[MRP] Removal of Reserves

[Reynolds 69]

PREFACE 
WARNING! This suggestion will be very controversial, and I humbly request that you read through the entire suggestion before dropping a -1 "wahh i luv my reserves fuk u reynol" and maybe actually take the time to fully comprehend what I am about to say, and really view this in the light of what's best for the server and not for yourself.

Introduction

Currently, as it stands, the reserve system in MRP works like this. A player works towards an officer position in a faction, and once the rank of 2LT+ is achieved, the player has the option to apply for reserves. The reserves were initially made to create an extended LOA for players who did not have enough time to commit to the role of officer in their faction, but still looked forward to joining back in the future. However, that function is non existent today, as it is essentially abused by players in various different ways. Here, I will outline and present all the ways of which the current reserves system is being abused.
 

1. Faction Hopping / Country Swapping

Probably the function in the reserves system that is most exploited today, is the use of reserves to join a different faction or swap countries. A function that even I am guilty of doing, the entire premise is that players typically apply for reserves in the hopes to leave their current faction to join a different faction on another country or even on the same country. This function is bad because players often apply for reserves in their current faction to retain certain weapons and equipment to use during wartime. An example of this would be a TSFU player reaching the rank of 2LT, and immediately applying for reserves to then join 313. This player will now have access to all of the TSFU classes, as well as the equipment they now have in 313. This player in question, is what I am today. To put it very bluntly, I originally applied for reserves as a new player solely to have access to the TSFU Bomber WL as well as the various weapons they have. In all honesty, to this day I only go on TSFU reserves to raid the US with bomber and to get feeds as well as to use the other good weapons. This was when I was a new player, and in hindsight this is what I saw the function of the reserve system to be and I can guarantee you many players see the reserve system in this same light. There can be varying arguments to this function, however in totality it can be agreed that this purpose was not intended for what the reserves system was envisioned to be from the beginning, and is a clear exploitation of the system. Giving a player free access to all the classes of a faction of which they actively contribute nothing to is not good.

     2. Retainment of Officer Abilities

This point bridges off of the concept I mentioned previously, but essentially another motive for applying for reserves would be to retain the abilities of an officer while being enlisted somewhere else. As it stands, the 2LTR rank contains exactly all the powers a 2LT would have, which includes but is not limited to Raiding, Kidnapping, War-Leading, Overruling Objectives in WL, Spawning in vehicles, Arresting people and Access to Restricted areas. These officer abilities can be had at any time by people with reserves simply by switching to the faction class, and adding 2LTR to their name. Now, this player has access to all officer powers without having to contribute to anything. This point is not dismissing whatever hard work the player has done to achieve the reserves, however this is just a copout for some lazy players who want to get to the officer position of a faction without putting in anymore work for that specific faction.

    3. Player Boredom / Disinterest

Another point is that players will inevitably get bored of the server and lose interest, thus leading to them applying for reserves to return back later. This point is more nuanced, as it can be very arguable depending on how you view it. Yes, the reserves are beneficial in the aspect that burnt out players can return whenever they want, and always leaves the door open for potential returning players. However, a counter-argument can be made that if players truly wanted to return back from where they left off, they would be willing to go through the enlisted process again to fully fulfill the officer grind. To add on, players will be hanging onto reserves for months on end, sometimes years, and leads to them not knowing the current state of the server, players, or even the state of the faction they were in (i.e. faction changes, leadership changes, weapon changes etc.). These players should have to restart and go through the enlisted process again. The reason why is for one, these players would not be up to par skill-wise and may not be playing at whatever tier level they were once at. It is pretty apparent that old returning players do not retain their skill from, and thus these players should attempt to play the server more to regain their old skill to match that of what the current skill-level is at that present moment. Also, returning players would no longer be up to par leadership wise as they may be out of touch with the current community as well as its player-base. A player with reserves from 2019 returning tomorrow would most likely not know majority of the player-base, as well as not being aware of anyone in their current faction. Having an officer who is completely out of touch with their own faction is not ideal in any scenario. If players simply go onto reserves solely from disinterest of the server, this defeats the original idea of reserves which was to essentially create an extended LOA for players who ARE looking to return back to the server. It is very obvious a player who expresses the fact that they are bored with the server and say that they may come back when it becomes more fun, will have a much lower chance of actually returning compared to someone who is merely taking a break because of a circumstance like college or traveling.

    4. Social Aspects of Reserves

This point will be very opinionated, and this is simply my stance on what reserves are today. The current process of reserves being approved is through a staff vote in which members from the staff team (and even GM's) get to collectively vote if a player should or should not receive reserves. Now, this point will not be based around the previous idea to give the system of reserve decisions back to faction leaders, as even that idea has the same flaws of what a staff team has. Essentially, no matter where you place decisions of the reserves whether it be leader-chosen reserves, staff votes, COLs only, officers only etc. it does not solve the issues or points that I outlined above. What all these decision types have in common, is that essentially what you get out of every single one is a popularity contest. There will almost always be room for bias when it comes to the decision to give someone reserves, and in this due process there is no way to avoid it. There are many flawed factors that are in effect in the reserve vote decisions, whether it be:
 

• OOC Actions
• In-Game RP Interactions
• War Playstyle
• Community Popularity
• Connection to Staff / Executive Team
• Veteran Status

 

All of these factors can greatly impede a player's access to their reserves, and one place this factor comes into play is veteran status. It is no secret that because of how much novelty and credit some veterans have, they will have a much easier time to earn reserves without having to put in as nearly as much work compared to new players who may find difficulty in garnering and overcoming some of the factors mentioned above. Any veteran who plays for a month will likely already have a good connection to the staff team and even executives, and do not have to worry about other factors such as community popularity as they quite literally spawn with it as soon as they return. Now for a new player, they now have the challenge of going out of their way to get good credibility amongst everyone in the server and staff team. One factor that I intentionally left out in the list above, is activity. Now here, this where the voting really gets skewed. Probably the first factor a staff member has when they see a new poll for a reserve is the player's activity. From the staff member's perspective, the only sense of activity that they can view is all the interactions they see the player have in game (Training, Tryouts, Playing War etc.) or forum posts. Now, when you introduce the concept of certain players being active in hours that some staff aren't active, it can seem to some staff members that a certain player is not active simply because they are never on when that player happens to be on. This staff member decision is then taken, under the pretense that "oh i never see him on -1" and collectively this can lead to someone's reserves getting denied. I do not need to point out the flaw in this system, as it is very clear how it is flawed. It is a whole different discussion when members of Admin+ go into certain faction activity channels and make their decision off of a players activity objectively, however for most decisions a staff member will -1 solely because they never see someone on.


Conclusion

Now, as you have seen I have outlined how the entire reserve system is flawed, and should be removed entirely. Obviously if these steps were taken as soon as soon as this post went live, there would have to be some actions to take before you completely delete all reserves. First of all, with the community wide announcement that reserves would be removed there should be a grace period anywhere between a week or a month for all players to come off reserves if they would like. Ideally, this announcement should be made so veteran players who are not in touch with the community hear of this, and can choose to return to the server. Many of the players who may disagree with the idea of reserves being removed may be entitled due to them likely having reserves themselves. A large majority of the time, the reason cited by them is that "players would be angry". While this might be true, a grace period would help aid this situation. Additionally, if the same logic applied to everything on the server, we would have poor leaders, as nobody would get removed. This logic is flawed, and should not be applied to this suggestion.

- Reynolds

[Draco_ 223]

 

+1 kinda 
The reserves system, to me at least, is supposed to be something for players to come back to the server with. Not something that an active player should have. The current state, as you state, allows for players, including me, to just sit on reserves while still actively playing. Even being on reserves I still have all the capabilities of a normal officer. 

This might spark some controversy with active players, but aren't reserves supposed to be for reserve players? Not active ones.

But in contrast, the reserves system shouldn't be removed entirely. It should be removed for active players. Meaning that if a player leaves a faction to go to another one, they should not be granted reserves. Also, players who currently have reserves that haven't been active on the server should be able to keep them (active meaning that they play more than a couple of wars a week).

[Dillan 750]

-1 on my beliefs. Reserves is a privlage that was granted years ago to people with merit, time, or connections. Anyone who is or was an officer knows that you need to put in effort typically to earn officer, and at some point real life catches up, or burnout clicks in. 

Reserves used to be even better for those players, reaching all the way to COL and LTCOL ranks. I was one of the people who had Reserves in more then 3 factions in those days. 

That's my bias regarding it, the useful aspect is diffrent. It's helpful for 3 reasons, when someone wants to come back in a more useful role, they have instant access, another manpower resource. During war balances, you have access to all your equipment, not just entry level equipment. It draws old blood back on occasion, which is helpful when we want pop to go up. 

Reynolds you got to keep you Reserves because you deserved them, not everyone does. That's why the staff team and as you said "even GMs" vote on viability regarding them.

[Ziggy 1,353]

13 minutes ago, Dillan said:

Reserves is a privlage that was granted years ago to people with merit, time, or connections. 

This is insane cap out of you considering you did play back then. Reserves were not a reward in the past, they were used for people who needed to be absent from the server for longer than a reasonable LOA length. You know that 

[Dillan 750]

6 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

This is insane cap out of you considering you did play back then. Reserves were not a reward in the past, they were used for people who needed to be absent from the server for longer than a reasonable LOA length. You know that 

If you resigned from a high rank, and weren't hated, you got reserves every single time. Just look at army, they had a 012 rank for one of them. I know they were a reward, I got them from everyone even if I didn't work that hard. No oversight.

[Ziggy 1,353]

9 minutes ago, Dillan said:

If you resigned from a high rank, and weren't hated, you got reserves every single time. Just look at army, they had a 012 rank for one of them. I know they were a reward, I got them from everyone even if I didn't work that hard. No oversight.

Not sure what y’all had going on over there on US if this is true. For Afghan, the same can’t be said. It did happen sometimes don’t get me wrong, but we definitely didn’t have factions with an upwards of 30+ reserve players like we do now.

[Papamid 42]

-1
I see where you are going with this but I believe that this may not be the way to go. Maybe we should take a closer look at who we let get reserves. As staff we could start denying peoples reserve requests for those who instantly got to the rank of 2LT and want reserves to go somewhere else, if we feel as if that player did not contribute enough to both the base faction and their own faction before leaving they should not get reserves, it should not be a popularity contest to see if a person gets reserves. Additionally, we can look to our COLs to deny someones initial reserve request if they think that that person wont come back or if they don't think that person did enough for the faction to warrant a reserve request.

I do like your idea, and think we could shift it over to going through our reserve rosters that we have for every faction and remove people that A. have not been on in a while (something staff can come to an agreement on what "a while" means ) and B. remove the reserve title of those that have recently got it based on what they did for their faction during their time as an SNCO, WO, and Officer (again this would be up to the staff to go through each factions activity logs and ask the COLs of how active they were).

I think the idea of having reserves is a good thing for the server as people do lose interest and want to take a break, but to outright take away someones rank that they achieved, especially  if they put a lot of hard work into maintaining and managing their faction, is quite messed up. While I did say it a good thing for the server it does have its problems which is why I gave some possible solutions, thank you.

[JackJJ 498]

-1 I can see both sides of the argument very well. However, I can not in good conscience +1 a removal of one of the server's most rewarding factors. Many players I've encountered grind through enlisted and officer ranks for the main reason of achieving reserves. These players boost the server's population which is one of the server's biggest problems right now, if not the biggest. They contribute to the population heavily through their own existence on the server as well as their ability to retain base faction and others through tryouts, trainings, and activities. You could argue that this is a lame reason to contribute towards a faction, but this is just reality. If this reward was removed, many players (including myself) would have no desire to join any factions, do activities, or even remain active on the server as we can have more fun in other ways and we can fight in war using donor weapons. I personally enjoy having reserves because they represent the place that I used to hold in the faction. Class weapons, officer permissions, etc. are secondary to me and not as important as the literal proof that I used to exist on the server, and that I contributed enough to a faction to gain an officer rank and reserves. If reserves truly need to be removed or changed for the greater good of the server, overruling the fact that the server population could drop heavily from it, then I'm all for it. But personally, this just doesn't seem like something the server needs right now, as I can see way more bad coming from a change like this than good. Personally speaking, I haven't noticed much of anything that I would consider abuse of reserves, but what I have noticed is a HUGE drop in server population over the years, and it would pain me to see this trend accelerate even faster than it already is, killing the server sooner than it already would've died.

TL;DR: I'm wary about removing one of the server's most significant rewarding factors (reserves) due to the possiblity of losing even more of our average server population resulting from this event.

[Arma 3]

-1 People play the sever and help build on it and their hard work would go away. I could see maybe lowering the power of reserves so its not equal to a 2nd LT but removing it.  Also, it might deter people from playing the sever because reserves are a big part and reward from the officer grind. 

[Smity_ 257]

5 hours ago, Draco_ said:

But in contrast, the reserves system shouldn't be removed entirely. It should be removed for active players. Meaning that if a player leaves a faction to go to another one, they should not be granted reserves. Also, players who currently have reserves that haven't been active on the server should be able to keep them (active meaning that they play more than a couple of wars a week).

I completely agree. Which I would recommend something like players can't use the whitelists on Reserves and when applying for reserves they should have a reason for example: I'm getting deployed for 9 months or moving for work. 
I think that would remove the issue of Officer abilities and make it more likely to comeback to help the faction. Instead of the imma use these for war thats it. 

Even though the purpose wasn't supposed to be a reward thats what it became to be. With what mentioned above that would fix that. 

With that we should remove those that have had reserves for maybe 1 year or even 6 months as they should have either came off of them or not, otherwise have them removed.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Smity_

[xFish 394]

Gonna weigh in my two cents as a non MRP main, @Reynolds you laid out a beautiful argument that somehow I enjoyed reading even though I'm not sure how I got here. 
I do agree with @Draco_  though as it should just be for non-active players of the server (people gone for more than a month or two etc.). Again though, I'm basing all my info off of what I've read in this post and all the comments on it.

+1 lol

[SailorDef 26]

I disagree with completely removing reserves but I feel a change is necessary. Many people who join SOC factions/base faction officers stay just for the promise of "you can come back whenever" instead of events. Reserves are kind of a reward to show that someone made a difference and put in the time and effort. I feel taking that away would be demoralizing to people who want the option to try different factions without something to fall back on. To some it may look like there's no point in trying to put in the time and effort to the server and could eventually hurt the server pop. I do thing the reserves needs a change. Maybe make it more difficult to get them. Maybe change how long someone can hold onto reserves.

-1

[Smity_ 257]

Just now, SailorDef said:

Maybe make it more difficult to get them. Maybe change how long someone can hold onto reserves.

-1

I like this, This is what I feel about them also. I think something should change about them instead of completely removing them.

[PraetorDon 485]

Just be more selective on who gets reserves.

GEN Ranks for Base, top 3 for SOC. 2LT's should NOT be getting reserves unless there is extenuating circumstances (deployment/medical). It doesn't take a particularly long time to climb to O-1, and in reality, you aren't contributing all that much as a 2LT anyway. (Training/Tryouts is something most people can do). Only exception would be for a leader's Reserves, but generally if they didn't completely fuck the faction, then they should be granted.

Removing reserves entirely is a shotgun method when in reality the issue could be solved by the above going forward, and removing reserves from individuals who are not using them properly on a case by case basis as of now.

Criteria for removing reserves would be a faction leader decision imo, not a staff one. Makes for better leaders. I don't expect the majority of US staff to know what is going on in Tali and vice versa. That being said, prepare to justify your decision for removing someone's reserves. 

This is just a general idea, there will always be exceptions to all of the above.

I am very much for putting power back into the playerbase, and having staff observing, if that helps on what I'm trying to get at here. Strong Leaders = Strong Factions.

[Vibe 1,088]

-1 Garnet times incoming