An interrogant split from a debate

[Vedder]

Hey there. Weeks ago I was on these routinary forum checks and it was EA and Castagna who gathered my attention on EA's with a topic called "What happened to VC:MP clans?" (What proves once again how much of a social environment VC:MP is, rather than a common game - one of the reasons that keeps us here).

Whatever, I gave my two cents to the post, as well as did other people - (http://extreme-addicts.com/forum/index.php?topic=1344.0) - here is the topic for reference.

On context, even though I am not daily active, it's not news that VU is a dominant clan as Doom Killer said;

VU should get rid of like 80% of its clan, just have a goddamn limit on how many members do you want to keep. People forgot what clans are for, clans are supposed to be TEAM-SIZED, not meant to have enough numbers to take over everything.

Have a strict member count policy, so that people are forced to go to other clans or make their own ones, and then watch how the tables turn in favor of VCMP.

And this was also gathered by those of forum researches I make to pass boredom; more specifically from Sevrin's last application;

I also feel this pretty strongly. On the one hand I'm happy that VU's reputation is such that renowned players wish to join our ranks. On the other, it's fucking boring when one clan comes to dominate. The point of VU in the first place was to rival the main clans of the time, DnA, KFJ, MK and ULK. I saw them, and I thought I could do better.

I'd like to ask the protagonist here (VU), if you're pleased to answer and no problem exists. And also, any people that might be interested on this:

Is Doom right? - Would "closing applications" work as a real way to help smaller clans rise as he proposes? If you say yes, why yes?
And if you say no, why not?

[Charley]

Is Doom right? - Would "closing applications" work as a real way to help smaller clans rise as he proposes? If you say yes, why yes?
And if you say no, why not?

No. Doom's argument is essentially two hypotheses, both of which can be proven false:

1) Without the option to join the dominant clan, players would form their own clans thereby leading to more diversity.
2) When the dominant clan is so big, smaller clans stand no chance.

Hypothesis 1

Back in 2007/8 most clans didn't even have application procedures, you had to be invited. And there were informal but strict limits on the number of players most clans would invite. Did this mean that there were more clans, that it was easier for smaller clans, and that competition between them was better? Nope. Absolutely not.

People were given two options:

1) try and follow the mysterious pathway to be invited into one of the elite clans
2) join a clan led by the people who couldn't get into the elite clans, which meant, usually, shitty leadership

What did many people do, faced with these options? They stopped playing VC:MP. Understandably. The number of daily players circa November/December 2008 was about 30, total. It was only once VU, ULK and XE came along that things started picking up again in the clan scene.

Hypothesis 2

We had big clans to compete against in our rise too - ULK, KFJ, DnA, DU, MK. Why did they fall (MK excluded), and we succeed? Because our leadership and management was better. Not a boast, it's just true. Survival of the fittest.

The real problem

The problem is that there are very, very, few players who have the ability and time necessary to make a successful clan. Making a successful clan is really, really hard. We spent years making this work. We fought countless battles, worked our way through countless dramas (internal and external), and constantly refined our model. Things like this don't just pop out of nowhere.

If you are a good enough leader, or a good enough team, you will succeed.

[Vedder]

Thanks for replying and giving out your perspective.

[morphine]

 who have the ability and time necessary

I would personally put primary emphasis on time, and secondary on the declining player base.

No further commentary at the moment.

[Sevrin]

Just adding my reply to the exact topic on EA forums, a bit of late.
(A little bit of off topic from this topic, but something relevant, you might find overall.)

Gathering quality players in a "new" clan nowadays, is one of the most difficult things in VC:MP. Mostly quality players won't join an old or a new clan, just because of high level of toxicity from majority of player base, and shit loads of drama(not talking about healthy debate/dramas, but talking about serious high level toxic shit, constant degrading, etc).

I, as leading RT, managed to get only a few players, I could've gotten a lot more, but I kept it limited to quality players, its not that I'm against accepting newbies or something, but I'm against adding toxic players in my clan, that's why it has less players, but all are quality ones, and non-toxic, at the maximum rate(at least for me). My main goal of starting a new clan, was to develop some high level competition and activity in VC:MP(not normal activity, the activity of wars), but it doesn't happen in few months, for sure, at least not in VC:MP. It'll take time, determination & a lot of dedication to do that. There are still good players left in VC:MP, who are trying to help the clans grow, develop serious competition in VC:MP, but it will take time, and hopefully, I don't think so that VC:MP will die just like that, ups & downs came all the time, and yet, people are here, from 5-10 years, even having modern games, and more stuff, still they give time to this beautiful small community. Some clans, communities, everyone, is putting their efforts in this community, some might be doing this thing wrong, but at least they're trying, and eventually, things will surely get better.

//Edit:

Adding a bit more, players are really afraid to join clans, because either they had a terrible experience in their past clans(or group, w/e), or they're afraid also because of watching these "toxic" dramas in VC:MP, that they had lost interest in joining any sort of clan, even there are still good ones for them to join, but they're just afraid to do it, thinking it might end up real bad. Its up to them totally, whether they want to join or not but, just life real life is all about taking necessary risks, the virtual life as well depends upon what steps you take, how big the risk you can take, and how much of it you can actually afford to have. So, just calm down, this community had ups & downs every now & then, just try to be a little more open and try to find your way into something, hopefully, it will turn out good for you, even if it didn't, it won't really hurt much, to move and start something now.

1 positive player can handle negativity of 10 negative players, if he has that will to do it.

[ripmemes]

speaking with few VCMP players and veterans alike ( that, according to them, have permanently left VCMP ), I've come to the realisation that they commonly left the platform because they either had to move on and they had important real life stuff to take care of ( 40% ) or because they couldn't stand the sometimes unfair obstinate, frustrating nature of VCMP ( 60 % ) which is due to two reasons:

1- the gameplay has become dull, blank and boring as more and more toxic players emerge, aside from laggers that unfortunately lack servers in their region to play on.

2- too much arguing, and enmities between players and admins. dramas, and sometime unfair bans as it's become a hassle to talk one's way out of them.

I, myself, don't think will play ever again after my final departure though, I'm sticking around because of some of my friends here that I can't let down.

[LumberBang^.]

speaking with few VCMP players and veterans alike ( that, according to them, have permanently left VCMP ), I've come to the realisation that they commonly left the platform because they either had to move on and they had important real life stuff to take care of ( 40% ) or because they couldn't stand the sometimes unfair obstinate, frustrating nature of VCMP ( 60 % ) which is due to two reasons:

1- the gameplay has become dull, blank and boring as more and more toxic players emerge, aside from laggers that unfortunately lack servers in their region to play on.

2- too much arguing, and enmities between players and admins. dramas, and sometime unfair bans as it's become a hassle to talk one's way out of them.

I, myself, don't think will play ever again after my final departure though, I'm sticking around because of some of my friends here that I can't let down.

ok
idiot

[Charley]

Gathering quality players in a "new" clan nowadays, is one of the most difficult things in VC:MP. Mostly quality players won't join an old or a new clan, just because of high level of toxicity from majority of player base

'Nowadays' implies that it hasn't always been this way. Actually, it has. In fact, it's been a lot worse.

There might be a bit of toxicity floating around, but I would actually say that the average IQ of VC:MP regulars has steadily increased. The nuance and intellectualism in the conversations that we have on this forum these days were completely unthinkable ten years ago.

Like I said in my 'making a clan' guide, I believe going for big or even medium fish players is a strategy that's very unlikely to pay off. It's only worked well for a tiny number of clans, and even then, it wasn't really sustainable (see KFJ, TRC, SS).

[ferrari32]

Charley has a point here.

It's true we have a lot of members. Around 100, to be exact. And I understand the notion of it being overpowered or what-not, however, have you ever asked yourself how hard can it be to manage 100 people in a virtual community?

The answer is fucking hard. But we basically created players from scratch into a machine that can keep this whole thing organized without divine intervention. We have clear ruleset, clear goals, and a clear process of dealing with both external and internal problems. No divine intervention here.

With all these things in mind, and the liberty of speech and choice we give to our members, and with full honesty calling ourselves a family, it's only logical people will feel at home here. Rather than having a clan split up into two, have hacker dramas etc etc. Internal conflicts are mostly what break up clans. That, and inactive leadership, which is a problem we also tackled almost a decade ago, by instituting a formula that allows decisions to be made without the rule of thumb of one person.

But the absolute most absurd argument about Doomkiller's hypothesy is the fact that we are all very connected, knowing each and every member of ours as though we had actually met them. Lots of strong bonds here, and I just don't see friendships being broken over VCMP as a whole. In fact, I'd even go as far to say VU is bigger than VCMP, and will prevail long after it dies.

[ripmemes]

why don't you guys expand to other games ( like mta, samp or even fucking fivem ) if that's so.

[ferrari32]

Because there's no need to as of yet. Though I see this as a logical turn of events should VCMP go dead.

We used to have an SAMP division, led by SanDisk, it died over time. It just turned out it wasn't our gig. It's actually very hard to find the right platform for a clan like this one. You'd need a constant and dedicated community, and vibrant servers. Most importantly you'd need a game that accomodates both to hardcore and casual gamers (like vcmp is). The examples you've stated below are bad in that regard.

[ripmemes]

well I guess UGMP is your next destination.

for hardcore players, you have battlefield-like clanwars, battleroyale ( literally like pubg ), hydra dogfighting (UG has more other jets than hydra), and drifting.

for casual players, you have roleplay and freeroam, both of which are way better in UGMP ( and mta should it support ugmp )

keep in mind that UGMP is backwards compatible with SAMP. both mta:sa and gta:connected should support it as well though.

Vice city atmosphere perfectly replicated in the mod ( 3, LCS, VCS's too ) thanks to skygfx and its postshader fx features ( as well as additional places from VCS, and building neons, and more draw distance, silent patch and mods support)



this first photo has the lowest graphical settings and many of skygfx features turned off as I was testing few things.

[krystianoo]

nobody:

ripmemes in any discussion:

[ripmemes]

haha nice one.

[morphine]

nobody:

ripmemes in any discussion:

beat me by a bit there





I like the screenshots though, in all fairness