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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Guild Gathering #1 - Recruitment and Retention
LieutenantToast
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Glorious Ashes community - we're kicking off a brand new series called Guild Gatherings! Guild Gathering topics are a "reverse Q&A" similar to our Dev Discussions, where we ask you about your thoughts on everything related to guilds.
Our team has compiled a list of questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding guild tools, gameplay, your previous experiences, and more. Join in on our Guild Gatherings and share how your gaming family is special to you!
Guild Gathering #1 - Recruitment and Retention
What guild tools are most helpful to you for recruitment and retention, both in-game and outside of a game?
Keep an eye out for our next Guild Gathering topic regarding guild halls!
Hallo again everyone - thank you so much for taking the time to chime in share your thoughts for our very first Guild Gathering! Here's a quick recap of some of the top feedback on in-game and out-of-game recruitment and retention tools you provided for our team:
Recruitment
In-Game Tools
- Guild invite system and application process
- Improved guild search functionality
Out of Game Tools
- Guild web portals
- Guild spotlights
Retention
In-Game Tools
- Customizable permissions and ranks
- Member activity, gear, and contribution tracking
- Guild quests and salaries
- Event calendars and announcements
- Customizable guild halls
- Guild leaderboards and rewards
Out of Game Tools
- Guild forums
- Guild app integrations
21
Comments
Edit: Guild Roster Wages like in BDO.
List:
- Guild Invites
- function to copy/paste to and from the in game text chat and also the guild message board. So the Discord link and any other media can be used easily.
- Message boards, with more than just “message of the day” I need to be able to post several things that stay at the guild front page.
- Customizable permissions and ranks (people like a sense of progression in a guild, even if it’s minor permissions over time)
- Guild buffs or benefits that the guild has to cooperate to achieve really help with retention I’ve found.
For retention, I think actual guild rewards and GvG features is essential. The siege system in place should be great for that so I'm not worried about that. Guild currency that you can use for stuff like cosmetics would be cool. Also having guild-based rewards would be cool too. So if a certain guild can maintain their spot in a leaderboard everyone in their guild might get a cosmetic item to symbolize their identity as a member of a top pvp guild for example. Make different leaderboards for different aspects of the game with corresponding rewards. For example a craft-based guild leaderboard might give everyone in that guild either straight up or the ability to buy with guild currency a unique skin for a crafting tool or a top pvp/world boss guild might get cool weapon skins. I think it's also good to have good roles within a guild. Just make it like discord where a guild master can set their own custom titles and permissions.
I don't think much outside of the game needs to be available for guilds. I also don't think stuff like a voip system is necessary. Much easier to just stick with discord. Although being able to hyperlink within the game would be great. Being able to post a link to a guild's website/discord/social media/streams/etc within a notice board within the game is important. Makes it easier to keep the guild in contact with each other.
Also, there are of course the more practical things to focus on such as keeping track of member activity and such but knowing that would already be written down I wanted to add a different aspect to what could possibly be good for the guild members and the guild as a whole.
Thanks
Disc: Tockz#0001
Functions
Black Sails Discord
Ability to list information, maybe accessible from in- and outside of the game, think of message board or forums. Sticky posts, message of the days and additional notes for individual members, visible only to officers and above. A way to see the crafting skills of individuals, what they can craft etc.
Seeing what's going on in guild freehold without going there physically (virtually?) and what services it provides. What is needed for next upgrade, is there multiple ways to achieve it and what the guild is pursuing at the moment.
Calendar to list guild event's, some perhaps only visible to members of certain rank. At least 2 chat channels, one for officers and one for everybody.
Last but not least, a way for guilds to list themselves with a little info package about the guild. Similar way for individual players to list themselves so guild's looking to recruit members can browse the applicants
A guild calendar certainly would be a plus. There's unfortunately a fair share of players who just won't use a guild's own, separate website, to find out when events are.
The ability to quickly access the game's master forums would be great, as well as a place for guilds to host their own info-page on AoC's site. An in-game forums-specific browser, with it's own in-game button would be incredible!
Also it would be interesting to see a co-ownership feature where more than one person are the guild leader, in which case the role of the (true) guild leader becomes transferable without the need for the person to log in.
The ability to fuse a certain amount freehold spaces to create a guild freehold of a much bigger scale would be nice but I understand it would require quite a bit of programming, modelling, etc.
It would be nice to be able to create and participate in guild events like feast and competitions to get buffs for the entire guild.
Also, same way there can be wars and treaties between guilds it could be nice to be able to have this type of events between guilds.
While on the topic it would also be cool if high tier nodes had their type specific festivals/competitions like tournaments in military nodes.
There should be an in-guild voting system which can be initiated by the leader or people with the permission to do so. This would make the guild experience more inclusive for regular members and it would allow to track people who never participate in such polls which would help leaders to know who doesn't participate if the guild is fairly large.
This last point is just me hoping for a neat feature but nonetheless I find that it would be cool if a guild can receive a custom set of customization rewards having to do with their name as a reward for example holding a castle for an entire year or something similar for Metropolises. Something along the lines of ship skins maybe a mount skin for all members and/or a freehold customization building or item having to do with their guild name and or image.
If I go to the extreme, I can also suggest having the castle change along to the guild image and name like for example Shadow Drakes could have the light of the torches change to a dim purple and the castle itself having a bit of a scale texture or something, but again this is just me going to the extreme with this idea and in no way a real expectation, although it would be very cool.
For recruiting, we usually don't accept too many at once, maybe only a handful and give them time to adjust, get to know people and for us to get to know them and see if we all fit before accepting more.
As for retention we don't just play the one game. Our main focus may be within one game (currently Archeage Unchained) but members play other games too.
What tools I'd like to see:
- Recruitment questionnaire: Currently if someone applies to the guild, we send them an external form to fill out before we accept them. It would be awesome if you made it so Guild Leaders could make an ingame questionnaire that had the ability to design questions with just general input (text boxes, rate 1-5, yes/no etc)
-Allow guilds to be able to create their own ranks and permissions: Some MMO's have too many options, some have too little. It would be nice to have it so when someone makes a guild there are 3 default roles Leader, Officer, Member but give people the option to add more roles.
-Detailed member listings: It would be nice in the guild window if we could see something like:
I'm sure there will be more once I get a chance to play (can't wait!
- Guild chats: a usual chat box separate from the rest of the world or local area that allows you to communicate solely to your guildmates help keep in game communication organized (as a guild should be).
- Loot Sharing: its a thing that can keep or push away new recruits. so we either use an in-game or 3rd party dice roll/system that makes the sharing of loot fair.
- Websites: They could be hit or miss. Either the guild website provides great insight and information about the guild, and possibly a newsletter is posted there along with a monthly/weekly schedule of what the guild plans to do for that time frame. Or the website could be a copy and past of information that could be done within Discord or another communication app, therefore rendering the website useless.
Thanks for your time!
As a side thought, why not allow for guilds(internal to game) to set internal quests for members to participate in, not sure if this is done.
With that players can found their guilds
The "leaders" of guilds will have access to their page for the creation and modification of their page.
in order to create recruitment information directly on the guild's page
Why not integrate a roster of the guild leaders in order to have
contact in case someone wants to join the guild.
(I'm afraid that if the whole roster is displayed it looks like a big mess since 300 members is a big number)
example
They must have important features in my opinion:
- Guild invitation
- Page (G, N) related to the search and visualization of guilds
- Added an in-game guild ID for possible problems to allow support to be more efficient
- Message Board that displays two things, an EXTERNAL message and an internal message that can be modified.
- Rank can be modified with a limit of 20 letters for the row in question by allowing spaces.
- Modifiable permissions (guild invites, vault access, manage things, ...)
- Weekly guild quests that give access to rewards (buffs, guild gold, xp, ...)
- A guild chat
- An alliance chat (in anticipation)
A chat channel for guild ads to avoid pollution of /worldguild ads
They must also give some information that may why not lead to some % in play that can lead to
a few square things!
- Nickname
- Primary Class
- Level
- Job
- Activity to see people who have been absent for a long time in a single click
Do you want warm bodies that check boxes? Or do you want a teammate?
Forms and structure are easy to create, but there needs to be a good way to qualitatively judge a candidate.
In this way, getting in there and playing games with them is the best, and only way. We shouldn't rely on checkboxes alone... Otherwise, I might be playing in the NBA right now
Edit: It occurs to me maybe I didn't answer the right question... as for what a *game* like AoC can provide on these terms? I honestly don't feel like much is necessary. The best guilds I've been in, and the best memories I have is when those groups formed organically, without a quantitative facilitation. Hmm, maybe I did answer it
I am afraid that I do not understand the question.
It almost seems non-sensecial.
In fact this kind of attitude is down right counter-productive and in probably harmful to the hard work and personal investment I and others put into hazing rituals.
Edit* /Reddit explained it to me......I guess I understand snowflakes these days want to feel safe and welcome among strangers so I would suggest the following for Ashes of Creation: Instead of the traditional death dive off a cliff to a healer waiting to rez below followed by a congratulatory and traditional soap-sock beating, the soap can be lavendar scented and the socks can be washed.
Website
Forum
Social network
DKP
Voice communication (TS, Ventrillo, Raidcall)
In game addons.
But now, if suddenly I cut to do it again, then I see only the following necessary tools.
Discord and guild roster in the game.
Moreover, I would like to see in the roster:
Log - who joined and at whose invitation, why he left the guild, preferably with an indication of the reason.
Notes - a simple text field for the guild member himself and for the officers separately.
Information about the character - level, role, craft.
A simple chat is suitable for recruiting. And in the game it would be great to see not a faceless guild search interface throughout the server, but a bulletin board in a city or in a tavern.
If you continue to dream, it would be very interesting to have a guild bank that is not a junk warehouse, but a place with different levels of access and valuable things that you need to spend points to get. The points themselves can be obtained for guild activity, including for depositing into the bank.
A guild that plays together stays together.
You should incentivize bi-weekly or monthly gathering of the guild. This could be in the form of a buff or other reward.
For example, if everyone gathers at the hall on X day and spends an hour there, presumably socializing, talking about clan business, having a dance off, or doing the shennagins that players do when gathered.. The members will get a buff or points to a reward such as a cosmetic.
Heres what is gained from the system:
While forum/discord/chat spam recruitment is all good and dandy -- I miss being able to sit on a bench near the fountain with a recruiting sign, where people passing by can come over and have a chat with me, and I can sway them to join (or not
In Ragnarok Online specifically, the sign you'd sit with would double as a little chat room (you'd see how many people are in by just looking at the sign), so more than one person could join at once and talk, several people from the guild could do recruitment together and impress the potential recruits, and so on. It was a very neat feature and made the process even more social.
Retention:
Guild progression and guild bonuses / buffs - pretty standard stuff nowadays, but always good. Implementation may vary.
Guild activities in which a guild as a whole gets something and not specific people, even if some of the guildmembers didn't take part. For example, capturing a castle and having your guild flag on it creates guild pride, and makes people excited about being in this guild; although this castle better come with other perks, like castle dungeon, which you again have to brave together as a guild, as outsiders are not allowed in.
There should be something similar for smaller / less battle oriented guilds as well, since there's not enough castles for everyone.
For example, how about a guild activity for a guild specializing in crafting? A special rare craftable that will have guild name branded on it instead of a specific crafter, that can be sold from guild storage, and would require a number of crafters from the same guild to work in tandem to make?
Guild announcements - not only the ones you make on the spot, but also "reminders" you can set up in advance. If castle siege is on Friday at six - I want every guildmember to be greeted by a personal "Reminder: Castle siege on Friday at six, be 10 minutes early and bring a sword!" in the chat when they log in on Thursday. If I came up with a fun guild activity to do next day - I want to be able to do the same, and not overly rely on discord.
Outside of game:
Dedicated Forum/Discord sections for recruitment posts with strict rules on format - Ashes already got that, as far as I can see.
Potentially some easy solution for a guild forum and/or website - I personally like slow-paced and wordy forum discussions way more than one-liner discord chats, although I might be in the minority.
1) I cannot understate how useful this is and how frustrating it can be when it is not built-in.
2) Just, simply - yes
3) While this is fairly standard across most modern MMO's developed with half of a brain - it is essential
4) Yes, but with something else to consider. While I agree in-game guild searching should be robust, especially in a game like Ashes of Creation - a web-based tool can be really great too if you can also use these filters for searches. Not to the extent as either of us would desire, but a good base as an example would be FFX|V's FC (Guild) & community search tool: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/community_finder/
Another part of this: Tagging would be a key aspect for searching and recruitment. Ability to add metadata to guild info to ensure optimized research results. Ex. #Gatherers #merchardcore /#mercenaries , etc to let guildmasters the ability to modify search results with a ‘best match’ or ‘most relevant’ to those looking to join guilds.
5) I followed you at first, and we quickly saw different things here. However, when looking at say - a Guild Quest system (dailies / weeklies / etc) There could be potential here, such as:
Response provided by:
Kino & Trident50
Apostles of the Abyss
As a GM being able to tailor make roles and customise them allows the guild to function more efficiently and also means that members can strive for more responsibility's.
BANNERS Customisable banners/cloaks/shields/Armor insignias, would be a great way for people to visually be able to take pride in their guild. Having a system that allows a little more customisation than just some random shapes and colours would be great.
Outside of the game I think there are 2 main ways to retain members.
1. It's important to be honest with your recruitment message. For eg. Project Anvil is open about being a HC guild and having above average entry requirements. This means we don't get as many recruits, but the people we do recruit have the correctly expectations and mindset.
2. Despite AOC not being released and majority of people not having testing access, it is important to start creating a community and building friendships with your members. Having an active discord and finding games to play in the meantime really allows you to build those friendships.
But being able to mail a person ingame should suffice for the first interaction, incase you find some1 ingame and want to message them at a later point.
Guild roles are a must given how diverse and co-dependant AoC aims to be. The most favorable one for me so far was to have a general role-draft and able to add/remove privilages from a said role to make things easier for guildies to be able to find. But that should vastly depend on how guild interactions (structure and management wise) to be able to tell
A way for a guild leader to make notifications that people see when they log on.
A wholly customizeable set of ranks and privileges that a guild leader can assign. Every function in a guild should have a way to be assigned to a rank, so that a guild leader can completely customize his chain of command and their permitted responsibilities. This should extend to a meta level; in other words, a guild leader should be able to assign permission for the ability *to be able to assign certain permissions*. So, if I'm a guild leader, and I want my Guild Banker to decide who has access to the guild stores, I can give him that responsibility. If I want my Field Captain to decide who is able to take certain mounts out of the stables, I should be able to set that up. If I want my Head of Crafting to be able to decide who is allowed to work at the guild work stations and who has access to the material storage bank, I should be able to do that. If I want to set up a Human Resources Manager who handles all the recruiting and assigns people to given ranks I've set up in the guild, I should be able to do that.
Also, odd as this may sound, please keep in mind that Discord or other chat services like it should not replace ingame chat functionality. I often use Discord as an out-of-game chat services, but when ingame, I don't like paying attention to it because of the soft friction of having to split my attention between two different programs. I hop on a voice channel, if that, and I ignore everything beyond direct voice communication. Direct ingame chat takes precedence for me over external chat services every day of the week.
1- Guild Recruitment
- it would be great to have the following options when you want to do Guild Recruitment announcement:
- First a channel should exists to show guild recruitment announcement.
- On the guild UI screen, there should be a tab to be able to set your recruitment message. On this tab it would be great to have a short and long description, also what kind of guild you are, language of your guild, what your looking for (dps, tank, healer, support, other), message is active or not and also team members assign to be the contact.
- when the announcement is show or someone look at it, you should be able to see how many members there is in the guild, and members to contact for signing in.
2 - Guild Invites
- should have a button to invite people into the guild.
- Other option such as right click on the name.
- Would be great to be able to invite people from the website.
3 - Guild Maintenance
- would be great to be able to manage your guild in game and on the website.
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Guilds leaders need tools / metrics to show members commitment and contributions. Most members don't need to see them. Contributions could be rewarded with guild coins for use in the guild shop.
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Guild leaders can then assign ranks based on their own interpretation of the metrics, not based on game imposed standards.
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If a guild leader doesn't log in for a week then they get demoted to a low rank. Number 2 gets promoted to leader. This is in response to unexpected absences. If a leader knows they will be on vacation for two weeks then it is simple to step down in advance.
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I would also like to see a number of guild titles alongside the rank system. These could be 'Quartermaster', 'Master of arms', 'Master blacksmith, 'Master of beers. These could be made dependent on contributions of resources to the guild.
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Guild leaders assign permissions to ranks and/or titles. This could be... removal access to guild storage (anyone can make a recorded donation), ability to declare war on other guilds, ability to make alliances, ability to promote to one level below their own, ability to assign titles, ability to spend guild funds (recorded on a ledger for guild management to prevent abuse)
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Have "show own guild rank" options (like a number of dots next to your name) so that a guild member can show either no rank or any rank upto their own rank. Sometimes higher ranks don't want to stand out.
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The Infinite Black, despite its other limitations, had a great guild rank based and alliance chat system. There was a different tab for each rank chat and members only had visibility of chats at their rank and below. You needed to have progressed beyond "noob" level to access the alliance chat. It also told you who was online.
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Being able to post a map position or rally point in chat, which, when clicked on shows up on the map. Also consider the option to set guiding arrows for those that don't have a good sense of direction.
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As guilds level up they should have the option of adding alliances. This will happen in Discord anyway so there may as well be some in-game information based advantages (show allies on minimap, chats, notification of war declared on ally, war invites, etc) that guilds have to buy when they level up.
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A guild shop. The Quartermaster can take items out of guild storage and place in the guild shop. Members can buy items with guild coins, via a 24 hour? auction which starts when the first member makes a bid. Guild PvE/PvP loot could have the option to go into the Guild shop.
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Someone may be given the role to sell guild items in the local node or elsewhere if a better profit can be made.
A guild recruitment page similar to that of Archeage, but rather than allowing guilds to set their focus the page should instead show the activities the guild has participated in recently. This should be things like if they have participated in sieges recently, how many guild wars they have been in (and their W/L ratio), run a lot of caravans, what guild perks they have selected, their current character count, number of accounts that character count is made up from, and their current member cap, killed any notable PvE encounters, made use of the bounty hunter system, had a high number of corruption gaining kills - things like this that give an objective view of what the guild is about.
The guild is free to write about what they want to do in the future, but from the perspective of players looking for a guild, there should be an objective overview of any potential guild in a system like this.
Basically, a guild recruitment page is a great tool for guilds to recruit members, but it is only any good if perspective new members are able to trust the information contained on the page - which will never be the case if the guild is able to set it how they want (as was the case in Archeage, which is why it was useless there).
I've never personally seen recruitment forum sections be overly effective (I have never had a single person approach me saying they saw my guild on the guild recruitment section of the forums), but I guess they should still exist.
In order to keep guilds together.
There should be a web page/forum for guilds that has the following intergrations with the game.
In game guild MotD can be set in the website, and can be seen both in game and on the website for all members.
Guild chat can be seen on the guild page in real time, and players can comment from the guild page in to guild chat, as well as sending whispers to individual guild members. This should also apply to officer chat, as well as sending mail to guild members.
A guild calander should be shown on the web page, as well as intergrated in to the game. This should show sieges that the guild has an interest in, node mayor elections/arenas etc of nodes that the guild is interested in, server downtime, as well as allow the guild leadership to schedule events like caravans.
Access to the guild website should be based on your game account, with permissions set based on your guild rank. This means that if I invite a new player to the guild, they are automatically able to log in to the guilds website without me needing to do a thing. If I promote someone to a high rank, they have access to higher ranking discussions in the forum. If someone is booted from the guild, they immediately lose all access to the guilds page.
This would mean players that are unable to log in to the game for what ever reason are still able to keep in touch with the guild and individual people within it via a phone or laptop. It would do this in a way that is easy to maintain for the guild leadership, which means more guilds are likely to use it than if it was implemented without the above intergrations.
The only other thing I consider important for developers to do to keep guilds together - and this is the biggest one that has seen guilds I've run lose more members than any other factor - is to ensure guilds always have something interesting to do.
In many games that are more PvE focused than Ashes, my guild wouldn't lose a single member for over a year. Then, as soon as we have beated the last encounter before the developers add the next wave of content, we could lose up to 25% of the guild in the space of a week. This also happens in guilds where others monopolize content, leaving the first guild with nothing to take on.
Guilds NEED things to do. That is why people join guilds - to do things they can't do on their own. As soon as the reason people had for koining the guild is no longer relavant, many peopel do opt to leave the guild.
Now, in Ashes, we have caravans and nodes and such to keep us busy, and this will work to an extent. However, at least in terms of the people I tend to play games with, this can't and won't make up any more than half of their play time. They will want actual content to take on - progression based PvE.
Going to Archeage again, that game had a massive lack of progression based PvE content (as in, it didn't have any). Not surprisingly, guilds didn't last long in that game.
So, the tl;dr here is that to assist in recruiting, give us guild recruitment pages that contain objective information about the guild so that prospective members can trust it, and to help keep guilds together give us an easy to use website that has intergrations with the game, and most importantly, make sure guilds actually have something to do.
What guild tools are most helpful to you for recruitment and retention, both in-game and outside of a game?
In game, the most important tool is an organized guild rank system, in my organization we have ranks that are equal in power but perform different duties for the guild and our community and it's often frustrating to assign recruitment roles to administrative officers as sometimes they often conflate their standing as an officer with their very specific duties.
Also, a clean, organized way to recruit people that doesn't require pulling teeth. I like simple applicant systems and recruit function.
Out of game, perhaps a clean ui from the forums that allows us to advertise our guild concisely and enables us to show exactly what we're doing.