Direction For Helping To Solve The Clan And Dojo Issues

[Enot83]

After the live stream today I thought I'd post some of my thoughts in regards to the Dojo and clan size issues, here are some key ideas, thoughts or suggestions:

 

[1] Some people want larger clans.  Having a huge clan isn't wrong, but is there any requirement currently to do so other than spamming chat or picking up anyone and everyone you can with no regard to the impact to the clan as a whole.  What importance does this put on clans really?

 

So I suggest rather than what it sounded like as a simple restriction to clan sizes, that there be a way to expand the allowable clan size, and to be done at an increasing rate.  This means as an initial size of X many small clans would not be concerned with this aspect and devote resources/time to developing the standard Dojo rooms.  A larger clan that may already be at the cap would have the option to either initially focus similar to small clans, or devote an appropriate number of resources to expand their capacity, this may be the main focus of the clan, as its desire may be that in the long run with more members new clan content would be much more quickly obtainable. 

 

A system like this makes filling spots to make use of your expanded cap something desirable while at the same time, making it so simply filling up is not the only goal as you're still wanting active members.  The amount of expansions allowable could be expanded and a system like this is far more flexible.  The other benefit is that there could be teired categories for clans with various member expansions and competition in the events like the Moa one done previously.

 

Basically the intent is to make it so that expanding your clan becomes a choice that comes with the benefits of more members for resource acquisition, but may also have some drawbacks like delayed research as you are spending time to research expansions.  It also adds this member capacity as a quality to the clan itself, which if desired could allow for other aspects of categorization that can not be dodged for clan jumping.  For example not that it should but if larger clans did end up having to spend more since their facilities house more Tenno, even if members tried to jump out of clan to shrink its size, since the expansion is part of the clan regardless of current membership, costs would stay static.  There could be for clans that do have numerous members leave to not burden them, the ability to collapse the size of the clan, but again there is a cost to add additional slots later and there could be time frames in which nothing can be researched while collapsing the size etc.  This brings us back to making your clan larger becomes a choice with benefits and potential problems, so it is in your best interest to keep the clan alive and active, currently once you're done building if people leave, its of little to no consequence to the clan, only to the individual.

 

[2] How resources are acquired.  Taxation, donation whatever label you'd enjoy putting on it.  Rather than, joining with a bucket of resources to dump into a clan, it could be through clan taxation, or through the individuals choice of donations(which is better is less the debate here).  This means you wouldn't be able to dump your already earned materials into the clan, when you join a clan you must actively participate and play to gain materials while in clan, and a portion at the end of missions, as they are picked up, whichever system works best for tracking would go toward the Dojo into a pool.  That pool could then be spent on various rooms in the Dojo. 

 

It could even be that in the case of taxation the leader has set a tax value for members, which could be varied based on rank, and that those materials went to a specific project, left overs went into the pool.  Alternatively by the individuals choice they could adjust how much they are donating from materials found toward a particular project or into the Dojo's pool or resource silos.

 

This puts a value on the time you spend in clan with fellow members, it also could be tracked so leadership could see who is donating what/how much to see which members are heavier contributers for internal rewards or accolades.  In this you're balancing your resources gained for what you want as your personal stock for construction and what you are donating to the clan, in addition had something like this been in place, some of the account reset issues may have been avoided.

 

This places a great value on existing (not just now but in the future) or established clans since starting a clan is something that would be more of and undertaking for members.  With current resource requirements something like this may not work as well, and with what we saw with larger clans there could be some issue as well.  However, in some cases this also makes simply joining a clan to get the benefits without contribution something that could be stopped if desired with some kind of taxation system.

 

Again however, as new content is released would could see a similar scenario in which larger clans have near immediate access due to prior planning and resources spent.  I do not believe it is a perfect system but perhaps another addition that makes it better.

 

[3] Clan scaling, but not by increased resources, instead we borrow the idea of upkeep, that as a clan becomes larger, donation of resources have a percentage of loss as part of the upkeep for so many members, this would again likely require some kind of snapshot system to looked at the peak members in a given time and set the upkeep to that value.  This again is easily adjustable for balancing where it could even be a system that only adjusted every 100 members or as few as every additional member.

 

It could be examined to normalize so that as clans got incredibly large unless they had very active members they would actually be spending more on their upkeep than the actual upgrades.  More middle of the road is could act as method to slow things down on a exponential level, meaning that it was effective to be large but at a certain point, while you still gained members the necessity became less about resources and just simply about having more people.  On the other hand it could be a rather light upkeep that didn't impede large clans simply for being large, but gave an adjustable means by which DE could control access to content as they intend it but not necessarily making large clans invalid. 

 

 

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These are just some of my thoughts regarding the subject, I don't think these are the answers that will solve all problems, I don't think they all need to be implemented, perhaps pieces from each are better, or a combination... one even, or none.

 

I think however, this would bring a better dynamic to the clans and add some weight behind the decision to be a large clan.  I also believe this pushes that large clans make their own sacrifices to be large and should more appropriately enjoy the fruits of that labor. 

 

I think large clans should be more than just how many invites were thrown out.  I think the rewards for such should appropriatly reflect the effort put in for being large.  Currently I don't believe this is the case, the allure is there, but as DE_Steve indicated large clans progressed for more quickly than anticipated, because the system as it is now is too simple and easy to gain all the benefits at no cost.  When I say no cost, the cost for a large clan is no different from that of a small clan except for who decides to spam more for invites, and resources don't have to be the only answer, they can be one or a part of it, but they don't have to be.

Edited May 29, 2013 by Enot83

[Enot83]

Since this is becoming more relevant with recent posts... see if there are now additional thoughts regarding what I posted.