IMPORTANT!! CLAN MERGING (MUST READ)

Hey guys, I know we've been pacing slowly with our clan's build to going public, but something just came up that requires ALL of our feedback and honesty. So what exactly is so worthy of our attention? Well, we've been invited to merge with another clan, WiiScope, who appears to have a good war record and a total of 48 active members.

This could be good for us, but it could be bad, too. We'll have to move over to their site, but they'll allow us to use our site as a base of operations (for wars, etc)

I'm still going to have to negotiate to understand what our positions will be, but please give your input on the situation so far. I'll be back to update this later.

the merge sounds interesting.48 other members to kick it with sounds like one shell of a party. As long as i can find the site, im good with the whole merging situation

This could be good we can see new people, and meet new people instead of us playing eachother alot (Not that thats a bad thing or anything :p) But yeah ever heard the saying "Change is good"? Maybe you can grow and learn

It wouldnt hurt in my POV [Only admins are allowed to see this image]

Seeing that this is about Brawl clans and me not participating....I wonder what I'm doing here? I'll stay here and continue the miscellaneous topics that are already here. Chatting, talking about anime/games, art and doodling that's where I'm at. If the site stays good, if not I'm going down with it.....

To take the personal touch out of a clan is to take the fun away. Sure having a party with 100 people is fun. But having a party with 10 people you know very well is much better. Taking out the personal touch is basically like your "just another member". This creates a situation in which only officers and owners really matter. The rest are just cannon fodder.

"Go for it, run for it, dive in head-first, live life with no regrets..."

Personally, I like the idea of a ton more people. Think of it this way Con, more people to be better than. Larger communities are more fun, and it's much more of an accomplishment to make a name for yourself. Plus, we'll get to challenge other clans finally.
It will take some work though. Meeting the other clan and assimilating shouldn't be too hard though--just look at how fast everyone here got into this site. And, it's not like the site will die. It would be the base of operations for the wars and such, we may even be able to pull some clan tourneys over here. Who knows?
Either way, this probably won't be a bad thing.

I'd be happy with it MAYBE if we could get our own personal clan chat over there also. So we could at least talk without all the ogress (fancy for idiots) coming in and ruining our day. Because if you get 20+ people together theres going to be a healthy amount of idiots in it.

Conway wrote:

I'd be happy with it MAYBE if we could get our own personal clan chat over there also. So we could at least talk without all the ogress (fancy for idiots) coming in and ruining our day. Because if you get 20+ people together theres going to be a healthy amount of idiots in it.

It's true. There are a few people who seem alright, a few who probably think they're too good to brawl n00bs, and a few who just sit in there and don't do anything. There's also a large amount of random people who find their way in there, not to mention that "iSandbagU" guy, who is a totally worthless douchebag. At least he's not actually a member of that clan, just someone who randomly comes in there.
If all turns out well, we'll fit in and find a little niche. If not, I'll just leave and find somewhere else to go. Of course, I'll still come into our RD chat.
And hey, maybe we should not even join up, and just go public with RD. I really don't want to ruin a good thing, like the ability to hand-pick members ourselves. Taking RD public wouldn't guarantee more traffic, but at least we'd still be in control, whereas over at WiiScope we'll just have to go with the flow, and accept whatever their owner wants (although he seems like a pretty cool guy). There will definitely have to be some kind of negotiations as to our position over there, because I always want the ability to kick douchers from the chat.
Anyway, that's my current opinion. More walls of text are likely to appear as my opinion sways from one side to the other.

If we "get to" keep this site I don't see the significance. We could just as easily be members of both clans, it's not like it's hard to change tags every once in awhile. I don't see how they could force us to do anything except where it pertains to their site.

On the other hand, one of the main draws to this site for me is being able to associate with my SSBW friends. If I just wanted to brawl with numerous random folk I'd be on AiB now. So, if WiiScope draws ALL the remaining traffic out of this site, there's no longer any point to it . If not then it doesn't really make a difference, this place stays almost the same, and everyone makes more friends.

Also, technically I'm not sure if I'm even a legitimate member of RD since I haven't, and probably couldn't pass tryouts.

For what it's worth, I disagree with a merge. The main reason I came here is because this place was like a second, better, more interactive SSBW. By going over, yeah, it still would be, but it loses that personal feeling. Here we know everyone else, but with 60+ members, something like that would be impossible. I'd much rather stay small and brawl around here, unless the only time we'd truly be part of the larger community would be during a war or something.

Yeah, what about tryouts? I mean, it's not like I could pass them either, especially if we've still got to face off against Badger and Dusk...

Triforce Of Chozo wrote:

Conway wrote:

I'd be happy with it MAYBE if we could get our own personal clan chat over there also. So we could at least talk without all the ogress (fancy for idiots) coming in and ruining our day. Because if you get 20+ people together theres going to be a healthy amount of idiots in it.

It's true. There are a few people who seem alright, a few who probably think they're too good to brawl n00bs, and a few who just sit in there and don't do anything. There's also a large amount of random people who find their way in there, not to mention that "iSandbagU" guy, who is a totally worthless douchebag. At least he's not actually a member of that clan, just someone who randomly comes in there.
If all turns out well, we'll fit in and find a little niche. If not, I'll just leave and find somewhere else to go. Of course, I'll still come into our RD chat.
And hey, maybe we should not even join up, and just go public with RD. I really don't want to ruin a good thing, like the ability to hand-pick members ourselves. Taking RD public wouldn't guarantee more traffic, but at least we'd still be in control, whereas over at WiiScope we'll just have to go with the flow, and accept whatever their owner wants (although he seems like a pretty cool guy). There will definitely have to be some kind of negotiations as to our position over there, because I always want the ability to kick douchers from the chat.
Anyway, that's my current opinion. More walls of text are likely to appear as my opinion sways from one side to the other.

I'm starting to think we shouldn't do this...
1) This place is so awesome because we pick who is here and there it is random people that aren't as awesome as us. xD
2) Is the fact that we wouldn't have control over things like we do here
3)Their big community isn't as well built as our little one with only 24 members

Overall our little place we have here has WAY more potential then Wiiscope.

Alrighty, so, have y'all even Brawled these guys? -w- Maybe it's 10% Elite, 90% Buttnuggets. >w>

I've always loved small groups rather than large. That's the reason I joined this clan...it's private and we all know each other. As Conway said, we'll be "'just another member'" if we join a big group like that. I don't want to see this clan fall apart into a big pool of strangers. T~T

I say we stay. ^w^

Here's something I want to make sure you people keep in mind before choosing - think about what their motives are. We got this request out of the blue at such a random time with no warning that it seems a bit ethereal. What do I mean? Well, we could just be, as conway said, "fodder" for this clan. Here's a list of things to keep in mind:

• We've never met this clan, nor have we heard of them or brawled them, and vice versa
  
• 48 members is the number of users who have ever logged on.
  
• The chat seems inactive when I visited, and the people there are a bit... afk... constantly
  
• The forum has a lot of subparr threads. No offense personally to them, but even our non-playing members seem a bit more knowledgeable on relaying the subject manner
  
• I've been offered to be the owner of the chat, but... I haven't heard of any special privileges for us if we joined and dropped our clan
  
• Most important thing to remember: we may just be a last-resort to reactivate a clan that is dying. We should never sell ourselves out if we think we'll be tossed aside at the end.
  
• We seem to run ourselves very smoothly, and we have stayed active longer than $$B could've handled under these situations.
  

So... my personal opinion is to stay here. Nothing is going wrong, so don't fix what isn't broken. We shouldn't be the support of a group if we can be the group itself. The only time I think we'd NEED to merge is if we fell apart as a community. And, I hope you'll all agree, we're far from falling apart.

I believe I've come full-circle on the topic. I started out by looking at all of the reasons to join, and I thought "Hey, this is pretty good." And then as I looked a bit harder, I realized that those reasons themselves were pretty thin. Active clan? They only look like it--there wasn't a lot of activity going on in there, just people sitting around. Granted, they were all watching the NBA Finals, but still... I've been over there before, and it wasn't all that impressive.
I thought that more members would mean more forum activity, but it turns out only about four or five people actually do something over there, and out of those I didn't really see any putting forth anything worthwhile. I started out over there by telling them I beat a guy (Heavy, from THB) in MK dittos to see what they would say. I immediately had to throw up my flame shield. Not very welcoming in my opinion, considering they wanted us to join. Not to mention the fact that they just let any random guy stick around, even if they're a complete douche (go look for "iSandbagU"). Badger started brawling a few of them (some of the suckier ones I hope), and not only were they mediocre--they had horrible connections. Now, I know in a larger place, the maximum and minimum values are likely to be much wider than in a small place, but I don't know what we would do if we got stuck just playing with scrubs over there, since we would be new and none of the worthwhile people would know us.
So, I decided it was time to come back to RD and make comparisons. The first thing to note is the range of intelligenc: Ours is above average, and I would be surprised to find out we have any members that couldn't read something more advanced than Goosebumps. As far as I can tell, all of RD has potential and strives to improve, whereas the people I saw playing Badger last night were pretty much maxed out at a level below any of ours. That's not to say that they aren't a good clan with good, quality people in it, but just like any larger place that tries to recruit anyone that plays, there's bound to be quite a few that just aren't worth our time. I like how we basically take the pick-of-the-litter as far as the kinds of people we invite over. To compare it to Pokemon, say that WiiScope is that guy who just goes around catching everything he sees, hoping that at some point he'll get something good. You know, that guy who eventually fills his team with those lv 44 Fearows from Route 22 and lv 45 Gravellers from Victory Road. RD, on the other hand, is the trainer that only catches Pokemon he likes, and ones with potential. He then proceeds to train up his smaller crew, and they grow together, eventually beating out that guy who just grabs everything and then uses the strongest.
Another thing I noticed was the difference in sites. While ours has a cool look, thanks to Dusk, theirs is just the basic format, with a plain logo up top. This reinforces the idea of the personal touch. Our site is more like a home, and we feel comfortable in it. Theirs is just a hull that they occupy and use to meet. What other site would make a gallery section for Moemon, or have someone go through and post videos in every character chat section, or still hang out and have good conversations about anything and everything, even when not Brawling? A site with a small group of people who have gotten to know each other, and have fun with each other. A place where you can brawl anyone and not care about winning or losing, just having fun. That place has turned out to be RD.
TL;DR version: RD has that personal touch that can't be matched by any other site.

This merger has pretty much jumped the shark at this point. While the idea was exciting and new at first, I've come to realize that even if we were to merge with someone, we could do a hell of a lot better. Our site isn't ever going to die, only grow larger and stronger as slowly but surely we find more worthwhile people to invite in.
Now, I'm still all for going public with the clan. The site can still be kind of secret (at least, to those who don't know how to google), but the main thing is that we should get out and play some other clans. We don't have to war or anything, but maybe have interclan tournaments and such. Fun, competitive events that people won't take too seriously. Whew, that's my two cents. I'll hold off on writing any more right now, since the matter is probably nearly decided. Just take a look at my posts in order, and see if you can agree with my reasoning process--go all for one idea, go back to the other idea, and compare the two. I think you'll agree that we should in fact not merge with anyone.

Thanks for the inspirational words, Chozo, but you're a bit late to the party on changing.

I already declined the offer

Dexter seemed a bit impatient to wait, or maybe he just needed a quick answer. At the time, I'd tallied up the votes at around 2 more votes against than for. Now, whether or not anyone has changed their minds, we've already passed, so just forget about changing sites.

If you want to play other people from other clans, that's all good and fine, but always keep cautious. I don't need to warn you of the dangers, thanks to Chozo and the experience many of you may have faced at AiB. WE manage to get new players in our chat more frequently recently, and we could always just go to new places and ask for some games there, without the problem of having to abandon RD (which I wouldn't do anyway, I spent about a half-year working on this site).

I don't know how many of you remember, but the first day we made this site, it looked infinitely different. We've survived for a long time under such a small number of people, and that itself has reaped its own rewards. You say playing our own team doesn't make us better? Not true. I can recall the day we started, and we've vastly improved as players from that day. And unlike most clans that want the quick and easy way, I'm willing to train and play against those who are here, improving them slowly but surely. I've never been a huge fan of the "go out, find some amazing player, recruit them" tactic. When we've got people right here who are willing to improve, and stay on the site and chat with us, that's ALWAYS better than picking out some random person that plays well, but has no connection with us whatsoever (I'll put Harvest as an example for this). We have, here at RD, fun people who want us to succeed, who want to help, who want to have fun, and want to have fun with friends. I'm never giving that up for some shallow profits.

AngryBadger wrote:

1) This place is so awesome because we pick who is here and there it is random people that aren't as awesome as us. xD

No one is as awesome as me.

Triforce Of Chozo wrote:

I believe I've come full-circle on the topic. I started out by looking at all of the reasons to join, and I thought "Hey, this is pretty good." And then as I looked a bit harder, I realized that those reasons themselves were pretty thin. Active clan? They only look like it--there wasn't a lot of activity going on in there, just people sitting around. Granted, they were all watching the NBA Finals, but still... I've been over there before, and it wasn't all that impressive.
I thought that more members would mean more forum activity, but it turns out only about four or five people actually do something over there, and out of those I didn't really see any putting forth anything worthwhile. I started out over there by telling them I beat a guy (Heavy, from THB) in MK dittos to see what they would say. I immediately had to throw up my flame shield. Not very welcoming in my opinion, considering they wanted us to join. Not to mention the fact that they just let any random guy stick around, even if they're a complete douche (go look for "iSandbagU"). Badger started brawling a few of them (some of the suckier ones I hope), and not only were they mediocre--they had horrible connections. Now, I know in a larger place, the maximum and minimum values are likely to be much wider than in a small place, but I don't know what we would do if we got stuck just playing with scrubs over there, since we would be new and none of the worthwhile people would know us.
So, I decided it was time to come back to RD and make comparisons. The first thing to note is the range of intelligenc: Ours is above average, and I would be surprised to find out we have any members that couldn't read something more advanced than Goosebumps. As far as I can tell, all of RD has potential and strives to improve, whereas the people I saw playing Badger last night were pretty much maxed out at a level below any of ours. That's not to say that they aren't a good clan with good, quality people in it, but just like any larger place that tries to recruit anyone that plays, there's bound to be quite a few that just aren't worth our time. I like how we basically take the pick-of-the-litter as far as the kinds of people we invite over. To compare it to Pokemon, say that WiiScope is that guy who just goes around catching everything he sees, hoping that at some point he'll get something good. You know, that guy who eventually fills his team with those lv 44 Fearows from Route 22 and lv 45 Gravellers from Victory Road. RD, on the other hand, is the trainer that only catches Pokemon he likes, and ones with potential. He then proceeds to train up his smaller crew, and they grow together, eventually beating out that guy who just grabs everything and then uses the strongest.
Another thing I noticed was the difference in sites. While ours has a cool look, thanks to Dusk, theirs is just the basic format, with a plain logo up top. This reinforces the idea of the personal touch. Our site is more like a home, and we feel comfortable in it. Theirs is just a hull that they occupy and use to meet. What other site would make a gallery section for Moemon, or have someone go through and post videos in every character chat section, or still hang out and have good conversations about anything and everything, even when not Brawling? A site with a small group of people who have gotten to know each other, and have fun with each other. A place where you can brawl anyone and not care about winning or losing, just having fun. That place has turned out to be RD.
TL;DR version: RD has that personal touch that can't be matched by any other site.

This merger has pretty much jumped the shark at this point. While the idea was exciting and new at first, I've come to realize that even if we were to merge with someone, we could do a hell of a lot better. Our site isn't ever going to die, only grow larger and stronger as slowly but surely we find more worthwhile people to invite in.
Now, I'm still all for going public with the clan. The site can still be kind of secret (at least, to those who don't know how to google), but the main thing is that we should get out and play some other clans. We don't have to war or anything, but maybe have interclan tournaments and such. Fun, competitive events that people won't take too seriously. Whew, that's my two cents. I'll hold off on writing any more right now, since the matter is probably nearly decided. Just take a look at my posts in order, and see if you can agree with my reasoning process--go all for one idea, go back to the other idea, and compare the two. I think you'll agree that we should in fact not merge with anyone.

-clap clap clap-