But let's discuss this through, because I think a lack of good advice has led Prabster down the Poon Squad road of "I'm not good at the actual game so I'll make my own version of it and claim to be great at it." (Not to say Prabster isn't motivated to improve, but he seems to be buying into the argument that any arbitrary set of settings is equally valid).

I'm going to assume that, when Prabster describes an "elite" clan, he means a clan so good at delivering value to its members that it no longer has to recruit. That is, the following dichotomy:

Elite clan: more interested recruits than spots, or very little effort per potential recruit gained

Inclusive clan: more spots than interested recruits, or moderate to high effort per potential recruit gained

So the key thing is how good a clan is at delivering value. Now when we talk about value, we have to specify it in terms of things that a clan can actually be good at delivering- things it has an advantage in not simply because it chooses to do them (differentiation) but because it's also very, very good at them (excellence).

Things like chat games, for example, are going to fall under the first category- literally anyone could set them up. Having a lot of diplomatic players? The Lost Wolves and DARKLORDS show us how easy that is to develop. So you have to chase some sort of quality, something of worth, something that other people can't just easily decide to make themselves.

For clans like Apex, WG, and GG, it's their high concentration of elite players- players who, for most clans, are tough to recruit. No one can just step in and create another Apex, at least not without a very high amount of effort. For clans like {rp}, it's their ability to have a decent number of mature players who're still intersted in diplo- also a hard task- and their ability to execute worthwhile diplomacy games. This is distinct from simply being "good" at diplomacy games- instead, it's community-building, an act that takes a lot of managerial skill (which is very, very easy to catch on to if you PM the {rp} leadership).

So when I was in CORP, what we were trying to deliver was an environment where players of all kinds could come in to grow and have fun. This, like {rp}'s main quality, was about managerial skill more than player skill. The first structural issue I noticed was that CORP was very lax, a bit trollish, and generally just a mostly-inactive group that kind of dicked around. Now, these aren't really terrible qualities- being relaxed is great- but it got in the way of the clan's ability to consistently deliver value, resulting in coups (The Lone Wolf in June, Achilles de Flandres III in July) and also a general failure to do much for its members. We didn't have a system in place. On top of that, CORP was also heavily stunted toward RP while a good number of its players were also interested in strategy and growing as strategy players.

In short, the clan was being rather unfair to a good portion of its members. So yada yada yada dojos yada yada Gunjikomon yada yada I worked to fix all that to some extent. At this stage, CORP has arrived at a new set of structural issues:

1. A return to poor management. The clan is ultimately controlled by Kazuki (a semi-inactive RP player) and his current right-hand man is Andres (a leader of Clan Espanol who's very social and keeps inviting me to chat games after I asked him not to). While Ox, Prabster, and BigMeck are clearly interested in improving the clan through some serious effort, the clan's authority and the clan's management activity are concentrated in different locations. I think this is the ultimate structural issue that's going to keep CORP from developing- good clans need good core managers- and it's the reason why I left. Kazuki having a Kapy-like attitude of just dicking around and stagnating (again, not necessarily bad) is what resulted in a complete failure to establish a coherent management framework (i.e., the creation of a management framework which was ignored by Angry Panda with zero repercussions or response from Kazuki until he was forced to act). Until the people at the very, very top are serious about making things happen, they're not going to.

2. A need for better strategic players. While siirial, BigMeck, orionaux, Niklas, etc., are very good by my standards, they're average or below-average by a lot of other players' standards. CORP doesn't have a shot at helping its strategic players propel themselves high if it's not able to maintain a decent number of high-ability players. The issue is that they can't simply be recruited that easily because the clan needs to be able to provide them something of value. Well, I mean, there's Krzychu who joined DARKLORDS like 30 times, but not everyone's Krzychu. In any case, development of the clan's internal membership needs to occur side-by-side with recruitment of new players whose skill levels are just above the clan's peak.

3. A reluctance to trim bad players. When I say bad players, I don't mean people who aren't that good at 1v1's, etc.- I'm talking about trolls, inactives, or other players who just aren't motivated to actually grow in any way and instead just like to jerk around. The chat Platinum linked is a good case in point. I think this stems from the first issue- Andres and Kazuki aren't serious enough to trim out the bad players. The clan seems to be returning to an Angry Panda era of recruiting just about anyone instead of continuing on the path that BigMeck and OxTheArtist set it on- scouting out high-quality players, actually playing with them, and recruiting them.

4. A lack of growth in internal activity. You always need to be doing more as a clan than you were a week ago. I don't think CORP is currently functioning at the capacity it could be functioning at in this arena.

In any case, just focus on delivering more value- of some specific sort (maybe y'all are still sticking with creating a fun, member-driven growth environment)- and recognizing when things get in the way. Don't hesitate to eliminate them, and don't make excuses. You need to be driven.

Edited 8/30/2015 07:05:19

Before I finish reading this knyte, I'd just like to add that Tjoex is seriously stepping up and just proposed an idea that reforms the whole dojo system, in a way that we can efficiently get the best out of each and every player, and maybe start a dojo league.

Yes, I an trying to reform the clan in a structural way, in which the clan is divided into two parts. one based on strategy, one based on roleplay and diplomacies. within these smaller segments of the clan we have even smaller segments. these will be based on training and competition. If we want to improve our clan we have to keep the groups small where people are really active, where people want to learn. the daimyo is the head of one of the 2 dojo's and under the daimyo's rule there will be (lets call them ninja's) trainers. each trainer will have a group of around 4 students. I hope that in this way, we can create more competition in the clan, and improve players skills more effectively. We still have a whole lot of problems we have to solve, but I hope this is the first step into improving the clan.

That's a pretty cool idea. Good luck with that! Glad that the GC is finally able to implement changes again.