Army of Club Penguin

***VERY IMPORTANT***

***Edits at the bottom please***

Hey ACP,

It’s me, Flipper7706! I haven’t posted in a while but you have probably seen me around chat being moaning about everything. After talking to a lot of other ACP soldiers and viewing around the comments, it’s come to my attention to do something about ACP’s current “fall”. That’s all I’m going to say about the fall, because talking about it anymore isn’t going to solve anything. Brainstorming with others specifically Foldez and a few inputs from Ollie I have around 14 points that ACP can improve on if they are to get back to being the best.

***The first 13 points are mainly aimed at the ACP leadership, but there is 1 point specifically for the Soldiers. It would help if the Soldiers would read some of the first 13 too though, so you can give your opinion on whether I’m mistaken, correct, or missed out anything***

Posts

Looking around the ACP website, all I can see are victory posts, posts about senate and 1 post which is just full of  pictures. Seriously? “Back in my day” we had posts about other topics, topics that engaged the soldiers and kept them up to date with other things in the army. War updates would be nice every now and then, maybe a competition. Twingy said it best in this comment on Ken’s latest post.

“I like these posts however I’d prefer posts which weren’t just funny pictures, something more substantial which wasn’t about battles.”

When I was leader I once got a private post from Oagal saying our post quality was really bad, and since then I stepped it up trying to add cool pictures to my posts, so there wasn’t just a solid wall of text. Another thing he said was don’t leave a post sticky for more than 3 days max, as each time a soldier looks at the site they just sees the same old post over and over again, making him bored of the site. You need more variety around the site, and not just post results.

Recruiting

Your plan to get better now is to do recruiting every day, well as Foldez pointed out I don’t think that will cut it. She reported that it takes forever just to get in a straight line and you can’t think about recruiting when your tactics are so bad. Admittedly, yes, you don’t need much tactics to recruit but you have to look somewhat organised, also you have to realise that recruiting has in a way evolved, and that just Club Penguin recruiting isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Iceyfeet knows that you have to chat recruit to get effective results, and even if I hate that style of recruiting, you might have to use that or other new methods to get new soldiers, because the old ones are becoming very much outdated and ineffective. What I’d propose is that you  start off with impromptu training sessions and then slowly get back to thinking about recruiting. Club Penguin “civilians” aren’t going to join a mess of green penguins, or understand what is going on.

Example: This is apparently a “perfect circle”

Rewards

Basically, YOU NEED MORE REWARDS! The only reward I’ve seen in the past few days is the “Destructive Soldier” award, which I guess got a kind of reward, but you need more than just 1. You need to start introducing something like temp-mod or temp-owner back for those who did really well in a battle, you need to start motivating these guys again, that’s why you haven’t been getting many soldiers, because frankly why should they go if they get nothing out of it and it’s not being fun anymore. Also, it seems that promotions are just becoming too easy and just a given thing, Funks explained that on “Destructive Day” they got 3 clovers per event, 10 events, if they attended them all they would get a promotion, a promotion worth of clovers on 1 day? What’s the point of working for the rest of the month?

Maybe “Soldier of the Month” can return, something other than just promotions to look forward to at the end of the month, something they can brag about and get a high reward for just being great. Maybe another way of effective recruiting is set mini rewards for people who bring in 5 friends who actually stay, or even 10. The possibilities are endless, treat some people to uLead’s which I haven’t been seen any recently, there is a whole range of activities to do other than calling someone a “Destructive Soldier”

Who’s fault is it?

I’ve seen a lot of owners the past week or so constantly moan at troops, or saying stuff like “why didn’t we get more today” or things like “why are the troops so lazy” well, I think I kinda’ answered that in the Rewards section. The have nothing to work for, and you can’t keep blaming them for ACP not doing to well at the moment. If anyone’s, it’s your fault. You guys are the leaders, and theres no point blaming soldiers for not coming, your the one who should be doing something about it.

You guys were chosen as high ranked because you probably have creativity, originality, or really active, so you guys should be able to think of something to get ACP get into a fighting place for 1st again, and it shouldn’t be too hard. I think Ek has the right set of mind when coming to this, as he assures me that he tries and tells the owners to work what we’ve got, no point moaning about what could’ve, should’ve and would’ve been, that’s all in the past and you have to focus on the future.

WORK together

Another one thought by Foldez, and one that links to the previous section, you guys need to WORK together to become better. I’ve seen a lot of separate ideas, a lot of just random out of the blue ideas and saying “right, were doing this”. You guys need to think ethically about these, who they may affect, who you should ask about it, and get everyones opinion. You are all really clever people here and combined it should be easy to get ACP out of this slump, right?

Maybe you need more private posts to discuss things, maybe you need more discussions in PC’s, maybe you actually need to get to know every other owner in the army so you have an understanding of what they are like. The leadership should be like a sports team, everything working together, everyone knowing each others strengths and weakness’s, and making it a collaborative effort to be the best, not just 1 person trying to lead all on their own.

Get your priorities straight

This kinda’ applies to the second one too, but you really need to get sorted on what you’re meant to be doing, I mean apparently we haven’t even owned Snow Fort and Breeze, 2 of our most important servers for around 2 months. I mean what the hell? We shouldn’t be doing this petty war with the Pirates the past 2 months, we should be working together to be trying to get back our capital and training server, that should be the goal in the next few weeks, probably days!

I know that you have got Snow Fort back now, but after 2 months? As I said it links back to Recruiting, you need to decide what you are doing first and what’s probably the best course of action, because if it takes you 20 minutes to do a straight line, I wouldn’t be worrying about my recruiting. You should set up a plan and decide what you are going to do next, and what I’ve just said also links onto the next topic of discussion.

Don’t worship the top 10

Seriously, what has the top 10 got to do with everything. I know I was pretty obsessed with it when I was leader, but now it’s just a mess. Two biased people ruin it who said they would ignore ACP news if we banned them, so what’s the point in listening to them? Who cares if we are 7th, we need to start setting our own individual goals. Maybe think about getting to 25+ solid average in the coming weeks, and not go on our period when we see that we’re 7th. Yes, ACP isn’t doing too well, but pressurising the troops to jump from 7th to 1st, from 20 to 40 is just too hard, 1 small step at a time.

Who cares if you are kicked out of CPAC, because their opinion is getting less noticed day by day. This applies to the soldiers too, get it out of your mind frame that we are 7th, or whatever, we can’t dwell on the past, think what we should’ve done differently back then, think of, well what can we do differently now? This is kind of an all time low, and things can only get better, look for the positives and look towards the future and getting ACP back up there, dominating the rest of the playing field.

Destructive Days

I’m recommending that you stop with these as soon as possible, and I’m telling you before you do too many. People get exhausted from around 10 events a day, especially when ACP is like this, an army who is struggling to get 20+ consistently, I understand that the 2nd destructive day thing was when you had to defend, but maybe you could actually miss a few out for the least important event, give your soldiers a break and cut them some slack.

It’s also what bores them from ACP, and makes it boring. 10 events a day, is every time you log on you have someone spamming the chat, shouting at you to logon to a server for around the 8th time today, and you just think you can’t be bothered with it, it can drive away soldiers and potential recruits, you should ask the soldiers how many of them actually enjoy this, when I was leader the most we had in a day was probably around 3.

Sort out your USA

From what I’ve heard, your USA force is actually pretty bad. Your USA owners apparently aren’t doing their job and mods, british mods at that, are having to lead when scheduling USA specific events, and it’s also the fact that it looks like you don’t actually schedule many USA events compared to the UK ones, which can leave them left out. The way it’s going ACP is turning into what seems a UK/Euro exclusive, and you need to start evening it out again.

Also, to the USA owners, you need to step up your game, as there are a lot of USA mods which could handle your position, now I know I’m not in any position to threat/demote anyone but it’s just people don’t feel as though you are stepping up to your role, and I know you guys deserve that rank, it’s just others don’t see it. I’d recommend you try to get more active and help out more, or retire if you can’t handle it, because being ACP 2ic/3ic isn’t something where you just do nothing, the way ACP is every little bit of help counts.

Senate

I guess this one’s more of a personal opinion than a problem with ACP, but it’s an opinion a lot of people share. The senate is kinda’ useless, I mean you started it then immediately suspended it, I mean what was the point anyway then? It seems like the only reason the senate actually exists is because owners are too lazy to answer PC’s to get opinions from the soldiers on what to add/get rid of and what to do.

I propose that you should do something like a suggestions post once every month or whatever, where EVERY soldier can comment their helpful ideas, not just an elite few who get to go to a fancy meeting, this way everyone gets to say something, because otherwise they  may not of been able to relay their ideas to a senate member, or maybe a senate member ignored it completely. This would take dedication, as you would have to go through every comment and maybe make a results post of it saying which were the best and then you could vote on it, but if it makes the soldiers feel like they are actually doing something to help the army, it’s worth it.

ACPTR

You guys need to figure out what you are doing about ACPTR, and if it is actually any help to ACP at this time right now. You either need to decide to temporarily close it, because to be honest you don’t have enough soldiers coming in daily for this to have any affect, or actually show attention to it and get it working properly, and the first thing you can do about that is not having a Brig. General leading ACPTR, it’s meant to be a prestigious part of ACP and if no Div. Gen wants it then what’s the point in having it.

I haven’t seen an actual ACPTR post in forever, and it may as well be dead to anyone else, because nothing seems to be done with it. This again links back to the priorities section, because you need to figure out what it is you want to be doing with ACP, and if this is worth the time and/or the effort to keep it going, because frankly with the sizes we are getting, it doesn’t seem to be creating a worthwhile long term affect.

Retired leaders are retired for a reason

You also need to stop looking for help to retired leaders and retired soldiers, because they can’t really help you any more. They are retired for a reason, and you can’t keep asking for help from them when you really reach deep trouble, I’m sure Oagal doesn’t want to interfere anymore and that we should be sophisticated and mature enough to not have to get people to help you guys, because you were chosen as leaders for a reason, also you can’t rely on people like Mch coming back at temp 2ic to help out anymore too.

I know you haven’t specifically asked for help from the leaders, but you aren’t doing anything really to help get yourselves back up to the top, you seem to be waiting for a retired leader to do something to help you get back on track, which for some reason, I find myself doing. You need to start getting your original ideas together and brainstorm as a team of leaders, linking back to WORK together.

Why am I making this post?

This links to the above one, it’s because no-one seems to be trying to do anything to get out ACP’s slump, I know that you have small recruiting organisations, but that’s not going to cut it, I’m making this to show how yes, you can get recruits, but also then how to keep them and how to function well together with them so we can be an effective army.

I hope you don’t take this as me shouting at you, it’s me trying to give you advice on how to improve and if I have come across very angry or something, I don’t mean to. Also people are asking me if I’m returning because of my increased activity of chat, well the answer is I have no intention of returning, and I’m only doing this because I’m concerned for ACP, even if it is a kid’s game, and I want to help in the best way I can and if it’s by making you realise what you’re doing wrong, so be it.

Finally, to the soldiers.

Do you know how frustrating it is when there is 30+ on chat and only 15 show up? Very. If you decide to login to ACP chat, please don’t be AFK for the rest of the time you’re on there because it’s very annoying to the leaders. Also when you are in a event, please no side conversations (yes, I know I’m guilty of this too) as it can be a pain as leaders try to order commands, but they are instantly flooded away by a sea of random conversation.

ACP should usually have around 2-3 events a week as long as there isn’t a war, so if you can just focus for 30 minutes each day, it would be a real help to those who are trying to run ACP, you have the rest of the week to have fun, engage in a heated debate on a post to express your opinions, and chill on chat with your friends. It’s only a small part of your day to pay attention, so please do!

Summary

This is mine, and other peoples opinions on what ACP should do to improve, it might not be well received, it might be what everyone was thinking but too afraid to say but following the slump were in something was needed. This falls just after ACP’s anniversary, which is kind of poetry in motion in a way. We aren’t doing too good right now, but it’s time to focus on the future and how we can improve. Think to the next anniversary of ACP and see how much you can improve together, and you can look back to this period and remember how you persevered.

I remember when Shab put the Ultimatum on me, so I know how this feels, that pressure, but I’m trying not to do it that way. Your positions are not at stake, no-one is going to be demoted/random people promoted to a high rank if you don’t do what I ask, this is just friendly advice that I hope you take to improve ACP.

Comment on your thoughts of what is wrong with ACP at the moment, or if I’m mistaken on any of the points!

With best regards,

–Flipper7706, former ACP Leader

tl;dr: 13 points on how I think ACP leadership can improve and 1 point on how the soldiers can improve.

Also, apologies if the post format screws up halfway through, WP posting was being a derp.

Edits:

Stew: I would have posted, but it would of been too short. Anyways, I am very sorry for my recent inactivity. My grandma has been sick, I have the worst teachers ever, adjusting to all the homework, and yes, I have a bit of a job as well! I was actually considering retiring during that time period, but now, hopefully that is, I should be back and active. Next time, I will let you all know what happend.

Asd: I know I’m retired, but I’ve asked to stay on the site to do some contests. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I have about 3500 xats in storage, and I want to use them for the benefit of the ACP. I have a post in the drafts about a contest event, and I’ll post it with a specific date, assuming Ek approves, but I won’t post it until the war is over. I agree with Flipper, we need to set a list of goals and a list of priorities for the ACP. Get things organized, and work together. Have a post where the owners will say what they will do to help reach a certain goal or something. Organization is the key to our success.

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