Mass Recruiting

[Sangwa]

I there\'s a great urge to discuss mass recruitment. We need to find a way to easen its casualties and make everyone happy.
Mass recruiting has been present in Planeshift for as far as I can remember. It\'s consequences are harmful and clear: Unbalanced guilds, roleplay demotivation and recruitment issues for non-mass recruiting guilds.
Guild become unbalanced, because while one has 150 members in an month the other has 10 and also due to the fact that most of these hastly recruited players tend to become powerlevelers.
The players within these guilds are demotivated from roleplaying, since their leaders don\'t care if they do roleplay or not. They instead powerlevel or quit the game, if they find PS\'s hack and slash mode frustrating enough.
Plus, other guilds that pay attention to roleplay and are not mass recruiters are left with few players to recruit.
This creates a threatening cicle, where mass recruiting guilds grow bigger and dumber while other guilds get crippled and left with bad conditions to roleplay properly.
I think it\'s ridiculous to have guild leaders that lure members into guilds that hardly roleplay or even know the names of the people recruited. GM\'s should punish this action and everyone should frown upon it.

This thread is meant to be a cooperative work of guild members with the purpose of motivating Mass Recruiters to recruit clean and properly, so that every guild leader can have its members.

Also, check this thread\'s twin sibling.

[shorty13]

FYI just b/c a guild has 110 doesn\'t mean they are powerlevelers.  110 in couple weeks or maybe even within a month is however.

[Sangwa]

Oh, ok. I\'ll change the example

[Farren Kutter]

I face the effects of mass-recruiting all the time... These days I just wait for a new member to just fall into my lap, I make more that way More active ones anyway.

[Father Sengus]

How you recruit is important, but what really matters if what you do with your recruits.

Shorty13, recruiting your 110 members over a period of 6 months doesn\'t make your guild any better than any other mass-recruiting guild, if you ask me. For everytime you\'ve recruited somebody, have you been encouraging this person to RP?

I don\'t like going into maths and all that, but you\'ve recruited 3 people every two days, counting that you\'ve been on every day and not counting the people who must have left during the 6 months you\'ve been active.
Now, don\'t tell me your guild doesn\'t have a lot of  powerlevelers when you hardly have a day to spend on their education.
You\'re not born an RP:er, you learn to become one...

To go back to Sangwa\'s original idea, I completely agree that mass-recruiting guilds shouldn\'t be accepted, though I\'m not sure if GM\'s should be asked to deal with the problem. At this point, there\'s no need to make their job more complicated than it already is.

Best way to do something about it right now, I think is to keep encouraging RP in PS. Slowly, powerlevelers will realise that they are missing out on something great...

[Sangwa]

I think there are systems that could be implemented to help this cause. The community has, of course, a great role to play. But so do the developers who can create systems that can complement the community\'s efforts.

[Farren Kutter]

I know Masoj, and I know that most anyone he recruits he encourages to RP... He participates in many RP events as well. I\'m sure he does his best to have his guild RP.

[Baston]

Hello all,

I think you present the problem by thinking in only one way.
Think this way and I believe you will see the other side of the problem :
A guild got disbanded if it\'s number of members fall under 5.
Just think about players who are not power levelers, who try to RP as much as they can but unfortunatly who are not that strong and not that famous. If this player wants to create a guild what solution have he ?
All power levelers will not want join his guild : they\'ll know that he is weaker than them, and will not want to be lead by someone weak.
The picture is not better with Rplayers I can tell you for sure.

So what is his solution ? the only possible : mass recruit newbies.
Why ? because he can only recruit newbies and if he don\'t mass recrecruit them, 80 % will leave him after a week.

I know it : I am this player ;-)
But I believe you can ask any of my guild members if they think we do not RP...
Our guilds first mission is ... a digging mission ! So for weapons and trias ;-)

I just wanted to say that the problem is not that simple : mass recruiting can be the only way for little guilde to survive as well as a way to increase the power levelers number...
It\'s not that simple like I said.

[Father Sengus]

Baston, I\'m sorry I didn\'t completely understand everything you said (I\'m a little tired ) but a conclusion I can make is that you say that making a guild of powerlevelers is better than not making one at all. That\'s where we would have to disagree

[seperot]

Personally i dont know why people feel the need to rush into a guild... it happens in all MMO games... and i cant understand it, although i know i myself have been victem to such thinking..

expecially in planeshift and most games when you start at a low level it seems better just to play and find yourself before joining with others...

[Shadowcast]

Baston, Im gonna have to disagree with you completely.If you are true RPers then you create freinds. You and youre freinds can make a guild, even if it not officially created. Thats what My freinds and I did. We tried mass recruting, it didnt work. Those who remember the old days of Radiant Fate know who we are. But those people left, and in the end (after the wipe) we were only left with 3 members, Charims, Thoronador, and myself (Shadowcast). We three were true RPers, and we stuck together. Even though we lost our \'official\' title, we still kept the guild together. We eventually were able to regain our title. We gained people through RPing, and most of them are very active, even trough the holidays and exam weeks. While we wont gain 150, 100, or even 50 players as fast as it takes mass recruiting guilds to get 200 people, we definatly enjoy it more than they do.

IMO mass recruiting guilds end up killing themselves eventually, it still needs to be stoped because it can kill PS.

[shorty13]

Originally posted by Father Sengus
How you recruit is important, but what really matters if what you do with your recruits.

Shorty13, recruiting your 110 members over a period of 6 months doesn\'t make your guild any better than any other mass-recruiting guild, if you ask me. For everytime you\'ve recruited somebody, have you been encouraging this person to RP?

I don\'t like going into maths and all that, but you\'ve recruited 3 people every two days, counting that you\'ve been on every day and not counting the people who must have left during the 6 months you\'ve been active.
Now, don\'t tell me your guild doesn\'t have a lot of  powerlevelers when you hardly have a day to spend on their education.
You\'re not born an RP:er, you learn to become one...

To go back to Sangwa\'s original idea, I completely agree that mass-recruiting guilds shouldn\'t be accepted, though I\'m not sure if GM\'s should be asked to deal with the problem. At this point, there\'s no need to make their job more complicated than it already is.

Best way to do something about it right now, I think is to keep encouraging RP in PS. Slowly, powerlevelers will realise that they are missing out on something great...

Yes I promote RPing.  For instance, I am pushing our guild to join the militia (though only 2 of us have lol, we\'re getting there).  I usually ask nice people I am having fun converstations with into the guild.  It also helps that you let at least half of your ranks invite people.  IE A guild (like the Dark Shadows) who allow 5/9 of their ranks invite others, they are obviously going to have more than say (I think I heard this somewhere) the Dark Empire where only Sangwa can invite others.

Also, as you stated, I hope PS\'s community grows more and more and less related to PLing.

[But Really, we shouldn\'t have 2 threads on this issue.  There is one here and 1 in the Wish List.  IMHO This one just seems to be a complaint and is useless.  However the one in the wishlist really has some good ideas going]

[Baston]

I\'m not sure you understand well my words :
Of course you need friends to create a new guild ! (ooc: how can you manage to get the 5 members in 5 minutes else ?)

But if you want to create a guild just to have a permanent group...
I think a guild must have goals and need peoples to achive thoses goals (or die trying).

Anyway I don\'t feel guilty : we are only 12 it\'s not really mass recruiting ;-)

I just point the fact that things are not simple.

[Shadowcast]

Thing shouldnt be simple. Life isnt.

But you mentioned earlier that you were worried people might leave. I f you have 4 good friends then why worry? If they are your friends then they wont leave, so youre whole point of mass recuiting would have been pointless. Basically, you were recruiting to gain as many active members as possible. But thats what we are trying to stop. It leaves the rest of the guilds with less people, and some then feel like they have to mass recruite to get people. Thats the problem.

Youre right, 12 isnt mass recruiting, although I never was accusing you ever it. What we want to stop is 70+ members in a short while.

[Valbrandr]

Ive been trying to think of how to combat this issue... obviously every MMORPG has this same problem.  What I would like to see is a few major conglomerations of guilds say 8-10 or so, like Fighters Guild and whatnot, with subdivisions inwhich the subdivisions would be the actual guilds themselves.   I dont really care who would run these 8-10 guilds at first.. whether dev, council of chosen members or whatever..

Now the ability for someone not in one of these Major Guild Houses would not be able to make a guild.  Some people are always loners anyway.  To join these Guild Houses, One would have to state your case to the House Council, if they find that you are an RP oriented guild then you will be accepted and allowed your own Subdivision in the Main Guild.  You could still name your own subdivision what you normally would.  So it would look something like this:  (Im just going to throw in names here and there.. not where they might go )

Fighters Guild:

-Janners Way

-The Dragon Council



Mages Guild:

-Knowledge Seekers

-Arcane Order



Theives Guild:

-Moonlit Council

-The Shaded Whisper



Smiths Guild:

-Hammers of the Way

-Union of Commerce


Im not sure how great of an idea it is, but it is an idea .. and if we could work The Shelter underneath this system, it would make it all the better.

(If you have trouble understanding me, PM me later.. my brains not working right now anyway )