Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Saede Riordan]

This started out as a conversation with Graelyn, but he suggested I post it here.

This is a question for the people who have been around in this game for a while, and have seen the way the community, and the game have unfolded during the first decade.

I'm trying to build a corporation that will be successful, that will be a force in the RP community and the game beyond, that will be around for the next decade. I know there are many pitfalls along the way to this, and many, many places for failure. So, knowing this I ask what would you elder players recommend I do, and avoid doing? What traps should I watch out for? What steps should I take?

[orange]

Start simple and focused.  Early on the corp simply can't do everything right now.  This includes timezones.

The corp needs to enable everyone, not just you, to do something interesting.

Initially you are it, you have to do everything.  If someone seems active, competent, and willing, ask them if they are willing to take on a corp role/task.  This can be anything from FCing and Recruitment to forum/website building.

Watch this video from Fanfest for some more insight into organization building.

Lastly, be willing to accept RP-lite players.  I suspect the average player is more than willing to have their activities guided by some of the in-game world, but you can't force strict adherence or participation in the RP community.

[Sakura Nihil]

My biggest piece of advice - decentralize.  Do not be the hero(ine) of the corp, the sole decision maker, the sole FC, the sole leader, etc.  Train your people to think, not follow like sheep, and praise people who take the initiative.

Because, some day, you'll be older, busy with RL, and tired, and for your corp to stand the test of time, someone else you trust needs to be able to take the reins, and get everyone else to follow them forward.  I almost compare it to the dynasty you find in monarchies, or institutions like the US Presidency.  Establishing a peaceful transition of power to those with time from those who don't have enough of it is crucial.

[Havohej]

First off, use alts to experiment with roles and access.  Know exactly what you're doing when you give anyone any access whatsoever that could hurt you/the corp financially ingame.

I suffered an 8b corptheft, once, but fortunately we were deep in nullsec, in Omist as part of a Goon bloc pet, and as he had no way to get anything out of the station, when we and some merc friends who'd previously been members dec'd his new vanity corp and camped him in, he contracted it all back, minus the 200m or so of minerals he'd sold on the open market in-region.

Second off, while it's tempting, avoid doing the noob-recruit spam thing.  Be patient about recruitment, bring in people who are interested in what you're doing and genuinely want to be a part of helping it to grow.  Rookies fall off the learning cliff and you end up with a 50-toon roster and 3 people in corpchat... which drives those other 2 off to find something more active.

Third, I'd say if you're going to build/grow a corp, you've gotta be willing to stand firm on your vision for it.  I could've had as many as 40 active pvpers in Du'uma Fiisi, or joined it to any number of alliances, but I stood firm to what it was supposed to be about and our 5-6 active pilots (3 or 4 online at any given time, or solo pirating during quiet hours since we were spread across the globe) had a shit ton of fun.

Also, you need to have time to devote to it.  Come up with things to get organic RP attention on the IGS (which you're working on, I know), and come up with things to do ingame to keep the people who sign on engaged.  It can be draining, but once you reach 'critical mass' - imo, a reputation that precedes you/your members, a name that rings bells (Havohej was once synonymous with 'evil fucker', not so much anymore... yet), people will come to you wanting to be a part of the fun you've created, and the more people, the easier it is to create more fun.  Then the only thing that can stop it is RL circumstances changing (like when I got locked up and DF1AS lost their FC...).  Much as I had tried to decentralize as Sakura suggests (good advice, btw), the only FCs I know and was close enough friends with were non-RPers and didn't wanna leave their NPC nullsec corps/alliances for what I had going, despite all the kills and lulz we were getting out of it all.  I WAS able to pawn diplo stuff off on Zu so Havo wouldn't have to act outwardly friendly to anyone, which was perfectly sensible IC and OOC a semi-manipulative move to make sure at least one other charismatic person was in a position of leadership so if anyone got mad/alienated at me, there was something else to keep them around until they weren't butthert anymore.  Which happened a couple times, plan worked wonderfully.

Above all, patience.  Do not get discouraged if it doesn't seem to take off right away.  I got tons of eve-mails after Du'uma Fiisi was 'big' in the scene about how people'd been watching my IGS presence for a while and liked what we were doing.  Early on, it seemed it/I was being ignored.  You, on the other hand, seem already to have plenty of attention/friendly folks to interact with unless I miss my guess, so you shouldn't have to deal with as much of that frustration once you get started.

You've also got natural allies and enemies ICly for what you're looking to do, which should help.  I had only natural enemies (everyone).

[Ché Biko]

I'll just leave this here: The Technocrat - Managing & Manipulating EVE Orgs

[Graelyn]

One can certainly make a niche for yourself and create a long-lasting and successful corp.

If, however, you're looking for the reputation and history of the big ones like Veto, PIE, Omerta, I-RED, Ushra'Khan, Electus Matari, Aegis Militia, Blood Inquisition, Star Fraction, etc., you can't just be an RP corporation. Each of these, and many more that are remembered well by EVE history, were successful corporations in their chosen fields first.

Many were really capable PvPers, in a game full of corporations trying to do just that. Some were industrial powerhouses. None sat in high-sec and posted to the IGS.

Creating an RP/Lore angle and adhering to it makes you an RP corp, but making a great EVE corp, one that other EVE corps (especially non-RPers) must grudgingly accept as a worthy foe, a verifiable threat, must be at the top of the priority list.

If your corp can stand on it's own in it's chosen specialty, while carrying a story of it's own, with visibility to the community, then you've won.

Looks like the other posters here have already covered some of the other points I was looking to make.

[Esna Pitoojee]

You may very well gain greater notoriety by simply existing and doing something interesting than by flinging your corp at people.

Allow me to explain.

When I was a director in the Peerage, the small size of the corp meant that everyone handled a lot of different duties, including recruitment and member management. For my part, I tried a lot of community-centric stuff: I made our own RP channel, I made sure The Peerage's name appeared on certain Amarr-faction projects and profiles.

The problem was that this was all talking, not doing - what we were doing was FW, which at the time had turned into an un-fun grindfest. Those few who joined were confronted by the daily stark reality of an Amarr FW corp, which meant no grand campaigns and no huge projects - just the daily grind to keep our sov. Eventually this got to the directorate as well, and the Peerage closed.

I continued to lurk in the Peerage's public channel, though, and so it was to my great surprise when a few months later people started appearing in the channel and asking if the Peerage was recruiting. Turned out this was when Amarr FW was rebulding itself from the ground up, and newbies were being directed to check the Amarr victory point counters (i.e., who was plexing) and then cross-reference it with the killboard to ensure the corps were active and part of the unified effort and not an alt or farmer corp. The Peerage didn't have a sterling record, but we did appear to be DOING something people were interested in - so they came and asked.

[Creep]

You're a wormhole group, right? I'm great at wormholes. You should see the list of WH corps I've been in, it's pretty extensive. You should make me a director. Trust me, I'm great at asset management.

For Serious Now:

I led a sizable and well-respected group of Player Killers, Griefers, and subtle trolls in a different MMO for ~6 years (they are still around today without my leadership), and during that time I led a much larger (and highly successful) alliance of PKers and Griefers for about 2-3 years (which died without me). Here is what I have learned:

-Don't be afraid to kick people. Do it quickly, with minimum of fanfare. If people want to know why so-and-so got kicked, have your reasons prepared and in easy-to-read list form. Beware of trolls — some are of extreme use, trolling your foes into stupidrage. These should be nurtured, to a point. But be careful lest they grow bored or resentful towards someone in your corp because when trolling of that caliber turns inwards, it can split your corp right down the middle. Never accept people trolling each other out of your group.

-Why are you blowing people up? Nail down your reason and stay consistent. I know you've jumped from reason to reason in the past, and if you want your corp to grow you are going to have to stop that. Sit down. Think it through. Follow the twisted logic train down to its source, and build your argument for why People Gotta Get Gunned.
Me? I hate materialism. I burn people's assets, or turn their assets against them. Always have, ever since I was a nub.
You seem to hate hypocrisy or arrogance, or some such thing. My vagueness on the issue is not a good thing. Make sure bystanders (and potential recruits) understand exactly what it is you hate so much. You aren't a Faction Loyalist group, so you need to really, really nail down your purpose in order to draw people in.

-Choose an opponent you know you can fight. Not WIN against. Just fight. Your fight against PYRE fizzled because you lived in a Wormhole and logged in at X time, while they lived in Lowsec and logged in at Y time. That is no way to conduct a war. Send out scouts to find out when your potential enemy is active, and where. If both of these factors are convenient for your corp, then deploy your assets nearby+clone services. After that is done you attack them, with or without warning. If you do warn them, don't wait — hit them on the same day you dec them. Make a splashy statement right off the bat so that you can immediately wave some results around.

-Don't just delegate responsibility, delegate leadership, and foster new leaders. Always always always. This is something I am terrible at, since I have a tendency to micromanage and crowd out other people. Really encourage people to learn to FC and manage campaigns.
I made it a policy to have newly recruited PKers brainstorm an idea for a new campaign immediately upon joining, and sometimes this lead to them leading our very established murdergroup within a week or so of gaining entry. The more members feel like they are contributing meaningfully, the longer they will stay and the more enthusiastic they will be.
Be an inspiring and confident leader (confidence is key), but don't overshadow your second, third, and fourth in command too. You are the Boss of Bosses de jure, so make sure that the others can fill your shoes when RL/burnout comes knocking. There's nothing to kill group enthusiasm like an uninspiring Second.
Also, have a second, third, and fourth in command. Seriously.

-Retaining Members should always be a priority. Put together an easy-to-follow orientation for new recruits, explaining how your forums/channels work, how the internal social atmosphere works, and asset-management details. Make their transition from outsider to insider as smooth and comfortable as possible. This also relates to the Trolls.

-Image appeal. Do you have a well-put-together wikipage and website? Are your members "staying on message" (I fuckin' love political jargon) in public? Do they behave radically different OOC? In the PK group I mentioned before, we almost never fully dropped character, even in OOC settings, which led to us really impressing an image of quiet menace and respectability upon the playerbase, while other groups were seen far more as casual griefers.

-Don't worry about what your enemies say about you, or how bystanders react to them. In your recruitment thread, you say that you're out there to PVP and troll. Your enemies are going to be as nasty to you as possible, so you have to have thicker skin and better (read:wittier and classier) smacktalk. Don't back down because propaganda is against you. Be horribly, horribly persistent. My group used to spend months on end on a single enemy group, grinding them down.
This goes doubly for the IGS. In fact, fuck the IGS. You're a PVP group. What happens in space matters 1000% more than forums. Gank the shit out of your enemies, brawl their fleets into submission, hotdrop their blingboats, and then be smug and condescending when they lambast you for being cheap and dishonorable (because you will never be labelled as 'honorable' as long as you are winning, this is a fact of EVE - "the only good fight is the one you lost", etc).

I'm sure I have more advice, but it's not rising to the top of my brain right now.

Oh, one more thing. Don't let me join your corp. Be careful who gets access to your hangars. Give them FC responsibilities, but limit their asset involvement.

[Desiderya]

Creep has good advice.

Personal experience stressing some made by him:
1) Be consistent
2) Stay focused on an achievable in-game goal
3) Don't be afraid to apply the jackboot and kick people if they're not fitting. Numbers are attractive and important for a growing corp, but the dude who's not committing when there's only 5 of you because he's into bigger fleets, man will not be worth a penny when shit hits the fan.
4) Love thy newbies and make it easy for them to involve themselves - they'll repay that loyality.
5) It ain't easy. 

[Lyn Farel]

Most of my attempts were... unsuccessful. So I do not have a lot of good advice.

The only thing that can kill your corp right away however, is not to make sure that people get their fun at least 3 or 4 evenings in the week, if not more. That means at first when you don't have much trusted and ACTIVELY MOTIVATED lieutenants, you have to bear all of this alone and make sure to organize things as frequently as possible.

That is the mistake I made in my second RP corp.

The mistake I made in the first one was not really a mistake, but similar to KoTMC 2.0. Being too strict on what kind of people we wanted in corp. Serious immersionist RPers and all that. Better to think about those like the core group of your corp rather than the standard. However, if you really care about your RP standards, then be sure to enforce them swiftly everytime someone of the non-core RP group of your corp starts to screw up with your RP policies. In counterpart, you have to offer them something invaluable to them or goals like Creep mentionned to keep them interested in your organization, or they will just go away.

Some will at some point anyway, but better to make a little bit of damage control beforehand.

[Hamish Grayson]

I would say the most important thing for a CEO is to provide content, for the players as soon as they log in.  That is his or her primary function.   This tacs on nicely to what Dex (orange) and Sakura were saying about delegation; too often you see a new CEO overburdened with doing everything while the rank and file have nothing to do.   You should be the brain, and they the doers even on things like making spreadsheets or building the website.   You lead and manage (two different things).  You inspire and motivate and keep them focused on doing the work.

Clearly define your vision and unique identity for the corp and create a set of written, specific and measurable goals with deadlines and clearly specify in the written outline who has the authority and responsibility to see each one accomplished.      Make a written plan for getting from where you are to now to where you want to be a make a set of mini-goals/bench marks along the way to each goal as a mechanism to see how each plan is moving along.   I.E we was to purchase that 2B isk blue print within the next three weeks so by Sunday of the first week the group should have earned 660M (33%)  ISK.  If we have not reached 660M ISK, we need to figure out why and if necessary modify the goal to the realities of our capabilities or even replace the person leading the project.

Basic demming cycle Plan->Do->Check->Back to Planning based on check

Be mindful that you should also delegate the setting of goals and making written plans and don't get bogged down doing all that stuff alone (my personal pitfall).  Have corp meetings for setting those goals, making the plans and figure out who's going to handle what jobs and what deadlines they need.  Crowd source your guys!   It makes them feel like part of the team, involved and important to the corp!

Be completely transparent to your members, they need to know where the ISK is going, what you are planning, why you are exploding those people etc.

Lastly, recruite non-rpers who are willing to at least not mock/break others immersion.  If you stick to RPers you will end up recruiting from a small percentage of small percentage of the player base.  This is death.

[Gottii]

One can certainly make a niche for yourself and create a long-lasting and successful corp.

If, however, you're looking for the reputation and history of the big ones like Veto, PIE, Omerta, I-RED, Ushra'Khan, Electus Matari, Aegis Militia, Blood Inquisition, Star Fraction, etc., you can't just be an RP corporation. Each of these, and many more that are remembered well by EVE history, were successful corporations in their chosen fields first.

Many were really capable PvPers, in a game full of corporations trying to do just that. Some were industrial powerhouses. None sat in high-sec and posted to the IGS.

Creating an RP/Lore angle and adhering to it makes you an RP corp, but making a great EVE corp, one that other EVE corps (especially non-RPers) must grudgingly accept as a worthy foe, a verifiable threat, must be at the top of the priority list.

If your corp can stand on it's own in it's chosen specialty, while carrying a story of it's own, with visibility to the community, then you've won.

Looks like the other posters here have already covered some of the other points I was looking to make.

Man so much this. 

Also, in any organization, 90% of the problems come from 10% of the membership.  Im a firm believer if being willing to ask someone to just leave if they dont work out.  My advice would be to be willing to give RP-lite players a try, but also be willing to give a lot of those same players the door if they dont work out in their trial period.

[Victoria Stecker]

I have little to no experience actually doing the leading of a corp, and my corp history is a litany of other people's projects that I joined which later failed. Derp.

One thing: Newbies can be great recruits, especially in a game as complicated as EVE. I got really lucky - I received one of those spam recruitment mails in a rookie system. It was an invitation to people who espoused the value of bacon, heavy metal, and... something else I don't remember. I dropped by their public channel, met Kazzzi, and ended up joining his corp. I learned the majority of the basics of EVE from Kaz and the couple other vets he had founded the corp with. AFAIK, kaz had founded the corp to gather new recruits, make iskies teaching them to run lvl 4s, and then take the ones that didn't suck back out to nullsec when he returned to Ushra'Khan. It worked - he got a couple of newbs who were happy to follow him wherever he went (at least, until I got tired of nullsec. then he was -1 newb).

Lesson: If you can filter out a few good newbs, and then take the time to teach them everything they need to know, you get highly loyal minions. These are handy.

Finding competent newbs is tough. Spamming mails in rookie systems can work - just make sure it's a recruitment message tailored to scare everyone away. Invite people to your public channel, hang out, be chill, etc. If you come across one that asks a lot of questions (different questions, not the same one over and over), seems willing to learn, has the right attitude toward pvp (don't fly what you can't lose, because you will), etc, then you might have just struck gold.

Or you might have just found another newb like me who has big ideas and no followthrough.

[kalaratiri]

If you plan to PvP, for the love of your own sanity train other people to run fleets.

Something I still have nightmares about is people getting bored because they absolutely required being FCed by only two or three people. This does not lead to a fun state of mind for those 2 or 3.

[Karmilla Strife]

Delegate to members that you can trust. If you take on all the responsibilities you will burn out. I was acting CEO of a nullsec corp for a few months, it was terrible because I tried to do everything myself. I've seen similar results when other players try to take on too much.