Issue with the fleet invites

Nicole K

Ever since the last update, my fleet is having problems sending out invites to prospective players using the suggested players tool. Our entire fleet was recruited and replenished 100% via those invites. We could almost always fill a vacant slot in about 24-48 hours by inviting most of the players on the list. Since the update, it's only letting us send invites a few at a time. Since we have no way of assessment of interest other than player rank and previous event ranking, it is important that we can send enough invites to actually find an interested player.

Basically it's a numbers game and most invites get declined. If we can only send to 4 or 5 players at a time, we will likely never be able to find anyone. After all we've been trying multiple times per day for almost 2 weeks now, and we have got no response. Obviously we were able to find and retain plenty of players prior to the change by setting the captain rank high enough to only take players invested in playing and unlikely to go inactive right away.

I spend a significant amount of money playing the game, but I am not interested in actively recruiting fleet members via some sort of time-intensive recruitment process. I quite frankly don't have time and would rather focus on the actual game itself. These "you must download x chat app and follow 350 rules etc" fleets are of no interest to the vast majority of people who play the game. So making it impossible for us to maintain a healthy fleet of active players is a big deal. I have gotten to know some of my fleet mates through the game and enjoy that, and I am very concerned that my fleet will not be able replace players when they leave the game for extended periods of time which will mean our fleet will decline and eventually fail.

Cranky (SC)

I support a reasonable limit on the number of invites that a fleet can send each day, while still allowing fleets like Nicole K’s to fill the gaps.

I’d suggest 5 a day should be enough, if more than this are being sent and they are not getting a response then I think it’s fair to say the people they are inviting aren’t interested. If sending repeated unsolicited invites to the same players, that could be considered harassment or spam.

It also causes issues for other fleets trying to recruit when the players they are inviting receives hundreds of fleet invites while transitioning over.

Another aspect to consider - if all fleets are limited on the number of invites they can send, reducing the overall volume of invites flying around, it means your invite stands a more reasonable chance of being seen.

Shan

Nicole K wrote: »

Ever since the last update, my fleet is having problems sending out invites to prospective players using the suggested players tool. Our entire fleet was recruited and replenished 100% via those invites. We could almost always fill a vacant slot in about 24-48 hours by inviting most of the players on the list. Since the update, it's only letting us send invites a few at a time. Since we have no way of assessment of interest other than player rank and previous event ranking, it is important that we can send enough invites to actually find an interested player.

Basically it's a numbers game and most invites get declined. If we can only send to 4 or 5 players at a time, we will likely never be able to find anyone. After all we've been trying multiple times per day for almost 2 weeks now, and we have got no response. Obviously we were able to find and retain plenty of players prior to the change by setting the captain rank high enough to only take players invested in playing and unlikely to go inactive right away.

I spend a significant amount of money playing the game, but I am not interested in actively recruiting fleet members via some sort of time-intensive recruitment process. I quite frankly don't have time and would rather focus on the actual game itself. These "you must download x chat app and follow 350 rules etc" fleets are of no interest to the vast majority of people who play the game. So making it impossible for us to maintain a healthy fleet of active players is a big deal. I have gotten to know some of my fleet mates through the game and enjoy that, and I am very concerned that my fleet will not be able replace players when they leave the game for extended periods of time which will mean our fleet will decline and eventually fail.

You mention encountering problems, could you please elaborate on those exact problems?
How many invites were you able to send prior as opposed to now?

That is the kind of info I need, thank you!

Nicole K

Before I could send 20 at a time. Now I can send between 2 and 7. When I load the game for the first time the list shows that everyone is available to invite. But after I send one or two, the other ones in the list that I can invite start having the invite button disappear.

The number varies but it's usually about 5 total. It won't show me other players or allow anymore invites for a really long time, which is why we are never going to get anyone as long as it is like this. The odds are worse than the top shelf at Dabo or winning gauntlet crew.

Seven of One

Our training fleet is experiencing similar issues. We don't spam however when we had space we could send invites to those level 9 players that had just found fleets, generally we would fill back up within an hour or so, its now been a couple of days.

So, STA has 7 spaces available, and the Admiral has just sent 7 invites and then couldn't send anymore.
Our retirement fleet has more spaces available and as an officer in that fleet he was also able to send 7.

So the magic number is 7 (obviously) 😂

Unsure when it resets, am positive I sent some invites this morning so I'm assuming at Dabo reset.

Seven of One

Also, we're recruiting 😉

Nicole K

@pasty You have obviously never done cold calls before if you think 5 is a reasonable limit. The invite is sent based on player rank as the only information we have to pick someone. We can't really predict who is going to be interested or not.

Think about it. If you contact 5 people you don't know on a 20 person list and ask them to join, the chances of you picking the 1 or 2 out of the the 20 who are interested is really small. But I bet it is more like 1 or 2 out of every hundred invites. This means that we had a 20% chance of success before. That's probably pretty close since it never took longer than 2 days to refill the fleet and we could probably do invitations 3 or 4 times in a day.

Now we have the same 1 out of 100 chance but we only get to see 20 of the 100 and we only get to pick 7 with no way to differentiate. That is why we are saying that isn't going to work anymore. It's a numbers game where most won't but a few will. That requires being able to contact more than 7 people a day. Otherwise you just won't be able to reach the people who are actually interested. And that means otherwise viable fleets will start to decline and die since they can't be replenished anymore.

The current setup will destroy my fleet. And I suspect that there are more than one or two fleets just like mine that were realitively stable and able to retain their players but now can't fill slots when someone leaves. Like I said, before we never went more than 48 hours to refill when someone left. And now it's been 2 weeks with 3 vacant slots. We have a level 86 Starbase. That's a lot of combined effort that my fleet mates would rather not lose.

Nicole K

My fleet is now down to 46 players since someone was inactive for 10 days. Fleet hasn't been this low in over a year. Thank you for ruining my fleet. If you wanted to ruin the game for me, I don't think you could have found a better way.

Seven of One

Wow. That escalated fast. Just FYI DB, my game is not utterly ruined because you've prevented mass spamming of non fleet players. I remember when changing fleet I felt quite overwhelmed by the invites and mail I received.

However, you know a heads up of some of these changes would be appreciated, I still don't know when my voyage traits will change, occasionally they last three days now 🤷‍♂️ its like Russian roulette. My game is ruined! Ruined I tell you!

Nicole K

It may not be a big deal deal to you but our long-time members have become friends and the fleet is what makes that possible. Without that social aspect, I am pretty sure I would have lost interest in playing before now.

I don't see why a fleet invite could be overwhelming. You just click no or ignore it if you aren't interested. But I still do not get why anyone would refuse the daily honor from being in a fleet when the only requirement for fleet members is to actually play on a somewhat regular basis. It's not like there are any downsides or commitments for all but the most competitive whale fleets.

Shan

Let's avoid making this personal, shall we?
We are all affected by things differently and that is OK.

Nicole K

So are they going to make the suggested player list work again or is our fleet just supposed to dwindle until we aren't viable anymore? That's really all I care about. I am seriously done with the game if you destroy my fleet that I have been part of for more than a year now. I don't care about anyone else's opinions or really anything else at the moment. I just want to know if one of the most important things in the game to me is ruined or not? We still have no new players joining and are down to 46 in 2 weeks.

Shan

Nicole K wrote: »

So are they going to make the suggested player list work again or is our fleet just supposed to dwindle until we aren't viable anymore? That's really all I care about. I am seriously done with the game if you destroy my fleet that I have been part of for more than a year now. I don't care about anyone else's opinions or really anything else at the moment. I just want to know if one of the most important things in the game to me is ruined or not? We still have no new players joining and are down to 46 in 2 weeks.

I have let the team know about this but I have no update atm.

Shan

Nicole K wrote: »

So are they going to make the suggested player list work again or is our fleet just supposed to dwindle until we aren't viable anymore? That's really all I care about. I am seriously done with the game if you destroy my fleet that I have been part of for more than a year now. I don't care about anyone else's opinions or really anything else at the moment. I just want to know if one of the most important things in the game to me is ruined or not? We still have no new players joining and are down to 46 in 2 weeks.

There is a potential fix for this, please try again? Thank you!

Nicole K

Shan wrote: »

Nicole K wrote: »

So are they going to make the suggested player list work again or is our fleet just supposed to dwindle until we aren't viable anymore? That's really all I care about. I am seriously done with the game if you destroy my fleet that I have been part of for more than a year now. I don't care about anyone else's opinions or really anything else at the moment. I just want to know if one of the most important things in the game to me is ruined or not? We still have no new players joining and are down to 46 in 2 weeks.

There is a potential fix for this, please try again? Thank you!

Thanks, I am not clear on how the fix works, but invites are working again. It's not as good as it was originally, but we aren't dwindling and unable to refill anymore when we need to refill our fleet with blind invites. So I really appreciate whatever was done to address the issue.