I find the ignore option best if someone is advertising their guild so frequently that it disrupts chat. Doesn't take long to click them off. We've been given the options to control our experience of chat, so makes sense to use them.

Also, glad to hear you're enjoying the game!

Demendra wrote: »

ESO was a gift for Christmas and enjoying it very much thus far as a big fan of the Elder scrolls series.

One factor that's obviously new to the game with It's multiplayer aspect is being able to socialize with others.

I've noticed though that this has been difficult as guilds are always advertising in this chat, if It's not spamming It's different guilds posting over top of a previous guilds advertisement.

This is making it very difficult for players to interact with one another.

I have seen players in-game make comments about this, like "spam!" And "Do you expect people to join your guild if you advertise it in the chat like this". It obviously annoys players.

I do realize that reporting a player for spam is an option, but I'm concerned as I will be the one at fault as some guilds are advertising only one post, but because of that one post it activates another guild to post over top of that guild and it creates a chain reaction.

Please do something about this...

I'm one to make suggestions,

Possibly make an official announcement that advertising guilds in-game is a reportable offence. So that players know if It's right or wrong when it comes to reporting and advertising a guild.

I'm not suggesting that you can't talk about your guild name in-game, but more that It's not announced to the world and discussed in a general conversation where an invitation comes up.

Thanks for reading,

hope something can be done because of my rant.

Demendra

How else are they supposed to advertise??
The only other way they can ask people is to click on random strangers and invite into the guild, which most of us consider rude.

It would be nicer if they had trade and Enrolment channels in chat, but they don't.

Edit~ Guilds should also limit the frequency of the posts, as should everyone else, it's ok to ask for help every other minute, but it's not ok to advertise your guild or that you want to sell something(or buy something either) that frequently.

I recommend having "zone" chat disabled, and "zone-English" chat enabled (or your appropriate language of course). It cuts down on the trivia considerably, while still allowing you to communicate with others if you wish.

Demendra wrote: »

I have seen players in-game make comments about this, like "spam!" And "Do you expect people to join your guild if you advertise it in the chat like this". It obviously annoys players.

I do realize that reporting a player for spam is an option, but I'm concerned as I will be the one at fault as some guilds are advertising only one post, but because of that one post it activates another guild to post over top of that guild and it creates a chain reaction.

First, welcome to Tamriel.

Second: The chat tab system is one you should be familiar with for your preferences. You can have custom tailored chat tabs to exclude info in one tab, while keeping it another if you feel the need to review zone chat. For instance, I have a tab called "Immersive," which keeps my local chat, team chat, emotes and NPC texts in one tab. Next is "Global," which has all the guild and zone chats in one window. I further break these down with "Traders", " Combat" and "Social" to distinguish between types of guilds I belong to.

The chat system let's me refine what I see, and when/how I see it. You should work out a system to your preference.

Side note: Zone spam really only happens in the beginning areas. Find a crew you like, then just ignore Zone unless you have a need. It normalizes once you're beyond lvl 15 areas.

There ARE other ways for guilds to recruit but they require time and work. That's why many guild leaders simply rely on spamming the zone chat, knowing but still ignoring how ennoying it is for everyone.

- Join PU Groups and talk to people. PUG are usually full of people with no or inactive guilds. Same with raids.
- Find other guilds to merge with
- Look in zone chat for people looking for guilds
- Etc...

I understand that guilds still use zone chat but PLEASE don't believe that 30 min interval is OK : it's not. Once a day would be the correct dose for each guild in order for the whole thing to be bearable.

The in-game LFG tool being what it is, I totally accept that players use the zone chat to form PUGs.

As to WTB/WTS... I don't understand why people don't use guild stores but...

I think the ones that spam zone chat every five minutes or so are the ones trying to trick lowbies into joining so they can get a guild bank all for themselves.

I'm in a mid tier trade guild, we consistently have a kiosk but it's not in a major location -- we do pretty well at least. But the guild leader has given everyone the ability to add members which helps with recruiting; when someone asks for a trade guild invite I make them a quick pitch via whisper. It doesn't solve the recruiting problem but it helps.

Turgenev wrote: »

Demendra wrote: »

I have seen players in-game make comments about this, like "spam!" And "Do you expect people to join your guild if you advertise it in the chat like this". It obviously annoys players.

I do realize that reporting a player for spam is an option, but I'm concerned as I will be the one at fault as some guilds are advertising only one post, but because of that one post it activates another guild to post over top of that guild and it creates a chain reaction.

First, welcome to Tamriel.

Second: The chat tab system is one you should be familiar with for your preferences. You can have custom tailored chat tabs to exclude info in one tab, while keeping it another if you feel the need to review zone chat. For instance, I have a tab called "Immersive," which keeps my local chat, team chat, emotes and NPC texts in one tab. Next is "Global," which has all the guild and zone chats in one window. I further break these down with "Traders", " Combat" and "Social" to distinguish between types of guilds I belong to.

The chat system let's me refine what I see, and when/how I see it. You should work out a system to your preference.

Side note: Zone spam really only happens in the beginning areas. Find a crew you like, then just ignore Zone unless you have a need. It normalizes once you're beyond lvl 15 areas.

Thanks for your suggestion, I'll look at tailoring this to try and filter out the zone chat. Just seems unfortunate that I have to try and remove Zone chat completely because of Guilds. Right now I'm not even slightly interested in joining a guild because of it.

Yeah I have to say at first, I kind of sympathize. I don't like the spamming but ya know what, no one does. After reading the snide comments left by the OP though, now I just wanna say... deal with it.

Many of us have been here dealing with it for many months. Yeah ok, you don't like something, so you complain... I get that, I and many others have done it. There are plenty of other things way bigger than guilds advertising in zone chat, (which is the way it has always been and will probably always be) worth bitching and moaning over.

If you cant handle a little "spamming of the guilds" in zone, this probably isn't the game for you as this is just the icing on the cake.

lordrichter wrote: »

Demendra wrote: »

Do I really have to get specific on this when all you have to do is read it...
I said "thousands of clans advertise all day every day", and that's 100% true on the ESO. I didn't say I see thousands of spam messages from guilds everyday did I?

Yes, as a matter of fact, you do. Your whole thread is about seeing too many of these messages, so when you start talking about thousands of them, things need to be explained.

"Thousands of clans advertise on ESO every day" isn't self explanatory? Lol.

Alphashado wrote: »

That is simply untrue. Until you have the responsibility of trying to keep a guild full of 500 active accounts, you will never understand how challenging it really is and how much work is involved. We lose 10-15 accounts every single day due to our 15 day inactivity policy.

Don't confuse "disagree" with "untrue" and explain why the methods I mentioned should not work for you.
And if you loose 10-15 members / day maybe you should start wondering if people find what they're looking for in your guild.
And yes I have the responsibility of a guild, but we have a different policy than yours : I try to keep it full of happy friendly members (not necessarily 500) rather than sticking to 500 anonymous IDs.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

That is simply untrue. Until you have the responsibility of trying to keep a guild full of 500 active accounts, you will never understand how challenging it really is and how much work is involved. We lose 10-15 accounts every single day due to our 15 day inactivity policy.

Don't confuse "disagree" with "untrue" and explain why the methods I mentioned should not work for you.
And if you loose 10-15 members / day maybe you should start wondering if people find what they're looking for in your guild.
And yes I have the responsibility of a guild, but we have a different policy than yours : I try to keep it full of happy friendly members (not necessarily 500) rather than sticking to 500 anonymous IDs.

This is a trading guild I am talking about. In order for it to be successful you need a full roster of active accounts. I'm not talking about people that leave the guild. I am talking about people that haven't logged into the game in two weeks. Hense why I said we lose them due to inactivity policy. I didn't mention anything about quitting. If they are inactive for 15 days, we boot them from the guild. That is actually quite soft compared to most trading guilds that have inactive policies as short as 3 days. 15 days is a pretty clear indication that someone has left the game. There are exceptions of course. If someone is on vacation for example, we will retain them until they return. So yes, in a guild of 500 people, 10-15 are leaving the game daily. Blame ZoS. Don't blame us for just trying to keep our roster full. We have no control over people leaving the game. Luckily for us and for ESO, there seems to be an equal number of people either returning or trying ESO for the first time.

A PvE guild like the one you mentioned can get away with a roster full of inactive accounts. A PvE guild can get away with having only 100 happy members. A trade guild cannot. A trade guild needs a full roster of active accounts in order to succeed.

It would be impossible to find that many people every single day using only the methods you mentioned.

Seriously. You are greatly embellishing this issue that you clearly do not understand.

Rosveen wrote: »

I doubt there are literally thousands of guilds advertising. I don't think we even have so many guilds.

Obvious to anyone who has played ESO for any length of time, there are not thousands of guilds advertising at once. But there are some recruiters who spam every few minutes, and then there are those that spam ever thirty or sixty minutes or so. If you have a number of them going at once, it can overwhelm zone chat.

But really, what's the loss here? It's zone chat. If I'm not reading some guild spam, I'm reading a lengthy discussion of what are the essential characteristics of an MMO or a roundtable on the modern history of the video game (and a demonstration of totally awesome video game knowledge) or a rant about why ESO sucks so bad or reading someone's self-indulgent chat SCREAM or someone named Dr. Love offering sexual services for players.

Yeah. Well, if someone on zone chat gets on my nerves, I ignore them. After a few days, I clear them again.

On the other hand, two of the guilds I most enjoy, I learned about through zone chat. So yes, it is an effective way of recruiting. And if there were a separate chat channel, I would have ignored it and not learned about these guilds.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

It would be impossible to find that many people every single day using only the methods you mentioned.

Seriously. You are greatly embellishing this issue that you clearly do not understand.

Sorry but you still haven't explained WHY some of the possibilities I mentioned would not work for you. Seriously, you are greatly underestimating options that you have not tried.

I actually don't see any difference between a player's guild and a trading guild when it comes to finding what you want, feeling at ease and encouraged to participate. Becoming inactive and being kicked from a guild equals to quitting imho, even though I admit that quitting the game is not the same thing as quitting a guild.

I'm glad if heavy advertising via zone chat brings new sufficient and active new members though. At least it's not a useless annoyance for us.

The reasons why your mentioned alternatives wouldn't work are really quite simple. They don't reach a wide enough audience fast enough. That's pretty much it. Zone ads hit the largest number of people with the smallest amount of effort. That's not to say that your methods aren't also being used when appropriate, but players need to be replaced at a rate that is sometimes much faster than your methods alone can accomplish.

In my guild our attrition rate is between 5 and 10 members daily with a 14 day inactive policy. Sometimes we get new recruits just from members recruiting from friends and pug groups as well as those specifically looking in zone chat for guilds. There are days I never post a zone ad. But when we're down by 20 members, I have to do what I have to do in order to bring numbers up. It's what a good trade guild GM will do to keep the guild healthy. The alternative is letting the guild become increasingly inactive which leads to a greater rate of attrition as members note that the guild is stagnating which will lead to more zone ads later on to replace greater numbers of members.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

It would be impossible to find that many people every single day using only the methods you mentioned.

Seriously. You are greatly embellishing this issue that you clearly do not understand.

Sorry but you still haven't explained WHY some of the possibilities I mentioned would not work for you. Seriously, you are greatly underestimating options that you have not tried.

What leads you to believe that I haven't tried those other options? What leads you to believe that I don't use every available option? I never said that I didn't. What I said was that using those options would make it impossible to keep trading guilds full due to the sheer amount of people quitting the game.

Ask in Pugs - I do this on a fairly regular basis. How often do you imagine I am in a pug? Once or twice a day tops. That's two groups of 3 other random people a day. So thats 6 people a day (best case scenario) that I can even ask. And all I can do is ask if anyone is looking for a trading guild. Sometimes someone says yes, most times they don't. So best case scenario, that is 1 person a day via asking in pugs.

Invite people looking for trade guilds in zone chat - You think I don't do this already? Obviously since I spend much of my personal time recruiting, I jump on any opportunity I see. If I see someone asking in chat, of course I talk to them and send them an invitation.

Merge guilds - This just wouldn't work. It would be an incredible amount of work and coordination, and at the end of the day you would still have the issue of people leaving the game in droves and needing to be replaced.

What I have been trying to tell you is that most of us DO use every option available and it isn't nearly enough to acquire 10-15 people a day. Like I said. I do not enjoy wasting hours of my day going from zone to zone trying to find people. I would much rather be playing the game. Most successful trading guilds exhaust every opportunity. ATM there is no method even remotely as successful as advertising in zone chat.

The people in my guild count on me and a few others to keep our roster full of active players. The people that come to our guild store count on me and a few others to keep our roster full so that they can enjoy a good, well stocked kiosk. I do the best I can to not be disruptive. I usually post once in each zone and move on. At least I try to be respectful. Most recruiters do. Like I said if you see someone posting over and over in the same zone than feel free to ignore them. But please quit trying to make villains out of good people that are doing the best they can for people that count on them.

Overreacting a bit OP. If someone is literally spamming, just ignore them. Regular guild recruitment does not ruin ingame chat. Its not like it completely clutters the window all the time. If someone is being a pest by spamming it wvery 10 seconds, then just ignore them like I said before. And feel free to remove them the next day if you feel its too limiting on your community ingame.