Forums » Suggestions
Provide better visibility to recent guild activity
Since:
A) Guilds are already limited to listing if there has been an active member within the last 30 days.
B) There is no requirement that guilds actively prune their members and reflect actual membership levels that represent their activity level.
I propose the following:
Add two columns to the guild listing page between the guild tag and the total member count. The two columns would be as follows:
1) % Active - Which would be a calculation rounded to 2 decimal places that divides the number of active players within the last 30 days by the total number of members.
2) Active Members - Which would be the number of members who have logged in within the last 30 days, keeping the same activity threshold already used to identify active guilds.
The benefits are as follows:
I. Players could more easily determine which guilds are dead or joke guilds, reducing the amount of time and effort needed to find a guild to join.
II. The practice of padding guild membership with dead accounts of long-dead players would no longer create the artificial appearance of being active and thriving.
III. Guilds would be encouraged to prune inactive members to maintain a double-digit activity percentage. The pruning of inactive members would also reduce the number of unplayed alts sitting as sleeper agents in guild rosters which could be used to monitor when specific players are online.
A) Guilds are already limited to listing if there has been an active member within the last 30 days.
B) There is no requirement that guilds actively prune their members and reflect actual membership levels that represent their activity level.
I propose the following:
Add two columns to the guild listing page between the guild tag and the total member count. The two columns would be as follows:
1) % Active - Which would be a calculation rounded to 2 decimal places that divides the number of active players within the last 30 days by the total number of members.
2) Active Members - Which would be the number of members who have logged in within the last 30 days, keeping the same activity threshold already used to identify active guilds.
The benefits are as follows:
I. Players could more easily determine which guilds are dead or joke guilds, reducing the amount of time and effort needed to find a guild to join.
II. The practice of padding guild membership with dead accounts of long-dead players would no longer create the artificial appearance of being active and thriving.
III. Guilds would be encouraged to prune inactive members to maintain a double-digit activity percentage. The pruning of inactive members would also reduce the number of unplayed alts sitting as sleeper agents in guild rosters which could be used to monitor when specific players are online.
+1 to part 2. I totally agree with benefits I and II.
-1 to part 1. This is unnecessary clutter (not to mention unnecessary precision) and only seems to exist for the purpose of stigmatizing guilds who have a different management philosophy from your own.
-1 to part 1. This is unnecessary clutter (not to mention unnecessary precision) and only seems to exist for the purpose of stigmatizing guilds who have a different management philosophy from your own.
Fair points Rin.
I can accept the overall idea of displaying a more realistic account of current guild activity a % would favour very small but active guilds, though I doubt it would have any ingame impact.
Particularly I would address point 3.
"III. Guilds would be encouraged to prune inactive members to maintain a double-digit activity percentage. The pruning of inactive members would also reduce the number of unplayed alts sitting as sleeper agents in guild rosters which could be used to monitor when specific players are online."
Certainly TGFT has listed as members many who are no longer active, however our statistics show that many do continue to log into our forums and show an interest in VO as game. The point of keeping them on the guild roster is to encourage them to return. If someone logs in and finds they have ben booted out of a guild they unlikely to rejoin the game as a whole. For that reason I would suggest that some guilds would consider keeping a light on for returnees far more important than nebulous statistics.
Apart from that, there is no reason why spotter alts have to be guild members given the way that information can be transferred via plugins within the game.
Particularly I would address point 3.
"III. Guilds would be encouraged to prune inactive members to maintain a double-digit activity percentage. The pruning of inactive members would also reduce the number of unplayed alts sitting as sleeper agents in guild rosters which could be used to monitor when specific players are online."
Certainly TGFT has listed as members many who are no longer active, however our statistics show that many do continue to log into our forums and show an interest in VO as game. The point of keeping them on the guild roster is to encourage them to return. If someone logs in and finds they have ben booted out of a guild they unlikely to rejoin the game as a whole. For that reason I would suggest that some guilds would consider keeping a light on for returnees far more important than nebulous statistics.
Apart from that, there is no reason why spotter alts have to be guild members given the way that information can be transferred via plugins within the game.
-1 for point 1 and benefit 3. Fix those for a plus one savet.
That said, I think guilds should show as dead unless the co, both LTs, and half the council logs on in the past month, not just ONE LONELY MEMBER that should switch guilds. Too many guilds are one of the issues in VO. AND, I hope these dead guilds die eventually (like within 90 days).
That said, I think guilds should show as dead unless the co, both LTs, and half the council logs on in the past month, not just ONE LONELY MEMBER that should switch guilds. Too many guilds are one of the issues in VO. AND, I hope these dead guilds die eventually (like within 90 days).
I acknowledged that the % active could be seen as punitive, so I think we can let both points stand on their individual merit.
To clarify on my sleeper agent comment though, the monitoring behavior I was referring to is related to the ability to see when users are online. A person could easily place 5 or more alts into various guilds and then scrape the VO website data to build a list of very precise activity times of each player in said guilds, which could be used in an exploitative manner by either traders or pirates to target times when someone is online or is not online respectively.
So I think going forward, we should just +1 and -1 the two suggestions which I originally lumped together. I believe the consensus is that the % active is not favorable but the # active is favorable. I'm not a fan of editing original posts except for instances of typos as it can break the logical flow of the discussion for anyone joining after the edit.
To clarify on my sleeper agent comment though, the monitoring behavior I was referring to is related to the ability to see when users are online. A person could easily place 5 or more alts into various guilds and then scrape the VO website data to build a list of very precise activity times of each player in said guilds, which could be used in an exploitative manner by either traders or pirates to target times when someone is online or is not online respectively.
So I think going forward, we should just +1 and -1 the two suggestions which I originally lumped together. I believe the consensus is that the % active is not favorable but the # active is favorable. I'm not a fan of editing original posts except for instances of typos as it can break the logical flow of the discussion for anyone joining after the edit.
+1 I like prunes :D rar
+1 to it all
