Squad preference is going away for a month

[Rahlzel]

Managers and Heads of Staff have been having an internal discussion for a few weeks that ended with me calling for a vote.

The problem this is trying to fix is the increased frequency of "metabuddying" which is IRL friends grouping up in order to perform actions in-game as a group without RPing knowledge of it, such as a Squad of marines ganging up on someone on a whim (perhaps after voice chat in a private Discord).

So, the ability to choose a squad as a marine is going to go away for a month. Players will instead be randomly placed in squads. The exact date this will begin is unknown, but Soon™.

I'm not going to publicly state anyone's vote unless they want to state it themselves, but I wanted to state my position on it - I'm against removing squad preference. I don't like the idea of preventing friends from playing together in a multiplayer game, and I don't know of any game in existence that disallows it. On the other hand, I understand that due to the RP nature and metagaming potential of Colonial Marines, it can't easily be handled like other games, the goal being to stop it at its source rather than punish players for it. I'd prefer other solutions but I'm empty-handed, and I'm not in-game as much as my Managers and Head Dev whom I trust the opinions of.

EDIT: See EmeraldBlood's more detailed explanation and reasoning here

[TheMaskedMan2]

Mixed feelings on this.

On one hand some of the meta-buddying is a pain in the ass and causes headaches for everyone involved. When squads fight eachother and start shit or constantly act up.
On the other hand people pairing up with people they know is good for making friends and teamwork and leads to a more enjoyable experience.

I know for one I will miss always being a Charlie, purple is the best color, but i'm willing to give it a shot for a month, curious how it'll turn out, maybe in the end it'll cause people to meet new players, diversify, and maybe promote some inter squad play a bit more?

[Lumdor]

It was nice knowing you delta brothers and sisters.

[Jeser]

Ehm. IMHO, it will increase marines ignoring their squads significantly. I mean, even at medium time in round, we already have nearly 1/3 marines sticking with those they know ratehr than their squad. I won't be surprised if I will see it happening since roundstart now.

[driecg36]

Meta buddying is something that's gonna happen regardless of squad prefs. It happened before they were added, and it'll happen after it gets removed. The thing is, metabuddying in itself isn't something inherently bad. Player's characters having relationships and friends makes for good rp and more interesting rounds than everyone on the ship being perfect strangers.

I think removing squad prefs is gonna lead to more harm than good. People want to play with their friends in squads they know- it's a big part of what makes cm fun for me and many others.

We can easily deal with metagaming on a case by case basis, as we have before, without punishing the whole of the player base.

[Lumdor]

I agree with what driecg said. Most managers rarely play, but instead deal with forum stuff.

To be honest this will just make people sticking with their friends and having groups of all four squads being made.

[Symbiosis]

Mixed feelings on this.

On one hand some of the meta-buddying is a pain in the ass and causes headaches for everyone involved. When squads fight eachother and start shit or constantly act up.
On the other hand people pairing up with people they know is good for making friends and teamwork and leads to a more enjoyable experience.

I know for one I will miss always being a Charlie, purple is the best color, but i'm willing to give it a shot for a month, curious how it'll turn out, maybe in the end it'll cause people to meet new players, diversify, and maybe promote some inter squad play a bit more?

Watching Charlie and Delta fight is like watching a new Alpha SL leave prep each round. It’s part of the fun and what makes CM “CM”, IMHO.

Be prepared for murderball.

The Managers were presented a potential problem and came up with a solution, just give it a month.

People play CM to play with their friends, it’s frankly why the private Discord use has risen to such high levels. It’s sharing stories of how shit goes down, laughing about PFC Baldo buckshotting their SL into boiler gas, or just talking about random shit after while waiting for briefing to get over with.

I think this’ll really eat at squad cohesion. With Comms you’ll rarely see much cohesion once the fighting starts.

[TheMaskedMan2]

Yes I am perfectly fine with giving it a chance. Might as well test it out for a month and see how it works.

[Lumdor]

I'm all down for doing this for a month.

Though I don't quite think heads/managers realize what this is gonna turn into just so people can play with their friends, or people they know are good at the game.

[driecg36]

I'm not down for trying this for a month.

It makes the game actively less fun only to fix, let's be frank, a non-issue which we easily handle on a case by case basis.

[Butlerblock]

Shoulda become xeno mains when you boys had the chance

[NethIafins]

Fuck it, let's make a lobby where guys can join game in the same squad if they are registered as friends

Why even have squads, let's have metabuddy 2-12 people size groups that each have its own dropship.

It will be great

[Sulaboy]

-Snip

When will we be adding friendship whitelists?

[Omicega]

This won't fix anything and is just going to give me - and the rest of moderation staff - a fucking massive pain in the arse for a month. People will simply greytide themselves into impromptu squads and it will cause more bad feeling and sentiment than ever before.

There is no feasible way to stop people from grouping up and playing with the people they like, short of making it a server rule to stick to your assigned squad - something that is borderline unenforceable and would be a colossal headache to actually put into practice.

EDIT: A week trial I could just about get alongside with. A month - no way.

[Westhybrid]

I would honestly just reverse this immediately.

You're tackling this like it's a huge problem, when in reality, it's nearly non-existent. Having Squad Preference is more of a benefit knowing you can pick a squad you're canonically tied to and roll with it. And Driecg hit it on the fucking head; the people voting on this don't play in-game very often if ever. Why are they making heavy decisions on this without a poll or any consultation of the people playing marine.

Your playerbase is happier when they're able to play with people they recognize and actually talk to. You're forcing us to play with randoms a majority of the time. We're not all here to socialize with the bald and the brave, we enjoy roleplaying with our friends. You already removed the common channel for squads, what more do you think this will actually accomplish.

I'd love to hear the fucking argument from the people that voted for this.

[WinterClould]

Guess it's time to extend my break from playing any squad roles for another month. Oh joy.

[ThesoldierLLJK]

I can see this leading towards more CO's instituting the "Gamma Squad"

Maybe instead of a month try it for a week and evaluate it?

[CaptainYankee]

Very negative feelings about this change. Part of the reason I left after my removal was Apop telling me that he was pushing for squad pref. removal. Charlie regulars are 60% of the reason I play CM. On top of that, Alpha and Bravo font color are so difficult to read that I take advil when I'm assigned to either of them, and to be honest I often cryo if I roll bravo just because it's not worth the strain on my eyes. I have a feeling that this is going to lead to a large jump in xeno victories, I've always said one of the biggest advantages marines have over xenos is cohesion.

[Slduggy]

When did fighting for your friends become a bad thing?

[Sleepy Retard]

The two people who had to deal with pre-squad preferences already put their very valid and super goodly good good opinions in.

Therefore I'll restate what they've said but better because I said it. Squad preferences change the dynamic of meta squads. Way back when, we had Banter and Sanctum. They operated off the premise that the Logistic Officers could form their squads, so they didn't get randoms and instead their full getup.

Then came random squads. I say random but it wasn't. Alpha and bravo were the good squads, they got the most PFCs and corporals, it was good times. This only brought up one issue, people who wanted to be with their friends would either get a squad transfer - not that bad, or they'd leave their squad and go fight with their friends in an impromptu fire team. That's not exactly beneficial to the game. So, every day you'd see at 12:30 on LV a medium sized group would be at table fort fighting. All mixed squad members, but with one thing in common: They were all friends or shared a friend within the group. This was a detriment to squad cohesion and sadly happened a majority of the rounds, and was ignored besides the super ballsy going straight to the hive.

And then, squad preferences were added. This brought back meta squads with a twist. No longer was it a private thing that you couldn't join, but now three squads (not alpha, it was the baldie squad that got new players) with a consistent core of players, the old meta squad you could say, with a bunch of people who either were random or grew attached to one squad. This increased cohesion and each squad started building a reputation for themselves, and if a new player learned about each one they would pick one that suited them. But I suspect that this test is for different reasons.

I suspect that this test is for two reasons. One, the pre briefing fights that have been happening consistently, with members of charlie and delta beating the fuck out of each other for fun. Reason two, with the new squad preferences private discords grow faster and are used more heavily. What do I mean by this? If a group has a private discord and they solely run, let's say bravo squad, they have a higher chance to pick up new members for their discord. They're constantly interacting with their buddies and also people they don't know since they share a squad, and because of this they'll more frequently pick up new friends from random as they'll consistently see that random in the same squad over and over again, before long said person might be added into the private discord. And the cycle continues, just faster this time as one member added means they might want another person added.

Why do I find this test incredibly dumb? Not for any of the reasons above, in fact, but for another blatant reason - we tested the new rules for not even a week in total and then we adopted them. This changes literally everything in accordance to the game, on both sides. However, this has a lesser impact over all I'd reckon. I would not mind this test in any way shape or form, though I would recommend to BMC, Rahl and the managers that they consider something along the lines of the rule testing, or shorten the length of the test. I feel like there'll be less grievances if one of these two options were adopted.

[Kerek]

I don’t really want this at all. Nowadays I only have fun on CM because of the dorks in delta. I’ve made friends in the game from the squads. I was around before the preferences and honestly it was the same thing then. People would gear up and then rambo off with people they knew as ‘battle buddies’ or whatever.

Squad cohesion now is a lot better now as people recognize eachother. Each squad has their meta assignments, and people can choose what they enjoy.

Alpha/Bravo are generally FoB
Charlie/Delta are generally scouting.

Players get to choose the gameplay they enjoy, and I don’t see anything wrong with it.

I think CM is far better with squad preference than without it.

[Nantei]

I honestly don't see squad preferences fixing people metagaming using Discord at all. They can still use out of game comms to organize, people in the regular CM voice channel do this not uncommonly I have been told. I've seen people ignore their squad assignments all the time and just hang out, it's not particularly uncommon for people to ignore squad placement. I probably would never have stuck with this server were it not for squad preferences. Charlie is the squad I have the most fun with, and if I had been forced into others, I probably wouldn't have stuck around. It's the connections with my friends that make this game fun, and the bonds I have formed, otherwise this is just another TDM server with an Aliens theme.

Yes, I can still play with my friends, but the odds that we are in the same squad will be pretty nill, and that's going to detract a lot.

[NoahKirchner]

I certainly think a test of it could lead to some positive changes, though I do like the system because it roughly allows me to pick what I'm going to do that round (Kind of). I also have good roleplay with a lot of the people who play in the squad that I normally have my pref set to because I know their characters a bit better than everyone else.

If I go alpha or bravo I'm probably gonna be on FOB duty, which is nice sometimes, charlie and delta generally get to fight more if I want to fight. That said, before squad prefs, everyone just kind of slowly shuffled towards the front with no real regard for squad orders instead of the people who didn't mind FOB duty going to the FOB duty squads and the people who wanted to fight and die quickly going to charlie and delta. In this case, since I played SL a lot back then, you lost roughly half or 3/4 of your squad every game when they just kinda floated towards the action, something which happens still but with numbers closer to 1/4 of your squad.

A month is also a fair bit of time I'd argue, a week or two I think would probably be sufficient for the results you're looking for, a month in terms of game time is pretty massive.

[simonset55]

Funny to see how, what is seemingly a bunch of delta mains, say this is a bad thing. This change will just rustle some jimmies for a month until you realize that people will still just group up with the people they know, regardless of what squad they're in.

Overall this is pretty "meh" for anyone who doesn't metabuddy up ingame. Aka. many bravos and alphas i imagine, since those squads are mostly randoms anyways.

Let people do what they want if that's how they're having fun, to me it doesn't even seem like a problem at all since i don't see the metabuddy "groups" actually breaking the rules.

[Sir Lordington]

I've often thought about the removal of squad preferences as something positive, particularly after some incidents both IC and OOC, but a fair argument may be made that squad preferences do enhance the game more than they harm it.

It's important to remember that this is a test to collect data, not necessarily something permanent and I for one am interested to see how it develops over the month.