Ghost's Suggestions & Ideas.

Fully read through this and give some feedback, whether it be in PM, Forum, IM, or Ventrilo. These are suggestions to help you guys recruit more people, in a faster time frame while also keeping it within your given expectations.

Costume
Coming into a new MMO like City of Heroes, everyone wants to create their image of a superhero. We've all sat in front of our monitor and gazed upon the character that we have spent over an hour creating. It's the superhero that we never had as a kid, not in a comic, not in a TV show, or a movie. Instead it's your own creation and image of yourself as a superhero.

Whenever you ask someone to suspend that image in their head and create something that reflects multiple people, it's kind of disappointing. I have come up with a comprimise to keep bolth halves involved without confrentation. Instead of making them create their uniform immediately, let the recruit be more creative. Encourage them to re-create themselves as a superhero, but comprimise with them. Let them know that whenever you guys group up, you require everyone be in uniform, other than that feel free to use your casual costume. If we are not in one large group, and you can't see my costume, does it really make that much of a difference? The worste that could happen is that it would strengthen their passion to advance in the game to be more involved with you guys.
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Name Requirement
Let's assume that you've made the character of your dreams. You've spent all your time shaping your hero into what you've always wanted. All you need is the right group to join forces with. You find an amazing supergroup that seems perfect for you, but you can't join because of your name.

Instead of turning away people that don't have the required name, I propose that you guys create a trial period. Allow the recruit to see why they should want to be a part of The Sixth Column. Show them that you can dominate in pvp, complete task forces in short amounts of time, and increase the overall skill of your members. Make them want to be a part of you, and represent your name. After the recruit has peaked their interest, show them the trade off. Example, "In order for you to compete with us in pvp, and join us in our task force groups, we require that you wear a tag in your name to better represent the unity in our group. We can help you on your new character and in a short amount of time, even surpass your current character. The benefits you will receive from doing so are definately worth your time."
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Being Active
From what I've personally seen, you guys are never all on at the same time. Create a schedule that works for everyone. In order to gain new members, it's essential to show that you guys are not just dicking around, and that you can get shit done. I'm not going to pretend I know a lot about CoH, but I do know public relations like a motherfucker. I run one of the largest LAN parties in texas, I write articles for the Texan Gamer on professional gaming and leagues, and I manage a semi-professional counter-strike source team. I have the experience to know what people want and how to deal with them. Chaning how things work won't make it happen, unless you guys are there as a whole to represent that.
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Again, I would really like to see some feedback on this in any form. Post up your opinions on here, send me a PM, or come chat with me in ventrilo. Keep in mind these are only suggestions, and I'm only trying to help.

Ghost, you got some really good ideas right hurr man. It's nice to see you helping out the cause dude. As for the schedule plan its a great idea. Sadly, not everyone is on the same timeframe though. I mean, I live in Texas as well, but alot of our members are scattered across the country, and if you've ever talked to Angel she lives in England. If we could get the schedule plan to work that would be fantastic, just extremely hard to put together.

Karnie wrote:

As for the schedule plan its a great idea. Sadly, not everyone is on the same timeframe though. I mean, I live in Texas as well, but alot of our members are scattered across the country, and if you've ever talked to Angel she lives in England.

Let's startup a schedule thread then, get some times and hammer out sessions where we are all on at the same time. You have to start somewhere. Our source team was spread out across the U.S. last season. We had three in California, two in Texas, one in Utah, and one in Pennsylvania. You just have to find a gap that everyone has free time.

Well are we talking weekdays or weekends? Weekends are easier for me, as my english teacher gives us way too much work to do. I could still try to manage some time into weekends though, if you need it.

I'm going to try and take this information in in a way that a leader would and not a friend.
So personally, the costume idea has always been around in my mind. When I make a new toon for the group because TwigDeath get's a little old (i.e. Flashfire) I always find it kind of weird that I had to run around in the Soldat uniform till I was twenty, and during that entire timeframe I probably only was with other columnists once. I think an even better compromise would be to let them freely make a costume (with still the size proportions) at creation; and simply require the uniform be in slot #2 upon level 20. However without it, say promotions won't be granted, they cannot attend public gatherings without it, ect. Honestly, the name and SG name upon the characters click is distinctive enough in my eyes without the uniform. So. I'll talk this through. Yeah.

I think an activity schedual is easy enough, we won't require people to be on, but a simple "Hey. Look, at this hour, this is when we got a lot of shit going down, so be here if you can."

A trial run of the Sixth is a fantastic idea, I think we've even tried it once before. But something that I think should be backburnered until we have a larger group that CAN throw together the sick-ass task forces, ect.

Yeah, I can definitely confirm what Twig said. We've had these ideas before. The scheduling would be useful, but it'll take some time to iron out. Not to mention, there's always the chance something unexpected could prevent a number of us from showing up. There are things to consider. But as it stands, we can't get the magnitude of recruits we want until we have enough people to make us seem awesome. The trick is, we don't have quite enough people for that, and getting them will be challenging. As our group builds, however, the momentum will pick up, and it'll be easier.

Ghost.exe wrote:

Instead of making them create their uniform immediately, let the recruit be more creative. Encourage them to re-create themselves as a superhero, but comprimise with them. Let them know that whenever you guys group up, you require everyone be in uniform, other than that feel free to use your casual costume. If we are not in one large group, and you can't see my costume, does it really make that much of a difference? The worste that could happen is that it would strengthen their passion to advance in the game to be more involved with you guys.

This is essentially what we do now. We require that people start with the uniform, but once they either turn in the Halloween salvage or reach level 20, they're free to have whatever costume they want. We even happily help new recruits get Halloween salvage if they're dying for a second costume.

I would argue against letting people start with a different costume, just because it is sometimes a while before people earn another costume slot, and we a) wouldn't want people to have to miss out on events because they didn't have their second slot, and b) DO want the publicity of people running around with their uniform on for at least the time until they get their next slot.

Ghost.exe wrote:

Instead of turning away people that don't have the required name, I propose that you guys create a trial period. Allow the recruit to see why they should want to be a part of The Sixth Column. Show them that you can dominate in pvp, complete task forces in short amounts of time, and increase the overall skill of your members.

We've thrown this idea around before. The concerns we had about it, we felt, outweighted the plusses. The most major concern, I think was the issue of malicious intent. We've dealt with our fair share of griefers in our time, and we can just imagine what someone might do with this opportunity. Once somebody joins a SG, they immediately have the SG name shown for everyone to see under their name. To an outsider not familiar with our organisation, they will assume that the person on the 'trial period' is a full member, and that whatever they do is reflective of our group. Griefers might join the SG and then go off and insult everyone and their mother in the name of the Sixth Column, which would then be taken as representative of our SG, which would not be good.

Ghost.exe wrote:

From what I've personally seen, you guys are never all on at the same time. Create a schedule that works for everyone. In order to gain new members, it's essential to show that you guys are not just dicking around, and that you can get shit done.

I have nothing against that. In fact, we usually get one of these posts going again every once in a while.

Ghost.exe wrote:

Again, I would really like to see some feedback on this in any form. Post up your opinions on here, send me a PM, or come chat with me in ventrilo. Keep in mind these are only suggestions, and I'm only trying to help.

No need to qualify yourself here, mate. If ever you have a suggestion, that's part of what these forums are for. Also, if you ever have a suggestion or comment or criticism you don't want to be entirely public, PM me or any other komtur and we can post it in the private Komtur section of the forums and discuss it amongst ourselves. That goes, of course, for everybody.

hurm....
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Peace's input:
Costume & Name Requirement
Costume & name requirements have always been a part of the Sixth Column, and always will be. Its what the Sixth IS. Now over the age we have largely eased our requirements (dear god we used to be strict), and they're likely to become even more eased.
I understand what your trying to say, though. What you forget is what you have to do to match these requirements. You have to make a new character, and that characters image IS the Sixth Columns image, he/she's a soldat. So I don't care if you have this badass name, just make sure Nacht is in front of it, and i don't care if you have a great costume idea, you get 5 of them.
Now where as this will turn down 90% of your recruits. The other 10% that join and stay will be dedicated, and thats what I wanted as Komtur (although I was definately hungry for a huge sg, which is why I wasted my sophmore year in Atlas ).
This is the Sixth Column, not some generic supergroup, and a much different Sixth Column at that. I've heard you stress your hatred of the uniform, and we all wore soldat black, we know it sucks, and the offizers here also know there is no way of fixing it (SRSLY AMIRIGHTYO?!?!). I like to look at it as a soldats incentive to want to become a captain =P.

What I'd suggest to those who recruit now is this: Tell them they have to show you the uni, and they need the name, itll test their dedication. But if they don't want to stay in the uniform, give 20k influence and teleport their ass to icon, itll show YOUR dedication. Just make sure they know you need it for any Sixth Column event (bt, meetings...and even sg teams(Which are the funnest one imo)).
The idea of the Sixth Column has changed, Its no longer a sg trying to control a server. Its a social group of long time gaming buds, and were simply looking to find some other cool peeps. So if they aren't always in uniform till 20, fine, but if they need it, its up to them to go remake there costume OR get to 20 reaaaaal fast, preferably the later.

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Being Active
most of the members you currently have are on at LEAST their 3rd year of playing. Dedication to the game will be questionable. My solution, a strong forums and everyone on XFIRE. Then again, this has been the one thing I've never been able to fucking get done, and its the reasons there is a new Sixth Forums every 2 years or so lol.
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Keep in mind I say this from purely a old Sixthie's perspective people, just my opinion .