New players pls: Joining the big clans is bad for you

Couldn't agree more. 11 people in a football team, thousands and millions of fans? There's also a sub bench and reserves who do not play for many games but will get chosen eventually. Icy, I rarely come on the forums but I had to in regards to replying to your unfortunate disease of being narrow minded and opinionated. I feel for you I really do.

This thread is getting a bit heated...

If we actually look at the argument put forward in the OP- I don't think it's a bad idea to be honest.

There is a point where one team becoming bigger is pointless (as so many players can never represent the clan in an event, and to be honest I think that is the most fun part of it). I'm not sure representing a clan in *all* events is necessary, but it's nice to have the opportunity to do so even if you aren't number 1.

We have been trying to do that during clan wars- you'll notice in each fixture we fielded a different team (this was based on requests of who *wanted* to play and who was available). I think we're probably at a good size as although we have quite a few members, actual *active members* available for these events is in the region of 10 at any given time. The bigger clans do need new recruits as invariably many members join then move on to other games after a while, however we need to be careful that it doesn't become a case of 'everyone join x' because everyone else is in.

I for one think we should encourage new groups to form, and other older inactive groups (e.g. Nova, Ballistic Logistics etc) to try recruiting again. I don't want Promethean to become the '1 clan' any more than I think it was good for the community that Realm started off with such a disproportionate number of players.

What I think would be a helpful discussion moving forward:

1: Why haven't more clans formed?

2: What support should we (the established community as a whole) be offering to help new groups get started?

3: What events could groups like @exodusesports be offering to encourage the formation of new competitive groups, and are there any things that could be done to give newer teams a chance in these events considering the skill level of the established groups (as loosing everything without a chance can't be fun).

Also remember: While we obviously love tournaments, there aren't enough of us to do everything. We will be happy to keep doing what we do even if we don't have a monopoly on tournaments. We also work with people that want to organize their own events, so just because exodus doesn't do something shouldn't stop it from happening.

It's difficult starting a new clan when there are already some well established ones.

If someone comes onto the recruitment thread and sees 2 clans, one with 30 members and one that's only a week old that has 4 they'll go for the one with 30 members. It's fair enough: more players means more games, more chances for people you like and more players at your skill level. Also, a lot of gaming clans do die within a few weeks or months: it almost happened to Promethean, 4 or 5 of us were keeping things going for a couple of months in early beta.

I don't really have any answers, I just don't think it's unsurprising there are so few clans out there. And in terms of helping the situation, it's not exactly like I can turn away people who want to join Promethean by telling them to go join a new clan so we'll have more opponents

Beyond wishing the new clans good luck I don't really know how I can help...

When I was looking for a clan I didn't give a **** about balance of clans or how many there were. I just joined one randomly and said I wanted to get rekt until I got better. Then BattleBear whooped my *** until I could play decently. Now I'm happy.

I know there's no easy answer to all of this.

@cptconundrum I'll have to try and run another tourney or 2 (I did Weakest link ages ago). I think *team* events are critical for the formation of clans so more like that would be good.

One thing that does occur to me (and echoes another thread) is that we need a way of letting new players *know* about these events. I think had there been some wider publicity there could have been so many more teams in LOC however the people who see it here on the forum is quite small.

As for formation of new groups, one option is for experienced 'pro' players to split off and start forming rival groups e.g. @reptarking forming ALX. I think having a well established name start a new group does lend it some credibility perhaps?

The only reason why this would need to happen is because PA has a small community. Look at CSGo, they have balanced teams because they have enough players to make them balanced.

i don´t mind there being larger clans/guilds/teams
but seriously ... the more the merrier ... because more grudgeteamgames to watch

True, though I would have expected new teams to start forming given the large influx of new players recently... Perhaps there are more than we know of, are there a load of Steam based clans for example?

Indeed. We do our best getting posts out on Reddit, Steam (forum and PA Tournaments group), Facebook, Google+, Twitter, our site, and this forum. Even with all those posts, it seems like we still end up with viewers discovering competitive PA for the first time through Twitch. Uber can help by adding a tournament calendar to the game, but I think until then the best any of us can do is really just stream more events.

If people are discovering tournaments through Twitch, let's put more events on Twitch!

But these are called VIEWERS not PLAYERS. If those people want to play, they are making a mistake by joining your clan.

Well, I guess this is just how a non-thought out clan would work.


I said it. Realm isn't really thought out.
I look at Realm as the North Korea of clans- My buddy @shadowlorda1 played a 5v5 against @ZaphodX and the realm players on his team were taking his commander and units. He told them to stop, and they said, "NO, we can use it better than you can." Realm, I get the impression, is very controlling. They will spoon feed and force you to behave in a certain way. That's why my buddy and I started up our own, so we could teach new players. We could give them advice, and if they choose not to follow it, they would learn the consequences for themselves. So I find players in the ranked, ones that appear to have talent yet could use better strategy, and we teach. Sup. Message me to join SC.

There are definitely some groups/clans out there that aren't seen on the forums. I've seen tags of other groups quite a few times in game. I've never seen any other clans take part in a tournament though: in game advertising for tourneys would definitely help this I think.

Also, linking the clan forum to new players is also a mistake, because the clan forum is dominated by the huge threads of the big clans. It is only natural that they would flock to them then. That's why I would ask that, after this thread has run its course, that it be moved to the clan forum, and stickied, with a list of smaller clans edited in the OP, and links to their respective threads in the clan forum.

Also, sorry for double post, but that's complete rubbish. A few annoying control freaks in a clan doesn't make it the 'north korea' of clans, and personally I've had nothing but pleasant experiences playing with or against the realm (it's the first and only time you'll hear me say that so cherish it realm scrubs )

Except for zaphod's legendary rage of course.


That's still scary.

Basically, the fastest way to promote new clans and smaller clans would be for the big clans to CLOSE registration.

I know no one's going to do that, but I had to say it.

You need a clan tag / forum banner then

Also in defence of the realm guys, I've played with @cwarner7264 and @wpmarshall and a few others- all really nice blokes and not that overbearing. I think they may have a few 'controlling' players but I don't think it's a clan policy.

I mean there is one (who shall remain nameless) Promethean player who has a very bad habit of trying to do *everyone's* micro in team games... Players are people at the end of the day (so not necessarily perfect all the time)

Why don't you go into our teamspeak sometime and see if that's truly the case instead of spouting nonsense based off of a ZaphodX game of all things. I haven't seen Zaphod in our teamspeak in months.

Well @cwarner7264 did stop recruiting a while back for this reason. At what point is this reasonable though?

Also is closing recruitment really the best option, or maybe the more established clans should make the entry requirement a little less 'easy'? I remember joining my first clan for TA, I was required to play under a sub group 'trainee' tag for a couple of months and was only permitted full membership upon beating an experienced player 1 v 1.

Why does clan membership necessarily imply active participation in tournaments? Clans can be a place for people who like certain games to meet. Competing doesn't have to be everything a clan does.