss. Usually each such report ends up in a rule or procedure change, or at least a minor tweak to our behaviors/applications.
