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How to recruit! (and not be a nuisance)


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Greetings Everybody!

 

I am writing this post today in hopes of inspiring you all to recruit respectfully and efficiently.  As of late I have been targeted for bad recruitment practices so I'd like clear my name of all that.

 

Before getting into recruitment I would like to say there are some steps to increase your groups reputation, which in turn will increase your chance of having a successful recruitment session.

1.  If you have a Dual Universe supporter pack then the first thing you want to do is create an organization page over at https://community.dualthegame.com/organizations

2.  Setup a group discord and BE ACTIVE on it.  When a member sees you being active in your group, doing events and working hard to build up your organizations then they will want to be part of the group even more.

3.  Create some content.  If you've never made videos or artwork I would recommend taking some time and learning a little bit so your group can have some content to attract players (or you can ask some of your members for help, you'd be surprised at the level of creativity of some of your members).  For the best example I would look at the Band of Outlaws organization page.  They do a lot of parody work but it's still successful in reaching out to players and enticing them to join their organization.

 

These are just steps you cant take to make your group more attractive.  Try to be creative and I'm sure you can come up with more ways to make your organization appealing.

 

 

Now getting into recruitment practices...

There are several different sources you can go through when recruiting.  In this post I'll be covering each area of recruitment that you can go through, as well as, describing how you should be getting your message across in a positive manner.

 

Dual Universe Forums

This is probably the most obvious method of recruitment.  When recruiting from the forums there are two things you can do.  One is to create an attractive post for your organization and the other is to message new members to the community individually.  Make sure that when you create your forum post, you make your group's intentions clear and attractive as possible.  When you message someone try not to bombard them with too much information, but give them enough to have a quick overview of the organization and the best way to contact you.

What you DON'T want to do while finding new members is to message people that are already part of existing organizations.  Always check the players profile and ensure if they are part of a group or not.  Even check their past posting history.  You might be looking at an old post that's been bumped so always be on the lookout.  If you do happen to message someone that was part of an organization by mistake and they respond to you, just apologize and try to move on.

 

 

Discord

Recruiting from discord can be very tricky and disrespectful if the place your recruiting from doesn't know about it.  If you find a discord community the first thing you want to do is check if they have an advertisement section.  Always read and abide by their rules.  If they don't have an advertisement section then message the discord server's admin about your intentions and see if it's ok to do recruitment from his/her community.  Try to offer incentives so that they will agree to it.  You can ask them to trade players, if their discord is for example a Rust community then tell them that if you have any Rust players that you will send them your way and they should do it vice versa.  Maybe even offer something of monetary value if you think it's worth it.  But I want to say I don't recommend doing that.  In my experience I have not been super successful at discord recruitment but maybe you guys can do it better than me.  If your going to message members individually then make sure the server admin knows that and DO NOT send a spam recruitment messages.  When messaging someone about recruitment always start a conversation, "hey, how are you?" and then gradually proceed to talk to them about your intentions.

 

 

Steam Groups

The first thing you want to check of course is your friends list.  Check any past communities you've been apart of or talk to some old friends.  Some of them might be interested in joining up with you.  Other than that, your best bet is to check steam groups that have connections to games with similar aspects to Dual Universe.  My military is ran by Arma 3 Milsim guys so I regularly check out several Arma 3 Milsim steam groups.  That and other games that has similar aspects to Dual Universe such as Rust, Ark, Space Engineers or Empyrion.  Now alot of these groups literally have tens of thousands of members so there really isn't a shortage of people to contact.  What you want to do is start sorting through profiles that are interesting to you.  I have my own criteria of contacting people and you guys should make your own as well.  Try to add as much people as you can when going through the steam group member lists, but I suggest only contacting people who are online at the moment.  Whenever I add someone I usually give them a nickname (for example, "Space Engineer Player - 03/31").  I use nicknames because if someone eventually adds me, I want to remember where I added them from and if they don't add me in two weeks then I just delete them.  You also want to be using "Steam Tags."  This will help you separate your actual steam friends from people who you are contacting for recruitment.  Just give them a "recruitment" tag after they add you.

Now once people start adding you back, you want to start messaging them.  ONLY message them when they are online, not in Snooze or Away mode (it might annoy some people).  You want to do recruitment as respectfully and efficiently as possible.  So I suggest that when you message someone you start off by saying something like "Hey, how are you?".  Then you will get either a positive or a negative response, you know how steam players are ;) .  If they respond in a positive manner then tell them you have an offer and that you are hoping that they could hear you out.  Then proceed to tell them about the game and your group.  If they aren't interested then tell them thank you for listening and to have a good day.  After that just remove them from your friends list.  If someone responds to you in a negative manner then try to twist it around in your favor to make them interested.  If that doesn't work then once again delete them from your friends list.  I usually add around 20-50 people whenever I do a recruitment session.  You'll probably get a 20% friend acceptance rate and out of that you'll get 20% that might be interested.  That's just what it feels like from my experience.

 

I also want to recommend upping your steam profile.  If they see that your profile is an empty page and your messaging them about an offer then they might take it as a scam.  Whereas if you have a decent looking and respectful steam profile with some artwork then they may listen to your offer.

 

Reddit/Other Communities

Now I only did reddit once so I can't help you be too successful at this, but I can tell you just be respectful of any place that you may recruit from.  Try to go into subreddits that can somehow relate to Dual Universe.  Read the rules and make sure your posting in the right place.  The same goes for any other forum/community that you may recruit from.  Always read up on the rules and if there aren't any then try to contact the admin.

 

When I do go hard on recruiting I usually spend around 2 hours a day recruiting on steam and talking to people about the game while at the same time being as respectful as possible.  If your trying to recruit a lot of people then you'll have to spend a lot of time on recruitment.  If your building a small group then I just suggest sticking to the Dual Universe forums and see what you can find here.  There's tons of time before the game get's released so if you just want a small group then waiting and contacting people on here every once in a while might be your best bet.

 

Thanks everyone for reading.  I hope this clears up any confusion and hopefully the group that is actually ruining recruitment for everyone can follow these guidelines.

 

Have a great day!

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Kudos on the level of detail. Though your wording could use some work, this piece comes off very showoff-ish, which I'm sure is not intention behind it. As for your discord recruitment section, asking for the admin's permission to recruit in their discord via DMs is a courtesy, it is in no way necessary nor is it required. If you're talking to an individual, said individual should be able to make their own decisions. Your members are not your property, they simply chose to align to the group you run. If they leave and join another org as a result of a private message recruitment, then they have every right to do so. If a person is annoying them however, blocking people is a thing. Simply going around and giving people shit for telling others about something they might be interested in is dumb. In this game org exclusivity is going to be rare, people have many interests and you shouldn't limit "your members" in that way. And stop calling it "poaching", this is just recruitment. Unless someone is spamming people with a bot account, there is no problem with it.

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16 minutes ago, Dxeo said:

Kudos on the level of detail. Though your wording could use some work, this piece comes off very showoff-ish, which I'm sure is not intention behind it. As for your discord recruitment section, asking for the admin's permission to recruit in their discord via DMs is a courtesy, it is in no way necessary nor is it required. If you're talking to an individual, said individual should be able to make their own decisions, your members are not your property, they simply chose to align to the group you run. If they leave and join another org as a result of a private message recruitment, then they have every right to do so, if a person is annoying them however, blocking people is a thing. Simply going around and giving people shit for telling others about something they might be interested in is dumb. In this game org exclusivity is going to be rare, people have many interests and you shouldn't limit "your members" in that way. And stop calling it "poaching", this is just recruitment. Unless someone is spamming people with a bot account, there is no problem with it.

It really depends on the discord your going to.  Say it's some sort of space engineer discord with around 50 members with no advertisement section whatsover, then I would talk to the admin.

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Interesting, but in that topic I also would not just talk about how to approach recruitment, maybe. Now for the following I don't necessarily mean to imply you should add it to your guide of sorts because it could be seen as another topic on its own, detached from recruitment. I simply want to bring it up here for further discussion and to those "on the fence" about it.

 

It's the question:

 

 

Do you want to recruit (and in a wider sense, lead an organization or grow it with "strangers") at all and invest the time in the first place?

 

 

Now, I realize the question or step would be clear to most asking themselves how to recruit, but I'll just throw it in here for all "on the fence" now or later about starting a group, relatively from scratch. If you start with a hand full of people, friends, prior infrastructure, media etc, it is easier.

 

While luck of course also plays a huge role and doing the right things at the right time, I think on average the hardest part is starting from scratch:

 

  • No (other) members
  • No prior infrastructure to utilize (forums, websites, etc)
  • No prior media work, branding, themes, organization concept
  • (and then) Picking a style or approach that is not so competitive and covered too often or alternatively trying to pick a unique one (from scratch) that is competitive

 

I don't want to write an essay at this time, but wanting to start an organization anew, maybe from scratch, is usually not so easy and should (in my book) only be done if you really have a good idea on how to proceed and what to do and / or if you have that "spark" in you that almost compels you to do it.

 

I would, however, not advise just "randomly" trying to start an organization and just throw time and money into something that may never pick up or be a good idea. If you do not approach that with some sort of basic plan and want to pour your heart into it, it'll likely just fail or never really "live" or "grow" as it could be with more "heart" in it.

 

But no matter of subjective success, growing or not, in almost all cases it's basically apparent that maintaining or growing an organization takes time and work.

 

In short, it's not for everybody and before you likely waste time, it might be better to join one of the existing organizations. It's what I do personally in other games. Of course, sometimes you might never know if it works unless you try, on the other hand.

 

----------------------------

 

So in short, I'm not necessarily saying don't try to start other groups (from scratch). I simply mean to say:

 

 

 

If you do, you better have a rough plan and are willing to invest time over the weeks, months, years. And acknowledge that setbacks might occur.

 

 

 

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21 minutes ago, Warden said:

Interesting, but in that topic I also would not just talk about how to approach recruitment, maybe. Now for the following I don't necessarily mean to imply you should add it to your guide of sorts because it could be seen as another topic on its own, detached from recruitment. I simply want to bring it up here for further discussion and to those "on the fence" about it.

 

It's the question:

 

 

Do you want to recruit (and in a wider sense, lead an organization or grow it with "strangers") at all and invest the time in the first place?

 

 

Now, I realize the question or step would be clear to most asking themselves how to recruit, but I'll just throw it in here for all "on the fence" now or later about starting a group, relatively from scratch. If you start with a hand full of people, friends, prior infrastructure, media etc, it is easier.

 

While luck of course also plays a huge role and doing the right things at the right time, I think on average the hardest part is starting from scratch:

 

  • No (other) members
  • No prior infrastructure to utilize (forums, websites, etc)
  • No prior media work, branding, themes, organization concept
  • (and then) Picking a style or approach that is not so competitive and covered too often or alternatively trying to pick a unique one (from scratch) that is competitive

 

I don't want to write an essay at this time, but wanting to start an organization anew, maybe from scratch, is usually not so easy and should (in my book) only be done if you really have a good idea on how to proceed and what to do and / or if you have that "spark" in you that almost compels you to do it.

 

I would, however, not advise just "randomly" trying to start an organization and just throw time and money into something that may never pick up or be a good idea. If you do not approach that with some sort of basic plan and want to pour your heart into it, it'll likely just fail or never really "live" or "grow" as it could be with more "heart" in it.

 

But no matter of subjective success, growing or not, in almost all cases it's basically apparent that maintaining or growing an organization takes time and work.

 

In short, it's not for everybody and before you likely waste time, it might be better to join one of the existing organizations. It's what I do personally in other games. Of course, sometimes you might never know if it works unless you try, on the other hand.

 

----------------------------

 

So in short, I'm not necessarily saying don't try to start other groups (from scratch). I simply mean to say:

 

 

 

If you do, you better have a rough plan and are willing to invest time over the weeks, months, years. And acknowledge that setbacks might occur.

 

 

 

This is a great point to bring up for people starting groups without anything to bring in.  It does certainly feel like a part time job at some points and I came from a large community with at least 30 members willing to signup right away with me.  Like I said earlier in my post, for me to be successful and fast at recruiting quality players, it usually takes around 2 hours a day on average to recruit just 1-3 members.  And that doesn't count the other time I put into planning and getting content made for the group.

 

Good point

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While I appreciate the intent of the OP, something needs to be addressed which I feel may in fact only be encouraged by this post.

 

Something I have noticed is that there are a _lot_ of orgs that are basically copies in their setup and intent. Another thing is that many of these are rather pretentious and boast a 'leadership structure' which often is simply pulled out of thin air and has no real meaning or function. Also it's quite obvious a lot of these organisation founders have no clue about what it means to lead an organisation and just copy/paste something they like and throw in a Discord server and maybe a template website for good measure.

 

 It would appear that a lot of players 'attracted' to DU are rather egocentric and want to 'have their own little kingdom' which is actually not a good development at all and potentially could (seriously) degrade playability in the end. Now I am sure a lot of these orgs will simply amount to nothing and just fizzle away once the game gets going but really, you should _first_ see what is out there that matches your vision and ideas and only set up anew org if you can't find any. Most of these 'I am a huge org with massive structure' one-man setups will simply be squashed when the game actually goes public and a number of well organised huge member count groups march in to the game, I know of at least three that will make the larger orgs in DU now look like boyscouts as they have actual leadership structure and a large group of 'workers' who know what to do and when.

 

NQ has quite the task ahead to clean up and restructure the way Organisations are able to be effective in the game as right now, most are driven by what they want instead of what NQ is actually planning/allowing, much of which we do not even know yet which is part of the problem because too many are just making stuff up right now.

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I've seen all sorts of recruitment methodes during my days in WoW and Planetside 2. Basically you've got a few basic styles:

 

• The Hoarder

Mass invite anyone who isn't in a corp. This will annoy some, others will accept out of curiosity. From the second group, only a few remain long enough for you to say 'hi' to. Very effective to gather a large number of members, but low quality membership.

 

• The Street-corner Salesman

Write a basic pitch and contact corpless folks directly. They usually start out very chipper, use "friend" or "buddy" a lot but don't actually mean it. It works on folk that yearn to belong to a group but don't have to social constitution to proactively seek them out themselves.

 

• The Advertisers

They make their corp look extremely appealing and professional. Emanating success and YOU could be a part of that! Of the winning team. That way the corp can filter potential members, choosing whomever can uphold their image of 'success' and make it a reality.

 

• The Trialrunners

A group of core members or an org can take folks and third party on a mission. Then from that mission the core members can assess the performance of the potential new recruits and pitch accordingly.

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7 hours ago, blazemonger said:

While I appreciate the intent of the OP, something needs to be addressed which I feel may in fact only be encouraged by this post.

 

Something I have noticed is that there are a _lot_ of orgs that are basically copies in their setup and intent. Another thing is that many of these are rather pretentious and boast a 'leadership structure' which often is simply pulled out of thin air and has no real meaning or function. Also it's quite obvious a lot of these organisation founders have no clue about what it means to lead an organisation and just copy/paste something they like and throw in a Discord server and maybe a template website for good measure.

 

 It would appear that a lot of players 'attracted' to DU are rather egocentric and want to 'have their own little kingdom' which is actually not a good development at all and potentially could (seriously) degrade playability in the end. Now I am sure a lot of these orgs will simply amount to nothing and just fizzle away once the game gets going but really, you should _first_ see what is out there that matches your vision and ideas and only set up anew org if you can't find any. Most of these 'I am a huge org with massive structure' one-man setups will simply be squashed when the game actually goes public and a number of well organised huge member count groups march in to the game, I know of at least three that will make the larger orgs in DU now look like boyscouts as they have actual leadership structure and a large group of 'workers' who know what to do and when.

 

NQ has quite the task ahead to clean up and restructure the way Organisations are able to be effective in the game as right now, most are driven by what they want instead of what NQ is actually planning/allowing, much of which we do not even know yet which is part of the problem because too many are just making stuff up right now.

For people new to running organizations I honestly think it's good for them to use larger groups as examples, especially if they have no prior experience and they have big ambitions.  When I started my organization I looked how the larger organizations were running to see what I could expect from the game, then I took even more inspiration from real governments, such as as the Japanese to build my structure while keeping in mind projected member count and what could be applied to in game.  Some of the stuff may be removed as more info comes out from DU.

 

I think alot of these organizations are creating a rank structure for their projected member count.  Even as they start off small alot of people want to be very ambitious.  The question is, will they be able to accomplish it?

 

Getting off track into other groups and not actual recruitment methods, yes there are large communities out there such as TheXPGamers who intend on playing in DU but who knows how much effort they will put into the game.

 

There are some things that NQ won't be able to effect as far as group ranking structure goes.  Who's in charge of building, designing, military, politics, etc.  So we can still create an effective structure at the moment and just re-work it as the game get's closer to release and more information is passed down to us.

 

Contrary to what you are saying that people wanting to "Have their own little kingdom" could be a bad thing, I feel it's much the opposite.  There's a ton of diversity in DU and the universe is quite large.  If everyone was a follower then we could see less creativity in the game go on.  I personally would like to see as many groups as possible try to build up.  It brings a competitive feeling to the game as groups will want to build larger ships, crews & cities.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi everyone.

 

As seen by their actions, some community members have recently garnered a negative reputation for Dual Universe, its community, and the Novaquark team. It would have been logical and welcome to consult the Novaquark staff before posting what are supposedly considered “good practices” to recruit players into an Organization and what are not.

 

As a matter of fact, Novaquark DOES NOT consider what has been described in this thread as good practices to recruit new players for an Organization in Dual Universe.

Here is the official Novaquark stance on the topic.

 

Best Regards,

Nyzaltar.

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