Recruiting new members

[DeletedUser487]

Hi guys,

Is anyone else having a tough time recruiting new members?

I am sending messages out left, right and centre and nothing.

Anyone got any tips?

 

[DeletedUser1150]

We are also having a hard time finding active players. What world are you on ... maybe we could combine our fellowships?

 

[DeletedUser3075]

I recently got promoted to ambassador in my fellowship and when I looked at the aspirants I was shocked to see that there were over 100 pages of them (varying from 1k points to 100k points) for just the last 3-5 days, so it's not like they have been sitting there for months and the ambassadors/marges/archmage can't be bothered to clear the list. 100 pages has to be what 600 applicants? 0_o

Four things could be happening here...

1) they find being randomly invited offensive (rather like a telesales call) and would rather apply to a fellowship themselves
2) they aren't even active anymore. 3-5 days with no response is probably not the type of player you want anyway
3) they disagree with the overview of the fellowship (it's rules)
4) they would rather play the game solo and/or not bothered about tournaments

I sent out 10 invites myself in the last two days and not a single one of them were accepted either so i do agree it appears to be a bit of a problem and it's strange that there are thousands of members with no fellowship at any points level

 

[DeletedUser1265]

I have noticed that in the past too though. But there seems to be a lull at the moment, which is particularly bad. There are many FSs that are not running at capacity for weeks now, or hanging on to inactive fellows as placeholders.

I found recruiting incredibly labour intensive but the following worked for us (it was always a team effort):

• Keeping track of who in the neighborhood offers help regularly - if they are not in an a FS we approached them with a personal message, before spamming them with a FS request.
• We kept a spreadsheet of players that had potential (often based on their goods combination) and we tracked their growth to see if they were active, and how regularly they logged on - if it was a fit we would send a message. It also served as a log so we wouldn't all spam or annoy the same player or waste our own time sending repeated messages.
• Sometimes it was as easy as thanking a neighbour for NH or taking trades and they found that we were friendlier or more helpful than their FS and they would 'cross over' so to speak - but this was mostly due to an approach to the game rather than a recruitment tactic.
• Other than that patience and, as @Foxfire suggested, negotiating mergers - there are often seemingly inactive fellowships where the AM has gone AWOL and the players are trying to plod along because they enjoy playing together but aren't really reaping the rewards of being in the FS

Also, I found being honest about what is expected and offering continued support once they join helped with fellows sticking around. Like how do you do NH, which culture is best, etc. We dangled a carrot for smaller cities - in order to help them grow we allowed 0 star trades for cities under 12k, which helped. Our approach was always to grow as a team, so we didn't disregard small cities as long as they remained active. We focus on the people rather than the points.

As an aside, I found that actively poaching rarely works, as I have noticed players that were poached from fellowships tend to hop between fellowships - mostly for the ranking prestige. Also it is like breaking the fellowship equivalent of the "bro code"

I do think INNO may need to consider focussing on the importance of fellowship as part of the gameplay - potentially in the tutorial stages.

All the best
Sis

 

[DeletedUser3075]

There are many FSs that are not running at capacity for weeks now, or hanging on to inactive fellows as placeholders.

That is simply because people want to retain their fellowship rank so would never expel an inactive 180k player for example. I know someone who had active aspirants wanting to join ranging from 2k to 10k and he didnt invite any of them because he would rather have an inactive 204k player. The sad thing is that rank is only really there for bragging rights as it doesn't have a real functional/practical use as in rewards etc, except for fellowship tournaments and more trading I guess My view is if that person is inactive it doesnt matter if they 180k points, they should be removed with someone who is active and visits regularly

 

[cwgiii]

There is a thread in the Ideas and Suggestions section about improving the search for new fellows:
https://en.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/showing-fellowship-history.642/

I believe this idea centered on the ability to see the fellowship history of a particular player (possibly in the Applicants list, or from the Rankings list). This would be helpful to investigate underlying reasons for a player jumping from one fellowship to another. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it would be a tool to help with decision making. I personally wish there was sort capability in the Rankings list to be able to filter on particular boosted goods (both inclusively and exclusively). In addition, a filter or block would be VERY helpful to be able to cull out folks (that wish to play alone, that do not fit with a particular rule set for a fellowship, that are no longer active/active enough, etc.). Another criteria that some Fellowships might be interested in would be to filter based on AW acquired by each individual. Just some thoughts.

Of course, all of this would require development. And we know how strapped the Dev team must be with other priorities.

 

[DeletedUser3075]

There is a thread in the Ideas and Suggestions section about improving the search for new fellows:
https://en.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/showing-fellowship-history.642/

I believe this idea centered on the ability to see the fellowship history of a particular player (possibly in the Applicants list, or from the Rankings list). This would be helpful to investigate underlying reasons for a player jumping from one fellowship to another. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it would be a tool to help with decision making. I personally wish there was sort capability in the Rankings list to be able to filter on particular boosted goods (both inclusively and exclusively). In addition, a filter or block would be VERY helpful to be able to cull out folks (that wish to play alone, that do not fit with a particular rule set for a fellowship, that are no longer active/active enough, etc.). Another criteria that some Fellowships might be interested in would be to filter based on AW acquired by each individual. Just some thoughts.

Of course, all of this would require development. And we know how strapped the Dev team must be with other priorities.

That thread was more aimed at trying to demonize players who had jumped around from fellowship to fellowship, and brand them as "bad apples" for doing so irrespective of what the reasons were. It's not hard for an arch mage or mage to abuse their role and make it incredibly difficult for a player to get in another fellowship with that suggestion.

I do agree with those filter ideas though. A player could fill in a form in their profile saying how often they visit etc, or how many hours they play for a day etc and that info could be filtered out.

However I don't agree with a filter that just says "times left a fellowship" or "times expelled from a fellowship" so people can investigate, because the story is not always as it seems in some cases. The last thing we need in this game is some toxic authoritarian policing system like that where the fate of one players credibility and success of getting into other fellowships rests solely on a negative report from a spiteful AM. I'm not insinuating this is common place or anything but I do feek it's just another manifestation for some players to take the moral high ground even further and assert their authority even more. In theory it's a noble idea, but in practice it's so easily abused.

 

[DeletedUser1265]

he sad thing is that rank is only really there for bragging rights as it doesn't have a real functional/practical use as in rewards etc, except for fellowship tournaments and more trading I guess My view is if that person is inactive it doesnt matter if they 180k points, they should be removed with someone who is active and visits regularly

I totally agree with you.

 

[DeletedUser1345]

.... when I looked at the aspirants I was shocked to see that there were over 100 pages of them (varying from 1k points to 100k points) for just the last 3-5 days.....

Hmm. Your fellowship ( which is ranked #450 as I type this ) has "over 100 pages of aspirants" .....?
Frankly, I find this more than a little hard to believe.

My fellowship ( currently ranked #60 ) only occasionally gets any aspirants.

- lighteye-elf, Archmage, The Alliance, score 161, 559, rank #195, Arendyll

 

[DeletedUser3075]

Hmm. Your fellowship ( which is ranked #450 as I type this ) has "over 100 pages of aspirants" .....?
Frankly, I find this more than a little hard to believe.

My fellowship ( currently ranked #60 ) only occasionally gets any aspirants.

- lighteye-elf, Archmage, The Alliance, score 161, 559, rank #195, Arendyll

Aspirants is just the total list of who has been invited. You really thought I meant there was 600 aspirants with green ticks? come on now lol. Why would a fellowship with 600 green ticks complain about struggling to get members. Think about it for a second lol Obviously I meant 600 players that had been invited by the AM/M/Ambassadors and none had responded, which is what this topic is about....struggling to recruit fellowship members

Clearly people from the fellowship had just been sending out hundreds of invites. Technically that list of aspirants could be over 1000 pages if the AM was crazy enough to sit down and systematically invite everyone on the server without a fellowship. I have just deleted 60 pages worth of aspirants that were from the 7th (these players arent worth recruiting if they all let an invite go 4 days without responding at all) and now it has 58 pages of aspirants (none green tick) from the 10th (yesterday)

 

[DeletedUser1345]

Maybe Inno changed the terminology recently - formerly, an "aspirant" was a player who aspired to join your fellowship and had sent an application to do so - which is distinct from a player who had been invited to join by fellowship leadership.
In any case, it strikes me as a thorough waste of time to issue thousands of invitations to random players - or however many "hundreds of pages" comes to.
That just has the odor of spam.

 

[DeletedUser3075]

Maybe Inno changed the terminology recently - formerly, an "aspirant" was a player who aspired to join your fellowship and had sent an application to do so - which is distinct from a player who had been invited to join by fellowship leadership.
In any case, it strikes me as a thorough waste of time to issue thousands of invitations to random players - or however many "hundreds of pages" comes to.
That just has the odor of spam.

why do you keep using quotation marks as if you don't believe me?

1) "aspirants"
Go to your fellowship icon if you are ambassador or higher in rank and click the Aspirants tab. It shows everyone that has been invited or applied in the same list. People who have applied themselves will be denoted by a green tick symbol.

2) "Hundreds of pages"
using quotations on this repeatedly gives off the vibe that you don't believe me. Do I really need to screenshot the 58 remaining pages just so you believe me lol?

3) "odor of spam?"
How else is a new fellowship supposed to gain members? Should they invite 1 player every day? Sending 1 invite out to many different players isn't spam (as oppose to the technique another member posted on this thread about spamming the same member with multiple invites after an initial message). They are free to read the rules of the fellowship that just invited them or not and decide whether they want to respond.

It's just increasing the number of aspirants you will get(which is what you need when you are a new fellowship), and potentially recruit someone you would have only gotten around to recruiting in 3 months time (that is now in another fellowship) if you don't mass invite players. It's similar to "cold calling" which is something I touched on earlier that could be a reason for one or two not accepting. A new telesales company for example has to get its employees to scour the yellow pages to start getting business because they don't have any contacts built up. It's not a casual approach but more of a "min/maxer" approach. After all their philosophy is "ring 100 people get 99 no's and 1 yes" for example. When you are a long running and/or high ranked fellowship with 23/25 for example there is no need to do this. 1 or 2 invites every other day is probably enough.

If an AM of a brand new fellowship sits there and says "I will invite 1 or 2 players every other day"...to me that isn't a very good philosophy versus one where they say "i'll invite 20 players(or more) every day". Clearly either they invited all 600 or it was a mixture of other mages and ambassadors (the latter is more likely). No one in our fellowship will repeatedly spam the same player anyway as that's harassment. It's one invite to each player and after 3-4 days if they don't reply it's deleted, and they probably won't be sent an invite again. The difference is I find a positive in that this fellowship is clearly very pro-active in trying to recruit players where you somehow found a negative, in just about everything that said, without actually contributing to the original question.

 

[DeletedUser1265]

Maybe Inno changed the terminology recently - formerly, an "aspirant" was a player who aspired to join your fellowship and had sent an application to do so - which is distinct from a player who had been invited to join by fellowship leadership.
In any case, it strikes me as a thorough waste of time to issue thousands of invitations to random players - or however many "hundreds of pages" comes to.
That just has the odor of spam.

Just to clarify, aspirant refers to the tab where invitations and applications appears, so it is actually the name of the tab where the list appears. However, instead of belaboring the point could we assist developing fellowships with some ideas to get new players on board?

3) "odor of spam?"
How else is a new fellowship supposed to gain members? Should they invite 1 player every day?

I would suggest sending a personal message with the invites, otherwise it does start to feel spammy, I used to get quite a few like those when I tried going solo, and I deleted them on sight - it actually got annoying. It helps telling players why you are inviting them, what are the benefits, why did you pickachoo them, etc. (As an AM I had different templates that I used to copy and paste depending on the player and why I wanted to recruit them )

 

[DeletedUser3075]

I would suggest sending a personal message with the invites, otherwise it does start to feel spammy, I used to get quite a few like those when I tried going solo, and I deleted them on sight - it actually got annoying. It helps telling players why you are inviting them, what are the benefits, why did you pickachoo them, etc. (As an AM I had different templates that I used to copy and paste depending on the player and why I wanted to recruit them )

How does a player know its spam if you only send them one invite? For me there is a difference between spamming the same player with multiple invites and sending 1 invite to multiple players. 1 is harassment, the other is just a guild trying to speed up the process

Just to clarify, aspirant refers to the tab where invitations and applications appears, so it is actually the name of the tab where the list appears. However, instead of belaboring the point could we assist developing fellowships with some ideas to get new players on board?

Seconded

 

[DeletedUser1265]

How does a player know its spam if you only send them one invite?

I can only speak from my experience. But you may send one but there are various other fellowships doing exactly the same thing, so when I log on I have a few invites at my shield. The higher my ranking the more there are. So it may not be your intention to spam the player but often the invitation gets lots among others, as they are really all anonymous and there is no real differentiation.

The player that sent a message and followed that up with an invite got my attention. The rest I deleted on sight, as the perception is that the only reason you are inviting me is to make up numbers in your FS, because you need my goods or because I am a higher ranking player. Those all benefit the faceless player inviting me - but what is in it for me? I have no idea what your FS is about, why is it better than another, why do you have an opening - is it because the FS is not player friendly? I just tend to steer clear. A personal touch goes a long way

Remember, not all new players know, or fully understand the benefits of fellowships, so invites get ignored out of ignorance too. A personal message could help with that too.

 

[cwgiii]

It is true that some AMs are more authoritarian than others. Each individual has their management style, certainly within their perogative. As with most data, fellowship history can be spun in different ways and interpreted differently by different people. Expelled vs. left, duration in a fellowship vs. on their own, reasons for each can vary. My point is that we have no tool at this time other than random shots in the dark. Any data is better than nothing.

If something was provided, each fellowship could interpret the data, or reach out to previous fellowships for anecdotal stories, or both, or do nothing differently at all. Even just having a list of which fellowships an individual has been a part of in the past could tell a story. Questions could be asked of the individual and previous fellowships. Then a decision could be made. If accepted and a bad fit, then no harm or foul (as today). The parties walk away from the relationship.

However, seeing that an individual had joined 4 or 5 fellowships in a month might be an indication of a pattern.

Just my opinion.

 

[DeletedUser3075]

I can only speak from my experience. But you may send one but there are various other fellowships doing exactly the same thing, so when I log on I have a few invites at my shield. The higher my ranking the more there are. So it may not be your intention to spam the player but often the invitation gets lots among others, as they are really all anonymous and there is no real differentiation.

The player that sent a message and followed that up with an invite got my attention. The rest I deleted on sight, as the perception is that the only reason you are inviting me is to make up numbers in your FS, because you need my goods or because I am a higher ranking player. Those all benefit the faceless player inviting me - but what is in it for me? I have no idea what your FS is about, why is it better than another, why do you have an opening - is it because the FS is not player friendly? I just tend to steer clear. A personal touch goes a long way

Remember, not all new players know, or fully understand the benefits of fellowships, so invites get ignored out of ignorance too.

yes I agree with the reasoning for declining a request (no message just a random invite) but it still isn't spam if you are only sending 1 invite to them. It is one of the original points I mentioned in my first topic as to why some people could be ignoring requests ( point 1) ) Of course it's not the only one as some do just accept random requests.

 

[DeletedUser1265]

it still isn't spam if you are only sending 1

I am not sure INNO allows you to send repeated messages, unless you cancel and resend. But I think it is a matter of perception. Once the player is removed from the list, after a few days, as suggested, another FS member can send a message - intentionally or not. Then becomes spammy and defeats the purpose of recruiting. Unless you have a record of who has been invited and you don't resend you cannot guarantee that the FS won't end up annoying a player with repeated invites.

In any case... I am merely pointing out how these invites are perceived by players, which is often why they remain unanswered or ignored. E.g. A random message about enlargement equipment in my e-mail gets filtered to spam, even if I only get it once from a new sender. But we will probably end up arguing semantics, which isn't going to help with the recruitment of new players and I do agree, it is only one of various reasons.

The other reason, which is true in many cases, is that players are able to be selective, which is why it it always helps to do a little extra and to engage to see if the player, and or FS, is a good fit before having to add/remove, or accept/resign.

Good luck with your recruiting

 

[DeletedUser3075]

However, seeing that an individual had joined 4 or 5 fellowships in a month might be an indication of a pattern.

A pattern of what though? Maybe they just didn't like their rules, or didnt get on with players in their fellowships? Why does it automatically have to mean that they are a "bad fit" if they have been in 4 or 5 fellowships in a month? What do they get out of leaving one? nothing they end up without a fellowship and unable to compete in tournaments. It's just a reason for AMs to justify their pre conceptions in my opinion..."oh they have been in 4 fellowships...no thanks, NEXT!"

It is true that some AMs are more authoritarian than others. Each individual has their management style, certainly within their perogative. As with most data, fellowship history can be spun in different ways and interpreted differently by different people. Expelled vs. left, duration in a fellowship vs. on their own, reasons for each can vary

Exactly, and for that reason alone I think it's just a breeding ground for AMs who love to take the moral high ground that want to assume they must have been expelled, or if they were expelled it must have been justified, or if they left it was nothing to do with the fellowship or it's members. I will never be on board with such a change when a players history and future prospects can be controlled forever by a simple click of a button from an AM, and a judgement based upon that from future AMs possibly leaving them constantly exiled. It's the same concept as a "chinese whisper effect".

If such a system is implemented then we need to see the record of every AM in dealing with expulsions too (to see if they were justified) otherwise it's not a fair system. Also what some people think is justified will vary from player to player. For example if one play didnt visit for 7 days and then said "sorry ive been in hospital", most AMs would probably give them the benefit of the doubt, whilst other AMs and players may not feel the same (because they might be making pre conceived ideas that they are lying etc).

@Weirdsister "A random message about enlargement equipment in my e-mail gets filtered to spam, even if I only get it once."
(LOL) me too with those emails but yeah that's not the same as an invite with no message, or an invite with a message asking to join. I received random invites without a message before I joined my current FS and I would just read their overview. If I didnt agree with their rules I would decline the invite. If I thought it sounded cool I would join, sometimes i would send a message tho their AM asking why they invited me. YOu never know if you will like the fellowship if you dont even give them a chance (delete all invites unaccompanied by a message)

 

[DeletedUser1265]

@HardcoreGamer Good luck with your process, I hope you (and the fellowship you are 'ambassadoring' for) find the perfect fellows for your team and grow to kick some serious FS beehind.

(Be it through climbing the ranks, building relationships, friendly banter, helping smaller cities grow or just finding the right mix of fellows to enjoy the ride with. Enjoy it.)

Sis - Edited to avoid misunderstanding