Wednesday, November 28, 2012

How to Create a Strong Order



A lot of people get frustrated at their order. They find themselves contributing more than their fair share and their order leader doesn't kick the inactive members or those being carried. It can be a frustrating position especially if you don't have the time to start, recruit, and run an order.

When done properly an order leaders job is easy to accomplish and runs smoothly, if done improperly it can seem like an uphill battle of losing a great member for every new great member you get.

Well, it isn't as tough as it seems. Oddly it parallels running a business quite a bit. First this will be a guide on how to create a good order from the start. The second part will list ways to improve or maintain a strong order while keeping it fun.

First Steps:

To begin with creating an order its important to understand that with the high amount of recruits needed in high end orders, there is little reason for somebody strong to join yours. In fact, there is pretty much no reason for somebody to join yours. Understanding this is important because it helps you appreciate the members you do get. When I see new orders with three members trying to recruit people with 85k+ and required to spend 200HP, I laugh.

When creating a post on a forum for Order recruitment it's important to hit on certain things. Everybody is putting 75-90k base as a requirement. This means that there is a huge pool of players below 75k base who are strong active players not being given a chance. These players are probably pretty annoyed and discouraged and will appreciate an Order looking for members in their range. As these players ramp up in power, they will be more likely to stay. An 85k+ member will jump ship the first time you perform poorly, keeping you in a vicious recruitment cycle. Nothing is much worse than always having to look for strong members because your strong members keep jumping ship. Eventually people will pick up on this and just not want to join.

As people join your order its important to create a welcoming atmosphere, especially as a newly created order. You do this by answering questions as they ask them and participating in chat. (Something I don't do, but I'm not the leader :P) By doing this you foster an environment of participation and as new members ask new questions, lots of people participate. An order with no messages is bound to have people leaving.

Events can make or break a new order. A player a while back posted a comment, I can't remember where and there are a lot of places. He mentioned that sometimes spending the extra HP during a Holy War, even if you won't make it back in rewards, is worth it because it increases your rank allowing you to recruit stronger players. Your first few events should be run with this mentality. It increases confidence in the members that are there, and increases your chances of easily picking up strong members down the road. (it's inevitable that some of your members will leave or become inactive, keep an eye open for these and replace as needed). If you're serious about making a strong order you will push the first couple events.

If your first event goes well, chances are you will retain strong members and can purge inactive members. If first event goes poorly, you may have a lot of recruiting to do as people jump ship but its important to find out why you did poorly. Post in chat and ask who spent what, who wasn't able to participate, etc. You do this to check for participation and effort. If a guy with a rare deck with 50k attack and defense spend all 20 of his saved HP but didn't do well because he could only attack once, that's significantly different than the guy with 75k who bought that SR card before the event leaving him with 30HP to spend. You want people who want to get stronger as a group.

Finally, make sure you have outside chat apps like line or palingro. Its necessary for quick communication since the in game chat is so limited. It also builds community.

How to Improve/Maintain an Order:

If your order is strong, chances are it maintains itself unless a big hitter quits the game in which case you have a list a mile long of replacements. If your order is new or mid ranked it can be tough to maintain quality membership.

Don't be a dick:
Do not complain or rage at your members for not doing enough. Remember you are a leader and this is a game. People get treated like shit enough in real life without having some faceless turd bitch at them. Keep your criticism positive. Don't talk about what they didn't do, talk about what they can do. Chances are people know when their decks are weak or they didn't contribute enough HP. Let them know how they can make more HP, how they can improve their deck, and what times you will be pushing for attacks. It will cut down on drama, and increase your orders respect for you.

Participate heavy:
Not only in events, but in conversations. An order that talks a lot, generally maintains members. People build connections and feel bad for leaving. It's a comfort thing.

Wtf happened to contests?:
Back in the days of Ultima Online guilds ran contests/events regularly. As games progressed it seems that the need for contests has disappeared. Instead of focusing on community, games focus on progression, gear, ranks, whatever it is, it really is a shame. Contests and events within an order though are still one of the best ways to build community.

Pay attention!:
I had an order on my alt account that didn't notice that 12 members were completely inactive for over three weeks. I had an Alliance I recently left on Marvel that had six accounts that were level 10 for a week. Your order members notice things like this. They notice people who don't contribute, they notice people that aren't playing, they notice that you don't notice. It makes you look like you don't care about your order, and if you don't why should your members?


If anybody else has any other tips, I'm sure people would be happy to hear them. That's all I have though.

27 comments:

  1. yeah lucarda i absolutely agree with you. i'm just a member in a not-so-good order. i outclass my order but i still stay coz the leader has helped me a lot and answered my questions in the past. so our order has 25 members but a lot of inactives. we still do quite gd coz we had some strong members in our order who are quite committed. but now we could not attract new members. they simply dun apply. what can we do? we're not kicking inactives coz they make our order look larger...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't expect people to apply unless you're a highly ranked Order. Players who don't expect themselves to rank well or don't care, don't bother applying. Those who do want to rank well and do care, are looking for highly ranked orders.

      The best way to get members is referrals or recruitment. For that players need to be active. I normally say put a post in chat and let people know if they don't respond in a week they will be kicked. If they don't respond, kick them. It gives you a good idea of the work you need to do and its motivation for each spot filled.

      Afterward place a post on Gamefaqs looking for active players. Let people know you just cut a bunch of dead weight, what rank you expect your order to hit, how you're going to hit it, etc. The more well thought out and detailed your post, the more likely people are to respond to it.

      Delete
  2. Hi Lucarda and readers!
    This is slightly unrelated but I didn't know where to post it, but how much defense power is ideal for a defense leader in a top #2000 order??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is no set number but top 2000 you can probably get away with 65-70k. In that ranking it's not so much about your defense leader as it is about participation from all your members.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for replying Lucarda, but I actually meant the number of points put into the defense stat, ie. I have 250 atm. Please answer again :D

      Delete
    3. Oh. Haha. I normally recommend no higher than 300 because you won't be able to attack otherwise. 250 should be more than enough if you have a solid defense deck in the 2000 range though.

      Realistically you should try to have a second account that stacks defense that you only use during HW. Otherwise you're asking a player to get fewer points than everybody by not being able to attack more than once.

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ahh. Sticky situation. Unfortunately I am going to take a stance of not posting recruitment on my blog. The primary reason being that if I allow established orders with decent rankings to recruit, I have to allow newbie orders to recruit. Then there is the eventual questions of 'which order would you recommend' then I get into playing favorites. It just becomes a pain. Sorry.

      Delete
    2. Lol, understood! I really like your blog anyway and have been reading it occasionally.

      In my prev post, i said that an order needs a forum to help build the community. Chat programs is good and necessary, but forum will help your order a lot when you want to communicate policy or interact with people with huge time gap

      Delete
  4. Hey Ng Arnold,

    My order is looking for new memebers, we have probably 12 really active members in our order at the moment but have 27 people (many need the boot) so we are kind of in the same boat. Not sure if you are interested in combining orders but I am just throwing it out there.

    Our DEF leader has a 91k base and all the cards are skill level 10, I am one of the atk leaders, my base is only 83k but I hit for around 170k if all my Infrits go off.

    Our Order leader also has a really strong deck, not sure on his stats. We ranked around 1000 in the last holy war but our decks are twice as strong now and we are prepared with lots of HP.

    Let me know if you and your order want to combine forces.



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i'll let u know i'll hv to ask my order leader

      Delete
    2. Have any open spots for me? I'm very active and just finishing off my HR decks. I'll probably be around 75-80k base each (but with good boosts like Aspara). I spent all my HP last holy war so we could get the 15 wins and there were only 1-2 other people who did anything. My ign is Vidovi.

      Delete
    3. just a curious question why haven't you got into a good order until now...

      Delete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sounds good, Ng Arnold, we are a friendly group and want to keep moving up the leaderboards. My user name on RoB is YouAreMyBoyBlue as well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. well we're a group that rank about 1300 last hw. dunno how the bigs did it i was abt lv 15 back then. seems like a member blew a ton of hp and raised our ranking. still waiting for the reply would tell u after i grab a sleep now

      Delete
  7. Hey Justin, I will send you an invite to my order Latnok, we would love to have you join.

    ReplyDelete
  8. what fools!!!!!!!!!!!!!!my order is valentine and we rank 900 rank or less in all events. with defense leader and attack leader like that, thats dumb.everyone in the order is active and has a 79 k attack or defense deck

    ReplyDelete
  9. but hp was our weak point.rob isnt generating hp for everyone anymore. planning to go 500 rank this year

    ReplyDelete
  10. What are examples of contest that can be held among order members?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1) Guess the card and you win it

      2) Trivia contests for HP

      3) Highest battle rank for the day wins a prize.

      4) Betting HP on football games :P

      For starters. The fact is, you could challenge players in your order to random custom games of League of Legends and bet HP against them. The key is, you are building a community. Not necessarily a RoB exclusive group that can't play together in other games.

      Delete
  11. My order leader come out with a nice game too. player who attack def leader the most in 10 days will get 10hp. It was fun and funny too as the defense leader was very shocked in that 10 days period. lol. Winning is not necessary. Make sure you dont miss 3 times attack per day. Eventually 2 people get rewarded with 10hp as both of them have an equal total number of 30 attacks in that 10 days. #Top 100 order

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cool activity. Defense leaders have it rough because they don't get the glory that an attack leader accumulating points gets. It seems like a cool activity to both keep him on his toes for what to expect and to give him some props on what he does.

      Delete
  12. One thing that has been extremely successful for my order is I do a 50/50 HP drawing every quest event. For each HP donated to the order u get 1 raffle ticket. At the end I will draw a number and that winner gets half of all the HP donated. The other half I maintain and when HW comes I redistribute it to guys will wall buster cards to encourage them to bust down the walls. I also give a reward to the top donator. This has aided greatly with HW and the couple times newer guys have won I've been able to help build a great deck.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Lucarda i have a group of good players but i only have 6-10 that goes all out. out of 31 players i keep picking up players that say they are active they have decent decks but when i get to wars they do minimum to get rewards i keep getting burned by this what can i do different. this last war 6 of us carried the group i chat wid everybody in forums and outside chat we are ranked under 500 but everytime i get a killer player and i get screwed in wars by the other 15-20 ppl i loose my killer this last war nobody want to battle unless my top 3 defence wreckers was there im not really sure how to break this cycle ive tried different things but not sure if im setting goals to high or if i need to just kick all the ppl who are to far behind i have a couple who cant afford to buy hp they trade or enhance for hp and they will use it in wars me personaly i use 200-300 hp each war im trying to keep it fun and win my order has gotten dishearten after this last war cause we didnt meet our goals im frustrated and i feel i have let them down can u give me some advice to turn this around thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I understand that feeling. My alts order recently broke up because we lost several of our top players to top 100 orders, they were frustrated over the fact the previous Holy War we dropped to right past 300.

      My recommendation given your current set up is to find another Order in the same predicament. There are a lot of order leaders who are highly active in the game and mergers are possible. Some people have control issues though.

      As for recruitment, you can require players to show evidence of their previous Holy War ranking. Also, you can let them know that there is a minimum required to spend during a Holy War, if they join and they only do the minimum points, not only will they be booted but you will weekly find what new order they are in and let the order leader know the crap they pulled. Most players who plan to sandbag won't take the risk, and players that want to throw down heavy, will appreciate the follow through.

      This last war though I can say is a tough gauge of your order members commitment. A lot of players knew the rewards were shit and weren't going to go hard. I only spent 140HP which is light to me. So its tough to judge them harshly considering my Order had a minimum required of 150 to spend. The difference between me and most is I felt awful about only spending 140. lol.

      Delete
  14. Thanks for the feedback il use that info and see if it can help me i felt bad cause we didnt meet the gaol we set im trying to get our moral boosted baack up at the moment i picked up a order leader of a order that just disbanned cause they didnt do good and the ringers left him thanks again if i run into more problems il hit u up :-)

    ReplyDelete