Maintaining Strong LS Leadership

[Shamaya]

I've seen the topics come up now and then, with respect to things such as: DKP systems vs other systems of managing fairness/desert, or how best to handle such systems, or what kind of rules make for a fair and productive LS, or how to balance the competitive HNM scene with the rest of endgame content. But apart from the topic of "how to manage an endgame LS" in a general sense, I've been wondering something different for a couple months. That is, how to manage LS leadership.

Theorycraft on how to manage LS issues can only go so far as an LS's leadership lets it. I think on the rare occasions that discussions come up, the foundation of the LS is ignored. And naturally the analogy goes that any strong structure needs a solid foundation.

Stereotypical LS Structures

Spoiler: show

There are two stereotypical generalizations of endgame LS's that I've been in and seen.
(1)One, is the LS of concerned officers and citizens. Ones that are out to make the LS as fair and ethical as they can, while still being productive. And these types of shells have selfless leaders that do all the work required for little more than the gratitude of their friends and lsm8's.
(2)Another, is the dictatorial type. A single person, or a small clique, has a strong reign on the LS. Measures of fairness are taken. But favoritism and bias are usually present. And the motivation for the leadership to do the required managerial work is often gear driven.

Problems Arising from Imperfect LS Structure

Spoiler: show

I understand this is far too general. But my point is not in these above descriptions, it's about problems that arise.
(1)For the first stereotype, there are general problems that occur. Burnout being key. Burnout and IRL. The selfless leadership does quite well for awhile, but then it all starts to bear down. Little by little, officers quit or play less, or get completely burned out by day-to-day tasks. Fairness and basic structure are maintained, but productivity takes a nose dive. Nobody else steps to the plate (or, if they do, are not acknowledged with authority), and the eventually the headless LS stagnates.
(2)While I think this type of LS lasts longer, big problems can occur when "the dictator" quits. Sometimes, when this happens, the LS bank magically disappears. While I think these shells can also have longevity, the lifespan of the LS tends to be riddled with this type of bias and favoritism that I mentioned, bank-skimming, and the like.

Again, I understand that I'm being totally general and my illustration itself is biased. But the point of the illustration is to highlight some key issues for building and maintaining a strong endgame LS and, in a sense, conflict between them.

Productivity, Fairness, and Longevity
Everyone wants all three. I feel that the first two are sometimes in conflict. If Productivity*Fairness=Utility, then from a utility standpoint, a productive LS that doesn't carefully manage issues such as attendance, desert (deserving-ness), personal member issues, unbiased event scheduling, bank usage, -- can produce similar utility to a shell that carefully manages all these issues, but isn't as productive. I think DKP-style systems are relevant to this discussion, but I think shells with & without DKP systems can fit either of these stereotypes.

And, of course, longevity. When it comes down to it, who cares how fair or productive an LS is if it ends up breaking prematurely.

Personal Example

Spoiler: show

Perhaps it's better to give a personal story to go along with this. I have a busy IRL but I make time for the game. Fortunately, I have an HNMls that is truly International. So no matter what time zone, there's always something to do.

When I log in, I don't want to deal w/ BS. If there are HNM's up in my time zone when I get home, great. If not, there ought to be something else going on--whether it be sky, sea, limbus, einherjar, stronghold NM's, KS99's, ZNM T4, or any of the other wealth of endgame content this game has.

What about free time, you say? Or salvage statics and the like? For our LS, it's simple enough. If you have a salvage, limbus, einherjar, dynamis static, etc, you don't have to attend a mandatory camp--no question. And free time? This is reconciled by the fact that only certain NM's or NM windows are mandatory. Usually, they're not.

The problem is that we rarely do more than select HNM's. The leaders have to spend their valuable time to manage attendance, sell/splits, alliance setups, and all the other BS. So when their day of HNM'ing is done, they're truly burnt out. As they don't get extra DKP gil or, anything... from putting in the effort to make the LS into something more, the amount of work they put in is very finite. When some of the officers did put in "infinite" work (aside from sleeping/eating) into the game, it resulted in eventual quitting or stepping down.

Personally, I'd rather give up cuts from my DKP or gil from my sell/splits, to give it to the people doing the administrative work, if it meant that we had shit going on around the clock. But I think most members would feel that that conflicts with the philosophy of fairness. "Well, officers shouldn't get extra cuts.. that's an unfair abuse of power.." That's the kind of impression I get from people.

Reiterating, I believe the problem of imperfect shell structure comes down to leadership issues. Scheduling frequent events and dragging members to HNM camps, while keeping timely and proper reign on DKP and the LS bank (or whatever system is being used), is a daunting task. Where's the incentive? With hard work and little reward, maintaining fairness can only last so long before motivation dies. On the other hand, if you're leading stuff and making sure that you and your personal buddies gain a lot from it, there's plenty of motivation, but fairness dies. And then shell longevity is a whole nother issue.


So, the crux of this.. the point of my inquiry.. is how can an LS structure its management so as to guarantee all three: productivity (keep events going round-the-clock), fairness (making sure most people are happy with scheduling, bank usage, drop allocation, etc), and longevity (keeping this stable for a long, long time)?

[thetruepandagod]

Everyone gets burnt out when they are an officer or leader, just have them bounce the work off of each other if you sense one of them going over the edge. It really shouldn't be shouldered on one person for too long, i tried that and went insane due to no sleep.

Also make sure that all bank information is public to all members everything, even AH tax.

Fairness really shouldn't be a problem if people don't like it simply have them leave or be kicked and keep a group of people that are happy with how things are done.

The only way you can maintain stability is obviously with stable leadership, you should have a good group of officers that are willing to fill in for the leader when he isn't on regardless of whether he is busy for a day or gone indefinitely.

[SaviorSelf]

This is all based on my experiences. If they are not the same as yours, or you don't agree; oh well. This is probably so sloppy too since I've been up for about 2 days straight, but oh well!

Productivity - Make the LS events fun to attend. Events themselves are boring as shit, its the people you do them with who should make it bearable. The LS Leader/Sacks are not gods.

Fairness - Give people points for going to events, let them use there points to bid on stuff. Leader/Sack discretion as I've seen in a lot of instances are total bullshit. Leader bias leads to people not getting shit they deserve cause of personal issues. Don't keep a LS bank, spread it amongst the members. One person profiting from everyone's combined work is just stupid in my mind. Seen so many people use there LS to get a relic, then quit with it shortly after. Great investment. Make the LS bank expenses public so that every gil is accountable for.

Longevity - If people are happy with what they're doing and make progress, they'll stay. If every event is a chore because they hate someone in the group, it brings down the morale and makes people not want to stick around. If you're just building, trial people to see if they fit in with the group. Make a lot of personal comments to other members, racial slurs, anything really, and the new member has a problem with that? Probably won't be a good fit in the group. Let them know what they're getting into before hand, so they don't apply and find out it wouldn't work out from the get go.

tl;dr: I'm content with what I've done in the game when I play, haven't scammed/stolen/jacked anybody of shit and don't use people to get myself a shiny item. I know I certainly wouldn't give my paycheck to some dipshit who wants to buy a pool for his house, I wouldn't give my gil either. When you make money, split it between people who came. Even if they're just item whores, everybody loves money. They put in time, pay them for it.

[drwaffles]

Make a lot of personal comments to other members, racial slurs, anything really, and the new member has a problem with that? Probably won't be a good fit in the group.

I fail to see how this is a good idea. My previous LS had a sizeable handful of people who never fucking shut up making the same unfunny nigger/Jew jokes at one another round the clock, and that combined with general idiocy was enough for me to want to slaughter them. An atmosphere of professionalism is far more appealing to the types of players who are going to contribute towards making an LS successful, at least from what I've seen. Familiarity and good-natured ribbing are great of course, but when your log looks like this every day:

(Xsephcloudix) U FUCKING NIGGER
(Kawaikitteh) LOL
(Megabaka) XD XD
(Darkguardianx) NO UR THE NIGGER U GO BACK TO UR WATERMELON
(Xsephcloudix) STEAL BIKES MOER NIGGER
(Reeku) HAHAHAHAAAHH
(Leaderguy) haha you guys crack me up
(Agrargon) NIGGERS PLZ

It makes you want to kill yourself. I'm not offended by racial slurs or anything, but gratuitous use of them for "comic" effect is so fucking boring and makes you feel like you're in an LS with a bunch of 13-year-olds, which is hardly an environment truly conducive to productivity.

[Shinryuu]

Dude you're in a LS with Sig, is that honestly any better?

(the correct answer starts with the same letter as my first name)

[Shinryuu]

Regarding strong leadership: I've been following the same dude for years now. He's competent, can dualbox triggers for a lot of stuff and then drags the rest with him to do the actual event (while giving drops to members), and is a walking encyclopedia of the game. He calls people on their shit (gimpy members or dumb playstyle) but doesn't really judge them for it (no consequences as in kicking or continuous mean comments). Somehow after that people feel the need to improve themselves, which obviously benefits everyone. Oh, and he's online a lot, which is quite important to be a good FFXI leader.

[Takedown3]

i would suggest not letting robb lead your LS, other then that you are probably safe

[Despain]

Personal experience from running a sky linkshell for a bit on Pandemonium a bit. When I first started the shell, I made two key notes.
1) I'd never let the bank go over 2mil, as there was no need for a sky linkshell to have a bank.
2) I'd pick competent people to help me run my linkshell.

Considering it was only a sky linkshell, it wasn't much of a big deal. We had a bank that we used to help people uncurse their items, since a lot of people tend to start off with endgame with Dynamis or Sky, so you can't really expect them to be loaded with cash, or even know much about endgame. Once the bank got to 2mil, money items would go to lot, and people could use their points to lot said items.

The sackholders I picked turned out not to be as good as I'd hope. I took a month break, and the shell was pretty much gone. The person who held the 2mil bank claimed that someone went into his account and took the gil (yeah, right).

It also helps to run a linkshell where the majority of the people are close friends. I can't stress this enough. I love getting on vent and bullshitting with people I know, while at the same time getting stuff done. We would have eventually moved on to other endgame events, but taking that month break destroyed everything :/.

[Onorgul]

I don't really think it is possible to have a truly strong leader (or group of leaders) handling a given linkshell for more than 3-6 months. I know there are exceptions, but most people simply don't have the drive to do the thankless work of balancing egos, scheduling, strategizing, and generally feeling tired all the time for more than a couple months. I mean, think about it, I basically just described a full-time job, except that we're paying for it and no amount of shiny video game gear is going to equal the sort of salary one would get for doing the equivalent work in the real world.

[Byrthnoth]

I'd say LS leaders need to have the four following things, in order of importance:

0) A lot of freaking patience.
- Freaking people!

1) High playtime.
- It's necessary for an LS leader to always be around if you want to be a successful shell.

2) Knowledge of how to be the best and a desire to be the best.
- If someone doesn't know how to do an event or doesn't care to do it right, then they won't be as successful as someone who does. Good players get bored gimping around with LS leaders less dedicated to performance than they are.

3) The ability to weigh the desires of LS and at least give the illusion of fairness.
- LS event schedule has to at least partially reflect the desires of the linkshell. If no one cares about helping ____ finish their relic because ____ is a d-bag, then spamming city Dynamises is not going to be a wise leadership decision.

4) Not much dedication to anyone except the other LS leaders and the idea of "The Linkshell."
- This makes it much easier to make those hard decisions. If someone doesn't fit with your group, then they should leave.



Point system or arbitrary drop assignment doesn't matter so much really.
* Point systems are good when they're all-inclusive and you feel that everyone contributes equally to events and the linkshell. They're also great for determining cash-out amounts.
* Arbitrary drop assignments can compensate for some players being worse than others, but they can also leave some people feeling under-appreciated. If there's no set system for handing out drops and no one is keeping good track of who has gotten what lately, you can end up with very uneven drop distributions even among equally skilled/dedicated players.

Personally, I'm a fan of a mixed point/arbitrary system, where drops would normally go by points and the most important drops (Novios, Gaiters, Shadow items, etc) would be arbitrarily assigned point-free based on some sort of sack-consensus merit system. That way good items don't go to gimps regardless of how many years they've been dragging down LS events.

PS. I'm zero based.

[Dooom]

Personally, I'd rather give up cuts from my DKP or gil from my sell/splits, to give it to the people doing the administrative work, if it meant that we had shit going on around the clock. But I think most members would feel that that conflicts with the philosophy of fairness. "Well, officers shouldn't get extra cuts.. that's an unfair abuse of power.." That's the kind of impression I get from people.

I wish more people felt this way. It can be so demoralising to run events, update points sheets, show up 30 mins before everyone else, leave 30 mins after everyone else, all for no extra reward except a sense of self-satisfaction which isn't always there; and for people to take it for granted can be nothing short of insulting. If you're in a DKP-based shell, and the leaders are getting no extra reward for it - even if it's just a word of thanks every now and then, or extra help when they need an NM or mission or whatever they can't solo - then don't be surprised when they decide it's not worth the extra stress.

[Aeowin]

I've found the best way to run a linkshell is the way Iremire leads us:

Chill in our hallway in Whitegate and dictate.

[Meat]

no leaders with egirls

[Despain]

no leaders with egirls

This. Can't tell you how many linkshells I've known of that fall apart cause of e-relationships.

[ikariiiii]

^ best part of having a gay ls leader imo

[kisada]

i think the most important thing to do first is to make sure the ls has set goals and expectations, and to constantly re-evaluate them. over the course of time, new events come out, you get roster turnover, popularity increases and wanes, and unexpected things happen. so while a ls might start out as just a bare king camping ls, they might venture into sky as well, then add in more and more events as time goes on.

my own ls started with basic hnms, became heavily involved with sky, and as more events and hnms were released we did everything out there. eventually there came a point where there was so much stuff to do (hnms, limbus, sky, znm, einherjar, dynamis, salvage, sea) that we had trouble deciding how much time we wanted to allocate to all the things we liked. there just isn't enough time in the day to do everything without burning out your members (unless you have a large core of obsessive college students playing 15+ hours a day). furthermore, knowing which events you want to do or at least are most important to the shell needs to be balanced with how active your guys are. there were times when we had lots of people and not enough events, as well times when we were losing active players but with an overwhelming amount of things to do. so your leadership really has to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate the shell's goals, with respect to current events and how active your members are.

one thing i kinda reflected upon every now and then was that when i first started the game, i was playing with people who were pretty much like me: we were kids who had just entered college or were in high school with very little real life responsibilities. the first 2 or 3 years my linkshell had an extremely strong and very active core that was willing to do pretty much everything at any time of the day. however, real life never goes away and people grow up. as the years passed, people graduated, got jobs, and moved on. our core weakened and thinned out, and no matter what we did we could never replace the original strength and enthusiasm to play as much as humanly possible. gradually it turned into "play as much as i can before i gotta go to bed cause i got work at 9." many, many times i had to make sure the ls was absolutely honest with itself in what it wanted to do and i had to say "ok we can't do this anymore" or "camping this is just too impractical." the people in your ls have to see the shell's goals transparently and for what they are. if you have expectations that are too high like camping every hnm and doing every event, then your shell is gonna get upset and feel sad when they can't meet those expectations. but if your leadership is selective, and picks the right events for the shell then they will be happy knowing that they've accomplished their goals.

when the ls has the right expectations, you are as productive as you want to be. and by doing so you help to further longevity because A. you keep all the people in the shell who understand the shell's goals and want to help meet them, and B. the people you're recruiting also understand and want to meet those goals. if you do sky, sea, salvage, znm but no king camping, no tiamat, etc. and you are explicitly clear about it, then as a result the people who do join (with those goals in mind) won't leave the shell based on the things you DON'T do.



in regards to fairness (and mostly just drops or allocation): being transparent with what you do is obviously extremely important. but beyond that, you have to constantly be reviewing and trying to improve your system, rather than just putting it into place and leaving it as is. there are sooooooo many ways to make a great allocation system, but it requires a lot of thinking and work and you should never stop trying to come up with ideas to make it better, because the smoother and more efficiently it runs, the fairer it is and the happier the ls is with it.

there's pretty much no system that will make everyone 100% happy and at some point in time, you're gonna have people griping over something. furthermore, new items and new events can cause ripples in the system you currently do have so just leaving it alone without intentions of periodic review will leave your systems antiquated. but if you're constantly thinking of new ideas and ways to make your system better, in the end items become more accurately allocated to the right people, and your members come out of it a whole lot better.


one final thing i should add is that with almost every big linkshell decision i made, i never made it alone. whether it came to scheduling events, working on new or current policies, or debating on strategies, i either looked for the opinions of the shell members, or at least my other fellow leaders. i mean obviously as a leader you have to have a clear vision of where you want the shell to go, so you can't just just call for democratic votes every single time you wanna do something. but that should never, ever preclude you from seeking informed opinions on the decisions you make for the future of the shell. being humble enough to know that i could probably make better decisions with group input allowed me to maintain a much higher level of fairness than if i just decided everything on my own. and as a result, i was able to run a ls for several years that had rarely ever had to deal with people complaining about favoritism or bias.

[lolwut]

when the ls has the right expectations, you are as productive as you want to be. and by doing so you help to further longevity because A. you keep all the people in the shell who understand the shell's goals and want to help meet them, and B. the people you're recruiting also understand and want to meet those goals. if you do sky, sea, salvage, znm but no king camping, no tiamat, etc. and you are explicitly clear about it, then as a result the people who do join (with those goals in mind) won't leave the shell based on the things you DON'T do.

in regards to fairness (and mostly just drops or allocation): being transparent with what you do is obviously extremely important. but beyond that, you have to constantly be reviewing and trying to improve your system, rather than just putting it into place and leaving it as is. there are sooooooo many ways to make a great allocation system, but it requires a lot of thinking and work and you should never stop trying to come up with ideas to make it better, because the smoother and more efficiently it runs, the fairer it is and the happier the ls is with it.

there's pretty much no system that will make everyone 100% happy and at some point in time, you're gonna have people griping over something. furthermore, new items and new events can cause ripples in the system you currently do have so just leaving it alone without intentions of periodic review will leave your systems antiquated. but if you're constantly thinking of new ideas and ways to make your system better, in the end items become more accurately allocated to the right people, and your members come out of it a whole lot better.

Please bring your shell to Asura and invite me. ;_;

[QuePsiXI]

no leaders with egirls

Well played.

[Kuwait-cafe]

^ best part of having a gay ls leader imo

what if he has a gay lover? i mean he could be hitting on one of you, and you don't even know it.

[Calintzpso]

I found in leadership, singling out a random person and shooting them in the back of the head execution style in front of everyone else tends to keep everyone in line.

I miss the era of Decimation rulings.

Rule like Branigan's Law. Hard, and Fast!

good example

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...vp20091006.png

Why sugar coat it with useless bickering when a problem arises.