It’s been about a week and half since I left FTCL. With any major changes, there are adjustments at many levels to go with those changes.
FTCL Team Building
FTCL had it’s core members and we also had a lot of fringe/casual/quiet players. This is not new to any alliance.
I took it upon myself to apply some social theories to get some of these players to interact more. With being anonymous online, communication was very limited to interaction. Some wouldn’t even reply to messages or there is a language barrier or even availability when they would jump on.
Small and middle alliances are great starting points for not just casual and limited knowledge players, but for someone who wants to understand how to build a team. Communication, trust and engagement help bridge myself to another player that would be isolated or distant or quiet in the team. Overtime, many started to reach out to me and ask for help.
That helped me understand a bit of the newer player with limited knowledge. Many were to shy to speak or ask for help, so having private conversations would boost some confidence with them to at least reach out to me. From there we could build the relationship and eventually bridge that to joining the team in alliance chat.
It is one of the reasons why I did have a hard time leaving FTCL. The last few months of helping many to engage with the team and helped me learn how to be more effective in communication was a great lesson. There a bit of abandonment, but I was demoralized from playing and I need to change my environment.
FAFO Team Integration
As I said, joining FAFO was a great change for my gameplay in a few ways. FAFO was already a highly functioning team. Zed made way for I want to say 14 of us.
To be clear again, leaving was unplanned and everyone had their separate issues. Timing just happened and I reached out to Zed if they had space. To clear up any misconceptions:
FAFO DID NOT POACH FOR PLAYERS!!!
Now that is made clear, when joining a different culture, I always feel I need to observe first. Just to see the chat dynamics. Some chats have people that argue, some have people flirting a lot and how are the power dynamics and control to when high ranking level members speak. There are always people that can dominate a conversation and there are group conversations that are just welcoming. Additionally, there is a lot of technical game play and tips being shared… something we didn’t get too often in FTCL.
If 14 FTCL join and that was a good 95% of FTCL’s Alliance chat culture, I always look at how to integrate, rather than dominate. Respectfully, we joined FAFO and so we have to acclimate to their culture.
Excitingly, FAFO is getting a few more members from another big alliance. Which they are coming over, but are coordinated as a group together. For the most part, we are all good with each other. I’ve talked to a few of the members coming over and we’ve been good for awhile.
This is following a week and a half after we joined, so it is also kind of a big impact within the FAFO.
Learning how to transition from helping new and casual players learn to being part of an integration has been an interesting journey so far.
