Develop inactive FS deletion list and protocol

[OIM20]

Proposal: Have an automated sweep that disbands Fellowships with open enrollment/automatic join whose archmages have become inactive.

While this action would occur naturally once the AM's inactive city is deleted, before that happens, there could be months (years?) that pass where players

1. join the game,
2. are directed by the game to the inactive FS,
3. join the inactive FS,
4. become jaded and think the game is dead because their FS is inactive,
5. and ultimately quit the game, thus losing Inno both players and money.

Notes:

1. This would only affect Fellowships with automatic join selected. (The button says "Join" instead of "Apply". You don't see this when you're in an FS, only when you're looking at an overview page and you're not in one. So I don't have a screen of that to show you.)
2. This would only affect Fellowships whose AMs have been added to the city-nuke list but whose listing is more than 7 days from being processed by the code.
3. A message should be generated automatically by the system when the FS is added to the 'to be disbanded' queue to be sent to any member of the FS not on the city-nuke list, which should allow 1 week for players to find new homes. (If someone isn't logging in during an entire 7-day period, they likely aren't looking for a very active FS, and not being part of a defunct FS isn't going to affect them either.)

Purpose: Ultimately, the goal is to match active players with active Fellowships, to make everyone playing the game happier and enable them to have a better experience overall.

Spoiler: Example

Example: The Grove
Archmage Ular Thornoak has not had a change in their score since 19 July 2021.

Because their FS has been allowed to be recommended to new players, when King Alford joined the game on 19 Sep 2021,

there was nothing stopping them from joining "The Grove". However, Flame of Elysium was their first FS, and its AM, R Sharpe, has had no change in score since 11 July 2021.

Because King Alford has had the misfortune of joining two defunct Fellowships, they likely have the impression that this is simply how Elvenar is. While we know this game is not a bunch of dead cities, newer players do not know that when they find themselves part of a defunct FS, especially when it is one that was recommended to them by the game itself.

Pros:

1. Player Retention: to prevent players new to the game from becoming immediately jaded and quitting after joining an FS whose AM has left the game but left their FS with open enrollment. These players don't know how to tell if an FS is active or not, and the game makes no differentiation when it suggests Fellowships to new players for them to join. (Also would be nice if that were fixed. See the possible implementation message below.)
2. Increased Activity: by keeping players from joining defunct Fellowships and steering them towards active ones (by default as the others will not exist), all players in the active FS are more likely to spend increased time in the game building their cities since they will be able to trade more for the goods they need to be able to do so.
3. Creating a process for disbanding inactive Fellowships establishes a protocol which will allow developers to clean up the database files. And the less unused data being stored on a server, the less chance the server develops lag because of broad queries being forced to go through that old data. This could possibly result in fewer "stream error" incidents.

Cons:
1) Time to write new code.

• The city-nuke list code could possibly be tweaked to generate a similar FS-nuke list.

2) Sending auto-generated e-mails to players of an FS slated for deletion. Auto-generated external e-mails to inactive players do happen, so I recommend that the code for that be tweaked if possible to send a 'time to find a new FS' message to active players in defunct Fellowships.

The message could read something like:

Dear {player.name},

We hope you have been enjoying building and growing your city in Elvenar. We see that you're in chapter {player.chapter} - congratulations!

We want to help you grow your city even better, and to do that, we are letting you know that the Fellowship you're in, {player.FS}, is scheduled to be disbanded on {player.FS.disband-schedule} due to the inactivity of its founding member. Fellowships are intended to help you by providing trading partners and enabling you to participate in weekly activities (the Tournament and the Spire), as well as the Fellowship Adventure which helps many players obtain artefacts for the evolving event buildings that they missed during the event. You aren't currently getting that opportunity, and we're taking this step to change that.

But despair not! Please log in to your city to be provided a list of potential new Fellowships for you to join. We also recommend that you look in our forum for your world, {player.world}, here: [link to subforum for player's world - e.g. Arendyll] to browse listings for Fellowships currently looking for new members.

We look forward to seeing your city grow in Elvenar, {player.name}!

Sincerely,

Your Elvenar Development Team at InnoGames

• Obviously there would need to be a period at the onset of such a feature that would warn members of the affected FS that it was about to be disbanded. But as time moves on, the period between sending such a message and disbanding the FS should, I think, be 7 days. That gives them time no matter where they fall in the Spire/Tourney cycle to find a new group to join before the next cycle begins.

3) If this is implemented, announcing the feature would need to be very carefully worded so people don't think it affects someone it doesn't. People (even on the forum where you have to read to interact) don't always read carefully and generating a bunch of busy work for the Help Desk is not the goal.

A new feature to keep players from joining inactive or defunct Fellowships is being enacted. This feature utilizes the code already in place to find inactive players. If the inactive player is an AM of an FS which allows players to "Join" rather than "Apply", once they have been added to the list for possible deletion, several things will happen.
1) The FS will be changed to "Apply".
2) The FS will be removed from the recommended FS rotation so that new players are guided towards active Fellowships.
3) The AM will be sent an external e-mail to let them know their FS will be disbanded (time frame to be included in message).
4) Messages will be sent via external e-mail to notify any members of the FS who are still active that it is going to be disbanded due to the AM no longer playing the game.

If none of the above applies to your AM, then this feature will not affect you directly. If you are in a leadership position for an FS, this may result in your FS receiving more applications than you are accustomed to.

Something like that. If I've been unclear somewhere in there, please tell me. My English isn't always the best (hence why I try to read carefully, but even I mess up sometimes).

 

[Kadhrin]

I like it. I would add some language about "if you wish to become archmage of this fellowship, then..." in case of absentee archmage and a fellowship with moderately active players. I think I would extend the warning period to two weeks, with a reminder message after one week.

 

[OIM20]

I don't necessarily think allowing someone to become the AM of these old groups would be good. They haven't been managed properly to this point, either by the AM or the other leadership. The new AM would basically be inheriting the name and possibly a reputation (good or bad) for the group, but have to completely kick out all the inactive cities and rebuild membership from scratch. Considering we're talking about inactive groups, there isn't a high likelihood of inheriting a cache of Perks points or anything that would really make changing the AM worth it.

It's only going to affect the groups that allow players to join directly without an application process. That appeals to players who are a bit asocial but want the benefits the game promises with the FS dynamic. They aren't getting those benefits, though, as a part of an inactive FS. So for someone who's asocial and becoming part of an FS with auto-enrollment, becoming an AM with all the duties that entails might push them from the game anyway. That's what we're trying to prevent.

Spoiler: Long story short....

Time for a bit of opening myself to mockery, I suppose. Believe it or not, I'm an introvert. I hate confrontation. I don't like being the person who has to make the decisions. However, I apparently do not give off that vibe at all to anyone who meets me, online or irl. Since I was in middle school, I've been put in charge of things, even if 'in charge' was behind the scenes making sure everything ran smoothly for whomever it needed to run smoothly for.

I am a mage in all three of my FS in Elvenar. In two of them (Sinya and Harandar) I am a recruitment mage. In Elcysandir, I'm the "Spire Pirate Captain" (that's in the group overview), and I've spent weeks trying to figure out how to not be mean and yet still tell everyone who needs to increase their Spire performance that they need to step up. I'm not as far as anyone else in my Elcy FS in the game - I've been taking moving forward slowly because I've realized I do not have the resources I need to be successful with 30 provinces to 5 or 6 stars and 48 Spire chests each week. I can make it - by the skin of my teeth, as the saying goes. So I know I need to slow down and not plow through so I can build up a resource cache that I can pull on.

I read so much about needing orcs here in the forum that the minute I entered chapter 8 (1st research done) in Elcy I crafted and laid out 4 Orc Nests so I could start collecting orcs. They're all in storage at the moment because I get better results with the Orc Ship plus the Echoes of the Forgotten in the same amount of space. I think. It's been a while since I looked at it, so I might be wrong.

But that's not pertinent. What I'm trying to convey is that I know exactly how each and every one of those asocial people feels when they're looking at the promise of rewards that the game makes and seeing "Apply" on that FS overview page instead of "Join". There's the possibility I'll be rejected. There's the possibility that I'll be accepted and not get along with the other players. Are these people nice? How can I tell? Is there a place where I can see how they talk to each other? No? ...Should I put myself out there? This is just a game after all, I mean, it's not important, right? I can just play for the long haul and not join an FS... Or join one of these others and get at least small rewards. At least with those I'm not expected to talk to anyone....

I've learned to put that voice on mute and plow ahead. Some people can't do that, or have never had to. Taking a personality like that and putting them into the position of AM without any support tools (and as far as I know, there aren't any really for recruitment. If there are, please someone point them out to me. I don't mean ES - I use that liberally. I also use ElvenArchitect to help members of my FS in rearranging their cities if they want the help) is just setting them up for failure. Sure, some of them might learn that they enjoy the responsibility, that they are capable of crafting a group of players who want to enjoy the game with minimal chatting into a 10-chest, Gold Spire group.

The immediate issues I'm attempting to address are player retention and matching active players to active fellowships. Getting rid of inactive auto-enrollment Fellowships allows only those FS with currently active members who have auto-join enabled to be presented to players who make that choice from the drop down menu. There are quite a few active FS that allow auto-join. I'll give you a sample from Sinya:
Knights of the Vale - up to date membership, 5 openings
Ancient Warriors - needs to clean house, but has an active AM
Brisingr - a few inactive members, 1 current opening regardless, active AM
D'urden - possibly some house cleaning to do - I imagine that one ch 15 player whose score hasn't changed in 2 years might be because they like ch 15, but only the AM can say for sure (besides Inno, anyway); active AM and 4 openings
Triumphant Together - 2 openings, 3 possible inactives, and an active AM
Funderland - 1 opening, several members that might be inactive, but an active AM
Fellowship of Friends - 2 openings, 2 possible inactives, and an active AM
Welcome to the Dark Side - 1 opening, 3 possible inactives, and an active AM
Sakura - 3 openings, 1 possible inactive, and an active AM

That's only the first 2 pages that the game returned of direct join FS that have any slots open.

Now, I didn't pull up any of the overviews for these Fellowships, but I imagine a new player would look for something that might seem less intense. Not necessarily Loki"s Quest (page 100/200, 3rd from the top, just the AM and no activity since Nov 2021), but more, say, how Just Have Fun looks to be, with its apparent 17 members. New Elvenar players aren't going to know about ElvenStats, and aren't going to know to look there to see if the FS is possibly inactive. There is *one* player in that FS who doesn't have a black triangle next to their name. One. Poor thing joined that FS when they joined the game in 2019, and they haven't ever been in another FS. I'm not sure they know they can leave. The archmage hasn't been active in about a year. Even that one member went inactive for all of 2021.

If Inno were to send the single active player of that FS an e-mail asking if they want to be AM, they might agree - but what would be the point of it? They'd be the monarch of a kingdom of corpses. Better to offer them a list of Fellowships whose members are active, whose leadership is active, and let them know that they can join a different FS and get the benefits that the game promised them, I think.

 

[Darielle]

If the fellowship is truly dead, with ALL members inactive, then this would be a good idea. But if some members are active and simply want to wait for a sick Archmage to return, and don't want to kick out any other inactive members until the AM returns and decides that for him or herself, then this could be a real pain. A fellowship that knows their AM is recuperating from an operation, for example, might wait several months for their return. They should be allowed to do so.

And what of the sick AM who built a fellowship from scratch for years only to find all that hard work is gone the minute they are restored to health? It's enough to make them sick again. Although I don't have an "autojoin" fellowship, ours was (and is) very active. We simply had an archmage with a black triangle for months due to illness scenario. The AM eventually came back on just long enough to make me AM and then leave the group, but we were trying to wait for her for a long time knowing how much she loved the game.

You'd have to make very, very sure that the fellowship was truly dead and not just having an absent Archmage.

 

[OIM20]

@Darielle - I'm sorry. I referenced the black triangles on ES in my reply above because I think we all (in the forum) know what I'm talking about. But in the opening, I said:

This would only affect Fellowships whose AMs have been added to the city-nuke list but whose listing is more than 7 days from being processed by the code.

So, black triangle or no, it wouldn't do anything to anyone who wasn't on the city deletion list.

Black triangles have shown up on my own Harandar FS' page on ES next to a player who logs in every week and does her tourney and Spire. But because her city's score doesn't change, ES says she's not active. I only reference the triangle because it's a possibility that the person isn't active and I didn't mean to be at all confusing in doing so.

 

[Myne]

I REALLY like this. I have been attempting to recruit some players who are active from these "dead" fellowships. In many cases, there are two active players left only out of a full fellowship.
You know what? They won't leave! Those folks just stay there in that dead fellowship. I am not talking one fellowship this has happened with, I am talking MANY. I think the disbanding would bring about the positive results you put forth.
Yes, this is a case of "it's for your own good", but it really is!

 

[The Fairy]

Some input:

I don't think a fellowship is disbanded if the AM's city is deleted, instead I think the game appoints a new AM within the fellowship?

And I am not sure if you should only look at if the AM is inactive - what if the rest of the fellowship is active? Or if there are at least one active mage? As long as there is an active mage then this mage can do almost everything the AM could do, except disband the fellowship and reset the fellowship perks if I remember correctly. But without active mages/AM it can be hard to keep the fs running as some privileges are missing.

A less drastic solution would be to change the "auto-join" to "apply" instead of disbanding the fellowship? I think this can be changed by mages too, so as long there is at least one active mage this can be changed back. With "apply" an ambassador can let new members in, but if an ambassador let someone in then the fs isn't completely inactive?

 

[crackie]

are directed by the game to the inactive FS,

From my observation, the game steers players to newly created FS over older, established FS. It puts the new ones towards the top of the list. I noticed this too when I first started a fresh FS and we had way more fresh new city applicants in clusters, but a few months later, we don’t even get them at all. I get why they do this, but I am not sure it has the desired positive effect. More often than not, I see FS where everyone is chap 1-3 and maybe the AM is chap 5 or 6. A lot of the AM themselves don’t know what they are doing so all the early chap new players aren’t getting any guidance. It creates a lot of the blind leading the blind situations and that has a very detrimental effect on the game.

 

[Myne]

Other Opinions???

 

[BrinDarby]

Proposal: Have an automated sweep that disbands Fellowships with open enrollment/automatic join whose archmages have become inactive.

My problem is the "disbands" part. I think it doesnt matter how
join is set up, either. If there's an inactive AM, then just hand off
the FS to one of the mages, who becomes the AM, and demote
the original AM to ambassador.

After recent events, disbanding the FS would delete thier ElvenStats
data, Perk levels, and trophy history on the overview. ( not a good thing )
So some other option than disbanding the FS should be developed.

 

[Zoof]

Maybe not totally disband, but possibly put into cold storage, so to speak. Notify affected players that their AM dropped off the face of the earth, then tell 'em that the game's ranking system ghosted their fellowship. Nobody new is coming in. Their fellowship's name won't appear in any rankings or listings.

Make it uncomfortable for living, breathing people to be where they are. Make it hard to pretend that the "warm" bodies nearby were warm because of their lifelikeness, not because they were sitting on a heating pad (what's that smell?) like some reptile. Tell 'em that the gameplay experience is going to be much better, even if they move to a place where everyone is lazy like a lizard instead of dead as a doorknob.

After all that? If they still want to stay where they're at? Why not let 'em. Ain't hurting nobody.

 

[Myne]

Maybe not totally disband, but possibly put into cold storage, so to speak. Notify affected players that their AM dropped off the face of the earth, then tell 'em that the game's ranking system ghosted their fellowship. Nobody new is coming in. Their fellowship's name won't appear in any rankings or listings.

Make it uncomfortable for living, breathing people to be where they are. Make it hard to pretend that the "warm" bodies nearby were warm because of their lifelikeness, not because they were sitting on a heating pad (what's that smell?) like some reptile. Tell 'em that the gameplay experience is going to be much better, even if they move to a place where everyone is lazy like a lizard instead of dead as a doorknob.

After all that? If they still want to stay where they're at? Why not let 'em. Ain't hurting nobody.

That's another possibility I suppose. I laughed when I first read that, but then I thought about it...it's kind of the equivalent of the breakfast club...though I am sure not near as interesting. lol

 

[Maire]

I REALLY like this. I have been attempting to recruit some players who are active from these "dead" fellowships. In many cases, there are two active players left only out of a full fellowship.
You know what? They won't leave! Those folks just stay there in that dead fellowship. I am not talking one fellowship this has happened with, I am talking MANY. I think the disbanding would bring about the positive results you put forth.
Yes, this is a case of "it's for your own good", but it really is!

Thank you, Myne for your post! I thought I was the only one this was happening to LOL! I had one newer player who wanted out but didn't know how to accomplish it. I helped her leave the dead FS then join ours and she has flourished.

 

[Mirai]

Something like this, or with easier shuffling of AM status to someone active in a FS, would be great -

I stumbled into one of these when I was brand new (now I'm just sorta still new), with the handful of remaining active players playing blind-man's-bluff on the Fellowship Adventure hill (pulling the flag at the end of a Stage is also a Mage or Archmage duty...the two Mages remaining were also mostly inactive.) LIfe is SO much better in a more balanced FS...

 

[Myne]

Thank you, Myne for your post! I thought I was the only one this was happening to LOL! I had one newer player who wanted out but didn't know how to accomplish it. I helped her leave the dead FS then join ours and she has flourished.

That's the thing, if you get them out they do really well. They have plodded along for so long they just blossom when they get with an active fellowship!

 

[Linnea Shadowwalker]

What if they changed it so that the moment an archmage is deemed inactive by Inno, the fellowship would change from 'open' join to 'apply'? This wouldn't solve the problem of current people stuck in dead fellowships, but would prevent new players from joining dead fellowships. And fellowships where the archmage is inactive, but the mages are carrying on, and don't want to take over, can still accept new players in.

Maybe also send an automated email if the archmage is inactive, and all mages are also inactive, telling people that their fellowship is dead, no new players can join, and that they should either switch to a new fellowship, or ask support to take over the archmage role.