The new guild recruiting tool - what do u think?

[Kaalenarc]

<p><span style="color: #ffff00;"> I like it - though Im not a fan of guilds with no recruiters online showing in the list. Is this intentional?</span></p>

[Cynziel]

It's certainly an improvement *thumbs up* However I also don't like seeing guilds with no online officers, though I guess you can take the guild name down and see if the officers come online soon, maybe.

[Kaalenarc]

<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">I guess - but that seems to defeat the purpose of changing it in the first place - which was to give more guilds a chance to appear on the list.</span></p>

[Thunderthyze]

<p>Unfortunately its a change that has been implemented far too late and at completely the wrong time. We need to some way of getting the dwindling few together to group....not spread them out into small 6 man ineffective guilds.</p><p>What I would like to see would be guild leaders to purge accounts from guilds that have been offline for more than say 3 months. THEN we might see the problem affecting the game. Rather than looking at the Players website and seeing all these guilds with 100+ accounts maybe we will see the true state...VERY few medium sized "active" guilds.</p>

[AnjelikaR]

Not sure about other guilds, but an inactive three months is the cut-off mark for ours as to when members are removed.At first I was dismayed to see our guild wasn't showing up, as it usually had before.  But I noticed the new filter that by default lists guilds that are seeking the specific class of that player.  When I checked our guild settings, I saw that we didn't have any of the classes checked off as it just didn't seem necessary before since we weren't limited to certain classes.  Once this was checked off, the guild did now appear.  Just wanted to mention this in case someone else wonders why they are not showing up.Seemed more than half the guilds listed had no active recruiter on.  I was also wondering if this was intentional.  But overall I think it's a good improvement.  Gives players a way to filter out guilds that don't meet their needs.

[Yimway]

Listing guilds with no active recruiters = epic fail

[Razlath]

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Listing guilds with no active recruiters = epic fail</blockquote>I actually have to concurr here.  My guild is focused on Central Time evening play.  It kind of sucks that we will show up for peeps that can only play when we are not.  Sure, it doesn't hurt anything, but I kind of feel bad that someone may not find the guild that would be perfect for them because we are taking a slot during our off-hours.

[Windowlicker]

<cite>Kaalenarc@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><p><span style="color: #ffff00;"> I like it - though Im not a fan of guilds with no recruiters online showing in the list. Is this intentional?</span></p></blockquote>Excuse me, but some guilds in this game only log on to raid.  So we shouldn't have the same exposure as people that stay logged in 24hrs a day?

[Krystara]

<p>I finally - for the first time - saw my own guild as recruiting when I did some filtering.  So I'm a big fat YAY at the moment.  We'll have to wait and see if anyone contacts me through it.  But the mere fact that I finally showed up at all is an improvement.</p><p> Nothing is perfect, but lets give the tool a chance.</p>

[Elebu]

<cite>Lysari@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I finally - for the first time - saw my own guild as recruiting when I did some filtering.  So I'm a big fat YAY at the moment.  We'll have to wait and see if anyone contacts me through it.  But the mere fact that I finally showed up at all is an improvement.</p><p> <b>Nothing is perfect, but lets give the tool a chance.</b></p></blockquote><p>I'm pretty sure I uttered that exact phrase at some point right after the 2000 US Presidential election...</p><p>Man, was I wrong.  In this case though I'd have to agree! <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p>

[Miladi]

<cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kaalenarc@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><p><span style="color: #ffff00;"> I like it - though Im not a fan of guilds with no recruiters online showing in the list. Is this intentional?</span></p></blockquote>Excuse me, but some guilds in this game only log on to raid.  So we shouldn't have the same exposure as people that stay logged in 24hrs a day?</blockquote>That would be correct. If you don't have people online to accept recruits, then what's the point of being on the recruiters list? No one can join your guild at that time, so you're taking up a slot that another guild might need. If your guild is raiding, then they're probably not able to answer recruiting inquiries either, or you're raiding something trivial for the guild so you can converse with an applicant at that time, so what's the point of advertising for people that you can't talk to?

[Spyderbite]

<cite>AnjelikaR wrote:</cite><blockquote>Not sure about other guilds, but an inactive three months is the cut-off mark for ours as to when members are removed.</blockquote>30 days for us unless they contact an officer and let them know that they plan on being on an extended leave.

[Asif]

<cite>Spyderbite@Venekor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>AnjelikaR wrote:</cite><blockquote>Not sure about other guilds, but an inactive three months is the cut-off mark for ours as to when members are removed.</blockquote>30 days for us unless they contact an officer and let them know that they plan on being on an extended leave.</blockquote>Ya we are like Spyder,s guild  30 days unless they let an officer know.

[Jai1]

My main's guild I think is 30 days but I have people in my pet guild who haven't logged on for 3 years.   I'm not so sure people should rely on a tool vs the good old conversations with potential applicants as well as the selling that sometimes has to be done.

[DragonMaster2385]

They should have a mail system attached to the tool.  If there is no recruiter online, the person looking for a guild should be able to send an in game mail to one of the recruiters (a designated recipient or the first recruiter to log on gets the mail).  That would solve lots of problems I think.

[Rothgar]

Hi guys, thanks for the feedback on the guild recruitment tool.The reason I removed the restriction for online recruiters is so the list would fill up instead of only showing a few guilds during late hours when maybe there weren't a lot of people online.  As I mentioned in another thread, the point is to see what guilds are out there, even if you have to contact them later.The strength of the tool is the new filter feature.  You can use this to narrow your search down so only guilds of a specific type show up.  Keep in mind we pushed this modification out quickly so we could have it out in time for the Recruiting Faire.  This doesn't mean we can't make more changes to it.  I think that showing guilds with offline recruiters would make a good option and I think I can add this to the filter screen before GU47.  I'll make the default view only show online recruiters, but you will have the option to change that on the filter page.So, moving past the topic of offline recruiters, what other feedback do you have for me?

[Fyranaer]

<cite>Diknak@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote>They should have a mail system attached to the tool.  If there is no recruiter online, the person looking for a guild should be able to send an in game mail to one of the recruiters (a designated recipient or the first recruiter to log on gets the mail).  That would solve lots of problems I think.</blockquote>This is a really good idea.  I think even having the option to set that communication option as your default would be nice.  Most of the time I don't mind getting a tell, but sometimes I'm in an instance and it would be nice to get a mail instead.  I can see potential problems with that (spamming an inbox, etc), but I think there could be good solutions to the downfalls.@Rothgar:  If a character is on a new account a pop-up tool tip explaining how to /tell chat would be nice.  Sometimes I get requests from new people to chat so I send them a /tell and they don't respond.  After one person finally got in the guild they explained that they couldn't figure it out being new to the game.edit:  Oh and I love the new tool.  I think it looks good.

[Kaalenarc]

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hi guys, thanks for the feedback on the guild recruitment tool.The reason I removed the restriction for online recruiters is so the list would fill up instead of only showing a few guilds during late hours when maybe there weren't a lot of people online.  As I mentioned in another thread, the point is to see what guilds are out there, even if you have to contact them later.The strength of the tool is the new filter feature.  You can use this to narrow your search down so only guilds of a specific type show up.  Keep in mind we pushed this modification out quickly so we could have it out in time for the Recruiting Faire.  This doesn't mean we can't make more changes to it.  I think that showing guilds with offline recruiters would make a good option and I think I can add this to the filter screen before GU47.  I'll make the default view only show online recruiters, but you will have the option to change that on the filter page.So, moving past the topic of offline recruiters, what other feedback do you have for me?</blockquote><p><span style="color: #ffff00;">I am glad to see online only being the default. The main complaint from the smaller guilds was that they didnt have an opportunity to get on.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffff00;"> As for other feedback - I have to agree Id like to see some sort of mail option. Maybe the tool could display ALL the recruiters for a guild , offline or not ,and maybe have an option to email them whn they are offline. The ability to receive email would also have to be a toggle option so someone didnt have a message sent to 5 of their alts. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffff00;"> A further suggestion would be to add an option to the filter for guilds that accept both good and evil members (please dont label it exile either)- right now you can filter by good  or by evil  but theres no option to filter guilds that accept all. While you can fill up two of the search fields with those options - it means fewer options to narrow the field.</span></p>

[Razlath]

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>So, moving past the topic of offline recruiters, what other feedback do you have for me?</blockquote><p>An option in the 4 optional drop downs (or maybe a different dropdown) should be regular guild play time.  You could make it Morning, Midday, Afternoon, Evening, Late Evening, Early Morning.  Maybe even include a timezone designator.  For grins and giggles I made a char on a completely different server and decided I would look at the guild recruitment window as if I were actually looking for a guild (I chose a new server so I wouldn't know any of their names).  What I found was a ton of offline guilds with no clue what time they normally play.  Since you join a guild to play with others, a normal playtime would be great.</p><p>This may be handled by an online recruiters only, but if you really want people to be looking at guilds that aren't online so they can "contact them later" it might be a good idea to actually somehow allow them to know if that guild is even viable.  Some guild may sound awesome and be exactly what I want, but if they play from 2am to 6am Central they really aren't all that useful to me.</p><p>Obviously this can be covered by our recruit message (and I will be updating Fist's soon), but a searchable drop down would be even better.</p>

[Yimway]

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hi guys, thanks for the feedback on the guild recruitment tool.The reason I removed the restriction for online recruiters is so the list would fill up instead of only showing a few guilds during late hours when maybe there weren't a lot of people online.  As I mentioned in another thread, the point is to see what guilds are out there, even if you have to contact them later.The strength of the tool is the new filter feature.  You can use this to narrow your search down so only guilds of a specific type show up.  Keep in mind we pushed this modification out quickly so we could have it out in time for the Recruiting Faire.  This doesn't mean we can't make more changes to it.  I think that showing guilds with offline recruiters would make a good option and I think I can add this to the filter screen before GU47.  I'll make the default view only show online recruiters, but you will have the option to change that on the filter page.So, moving past the topic of offline recruiters, what other feedback do you have for me?</blockquote>Here goes...Add a field for raid times and timezone and/or a place to add guild primetime hours.  This should be searchable.  The fact my guild is CST and is amost ctive between 6pm-1am CST is a fairly important piece of information and perhaps something that would be useful to filter / search on.  As a user, I'd like to quickly see what guilds match my playtimes.Set level requirements,  we only recruit level 80, I really don't need my listing showing as default to level 20 players.  I get around a dozen requests from the tool a week from some low level nub who can't read the text that says min level 80.  Again, another useful item to have in a separate field and filterable.You've got recruiting working by archtype, I'd prefer sub-type if not class.  I'm recruiting bards, but not rogues, clerics but not druids, etc.  Again when there are 50 guilds on a server recruiting, being able to delineate what we're looking for and providing the user with a more targeted search / filter result will be a big improvement.Add a seperate field / display item for guild website.  The generic description text is a very limited space to try to convey all this information.  A separate field for website with a /browser #website# link associate with it = win.Thats all I got for you off the top of my head, I'll post more if something comes to me...

[Razlath]

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>So, moving past the topic of offline recruiters, what other feedback do you have for me?</blockquote>Here goes...Add a field for raid times and timezone and/or a place to add guild primetime hours.  This should be searchable.  The fact my guild is CST and is amost ctive between 6pm-1am CST is a fairly important piece of information and perhaps something that would be useful to filter / search on.  As a user, I'd like to quickly see what guilds match my playtimes.Set level requirements,  we only recruit level 80, I really don't need my listing showing as default to level 20 players.  I get around a dozen requests from the tool a week from some low level nub who can't read the text that says min level 80.  Again, another useful item to have in a separate field and filterable.You've got recruiting working by archtype, I'd prefer sub-type if not class.  I'm recruiting bards, but not rogues, clerics but not druids, etc.  Again when there are 50 guilds on a server recruiting, being able to delineate what we're looking for and providing the user with a more targeted search / filter result will be a big improvement.Add a seperate field / display item for guild website.  The generic description text is a very limited space to try to convey all this information.  A separate field for website with a /browser #website# link associate with it = win.Thats all I got for you off the top of my head, I'll post more if something comes to me...</blockquote>Great suggestions Atan!  All of these would help a lot.  If the point is getting people in touch with the right guilds these will all help.  One thing I would add, if the guild website link could open the brower with that site, it would be awesome.

[GrunEQ]

<span style="font-size: x-small;font-family: comic sans ms,sand;">Have more than 25 guilds listed.  The list is too small, and several times have been less than 25 and my guild not showing up.  Also have a place to check if actively recuiting or not, so that the ones not accepting recuits, not show up on list.  I second the the idea that there should be a place to show if guild accepts all evil/good and looking for all classes/races.</span>

[Gilasil]

<p>It's a huge improvement.  It lets people concentrate on those guilds for which they're most likely to be a match.</p><p>However, if there's not a recruiter online there needs to be SOME way of contacting the guild.  Either a website or mail.  Perhaps it would be easiest to impliment  if there were a field for designated mail recipient.  The guild would be very wise to make sure the name of an ACTIVE recruiter is in that field.  Someone who checks their mail daily.  I also like the idea of a field for a website URL.  Add a filter option to only show guilds which either have a recruiter online OR have one of those fields filled.</p><p>It might also be nice to be able to filter out guilds for which no one has logged on for some set amount of time.  I'm not sure if that should be a week or a month, but there should be some set amount of time.</p><p>Guilds need to pay more attention to filling the form out too.  I saw some guilds for which there was no useful text describing it at all.  Why do they bother with the recruiting tool?</p><p>P.S.  In response to one of the responses, real world politics has absolutely no place on any of these boards.</p>

[greenmantle]

Still the same old problem of the large guilds permacamping the list with afk people while smaller guilds never get a look in. No recruiters on line then take them off the list seems simple give some of the late nighters a chance for once

[Razlath]

Sadly now that the recruitment fair is over work on this tool has probably halted.  I really wish they would either give an option for online only add enough offliner's in to fill to cap.  Online should ALWAYS have first priority and offline guilds should only display if there aren't enough online guilds to fill up the list.

[Noxxia]

I like the premise for the new guild recruiting tool, however it is about as handy as hand soap in the desert. My guild can have 5-6 characters on all day from many different levels and have them all be recruiting only to not show up in the recruitment window and there will be ten guilds without any recruiters on in the window. What does it say? Join our guild, we are considered by SOE to be great but we are never on? I have a very small guild, about 15 accounts trying to level ourselves up, currently, we are 51 and we would welcome new members but they are too busy checking out the offline guild window hogs. Grrrr

[Phayte]

The reality here is simple.Rothgar,  if you allow for the offline recruiting with mailboxes - then you are truly denying small guilds who are trying to become established the opportunity to be seen by new players.  The vast amount of new players most likely do not know what to type into the filter to get to a guild such as mine.  The real problem for small guilds is lack of exposure and it is necessary for those guilds to have any assistance possible.What is really needed is a system whereby small guilds like mine can gain exposure without having to have recruiting "shout" matches with all the people who don't want to hear it.   The large guilds in many ways are too large and use their size as a form of bullying (I do not mean that as an insult, but as a power position in the game) to gain more members (ie: we are large enough to help you do anything while the little guilds are not).  I have yet to see my own guild listed in the tool even when I am looking for it.  Kind of makes it hard to become one of the established ones.HafekCrimson Dawn - Mistmoore

[Zorastiz]

<p>I know the "no recruiter" thing has been beat to death but based on some peoples comments I have an an example of how this could be a problem in a different manner.</p><p>A guild who shall remain nameless on AB (in the top 5 population wise) does not openly recruit, they selectively recruit, no one is flagged as a recruiter yet they show up as #2 or #3 in the list on a daily basis. This could prevent a guild which is smaller, that wants to and is recruiting from showing up, it may be an isolated case but is another possbile issue.</p>

[Ariopia]

<cite>Phayte wrote:</cite><blockquote>The reality here is simple.Rothgar,  if you allow for the offline recruiting with mailboxes - then you are truly denying small guilds who are trying to become established the opportunity to be seen by new players.  The vast amount of new players most likely do not know what to type into the filter to get to a guild such as mine.  The real problem for small guilds is lack of exposure and it is necessary for those guilds to have any assistance possible.What is really needed is a system whereby small guilds like mine can gain exposure without having to have recruiting "shout" matches with all the people who don't want to hear it.   The large guilds in many ways are too large and use their size as a form of bullying (I do not mean that as an insult, but as a power position in the game) to gain more members (ie: we are large enough to help you do anything while the little guilds are not).  I have yet to see my own guild listed in the tool even when I am looking for it.  Kind of makes it hard to become one of the established ones.HafekCrimson Dawn - Mistmoore</blockquote>The flip side of this is also true. Players should have the ability to get a real feel for the size of the guild so that those who do not wish to get caught up in a micro-guild can avoid it. There are different tastes as far as guild size on the family guild->mega guild scale and the tool should help the player find what is right for them.My suggestion is to add a field for the total number of guild members current online and allow players to filter based on this number. This also has the nice property of matching potential members with guilds who are active when they are active. Sure the same thing can be achieved by doing a "who all guild" for each guild, but that's tedious.

[Armawk]

<p>Also an issue with differences between guilds actual nature and the flags they are selecting.</p><p>Got a big raid guild on Blackburrow, which ALWAYS shows at the top in the search, almost regardless of what you filter. They are flagged as casual so you cannot get rid of them that way, but they are recruiting for specific classes, level 80 only, fixed time requirements, the whole hardcore raid guild scene. Casual? Shyeah, that would be right..</p><p>Got NOTHING against big raid guilds,  but what, other than sheer ego, could motiovate one to flag itself as casual etc?</p>

[greenmantle]

<cite>shaunfletcher wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Got NOTHING against big raid guilds,  but what, other than sheer ego, could motiovate one to flag itself as casual etc?</p></blockquote>Lol

[Armawk]

que?

[Caethre]

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Listing guilds with no active recruiters = epic fail</blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">OOC.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">I disagree, I consider it an "epic success", to use your choice of phrase.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">Why? Because someone seeking for guilds can filter on all the guilds there are, not just those where a recruiter happens to be online. The only thing that is required is that guilds with a recruiter ALWAYS appear first, and guilds without one only appear in the list to fill it up to its maximum size when (if) all those matching the currently-selected filter settings that DO have a recruiter online have been already listed.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">It gives people more information. Information is ALWAYS good.</span></p><p><cite>Holymoly@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Unfortunately its a change that has been implemented far too late and at completely the wrong time. We need to some way of getting the dwindling few together to group....not spread them out into small 6 man ineffective guilds.</p><p>What I would like to see would be guild leaders to purge accounts from guilds that have been offline for more than say 3 months. THEN we might see the problem affecting the game. Rather than looking at the Players website and seeing all these guilds with 100+ accounts maybe we will see the true state...VERY few medium sized "active" guilds.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">Some folks love their small and even tiny guilds, and all power to them; whether certain others consider them "ineffective" is as irrelevant as it gets. Noone can tell other players where they should and should not guild, it is up to them.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">Even though I understand why you say it, it is the same thing for purging -  it is up to each guild leader. Noone can cannot dictate internal policy in other people's guilds, even if they think their policies are bad, it just isn't anyone else's place to insist upon the internal rules of other guilds.</span></p>

[Caethre]

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hi guys, thanks for the feedback on the guild recruitment tool.The reason I removed the restriction for online recruiters is so the list would fill up instead of only showing a few guilds during late hours when maybe there weren't a lot of people online.  As I mentioned in another thread, the point is to see what guilds are out there, even if you have to contact them later.The strength of the tool is the new filter feature.  You can use this to narrow your search down so only guilds of a specific type show up.  Keep in mind we pushed this modification out quickly so we could have it out in time for the Recruiting Faire.  This doesn't mean we can't make more changes to it.  I think that showing guilds with offline recruiters would make a good option and I think I can add this to the filter screen before GU47.  I'll make the default view only show online recruiters, but you will have the option to change that on the filter page.So, moving past the topic of offline recruiters, what other feedback do you have for me?</blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">OOC.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">Rothgar,</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">Basically, it's a job well done. The filter is helpful, and allows all kinds of guilds to be found, and really it should have been implemented like this to begin with.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">I have only one significant comment to make. The guild description box is huge, but only allows a very very short description. How about increasing the character length of the allowed description ... to about TEN times what it is now. That would enable guild leaders to actually give more of a reasonable description of what their guild is about.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">Other than that, good work. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></span></p>