The banner is often used for current information, like “we’re letting the titan go” or “this aw will be easy”.
I would like to have a separate set of ground rules that players can refer to at any time, and we can expect players to adhere to. So if someone misses a couple titans we can say “You know the rules”.
Also might be nice to have a message to go along with kicking a member: “You’ve been kicked from [alliance], [alliance leader says]: You missed the titan, you were warned, good luck”
This sounds a little harsh don’t you think…? The last thing you want to do is alienate people. I agree to certain expectations should be voiced, mostly out of respect for the rest of the alliance. i.e. people that participate daily or on a regular basis vs those who come and go as they please. I don’t think there’s much to be said to those individuals, believe me, they probably get kicked out of many others… I suggest you focusing on establishing good communication with your alliance, make yourself available and approach your members with questions, how they’re doing ? Is anyone not going to be around ? etc, etc. It’s all part of being a leader. At the end of the day, remember why we play. For the fun factor. And if you can’t offer a fun social environment in which people can thrive, then why would anyone want to stick around ? Ascension items aren’t everything… Hang in there, stay positive, fun and friendly, you’ll be all the better for it…
We have a loose set of rules. If you miss 3 titans with no communication at all we’ll usually kick them unless its someone who has been there a long time then we’ll give them some leeway. We’re pretty lenient. If someone misses 2 we’ll ask in chat and if they respond and start hitting again it’s all good. Also if someone is going on vacation or something we’ll usually give a heads up so everyone knows why they might miss some titan hits.
I don’t think you should really need rules. Players know what happens during the game and players know what alliances are for. I am assuming of course.
If you feel the need to boot someone so do it.
At the end of the day this is a game. Some people play it more than others. It is your decision to say when enough is enough.
PS. I was not given a rule sheet when I joined my alliance…
I’d rather not have someone get upset if they go on vacation and don’t say anything because it was assumed that they shouldn’t do that. I’d like to say “hey, our ground rules say if you’re going to be unable to play for more than 24 hours let someone know”. That’s all. Just want everyone on the same page, everyone held to the same standard.
I really like both of these ideas. I work in a school and one of the best things you can do is provide clear and specific rules. It’s just good communication. Not having clear rules creates a nebulous arena where if someone needs to be kicked, they’re often feeling confused or hurt. Some alliances are better at communicating than others and having a few rules to fall back on helps create fairness all around.
Also, a kick message is something I always thought was a good idea. The person being kicked should be afforded the opportunity to know why.
We like players not to miss three Titans in a row without forewarning. We talk this through whenever anyone joins our alliance, and I can’t remember the last time someone was kicked for missing Titans - certainly not this year. If you seriously think that some members of your alliance don’t know what the alliance’s expectations are, then I think you need to work on communication a little bit. You don’t need a separate set of ‘ground rules’ for that - just talk to people.
And you don’t need a ‘kick message’ under any circumstances. Before you kick someone, just tell them what is going to happen and why.
With players who live all over he world in different time zones, sometimes it’s hard to get a hold of someone…especially if the reason they’re at-risk of being kicked is because they haven’t been active. A kick message could simply allow the leader to say, “You missed three titans and we haven’t heard from you. We tried to contact you about it but didn’t receive a response. Good luck in the future.” If I get kicked, even if I see it coming or someone has communicated to me before about it, I would like a reason provided with it.
I’m not sure why you’re fighting so hard against this when it could be a tool that SG provides, but not one that you have to use. If your alliance functions well without it, great! Keep it that way…and recognize that some want this ability.
I think it would be a useful facility. If it doesn’t fit with your ethos and you prefer communicating through chat with each new joiner, then it doesn’t need to be used. It’s more useful in alliances that may have higher turnovers.
Bit difficult to chat to a person who is on at different times to you and/or is not playing as regularly as you’d like. That starts becoming rather hard work. The chat is likely to produce a ‘ok I’ll do better, yada yada’ after which the performance may lift for a while, then drop off again… and then what? Another chat?
There is a point where it becomes necessary to kick (especially in the lower alliances where you are bringing in people who are still new to the game, or trying it out, or have not yet made up their minds to it, or simply stop playing, etc… i.e. have naturally higher turnover).
No harm in there being an area with the alliance’s ground rules, or ethos, or philosophy or whatever you want there. Transparency and communication is generally a good thing. I’d certainly use it… (and my alliance members seem pretty happy with the way I run things) .
I also like the idea of being able to post a reason to the person if they do need to be kicked. It’s simply polite. Trying to coordinate my time with their time to catch them when we are both on to have the chat in advance… doesn’t work for me. Again, it could be optional… if some would prefer to manage through talking to the person before the boot then that’s their prerogative.
I am not “fighting […] hard against this”. If SG were to introduce these features I would have no objection and have expressed no objection in this thread. What I have expressed, however, is a degree of bewilderment that any alliance would find this necessary or even useful.
There are 30 players in an alliance, more or less, and I assume most alliances are like ours - players are distributed across most/all time zones. So y’all talk to each other all the time, don’t you? You’re not some sort of dictatorship where the leadership issues edicts and the rest of the alliance must obey? (That’s possible, but it sounds awful and seems unlikely.)
So all you need to do is this:
“Lassie123, did you see that Bilbo987 has missed a couple of Titans? They’re not on holiday, are they?”
“Nah. I think they’re on late shift this week. I’ll check in with them when they come online after you’re asleep.”
If a player really can’t be contacted for an extended period of time then it’s because they’ve stopped logging in. And they know they need to give a ‘heads up’ if they’re going to be away for a bit, because you discuss that courtesy in the group. So a kick message has no value.
Again, the introduction of these proposed features would cause me no difficulties whatsoever. But I find it weird and diquieting to consider the unpleasant alliance dynamics that might make them useful.
I have a couple of people in my alliance that have never turned up in the chat, not even after entering… there is no way I can communicate with them if they don’t come into the chat… some people are not into communication, I guess. So an annoucement board would be a helpful addition. Great if your alliance doesn’t need it. But it doesn’t necessarily mean people run their alliance like a dictatorship if they find such an option helpful. Just sayin’…
You make a reasonable point, except what makes you think that a player would read an announcement board, if they don’t bother to read chat? I find it hard to understand how a player could be an active alliance participant if they don’t communicate with the rest of the alliance.
I believe ‘alliance life’ varies greatly between a top 100 alliance and a mid level alliance - not all players are interested in the social aspect of the game and many are not interested in alliance scores and ratings. They join an alliance, because it is part of the game and to gain loot and ascension materials. There are probably many alliances where people hardly communicate at all, just hit the titan and maybe do some fighting in the wars and then go about their own business. We have a couple of these in our alliance and I know of alliances that are made up entirely of casual players. Any messages posted in the chat are likely to ‘obscured’ by subsequent posts, so there is no guarantee that the message has been read by everyone. Given the ongoing difficulty of finding new members - yes, this is very difficult for a mid level alliance - I am not particularly keen on kicking people, as long as they are not totally inactive. While an annoucement board would not guarantee that everyone reads what is posted there, it would still be an improvement on the current situation.
I hear what you’re saying. In the environment you describe, an announcement board makes sense. I’m still not convinced about the value of a kick message, though - if players are uncommunicative then it seems hyper gracious to provide an explanation when you kick them.
Nothing wrong with being gracious, even if the recipient is socially inept.
I’m probably in that sort of category myself - I just dealt with it differently, by accepting minimal titan rewards and setting myself up in an alliance of one.
I actually would really like both features. I suggested an alliance noteboard multiple times. I would like it to pop up when you log in and there are changes made. So it could say: “we are letting this titan go”. Even my members that are active in chat, sometimes read the alliance message after they hit the titan, so even for the chatty ones it would be helpful. Also to get a hold of the less chatty members, you could just say, could so and so come for a little chat. I do that now in the alliance description sometimes, but that feels a bit awkward, because people outside the alliance can read that too, it feels like a highschool message “could @brobb come to the principals office please?”.
I have had to kick members that I couldn’t get a hold on, who were very active when they joined, but gotten less active and after some chats, just didn’t pick up again. I really would like to be able to express my appreciation to them, and a “please come back when you get back into this game”. So a kick message would be a wonderful addition.
Glad to see this fostered a productive discussion! I was starting to think I was on an island on this one. Every alliance is different; as long as the feature is optional then I don’t see the harm.