How to tell a good Guild from a bad one?

[JELLOFELLOW]

I seemed to have found the perfect guild. They helped me get Arc and Traz. But now they ignore me and deliberately pass me by. If I do a swap thread, 2, 5, or 10 they just ignore those threads for several days, if I do a 20 or 30 swap they also ignore the threads. These are large players with hundreds of millions of pts. I am in the meager 600,000"s. I very rarely get a spot in a 1.9 thread and if I am not there in 5 minutes to put the FPs down, someone always takes it away, yet they will wait an hour or more for a top ranking player. Is this a good guild or not.

 

[Agent327]

Would you have asked if you thought it was a good guild?

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

Really the people to ask are your Guild members.
Guilds usually do go out of their way to be nice to a new member for a short period. then expect you to settle in. If you find you cannot, then you should ask what is wrong with the way you are doing stuff.

 

[67Sage101]

Find an old Guild where they LOVE swaps. 19 players in mine and all I see is swap, swap, swap. It is a guild with a bunch of players that don't even understand what an ARC is or a 1.9 thread. Most of the ones that did, moved on. Only 4 use use our 1.9 with outsiders contributing more than insiders.

But they don't talk to you either. From what I have experienced they just log in, collect, do a few GE battles, swap, and log out. Only one or two will respond in the guild chat.

But from my perspective you might be better off in a guild with people a little lower on the totem pole. Find one where the top players have 50 mil or less. Also it's tough getting a GB rolling.

In 1.9 you have to self donate a LOT to lock but in swaps the FP's are spread out over a lot of GB's. So you should pick one or the other.

For 1.9 just watch the thread when you know it's active and players are on. You'll catch some. Go for spot 4 or 5 and wait to pounce on them. Or you could message the higher players and ask them to let you take a spot. Some will be happy to.

 

[JELLOFELLOW]

There are three players who watch the 1.9 thread constantly, maybe I should figure out when they sleep? Thanks everyone for your input.

 

[Ericness]

I leave the swap threads in my guilds because I personally have no interest in them. It sounds like in your guild many others ignore them as well which may suggest it is not a good fit for your play style at the moment.

My philosophy on guilds is that you'll go through at least three as your city ages and you get more experienced. First is the lower level starter guild to get access to basic aids, trades, and GB leveling/print opportunities (often thru swaps) to get your feet under you. Next is the intermediate guild where you can get more advanced support (with limited 1.9) and goods and practice progressing in GE/GbG. Third is the advanced guild where you find higher rollers to offer advanced goods, GB support in the 100s to 1000s of FP a pop and competitive GE/GbG action. The trade off here is often that you are prepared to participate accordingly. Guilds with active, helpful, and reasonably communicative players is essential regardless of age or level. If a guild doesn't have this type of player move on.

Back to your situation, it sounds like you may be in a three guild when you would benefit more from a two (there is absolutely nothing wrong with this). If you really like the other players I would suggest reaching out to leadership or the general message thread for help and possibly organizing private swaps. Otherwise consider moving on to a guild that has more players in your range and advertises swaps once GE ends.

If, however, you see other players requests consistently taken immediately while yours gather dust, I say leave now and don't look back.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

I think you might want to actually read back through those swap threads and look at the actually time between posts as it's entirely possible that they aren't that active as many players prefer to use the 1.9 thread and putting in enough fps personally as you aren't guaranteed any spots or any real return on the swap threads. Another factor is how fast do you turn over your GBs? If they take a long time to turn over players will be less likely to add points in and of course your GBs are so much smaller that the rewards aren't worth the return for them. Even if they win a spot they don't get that many forge points out of it.

Have you tried asking players to let you have 5th on some of their GBs that you want? You'll want to look and find ones that are being worked on that won't cost you that much to take the spots.

By 'not there in the first 5 minutes' you mean that someone else comes along and claims the spot in the 1.9 thread? Well that's how it works it's posted to get a turn over as fast as possible. If you mean that you are claiming the spot and then not putting in the fps quickly then you are breaking the rules of the thread (well presumably but every guild I've been in has had a timeliness requirement for filling the position you claim in the 1.9 thread). Those top ranking players are probably taking the spots that require the most fps to claim since the not everyone has a large bank of fps (or even if they do they may have them in GBs until they get leveled).

Try reaching out to the leadership and see what they say. If they ignore you then move on but don't expect that a guild and its members will be calling on you to see what you want as they'll expect you to inquire with them about how to get what you want out of FOE.