Guild Recruiting Tools

[Sanya]

The next thing the gang is designing is a Guild Recruitment toolbox for people to use to help find new members.

What would it take to make a guild recruitment announcement/ad/signup form useful to you? So far, I've got:


General:

- Results in database form
- Recruitment announcement reaching wide audience/multiple spots online
- Link to guild history/philosophy
- Space to upload emblems and logos
- Bartle/other guild profile data

Application Form

- Pull character data from company sites (or sites like Camelot Monkey)
- Playtime availability
- Verify email address is legitimate
- Gaming rig data (inc. voice chat ability)
- Dropdown menus for products played


So. What would you add? Subtract?

Thanks, guys

[Reenala]

Originally Posted by Sanya

Application Form

- Pull character data from company sites (or sites like Camelot Monkey)
- Playtime availability
- Verify email address is legitimate
- Gaming rig data (inc. voice chat ability)
- Dropdown menus for products played

-Age (Not required, but helpfull)
-Why are you applying for <Insert Guild Here> ?
-Do you have an active Bank Account? if so please provide Number, Sort Codes and PIN below, in the spaces provided.


I provided 2 reasonable ones before drifting off into clichéd stupidity, it's late.

[Zeli]

I think this is what you mean, but if not, simply disregard:

As a guild leader, I would like to be able to click on certain criteria that I'm looking for (and I'd like to be able to submit multiple options in the same field) and then perhaps a "Provide Recruits" option to submit it and then any players meeting the criteria who are looking for a guild, would list on my screen - their names would link back to their GuildCafe profile so I can find out even more about them. I could have the option to leave it open and look at the list from time to time, or simply choose to look through potential recruits when I wanted to.

As a player, it would be neat too to be able to enter in a profile and then click "provide guilds" and a list of guilds that are recruiting players like me right then, would list on my screen, with their websites or contact information linked.

Criteria? I'm sure you'll think of many more appropriate ones, but basics:
Game
Server
Side
Time Zone
Real life region (North America, Europe, Australia, etc.)
Age restrictions
Weekly hour availability (1-10 hours, 10-20 hours, 20-40 hours, etc.)
Daily availability (24 hours a day, evening only, evenings and weekends, workdays only, etc.)
Roleplay reqs
Guild Size
Guild Style (hardcore PvE, hardcore PvP, hardcore all, casual, family style, etc.)
Playstyle (solo, must group, mix, etc)
MMORPG History
Character Main info: Class/Race/Craft/Level


There's probably alot more you'll think of, but I think you get the idea. And if I misinterpreted your post, then I don't want to keep going. :P

[Zel]

the ability to research guilds as well as players is something I'm expecting to become a huge draw for guildcafe, nice to hear that's getting some love soon!

Some things I'd like to see specifically:

The ability to search for guilds by game, server, faction, actual guild name, primary timezone, and possibly generalized keyword(s) reflecting their style of play. (edit: woops! sorry for echoing you here Zeli! I was typing a while ^^. Sexy name by the way.)

Then, the ability to sort those specific results by different criteria as well.
such as number of members, high to low. (reflecting actual numbers signed up on guildcafe, motivation to get whole guilds over here. ^.~)
Sortable by activity level here (average per-member postcount on guildcafe in the past 3 months or so?) (2nd edit: now... if only guildcafe had a dedicated community overseer to help deter meaningless spamming... heeey wait! now we do! =) It doesn't just have to be postcount though. could be leaving comments on guilds, articles, etc. as well.)
and sortable by reputation (Guild fame) on guildcafe too, generated by getting feedback from the guildcafe community, with the actual comments posted on your guild's profile page, and this is where visitors browsing will have the option to add their own comment too. oh, and obviously this guild profile page would be what you see as soon as you click on a guild's name from your searched and sorted results.

I see the guild profile page as just a single stand alone page with very limited content, brief description.. games, servers, membership numbers, most active playing times, guild motto. optional guild emblem (upload or choose one from a set of diverse guildcafe icons we could create ^^) and maybe some indicator of fame and activity rankings, such as a status bar, rank titles, emblems or color coded icons maybe. And of course there would be a direct link to continue to that guild's forums or recruitment areas, as well as the displayed comments from guildcafe users. If you expect the community comments to go on for miles maybe just let the person who owns that tag choose a few favorites and give a link to browse the rest.... or cause a few comments to pop up at random on refresh. Maybe let the people who own the tag be able to choose one of the above. (then it'd have to be coded to happen in all of these ways! bwahahaa!)

So, in a nutshell I'd like to see ways to reward guilds with visibility for their amount of community activity here on guildcafe, and for the reputation they have gained in the gaming community in general.

[Zeli]

That's okay, you said it better anyway!

And funny, I was just going to say what a fantastic name you have!

I like the idea of a guild profile page! I tried to make something like that here before, but I think I did it wrong and I made a guildsite here and we already have a site so we looked like we didn't have any activity if you looked at what I made here. I'll have to check that out again.

[Adythiel]

I'd like to see a couple of open text boxes with custom labels on what the guild is looking for. Each guild in every different game asks for slightly different information. This would allow the guild applications to be more custom tailored to the individual needs of a guild to ensure they can get the information they need without having to request it from said application.

[Esraymuk]

An interesting development. A box to place specific achievements, and links/email addresses of people in previous guilds that a prospective applicant has been in would be helpful for the application form.

However, I'm going to be a bit negative here and point out that most guilds have their own forums, and thus their own questions/application forms they expect applicants to fill in. I'm not sure how useful this feature may be to guilds, and theres a chance that it'll be underused (and thus a waste of time and effort on the creators part, which I'm sure they're keen to avoid).

That said, if you can publicize this feature sufficiently in order to give it a function similar to UCAS, it could become very useful (The english university applications system, whereby students submit all applications to universities through one organisation, UCAS.)

Centralisation of applications would assist in a) Helping applicants apply more easily, and b) Allowing guilds to properly compare applicants (Which may be difficult when every guild has a slightly different process).

Esraymuk

[Goddess Wills]

Zel & Zeli have already voiced all of my thoughts and then some. I think those things all sound great!

[DorlasEdrahil]

Hard to add to above posts, really. I'll simply post things I check out first as a recruit:

- timezone (first and foremost)
- Age requirements
- Code of Conduct

CoC could (I think) be dissected to some degree into categories; like hardcore/casual/RP/PvE/PvP, etc etc. (beware multiple categories are not all exclusive) and enable smart searches.

As for applications, nice way is to create custom ones without a hassle, let's say a very simple to use content-editor.
Being able to customize your own guild pages is appealing (at least to me) - I find current portals lacking in that department and usually go for designing and coding my own stuff. I think that enabling uploading your own HTML/PHP/forums would be great - it needs not be FTP access but web interface.

These are quick ideas off top of my head, not very impressive I know, but I have an superb excuse of rushing to play LOTRO. However I find the project intriguing since I'm always somehow dissatisfied with guild portals are offering, whether in means of design or facilities.

[Hades-LotD]

1. Age of Guild
2. Game(s)
3. Number of Members
4. Player Type (casual, pvp, etc)
5. Bartle Test Score (put it to use!)
6. Time Zone

I would probably just keep it to a basic 6 so that the search feature doesn't become a job in itself.