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    Your Elvenar Team

Poaching of players should be banned

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ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
I respectfully but wholeheartedly disagree. There is no "community attitude" against sending a friendly message to a player that is clearly overperforming in his fellowship, or where the fellowship is clearly dismal. To make a blanket statement that all messages of the type are going against the "community attitude" is just wrong. And to insinuate that they do something even more sinister or "contrary to the community standards" is just egregeous. When I have a player thanking me every single month, telling me that they would have left Elvenar by now if I hadn't "rescued" them and made them see what a good fellowship is, then I know I've done right not only by my team but by that player (who by the way, is skyrocketing!) If that former archmage would have cared about that player as much as I do, she would not have let him bear all the weight of the tournament on his shoulders, and get so unhappy to where I had to rescue him. I consider my actions for the good of Elvenar, not something "contrary to community standards."
This just shows you how easy it is to be wrong about community standards. I don't think I've ever seen a good, positive statement about "poaching" and assumed the community was universally against it. Well, serves me right for assuming my experience was enough to make the claim. Sorry.

My statement about wondering what else they might be up to was based upon the idea that "everybody" was against the practice discussed. And if "everybody" was you would think the person was pretty resistant to any influence the community might try to put on him/her regarding any other community standard, universal or not. So the logic was correct, but the idea with which I started was poorly founded. Again, sorry for stating things much too strongly.

Have you noticed I'm wrong once in a while? LOL (I have!)

AJ
 

Yavimaya

Scroll-Keeper
I would suggest you figure out how to get your FS full of players ASAP! When people go "looking" they look at FSs that aren't full or have inactive players, so your FS is a prime target right now. The next thing I would suggest is having a FS where all members' opinions are valued, that will help you "keep" your players. The next thing I would suggest is to get to a point where you are 10 chest/Gold Spire as fast as you can, that will help you keep players and recruit players when needed to keep your FS full. Also don't keep inactive players in your FS, players will not want to join if you have inactives in your FS, it makes players feel like the AM has poor leadership skills. Have everyone in your FS scour their neighborhood to recruit members. Have every member put the word recruit in their city name. Advertise on the forum and FB Groups. Go to the FS rank list and look for FSs that only have a few members and invite all of them to join. Go to the Player rank list and look for players that aren't in a FS but are still active according to Elvenstats. And don't stop until you are full and no longer look like an easy target.
I HIGHLY agree with this! Get out of the "start looking here in this fs for a replacement" zone.
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
If it's annoying to your teammates, why is no one reaching out to support? Open tickets and inform support of the harassment. If the same person/FS is messaging the same person over and over again, that is harassment and no player should have to deal with that.
Yup. Players who are happy in their current FS can block other players from messaging them repeatedly by using the report button. If they are contacted often by many different recruiters then it's a good indication that they are mismatched in their FS and they need to just accept that, and take it as a compliment like my wife does IRL...
 

Smooper

Well-Known Member
I should have copied Darielle's post. I took over a fellowship with 20 players and 6 chest average and "poached" my a$$ off to get us to where we are. Nobody in my fellowship has left except for one who went BACK to Band of Weirdlings (hard to blame her). I dump players who become inactive and leave them a message to contact me if they come back to the game, nobody has. Then I poach some more. I poach like Darielle does and nobody can tell me it is a bad thing because every player I have poached is happy to join us.

Can I put "Always Poaching" in my signature?

Edit: I have also got 2 decent players here from the recruitment thread. They were players looking for a fellowship, not fellowship looking for players.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
@Marilyn*43 Woohoo...4 pages! You've lit a FIRE! We're of course attracted to the bright orange warm glow like moth to light (some more than others). Don't feel bad or discouraged about the dissenting opinions. When your lede is "players should be banned", it's gonna unleash some strong and passionate feelings.

Thank goodness that in Elvenar, the ability to use the equivalent of robo-calls and email blasts is severely curtailed. One checkmark on the plus side for an antiquated message/chat system, lol!
I expect my best players to be accosted and they're all free to go wherever as they please, but there's a notorious FS on EN server that blanket canvas my entire FS. C'mon now, that's just lazy recruiting! We're an active Gold Spire FS too. I'm tempted to just add to my FS description that they think we're their minor league farm system bc they keep trying to recruit all of us. The other FS reading that will get a good chuckle. Archmages talk to each other. We all know. My fellows enjoy writing creative rejection letters though, and given this is EN, they have as many unique ways across the pond to tell someone to piss off as they do describing low levels of sobriety, so at least it's entertaining.

Many of you seem to be missing the point here. A fellowship does not have to be gold spire/ten chests to be a good fellowship. That's not the kind of FS that a player looking for is a no-pressure FS needs. An overview that says "no" or "low" pressure doesn't negate the implied pressure put on members to go all the way up the spire and/or get ten chests or more - and no, pressure is not apparent when the overview says "no pressure". Three people from my FS were recruited by the same AM ... two of them left and I didn't. Even though I politely responded that I was happy where I was, he kept pressuring me to switch. No "don't solicit" is going to stop people like that. People who are "happy" can, indeed, be poached if they think the grass is greener. A cohesive FS is much more important to me than a full FS; however, that's really not obvious from my elvenstats. I also find it much more rewarding to help new players than trying to keep up with high level players, an insidious type of pressure in itself. People who enjoy that have no reason to change from it any more than people who don't enjoy it should be persuaded to jump to it. People have different ways of playing the game, which should be respected.
If someone left for greener pastures, a part of them wasn't happy with the current offerings though. And I do agree, a FS doesn't have to be all about prizes and rewards. My new US FS is only 4 months old and started with no chests or spire medals to offer. Yes, our players have already been accosted, myself included. The bigger wolves have been hunting and circling. But I like to think, well at least it's wolves and not vultures. We're not dying and circling the drain. We're fresh meat on everyone's radars suddenly because of our recent FA and Spire success. As @Silly Bubbles said, it can be taken as a compliment. However, we're not going to chase 19 chests because I am lazy and recruiting is hard™ so I don't plan to make the worst part of running a FS even more unbearable by limiting myself to a certain range of tourney players. If that's what players want, they'll have to look elsewhere and let themselves be poached. Most FS drama stems from people playing in a wrong fitting fellowship, as most of the wise people here have already stated. I have no interest in playing with people who don't want to be here either so they're all free to leave, if not with their own two feet and of their own accord, then I'm always happy to provide a one way ticket ride on the trebuchet.

But it's also silly to imply everyone reads FS descriptions before applying to land themselves into the right fitting FS. Some just randomly apply and some FS just randomly accepts, even when it's an obvious profile mismatch. I know for a fact most don't read descriptions because I handle recruiting (is hard™) and the first part of the vetting process is seeing who can read and follow directions. If they fail the first step, we might not even bother looking up their stats. Truth is, a player isn't going to impress us just because they can throw 40k tourney points up weekly. That number can just as well be describing a singularly-focused, self-centered narcissistic jerk who wants everything for themselves. In which case, it'll be a bad fit for us. Again, it's all about perspective. So it's not all about stats and numbers. We took in a fledgling baby Flower Goblin with racing stripes even though she had no numbers because we know she has other intangibles we're after, like detective skills to help us find Shannon Egan.

* Recruiting is hard™ is a registered trademark of @Ihrlaen

the recruitment attempts probably make ya'll go "hey we must be getting close, lets get em!"
They went after them by adding a new chapter 1 player. That'll show them! HA HA HA!

We're not even trying to get close. We have some very small players, and we have no interest in replacing them with high-ranked players. We're high-ranked because many of us have been together for years, so we have a lot of mature cities. But we love our little cities just as much.
Hmmm...do I have to pay you now? I'm so used to you mocking me. I'm confused and disoriented as to what to do when you say nice things. Maybe it's just the vertigo.

Nobody in my fellowship has left except for one who went BACK to Band of Weirdlings (hard to blame her).
Damn. She's my nemesis! I can only see the back of her knees though. She better watch out because my diapers are good for 60k pts now! I've progressed to pull-ups!
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
Please reassure me that your "way more" discarded the Solo Fellowships, that are used by folks who are ... wait for it .... soloing.
Easily, yeah: I just clicked through the top 200 and there's only 45 full FS. If I had to pull a number I'd say the average was ~20 members?
Then I clicked through the next 200 and it drops pretty drastically even ignoring the solos and any FS with a name like "retired".
In ranks 200-400 there are only 3 full FS.
If you go further than that I'd say that we could take the members from ~30-40% of FS and merge them into other FS with open slots.

I mean #238 is a 3 active member FS that is recruiting while there are dozens of FS with the same goals (as per overviews) that are missing 3 members...:rolleyes:
 
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Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
This just shows you how easy it is to be wrong about community standards. I don't think I've ever seen a good, positive statement about "poaching" and assumed the community was universally against it. Well, serves me right for assuming my experience was enough to make the claim. Sorry.

My statement about wondering what else they might be up to was based upon the idea that "everybody" was against the practice discussed. And if "everybody" was you would think the person was pretty resistant to any influence the community might try to put on him/her regarding any other community standard, universal or not. So the logic was correct, but the idea with which I started was poorly founded. Again, sorry for stating things much too strongly.

Have you noticed I'm wrong once in a while? LOL (I have!)

AJ
yeah, but you're right more often than wrong, so that's okay, lol.
 

Tuschunreal

Active Member
I am pretty new here...only been playing 10 months or so and on Forum for a few months. I took your post as a chance to exercise my new found research skills. Assuming I found your fellowship (GALADRIM GUILD RECRUITING), it shows 5 players have departed since late November AND 5 players joined for a wash. Those that left are 2 inactives, 2 went to the same 10 chest team and 1 to a 8.8 chest team a bit above your 7.3 chest average. Sorry in advance...I talk a lot.

One of the fellowships I become the AM for I am re-building. I removed inactive players AND sent a message to a couple players who left to ask what it was that had them leave (before I became AM). They shared that the fellowship (before I renamed it to Relax and Be Merry) was declining and they wanted to be growing and get 10 chests and be challenged in Spire. I was new so it was pretty easy to do some sole searching about the fellowship. I changed the overview, set some goals and went on a mission to find players. I must have looked at 200+ players in elvenstats and then contacted actives not in a fellowship as well as reached out to small fellowship AM’s about merging. We have grown from 12 players to 23/24 depending on the week. I set as goal to review and remove inactive players once a month or more often. We have stayed at 23/24 players and are on track for our first 10 chest push week.

Why share all this? That is just numbers and mechanics. As shared by others in several places in Forum, culture of a fellowship has to match with the players and leadership. I suggest you consider reaching out to the active players that have left and ask what was it about their goals and culture desires had them them leave. Ignor, how leaving came about because the fact is they left. I believe you can and should ask yourself what your fellowship culture is including what the teams desires are for culture as well as for tournament, spire and FA participation. Do they match your vision? Out of that you may find out what is going on and the fact that your best players are being ‘poached’ may not be relavent.

I can tell you that Relax and Be Merry is developing it’s culture. How do we become a 10 chest tournament team and be “Relax and Be Merry”? Do we have tournament minimums or do we create an environment that teammates want to contribute as best they can given the realities of real life and the 10 chests will come in due time. Spoiler alert we picked the latter a month ago. I am sure our ‘culture’ will continue to evolve and some of my good game friends will continue to move on for whatever reason they have. I expect I will continue to support them in their game journey and several of us message back and forth to check on each other.

Thank you for posting your frustration. It will help me when I run into the challenge (not aware of any poached players but I am sure it will happen). My hope is that each player that leaves does so with some knowledge of what they are looking for and does enough research that they have a shot at getting it in their next fellowship. Cheers...tusch
 

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
Once upon a time when I was playing solo I must have hit some magic mark because I got 4 recruitment messages in 1 day....and none before or after. I, naturally, didn't bother reading up on them and elvenstats wasn't around (or maybe I just didn't know about it). In any case, I did what any normal person would do, I picked the highest ranked one and joined. Now I've been running it for 4+ years and it's still a great group. My sadness is that nobody has ever tried to recruit me! I mean I'm in the majors, for heaven sakes. No triple-A for me! And I play first base, catcher, and pitcher all at once! I really, really deserve some respect here!

Now, just in case some recruitment Mage sees this and really does send me a recruitment message, here are my terms.

1) I want cookies. Lots of them delivered daily. After all, is it really too much to ask for a Big League player?
2) I want to be called "Mr." Not, just "AJ," but "Mr. AJ" It's an ego thing and besides, in my not so humble opinion, "Mr." is what I should get for my vast experience.
3) I want to have the right to kick anybody on the team who doesn't bring me cookies, or for any other reason I feel appropriate. Even if it isn't.
4) And, I want to the right to alter the terms of this agreement without notice and on whatever whim I come up with.

Finally, if anybody wants to improve my contract terms, feel free. I'm open to even bigger bonuses and stuff.

AJ
 

Pheryll

Set Designer
Now, just in case some recruitment Mage sees this and really does send me a recruitment message, here are my terms.

1) I want cookies. Lots of them delivered daily. After all, is it really too much to ask for a Big League player?
2) I want to be called "Mr." Not, just "AJ," but "Mr. AJ" It's an ego thing and besides, in my not so humble opinion, "Mr." is what I should get for my vast experience.
3) I want to have the right to kick anybody on the team who doesn't bring me cookies, or for any other reason I feel appropriate. Even if it isn't.
4) And, I want to the right to alter the terms of this agreement without notice and on whatever whim I come up with.

Finally, if anybody wants to improve my contract terms, feel free. I'm open to even bigger bonuses and stuff.

AJ
I'll send your application to those who wish to give you an unlimited number of tracking cookies. I'm sure they will find ways to "improve" the contract terms to give you even more surveillance.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Mr. AJ is gonna get traded for a bag of peanuts and an unknown player to be named later, or possibly be subject to arbitration where his FS will not hold back on how terrible of a teammate he is in order to save a few bucks (peanuts?) on the deal. All of this will be subject to blackout and does not violate antitrust laws.

(I know baseball is a dying sport so these are baseball jokes for those who can’t follow.)
 
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