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Recruiting In-Game: Etiquete?
entnx01
Member Posts: 549 Arc User
Hello!
So my fleet is trying to recruit. However, I find myself stuck as to what's acceptable and what's not in the game.
I try recruiting through Zone Chat. I re-apply a message every 5 minutes around ESD and Starfleet Academy because of the potential for more people to beam in after a bit of time so I want them to catch the message if they have Zone chat up. Some feel doing that is "Spammy", and perhaps in an online game 5 minutes is too short a time before re-posting. So one of my questions is, what time span is usually acceptable for re-posting a recruiting message?
Also, are there any more acceptable areas to do recruiting? If so, what are they?
Or what rules do you live by when you try to recruit in-game? Or do you/your fleet? If you don't recruit in-game, how do you recruit?
Thank you for your time. I don't want to draw a bad reputation for just trying to grow my fleet.
So my fleet is trying to recruit. However, I find myself stuck as to what's acceptable and what's not in the game.
I try recruiting through Zone Chat. I re-apply a message every 5 minutes around ESD and Starfleet Academy because of the potential for more people to beam in after a bit of time so I want them to catch the message if they have Zone chat up. Some feel doing that is "Spammy", and perhaps in an online game 5 minutes is too short a time before re-posting. So one of my questions is, what time span is usually acceptable for re-posting a recruiting message?
Also, are there any more acceptable areas to do recruiting? If so, what are they?
Or what rules do you live by when you try to recruit in-game? Or do you/your fleet? If you don't recruit in-game, how do you recruit?
Thank you for your time. I don't want to draw a bad reputation for just trying to grow my fleet.
Post edited by entnx01 on
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Comments
Zone chat is probably the least effective method of recruiting there is. And arguably the most annoying. Use sparingly.
Don't recruit via Zone chat in Sector Space anywhere.
Earth Spacedock is way too "noisy" already and while it's the right place in some respects you're just adding to the noise level and annoying people who are trying to have other conversations. You're also competing with the people who are trying to form fleets in the first place.
Never send blind fleet invites.
You can post a recruiting notice here on the forums. There are two forums specifically set aside for that purpose: Starbase One for Fed, and Qo'noS for KDF. I don't believe this is very effective either, but it's way more acceptable than Zone chat.
You can put some kind of link for your fleet in your forum signature. That way if someone on the forums likes what you have to say they might bother to check out your link.
From watching one of my fleet members, I suspect the best way of all to recruit is to team up with other players in PUG's (Pick-Up Groups), Friend them, get to know them, and then privately ask them if they're interested in joining your fleet. Ditto for PvP.
Helping newbies is another good way to recruit. It's a demonstration of the value of teamwork.
Some of the biggest fleets actually draw their membership from out-of-game channels. Gaming groups, Trek fan groups, etc.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
More often than that and you will meet with calls of spam.
Sadly, the ones that need to see this are the ones that won't read it.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
About 90% of the fleet invites I get are just a blind invite. Most of the rest are a PM asking if I'm looking for a fleet. I politely turn them down and they usually thank me for bothering to reply at all.
Every once in a while I'll get an invite accompanied by a PM congratulating me on the honor of being selected to join blah blah blah. Those people go on the ignore list.
Those blind invites really annoy me though. It feels like I'm being shanghai'd into resource slavery. "You there, you're coming with us to work in the dilithium mines!"
2 - Offer the invite *before* sending an invite...
3 - Is better to send an invite to a friend, always
4 - Offer a fleet invite to who talks the same language of your (in my case, portuguese).
5 - Offer an fleet invite, but before, show your fleet's website, spend some time talking about of your fleet and other things before sending an invite.
In my case, my fleet value the quality of the members. We spend a lot of time teaching, explaning, helping and chatting, making tutorials or guides to our members or people who wants to join with us. We don't send blind invites becuse we make friends of at least good relations with friendly people before sending fleet invites. Is a good thing to do, and works really well.
If you want only numbers, is easily to send any blind invite to anyone by random. But to have a good quality, you have to work carefully with a lot of attention to your veterans and newly members.
No problem to send fleet invites, but plis, spend some time chatting and making at least a relation with other people, a friendly relation to become a friend and member or at least, a friendly person if he or she turn down your invite. Members are temporaly, but friends no.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
+1 to this. And you could have a little side mission to go visit it at a certain level so you know where it is and what it does. That would be nice.
This is driving me nuts. I get blind invites on my chars all the time and the way it's bugged I have to spam the decline button every time for the window to go away. Either give us a way to block invites or people need to quit the blind invites. To me this is the most annoying part of STO right now. The rest of the issues I can wait on and over all I love the game but that stupid window can really be a pain especially if you zone and the window wants to get buggy.
Also if you post in the forums too, give some details as well, beyond 'we're friendly and looking for people.' A number range (some people are looking for certain sizes), what kinds of activities you go for, what the group goals are, what sets you apart from the fleets with a thousand members across a dozen different MMOs, that sort of thing.
We've had this very thing sinse launch.
Dec '07 Account
I EARNED 1000 days...I didn't BUY it! New LTS=Death to Vet.System: 10/10/12 Never Forget
Something should be done for those who cared enough to have a 1000+ day sub.
You can block invites, by the way. It's a hard setting to find, and it won't stop them from PM'ing you.
Click on the "Social" button, in the middle on the buttons to the right of the mini-map. Then click on "Privacy" in the bottom right of that window. The setting to block invites is in there.
We are a small fleet, but a good one.
Fleet leader Nova Elite
Fleet Leader House of Nova elite
@ren_larreck
NEVER blind-invite.
Always talk to the person before you send the invite. Ask if they have any questions. Answer honestly. Be friendly.
I would love to use the forum area, but that doesn't reach 90% of players, and even then the front page turns over every two hours.
Most people aren't aware you CAN search the fleets, and even then it doesn't really give enough space for the recruiting message, or the vital stats of the fleet itself (activity, member count, etc).
THANK YOU! I couldn't find that even doing a google search for it.
It doesn't show them all either. It's like it only shows fleets that have a member in an instance of your zone.
As for the advertising thing... I dislike zone advertising, and if I see your message more than once within a few minutes, I report it as spam (because that's what it is). Let the message go out of the buffer where it can't be seen when you scroll up... and if you're in a fast moving area, wait a few minutes past that. Otherwise you'll annoy people.
Most people I've spoken to about the channel have said that they have it set to red text that catches their attention immediately, when someone types in it. When my mind shifts gears to action mode, from whatever I was doing, and I prepare to move quickly to another sector block before the RA is gone, only to realize it's someone recruiting in the wrong channel...it's pretty annoying. It would be like some company using the Emergency Broadcasting System for advertising purposes; you hear the beeps, stop everything you're doing to listen, then realize it's an advert. It sucks.
/rant
People recruiting in zone chat isn't bothersome, though, as long as the message is only repeated once every few minutes.
D'you mean the find fleet tab in the social list. I mean a place, highly visible (most useful on ESD or Quo'Nos) where people can post fleet spam to their hearts content so they don't have to risk being silenced by other users. Dunno how easy that would be to implement but it would be very useful
For recruiting I take my Eng toon into low level Deep Space Encounters with weapons and targeting on manual. If I find a Lt or LtC that's bitten of more than they can chew will heal them while drawing fire without interfering in any other way. If this results in a team or friend request (and often does) then it's time to offer an invite complete with answering any questions and follow-up.
Demonstrate good gamesmanship and team play. It's quite often successful.