Originally Posted by duck

Good afternoon.

To start off, I apologize for how most of the upkeep in this thread has been handled. Some points went ignored, some we couldn't find a common ground to end up on.
I haven't been nearly the best at dealing with everything going on in this thread and decided to wait until I had something substantial to say before responding.


Nevertheless, I've scoured the thread since the post announcing the first official check and I'm now going to respond to the major points being brought up:

• "Official was seen as something you get and then keep because checks were lenient"
  
  I take issue with how you worded this complaint. I don't think there's a single instance in which people insinuated it was because of lenient activity checks that we assumed we kept official. This seems like passing the buck.
  
  I understand that some people may have settled into the worry-free clan life because, as said, clan checks used to be very lenient and seldom happened.
  While this can explain why you would be upset, it does not excuse the general non-activity seen in clans today.
  I've previously said that passing our checks is not hard. This is still what I believe, but after a while I realized I was making a mistake thinking it was just the player's fault.
  This was mostly brought on, in our minds, by previous clan staff who accommodated inactivity due to lenient activity checks.
  Becoming used to that lifestyle and then being expected to be active in, well, almost any shape and form can be harder than we imagined.
  I realize I made a mistake in my thinking and I do sincerely apologize. I'd like to move on to the next point to talk about a related issue, and possibly a way to amend the situation.
  
  Hold up there, partner. Are you insinuating that we, the players, hold blame for this at all? Last I remembered, there was significant contribution to the suggestion thread as to what could be done to boost activity, but generally we saw few of these things implemented. If y'all see activity going down, my first question is, "what's wrong with the game" rather than, "what's wrong with my players". We don't need an excuse to not play the game, but we sure as hell do need an excuse to play the game.
  
  Again, I think you're wrong in your assumption that it's because of leniency of previous activity checks that make Clans complacent, what you're really looking at is just general disinterest with the game, and you're trying to force interest by attacking clans, before you actually try incentivizing them.
  
• "We are being blackmailed to play the game without any rewards"
  
  Again, I think your conflating two separate points here. One complaint is that we are being blackmailed into activity in general. The other point is that there is no rewards system to play the game as a clan.
  
  At first, I found this comment ridiculous and stood my ground on the opinion that no matter what rewards exist or not, a reasonable standard for checks should be in place.
  This was the opinion that also made us launch the checks. After a good while of thinking about it and trying to see it from your eyes as best as I can, I realized the mistake.
  A reward scheme was in the works about a month after the checks were first announced, but we didn't prioritize it as much in that time.
  As said, we deemed the regulation of the checks as more important than the rewards.
  We still believe that this regulation has long since been needed, but I see now that it definitely should have been preceeded by, or gone hand in hand with the reward scheme.
  
  So essentially, sorrynotsorry. You recognize the mistake, but right before that you state that you're mistaken opinion is the whole reason this activity update exists, so there's not really much of an actual apology in here except to say that "I'm sorry you don't agree with what I'm doing".
  
  To progress from that, we have officially launched our Perk Shop project. I won't get into the nitty-gritty of it here, but there is a thread covering all the important info here: "Clan Perk Points and Shop"
  For questions, please use the thread and we'll answer everything to the best of our abilities. We want this project to be heavily influenced by the community, so we are open to hearing about any and all suggestions you have for the shop itself or additional perks.
  I recognize that this should have come sooner, and I apologize. I can only hope that we can use it now to make sure activity is both kept at a standard and properly rewarded.
  
  No complaints here. Good on you guys.
  
• "Clan discords should be counted towards activity"
  
  This one is also somewhat tricky. As mentioned, IRC checks used to be a thing, but were also dropped before my time as lead. With IRC, the argument could be made that there is still somewhat of an association with Toribash.
  But Discord is entirely removed from the community. It does not sit on any sort of toribash server, it's not officially recognized as a Toribash platform.
  Not only that, but monitoring activity is somewhat of a pest. For one, measuring activity with an outside bot is not exactly the most reliable system. Clan ranks in discords are random, some people don't even have a set clan rank.
  Having a bot that's in the hands of someone else in your discord server might be an unappealing idea for some. And it would most likely be very easy to manipulate.
  
  All inn all, it boils down to the fact that discord is too removed from the community for us to spend nearly as many resources on trying to count it towards activity as it might require.
  
  Fair. I can't blame you for saying that a non Toribash related site doesn't count towards activity.
  
• "SP clans are getting the short end of the stick"
  
  This is a troublesome one. On one hand, it's true. If a clan's entire activity comes from SP, there's virtually no way to accurately see that.
  I was pointed out this point before the first check ran and the best way I could measure SP activity is by seeing if clan members have been posting replays.
  Unfortunately, that is basically the best we have at this point in time. On the other hand, SP clans are also a very fringe case, as not a lot of activity in general is coming from singleplayer.
  In any case, if your clan's activity does mostly come from singleplayer, please make sure you are posting replays to the Replays board so I can take that into account.

Sure, good temporary solution. Should have a system implemented though to track activity of single player eventually.

As far as I can see, these have been the biggest points of contention with this change. I am truly sorry that I didn't take the time to respond to your concerns sooner and that I handled this poorly.
I hope my answers to your worries are sufficient, but I'm ready to hear anything you have to say. I'll do my best to learn from this situation and to better my approach in the future.

Originally Posted by sir

I'm amazed that people still bring this up. Have any of you read the OP?

Originally Posted by sir

With the way it's done now clans are saved from fiddling around with members' ranks every time some of them go inactive or return from inactivity and just allow half of clan members to be inactive no matter what. Instead, what you're asking for is to be able to explicitly list people who you think are inactive and only exclude them from the check while treating everyone else as active? How is that better? There would still be limitations on how many members you can have assigned to "inactive" rank (which would still be these 50% of total member count), and then we'd also have to only give full activity points if all other clan members are active (because you already defined which players of your clan are inactive, right? everyone else must be active in that case). What's the change then? To me it sounds like more manual (and useless) labor for clan leads with no actual difference.

Originally Posted by duck

The purpose of the activity check is to impose a standard on clans in regards to activity. As it has been for a long time and will continue to be because we honestly see it as best, a certain percentage of your clan should be active to be considered active. If you have a team of 10 developers in which 7 of them are actively pushing out work, you have an active team. But if you have a team of 60 and only 7 of them are working, your team is not active. I'd say that's pretty simple and reasonable, but feel free to disagree.

Originally Posted by duck

Clans have a chance to get 30 points for forum activity, which is more than halfway towards activity. We've caved in and let clans that are forum heavy get almost all the way to the top. Not only that, but we are now rewarding activity.

Originally Posted by Ele

On rewarding activity... Being blackmailed into playing the game is still being blackmailed into playing the game...

Originally Posted by Ele

No sir. It's almost like YOU DIDN'T READ MY SUGGESTION (you only read my username). That's not what I suggested AT ALL.

I suggested that if a small clan achieves full ingame activity points for having 6 members playing, ALL clans with 6 members (or more) playing receive full points too.

There would be no members ranks, there would be no need to edit the script. All it takes is for one clan staff member to discern the smallest clan that got full ingame points. Then it's just a matter of looking at the failing clans and if they have more members playing than the previous clan, give them full ingame points too.

Originally Posted by sir

You suggested two completely different things in your posts, I responded to one that didn't make any sense at all in hopes that it won't be ever brought up again. First time you complained about us not allowing clans to specify who to exclude from checks, second time you complained about small clans getting an advantage due to having less players.

Originally Posted by sir

Second complaint is legit, I can agree that there should be a minimum required amount of players for official clans to get full points for activity. Historically, clans system treats any clan with over 5 members as active, and with 50% members active required to get full points it means that such a clan can have only three members playing the game to pass the ingame activity check.

Originally Posted by sir

Regarding that Team A Team B thing... Honestly, you're arguing for the sake of it here (as usual?). Team A has 100% of its members active and thus is active as a whole, whereas Team B isn't. That's it and you can't argue with that.
Actually I know that you can and most probably will, but that'd make no sense.

Originally Posted by Ele

Why punish Team B for not being 'active as a whole', when they have just the same (or more) people playing than Team A?

Originally Posted by Hattersin

I don't think this is a real scenario
If you have a clan that's fully active I think you'd pass even with 6 members

Originally Posted by Lionet

I think I get what Ele is pointing out and I partially agree with it. Instead of thinking about how many active members a clan have it's better to think of how much activity it is producing.

Originally Posted by Lionet

About the small clans having full activity I still agree with sir, I can't see why a clan with 5 members having full activity would be threatening to anyone, and having a clan with 20 members in it and only 5 members or so being able to play a few games in throughout the whole month doesn't sound like an active clan.