Guild Mail Spam

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO · June 25

Guys. It's 2026 now if i'm not gravely mistaken. The world found the ultimate cure for spam about 20 years ago: Bayes, Support Vector Machines, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting Machines, K-Nearest Neighbors, Transformer Models, Long Short-Term Memory, Convolutional Neural Networks, Regex, SpamAssassin, K-Means Clustering, Locality-Sensitive Hashing, not to mention the LLMs that can sniff and eradicate ANY unwanted message in mere milliseconds.

How come that ZOS, in their wisdom, decided to boost and promote spam with the guild messages? To bring it to the pinnacle? To the absolute maximum?

OsUfi · June 25

Voice to concerns to your guild leaders. If they don't listen, leave.

Two of my guilds spammed like crazy when they introduced guild mail. One stopped by the third day, and now just sends a weekly message with events, the other didn't and saw a surprising amount of people leave after a spirited discussion in guild chat. Myself included.

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO · June 25

OsUfi wrote: »

Voice to concerns to your guild leaders. If they don't listen, leave.

Two of my guilds spammed like crazy when they introduced guild mail. One stopped by the third day, and now just sends a weekly message with events, the other didn't and saw a surprising amount of people leave after a spirited discussion in guild chat. Myself included.

Why would i leave? The guild is a guild. Period. ZOS gave them the tool to waste my time. Please fix your "QOL improvements".

Soarora · June 25

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

Voice to concerns to your guild leaders. If they don't listen, leave.

Two of my guilds spammed like crazy when they introduced guild mail. One stopped by the third day, and now just sends a weekly message with events, the other didn't and saw a surprising amount of people leave after a spirited discussion in guild chat. Myself included.

Why would i leave? The guild is a guild. Period. ZOS gave them the tool to waste my time. Please fix your "QOL improvements".

I was looking forward to the guild mail system as a GM because I can now effectively warn members before their rank is audited for kicking. It’s not like the only purpose of the tool is to spam people.

DenverRalphy · June 25

Murf's Knickknacks addon allows you to opt out of guild mailers on a guild by guild basis. I absolutely love it. I only need to opt out of one guild's mailers as the other four are rather responsible with the new tool. The guild is top notch in many other ways, so quitting would just be a rash over reaction. This addon provides the perfect solution for me.

https://mods.bethesda.net/en/elderscrollsonline/details/d38d1fe9-e738-4036-9d0d-baeaa4ebbe2e/Murf__39_s_Knickknacks

[edit] spelling/grammar

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO · June 25

Soarora wrote: »

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

Voice to concerns to your guild leaders. If they don't listen, leave.

Two of my guilds spammed like crazy when they introduced guild mail. One stopped by the third day, and now just sends a weekly message with events, the other didn't and saw a surprising amount of people leave after a spirited discussion in guild chat. Myself included.

Why would i leave? The guild is a guild. Period. ZOS gave them the tool to waste my time. Please fix your "QOL improvements".

I was looking forward to the guild mail system as a GM because I can now effectively warn members before their rank is audited for kicking. It’s not like the only purpose of the tool is to spam people.

The very example you give is yet another piece of the deep misconceptions buried in the game. The trading guild system. But i won't delve into that. Just tell me, however, why i would care about something that the self-proclaimed GM deemed so important to share with all the 500 ppl in the guild? About some lottery?

CatalinaWineMixer2 · June 25

I like Guild Mail and do not want it taken away. If you're getting spammed with it, you need to address the people sending it, not every Guild in the game.

tomofhyrule · June 25

I do think an opt-out option would have been nice, but there has been a lot of research (even from GMs here!) that mailers do increase engagement.

However, GMs should also be prudent about what they send. Anything more than once-a-day is excessive, and many guild mailers are time-sensitive, so they should probably auto-delete after like a week so people who are on vacation don’t get spammed about the raffle two weeks ago.

I can handle guild messaging. But within reason. I do have one guild that, every time they update their MOTD, will usually redo it about five or six times in succession because they can’t figure out they should do spellcheck before sending it, and the constant spam (that flashes on screen while I’m in combat!) is really annoying

Soarora · June 25

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

Voice to concerns to your guild leaders. If they don't listen, leave.

Two of my guilds spammed like crazy when they introduced guild mail. One stopped by the third day, and now just sends a weekly message with events, the other didn't and saw a surprising amount of people leave after a spirited discussion in guild chat. Myself included.

Why would i leave? The guild is a guild. Period. ZOS gave them the tool to waste my time. Please fix your "QOL improvements".

I was looking forward to the guild mail system as a GM because I can now effectively warn members before their rank is audited for kicking. It’s not like the only purpose of the tool is to spam people.

The very example you give is yet another piece of the deep misconceptions buried in the game. The trading guild system. But i won't delve into that. Just tell me, however, why i would care about something that the self-proclaimed GM deemed so important to share with all the 500 ppl in the guild? About some lottery?

No, nothing I said has to do with the trading guild system. I do not run a trading guild. We have never had a guild trader as far as I know. I do not care about the information that trading guilds want to share with me either. But I would rather a mail once a week on a specified day instead of the guild MoTD updates I get.

hiyde · June 25

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO wrote: »

why i would care about something that the self-proclaimed GM deemed so important to share with all the 500 ppl in the guild? About some lottery?

You requested to join the guild(s) you are in. If they aren't being run to your standards, find guild(s) that are, or make your own.

Not liking the trading system is valid. Not liking the Guild Mail tool is valid.

Demonizing the unpaid volunteer "self-proclaimed" GMs and Officers who run guilds and put work into running those raffles so that they have gold to place bids with is certainly a choice...

Destai · June 25

I feel like any new social feature needs some kind of opt-out. Because, yeah, totally agree, it's just too much. I've already gone over my feelings here, but I wish there better support for a more focused experience. I suppose add-ons will do for now.

hiyde · June 25

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I do think an opt-out option would have been nice, but there has been a lot of research (even from GMs here!) that mailers do increase engagement.

However, GMs should also be prudent about what they send. Anything more than once-a-day is excessive, and many guild mailers are time-sensitive, so they should probably auto-delete after like a week so people who are on vacation don’t get spammed about the raffle two weeks ago.

I can handle guild messaging. But within reason. I do have one guild that, every time they update their MOTD, will usually redo it about five or six times in succession because they can’t figure out they should do spellcheck before sending it, and the constant spam (that flashes on screen while I’m in combat!) is really annoying

One of the nice things about Guild Mail vs. addons is that we can retract outdated mails. For instance, I never send the new raffle mail without retracting the old one. If any other mails we send have a shelf-life, I literally set a calendar reminder to delete them. A few of the pieces of feedback I submitted to ZOS were:

- 5 Mails per guild active at once is too many, it should be no more than 3.
- Expiration should be configurable (1-30 days) -OR- be reduced from 14 days to 7.
- Increase the 700 char limit so that we can do newsletter-style mails covering several topics instead of multiple mails.

We send 2 weekly mails (on different days) and others as needed (in general it's 3-4 per week grand total).

Yes, it is absolutely helpful with engagement. We regularly get thank you's from members for keeping them informed. In 12 years with 2 guilds, we've never once gotten a complaint about overcommunication despite using guild mail addons since the start.

Like any communication tool, responsible use is the key (compelling content, not overusing), but this is a wonderful (and proven) tool to help successfully run guilds.

DoofusMax · June 26

Just to throw this out there for ZOS, and this might be a per-character thing (more testing needed and I've got other fish to fry at the moment), but if I delete a guild mail, it's right back in the mailbox the next time I log in.

I know it's not repeated sendings, btw. One guild is absolutely righteous with one mail per week with upcoming guild events for those who don't bother to check the MOTD. The MOTD always has a notification that it has changed, even if no one changed it and that's a wholly different problem. The other guild has sent maybe two since U50 added it. To keep it from reappearing, the guildmaster or whoever sent it must delete it using the guild mail tools.

One would think that "delete" was functionally equivalent to either "message received" or "not interested," but it isn't. It seems to be more akin to "snooze" or "remind me later." At the risk of sounding like a broken record on a lot of these feature additions, "needs work."

hiyde · June 26

DoofusMax wrote: »

One would think that "delete" was functionally equivalent to either "message received" or "not interested," but it isn't. It seems to be more akin to "snooze" or "remind me later." At the risk of sounding like a broken record on a lot of these feature additions, "needs work."

@DoofusMax
Do you run addons and have you tried disabling them and then deleting the mail(s)?
(just to rule out it being an addon issue).

Or it's a bug in the new system that they need to fix. But it doesn't affect everyone. Mine, for instance, stay gone when I delete them.

tsaescishoeshiner · June 26

Guilds who already sent regular guild mails haven't increased their rate for me, they're just more noticeable because they're in their own section and so it feels like there are more of them. Some guilds out there may have gone overboard with it, but I think the separate section makes them more visible.

DoofusMax · June 26

hiyde wrote: »

@DoofusMax
Do you run addons and have you tried disabling them and then deleting the mail(s)?
(just to rule out it being an addon issue).

I use addons, but the only one which touches mail is Lazy Writ Crafter, which collects hireling mails on the two characters which get them. Dolgubon has been rock solid for years, so I'm skeptical of the idea, but will test it the next time I log in.

ZOS_Hadeostry · June 26

Greetings,

After removing some unnecessary back and forth from this thread, we would like everyone to keep posts on the subject at hand, civil, and constructive.

If there may be any questions in regards to the rules, please feel free to review them here

LootAllTheStuff · June 26

DoofusMax wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

@DoofusMax
Do you run addons and have you tried disabling them and then deleting the mail(s)?
(just to rule out it being an addon issue).

I use addons, but the only one which touches mail is Lazy Writ Crafter, which collects hireling mails on the two characters which get them. Dolgubon has been rock solid for years, so I'm skeptical of the idea, but will test it the next time I log in.

It'd still be worth toggling it off and testing again just in case - the Guild Mail system is pretty new after all. What I can say is that (a) I don't run that add-on and (b) I'm not seeing the same issue. But I only run a very small number of add-ons, and only one which touches the UI and is currently inactive anyway, so mileage will very definitely vary.