I've been thinking about this since I started reading that giant thread by Garden about morale in eGO...and I'd like to get the real impressions that our longtime DoD guys have about everything. That thread is nice and all, but it keeps getting hijacked by individual divisions.
I've gone ahead and responded personally to a few of the DoD-specific comments (or general ones that are relevant). Please, if you have some comments, I (and the rest of DoD Leadership by association) would love to hear them. If you can't post them here for some reason, you know what to do: Advisors or the Drop Box. You guys know what is and isn't acceptable to talk about in public, and what should be saved for private. I'll lay some of my cards on the table...let's see what you have to show.
Ground Rules: No need for anybody to respond to each post, like has happened there; say your piece, observe and consider, consolidate your thoughts into one post, THEN post it. There's nothing I (and many others) hate more than when 15 of 40 replies are the same person; it's counterproductive and makes the thread look like so much more.
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1.) All the griping about wanting more realism events. (and not just limited to that thread!)
- Come on guys, this is common sense already. I'm actually a bit concerned that I have to explain this one; it should be obvious. Yes, we know that realism is the most popular DoD event. It's so popular that it easily can have as many players as Wild Card and Quick-Draw combined. But what does that actually tell you? Nobody's coming to our other events. If people aren't willing to show up, we're not going to do more prestigious events such as Royal Rumbles and Dog Tag Scrims.
Sure, we could do realism twice a week or more. But what does that mean? You can just skip one and come to another. That's nice. In turn, however, it means that the event becomes disposable, and loses its luster when you have five a week. Stormy has done a fantastic job developing and running this for weeks (26 now? That's HALF A YEAR!); that's terrific, and we're glad to see something take off as well as this has. The next problem we have is in logistics; you need somebody to actually RUN the event, and you can't count on somebody for every day of the week. Hopefully you guys get the point here.
TL;DR: Multiple realisms per week are not really on the table at this time. It's just not a good option.
2.) Recruiting
-Recruiting is a game, and one that I've always failed at. I try, but never really get anywhere. I'm sure that some of you are the same way. We're doing our best, but it's just not as simple as it sounds, and thank you to everyone who is out there working on it. We're trying to come up with new recruiting "stuff" for our divisional group. I'm going to skip my commentary about the denied application that was mentioned in the morale thread because of the "unified front in public" policy that I teach in Admin 101/Advanced Admin Training, but please do your best to get long-time pubbers into this clan. Players with a genuine interest are hard to come by, and we want them here. Again, this should be common sense.
3.) "Strictness of admining"
- ...to be perfectly honest, I don't think this is a problem here in DoD. We don't sit around and watch people break the rules, then try to decide who gets the honor of warning them; we come out and hit the binds, follow warn/kick/ban, and get the job done quickly and efficiently so that we all can have fun. Not a DoD problem at all, from what I've seen.
4.) Divisional Impressions
- I was glad to read things like this:
This is what we strive for here at eGO: people coming to play with us, having fun, and quite frankly, not caring about rank. I don't have a problem when people join servers, and would rather play with our members. There's a certain inherent level of quality associated with our members.
I hope none of you feel this way about us, and if so, please bring it up in the appropriate venues. We strive for professionalism here...quite honestly, that sort of derailed the entire topic with a bunch of nonsense that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things if it actually works and fills servers. If TP can take a server from 0 to 32 with that, I support it.
5.) The Admin Training Program
-Yes, I know that we've been lacking a bit lately with classes, and not to make excuses, but it's a busy time of year for all four of us. We're hoping to get more up in the near future, but it's a little disheartening when you have a giant promotion cycle and a class right after the divisional meeting where it's announced, and you have two people show up. Two. It's a little frustrating.
I've read the commentary about making some minor changes to Admin 101, and hope that we can contribute to any amending process.
6.) Server Numbers
-Of course, we'd love to see all of our servers in the top 10, and we're trying to improve them all, but it's not as simple as it may sound, trust me. Right now, I believe that we have more servers than any other division...and we have more in the top 150 (all of them, at least count) than the other divisions combined. That's FANTASTIC, and I hope to see this trend continue.
This is just the beginning; I would like to hear what you guys think about "morale" and related topics, on a level specific to this division. Thank you!
I've gone ahead and responded personally to a few of the DoD-specific comments (or general ones that are relevant). Please, if you have some comments, I (and the rest of DoD Leadership by association) would love to hear them. If you can't post them here for some reason, you know what to do: Advisors or the Drop Box. You guys know what is and isn't acceptable to talk about in public, and what should be saved for private. I'll lay some of my cards on the table...let's see what you have to show.
Ground Rules: No need for anybody to respond to each post, like has happened there; say your piece, observe and consider, consolidate your thoughts into one post, THEN post it. There's nothing I (and many others) hate more than when 15 of 40 replies are the same person; it's counterproductive and makes the thread look like so much more.
The community's listening, and would like your input. How do YOU think DoD is doing, and where can we improve?
==================================================
1.) All the griping about wanting more realism events. (and not just limited to that thread!)
- Come on guys, this is common sense already. I'm actually a bit concerned that I have to explain this one; it should be obvious. Yes, we know that realism is the most popular DoD event. It's so popular that it easily can have as many players as Wild Card and Quick-Draw combined. But what does that actually tell you? Nobody's coming to our other events. If people aren't willing to show up, we're not going to do more prestigious events such as Royal Rumbles and Dog Tag Scrims.
Sure, we could do realism twice a week or more. But what does that mean? You can just skip one and come to another. That's nice. In turn, however, it means that the event becomes disposable, and loses its luster when you have five a week. Stormy has done a fantastic job developing and running this for weeks (26 now? That's HALF A YEAR!); that's terrific, and we're glad to see something take off as well as this has. The next problem we have is in logistics; you need somebody to actually RUN the event, and you can't count on somebody for every day of the week. Hopefully you guys get the point here.
TL;DR: Multiple realisms per week are not really on the table at this time. It's just not a good option.
2.) Recruiting
-Recruiting is a game, and one that I've always failed at. I try, but never really get anywhere. I'm sure that some of you are the same way. We're doing our best, but it's just not as simple as it sounds, and thank you to everyone who is out there working on it. We're trying to come up with new recruiting "stuff" for our divisional group. I'm going to skip my commentary about the denied application that was mentioned in the morale thread because of the "unified front in public" policy that I teach in Admin 101/Advanced Admin Training, but please do your best to get long-time pubbers into this clan. Players with a genuine interest are hard to come by, and we want them here. Again, this should be common sense.
3.) "Strictness of admining"
- ...to be perfectly honest, I don't think this is a problem here in DoD. We don't sit around and watch people break the rules, then try to decide who gets the honor of warning them; we come out and hit the binds, follow warn/kick/ban, and get the job done quickly and efficiently so that we all can have fun. Not a DoD problem at all, from what I've seen.
4.) Divisional Impressions
- I was glad to read things like this:
Thykon said:My experiences with our TF2 and DOD:S divisions were outstanding. Rank was unimportant, e, eG, eGO, all outstanding community members.
This is what we strive for here at eGO: people coming to play with us, having fun, and quite frankly, not caring about rank. I don't have a problem when people join servers, and would rather play with our members. There's a certain inherent level of quality associated with our members.
Masterpiece said:...but when I see posts on the steam group (that's especially for tf2) going like " HALP ME IN SERVER LOLOL"...
I hope none of you feel this way about us, and if so, please bring it up in the appropriate venues. We strive for professionalism here...quite honestly, that sort of derailed the entire topic with a bunch of nonsense that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things if it actually works and fills servers. If TP can take a server from 0 to 32 with that, I support it.
5.) The Admin Training Program
-Yes, I know that we've been lacking a bit lately with classes, and not to make excuses, but it's a busy time of year for all four of us. We're hoping to get more up in the near future, but it's a little disheartening when you have a giant promotion cycle and a class right after the divisional meeting where it's announced, and you have two people show up. Two. It's a little frustrating.
I've read the commentary about making some minor changes to Admin 101, and hope that we can contribute to any amending process.
6.) Server Numbers
-Of course, we'd love to see all of our servers in the top 10, and we're trying to improve them all, but it's not as simple as it may sound, trust me. Right now, I believe that we have more servers than any other division...and we have more in the top 150 (all of them, at least count) than the other divisions combined. That's FANTASTIC, and I hope to see this trend continue.
This is just the beginning; I would like to hear what you guys think about "morale" and related topics, on a level specific to this division. Thank you!

























Plus it might make admining a bit hard on the opposite team if no1 is over there.