Open Guild No Longer Being Recommended To Players

by Hesoid
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Original Post

Re: Open Guild No Longer Being Recommended To Players

[ Edited ]

@Negotiator003 I have to bring in every recruit as well (or my recruitment officer does).

It's very difficult to even define what "level playing field" means, however. Without knowing how many times a guild has been suggested and rejected/accepted compared to all others, it's impossible to measure.

That's why I caution players from making "definitive" accusations based on unmeasurable subjective perception. It's one thing to ask a question. It's another to accuse CG of malfeasance and demand restitution.

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Message 21 of 26 (332 Views)

Re: Open Guild No Longer Being Recommended To Players

★★★★ Novice
@GladOS-013 You can quantify nearly anything with an adequate amount of information. I don't wish to argue symantec's. I can't speak on accusations made by others either. As for my comment I apologize if it sounds accusatory. Simply put it would seem something has changed drastically with recruitment and has been this way for awhile. I don't wish to speculate on this matter any further than this. Thanks you for your time.
Message 22 of 26 (324 Views)

Re: Open Guild No Longer Being Recommended To Players

You absolutely can quantify nearly anything with an adequate amount of information. However, it seems impossible for any player to generate enough data to draw a quantifiable conclusion.

There are several perfectly reasonable (and passive) reasons for a guild to have a reduction in guild recruits that don’t involve a bug:

1. A reduction in players using the guild search function (including all reasons - like more players using external recruitment tools or fewer players switching guilds)
2. An increase in total number of guilds, resulting in a reduced chance for your guild to be displayed by the guild search.
3. An increase in the number of players who see your guild in the search, but reject your guild and look for a “better fit”
4. The guild drops below a particular search threshold (such as the “45+ members” filter that I always use. When i use the in-game search function for my Alt, I am not interested in joining a guild that’s missing more than a couple of members, so if a guild has fewer than 45 members, I’ll never see it in a search.)

Only #2 is even partially measurable by players, but I don’t believe anyone could collect enough data to accurately quantify the number of Open and Searchable guilds that are missing members - and that number would change daily.

Given that there are several possibilities that would result in fewer recruits for you and that the guild search function has had no changes in years, Occam’s Razor suggests that the most likely conclusion is that your guild isn’t being excluded from the search, but a simpler reason (or a combination of multiple reasons) is the cause.
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I am a volunteer on this forum, and not an employee of EA or CG. Please let me know how I can help you!
Message 23 of 26 (282 Views)

Re: Open Guild No Longer Being Recommended To Players

★★★ Novice

@GladOS-013

 

I respectfully ask you to please stop posting on the subject. You are offering absolutely no useful information and all you are doing is annoying frustrated players in search of a resolution to an issue that is barrier to continued enjoyment (and hence playing) of the game. Your replies are therefore doing direct harm to CG’s product.

 

The lecture on statistics isn’t helpful. You can no more prove it is not a bug than I can prove it is a bug with stats. From a customer satisfaction perspective, it is also a moot point, people feel they have an issue, coming here in the hopes of getting some help, only to feel marginalized. The normal human response is to disengage from the game.

 

Finally, multiple people over a prolonged period of time are reporting wild swings in how their open guild is getting new recruits. Steady, if not daily new recruits, suddenly shifts to nothing for months on end. We have still not had a single new player (meet or prereqs or not) join since my last post. A better application Occam's razor would be that the game is functioning in unintended ways and not that we are all consistently hit with extremely statistically unlikely wild swings in player acquisition rates.

Message 24 of 26 (230 Views)

Re: Open Guild No Longer Being Recommended To Players

You may personally feel that my responses are not value-added, provide “no useful information”, and all I’m doing is “annoying frustrated players”, but you may not be speaking for all players who read this thread. Just because you disagree with me doesn’t mean I’m wrong. I can’t say 100% that I’m correct, but neither can you - so why should a legitimate discussion about possibilities be silenced?

The reason I respond to these “recruitment” posts the way I do is to help provide players with as much control as they can have over their own concerns. A player who thinks the game isn’t working properly will just enter into a victim mentality and get frustrated. A player who believes the game is broken (and remains broken) for months or years is likely to give up (and possibly leave the game) because they believe the Devs don’t care.

On the other hand, a player who believes they can provide some control over their own future is more likely to be an engaged player who will take whatever steps they can to improve the gaming experience for themselves and their guild. Whether there is a real problem or not, our options remain unchanged. We have things we can control, and others that we can’t. Dwelling on things outside of our control rarely is beneficial, so I like to help people realize their other options.

If nothing is wrong with the guild search and recommendation function, then nothing will change. Your guild will continue to lose players until you disband or quit. You should consider that to be a possible future - and decide whether you want to disband, or take whatever actions you can to improve your situation.
_____________________________________________________________
I am a volunteer on this forum, and not an employee of EA or CG. Please let me know how I can help you!
Message 25 of 26 (223 Views)

Re: Open Guild No Longer Being Recommended To Players

[ Edited ]

@GladOS-013 Just for fun, I documented 33 refreshes of the recommended guilds (saw 99 recommendations). My results:
77 guilds recommended once
10 guilds recommended twice
1 guild recommended thrice.

I saw guilds with 4 members and guilds with 49 members, so the recommendation algorithm doesn't seem to filter by number of players.

 

Edit: updated because a typo messed up my results

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I am a volunteer on this forum, and not an employee of EA or CG. Please let me know how I can help you!
Message 26 of 26 (216 Views)