want to join a clan, a good one, where they should get better faster than on their own, unless they join a bad one.
So I think this is the issue.
Clans are either:
Good (helpful): "where they should get better faster than on their own" (or otherwise grow or enjoy the game more in whatever aspect they care about)
or
Bad (unhelpful): clans that don't help players increase their growth/enjoyment in whatever aspect of the game they care about
To simplify this into something more measurable, I think we can say that Good clans' contributions are reflected in player growth and increased activity.
Also, clans are either:
Inclusive: most players (especially those who would benefit the most from a growth environment) are able to join
or
Exclusive: only a few players who are already skilled in some aspect of the game (or meet some other requirement posed by the clan) are eligible to join
My interpretation of what Widzisz pointed out is that at first, the clans were mostly big Bad-Inclusive groups that just added players for the sake of adding them or small Bad-Exclusive bands of friends/weak players/etc. Then the elite clans came in as Good-Exclusive clans- groups that contributed to activity/growth but were partly able to succeed due to their exclusiveness. I think we've got a deficit in another group that we need for Clans to make a huge impact in the community: Good-Inclusive clans.
While Good-Exclusive clans build the game and rapidly change it (as Widzisz pointed out, Good-Exclusive clans have a huge impact on player behavior and aspects of the metagame like Clan League/clan wars/clan tournaments/clan challenges/etc. and even on individual competitions), we need Good-Inclusive clans to push that growth out to the community at large.
I think that right now the clan system tends toward Good-Exclusive clans (Apex, WG, GG, VS, Yin-Yang, FBG, {Olympus}) whose recruitment requirements tend to filter out most players who need help with their growth and Bad-Inclusive clans (DARKLORDS, The Lost Wolves). There are a few Good-Inclusive clans but most of them are RP clans or region/language-based- we're really just left with M'Hunters, Illuminati, and a few others, but their community penetration so far is well short of potential and they often seem to be trying to follow the Good-Exclusive clan model.
In short, I don't think that the clan system has been leveraged to its full extent by the player community to create player growth and increase player activity- ultimately contributing to player retention. I also doubt that we can get Fizzer to improve the incentive model that encourages this by overhauling the Clan system anytime soon.
So it's up to us to do what we can about it. That's why I'm interested in:
- data that clan leaders, members, and potential members would benefit from
- tools that clan leaders would be able to use to better contribute to player growth and increased activity without expending a ton of effort on their part
- ways to increase clans' contributions to their members