League Membership / Card Voucher System

[Thompson]

So I pay membership dues... say 15, 20 bucks a month... who gets the money? How is the money used? How does the money go to assist event holders? I dont think anyone wants to finance a new load of gear or some chumps rent money just to play.. ya know?

[Chachi]

I would have no issue with paying for a membership if the benefit of paying is better game quality. As a thought to this Matt, I am a member of a couple of other forums that have a free membership that allow you access to most of the features of that forum. But to have full access (greater picture posting, better search capabilities, etc.) you can pay for a $20 annual membership. It helps supplement the cost of hosting and running the forum as well as sponsors events throughout the year. Could you tie something into AP that would work similar to that, as well as take care of a league membership fee? Also, are you ready to quit your day job and have AP be your only career? I would imagine that all of these steps and ideas that are talked about are really going to increase your efforts in all of this.

But again, I think even just having a yearly membership fee may weed out some of the hacks. Not all of course, because people with money can cheat too, but it may eliminate some of them.

[Tactical Church]

So would a low yearly cost league with monthly introduction meetings (possibly required for new members), membership cards, and some sort of liability insurance be worth it to you guys? I'd have to estimate out actual costs and get some quotes but I could imagine we could keep it really cheap.

I would be all for paying a yearly fee because i have full confidence that this system could work and also truly benefit our community.

Also i like KA-BAR's idea of the major and minor leagues. He brought up alot of good points and i think we should take those into consideration as well.

I think a membership is a really good idea. and we should do it

[Matt]

Forum incentives for members - good idea. I was already considering that as a given.

KA-BAR's idea is cool. When you put an organization like this in place with better records of membership, you can do things like split your folks into different groups based on age, completed training courses, etc. The sky is the limit. Say you want a qualify snipers? Somebody comes up with a great course for snipers, submits it to the league, we approve it... Then whenever somebody passes that they get a badge on the website or a patch for their uniform (or both) proving they have completed the course.

[El Diablo]

as for a APL or a leauge, i like the idea. its going to be hard work. i think it should be seperated like baseball. a major and minor leauge. alot of adults do not consider under age minors thier peers. they do not want to make friends and hang out with other peoples kids. the generation gap is way too huge. also alot of minors do not want to play with grumpy old men. if they do, there is something wrong with thier social radar.

If they did make this type of setup with "minor" and "major" leauges, would there be anyway to go to a major leauge OP being underage? You should be able to prove your worth and be able to move up and play in the "big leauges".

But I can see this going back to vouching for someone. Like "yeah he's cool he can play in this OP".

[Jester316]

This is getting to be very complicated.

Simple is better. You shazaam up, your name goes on a list (call it a "No Play" list). That list is available to event hosts (and can be updated after events). Seriousness of infraction determines length of stay on said list. Under 18 attendees must be overseen by someone over 18 who are known in the AP community. Under 18 earns a place on the list, so does the overseer.


From what I understand, the last time a "league" was implemented in this community, it went down faster than the Titanic. Being an unemployed college student, I find the idea of a "subscription" fee sickening. We already pay for event fees, consumables (bb's, propane, electricity), and gas to get to the games. Adding another fee on top of that would seriously hurt the members to love the game, but can't afford to keep up.

The other issue with the "league" concept is who can put on an event? How does it earn rating as major or minor? How will the games differ? We haven't had ANY games recently that I would classify as major league. So, before we can start going with what is major and minor, we need to get more games that we can even build a classification system.

Lets deal with one issue at a time, and the biggest one I see is the amount of persons who repeatedly show up to events and refuse to follow the rules, refuse to be safe, and who refuse to listen to the admins. A league won't address those issues. A list of those persons who are habitual hazards would.

[Thompson]

This is getting to be very complicated.

Simple is better. You f**k up, your name goes on a list (call it a "No Play" list). That list is available to event hosts (and can be updated after events). Seriousness of infraction determines length of stay on said list. Under 18 attendees must be overseen by someone over 18 who are known in the AP community. Under 18 earns a place on the list, so does the overseer.


From what I understand, the last time a "league" was implemented in this community, it went down faster than the Titanic. Being an unemployed college student, I find the idea of a "subscription" fee sickening. We already pay for event fees, consumables (bb's, propane, electricity), and gas to get to the games. Adding another fee on top of that would seriously hurt the members to love the game, but can't afford to keep up.

The other issue with the "league" concept is who can put on an event? How does it earn rating as major or minor? How will the games differ? We haven't had ANY games recently that I would classify as major league. So, before we can start going with what is major and minor, we need to get more games that we can even build a classification system.

Lets deal with one issue at a time, and the biggest one I see is the amount of persons who repeatedly show up to events and refuse to follow the rules, refuse to be safe, and who refuse to listen to the admins. A league won't address those issues. A list of those persons who are habitual hazards would.

*LIKE*... Oh wait... but I agree 100 percent.

[Falcon7]

I like the idea of training courses. A patch as a reward for completing a course should encourage noobs/newbs to go to said courses and learn something. Like what was being talked about earlier, there could be a basic safety/rules course that is required before going to OPs. If you cheat you have to take it again and everybody laughs at you.

[El Diablo]

If you cheat you have to take it again and everybody laughs at you.

I vote that pointing and laughing at hackers be mandatory

[SilentStalker]

More rules may not be the answer. We need to enforce the rules we have. If a player is selected as an admin they need to be sober during the game. We had this problem at the last game I attended. Admins need to enforce the rules of the game weather it is a friend or someone they can not stand. If that means putting their name on a public "Blacklist" so be it. If we as a group start a league then we need to know to the dollar where the money is going and how it is being spent. When you do this someone has to take charge of this and that gets time consuming or expensive.
I love the Idea of having required training but if someone makes an infraction and has to retrain how many time do you get to do diversion before you are asked to no longer come to events?
And then again you are adding rules that will need to be enforced. I ask again who will enforce these rules and maintain the list of infractions if not made on a public forum?
Good luck on figuring this out but I hope we can get it all worked out prior to my return to the field so I can get the proper credentials to play once I am back.
Happy Holidays to you all

[MillerSA15]

I think the league is good because if you screw up in the league you lose out on being able to play (red card style system), and if you screw up enough you are kicked out and you lose your money.

I think making some changes to how we deal with hackers is good, but I think a league type system would gain the community a lot of respect and exposure nation wide.

A simple system to implement now for the entire community (any game, any skirm, you catch a person that is just being an annoyance) that allows us to eliminate and discourage hacking is needed. That way the people that don't follow the rule even when it is just a fun skirm that doesn't matter can be dealt with. If you want to host a skirm with no rules and therefore there can't be hacking that is fine, but if you host an event and there is a person that can't follow the rules the community should be notified, so they can be avoided.

[Jester316]

I think the league is good because if you screw up in the league you lose out on being able to play (red card style system), and if you screw up enough you are kicked out and you lose your money.

I think making some changes to how we deal with hackers is good, but I think a league type system would gain the community a lot of respect and exposure nation wide.

A simple system to implement now for the entire community (any game, any skirm, you catch a person that is just being an annoyance) that allows us to eliminate and discourage hacking is needed. That way the people that don't follow the rule even when it is just a fun skirm that doesn't matter can be dealt with. If you want to host a skirm with no rules and therefore there can't be hacking that is fine, but if you host an event and there is a person that can't follow the rules the community should be notified, so they can be avoided.

Pheonix, I reference my post above. It's free, and just as effective.

[Matt]

Well, if you read my posts you'll notice I proposed 2 different models, one that's free and one that's commercial. There's pros and cons for both. I would call neither one sickening, they're just different. You get what you pay for.

FREE - I would envision this being a user group within AP that you can apply to join. To become part of this you have to volunteer more personal information, a home address, a phone number, maybe an emergency contact number. This data is only visible by admins and game promoters, not regular users. We have a merits/demerits system in place to dock points or give out points. Game promoters can say you have to be a member of the league to play with X amount of points, or however that works. Simple and free. We elect our own board of officials to overwatch this and make any decisions regarding exclusion or disciplinary action.

PAID - If you want to start talking about membership cards, umbrella insurance offerings for game hosts, regularly scheduled training events that aren't in some kid's back yard in lawn chairs, certifications with tabs or patches... There's $$$ involved. Unless you want to pay for it all yourself, it has to come from somewhere. And whether you like it or not, somebody is going to do this some day.

Jester - ONE STEP at a time is good advice. If there's need for a formal league in the future, we could always graduate from step 1 to step 2. I'm not trying to say we're gonna run out and set this up tomorrow, I'm just spit-balling some ideas around and getting some feedback.

[john boy]

League = gay. Remember we are a hobby and not a sport. We tried the league thing a few years ago. It got shit on hard by people in this community who for it now... Poor Nials...

No draft bs...

If we do anything, we should turn this community into an umbrella organization that has a board of directors of unit commanders. That way we can govern this community by setting up rules for it members and event hosts.
The dues will help cut insurance for Community events.

The No 5 RAC will take care of our minor recruits on our own...

[Eudorus]

Personally I won't join this scheme and I won't participate in games that require it.
Some of the "Most respected" members of this community are inveterate bullies and hackers. This would just be another mechanism for them to throw their weight around.