improving Painkiller

This is based on my opinion and experience from the guilds and games I have played over 8 years, as well as psychological facts.

I hope to provide you with ideas on how improve our Game experience through our community.
It also reflects my personal ambitions on where to head as a Guild.
To discuss the direction in which we want to head in the months to come…
I’m willing to take care of some of the tasks, but I need to know your opinions.


My impressions so far:

• stable guild with long history
• small but stable core
• currently facing a down period
(Pointed out in an older thread in the Guild Info Section months ago)

One strong point is the already existing structure that is already in place. Guild rules, application system, event planner, openness to democracy and opinions, flexible leadership. All these help to create and maintain a stable foundation so the guild will continuously feel "alive".

I think overhauls on some of current systems are necessary and will greatly benefit us.


Ensuring Forum and Member activity

Currently, the guild is lacking in its ability to maintain a player base that checks the forums regularly, and participates in Events. The Forum, which is one of the first impressions to people who apply to the guild, seems to have lots of topics but only few actually check the forums and are registered.

There are several ways to improve this; I'll go into detailed reasoning for each:


Application process

Having an application system is already a good decision, it makes people register on the forum and attracts individuals who show a degree of commitment, and some willingness to put in effort. I believe the app-form simply needs some more detail and we should increase the requirements for future applicants. Whether we want to continue in recruiting people without applications is up to debate, I believe this restriction could lead to a more stable player base, rather than constantly being on the look for new members. Also recruitment could build towards directing people to the forums without inviting them straight away.
Keep in mind; I am unaware of how you select people for recruitment.


Suggestions for application criteria:

• Achievement points
• Character levels(these 2 questions give us small insight on their experience with gw2)
• Experience in MMOs (perhaps experience other gw2 guilds, Raid leading, E-sports etc.)
• Experience in Guilds (perhaps experience in Leadership, web or graphic design, hosting etc.)
• What u expect from PK (perhaps his expectations are too high/low for pk)
• What can you offer us? (Is this person someone you'd like to play with?)
• Playtimes (very active members are always nice to have)
• Possible other questions

I believe this discussion deserves an extra topic, which we already have, to make a decision.


Recruitment

Once the application process and our guild guideline/rules are updated we can think on ways to attract players to our forums.

Updating the recruitment posts on the websites we have used so far and posting one on the official gw2 forums, as well as keeping them “bumped” will spread the message of PK and ensure us an applicant flow (hopefully ).

I found this after I wrote this: https://pain.actieforum.com/t156-recruiting-on-public-forum
Perhaps the responses aren’t overwhelming but making a recruit post on our website which we can copy to various websites isn’t gonna hurt us, it’s up to whom wants to take on this task, if anyone…


Guild Rules
(copied from the forum with personal input from me)

•We wanna keep Painkiller a medium sized guild, not too small or too big. We don't recruit in   global, but we always have room for nice people we meet on our way.
What exactly is medium size? The guild feels a bit to small to me right now, I would like to have around 15-20 members online in the evening times (17:00~-22:00~) which is our peak of activity. This would help with our Events being filled more often and we could sometimes have 2 groups for fractals, for both low and high level players.

•We wanna focus the personal relations and to have fun.
•We respect each other, nomatter where people come from or what they believe in.
•We use English as communication.
•18+ age to join pK. However we have exceptions.
•Our guild-structure is flat. We don't want a few on top, but we want many to take part and responsibility in the guild.
•Important we get all to log on teamspeak and forum every day.
•People only represent our guild. If active in other guilds we can't have them.
•We don't have any guildtaxes.
•Sunday is the most important guildmission day, we expect people to join here if they are online.
•All should get one lvl. 80 character with all WayPoints unlocked, so they easier can join guildmissions. We all help each other with this.
•Important we do things together, arrange all kind of small or big events for the social part.
•No use of exploits
•After 2 Months of not logging in the game, we will mail you a message ingame,and remove you from the guild, this way we make sure we have members online that play regulary

The rules about TeamSpeak/forum, guild representation and log in activity
Do not seem to be taken care of. I believe what we state in our rules should hold some meaning, if we don’t wanna bother with keeping those rules in place then we may as well not have them. Otherwise it gives applicants a false impression.
•TeamSpeak should be required for some runs, we can specifically ask for this individually.

•Forum activity is a good rule, but weekly would suffice, application system will definitely help with this. But what if people don’t hold to it, kicking them will probably not be a good idea for our activity…By having the members require to sign up for events it gives them a purpose to check regularly in their own interest.

•Representation has the same problem you have with enforcing forum activity.
I would keep it as a should rather than a must. Members will represent if we can offer them what they want, we can try to keep our event content spread across all 3 game types.

•Log in activity would need to be taken better care of, not that it hurts to have a few inactive players in the roster.


Event planner

Offering our members a couple of events every week will increase the quality of the guild and make it more attractive for players. It also provides them with activities which give them a reason to play. I find that doing things together with the guild can be a lot of fun, whereas otherwise it would just be boring and I would not want to do it.

The event planner which you seem to have maintained for some time provided stability but it seems that it lacked individual contribution, causing it to fall apart over time.

It was built on members adapting towards the event planner, which I believe is a problem.

If events are organized by members who are free to decide the times and events on a weekly basis it will not feel as much of a chore to log in for every week. Members decide every week, what they do or do not want to do.  

We all have things outside the game that we need to take care of, and this way you don’t have to keep canceling a run, which disappoints those who want to take part in it.           If you know you have the time window available and you have the desire the group up for the coming week, then you can host an event. Having people sign up for the event is optional, but it also makes it that much more reliable on whom participates in the run, because it requires the participants to make a commitment. You can always ask in guild chat if someone wants to join when you form the party in game if it lacks participants in the end. This removes the problem of organizing an event and realizing no one wants to participate in game when it is about to start.

I have already started on working towards this, I want to do this more regularly than it has been so far. It was due to some distress in my life and I hope to keep it up.


Providing basic guides

If we have an interest in recruiting new players this makes some sense, but I think it has much less weight than the other points I talked about before,  just a suggestion if someone feels up to it.
These can easily be copied from the web, no need to make unnecessary effort here.

This helps people that join pre max level to find what they need to participate in the content without us needing to constantly take care of them individually. The game is vast and there is lots to learn, even for veterans, these are just meant to give them the fastest access to participate in Events with the others.

For Spvp this could be more interesting, if we want to really discuss our effectiveness in weekly team play.


sPvP

I would love to see us have a team that plays every week and improves our guilds power in structured team fights over time, with long term players.
I’m up for it and I’ll be working towards it, everyone who wants to join in is welcome!


To do

• Sharpening the Guideline/rules
• Overhauling the Application Form
• Posting/Updating recruitment topics

Let me know what you think about my ideas and what you want to have implemented.

Thanks for reading!

-Mizu


Wall of Text hits you for 15,369 K damage!

Mizu wrote:

-Mizu


Wall of Text hits you for 15,369 K damage!

Hey Mizu, this is just a quick check for myself and i haven't read everything. Tonight i will have more time to go through it all and give you more info/comments on the topics. It's great you wanna think with us. So we have a different kind of view.

Well more talks tonight.

Dana

I just went through it, and I'm seeing good stuff here.

From experience, application process is ideal, although slow. Additionally, we HAD a PvP team. And that went to shit.

I also lately had WAAAY less time to be on GW2, or at the PC at all *shakes fist at uni* but I'm trying my best

Haven't had time to be active lately unfortunately (study and due to the fact that sports just started again on quite a few evenings). Have been checking the website almost daily though!

But due to the fact that I've been maintaining a guild in the past and have had experience with recruiting and especially an application proces comes that I really dig this post. You can't 'force' people to use website/forums. What I always believe  is that people need to have a reason instead to be drawn to the website. The feeling of 'missing out' if not checking the website is one of those things that keeps people checking websites and such. That feeling you get drawn to a website is something you can create.

I had the urge to write a post offering my thoughts these last 2 weeks on the side of my busy schedule at the moment but it's a good time maybe to share them here to have them all in one place. What I miss a bit is a website which really attracts you to it. There's a lot of history in here though, that's what attracted me to it. But I guess it has grown to be a bit stale with the activity lately.

Having them to atleast register and apply on the website should be a mandatory thing I think. Even though this means losing 60% of your potential recruitment. I would personally rather invite only a few but ones that stick and contribute than recruiting a bunch and hoping you got the right ones. (not saying this goes wrong now since I don't know how you guys recruit!)

What I miss the most of having a forum only website is:
- A calender with events, ideally where you can sign up for it
- A homepage with news posts about the ins and outs of the guild (recaps of events such as a screenshot of the jumping puzzles for example)
- A truly customised website having PainKiller all over it.
- A shoutbox on the homepage to easily communicate with eachother out of the game. Like when you are late for an event to notify the rest.


Especially that first point with the need to sign up would have great advantage. It means you know who comes and it means people will have to visit the website to be able to participate in such event. (if you require having to sign up for it)

I can show you the website I mostly created for my WoW guild (some thing are probably a bit different since I left 2 months ago): www.raiders-inc.net

As you can see in the first glance:
- Calender on the left with upcoming events
- Newspost with what has happened and such > shows guild activity
- Shoutbox, easy communicating

Nowadays with most website hosts you can transfer the complete forum database so you won't have to lose anything. But I would like to hear your thoughts about maybe trying out a true website such as the one I linked? It wouldn't be free but I don't have problems with paying for it at all.  You have lots of great website hosts such as Enjin and Iclanwebsite. I can be your guy setting it all up if you want.

And when it doesn't work out or anything there's always a chance of just going back to the old way.

Take an example of:
http://lgbt.enjin.com/home
http://www.prescribedrx.com/
http://rpcd.enjin.com/

Bit in that direction... Enjin even offers live WvW statistics and such

This looks amazing dude, your WoW site is rly nice. I pretty much agree with everyhing you said hahaha. We had a shoutbox once but it kinda disappeared, i never rly understood how it worked anyway :/. But i'd love to see these new features.

I agree with everything Steven has talked, they are some very good points which would make the website a lot better!

I really like the layout of the site, it has all the important info visible when u first connect to it.

The 1. enjin site u linked is very nice, I like the design even better, beeing all bright and tidy .
The Leadership is good too.

Titus, the shoutbox was the reason that everyone got popups the whole time from the forum

I used Enjin, it's really nice. Shivtr is also nice

Yeah I think Enjin would be one of the best choices really easy to set up and can import the database from here so all threads, categories and such will be implemented there. (as long as you can get hold of the sql database here). Enjin is even working on, as far as I know, a fully compatible roster directly linked to GW2. So you can view the guild roster, the ranks and such from there.

-> http://www.enjin.com/guild-wars-2-guild-hosting

But yeah it's ofcourse how the guild leadership sees themselves going forward. The application, rules and events suggestions are all really awesome from Mizu. I think a good goal you can set is a goal for the new expansion. How would you guys want the guild to be at that point? I can imagine a good goal being having a good turnout on events, guild missions and such. Or if there are a lot of PvP fans, having a PvP team/group once the new expansion hits. Or if you think that you like the current setup/turn out you would say let's just continue the way we did

I'd suggest coming together some time and inviting all of the members who want to raise their opinions and such (on teamspeak for example) . Or the officers/guild leader should come together and discuss what is written here and throw a reply together with what they agree or disagree and such.

I have already said to Mizu ingame that i wanna talk this over with Trip as well. And now also you Steven. Im giving also the chance of other folks to join for this. But i really wanna make sure that these folks are there.
Mizu, Steven, Trip and me.
But first i wanna talk with Trip for this. Afterwards we will discus a date and time.

Shouldn't the only officer be there too? Officers are kinda part of leadership, after all. I'd also like to join, but there isn't really much that I know how to improve except how people respond when someone asks for a dungeon run, but I can't change it

whaaaa u all posted this in 1 day xD makes me go all out nuclear just got home and was fun reading through all this - I value all that posted here so far, and yes, I can see Mizu and Steven has indeed already been reading the old posts we have on the site.

I luv all your idea's , and to be honest, I was hoping some 1 would step up and make nother post like this - indeed me and Dana will hav urgent meeting, and from there we can hav some talk on ts

I smell some talents regarding websites too - that's awesome.Will keep this post updated.