Referral System

[Darielle]

Hey, as I am trying to search for the ever-elusive 25th good player to round out our team on Sinya, I got the idea that maybe we could institute a referral thread for fellowships, not just for members as we have now. For example, if like-minded fellowships got together and said, "When your team is full, send me your excess applicants, and when my team is full, I'll do the same for you."

Thornwood has had to turn down applicants in the past, and I always wished we could have referred them to an alternative fellowship, but I didn't really know who was similar to us. What do other fellowships do when they have applicants while full? It's a shame to just send them on their own to wander the fellowship wilderness.

We could have categories, such as:

Casual: Fellowships with no rules, no limits, and who welcome anyone.

Active: Fellowships that have mostly active players, with low limits on tournament and spire play. They may reach bronze or silver in spire and may reach 10 chests on occasion, but not every week.

Competitive: Active fellowships that hit silver in spire and 10 chests or more every week, with occasional pushes for higher chests/gold spire.

Top Level: Gold spire, 11 or more chests weekly, and high-level expectations.

Of course, there will be some fellowships that don't fit exactly these categories, but mostly.

I don't know if it would work or not, but I'm just gathering thoughts at this point. If anyone wants to try it, I'll throw mine out first: Thornwood, Sinya Arda, Competitive. We don't currently have excess applicants and are one short, so your fellowship may be in the same boat, but as I said, we have had in the past so we might consider a partnership anyway.

If there are problems with this idea, I need to know them before I step in doo doo, so don't hold back. Thank you!

 

[Hawk1911]

Interesting idea @Darielle . I agree that when I'm full up, I would like to have a friend to send recruits too. However, it seams like I'm always looking for one person. People take breaks or have other real life stuff going on. I just lost 2 because their work became too much. I sometimes have a waiting list, but let's be honest, most people don't want to wait a week or longer to find a new home.

I am interested in a partnership where we could work together. Let's get some other FS and really change up the world. We'll call it the "Thornwood Coalition" lol or how about "Darielle's Hope" ?

Seriously, recruiting and managing a FS is one of the hardest parts of this game. 25 people is too small for regular consistency because 10% always have a real life event going on. Teaming up with one or more fellowships could possibly bring stability to the entire Coalition. The challenge is how to manage it and also achieve the goals of each member and the goals of the FS.

 

[Ihrlaen]

This is a very good idea. I too am looking for those final slots (2 in my case) in our Competitive fellowship. So much is about timing, and there are no in-game tools to help us. Moreover, having a way to refer across servers would be just as valuable as many of us play on multiple worlds with different fellowships.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Archmage is just a fancy way of saying “Recruiter-in-Chief”

 

[Myne]

Even if you just threw names of other fellowships back at them it would be an improvement over saying simply no.

 

[Ms Molly]

I think it is an awesome idea, Darielle! I am looking for that one spot as well right now and it would help greatly if we did have a referral program and, perhaps, a "type" system for the fellowships....but, in addition, it would be nice if on the Fellowships listing for the entire world that one could sort by fellowship type, so that when contacting the Archmage to give them a referral, it would make deciding which type of fellowship the "extra" player would fit in with best. Don't know if I expressed my thought clearly...but, essentially I am looking at it from the perspective of someone who cannot accommodate a player in need of a fellowship....I would want to be able to sort possible fellowships by "type" so that I don't waste time contacting archmages that are not interested in the extra player I am offering.

 

[Ms Molly]

This is a very good idea. I too am looking for those final slots (2 in my case) in our Active fellowship. So much is about timing, and there are no in-game tools to help us. Moreover, having a way to refer across servers would be just as valuable as many of us play on multiple worlds with different fellowships.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Archmage is just a fancy way of saying “Recruiter-in-Chief”

I love the "Recruiter-in-Chief" description! Ain't that the truth!

 

[Darielle]

Interesting idea @Darielle . I agree that when I'm full up, I would like to have a friend to send recruits too. However, it seams like I'm always looking for one person. People take breaks or have other real life stuff going on. I just lost 2 because their work became too much. I sometimes have a waiting list, but let's be honest, most people don't want to wait a week or longer to find a new home.

I am interested in a partnership where we could work together. Let's get some other FS and really change up the world. We'll call it the "Thornwood Coalition" lol or how about "Darielle's Hope" ?

Seriously, recruiting and managing a FS is one of the hardest parts of this game. 25 people is too small for regular consistency because 10% always have a real life event going on. Teaming up with one or more fellowships could possibly bring stability to the entire Coalition. The challenge is how to manage it and also achieve the goals of each member and the goals of the FS.

You're group is great, Hawk, and a little bit higher than ours. We have gold pushes every 9 weeks (steel tourney time) but you acheive it much more often. Still, I'd love a NewLand/Thornwood partnership.

 

[Myne]

hmmm maybe a dedicated post where AMs can post their fellowship type, and number of openings? They could go back and delete the posts as needed to keep the thread updated.

 

[Darielle]

I think it is an awesome idea, Darielle! I am looking for that one spot as well right now and it would help greatly if we did have a referral program and, perhaps, a "type" system for the fellowships....but, in addition, it would be nice if on the Fellowships listing for the entire world that one could sort by fellowship type, so that when contacting the Archmage to give them a referral, it would make deciding which type of fellowship the "extra" player would fit in with best. Don't know if I expressed my thought clearly...but, essentially I am looking at it from the perspective of someone who cannot accommodate a player in need of a fellowship....I would want to be able to sort possible fellowships by "type" so that I don't waste time contacting archmages that are not interested in the extra player I am offering.

Thanks! Yeah, it's sometimes hard to know what players will fit where. But I think it would be less of a problem for archmages or mages having to pick which people are appropriate than it is to find people in the first place.

 

[Darielle]

hmmm maybe a dedicated post where AMs can post their fellowship type, and number of openings? They could go back and delete the posts as needed to keep the thread updated.

Good idea! We could have a specific recruitment thread where an AM or Mage (I'm not the AM; I'm the second in command and the spire mage) could post under specific categories, such as I described above (ie casual, active, competitive, and top-level).

Are there any other ideas for names of the different types of fellowships? Or other categories of fellowships? If we could have a specific list of fellowship titles, then we could start a thread that would tell archmages/mages to post their needs like this:

Sinya Arda: Competitive Fellowship: 1 opening in Thornwood

Or ... maybe a different naming system for the fellowships? I'd want to get it right before we started a thread to do this.

Or how about a fellowship partnership thread, where fellowships seek partners to help with recruiting, ie, my original thought. When you have an applicant and can't keep it, you could contact another archmage and ask if they want that recruit, and to write to them (saying the other fellowship referred them)?

In that case, we could have a thread that posts things like:

Sinya Arda: Competitive Fellowship: Thornwood seeks same for Recruit Swapping

Then, when one is full and has extra applicants, they would refer them to the next one. Maybe there would have to be a limit, such as having no more than five fellowships in the super-fellowship group.

Just in the past year, we at Thornwood have had to turn away at least five people. I'm sure we're not the only fellowship that has that problem. Since there are so many fellowships begging for recruits, there must be a way to find the best substitute for these players. If I had an extra applicant, I could write to the archmage or mage of a sister group and say, "So and so applied, but we're full. You may want to contact them before they find another group." Or we could write to the applicant and say, "I'm sorry we're full, but there's a great fellowship with a similar profile to ours, Name." I don't know ... something like that might work.

 

[Myne]

There would probably need to be a pinned post at the top of the thread defining the different types of fellowships.
Then the posts would probably look something like this:
World: Sinya Arda
Fellowship: Joe's Blues
Type: Competitive
Minimum Performance: whatever you have.

The thing about doing it that way is the AM or Mage can shoot over to the forum and copy requirements to paste in the reply back to the applicant. Makes it easier on all.

 

[Darielle]

There would probably need to be a pinned post at the top of the thread defining the different types of fellowships.
Then the posts would probably look something like this:
World: Sinya Arda
Fellowship: Joe's Blues
Type: Competitive
Minimum Performance: whatever you have.

The thing about doing it that way is the AM or Mage can shoot over to the forum and copy requirements to paste in the reply back to the applicant. Makes it easier on all.

I like that idea.

 

[Myne]

I like that idea.

ok let's see what everyone else thinks too. Perhaps we could just utilize the "Fellowships seeking Players" thread with a few changes like the pinned post?

 

[Darielle]

ok let's see what everyone else thinks too. Perhaps we could just utilize the "Fellowships seeking Players" thread with a few changes like the pinned post?

I'm off to have lunch, but I'll do it when I get back or else you can. Whatever you think best is fine with me.

 

[Myne]

I'm off to have lunch, but I'll do it when I get back or else you can. Whatever you think best is fine with me.

I think we should nail the fellowship definitions first

 

[Hawk1911]

@Myne @Darielle I like where this is going.

I like the 4 levels and definitions;
Casual: Everyone is welcome
Active: Bronze Spire, +8c tourney
Competitive: Silver Spire, +10c tourney
Top Level: Gold Spire, +12c tourney

It makes sense to me and provides the key pieces of information. Not overly complex, but not too simple either.

My FS would look like this:
World: Sinya Arda
Fellowship: The New Land
Type: Top Level
Minimum Performance: Complete the Lab in Spire and 1000 Tourney

 

[Darielle]

@Myne @Darielle I like where this is going.

I like the 4 levels and definitions;
Casual: Everyone is welcome
Active: Bronze Spire, +8c tourney
Competitive: Silver Spire, +10c tourney
Top Level: Gold Spire, +12c tourney

It makes sense to me and provides the key pieces of information. Not overly complex, but not too simple either.

My FS would look like this:
World: Sinya Arda
Fellowship: The New Land
Type: Top Level
Minimum Performance: Complete the Lab in Spire and 1000 Tourney

Perfect. I think this would work well. Anyone else have anything to add?

 

[Myne]

Casual and Active could have maybe.....
Casual: Plays 1 to 15 x a week
Active: Plays multiple times a day every day?

 

[Myne]

competitive: working on excelling
Top Level: Lives here...shark worthy. LOL!

 

[Ihrlaen]

Perhaps specify “Weekly” in minimum performance?