[G] Guide to Leading a Team

[Demuyt]

Hi there! If you are the captain of a new clan, this guide has been designed to help you give it a good start. We (tgleaf & Demuyt) will be giving tips that will allow you to push your clan to its maximum potential while taking good habits that will make it last. Let's get started!

New clans pop up frequently in the Altitude community. However, the majority of them do not understand what the basics of keeping a clan alive are and fail to remain active for more than two weeks.
The important points of keeping a clan alive and improving are:

Communication:

No clan lives without communication. Communication is your first priority when getting a clan started, it is the ability to contact your clan members quickly and reliably. In-game communication is rarely enough, so I have a few recommendations:

-Start a clan thread on the Altitude forums, in the 'Clan Organization' subforum. In this thread, you should present your clan to the Altitude community. After your clan thread is up, get all your clan members to join the forums and use this thread to discuss clan matters.

-Start your own private forum. I only recommend using this method if you have very private discussions to be held on your clan forum, otherwise being on the public forums is better, because other people and clan will get to know you better. Starting a private forum is easy: Ajuk explains it all clearly in this post:

http://altitudegame.com/forums/showp...&postcount=348

-Use voice communication during matches. The Altitude community uses Mumble, which is a very fast, low-latency program that will make your communication way more efficient. Information about the Altitude Community Server can be found here, and Mumble can be downloaded here.

-Make sure your members are active and motivated, because they will have to check your message board frequently in order to be up to date with clan activity.

-Remind your clan members that they must post once on the forums before private messaging is enabled.

-Also encourage your members to read The Unofficial Guide to Altitude on the wiki http://nimblygames.com/wiki/index.ph...de_to_Altitude as it's chock-full of good information about the game.

Leadership:

A clan greatly relies on its leader/captain. In fact, some clans have evolved positively mostly thanks to the efforts of their leader, while some have failed immediately because of terrible leadership. The leader's job is organizing scrims regularly, knowing everything about his clan members, managing recruitment, and being the main contact for his clan.

-This is task can sometimes turn out to be very heavy, so I recommend having one or two co-captains that will help a lot in leading. You can give each of them a distinct role, for example having one organizing matches, another managing recruitment, etc. Choose them wisely, because bad choices can ruin clans.

-Always have a second in charge. Sometimes a leader can disappear suddenly and leave his clan disorganized because it relied solely on him. The second in charge's role is to take on leadership when the leader has obligations that restrict him from playing.

-Give a good impression of your clan. As you are your clan's main contact as a captain, people will judge your clan by the impression you give them. Don't ruin your clan's reputation by acting immature or annoying.

-Dedicate your time to the clan. The expression "I'm too lazy to-" should never be used by a leader. If you don't do all the boring stuff that is necessary to keep your clan alive, or if it bores you, pass on leadership to someone else because a clan with a lazy leader is doomed.

Activity/Playing Matches:

In order to become better, you have to play a LOT.

-Try to play at least one scrim per week to keep your team active, interested and improving. Try to scrim versus clans that are both of comparable level and better, in order to learn from watching.

-Internal scrims among your clan members are also a great way to practice skills and strategies. Post a time on your clan thread for people to show up.

-You should organize your lineup according to proper plane composition to pull the most out of your team during matches: guides about how to compose an efficient team can be found in the Guides forum.

-Take screenshots of the scoreboard at the end of the matches, then post them on the forums with a little explanation on what happened, what went wrong, and what points you need to improve on. Learning from your mistakes is very important! Screenshots can be very revealing sometimes, they point out the lack of killing, the excessive killing, inefficient plane compositions, etc.

-At first, you will tend to lose a lot against good and established clans. Keep your head up! Be positive and you will improve.

-Organizing scrimmages is fairly easy. When you have picked your opponent, message its leader or post in their thread asking for a scrim. In general, no clan will refuse to scrim you, so the answer you will most probably receive will be a yes. After they have accepted the challenge, decide a play time that suits both teams well.

-Confirmations: before your games, post a confirmation request on your message board. Use big letters and colors to catch attention. A confirmation list is a very useful tool. It gives you an idea of how the lineup is going to look like and what members still need to be informed. Ask your clan members to post whether they're available or not.

Recruitment:

In order for a clan to work well, its recruitment has to be well managed too. A lot of clans whose leader has had no previous experience don't know how to pick their members, and that causes the major part of them to fail.

-There are several ways to recruit new players. Partly, it depends on your experience in the Altitude community. Posting on the forums -- unless you are a well-known, established clan is generally not a good way to recruit. *It doesn't hurt to ask in your clan thread if anyone wants to join, but don't expect to gain members that way. If you are relatively new to the game, you'll want to friend people in-game and play in the same few servers consistently so that people get to know you well.

-Maintain a respectful, friendly attitude and you're likely to make friends quickly. Keep an eye out for players at or slightly above your skill level. Players at a much higher skill level will either be in a clan already or will have been asked so many times that they won't appreciate your inquiry.

-When you've observed a player enough to gauge their skill level and have chatted with them to get to know them a bit (never try to recruit a player you haven't chatted with because it's unlikely that your "Want to join {SLY*FOX}?" will convince them to join your clan if they don't already know you), it's time to go for it. Give them a compliment about their play style and then ask if they're interested in your clan.

-Don't be pushy and definitely don't beg. If a player expresses interest, you should have a plan in mind for the next step. For example, do they need to have a formal tryout, do you need to ask other clan members for their approval, or do they just change their nickname to include your clan's tag?

-Some of the top-ranked clans in Altitude got their start by grabbing a few friends for scrims and just being respectful, competitive players who impressed other players in the servers. If you do this long enough, you'll have people begging to be in your clan.

-Watch out for your roster size. It is difficult for a team to work if it has too few players, because it will be hard for it to field enough players to show up for games. Large clans can be very hard to manage as well. A good roster size is approximately 12-20 members.

Conclusion:

Most of the past Altitude clans that have failed did not understand these basics, which lead to their downfall.
While leading a team can be very different from one team to another, the advice that you've just read can be useful to anyone, and if you follow it you will get a solid start in competitive Altitude. If you think you have what it takes to be the best, then go out there and kick some ass! And while leading a team often requires you to be serious, don't forget that Altitude is mostly about having fun...

Thanks for reading,

Demuyt & tgleaf.

PS: If you have any questions or need help managing a clan, don't hesitate to send us a private message (PM)! We would be glad to help you out.

[Mt.Vesuvius]

This will definitely be of help to newer players. (Even to some older players too)

[Ajuk999]

I haven't read through all of it, but looks pretty good so far.

BTW, alot of this stuff is used in AH. Glad your spreading our way Demuyt. :P

[leggomyeggo]

Nice guide. Hopefully some new people will actually read this.

But, I do have one small problem.

Originally Posted by Demuyt

However, the majority of them does not understand what the basics of keeping a clan alive are and fail to remain active for more than two weeks.

Not to be a grammar Nazi, but shouldn't that be "...the majority of them do not understand..."?

[Mt.Vesuvius]

Originally Posted by leggomyeggo

But, I do have one small problem.


Not to be a grammar Nazi, but shouldn't that be "...the majority of them do not understand..."?

There are more mistakes than that but wouldn't it be nicer to PM it to him instead?

[Demuyt]

europe rocks

fx'd

[Emergency]

This was a great guide! Thank you for writing it!

I shall follow this much more strictly and add it to enhance my team. ^^ I sure hope I've demonstrated what you've said before reading it!

[Demuyt]

Originally Posted by Emergency

This was a great guide! Thank you for writing it!

I shall follow this much more strictly and add it to enhance my team. ^^ I sure hope I've demonstrated what you've said before reading it!

No reply could've made me happier than this one! I'm glad you enjoyed reading it. And from what I've seen, your team looks very promising. Keep it up!

[tyr]

That's pretty hilarious as we did pretty much exactly the opposite of a lot of stuff you wrote in there in ACE.
But I guess for normal clan this'll work ... Good job.

[leggomyeggo]

Originally Posted by Mt.Vesuvius

There are more mistakes than that but wouldn't it be nicer to PM it to him instead?

Why would that be? Yes, I realize there were a few more mistakes, but this one was in the intro and was bugging me :x.

Also, wouldn't it be nicer if you PM'd me with this instead of publicly stating it?

[Mt.Vesuvius]

Originally Posted by leggomyeggo

Also, wouldn't it be nicer if you PM'd me with this instead of publicly stating it?

Ya I guess so. My b.

[tgleaf]

Originally Posted by tyr

That's pretty hilarious as we did pretty much exactly the opposite of a lot of stuff you wrote in there in ACE.
But I guess for normal clan this'll work ... Good job.

How so? I'd love to hear more about the inner workings of ACE.

[Kuja900]

Originally Posted by tyr

That's pretty hilarious as we did pretty much exactly the opposite of a lot of stuff you wrote in there in ACE.
But I guess for normal clan this'll work ... Good job.

Yeah fLb does the exact opposite of a lot of it as well lol. Good work though making this for the community.

[tyr]

Ok I'll go through everything in the OP and see how ACE worked.
Our present inactivity is due to something completely unrelated with all of this.

-Start a clan thread on the Altitude forums, in the 'Clan Organization' subforum. In this thread, you should present your clan to the Altitude community. After your clan thread is up, get all your clan members to join the forums and use this thread to discuss clan matters.

I don't think a clan thread is THAT important. Yeah sure it's nice and all but it's mostly for public relations imo

-Start your own private forum. I only recommend using this method if you have very private discussions to be held on your clan forum, otherwise being on the public forums is better, because other people and clan will get to know you better.

We never did that. All our private communication (when we had some) was done through PMs. Whether it be on altitude or on the forums.

-Use voice communication during matches.

Ok, you got me there. I'm fairly sure ACE was the first or one of the first to use voice chat during games.
I know fLB didn't for a looong time.

-Make sure your members are active and motivated, because they will have to check your message board frequently in order to be up to date with clan activity.

I mostly didn't do that. I only tried to contact people when I didn't see them online for like 2 weeks straight to ask them if they're still playing.

-Remind your clan members that they must post once on the forums before private messaging is enabled.

Some of my members weren't even registered on the forums.

-This is task can sometimes turn out to be very heavy, so I recommend having one or two co-captains that will help a lot in leading. You can give each of them a distinct role, for example having one organizing matches, another managing recruitment, ect. Choose them wisely, because bad choices can ruin clans.

I was the only captain but from time to time I asked some members to help me with some stuff. Curious helped me a little with strategy and such and I remember Cloud finding us some scrims from time to time. And there's probably a lot of other things that I don't remember as well. But in the end I was the only captain, and the one you should talk to if you had anything to say to ACE.

-Always have a second in charge. Sometimes a leader can dissappear suddenly and leave his clan disorganized because it relied solely on him. The second in charge's role is to take on leadership when the leader has obligations that restrict him of playing.

I was always there lol.
But yeah, even if I said nothing, I knew I could count on my members to stay focused if something happened. So even though I never officially set something like this, I'm sure they all knew what to do. Including someone take the lead if need be.

-Give a good impression of your clan. As you are your clan's main contact as a captain, people will judge your clan by the impression you give them. Don't ruin your clan's reputation by acting immature or annoying.

I wasn't very nice, to say the least.
I don't remember insulting my members but I wasn't tender either. When we made a mistake, I clearly said it, and pretty roughly on top of that.
I think this is what made us pretty successful too. Because I yelled a lot, my guys remembered what they did wrong and what they needed to do in specific situations and they did it. So in the end we had good teamwork.

-Dedicate your time to the clan. The expression "I'm too lazy to-" should never be used by a leader. If you don't do all the boring stuff that is necessary to keep your clan alive, if it bores you, pass on leadership to someone else because a clan with a lazy leader is doomed.

I was actually pretty lazy lol.
I don't think it's only the captain's job to find the scrims. As I already said, I asked my members to look for scrims if they had the occasion, and they did.
I'm not here to manage a group of children, but a group of mature people. So I don't think I need to be here 10 hours a day to tell everyone what to do.

-Try to play at least one scrim per week to keep your team active, interested and improving. Try to scrim versus clans that are both of comparable level and better, in order to learn from watching.

We tried to scrim as often as we could. Unfortunately there weren't that many active teams at the time so it was actually quite hard.

-Internal scrims among your clan members are also a great way to practice skills and strategies. *Post a time on your clan thread for people to show up.

We didn't have enough members

-You should organize your lineup according to proper plane composition to pull the most out of your team during matches

Yes

-Take screenshots of the scoreboard at the end of the matches, then post them on the forums with a little explanation on what happened, what went wrong, what points you need to improve on. Learning from your mistakes is very important! Screenshots can be very revealing sometimes, they point out the lack of killing, the excessive killing, the unefficient plane composition, ect.

We did that on voice chat live, and stayed after the game so we could debrief what happened, and what were the mistakes and what could be improved.

-At first, you will tend to lose a lot against good and established clans. Keep your head up! Be positive and you will improve.

I guess, yeah.

-Confirmations: before your games, post a confirmation request on your message board. Use big letters and colors to catch attention. A confirmations list a very useful tool, it gives you an idea of how the lineup is going to look like and what members still need to informed. Ask your clan members to post wether they're available or not.

Once again, this was done through PMs.

As for the recruitment, most of the time I asked people I wanted to join the clan if I needed to recruit someone. This way I knew who I recruited and I didn't need to waste time knowing them before starting to play.

So yeah, but as I said, I completely understand that it was a different time. Now pretty much everyone uses the forum and there are a lot of different teams, so a lot of stuff can be done differently from what we did.

[Kuja900]

I never really understood the need for confirmation lists. For fLb I pretty much just go up to everybody a day or two before the match and do the whole "you coming?" "cool" thing. I mean its not a challenge to keep track of. And Tyr we did use voice chat since our incarnation but just sporadically not frequently for a while.

fLb deviations from the list:

-no team practices last league

-No confirmation list

-No private forum

-I'm pretty lazy

-I do not really care about who posts or who doesn't post on the forums, pretty sure some members still not registered here.

-Didn't do internal scrims this league but we have before

-No co leader or co co leader non sense. I been pretty much handling all organization alone for years now and I don't think anyone has really had trouble reaching me when they needed to. Teams with multiple leaders always seem difficult to coordinate with to me I mean I just never know who I am supposed to be talking to (namely talking about IL). If I know I am going to be away for a weekend or something I'll usually just defer to some swedish guy to handle things that need to be handled in my absence (hookers and blow).

-When fLb was first starting out I did do the observation thing a lot. It's also how I recruited all of the initial fLbSS roster (which later became Sammich). I scouted matattack, mikesol, ufo, manatee, ingbo and many more at pretty much full on stalker levels. I highly recommend for teams to scout players they want to recruit extensively, it helps if you are better then them and know what to look for. Now I basically just recruit based on what components I feel my team needs and I usually have an individual in mind to fill said needs, only one person ever has gotten in to fLb by asking to join up.

edit: Almost none of this is meant to be an example, it's just what works for us. It may or may not work for you. I do however promise having a "second in charge" really isn't that big of a deal.

[Ingbo]

Originally Posted by Kuja900

I do however promise having a "second in charge" really isn't that big of a deal.

ty 10chars

[dr. carbon]

Originally Posted by leggomyeggo

Nice guide. Hopefully some new people will actually read this.

But, I do have one small problem.


Not to be a grammar Nazi, but shouldn't that be "...the majority of them do not understand..."?

Actually, it is correct as is b/c majority is a singular noun. Majorities is the plural form.

[vintage]

Originally Posted by dr. carbon

Actually, it is correct as is b/c majority is a singular noun. Majorities is the plural form.

Actually, when it is followed by a prepositional phrase then you have to use a plural verb.

[Kuja900]

Originally Posted by dr. carbon

Actually, it is correct as is b/c majority is a singular noun. Majorities is the plural form.

The correction of a grammar correction is one of the most devastating owns known to forum kind. We thank you sir.

[Mandrad]

There's something not mentioned that should be interesting to explore. Managing numbers, kids & maturity issues.

When you have a 15 guys group, and only 5 can play, it takes some gymmnastics to make it work.
There is "the good 15" group, where lots of players come to a game and ofc the bad, the ones that more than sometimes, convert to a 4 (forum frequency solves a lot here).
The good, is the problem you want. Leader has an ideal 5 but all players have to play in order that they keep interested. In the end, team wont perform as it could but will keep healthy for another week.

Keeping in touch, and keep track every now and then with every single player, its very important - especialy if they're kids.

I think that if one is unexperienced at being a leader he should have a small clan. Small is something like 8 to 10 players. 1st of all, its a fact that he will not recruit very experienced players, meaning he will have "new" players eager to play in the league - meaning they will show up. If they dont, kick'em.

I know kids have all the time, but looks impossible to me that one alone can handle all that it takes for a good pace new team evolution.

Keeping pro-magnons away from your roster will always be wise to make the team last longer. Time will take you there.

[beefheart]

Lol wat an elaborate - hard to follow - post to explain that you want your team to be as small as possible, but still have 5 (or 6) good players available for each scrim.

[Kuja900]

what is a pro-magnon?

[rojo]

Originally Posted by Kuja900

what is a pro-magnon?

This?
chars

[classicallad]

Originally Posted by Mandrad

There's something not mentioned that should be interesting to explore. Managing numbers, kids & maturity issues.

When you have a 15 guys group, and only 5 can play, it takes some gymmnastics to make it work.
There is "the good 15" group, where lots of players come to a game and ofc the bad, the ones that more than sometimes, convert to a 4 (forum frequency solves a lot here).
The good, is the problem you want. Leader has an ideal 5 but all players have to play in order that they keep interested. In the end, team wont perform as it could but will keep healthy for another week.

Keeping in touch, and keep track every now and then with every single player, its very important - especialy if they're kids.

I think that if one is unexperienced at being a leader he should have a small clan. Small is something like 8 to 10 players. 1st of all, its a fact that he will not recruit very experienced players, meaning he will have "new" players eager to play in the league - meaning they will show up. If they dont, kick'em.

I know kids have all the time, but looks impossible to me that one alone can handle all that it takes for a good pace new team evolution.

Keeping pro-magnons away from your roster will always be wise to make the team last longer. Time will take you there.

your wrong, some of the best players are pro magnons - a bit colorful shall we say

[sunshineduck]

the only responsibility a captain of FRO has is to defer responsibilities to other captains

[Clapon]

Originally Posted by Demuyt

-Dedicate your time to the clan. The expression "I'm too lazy to-" should never be used by a leader. If you don't do all the boring stuff that is necessary to keep your clan alive, if it bores you, pass on leadership to someone else because a clan with a lazy leader is doomed.

Me and Goose were captains of a team... i dont think you can get much more lazy.

[Clapon]

Originally Posted by sunshineduck

the only responsibility a captain of FRO has is to defer responsibilities to other captains

ex. Clapon-king of kicking.

[Ajuk999]

Clapon, you were a successful leader, what do you have to say about this thread.

[don14altitude@gmail.com]

Very nice explanation I just love to read this now I to want to create a clan after seeing this!!!! Lol but nice demyut and tgleaf

[Mr Nice]

Hey demuyt!

i cant send u pm on the forum cause u have to many msges xD
i wanted to talk to you in private. pls post here when you are able to store my pm.

Regards

EvelKnievel

[Demuyt]

Originally Posted by Mr Nice

Hey demuyt!

i cant send u pm on the forum cause u have to many msges xD
i wanted to talk to you in private. pls post here when you are able to store my pm.

Regards

EvelKnievel

ill delete some messages sry

[AlphaWolf]

Wow thanks this really helped me a lot