New limit on spam fleet invites
Nicole K
✭✭✭
in The Bridge
I don't know why they did this, but it seems that they have seriously limited the number of fleet invites that can be sent at one time. Until now, when we had open fleet slots, we could fill back up by sending out invites using the suggested players tool in the fleet menu. It usually took about a day to fill back up. Now with the hard limit on invites, we have 3 slots open for a week now. I just wanted to know why they decided to make it impossible to easily maintain a a full fleet.
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Sometimes when we have a new recruit in the transition period they end up receiving dozens of invites and we’ve never quite believed the maths behind it. They can literally go 1hr in the ether between fleets and have an inbox full of invites.
We figured there must be a large number of fleets our there hammering the invite random player button.
When I switched fleets early this year, I received more than 300 invites in about 2 days' time. And if you're looking to join a specific fleet, that particular invitation can get seriously lost.
We haven't been able to fill a slot since the update ruined the invite system. We only had to do it about once or twice a month for a day or two. Now it does not work at all.
Maybe because the actions you describe are sending spam messages to players and keeping the players inbox clear is more important than your ability to send spam.
This post is like complaining that your business of selling discount medication by emailing every internet user is no longer viable because now GMail doesn't show your email.
Besides that, there's no downside to being in a fleet (at least ours) because you don't have to do anything but actually not be inactive for 10 days and you get starbase boosts and free honor. There's no expectations of communication or event participation. So I don't understand the "go it alone" people. Almost 75% of my fleet has never used the chat or made any contact with the fleet at all. However, they do make contributions to the starbase and that helps everyone. Virtually every member of my fleet is there as the result of an unsolicited invite. I've had nobody complain about being overwhelmed with fleet invites.
Let me start by trying to participate in the discussion in a more friendly manner. Hi/Hello and sorry if my tone was aggressive before, I genuinely didn’t mean anything bad toward you personally.
While level 50 may seem reasonable/low level on the outset, especially compared to many of us here, it does still represent a huge amount of time and/or money invested. You might have better luck reducing that significantly.
What I wanted to put across before was the frustration that some of us feel when we recruit new members. {ACE} requires members participate in discussion groups using Line. We organise squads, strategy, have our own in-fleet games and general banter. It’s a requirement of joining that you’re active in our community as much as you are in game. And so we have a screening process.
Over the last year or so, we’ve noticed when recruiting that in the small time that can sometimes happen between leaving their previous fleet and joining us, they may receive dozens (or even hundreds) of invites to join other fleets. We are sometimes talking about 30 minutes, but others maybe a few hours. Not a huge amount of time.
Crunching the numbers, it would appear that with X amount of total number of players in game, Y amount of possible fleets, and Z being opportunity for them to receive invites, there must be fleets out there that are sending hundreds or thousands of invites to recommended players - on an hourly basis - for the maths to add up.
We’ve had people struggle to find our invite or get bounced around accidentally between other fleets, before finally finding their way and it’s extremely frustrating.
So, while I do understand your view that inviting recommended players is a useful tool by design, it feels like it is being heavily abused by some. And that is why I welcome some attempt by DB to control it. Fleet invite spamming can at best cause a full/delayed message inbox, at worst (in addition), clog up DB servers, slow down and complicate applications to some fleets, and generally just be a PITA.
Well my point was just to demonstrate that with our process it becomes difficult sometimes to get people in because they get spammed with invites from other fleets.
20 or so a month sounds totally reasonable, but it seems like there are fleets out there that are sending hundreds continuously and it’s good DB appear to be doing something about that.
If yours was the only fleet doing it, then it wouldn't be a problem. As soon as every fleet does it, then yes, the influx of invites is overwhelming
I think a major catch to your strategy is that you’re not offering a lot relative to other fleets. A lot of level 50 players want to be in competitive fleets, and you’re not offering that.
I applaud DB’s efforts to reduce spam for those who don’t want to be in fleets and the people who are switching fleets and know their destination.
If players prefer to be fleetless, they have the option to turn invites off. It is only inconvenient when you are waiting for a specific invite.
It is getting close to 2 weeks now that our fleet is stuck at 47. And that is with 4 or 5 officers all sending out the new maximum multiple times per day. The new limit is causing us to send exponentially more invites than we did previously. And I know that I have now invited the same person 11 times in the past 4 days (and do not feel anything but mildly amused by that fact)
Perhaps instead of an extremely low limit on invites, only allowing a player to show up on the suggested players list 1 time per fleet would be a more effective way to address the problem.
And as the other player mentioned, you can just turn off the invites if you don't want want to be in a fleet. Although that still just seems really stupid to pass on the daily honor when you can be in a fleet like mine where we all you have to do is play at least once every 10 days. You don't have to download any 3rd party chat program, spend a significant (or any) amount of time communicating with your fleetmates (unless you feel like it) or worry about getting kicked out of your fleet if you happen to be too busy to devote half your weekend to a cell phone game.
You seem to be taking it personally that people won't join. Don't.
I also question why you're set on level 50 and above if your fleet is not trying to be competitive. As long as new members contribute to the fleet dailies, what does it matter what level they are?
I love that you continue to dig in defending a practice you yourself called spam. You're harassing uninterested players and making a value judgement that they should be interested in your fleet. They're not interested, they don't want to be spammed with unsolicited invited, it doesn't matter how worthy you think you are and how wrong you think the other players are. DB absolutely should be taking steps to stop harassment in the game. I'm sorry that you feel like your ability to have a full fleet is impacted, but your desire for a full fleet does not give you the right to harass other players to achieve that.
Wow, really glad they are looking into this practice. You didn't get the hint that the person you are spamming doesn't want to join you?
Nikole K, if you believe there is an issue with how fleet invites currently work please create a thread for it in Engineering Room and provide all relevant details there. Thank you!