Why do you think wesnoth clans/groups never took off?

[Dveman115]

Is it because there's a lack of a team ladder for them to play on? I play wesnoth regularly with my friends, and we usually play on a team against the npcs (and we almost always win). But why don't you think there are more groups of people out there scheduling matches against other people? Personally, I think it would be a great game to have a persistent team in, as certain races complement each other well. Thoughts?

[Darkmage]

I always liked to create some kind of clan but never finished it, i mean, if you plan everything it's completely possible and can be a great experience but if you let it to the next day...

Anyway there is already the N3T clan(i think it stills alive) of gamers who hate 3 sides battles(if i'm well informed).

Anyway, if there were some clans, how would they work? all players of rebels faction, or drakes, or players of certain maps, or eras, or whatever. Or just group of gamers no matter how do they play.

I still thinking it would be a great idea, but as many times this should be a work for the community, if some liked the idea, a the fundator of the clan to create the clan's website and obiously it would be out of the hands of any dev or forum mod...

[Caphriel]

Clans would allow for more organized team play, possibly a clan ladder, and they'd make it easier to get together a group for larger games. Additionally, there are advantages to playing with the same teammates a lot. A clan also provides a group to practice with, if you want. You could have an all-Orc clan, but most likely not.

The reason Wesnoth clans haven't gone anywhere is probably because they're a lot of work. Before starting a clan, you have to decide what your goals for it are. To make finding people to play with easier? To gather good players? To create a shared identity? Then you've got to actually create it. This means advertising, creating a webpage, and recruiting. Advertising is work, and can get people annoyed with you, if you're too aggressive (spamming "JOIN MY CLAN" in the server is a Bad Thing.) A good website with a forum is necessary. It doesn't have to be much, just a roster, a purpose statement, and a place for people to talk to you (and a private section for your members to talk to each other), but you need to create it. Recruiting involves more decisions, but is related to your goal. If you're trying to get a friendly clan together, are you okay with people who suck at the game? If you want a serious competitive clan, are you willing to have people that don't get along with each other, and the trouble that entails?

Once you've got your clan up and running with a few members, the real work starts. People will leave, so you can never really stop recruiting. Now, unless you're a social clan with no goals other than a shared identity, your members are going to want clan activities. As the leader, you will be expected to organize everything. This includes in-clan practice matches, matches against other clans, involvement in tournaments, and every other event. You can try to delegate, but if you have a good person to delegate to, you're lucky. But watch out for jealousy over the perceived favoritism!

Because most clans are interested in inter-clan competition, most clans can't exist in a vacuum. This means some inter-clan communication is necessary. You must be on speaking terms with other clan leader. You'll have to handle scheduling problems and arrange a time when the two clans can meet. As the clan community grows, some extra-clan organizational body may be needed. This probably means another website and forum, and if you're the founder of one of the early clans that still exists, expect people to look to you for guidance.

So basically, it's because getting a clan up and running is a ton of work, and requires an interested and active community. I'd personally love to see some practice clans start up. They're the easiest kind to start, because they can exist in a vacuum, and they don't take as much work to run.

[palloco]

Clans are generally made for bragging rights or to be able to play in high level competitions. Since the average age of Wesnoth players is higher than in other online games few people would try to create clans for the first reason. The time required for playing decent 2vs2 games is very high, leading to impractical problems in scheduling matches. It is much easier and funny to check which players are in lobby and ask the ones you know for a match.

[Strom]

Because there is no point in creating such a clan? Existence of such groups would make any sense only for purpose of clan matches. As fas as i know Wesnoth community does not like competitive gaming(and clan matches are some kind of it) and because Wesnoth lacks any support towards such activity it is just pointless to create a clan. If you want to play a team game you can just ask a couple of friends to play with you.

[Darkmage]

Well at first the problem of scheduling can be solved with some bosses and assistants, and inside-clan competitions may be announced with time, 2 to 4 weeks maybe, as well as outside-clan competitions, bearing in mind that a nice competition may long a week, and a clan i think to be fairly managed must not have over 20-25 members.

[Caphriel]

If you want to play a team game you can just ask a couple of friends to play with you.

In one sense a clan is a formalization of the group of friends you ask to play with you when you want a team game.

The Wesnoth community does to some extent like competitive gaming, as evidenced by the Wesnoth Ladder. And there are other purposes for creating a clan, other than bragging rights and high level competitive gaming, such as having people who you can rely on to help you test out new ideas, and the whole shared-identity thing.

Darkmage, where are we going to get these bosses and assistants? You can't force someone to play Wesnoth, anyway. It's not like they're getting paid for it. I think that although internal management would be more difficult, scheduling inter-clan events would be easier the more players you have in your clan, because if you have more people, it is more likely that someone will be available at any given time.

I'm not arguing that we should all go try to start clans, even though I think it sounds like it. Clans are a symptom of a large, active gaming community more than they are a cause of it. Therefore, I believe that the existence of clans in Wesnoth would be a good sign for its future

[Strom]

In one sense a clan is a formalization of the group of friends you ask to play with you when you want a team game.

Sure but there is no point in creating clan just to play team games with friends.

The Wesnoth community does to some extent like competitive gaming, as evidenced by the Wesnoth Ladder.

Well 104 ranked players with 1857 confirmed(and those who never registered) shows that competitive gaming isn't very popular.

And there are other purposes for creating a clan, other than bragging rights and high level competitive gaming, such as having people who you can rely on to help you test out new ideas, and the whole shared-identity thing.

Again there is no need to create a clan to ask someone to help you test some new strategy.

In strategy games most of clans exist to compete with each other. Of course there is also socializing aspect and all but main purpose is competitive gaming.

[Velensk]

You can play compeditivly all you want, however I don't see why a clan would help you do that. I like to play compeditivly but I don't realy like ladders or clans.

[Sangel]

I suspect that the reason clans have never taken off in Wesnoth is that the majority of Wesnoth players are not interested in clans. Two factors that may be driving this:

1) Casual bent of the player base. The Wesnoth player base includes a larger-than-normal number of casual gamers. Because the game is free, and relatively simple, pretty much anyone can jump in and start having fun. Because of this, you see a lot of players drifting in and out. Clans, on the other hand, require a gamer who's reasonably dedicated to the game the clan is formed around.

2) Demographics of the player base. Clans are generally most beloved of teens. Perhaps due to its its casual-friendliness. Wesnoth has an unusually broad player demographic. Most of the top players have been involved in Wesnoth for years, and are no longer in the clan-forming kind of mindset.

And finally,

3) Lack of critical mass. Without coded support for ladders, labels, communication tools, etc, there's not a whole lot for a clan to do. Certainly unofficial clan v. clan matches could be held, but that would require clans to exist in the first place.

[Caphriel]

I'm not really sure why we're arguing about this, Strom (or even what we're arguing about, exactly), but since I disagree with you on one point that I feel is worth continuing to discuss, I'll proceed

Well 104 ranked players with 1857 confirmed(and those who never registered) shows that competitive gaming isn't very popular.

There are less than 1000 seriously active members of the forum, I believe (estimated by post counts and join dates.) About 10% of the size of the active community is not huge, but it's not bad. I obviously have no way to know how many people play Wesnoth but aren't forum members, or are inactive forum members but still play. For comparison, there are about 22,000 users playing StarCraft on battle.net at this moment, and about 1800 playing on the ICCUP ladder server. That's 8%. I think it's safe to make an argument that serious competitive play is reasonably popular in Wesnoth. On the other hand, it seems the development community is not really behind serious competition. based on some comments on the ladder website.

I personally would feel awkward asking the things I ask of my clans in other games of random strangers or casual acquaintances. This goes from testing strategies, to teammates for a team game. I'm more interested in clans for the social aspect than the competitive aspect, though

[ElvenKing]

I suspect that the reason clans have never taken off in Wesnoth is that the majority of Wesnoth players are not interested in clans. Two factors that may be driving this:

1) Casual bent of the player base. The Wesnoth player base includes a larger-than-normal number of casual gamers. Because the game is free, and relatively simple, pretty much anyone can jump in and start having fun. Because of this, you see a lot of players drifting in and out. Clans, on the other hand, require a gamer who's reasonably dedicated to the game the clan is formed around.

2) Demographics of the player base. Clans are generally most beloved of teens. Perhaps due to its its casual-friendliness. Wesnoth has an unusually broad player demographic. Most of the top players have been involved in Wesnoth for years, and are no longer in the clan-forming kind of mindset.

And finally,

3) Lack of critical mass. Without coded support for ladders, labels, communication tools, etc, there's not a whole lot for a clan to do. Certainly unofficial clan v. clan matches could be held, but that would require clans to exist in the first place.

Yes, a very accurate analysis. There simply aren't enough people interested. I sure there are a few good, dedicated players around that would enjoy clans; but they are so small in number that you could probably count them on two hands. Of course I think there would be a considerable number of immature players who would love clans; but the simple fact is most good, dedicated players would not be interested in playing or socialising with them in a clan environment.

I personally would feel awkward asking the things I ask of my clans in other games of random strangers or casual acquaintances. This goes from testing strategies, to teammates for a team game. I'm more interested in clans for the social aspect than the competitive aspect, though

See, I don't really understand this line of thought. What social aspects do clans provide that are unavailable on Wesnoth currently?

[Caphriel]

Currently there's not much between "talking to yourself" and "talking to everyone." It's the difference between having a couple friends and a lot of acquaintances. Like I said earlier, a clan can be a formalization of a group of friends. This would be a clan in the more traditional sense of the word, something of a fraternity rather than a competitive gaming organization. So, some specific things for the members, a private forum, and IRC channel.

For instance, one clan I am a member of in another game is entirely inactive. We do no organized playing, or organized anything except inviting new people. To join, a nominee/applicant has to be approved by all the current members. So in part, it's a public declaration of "Hey! We're all friends here!" and in part it's like a small private club that non-members don't really care about, because all the members are strangers to them.

If that's not helpful, I'll try explaining it again in the morning when I'm more lucid

Sangel, do you have more information about the Wesnoth player demographics, like a forum thread where people posted their demographic information or something? I'm not questioning you; I'm just curious about the subject.

[Noy]

I'm not really sure why we're arguing about this, Strom (or even what we're arguing about, exactly), but since I disagree with you on one point that I feel is worth continuing to discuss, I'll proceed

Well 104 ranked players with 1857 confirmed(and those who never registered) shows that competitive gaming isn't very popular.

There are less than 1000 seriously active members of the forum, I believe (estimated by post counts and join dates.) About 10% of the size of the active community is not huge, but it's not bad. I obviously have no way to know how many people play Wesnoth but aren't forum members, or are inactive forum members but still play. For comparison, there are about 22,000 users playing StarCraft on battle.net at this moment, and about 1800 playing on the ICCUP ladder server. That's 8%. I think it's safe to make an argument that serious competitive play is reasonably popular in Wesnoth. On the other hand, it seems the development community is not really behind serious competition. based on some comments on the ladder website.

This statement underlies how little you understand of the situation. I think any long term player on the ladder would probably disagree with the comment that its about "serious competitive play." Alot of the really skilled players don't even play on the ladder anymore and many who are in its top ten take it half heartedly. It was serious at one point in time, when it was a three way race between Becephalaus, Gallifax and Leocrotta (I think) at the top when the ladder was first created. However its not been like that for awhile.

Instead many of them would argue that the ladder is best for finding other players who don't leave or act antisocially and show a minimum level of competence. Being on the ladder isn't about cutthroat competition like you would suggest, but a system to ensure a basic quality of opponents. If anything it actually disproves the point you're trying to make, as people on the ladder wouldn't take well to insular opponents who celebrate their victories vocally and/or show off how good their clan is.

Sangel probably hit the nail most closely on the head with his post, partly with the age comment. This game isn't really for teenage kids. I would submit that very few players under the age of twenty have the desire or skills to play the game at a high level. It takes a lot of patience both in game and in practice to get good, and kids under 20 often don't have that. Clans that have started on wesnoth typically burn out within a month, with their players never to be seen again. Moreover I think the nature of the server discourages people from acting in an immature fashion. Most of the really skilled players probably abide by a general code of conduct and tend to avoid people who act immaturely, like the ladder. That doesn't bode well for clans as they probably wouldn't get much playing time against top tier players anyway.

[ElvenKing]

Currently there's not much between "talking to yourself" and "talking to everyone." It's the difference between having a couple friends and a lot of acquaintances. Like I said earlier, a clan can be a formalization of a group of friends. This would be a clan in the more traditional sense of the word, something of a fraternity rather than a competitive gaming organization. So, some specific things for the members, a private forum, and IRC channel.

For instance, one clan I am a member of in another game is entirely inactive. We do no organized playing, or organized anything except inviting new people. To join, a nominee/applicant has to be approved by all the current members. So in part, it's a public declaration of "Hey! We're all friends here!" and in part it's like a small private club that non-members don't really care about, because all the members are strangers to them.

If that's not helpful, I'll try explaining it again in the morning when I'm more lucid

I think I understand what you mean. To be honest I can't really see the point of having private social clubs exclusive only to it's members. I mean to me they just seem a way to divide the community or perhaps more accurately organise, and in some cases enhance, division within a community. The openness of the Wesnoth community(and the rest of it in general) has always been one of my favourite things about the game. I can understand clans from a competitive point of view. They are just teams. I would love to be part of a clan and train to be the best clan at playing the game.

But the social side of a clan as you've described just seems to be a way to exclude people. I can understand and would want privacy for discussing clan strategy for an upcoming match; but beyond that I don't see much point. Why would you want to exclude nice, polite, intelligent people from your general conversations? I can't see any sense in it(sure you might want to have private conversations sometimes; but that's what whisper is for).

Sangel, do you have more information about the Wesnoth player demographics, like a forum thread where people posted their demographic information or something? I'm not questioning you; I'm just curious about the subject.

There aren't many demographic statistics that I am aware of; I think there is an age thread somewhere, but that's about it(and that doesn't have every player on it). Most information on demographics that you would hear comes from what people have seen on the server.