Tips and Tricks to Starting a Faction

Valdea - Dreamweaver

Despite the sound of the thread name, I'm not looking to give advice on the subject, actually I'm looking more to receive information. I know how to get the faction created, but what I want to know are a few good ways to go about recruiting, getting money to participate in events such as TW, and how to be come a nice successful faction. Any advice would be nice (and if you happen to be a faction leader, say what faction you lead) b:thanks

Tiaque - Sanctuary

Each faction has their own way of doing things. What works for some, doesn't work for others, etc. Thus, the advice I'm gonna give is taken from personal experience as a faction director, and is yours to use as you will

Before you begin:

1. Write up your faction rules and policies. How long can a member be inactive without warning before they're kicked from the faction? How does your faction feel about PvP and PK? Are you going to allow alts in faction, or only one character per account? Keep the list short, but don't let yourself skimp on what you feel to be necessary....too many rules can makes your faction seem arrogant and militarist, but too little can lead to things getting out of hand.

2. Choose a director. Running a successful guild is a lot of work, and its very easy to get in over your head. Your director should be someone you trust – a real life friend, your significant other, a close in-game companion. For my faction, I became second-in-command for my boyfriend, and a close friend from in-game became our first marshal. A smoothly run administration is key to a successful guild.

3. Splurge on a few telecoustics. Trust me.

4. Make a mule character. This is entirely optional, but having a faction “bank” is always nice for holding money and faction-owned items.


Recruiting:

1. Open your faction to all levels. Some of the best players in my faction we got at level 3 or even lower. Yes, some will never log on again, but that's what activeness rules are for Those that stay will be among your most loyal and enjoyable members.

2. Run FB19 runs with your faction. A lot. You'll not only be putting your name out there, but you're likely to get a good amount of unguilded people interested.

3. Related to the above, be helpful. Help with Fbs, bosses, instances... Even at higher levels, when most people are already in a faction, some people still need help – and some are just hoping for a faction better for them then the one they're already in.

4. Before you recruit over WC, start a chatroom. Then, when all the whispers start getting in, instead of inviting them straight to faction, invite them into the chatroom, where you and your director and marshals can get to know them first – and they can get to know you and your faction.

5. Remember always: A faction is for the players. Players that fit into your ideals as a faction are the ones most likely to stay for a good long while. Whenever I see someone shouting “looking for faction” in any chat, my first whisper is always, without fail, “what are you looking for in a faction?”

Making money:

1. Ask your faction members to donate money. You can make it mandatory if you want, though that's entirely your choice. Let them know that all money will go to the faction – paying for upgrading the faction and bids for TW. How they do this is up to them – selling rare pets or molds, farming gold, a percentage of what they make in overnight cat shops, whatever.

2. Be creative, but don't beg. Especially, don't beg random people. Yes, I have known people to shout in the common chat in West Arch “PLZ DONATE $$ TO MY AWESOME FACTION, PLZ!!!” Its annoying, and likely to get more people to blacklist you than help you.

Being Successful:

1. Always stick to your principles, as a faction, and yourself as a leader. There will always, always be people who will argue. You will gain enemies, but you'll also gain a lot of respect as a leader, and as a person.

2. Enforce your rules. You don't want to come off as a push-over, but try not to be too harsh. Finding the balance between the two is difficult, but once you do, you'll find it easier to run your faction.

3. As an international server, democracy is not practiced by everyone. However, give your players some say in how their faction is run. How you do this is up to you – for us, guild rules and policies are decided upon by the leader, director, and marshals as a whole; and marshal positions can be held up to guild vote.

4. Get to know your members. In fact, make sure everyone gets to know everyone else. There doesn't need to be any personal information spread around, but general information brings everyone closer. Know what region of the world your players come from, or what state, if they're US. If you have college students, chat them up about their areas of studies, and the older players love to go on about their kids and families. Ages are a good thing to know as well, so you can get a general idea of what your members have been through.

5. Be chatty in faction chat. You'll always have the quiet ones, but even they learn to speak up. Just talking gets everyone involved, and makes everyone feel more comfortable approaching higher ranked or higher level players in faction with questions or when they need help.

6. Try and keep guild drama out of faction. It happens to every faction, no matter how hard they try to avoid it. If a problem comes up, don't avoid or ignore it. Settle the problems as best you can, and remind both parties that involving the rest of the faction usually is unnecessary and only creates more problems.

7. Be helpful and respectful to all members. If your faction is open to all levels, be prepared to patiently answer any questions anyone may have, and expect to repeat yourself, especially with the lower levels.

One last word of advice for you, from personal experience: Running a faction is hard. A wise person once said that the hardest thing to lead is your own peers. Its true - leading your peers in real life is hard, but it's even harder to run a faction of people you have never met. Never, ever be afraid or ashamed to admit that you've gotten in over your head - its best for you, and for your faction.

Good luck with your faction, and I hope my advice helps ^^

MystiMonk - Sanctuary

I am leader of guild but not this game.It is hard to get successfull guild going.It depends on what size you want it the observations I have sen in ths game would adise agianst pvp one as large guilds hold most of the territories.It also helps to have website and if you can voip or voice chat.

There have been successfulll guilds in the other game I play but they eventually fall.These are great pvp guilds as well.The reason a lot will go inactive is becasue like the other game I play is free so they may make char up then find it is not what they wanted.Then you get your leavers who up leave the guild when you aren't on.when deciding upon an officers think hard about this and one you trust.This is so they don't kick most of your members out which did happen in my guild.

It is not easy being guild leader and when you get new blood into it they may not talk that often as they maybe some what shy and it is best not to forse them to talk.

It is not realy up to you to be helping everyone out that is what officers are for if they need help recruit.I wouldn't help them out with money give them advice on how to make it but don't give it to them.

I would start with small friendly guild.

Soradid - Heavens Tear

I lead FateofAll and a faction is really just a little club of ppl and they help eachother its pretty much just 4 social matters.

Valdea - Dreamweaver

Wow, Taique. That must have taken you forever to type. I really appreciate it, and all of the responses I recieved. Thank you guys. ^^

Granrey - Sanctuary

Tiaque post was just great. Unfortunately, I cannot give you "rep" for it as in other forums.

My only concern is not with the post but with the game though. There should be more ways for guilds to make money.

-Allowing guilds to have permanent catshops and banks would be a great help. This could allow guilds to make money by trading certain mats
-It would be nice if there were periodicly guild quests. Yes, exactly that, quest for guild members only.

-I wish there were guild wars as somebody suggested in the suggestion box, so your guild could be hired (is not the same as TW) as mercenary.

I've been had all positions in this game in guilds (except leader) and still I find no many reasons to be in one. yes, i's important for FB, bosses, TW, chat, friends and other things but that's it.

Bobncut - Sanctuary

Three things I'd add to Tiaque's excellent post:

1) Be responsive to faction members' requests for help. You may not be able to help them right away. That happens and everyone understands it. But, the number one reason I see people leave factions is that they ask and ask for help and nobody even says "Sorry, we can't get a squad together for that right now." Your guild officers should be reminded of how important it is to stay alert for requests and try to keep members from feeling ignored just because they asked at an inopportune time.

2) Work out a way that helping the members does not become an enormous drain on your time (and the time of your highest level members). It is inevitable that just after you kill a boss, somebody will ask for help with that same boss. Higher level members will get frustrated with the lack of coordination and constant demands for their time. They leave and the faction falls apart. Or, lower levels will feel that the faction limits on help are so constrictive that they cannot get help and the faction loses members and gets a bad reputation. A big part of the solution to this is to encourage regular members to work together to do what they need whenever possible. Getting people out of the expectation that a faction is all about getting some high levels to do all your tough stuff for you will help ease the balancing problem a lot.

3) Money - Other than to level up the faction, you don't really need serious faction money until you're ready for TW. And, you won't be ready for TW as soon as you think. Jumping in to TW too early causes a lot of problems (money problems #1, but also worsening the time/helping balance problem as high levels get concerned about leveling enough for a good TW showing). By the time you are really ready to do TW, the price of bidding (and of towers and cats if it is PvP TW) will not be large relative to what your players are spending on gear and skills. For the money to level up the faction, a similar rule applies. You are ready to do this only when you have enough active members that a small contribution each is all it takes. Everybody always thinks they are broke, but that is a cash-flow issue. They had money, but already spent it when you come asking. Planning a bit ahead of money needs can make that issue go away.

Tiaque - Sanctuary

Just glad I can help ^^

Also, to all those with the excellent ideas, thanks for mentioning the things I didn't touch upon

Valdea - Dreamweaver

Okay, another question. What are you recommendations for promotion. Say the set up is this. You have your faction, it has a few members (maybe 10) but no one you know personally, you and your spouse are the Leader/Director respectively. What would you suggest about how to fairly promote members?

Tiaque - Sanctuary

Well....in my faction, officer positions are earned based off of leadership quality and helpfulness. Marshals act as a council to me and the faction leader, and they're elected by the faction members - no matter how new they are, they get a say. Executors are chosen and reveiwed by the marshals every two weeks or so.

One thing I highly recommend that you do not give away any faction officer position to anyone based solely on level. We just elected a new marshal this week - she was level 38 when the voting started, and just popped 40 today. We have level 20s as Executors - and they're among the best officers of the server (but my opinion's biased ). Level only tells how far they've advanced into the game - I know level 75+s who are still utter newbs at the game for one reason or another.

Officers are your faction representatives - they should be the ones that not only practice the ideals of your faction in words, but in action as well.

...I leave long posts >> I'm sorry, I like to give advice - let me know when to stop. ^^

Valdea - Dreamweaver

Hehe. I like your long posts. They're very helpful. Thanks for the really great advice. ^^

DraukaGrissa - Sanctuary

Excellent advice all around. It has helped Me so far. One thing I think this thread could use is the definitions of the various officer rankings and what is entailed in each officer position. I understand everyone's definition will be different, but nonetheless, any advice is helpful and will aid in shaping one's own definitions of what they expect from their officers.

Valdea - Dreamweaver

I found a very helpful post while google searching what exactly the faction roles do. Here's what I found

Zilariah - Heavens Tear wrote: »

There currently is not an ignore faction request option available yet. But pw is getting hit with many complaints and requests to create that option.

The benefits of being in a faction are having another group of people to quest and run fb's with aside from people on your friends list. And the Faction chat is uber cool for just shooting the breeze with many friends through the day at one time. Works like the squad chat but you don't need to be squaded. There's fun TW's to run but im not totally sure on the benefits of owning territory yet.

Theres mini titles to label factioners with but those too are 4letter limited. As for what these labels are for im not sure. We just give fun titles to our members to use more as an abreviated nick name. Some factions keep track of their members level achievments by titling them with the lvl they we at when joining. The whole title option might just be an option for each faction to use as they see fit.

Commissioners:
Regular faction members. No special abilities with the faction

Executors:
You can promote ppl to executors and they have the ability to invite others to join. But they cannot kick anyone from faction.

Marshals:
You can promote ppl to marshal. A marshal can invite ppl to join the faction and promote a commissioner to executor, but a marshal cannot promote anyone from executor or up. A marshal can also demote an executor back down to commissioner but cannot demote anyone higher then exec. Marshals also cannot kick anyone from faction.

Directors:
Directors can invite anyone, promote anyone to exec or marshal, demote from marshals on down. Grant titles, Kick out anyone from marshals on down but they have to demote a marshal down to commissioner and then kick them out. Directors can also change the slogan, although i've never read any other factions slogan before and cannot even find where our slogan shows up. (There can only be one Director per faction)

Leaders:
The one who creates the faction can do all options listed above. Leaders are the ones who initiate the TW's (There can only be one Leader per faction)

Creating a Faction:
First time applicants must be at least level 20 and must be able to pay 100,000 coins.

Upgrading a Faction:
You can upgrade your faction's tier in order to increase the member limit of your faction.
Tier 1: 50 member limit - 100,000 coins
Tier 2: 100 member limit - 2,000,000 coins
Tier 3: 200 member limit - 10,000,000 coins

Some factions are charging their members fee's and putting it in some faction bank to use for TW's and other faction issues. Although ours does not charge so I'm now sure how their handling any money issues.

The downside of starting a faction is getting members. Theres litterally hundreds of factions already created and not enough members to go around. Which is also why a lot of factions are sending spam invites to non factioned ppl running by. My faction just invites those asking to join and those we already are friends with.

I don't see spending 100k to start a faction in order to stop the invites as being worth it tho. I'm sure pw will implement the ignore faction invite option soon as it is a great request and highly needed.

If anyone see's Zilariah around be sure to thank her knowing what exactly faction roles do. b:thanks

DraukaGrissa - Sanctuary

Thank you for the reply Valdea but that wasn't really what I was looking for. Those are basically just the "permissions", if you will, that the various ranks have within the guild. It does, however, serve as a good starting point for those wanting to start a faction.

What I was asking for, specifically, is what job militarily, for lack of a better term, does each rank hold. An example would be, for argument's sake, the executor would be in charge of X amount of ppl during a TW, Marshals in charge of X amount of exec's etc. & on up. Another example: do executors play a key role in guild events such as internal fb's or does the marshal or director take care of that? I am asking more for Myself as I am leader & I'm trying to find other ppls definitions of what each rank is responsible for within the faction and define My own to create more structure & strength within.

I'm sure there are others out there that would benefit from this information also.

Granrey - Sanctuary

I have been already in 4 guilds. In all of them the main issue has been that higher levels don't get much help from the guild itsefl when they need help.

I guess that's why you need to get friends from other guild. When my 2nd guild collapsed, we went to different guilds.

For weird as it sound, this actually helped since now each of us has access to a wider network of help.

Another issue is TW. When you reach level 50+ or 60+. There is a preasure to join the big guilds (at least in santuary). This is so you can be on TW often.

I'm not too much into TW but I think is a good part of the game to do. I wish there small TW versions for small guilds to reduce this preasure.

Bobncut - Sanctuary

Guilds vary in how they use the officers. One guild I was in imposed a very military structure on officers to give every player an executor they could talk to as a first point of contact with the administration. Execs had specific Marshalls to escalate issues to, etc. That emerged in a faction that had grown up with everyone PMing the leader for anything they needed. As the faction got to level 3 size, the leader needed to impose a filter on those messages without drastically changing people's experience in the guild. So, the officers were a communications structure.

Most guilds use officers for a combination of rule enforcement and reward. Often, a guild will bring in a block of members (maybe a merger with another guild) who want some assurance the new guild will be run in a way they like - making their leader an officer helps give that assurance. Also, officers are usually your players who are visibly on the game the most and who don't mind helping other players or, at least, spending some time making sure they can help each other. Or, officers may be used to lend credence outside the guild to a person with an out-of-guild focused task (like a PR officer or a recruitment officer).

For TW, a guild will organize around its prominent core players. The basic operating unit for a TW is still the squad (although you may have a person directing a few squads with similar missions). Squad leaders may be guild officers, but they obviously do not have to be. You usually see a good bit of overlap there, because many of the core players in a guild will be officers, but it is usually a separate organization scheme.

Tiaque - Sanctuary

To add to the above posts:

As far as I can tell through testing, a faction can only have 4 marshals and 12 exes. At both level 1 and 2, it wouldn;t let me add any more than that.

des34

Hey everyone, I'm rather new to PWI, but I've got lots of guild experience, both leading and following. Here's my problem, I want to start my faction, and I meet the requirements after only 4 days, but I cannot find the NPC to make a guild anywhere in Archosaur. Can anyone pinpoint this NPC for me?

mc1

Des34, I believe you need to talk to the faction supervisor in Archosaur. The coordinates are 585 665.

Severinus - Dreamweaver

I just started PWi last week, and Im still a bit lost, and I made a faction, and im helping everyone to the best of my ability, and alot of them are long time friends, but im having trouble on how to know what ranks would be best for them and im a bit cautious about recruiting new people, can anyone give an insight?

Severinus - Dreamweaver

yesterday I recruited another good friend, got two other new members, and helped two of them level all day yesterday. so far we are doing well, and brought in outside help, they then decided to stay permenetly, thank you everyone for your help. This helped greatly

What_I_Got - Dreamweaver

i have just started a faction and it is well balanced and has nice peeps in it i want to upgrade us so we can get an emblem. i had problems at the beggining because the player i put to director was promoting any1 who was lvl 20+ so i demoted them and threatened him with the loss of his position if he continues with what he is doing.