AGN: "What shape is your outfit in and are you recruiting?" - ReachCast Episode 56 CQ

[Kalee J]

Originally Posted by NewSith

This is why there are so many people insisting on creating objectives for small groups, apart from pulling a vehicle, and this is why I completely disrespect people saying "go join a bigger outfit".

I disagree with your take on small groups having same issue in PS 1, however. Mostly because 5 people compared to 399 per cont is not even close to 5 people to 1k+ on a continent. Ever wondered why it's more fun to play solo or in a small group during non-primetime?

I did not mean to imply that this issue was only one for small outfits in either game. It affects everyone. I agree wwe should have objectives for small groups to enourage that type of game play.

[Rolfski]

I assume this topic is not meant as a brochure so I'll focus on the numbers part, not the quality part.
Numbers wise, I would say my main, BRTD, is in not too shabby state for a mid-seized outfit (350 members), considering the current state of the game.

What probably saved the day for this outfit is, aside from it's long history, is that it's more of an always-on outfit. Having many members from different time zones means we are able to sustain 2+ squads (3 to 4 prime time) from early afternoon to deep after midnight, when the Americans log on. 7 days a week that is, we have no off-days vs ops days.

Another big help in sustainability is maintaining a healthy leader-pool (officers, trainers, recruiters, PL's, SL's, admins, etc.). Ours is pretty big by any outfit's standard, because we learned it the hard way: Having outfits centred around too few people is just too risky in the long run.

Of course this is all a far cry from the days of the beta/early launch, when we would typically sustain 2+ full platoons, 7 days a week.
We're still getting in enough fresh recruits though, to regularly purge out the inactives and sustain an activity rate of 80+%. Not loosing too many members to other outfits either, a few to INI Elite who wanted to play more serious but that's mostly it. We do regularly get in veterans from other EU servers, who changed to Miller.

Special ops nights and training nights have unfortunately become less frequent. This also has to do with the Alert system, which has basically replaced our serious ops. This will hopefully turn for the better with Nexus/battle islands, as we already have 2 Nexus events and trainings planned.

[OdinsPride]

What shape is The Dread Legion in?

Well, in a word? Amazing. I could not be happier, or more proud, of the outfit that we have built from the ground up.
I never dreamed during all those late night Teamspeak sessions with the other founder, Coolkid69, would turn out this well. In my time playing PS2, I saw outfit after outfit fall apart and die, and all for different reasons. It seemed impossible to create something successful, yet in my estimation we have built an outfit that will last.

Some people have different criteria for what constitutes a successful outfit.

Some go by numbers, we have about 50 right now. To some, that may seem like small potatoes. But we have 100% participation over 30 days and 90% participation over 7 days. We run ops 4 nights a week, and many of our members play 5-7 nights a week. Not many outfits can say the same.

Some people base it on stats. We have risen to FIFTH on the Connery server, and continue to gain momentum. Most of our members started with us at lvl 20-40, and we have all risen together to the lvl 60-80 range.

Some go by recruitment. I can honestly say that we are very picky with who we admit into The Dread Legion, and yet we consistently gain recruits every week. We vet our recruits very heavily, and require them to jump through many more hoops than your average outfit. This is to ensure that the guys who are in The Dread Legion want to be in OUR outfit, not just ANY outfit. We have a forum post on SOE forums (https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...mmates.144840/) that has over 2000 views, and consistently generates applications. We run our "pubbie night" once a week and are overwhelmingly complimented for our cohesion and tactics.

We have an absurdly active forum, and consistently have members step up and contribute their hard earned money to support the outfit website and other ventures.

We are active in the community, and have prioritized outfit networking from Day One. We count many quality outfits among our friends, as well as a few formidable opponents (BAID, CASH, and X have all been consummate pros during scrims). We don't judge, nor are we elitist.

We are active on Twitter.
We have a Youtube channel.
We stream on Twitch.
We go where the fights are hard, and don't back down.
We are relied on by our peers, and respected by our enemies.
And we have been invited to participate in the Community Clash.

But the highest compliment to me as an outfit leader is when I get asked by another outfit leader if they can merge with us. I can't think of a better way to judge an outfit's success.


All in four months.


I can't wait to see where we go in the next four. With the group of guys that we have assembled, the sky's the limit. Would go to war for any of them, and do so every night.

[TimoWasTaken]

I started the game around release with twelve friends (my first outfit). I've been able to occasionally tempt them back with double xp weekends and Lan Partys, but essentially everyone has quit but me.

So, I joined T42. Great bunch of guys, well organized with consistently full platoons.

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Kalee J

I agree wwe should have objectives for small groups to enourage that type of game play.

More like create the said objectives to promote staying online when the rest of your outfit is offline.

[DaMann]

My outfit, Quantum Dawn on the Waterson server, still has its core members around with many of our more dedicated players staying with the community just not playing Planetside. We are all still together just in other games until the PS2 is optimized and/or more content releases.

Quantum Dawn still has a steady recruiting presence on our server with open squads and constantly bumping recruiting threads on planetside-universe and the official forums. I also asked some of my officers to showcase our recruitment video in their signature on what forums they frequent while trying to mention our outfit as much as possible.

We also understand that MLG is probably a significant time away however it keeps us motivated and competitive. While we may not be a professional outfit that poaches we are constantly striving to be the best we can become.

So we are still advancing and gaining membership, however it is in a very marginal increase.

[bites]

Previous outfit split due to partial absenteeism and politics aka human bullshit basically :P
(Second time this has happened unfortunately)
Some stayed, core online peeps went.
Split caused what I would call a "watering down" so instead of one full glass, you had two glasses, one half empty, one half full.
But both did not quench the thirst of either group really (as predicted) and result is original group that ran up to 1.5 platoons on the weekend/ops time, is basically gone.
Split off group seems to be surviving (but we saw a lot of their members join our TS as theirs was dead/quiet etc)

Currently Freelance, deciding on an outfit :B

[Zadexin]

Since I don't think the leadership of ODPM (new ODAM) frequents this site I nominate myself to post on their behalf. All agreed? Aye!

ODAM has always had a solid presence in game. Generally 1+ platoons during prime time. We have a very good dedicated core that can field almost 4 squads just by itself with a HUGE reserve of occasional people that can fill most of a second platoon on an ops night. Our general recruiting remains open, as that is the only way to keep the numbers up.

[bpostal]

Started beta with over a platoon of battle hardened veterans. Shortly after launch we had almost three platoons for operations. Currently during prime time we have two/three squads and I don't think I've seen a full outfit platoon in months.
We're recruiting but due to player burnout amongst the leadership (to include SLs and PLs) we're short handed to properly train recruits in every facet of gameplay resulting in a shift from combined arms to primarily infantry.

[Vashyo]

My outfit is dead, lack of interest for the game killed it, it died in a few months after launch. Been playing solo past few months pretty much or with the Trident-Outfit on my alt, though now I'm not playing at all either.