Recent events have highlighted a need to evaluate the supporting structures around the FU rules and enforcement.
More specifically, how members can raise concerns to Officers and improving clarity around rule breaking.
Jaeger events are still finding their feet within FU, we are generally agreed that these are a good thing but the organisers are looking for more feedback on what the community actually wants to get out of the sessions and if the current approach is working.
There were concerns about organising scrims against stacked teams that wouldn't be fun to join in and could harm engagement.
There were concerns raised that the veteran role was given as a popularity check from the officers.
We discussed what criteria are required to be eligible for veteran status (documented in Community Structure) and how those criteria of being vocal, communicative and embodying of the FU Ethos may naturally tend to surface in people that Officers 'like'. It isn't a requirement to be friends with Officers to become a veteran, but by being the sort of person eligible to be a veteran usually means you're making friends within FU!
A digression of this topic lead us to discuss how the most active channels within FU Discord are the officer channels. This could be stiffling more community engagement and Officers should endeavour to move most discussions into public channels rather than keep them behind closed-doors. This does not apply to Officer only conversations.
Recent news surrounding PlanetSide 2's future has created a bit of a stir amongst planetmens, this has lead some members to consider what happens if/when PlanetSide as we know it ceases to exist.
We discussed some potential options that have been mentioned multiple times in the past but the real value was had when we considered what is needed to allow FU to expand into new territory quickly and effectively.
This has 2 benefits; Giving us a business continuity plan for PlanetSide and allowing us to move quickly into new games that hit the market.
We will be starting new documents within the WiKi that will help FU as a whole understand its own division system more clearly and provide a framework for creating new divisions.
Is good - keep doing 👍
Similar to Jaeger scrims and FUOP we were agreed that these are good events for FU but that there are still some teething issues.
Most notably is skill balance.
Currently, internals teams are balanced; with equal number good and less-good players per team. While a fair match, this means that lower skill players are being farmed on both sides which isn't fun and can put players off joining.
A suggestion has been raised to skill balance some rounds. For example, in a 4 round event - 2 rounds should aim to pit teams of similar skill against each other even if this means running 2v2's. Then running balanced team matches for the remaining rounds.
This gives individuals opportunities to fight players of a similar skill but still exposes them to matches where they are against stronger opponents that will challenge them to learn more.
See below extract of Guthammer's post in PS2-Officers chat
Empowering Innovation with the Two-Pizza Team
The concept of Two-pizza teams is straightforward: no team should be big enough that it would take more than two pizzas to feed them. Ideally, this is a team of less than 10 people: smaller teams minimize lines of communication and decrease overhead of bureaucracy and decision-making. This allows two-pizza teams to spend more time focusing on their goals, constantly experimenting and innovating in their area of passion.We see evidence of this in Huntsmen and Tonkers. Our 2 most performant events.
Drill as a converse example is plagued with problems. Drill is also a "collective" responsibility. It isn't a small team of owners, it's all PS2 DOs.
Changes to the drill format are debated, voted on and discussed by a lot of people with conflicting ideas - changes enacted from this are often a compromise of suggestions rather than a unified agreed goal.
Huntsmen can make changes rapidly, test them and get feedback by the end of the next session. A two pizza team owns this event and are empowered to make the changes they see fit - discussion is quick and compromises are rare.I would encourage each of us to consider which topics we are most deeply invested in and find others to form teams around them and relinquish attachment to topics that we are ambivalent about.
For example, I care a great deal about systems administration for FU. My goal is to help FU run like a well oiled machine by making it easy for officers and members to have fun and grow the community.
Karlish, Delta and Morg have shown similar enthusiasm around this topic and so it makes sense for us to be working as a team on projects like FUBot, ribbon tracker and REDACTED
From my goal, I'm interested in events like drill and huntsmen but I would trust other officers who get joy out of running these events successfully to make the best decisions for that event. I don't need to be a part of that decision making process.
A number of suggestions formed around this discussion such as making a concious effort to switch to intent-based statements rather than approval-seeking requests.
"I think we should..." Becomes "I intend to..."
This small change allows the wider team to simply input "Very well!" rather than launching a 25 person debate over insignificant changes.
It also gives ownership of the action to the individual running the project rather than shirking responsibility to the wider whole - this promoting of leadership is part of what FU stands for. Inspiring leadership.