Penguinpyro's guide to forming groups

[penguinpyro]

I have a guide I'm writing that's currently in development.

wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Guides:An_In_Depth_Guide_to_Forming_Groups

Can you add any criticism, suggestions, or advice for this guide?

[cptfastbreak]

I have only read part one so far, but it seems a sensible guide, and it's a nice read. Of course I don't know that much about leading or forming groups since I'm relatively noob. But two things come to mind:

First, you make some allusions to historic/existent groups that you don't really explain - for example that people don't like Resens or ZHU, or that some group fell apart due to zerging exposure. Now I don't know if you can explain such things in detail on the wiki without drawing heat and drama from the respective groups, it just made me wonder sometimes.

Second, on the zerging matter. It's probably a good thing to advise people to stay off it, but I think your view is pretty optimistic. I understand Extinction was pretty badly hurt from their public admittance of zerging, to the point of being ostracized from the zombie community and whatnot. OTOH, I have the strong suspicion that The Dead are massive zergers, and apparently I'm not alone in that. Nevertheless, they're still pretty strong and successful about it. I think if a group acts in public as if they do not condone that behavior, and vary the profile names of their zerg alts a bit, they can get live with that quite comfortably. Sure, maybe they have some zerging alt change their group tag and act as if they kicked him out, or have an account or two banned, but in reality, Kevan's banning is not really effective, and zombie groups don't have much to fear from bounty hunters. Of course the zombie anonymity also helps.

[penguinpyro]

Feb 19, 2011 21:40:49 GMT -5 cptfastbreak said:

I have only read part one so far, but it seems a sensible guide, and it's a nice read. Of course I don't know that much about leading or forming groups since I'm relatively noob. But two things come to mind:

First, you make some allusions to historic/existent groups that you don't really explain - for example that people don't like Resens or ZHU, or that some group fell apart due to zerging exposure. Now I don't know if you can explain such things in detail on the wiki without drawing heat and drama from the respective groups, it just made me wonder sometimes.

Second, on the zerging matter. It's probably a good thing to advise people to stay off it, but I think your view is pretty optimistic. I understand Extinction was pretty badly hurt from their public admittance of zerging, to the point of being ostracized from the zombie community and whatnot. OTOH, I have the strong suspicion that The Dead are massive zergers, and apparently I'm not alone in that. Nevertheless, they're still pretty strong and successful about it. I think if a group acts in public as if they do not condone that behavior, and vary the profile names of their zerg alts a bit, they can get live with that quite comfortably. Sure, maybe they have some zerging alt change their group tag and act as if they kicked him out, or have an account or two banned, but in reality, Kevan's banning is not really effective, and zombie groups don't have much to fear from bounty hunters. Of course the zombie anonymity also helps.

I'm speaking from my experience, as well as fudging the facts a bit to further discourage zerging.

And yeah, I'll remove the Resens mention because it's probably prone to drama.

[winka]

This is AWesome reading ....I'm learning a lot !

Thanks.... for an enormous amount of work!

[cptfastbreak]

Feb 19, 2011 23:22:24 GMT -5 penguinpyro said:

fudging the facts a bit to further discourage zerging.

Yeah, I get that and I appreciate it. I guess I just felt like venting a bit about The Dead.

Feb 19, 2011 23:22:24 GMT -5 penguinpyro said:

And yeah, I'll remove the Resens mention because it's probably prone to drama.

How about this: "You don't have to like ZHU or Resens, but they are a force to be reckoned with, and if you piss them off, you might regret it." It basically says the same thing but a little more neutral and with some ego stroking for them involved.

Also, I read the rest of it now, and I thought of a few other things you might add. I understand tinyurl is the traditional choice for URL shortening, but I like bit.ly actually better, as it gives you 5 more characters for great win. Could be a factor when trying to squeeze a recruitment message into a graffity.

Second, you might add cade strafing to the strategies section, especially concerning the difference between 6AP for ruining/1 AP per day for repairing and 1AP for cading below VSB/average 4AP for decading in the best case, which could go a long way towards AP draining zombies.

And finally, a thought on groupless survivors, the stats page and a quick Excel calculation tells me that there are currently 2325 players in noteworthy (i.e. stats-worthy) groups. That means less than a fourth of players active in the last day are in a group, or if you consider the stats page's overall active player count of 17207, only a very tiny fraction of players are in a group at all. I don't really know what to make of this, but it probably means that a large part of the players, for whatever reason, will never join a group.

But, as I said, a nice read and I learnt a lot. +Karma for the effort.