To the NC outfits and members of Emerald.

I look at martial competency when identifying effective leaders. I don't care whether they're nice or popular or if they're nasty and belligerent.

I want to know people's track records in leadership and their decision making. There's big differences between leaders of outfits who have to rally people into squads and have to threaten to kick people in platoon for not following orders versus the leaders who get invited to squads and moved to leadership positions once they log on.

I want to know which outfits get the dominant outfit status the most on base captures and who gets their people into the top 15 players on the scoreboard for the fights they're in and what they were doing to get those scores.

I want to hear about how different leaders are being effective with their outfits, better if they get legitimate praise from people outside of their outfit.

You're not going to make an effective organization by just setting a code of conduct while remaining leaderless. There has to be people in charge and giving orders. Find a way to objectively vet people and make a list of names with contact information and levels of authority. Set up a clear chain of command with roles and responsibilities. Make that the objective of these meetings instead of running them like a speed dating event.

On a side note, investing time into coming up with a name for it already rubs me the wrong way because it reminds me of incompetent armchair generals trying to come up with a name for their operation instead of working out contingency plans.

Also I'm just going to throw this out there as an idea for how to run alerts after you've gotten your list of leaders. This is how I would do it with Recon Team Six if my outfit was large enough.

Assign one leader for each lattice lane from your list of competent leaders and that person will coordinate all forces in that lane over command channel. Assign another leader to command your mobile force that is used either as your air cavalry to reinforce bases under attack or provide a troop surge to bases we're attempting to capture. These leaders decide at the start of the alert how far our faction will go down each lattice lane and which territories we'll stop our advance and just focus on holding.

I am against the idea of any kind of "supreme commander" because of the limitations of situation awareness at that level.

This way we won't get double teamed by both factions because making sure the TR and VS have enough contested lanes to fight eachother is key to ensuring we're not swarmed on all fronts.

I realize that as a lowly BR 19, my opinion won't matter, but I'll put in my two cents anyway....

At the end of the day, Planetside 2, regardless of how big, complex, social, or even fun it is, it's still just a game. People play games to have fun, and I can't think of anyone who enjoys being yelled at. Sure, it's nice to win, and it's annoying to lose over and over. However, I think that we need to remember what planetside 2 is, and start having fun again.

Joining forces in order to achieve greater goals is fun for some folks. People that play ARMA go ALL OUT in ops and such. PS2 players do the same things at times with having outfits work as unit for a night.

No one should be yelling or barking orders at anyone and if they are or just being an *** on chat then ENC talks over what to do. That being either getting the person to explain their self in some forums/voip or to talking between ourselves to deiced if we need to put that person on a mute list. You can't clean up command chat without dealing with ***-holes, but it takes time with and without said ***-holes.

And no. ANY players opinion has a worth. All outfits are equal and all players can be anything from a gaming god to pure troll. BR doesn't mean **** but for how many certs you have and for all I know a low BR could be an alt for someone with 5 other BR100s just wanting to try a new server. You'd never know without them telling you. As long as the person isn't an *** then their opinion has worth can can be talked over. My BR is in the low 70s but Iv played since beta and learned a lot over my decades of gaming. Does that make my opinions have less worth than a BR100 that did nothing but grind terminal kills for months on end that never learned how to control a weapon?

What we really need is a high speed chain Gatling shotgun that we can hip-fire.

^.^

ok, I'll go now...

-- Smoov

Ok, here's my take. I've been around since beta. I've participated in many (more than I can remember!) of these inter-outfit meetings from beta until November when I quit the large outfit I was high ranking in. I have led platoons, and on occasion stepped up and given commands during alerts.; commands which sometimes listened to and sometimes not.

Observations:

1) MANY outfits will participate in the meetings. Many will even praise you for doing this. Then they will not follow through. There are two reasons for this that I see:

a) No real outfit leadership. Yep, I said it. The large outfits are generally LED by someone other than those who attend the meetings (typically outfit leaders). There are often MANY who lead at various times and in differing situations. But typically those who are all vocal during the meetings aren't those leaders.
b) Politics. Everyone THINKS that their outfit is more important than the other outfits. They think because their force is bigger, better trained, or just has a prettier website they should be "in charge". Outfit A doesn't like how Outfit B recruits. Outfit B doesn't like how Outfit C communicates. Outfit C doesn't like how Outfit A "dissed" them at some point. Outfit D is led by someone who used to be a trusted member/officer in Outfit B. Another word for it might be EGO.

2) Membership really could give a flying **** about alerts. Again, multiple reasons:

a) Many veteran NC are sick of being stomped on by VS, despite supposedly even factors. It's demoralizing.
b) You're doing well, hitting one faction hard and suddenly the third faction shows up en mass "just to farm", ruining any chance.
c) You get a good fight and suddenly you're outnumbered 3:1.....repeatedly. This typically only happens during alerts.

3) Lack of follow through, If you are leading often, and EFFECTIVELY burn out happens at an alarming rate. Try leading a platoon on a nightly basis AND keeping some kind of coalition going. One on it's own is hard, both are damn near impossible to do well.

4) Those who organize these things have failed to meet one major criteria: they have failed to earn respect among the NC. You can't simply step up and say you're going to do it. You have to earn the respect FIRST, then once people recognize leadership they will be more willing to follow.

5) Often those who try to start these things are refugees from another faction, bent on "showing the NC how it's done". Take that ******** elsewhere. We're NC. We don't need no stinkin VS telling us how to do things.

Repeat #5 a few times until it sinks in.

There is often little reason to actually bother with Alerts. The rewards are paltry compared to what you get in a halfway decent fight, furthermore the game doesn't reset the continent back to each faction having 1/3 of the target continent upon the start of the alert, and frankly, the only real objective in the game is to have fun and if i am stuck into an hour long battle defending a tech plant against a swarm of AoD or DaPP and mowing them down in droves, that is far more fun for me then going off to play redeployside.

That's just how I feel about it, personally.

By no means, in my post, am I trying to give the OP a hard time.
I commend you for your attempt to seek order in chaos.
I just felt that ChampagneDragon was spot on most of his points.
I also felt compelled to add my 2certs.
Much more could be said but ill leave it here.

FYI, "He" is a she That aside, I have spent a LOT of time leading, both outfit and pubs. There were many times I was leading two platoons at once (one outfit on TS and pubs on game chat).

I don't mean to be negative. Really. I'd LOVE to see someone pull the NC together. I just have burned out on trying. Hell, it was all I could do to keep a large outfit cohesive, and I wasn't the outfit leader (despite what many thought).

What I think needs to be done, and this is my opinion, is those who want to build an alliance need to step up and start leading public platoons. You do that and people will determine whether or not you're worth following. Enough feel like you're worth following and you'll be able to start guiding the faction though /orders. There were some of who had that ability months ago, but alas the two big ones have moved away from PS2, much as I find myself doing.