Clan Spotlight: [ESPRT] 1/26/2015

veganzombiez: Tankers!   It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s ESPRT!  This week’s Clan Spotlight shines on ESPRT, an up-and-coming clan that leapt into the Top 10 in the Clan Wars Third Campaign.  ESPRT has earned respect for their strength, their professionalism, and their values.  They’re ESPRT, and they can do anything.   Inchon – Commander, handles recruiting and any personnel issues, or anything that comes up. Bulldog1986 – Executive Officer, Head of the Diplomatic Section. Bolt_Upright – Executive Officer, Head of Operations. Black_8 – Personnel Officer, essentially Bolt_Upright’s right hand man. Brutalas – Private, conducts evaluations.   When and how did -Esprit De Corps- form, and how did you come up with the name? Inchon: A lot of us are former military, or had this connection of the idea of friendship, camaraderie, and bonds that last regardless of name, and when we were all at our other respective communities, everybody kind of was like, “How’s everything going over there?” “Eh, not so good, could be better.”  We wanted to try to take all those “could be betters” and actually execute it.  The term esprit de corps is used a lot in the American military to mean the morale of a unit. Every time that we get asked if we’re French, we’re… we’re not French, but that’s where the name came from.   The online definition of esprit de corps is, “A feeling of pride, fellowship, and common loyalty shared between the members of a group.”  Is that what you hope to accomplish?   Bulldog1986: Yeah, and that’s actually one of the things we have on our clan application.  We give them the definition from Webster’s and we actually ask them, “What does it mean to you?” That helps us judge whether they’d be a good fit for our community.   It seems like you have this bond of fellowship and common spirit amongst everybody.  Could you describe the environment within -Esprit De Corps-? Bulldog1986: Inchon likes to describe it as “the local bar.”  It’s just an easygoing environment.  You can jump into a channel and be rest assured that you’re going to be with another group of guys that have the same kind of mentality that you do and the same skill level.   Brutalas: I agree with that very intensely, and so recruits not only need to be at a certain skill level, but they also have to actually have the social ability skills that we’re looking for.  Similar to any company’s job interview, you’d want the people you’re going to have working there be very similar to your coworkers around you.  We want that sort of attitude and mentality within the clan for people to get along, so we don’t have very many issues, and since everybody is very like-minded, we all have bonded together.   Inchon: Going back to the bar mentality, I kinda see online gaming as 3 different choices: you have going out on a Friday night, you go to your club where you get big flashy names getting all dressed up and showing off, see who’s got the prettiest girl, the biggest car, things of that nature.  On the flip side, you got the dive bar where you’re going to go drink some cheap beer and get rowdy.   Bolt_Upright: With the biggest girl.   (laughter)   That’s in the interview.   Inchon: That is in the… that is… oooh, we can cut that part out, right? Or we could leave that… is there gonna be a blooper reel?   No, that’s going straight in.   (laughter)   Bulldog1986: That actually goes along with one of the mottos that I actually created for the clan: “We’re professionals, we’re not prudes,” so…   Inchon: Yeah exactly.  That place where you go Friday night after work where you really feel like it’s your home, and you’re going to be around people you like.  You’re there to relax, have a good time, and drink good beer, some good whiskey, that kind of environment.  Go ahead, Bolt.   Bolt_Upright: (chuckles) Sorry, couldn’t resist.   Inchon: I know you can’t resist the fat girls.   Bolt_Upright: You know it.   It’s all about the bass.   (raucous laughter)   Bolt_Upright: Fat bottomed girls make the – what is it, rocking world go round?  It’s a group of mature, like-minded guys.  They’re all grounded with realistic expectations that are set from up top and they’re embraced all the way to the bottom.   They’re basically quiet, efficient, lunch pail types and I don’t have to worry about these guys going off on the forums and causing all kinds of issues, and I like that.  Personally, I haven’t experienced such palpable electricity within a clan since the very early days after we formed FORGE years ago.  It was the same atmosphere right before FORGE took off like a rocket, and it’s the same here in ESPRT.   Inchon: So to let you know the environment, there are two things that Bolt’s going to poke fun at: I do not call this a clan, I call this a community.  To me, people join clans and they leave clans.  When a person becomes a member of a community, regardless of if they leave the game or come back to the game, they’re always going to be a member of that community.   Does ESPRT have any interesting traditions? Inchon: Everybody that joins is immediately introduced to everybody that’s online.  That’s one tradition that we started ever since we were small and carried out even to when we’ve been at max members.  When someone accepts, we pull everybody into a Teamspeak channel.  Whoever evaluated him says, “Hey, this guy is really good at mediums.  If we notice him in battle, he’s from Wisconsin, but he hates Green Bay,” you know, kinda something of that nature.   Bulldog1986: Negative.   Hypnotik: I would like that person.   Bulldog1986: No, no, I do like Green Bay, so let’s just get that clear right now–   ([bulldog1986] was moved out of the channel)   Everyone: Wooooooow! (extremely raucous laughter)   ([bulldog1986] has joined the channel)   Hypnotik: Go Bears!   Inchon: You find something out about a recruit and say, “Hey, if you’re ever looking for somebody who really knows how to abuse the Leo 1, check this guy out.”  Everybody welcomes him in, and it really gets that quick absorption to the community.  It’s so you don’t just get an invite and have to go find your own way.  I would say that’s one tradition that we started that really, really has an impact.  Bolt has a tradition that we always look forward to before the beginning of any match.   Bolt_Upright: I… I don’t know what you’re talking about…   (giggles)   Bulldog1986: It’s even in his Teamspeak description.   Bolt_Upright: We’re not allowed to use such language here.   (more giggles)   Yeah, you can.  We can always edit it if we have to.   Bolt_Upright: So we go into a match, I make sure to tell my guys to make sure they don’t screw this up.   Bulldog1986: That is before every single match.   Bolt_Upright: Good luck and don’t screw this up, which usually makes them all worry that they’re going to screw it up.  Except for that Ruin match where I actually told the guy that he was going to screw it up, and sure enough, out of the 15 guys, he was the one that screwed it up.   Inchon: It’s like the Airplane character that plays the doctor, when he comes in multiple times, “We’re all counting on you.”  Bolt would just pop into channels beforehand, after he gets the battles organized, and give those words of encouragement.   Bolt_Upright: In the campaign, I’ve poked every 30 people in two battles after I’ve sent them on their way.   Bulldog1986: What Inchon didn’t actually expand on, when he does introduce people in the Teamspeak, he literally gets a new member and he pulls everybody from different channels into the same channel.  What he doesn’t do is keep track of where everybody goes, so when he’s done introducing a member, he basically tells them, “Oops, all right, you gotta find your own way back because I don’t remember.”   Inchon: It might be a brief sobriety check because when I’m sober, I can normally remember.  If I’m pretty much, you know, couple glasses of whiskey into the night, it’s… it’s not pretty.   (laughter)   Inchon: It’s finding that balance of players that when you are not faced with a challenge.  We have real lives, we have careers, we have families, and we have mortgages.  We just want everyone relaxed, to find a way to drink a beer and have some fun.  On the flip side, we want to play this game at a very high level, so when we go to a challenge, we want to be able to be prepared for that challenge and face it  with as much  attention and detail as we can.  It’s really hard to find that balance of players that can, almost like a switch, have it to where they can relax, they can laugh about a loss, you know, they can enjoy the game for what is a game, but when it comes to challenge, they’re going to pull out that competitive level.   What was your first Clan Wars battle like as ESPRT? Inchon: We first got our feet wet in the DOS engagement.  Bulldog, you want to answer that?   Bulldog1986: Yeah, we were looking to test ourselves against a clan that was very well known on the map, but didn’t have a lot of diplomatic ties.  We were still up and coming at that time, and we knew that if we attacked a clan that had a lot diplomatic ties, we would bring a rainstorm down upon us that we wouldn’t be able to handle.  We attacked DOS because they are very solid, and we were able to come out victorious and eventually map them.  That was actually right before the campaigns, so it didn’t last too long.   Inchon: I think that the timing of us forming was just right to attack DOS.  This would let us see how we would actually execute Clan Wars, and Bolt and Black set up a very unique organizational system.  During the campaign, there was structure, and it helped us reach top ten in the campaign.   What was the source of your success in the [3rd] campaign? Inchon:  I would say Bolt’s organization.  Bolt, if you want to go ahead and expand on this one.   Bolt_Upright: It was basically people not screwing up.  I typically try to avoid forums unless I have a reason to read them, and on the occasions I went there, I saw a bunch of people from other clans complaining about the ruthlessness and the infighting and the backbiting and all the stuff that was going on over Fame Points.  We didn’t have any of that, so it was a lot easier for us.  Early on, some people questioned it, but then they just trusted in the process.  Every single day, we reassessed who needed points.  In the final week, players would just come to me while the callers gave me their team comp, and I’d grab the players for them.  To me, the greatest accomplishment wasn’t that everybody who wanted a tank got one, but that we didn’t have all the complaints.   Inchon: Our success came from the delegation of tasks.  Our battle callers could literally focus only on calling battles.  They gave a line up, and Bolt and Black would match it with players who wanted the tank.  We also have a “strategy cell”, where players can hop in a training room and say, “Here’s this strategy that we designed and tested.  What do you think?”  And due to our standards in recruiting, we don’t have an A-team, a B-team, or a C-team; we know anybody in the community will perform at a high level.  Brutalas, coming from the non-officer staff through the campaign, anything else that you saw that led to our success?   Brutalas: I would definitely say that the organization played a key role in it, but like Bolt said, it came down to the fact that nobody really complained that they still needed points.  By the end, everybody who actually wanted a tank got a tank.  We didn’t really care about being Top 3, but got to Top 10 anyway just to get some extra nice bonus gold.  We mostly focused just getting everybody the tank, so it was a very wonderful experience.   Bolt_Upright: Another way I organize stuff is that I play more of a baseball manager-type role than anything.  I try to keep my callers calm and comfortable before battles.  I have my strat cell who basically help vet a caller’s strats.  The caller will show his strat, and their job is to play the “What If?” game and make sure he’s ready for any possible problem.  Being a caller is a lot of stress.  You’re supposed to be playing a game, so I try to reduce that stress as much as possible.  I don’t overwork them and I try to keep a rotation going, so I don’t just find the hot hand and ride it until its dead.   Inchon: I would say that the unique thing about us is that a lot of our leadership structure is built to support our battle callers and to support our members.  We don’t have the XO calling battles; we have our battle callers calling battles and our XOs supporting them.   Bolt_Upright: I very much appreciate Inchon allowing us to level the load.  I’ve been a part of clans before, and our jobs can be just as tiring and mentally taxing as real jobs.   I’m a firm believer in leveling the load; if you’ve got tasks that you can delegate to responsible individuals, do it. Inchon: It prevents burn out, but it also gets that buy in.  When people are motivated, they want to participate, they want to improve the community, they want to say, “I did this.”  Even if it’s a simple task, it’s something that they can own, that they can present to the community to improve it.  I think delegation is key to success, so you need to be able to delegate, and you need to have people you trust to delegate those tasks to.   What role does Strongholds play in -Esprit De Corps-, and how often is it utilized? Inchon: I would say it depends on the day.  Friday night Strongholds are a little bit more…   Black_8: …fun.   Bulldog1986: …fun.   Inchon: …fun. A little bit more alcohol.   Bulldog1986: Here comes another clan tradition right there: drunk Strongholds.   Inchon: Yeah, drunk Strongholds.   Brutalas: It really does become a big dive bar.   Bulldog1986: Trust me, our win rate would actually be a little bit better if it wasn’t for those nights.   Bolt_Upright: Inchon likes to break out the bottle of appletinis.   (laughter)   Your victories are 86.25%. That’s pretty good!   Inchon: For us, Strongholds is a way to take someone that’s great in public battle in a small platoon, and have them learn larger team play.  Strongholds are a great way of training and practicing because practice makes perfect.  It also gets battle callers to think on their feet, so we do use it to train battle callers.  We also use it to evaluate new recruits.  I think it’s honestly one of the best things Wargaming has done to increase clan participation.  You can start up Strongholds any time, whereas Clan Wars are a very specific time.   Bolt_Upright: Having served with a fair number of very decent callers in this game, I look for two aspects when I’m looking for a caller, and Strongholds a very good place to be able to ascertain if somebody’s got those qualities because what I’m looking for is if an individual is able to command – (You’ve Got Mail!)   Inchon: How old is that?  What the heck?  You got AOL on there?   (laughter)   Bolt_Upright: Strongholds allows me to see how well the caller controls coms, and if they can spot critical points in a battle and react to them.  In Clan Wars, there are certain points in every battle that you can look at and go, “Yeah, we missed an opportunity” or “Yeah, we jumped on that at the right time.”  Strongholds are much more reactionary, and I want to see how well they react on the fly.   Inchon: One reason for our success is that we’re not trying to bite off more than we can chew.  We’ve taken a very phased approach: here’s our goal; let’s meet it.  After we get that goal, we move on.  Slowly, slowly building up and then building upon those accomplishments.   Black_8: Another thing Strongholds gives us is the opportunity, with the randomness of the teams and maps, to try some new things that we necessarily wouldn’t be able to try in a Clan Wars battle.   Bulldog1986: If one of the callers just happens to see a map that he’s always wanted to try a certain strat on, such as a YOLO, I mean it’s no big deal if you happen to lose it in a Stronghold.  It’s basically practice.   Inchon: One thing that I enjoy the most is the participation by the tanking community in general.  Everybody’s participating, and it gives you a high when you defeat a high level clan.  On the opposite side, it can be very humbling when somebody does a strat that you weren’t expecting and newcomers surprise you.  I think those experiences are great for any community.   Is the strat cell similar to a think tank? Bulldog1986: I head the strat cell.  Ex-callers or people that have a knack for strategy go into a room and basically just bounce strats back and forth.  We like to play devil’s advocate with each other.  If there’s a new map, we’ll jump in a training room and look for places that would be good for a push, weak points, things like that.  Then we take that exploration and basically build a strat around it.  If a battle caller has a strat that he wants to test, he’ll pull one or two strat cell members into a channel, run the strat by them, and they help perfect the strats or build new ones.   Inchon: Something we saw from other communities that could be improved on was that you would jump on an hour before the battle and you would have to run a training room and have to go all the way through it.  To me, that was an inefficient use of time, so by having that strat cell, we can present a strategy that has been vetted that everyone can have confidence in it.  They get a strat and they understand it during the 15 minute countdown and they execute it.   How does ESPRT prepare for a Clan Wars battle? Bolt_Upright: Oh, that starts like first thing in the morning when I hit work.   Bulldog1986: That dedication.   Bolt_Upright: I’ve been doing this a while.  I look over the map and I start thinking about all the different scenarios about who can chip where and how, and what’s the most efficient use of the chips.  Like with a strat cell, I think of all the different possible scenarios on the Global Map.  At that point, I send all my callers a text, sometimes too early because I keep forgetting that one of them is 2 hours behind me, and I start asking questions like it’s a fishing expedition. “Hey, if we want to do this, who’s comfortable for that?  Who wants this strat?  Who wants this map? Who wants this map?”  They give me feedback, and I start to get warm fuzzies on courses of action because if none of them want a particular map, I’m probably going to go around that particular territory.  I write it down in my little book, so that when the huddle hits, I go straight down that list.  I give the information I want to give and keep the huddle as short and efficient as possible.  Then we break off and all the callers go into the war room and the strat cell start attacking their strats. Inchon: In conjunction, Bolt is taking diplomatic input from Bulldog.  We’ll be talking daily, “This is the lay of the land.  Here’s some news coming around,” so really this strategy goes from a macro down to a micro.   Black_8: With the briefing, it allows the heads of the clan to be able to express what the clan’s doing, so everybody in the clan has a basic idea of what we’re trying to do.  I’ve been in other clans where you just kind of show up for Clan Wars battles and really have no idea what the clan’s doing.  ESPRT does a really good job of explaining to all its members of what’s going on daily and what our big plans are.   Inchon: I’d say communication is probably one thing that I harp on, and transparency.  There aren’t closed door sessions that don’t become public in an appropriate time frame.  We don’t have officers just sitting in officer only channels; they’re down there with their troops passing out information.  Another level of transparency is everybody can see any applications coming through and anybody can comment on them and say, “Hey, this guy’s a great guy” or you know, “I have my concerns for this reason.”  Everybody has an input in this community, and communication flows both ways.   Bolt_Upright: A lot of us that are actually in leadership roles, we’ve just established we’re former military and from that–   Inchon: Well, the Air Force.   Bolt_Upright: Hey!  But we all know that your guys are going be willing to eat a bigger bite of a bad sandwich, pardon my French, if they’re informed, right?  I mean, everybody’s been a part of that, and you’re willing to endure a lot more if you know the reasons that stuff is happening.  That’s why we try to get as much information from the top down as possible, and that’s the main purpose for the huddle, as well as, you know, Inchon’s death by PowerPoint.   (laughter)   When you’re doing diplomacy, what do you look for in a partner or enemy? Bulldog1986: For partners, we’re looking for honesty and integrity. Believe it or not, one of the recent spotlights you did on [TTIME], they seem to hold a lot of the same values as we do – professionalism, integrity, moral thinking, honesty. We’re looking for people along the same train of thought as we are. We look for people we can trust.  As far as enemies, we’re still fairly new; we don’t really have any true enemies right now.   Bolt_Upright: The basic guideline is to look for diplomatic partners in the same manner that you’d find dates on match.com.   Inchon: You have to have good intentions and also show that you’re able to back up your words with performance. We’re at the point where we have the structure in place and have the people, and now have to execute. If someone comes to us and says, “I read your Spotlight, I’ve seen you in battle, I like your mission statement and values, this is what we bring to the table and can field one team”, but that team isn’t as effective as we need it to be, it’s great to have friends, we’d look forward to seeing you in game and maybe do a scrim. On the other hand, if we see teams that are performing and make it far in Map Exhibitions or we see them in Strongholds doing well, that’s a great way to earn respect. You have to be able to show that you can do something and will be honest.   Bulldog1986: I always go into things thinking that “you can’t have too many friends.” Anyone who doesn’t believe that in World of Tanks has never been chip-spammed.   Inchon: One thing we said in the beginning was that we don’t want to be the clan that plants a flag and beats their chest saying, “Come at us”.  We want our actions to speak louder than any words we post.  We don’t have a presence in the forums. I think this Clan Spotlight will be the first time anyone sees anything official in regards to Esprit de Corps on a Wargaming website. Bulldog1986: I know a lot of clans have embassies in CR/D, but while it’s the diplo’s responsibility to keep up with things in there (who’s allied with or mad at whom), we don’t necessarily need one. After each battle we don’t really say much to an enemy team, we speak with our shells.   I was looking at things you sent us and I noticed you have community events, like your own On Track events or Carry Hard events. How do you guys come up with this and how often do you do them? Black_8: It was something we had seen with other clans, and we just kind of took it and made it our own event. With the On Track event, we wanted to focus on tanks we were looking to get more of in the clan, and wanted to reward our members who get them. The Carry Hard event was something we thought would be a good idea to build camaraderie and have more of an esprit de corps within our members and give out some gold as an incentive. We have plenty more lined up for the future.   Inchon: They’ve been successful. Our community is very active with sending each other invites, but you’ll see a lot of them with the message, “Let’s get the 1500 gold!” and people have been platooning with others they haven’t played with before. Paying out gold for participation in Clan Wars is great, but this gives people something who aren’t always available for Clan Wars but still do things as a community.   Black_8: Carry Hard is essentially a challenge to do the most damage as a platoon of just ESPRT members when compared with the damage dealt by the rest of the team. Whoever gets the highest percentage would win the event. The On Track event is whoever researches and buys the tank gets a bit of gold for doing so.   Inchon: The current leading platoon has 70% of the damage dealt by the team. For me, we want to provide fun and unique ways to reward our players for doing activities that benefit the community, either by making us more active or bringing something positive to the Esprit de Corps name.   Do you have any advice for new clans that want to do something similar? Bolt_Upright: Set attainable goals and realistic expectations, and follow the building blocks you’ve set out for yourself.   Inchon: Go slow. There were a lot of times as we were moving up that we had merger opportunities or groups of 8 looking to come in with 3 really good players and a few bad players. Hold to your values, whether they’re in-game performance, personalities, or whatever theme you have designed your clan around, hold to that theme. Every new community will be challenged and hit speed bumps, but if you have a strong structure and keep communicating with your players, you’ll get over those and be even better after them.   Bulldog1986: Find and set your standards. I don’t just mean win rate or WN8, I mean the values in people. What do you value and what do you want your community to be like. For us, it’s professionalism, integrity, and honesty. You can’t put 100 different personalities in the same room and expect them to get along; eventually the whole community would implode. As Inchon said, perseverance and patience are important. Some clans take off like wildfire and fizzle really quick, and some will take off and become monsters.   Brutalas: I believe that you have to do this slow. Set your values and follow them. Additionally, you have to find exactly what you’re looking for out of your clan. If you’re looking for skill or a specific hobbyist, go with that. You have to have something that is in common. If you get several very different people together and try to force them to communicate well, it’ll collapse. What brought me to ESPRT was a community that was rather mature. I didn’t want to deal with people who would be getting in and leaving quickly or one that was just here for Clan Wars or tournaments. It was a good group of people that I got along with. Sometimes I’ll just be working on my computer while in TeamSpeak and just hang out because it’s a good conversation.   Bulldog1986: If you’re a new and upcoming clan, don’t be afraid to ask for help – whether from those in your community or even other clans. One thing we’ve benefitted from is that we’ve gotten several people from other clans that have experience. On the other end, if you’re starting a new clan and don’t have the experience or knowledge to do so yet, don’t be afraid to ask others for help.   How does a player join ESPRT? Inchon: The first step is to put in an application on our website. It’s really the first line to see if someone is serious or not. If they put in 5 words and spend 3 minutes trying to get in, it’s probably not a good indication that this is a place they really want to call home.  You don’t have to write a college essay or anything, but make it to where we think you’ll be a good fit here and will embody the values and missions we’ve presented.  The next step is a recruiter will get a hold of you or jump on TeamSpeak and we’ll do evaluations with players that we trust to get a feel for in-game abilities and how well you’ll work with the clan personality-wise.   It’s been interesting to reject people with higher stats based upon them just not being a good fit, and we’ve had some interesting reactions from it. After enough people have otten a good enough idea about the person we make a decision.   Any last words/shout outs? Bolt_Upright: A lot of how we think is embedded from some of our military careers, but I’ve definitely picked up a few best practices along the way from clans and people I’ve played with, such as Yankee, BarrooM, Nagatron, and Lozarus, to name a few.   Inchon: I promised a few people this... I’d have to say, “Remove arty.”   Bulldog1986: As an arty player, I have to add, “Please don’t.”  I’d also like to say thank you to all of the communities we’ve gotten to know so far and look forward to the communities we will get to know after this.