I dislike the new "PC: Find Squads and Clans!" format

[---RV---Maniac]

This new format, of reducing the multiple recruiting subforums per tier into a single subforum, as made clan recruiting on the pc side alot more messier.

- It has made more difficult for players to find clans of specific tier due to all of them being placed together (tags are nice, but when u got to scroll down multiple pages to find either a mountain clan or storm clan most players will simply go for whatever is top of the first list). It has made a few clans get even more recruits than while most of the other clans have goten a considerable decrease to the point that their forum post is pratically useless now.

- Moon clans with more traffic will get an advantage over newer and smaller clans. Clans with alot of views and comments will stay on the first page constantly and moon clans who recruit large groups of people will get an edge over recently starting and smaller clans.

- There was always thread bumping (which I detest when done on a daily basis) but with this new format is now more used than before and with a lack of monitoring that I have noticed from DE part, bumped threads are always staying on first page and again burying down any other forum posts. Considering how hard it is to stay close to the first few pages now, posting empty comments on a post to keep it at a top has now become a necessity for some.

I understood the changes, but was it really necessary? Did it really bothered people that much having multiple subforums? Maybe there's something I'm missing.

As it stands, recruiting on forums for a clan has now became obsolete for most clans due to this change.

Edited February 5, 2018 by ---RV---Maniac

[--RV--Daedrec]

I agree with this sexy man

[Little]

this is not an empty post :)

[MariAnnette]

Personally, I liked how organized the subforums were before the changes.  It was neat and easy to find what you were looking for.  The consolidation into one subforum where everything is posted is cluttered and terribly disorganized.

[NightmareT12]

TBH some of the recent merges they made have been for the worse. Merging UI feedback to Art and Animation, which clutters issues between the two and increases the need to bump some old issues, or merging the console bug subforums, because there's a chance a bug might be platform specific.

Needless to say what merging 5 different clan categories off a 27 million users playerbase in a single subforum is. Obviously bigger popular clans get the attention while others are relegated.

I can understand DE needs to keep the Forum size as down sizewise as possible but sometimes it's just for the worse, at least in my most humble opinion.

Edited February 5, 2018 by NightmareT12

[[DE]Drew]

They were mostly dead by comparison to other subforums, but if the single subforum is now too active, we can work on a balance. 

[Faulcun]

I actually disagree with OP.

At first, I had the exact same thoughts, concerns, and fears about the subforums being merged together.

But after time, and discussing it with my other leaders, we decided to make the most of it and see how it goes.

I agree, there is a lot of bumping. It can be viewed as a negative, but I see it as a positive if i were looking for a clan because that means the clan is active with somebody staying on top of interested recruits. If your clan is constantly bumping your thread, and you arent getting any recruits, then chances are you need to take a second look at your post. Lazy clans will fall down the list for sure. But if you are taking the responsibility to lead a group of people, then it should be expected that you rise to the occasion and keep your clan on the first page.

Merging the forums has certainly created competition among recruiting clans. A lot of people in this generation are afraid of competition though. Before the merge, apparently there was very little activity among the subforums. Now all the clans are in one place, which means everybody has an equal chance to see your clan now. I think newer players have the opportunity to consider a smaller clan that they otherwise wouldnt have visited the subforum for before. 

Ultimately active clans will adapt, and inactive clans will be inactive. Its just as unfair for a new recruit to join an inactive clan if the leader isnt willing to do the work to keep it active to begin with. Anybody can be a warlord, not everybody can be a leader.

Whats more interesting to me is a reduction in activity in the recruiting forum can probably correspond to a reduction of new players trying the game as well. We might have 27+ million registered users, but how many of those accounts are active? Ive got 200-300 people on my friends list, and you'd be surprised at how many are absent for over 1000 days. One might speculate that warframe has reached its peak....

Edited February 5, 2018 by Faulcun

[-VM-Blaspheme]

Before ... let me state, I don't rely on Warframe sub forums to recruit. But I do have my opinion and I need to agree with Maniac here.

I don't get how considering a bumping as a effort to make your post "great again"... I find this chessy, not an issue and in somewhat will give more action on the forums. 

6 hours ago, Faulcun said:

 

Merging the forums has certainly created competition among recruiting clans. A lot of people in this generation are afraid of competition though. Before the merge, apparently there was very little activity among the subforums. Now all the clans are in one place, which means everybody has an equal chance to see your clan now. I think newer players have the opportunity to consider a smaller clan that they otherwise wouldnt have visited the subforum for before. 

Equal change? How? Most moons are on the top all the time... And with all the  bumping pro's looking into sub-forum, to bump that post....

In the new player chapter, this is actually more confusing to a new player, the layers on the sub-forum that separate moon, mountain... so on, so on, I would give a new player the idea that clans have tiers. At the current stage, its just another clan with a lot of replies.

6 hours ago, Faulcun said:

 

Whats more interesting to me is a reduction in activity in the recruiting forum can probably correspond to a reduction of new players trying the game as well. We might have 27+ million registered users, but how many of those accounts are active? Ive got 200-300 people on my friends list, and you'd be surprised at how many are absent for over 1000 days. One might speculate that warframe has reached its peak....

I somewhat agree here but only regarding the activity in the recruiting... But I believe that is due to how clustered it is, and how hard is now to a player to seek his kind of clan.

9 hours ago, [DE]Drew said:

They were mostly dead by comparison to other subforums, but if the single subforum is now too active, we can work on a balance. 

Yes they were dead, I hope you guys find a balance.

What could work is a activity checker to the Warlord, if the activity checker failed, the recruit post could be erased. The activity checker could be a simple validation link sent to the email just to refresh the post :) Just an idea...

[-CG-ImMrBloo]

I agree With @Faulcun

 

[Faulcun]

11 minutes ago, -VM-Blaspheme said:

Equal change? How? Most moons are on the top all the time... And with all the  bumping pro's looking into sub-forum, to bump that post....

In the new player chapter, this is actually more confusing to a new player, the layers on the sub-forum that separate moon, mountain... so on, so on, I would give a new player the idea that clans have tiers. At the current stage, its just another clan with a lot of replies.

Again, I disagree. We are only a storm clan and we manage to do just fine staying on the top half of page one, if not top 3 posts. We've since filled our clan and have closed recruiting. As of now, our recruiting post has dropped to page 3 and will more than likely continue to drop further. But we have no need to bump it because we arent recruiting. As we remove members, eventually we'll open recruiting again next month and the process will repeat. Clans will come and go on the front page as they fill up and close, remove members and open up again. 

As for newer players not knowing the difference between clan tiers....  Warframe has always had a problem educating its players on even the most basic of systems. This is no different. This will not change until DE makes more of an effort to do so. Players that dont know the difference at least are all coming to the same place, and every clan would be considered by that player. If a player already knows the difference, then they already have a tier in mind and will seek it out regardless.

12 minutes ago, -VM-Blaspheme said:

I somewhat agree here but only regarding the activity in the recruiting... But I believe that is due to how clustered it is, and how hard is now to a player to seek his kind of clan.

The reason everything was merged was because of a lack of activity. You cant blame it on everything being clustered .

[---RV---Maniac]

43 minutes ago, Faulcun said:

Again, I disagree. We are only a storm clan and we manage to do just fine staying on the top half of page one, if not top 3 posts. We've since filled our clan and have closed recruiting. As of now, our recruiting post has dropped to page 3 and will more than likely continue to drop further. But we have no need to bump it because we arent recruiting. As we remove members, eventually we'll open recruiting again next month and the process will repeat. Clans will come and go on the front page as they fill up and close, remove members and open up again. 

 

The fact is, larger clans and clans with low mastery requirements still get an advantage over everyone else, shadow and ghost clans are now non existent on this new format and clans more selective with their recruitment are geting buried.

Also there are clans, who will never close recruiting, meaning they always gona stay on top, thats the case specially with moon clans who constantly kick/recruit players. You can twist it all you want, but moon clans + low requirements are now the 2 main factors for being top in the list, everything else is now close to being obsolete unless you shamelessly bump it constantly.

47 minutes ago, Faulcun said:

The reason everything was merged was because of a lack of activity. You cant blame it on everything being clustered .

It wasnt lacking that much in activity, specially the moon subforum part, but still a somewhat quiet thread is better than a messy one thats makes you wana to turn around.

[-CG-ImMrBloo]

Very good opinions all around for each of you, I feel there's a common ground between both. Maybe put ghost/shadow/storm together and mountain/moon together and seperate alliances because new players keep joining alliance discords thinking they are clans now

Edited February 6, 2018 by -CG-ImMrBloo

[Faulcun]

6 minutes ago, ---RV---Maniac said:

The fact is, larger clans and clans with low mastery requirements still get an advantage over everyone else, shadow and ghost clans are now non existent on this new format and clans more selective with their recruitment are geting buried.

Also there are clans, who will never close recruiting, meaning they always gona stay on top, thats the case specially with moon clans who constantly kick/recruit players. You can twist it all you want, but moon clans + low requirements are now the 2 main factors for being top in the list, everything else is now close to being obsolete unless you shamelessly bump it constantly.

I still disagree. If you are getting buried, then you arent doing your job. You can call it shameless, but thats a personal perspective. I dont think of it as shameless because its simply advertising. If you want to succeed, then thats what you have to do. You have to get your name out there. Its that simple.

10 minutes ago, ---RV---Maniac said:

It wasnt lacking that much in activity, specially the moon subforum part, but still a somewhat quiet thread is better than a messy one thats makes you wana to turn around.

A lack of activity was the specific reason listed in the following link

https://forums.warframe.com/announcement/59-condensed-recruitment-forums/

[Suncake]

1 hour ago, Faulcun said:

I still disagree. If you are getting buried, then you arent doing your job. You can call it shameless, but thats a personal perspective. I dont think of it as shameless because its simply advertising. If you want to succeed, then thats what you have to do. You have to get your name out there. Its that simple.

People value their time well and rarely go beyond the first page, I bet most of them don't even scroll the page to the bottom. Recruiters also understand that and spam bump posts in their threads daily to keep them visible, and numerous bump posts only make your thread look pathetic. WIth different forum categories earlier we haven't had to bump our threads that often, it all was tidy and worked more like a catalogue.

We could make it all a little more stable by creating 

1. A section for "Looking for a group" threads.
2. A section for clan recruiting with a sticky "Looking for a clan" thread.
3. A section for alliance recruiting with a sticky "Looking for an alliance" thread.

This would greatly reduce the chaos we have at the moment. The clan section may also be divided in Ghost-Shadow-Storm and Mountain-Moon categories as my man MrBloo suggested above.

1 hour ago, Faulcun said:

A lack of activity was the specific reason listed in the following link

https://forums.warframe.com/announcement/59-condensed-recruitment-forums/

A lack of visible activity. Lots of people go straight for our Discord and ask for an invite in there without replying at forums.

[Faulcun]

22 minutes ago, Suncake said:

People value their time well and rarely go beyond the first page, I bet most of them don't even scroll the page to the bottom. Recruiters also understand that and spam bump posts in their threads daily to keep them visible, and numerous bump posts only make your thread look pathetic. WIth different forum categories earlier we haven't had to bump our threads that often, it all was tidy and worked more like a catalogue.

We could make it all a little more stable by creating 

1. A section for "Looking for a group" threads.
2. A section for clan recruiting with a sticky "Looking for a clan" thread.
3. A section for alliance recruiting with a sticky "Looking for an alliance" thread.

This would greatly reduce the chaos we have at the moment. The clan section may also be divided in Ghost-Shadow-Storm and Mountain-Moon categories as my man MrBloo suggested above.

Thats really a matter of opinion, even if i happen to agree with it when i see a thread full of "bump". Thats why i simply have a conversation with my clanmates in our clan thread. Its clean, and it shows engagement with our members, and our post stays at the top. I shouldnt have to tell you this kind of stuff though. Stop looking for excuses to fail, and start looking for paths to success.

But im fine with the proposed suggestions. Either way, we'll adapt and accomplish our goals regardless.

22 minutes ago, Suncake said:

A lack of visible activity. Lots of people go straight for our Discord and ask for an invite in there without replying at forums.

So whats the excuse for the other 24 clans on that page? Did I miss the memo where we all recruit through discord?

Edited February 6, 2018 by Faulcun

[Suncake]

2 minutes ago, Faulcun said:

Thats really a matter of opinion, even if i happen to agree with it when i see a thread full of "bump". Thats why i simply have a conversation with my clanmates in our clan thread. Its clean, and it shows engagement with our members, and our post stays at the top. I shouldnt have to tell you this kind of stuff though. Stop looking for excuses to fail, and start looking for paths to success.

IMO having a conversation in a recruitment thread is off-topic. I'm not looking for excuses, I recruited 200 playes in a month or two. I'm looking for ways to make recruitment threads more comfy.

[---RV---Maniac]

22 hours ago, Faulcun said:

I still disagree. If you are getting buried, then you arent doing your job. You can call it shameless, but thats a personal perspective. I dont think of it as shameless because its simply advertising. If you want to succeed, then thats what you have to do. You have to get your name out there. Its that simple.

2) QUALITY STANDARDS – Use our forums to talk to us and talk to each other in a constructive and respectful way that encourages interaction and thoughtful discussion. Stay on-topic, be constructive and use descriptive Topic titles. Don’t rage/rant post, name and shame, have misleading topic titles, post spam, advertisements, unreleased Design Council information, pornography or any other inappropriate, offensive or irrelevant content to the Forums in text, image, or video form. We will delete/edit it, and there will be consequences as per our warnings.

This should cover bumping or "converstations" you have in your recruiting thread as part of the irrelevant content, considering it's a recruiting post for recruiting. And having 1 guy, specially in a moon clan, bumping up your own thread does not prove its active, just proves there someone in that clan that is able to type "." once a day  in a forum post.

Does not show off activity, does not prove your doing you "job" and it's as much advertising as white noise, the advertising comes from your original post where you actually give informating about your clan. People have also received warning or gotten their posts removed due to bumping, thus proving DE stance on it.

And yes, lack of activity was the reason given for the change, but like I said, Moon recruiting subforum, did not lack that much activity. And like I said before, I would prefer a more quiet and less messy subforum than this current one.

If they wana change the subform, into something with less categories, I don't mind giving it a try. As it currently stands, its just bad.

Edited February 7, 2018 by ---RV---Maniac

[Faulcun]

3 hours ago, ---RV---Maniac said:

2) QUALITY STANDARDS – Use our forums to talk to us and talk to each other in a constructive and respectful way that encourages interaction and thoughtful discussion. Stay on-topic, be constructive and use descriptive Topic titles. Don’t rage/rant post, name and shame, have misleading topic titles, post spam, advertisements, unreleased Design Council information, pornography or any other inappropriate, offensive or irrelevant content to the Forums in text, image, or video form. We will delete/edit it, and there will be consequences as per our warnings.

This should cover bumping or "converstations" you have in your recruiting thread as part of the irrelevant content, considering it's a recruiting post for recruiting. And having 1 guy, specially in a moon clan, bumping up your own thread does not prove its active, just proves there someone in that clan that is able to type "." once a day  in a forum post.

Does not show off activity, does not prove your doing you "job" and it's as much advertising as white noise, the advertising comes from your original post where you actually give informating about your clan. People have also received warning or gotten their posts removed due to bumping, thus proving DE stance on it.

And yes, lack of activity was the reason given for the change, but like I said, Moon recruiting subforum, did not lack that much activity. And like I said before, I would prefer a more quiet and less messy subforum than this current one.

If they wana change the subform, into something with less categories, I don't mind giving it a try. As it currently stands, its just bad.

Im not trying to tell you what to do. The reality of the situation is you have two choices. Set your example for other clans, never post in your thread unless a recruit posts first, and watch your thread fall pages behind... in turn, you'll be right back here complaining again.

Or, shamelessly bump your own thread, and make sure that people have the opportunity to even see that lovely recruitment thread that you worked so hard to put together.

Makes no difference to me.

In the last 5 years, I have never seen somebody receive a warning for bumping their clan's recruitment post, or a recruitment post being removed for it. if there were a single forum where bumping would be reasonable.... it would be the recruitment section.

In fact, I welcome a staff member or moderator to start handing out bump warnings in the recruitment section.... .the fallout would be amazing....