User:Seventh/Guild invite issues

→ moved from User talk:Linsey Murdock

On behalf of the guild leaders and officers in my alliance (myself included), I think that there should be some changes to the guild invite system. Specifically, we have noticed that there are many people who will ask for an invite, we will screen them (asking various questions, explaining what the guild/alliance does, and the rules), and literally minutes or even seconds later they will leave the guild. It wouldn't be such an issue except that guild invites (and guesting, too) cost 100g. Individually it's not much, but this adds up over time, and I know there are officers who have gone through several platinum a day just wasted on bogus guild invites. I'm not sure if this is some new form of griefing, but it certainly seems suspicious when users have been explained everything there is to know, and yet still leave a guild moments later. Worse, they'll ask you to invite their friends--normally a reasonable request--only to leave along with their friends moments later. It's at the point where some officers are refusing to recruit people because of the cost of instant-leavers.

I think that if a user leaves the guild within 48 hours of being invited, the user that invited them should be reimbursed the entire cost of the invite. If a user does not accept an invite (as you are charged for just submitting an invite regardless of whether or not it is accepted) within the same amount of time I think that the invite should be automatically canceled and again reimburse the person who sent the invite. Alternatively, just remove the cost for invites/guests completely. I understand the need for gold sinks in the game, but the abuse of these is substantial and worse, provides a disincentive for recruitment. --Seventh 18:07, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest a more complete vetting system. I rarely invite someone to my guild if I (or other guildies) have not played with them or they have been recommended by someone in the alliance. And seriously if you have been playing the game for any period of time, 100g is really nothing. If you are spam recruiting this is a much larger problem, and can be eliminated by simply changing your recruiting style. The amount of coding it would take to automatically reimburse someone each time this happens does not seem worth the time it would take. -- Wyn 18:17, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I would not be at all happy about an invitation being cancelled as is suggested in the original post. In my guild if players are absent for more than 2 weeks they are kicked, but an immediate invitation is sent for them to rejoin. When/if that player logs in again they can accept the invitation back and be right back in the guild. It's worth the 100g per invite to have the ability to keep the roster clean and active and still let people know that they are welcome and wanted back in the guild. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:70.129.45.70 (talk).

Several platinum a day? This means you would have to invite 25+ members a day! I'm with Wyn on this one, play a bit with people before inviting them. You'll find out soon enough if they are compatible with your guild. Though I'm wondering too why a fee has to be paid in the first place, --Arduinna 19:18, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I've never spent anywhere near 1k a day on invites, and most stay. Then again, we don't spam Kamadan, we recruit on the forums instead. Perhaps the problem is not the cost, but the method of recruitment. -- Alaris 20:31, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps people misunderstand. You can't even guarantee you'll play with someone if you're in, for instance, Jade Quarry. Even so, many officers/leaders don't have time to play through an area with the 8+ people they invite per day. As many users who join may need a particular mission, quest, vanquish, etc., it makes more sense to have them join up with other users in the guild/alliance after joining. Many users are understandably impatient when joining a guild, some who stay for a long time, while others will leave right away. Would you really want to have to dedicate a large chunk of time to a guild recruiter, who might not even invite you to the guild? More often than not, people will decide the "trial" to get into the guild isn't worth it, and will go somewhere else. As for the coding comment--they don't have to recode the system, they could just lower the cost of invites. --Seventh 23:17, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

If someone decides the trial isn't worth getting into the guild, then more likely than not they aren't likely to stay long if you did invite them. My guild's stance is that no one gets an invite without having first been interviewed by an officer and playing a session, sometimes done simultaneously. In most cases, the ones that get invited end up being long-term members. We've only had one or two members in the last four years slip through that ended up being unreliable or of the "gimme stuff I'm new" variety. As a result, over 75% of our guild are active members with two years or better with the guild. Screening members may be a bit of a pain, but it does pay off.--Pyron Sy 23:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I guess it all depends on what you want out of your guild. For me guild is family, there isn't anyone in my guild/alliance that I haven's spoken to/played with. I'm not looking for 100/1000 people, I'm not looking for faction farmers. If the guild's goal is strictly to gain as much faction as possible everyday, or to just maintain the 100 on the roster, then recruiting 25 people a day and counting on at least 50% attribution is probably realistic, and in that case, complaints about the invite fee are meaningless. If you are looking to build a guild that supports it's members/allies in their goals in the game, then spending the time to find the right people and the 100g is more than worth it. -- Wyn 00:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Quality over quantity generally requires more investment. As the others have said, try before you buy. If you're investing that much in recruiting each day one should see quite easily that the method needs to be reworked. Investing time in potential guildies might be a push for some people, and doesn't always mean the accepted invitee won't skip out on you but it may be better than what you're doing now.

I also echo a previous comment made questioning why it costs to invite someone into your guild anyway, other than a very minor goldsink. [imagines the Guild Accountant] I personally wouldn't have minded the payment cost if there was a 'guild bank' instead of the officers or guild leader paying. But, that's just me.

PS. Can we have a guild bank please? 000.00.00.00 00:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

on a related note: why dont they remove the gold sink for guests?75.165.97.80 02:37, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Your guild may be able to get by with 75% active, but for those that want a fighting chance at faction, you have to kick people with an idle time of 1-2 weeks, simply to make room for new members. This alone makes it expensive, but when you lose, estimating from our roster history, ~60% of your recruits within 24 hours, and close to 70-80% within 48 hours, it becomes an expensive proposition. I've started reimbursing other officers for recruitment, and it costs me around 1 platinum a day, plus or minus a few hundred gold. Now, if I had been doing this since I started playing GW, I would have paid out over 1,300 platinum, or enough gold to buy all guild NPCs twice over and still have some spare change, or a couple sets of FoW armor, take your pick. Granted, I think I should point out it didn't used to cost gold to invite users to your guild, and users (in the past) left with less frequency. I also think that guesting should be free, as I see no reason why a temporary invite should cost anything, and again I've heard of people who are seeking temporary invites be scammed out of 100g, sometimes several times, just to get a guest to a guild with the opposite alliance (kurz/lux). --Seventh 07:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, you have chosen to be a faction farming guild. It's not required, nor is it even super important overall in the game. As such it is not up to the developers to ease your expenditure, you have to live with the consequences of your choices just as anywhere else. Also, if you are playing enough to support a faction farming guild, money really should not be an issue I mean, 10k can be farmed easily in under an hour. Again, I think you need to rethink your recruiting strategies and/or your play focus if the loss of this money is this much of a problem for you, rather than seek changes in a system that was designed to make it necessary to consider your invites before issuing them. -- Wyn 08:03, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Wyn, the system is not a system that "was designed to make it necessary to consider your invites before issuing them" the system right now is set up so people don't sit in spamadon and spam invites to people who don't have a guild. that's how its set up right now. if it was really set up the way you speak of then the guild leader would have a setting where he could choose a mission/ or pvp arena that needed to be completed upon getting an invite. I think that everything to do with guilds needs a rework. your spending 100g per time you invite someone, a guild hall costs around 10k and is only really useful for people who have full halls and on top of that the npcs you "buy" for you hall dost help some one who is intsted in only pvp, and you cant even make a guild if you are a pvp only toon. there should be a usefull side for both pvp and pve. also the money sink for some of the npcs is just stupid i mean a Weapon smith that custmizes items for 10g isnt worth 10k nor is a skill trainer (that only teaches you core skills so no skills for rit sin para derv) worth 100k No, a better system for getting npcs would be one of you get a merchant and guild lord if you sell and buy from the merchant enough he will start to help you fill out the rest of your guild hall. but also still have the option of out right buying them. Also, a guest invite should be Free, there is no reason as to why it costs money to give a guest invite. normaly you use a guest invite so you can gvg with another guild or get set up for pvp or so you can ab on k/l. i know that one argument is that it people would just spam guest invites well one way to fix that is to make it so people who receive can reject an guest invite and cancel it, and make it so members(thats right members not only officers, anyone should be able to issue a guest invite) can only give out 5 a day each. ALSO Another thing that bothers me about guilds, why dose it always need to be a monarchy with officers selected by said monarch, why cant we chouse how the guild is set up that way? 75.165.97.80 09:44, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I just don't see the need to change the cost of invites whether they are membership or guest. Gold is not at all difficult to acquire in this game, so to waste valuable developer time on this seems more of a waste to me than a benefit. I would rather see Linsey's time freed up to do some of the wonderful new things she wants to do for us, or fix REAL problems. As for your idea of changing the overall hierarchy of a guild, I think it's ridiculous. A good guild leader consults with officers and members before making any major changes to the guild. If guild decisions needed to be approved by a majority, nothing would ever be decided. Unless you have a very small, or very inactive guild, getting an officer to issue an invite on behalf of a member should not be a problem. If it's the added cost to the officers, just require the member to reimburse or provide the fee up front. I guess my biggest concern here is that we have one developer and one programmer dedicated to Guild Wars, and repeatedly these non important issues are being brought up. We have survived almost 4 years with the guild structure the way it is and we've made it work (some better than others obviously). I would just like to see people really think about the over all importance of their requests BEFORE creating a wall of text on Linsey's page (or Joe's, or Regina's). -- Wyn 10:23, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

{RI}This was part of a scrimmage enhancing topic I brought up with Linsey before, but the reasoning for it now is pretty simple: they made a PvP only kit yet a PvP only character has a difficult time of making money unless if they are an AT/mat player (not likely if they just bought a PvP kit) or if they are UAX and have nothing to blow their faction on (only if they bought all the packs). While gold is easily acquired for a PvE only character, it makes running a guild difficult for someone who only has the PvP kit. DarkNecrid 16:28, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Z-keys reduced this to some extent, assuming you're willing to sell them. Also, Wyn, while you might run your guild differently, your egocentric opinion on how I should run my recruiting in a high faction guild that it appears you have no experience in, is not very helpful in this discussion. Even if "10k can be easily farmed in under an hour", do you really enjoy farming? Do you want to farm for an hour just so you can recruit people? As for it being a "waste of developer time", I can't imagine it being any harder to change guild invites from 100 to 0 than it is to change the recharge time for Jagged Bones from 5 to 15, but I'll let Linsey answer this when she gets around to reading this. How many members are going to pay 100g for an invite when they can get it somewhere else for free, or are on a PvP character/account with 0g on them? How many times have you been on a PvP character/account with 0g and as a result, not able to invite someone? Its detrimental to the centric idea of Guild Wars, and that's why I'm asking for it to be removed. Lastly, it hasn't been 4 years with the same guild system, as I already stated--guild invites and guesting used to be free, and I'm sure there have been other changes I'm forgetting. --Seventh 16:50, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Let's assume for a moment that they added Guild invite costs to deal with guild invite spams. Then removing that cost would allow that spam to come back. I'd rather pay the 100g than deal with even more spam than there already is. As for faction farming, there's really three reasons to do it: (1) access to cheap lockpicks, (2) maxing kurzick / luxon title, and (3) making your alliance more attractive to members who want (1) or (2). The costs of doing this can be greatly alleviated by selling lockpicks at 1250g when you buy them at 1200g. Treasure hunters will often buy them in bulk, at 80 lockpicks per 100k, netting you 4k per trade. It's easy money if you hold a town. Otherwise, I think the good done to you (and others competing for faction farmers) will affect far fewer players than needed to justify the resulting spam everyone will have to endure. -- Alaris 17:11, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah but I don't think the people with only a PvP only kit are ok with having to live with selling Zkeys just to invite people especially when they aren't going to be earning zkeys for quite awhile. Alterante solution is to allow you to use Balthazar Faction, in this case 100 Balth Faction to invite people as well as 100g. :/ Like I said Seventh, zkeys help but PvP kit users won't be AT/mat players for quite some time, so they are basically forced to join someone elses guild or have PvE officers otherwise they are screwed. DarkNecrid 19:03, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, let's assume that spam was the reason it was changed because it was a problem. This could be easily solved by only allowing one invite at a time per person. In fact, for the more active guilds (the very ones you fear will spam invites) it's not a problem anyway as you can only put out enough invites so that, if accepted, your guild would contain 100 people. As far as selling lockpicks in a town to make back the money, good luck. There's almost always several other people trying to do the exact same thing. I also think most of the buyers of the discount lockpicks just get invites to a guild in an alliance that owns a town, buy the lockpicks, and then leave, further inducing problems for recruiters. Not only are they paying 100g to invite a person who will leave immediately after fulfilling only their own needs, but then the person will not buy lockpicks for 1250g from a seller, thus making it even more of a pain to sustain a guild that owns a town. Even if you can sell lockpicks in a town, you'll likely have to wait hours to sell them in the volume you mention, which could have been better (and ever so slightly more fun) farming the gold instead. --Seventh 23:15, 25 March 2009 (UTC)