Cities And Housing Archive
Thread: questions on recruiting new citizens...
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Morrigan335
Tue Feb 08, 2005 10:10 am
#1
The guild I belong to on the Sunrunner server started a player city on Corellia this weekend. Our guild is still in its infant stages, so we didn't have quite enough individuals to meet the "10 citizens in 24 hours" requirement, so, needless to say, several of us found ourselves recruiting in several of the major starports. Unfortunately, at least on my end, the recruitment involved a lot of spamming. Now, while I personally don't like the spam that clings to places like Coronet, it did work in a limited fashion. (I actually started dancing and making idle conversation with the people waiting for buffs in between shouting out information about the city. It seemed to help a bit, but I'm sure it contributed to lag. :smileysad
We did manage to get enough people by the deadline, but that was due, at least in part, to people who had more than one account.
We did manage to get enough people by the deadline, but that was due, at least in part, to people who had more than one account.For those of you who have successfully established player cities, what did you do to recruit new citizens? Our city (Sema) is still an outpost and it will be a while before it can be registered on the planetary map, so I doubt the chance that people will simply wander to it is all that high, even though it's in a gorgeous location. We're also trying to get enough citizens so that we can place the city improvements that people really look for when deciding to move.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Anaya Lintavis
Marshal FR, Arca Stardrive (Sunrunner)
Famine101
Tue Feb 08, 2005 11:06 am
#2
We used spam andg-mail messages, but I never liked these methods. What really works best for a player city is getting to know more people through grouping and friendly conversation. To me, the citizens recruited in this fashion tended to stay around longer. This also gives you a chance to find out what kind of person you will be adding to your player city. A lasting city will grow naturally.
tikimatsuma
Tue Feb 08, 2005 11:46 am
#3
we actively sought out new players or players new to our server, ie.... standing around the eisley Sp or in cantinas like in espa
MTolwyn
Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:20 am
#4
we ve atm 75+ without any spamming
it just takes time and a small start group
then go ask friends, business contacts, other guilds in your area
try to get some events running
try to get some good crafters to open shops in your city
once you reach a certain size of active citizens things start running by itself
jexicredent9669
Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:18 pm
#5
We just take our time......another good method is to put some information in your bio. Or city has 32 members and we never spammed they all came to us becuase of our bios.
Patamon
Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:35 pm
#6
I started a town on Eclipse / LOK about 15 days ago called Pyramid Lake.
As of this morning we're at 46 citizens, and on target to hit city in 6 days.
I can tell you how I've done it so far...
* I give all new citizens a free house with 15 days of maintenance pre-paid, and a free speeder bike for joining. When your a new city first starting out you wont have very many services, so you really have to make it worthwhile for a person to live/move there. I believe at a MINIMUM you should provide them with free housing.
* I'm a Master Merchant, so I setup my barker droid to give a snippit of info about my town on the beginner cities, and to contact me if anyones interested. on a typical day the droid brings in 2-3 new citizens.
* In the beginning, I spent a lot of time recruiting myself. Some spamming, but usually I would hang out in the stater cities and look for players who were obviously noobs.. (no guild... green beginner droid next to them.... etc..) And send them a /tell with my offer of a free house and speeder bike. Many noobs are super appreciative of the free stuff.
*I help out all my citizens as much as I can. I'm a resource vendor, so if they are aspiring Artisans I give them resouces to help with their grind. If they need cash for one reason or another, I try to help them out, and so on. I find its very important to help these people out if you want them to respect you as a Mayor and live in your town, especially during the early days when theres not much there. (ie: no shuttleport, bank terminals, trainers, etc.)
* Now that the town is much larger (46 citizens) and been around a few weeks, some of the earlier pioneers have become pretty focal to the town, and have begun recruiting themselves. Sometimes they bring in friends, or guildmates, sometimes total strangers. In the begininng they were just doing this on their own, because they wanted the town to grow, lately I've begun rewarding these citizens with largers houses etc. for their hard work and loyalty.
In a Nutshell...
I think the key to attracting (and KEEPING) Players in your town is the involed, to be charitable, and to be respectfull of your new citizens. Its a lot of work, but if you show your an active mayor and are really trying to make your town a great place to live, you will get more and more people to join.
Another note... I would say a good 1 in 5 citizens of my town are refugee's from other Player Cities... and I continually hear the same horror stories over and over again of how their original town had fallen into disrepair because of a dis-interested Mayor or Citizens, some of these people are litterally emigrating out of Player Cities that have become Ghost Towns.
- Retrop
jexicredent9669
Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:11 pm
#7
Patamon wrote:
I started a town on Eclipse / LOK about 15 days ago called Pyramid Lake.
As of this morning we're at 46 citizens, and on target to hit city in 6 days.
I can tell you how I've done it so far...
* I give all new citizens a free house with 15 days of maintenance pre-paid, and a free speeder bike for joining. When your a new city first starting out you wont have very many services, so you really have to make it worthwhile for a person to live/move there. I believe at a MINIMUM you should provide them with free housing.
* I'm a Master Merchant, so I setup my barker droid to give a snippit of info about my town on the beginner cities, and to contact me if anyones interested. on a typical day the droid brings in 2-3 new citizens.
* In the beginning, I spent a lot of time recruiting myself. Some spamming, but usually I would hang out in the stater cities and look for players who were obviously noobs.. (no guild... green beginner droid next to them.... etc..) And send them a /tell with my offer of a free house and speeder bike. Many noobs are super appreciative of the free stuff.
*I help out all my citizens as much as I can. I'm a resource vendor, so if they are aspiring Artisans I give them resouces to help with their grind. If they need cash for one reason or another, I try to help them out, and so on. I find its very important to help these people out if you want them to respect you as a Mayor and live in your town, especially during the early days when theres not much there. (ie: no shuttleport, bank terminals, trainers, etc.)
* Now that the town is much larger (46 citizens) and been around a few weeks, some of the earlier pioneers have become pretty focal to the town, and have begun recruiting themselves. Sometimes they bring in friends, or guildmates, sometimes total strangers. In the begininng they were just doing this on their own, because they wanted the town to grow, lately I've begun rewarding these citizens with largers houses etc. for their hard work and loyalty.
In a Nutshell...
I think the key to attracting (and KEEPING) Players in your town is the involed, to be charitable, and to be respectfull of your new citizens. Its a lot of work, but if you show your an active mayor and are really trying to make your town a great place to live, you will get more and more people to join.
Another note... I would say a good 1 in 5 citizens of my town are refugee's from other Player Cities... and I continually hear the same horror stories over and over again of how their original town had fallen into disrepair because of a dis-interested Mayor or Citizens, some of these people are litterally emigrating out of Player Cities that have become Ghost Towns.
- Retrop
Well see we dont alow just anybody in our city we are more intrested in quality players ( Not Meaning Skilled ) over numbers. We are a Roleplaying city and only want roleplayers ..... if we used your method then we would get alot of ppl who just want a house and dont really care about the city. However I agree that if its numbers your after then this is a very nice way to do it.
Morrigan335
Thu Feb 10, 2005 7:43 am
#8
Well see we dont alow just anybody in our city we are more intrested in quality players ( Not Meaning Skilled ) over numbers. We are a Roleplaying city and only want roleplayers ..... if we used your method then we would get alot of ppl who just want a house and dont really care about the city. However I agree that if its numbers your after then this is a very nice way to do it.
I didn't think I'd get this much of a response. Thank you all.
I personally agree, being a dedicated roleplayer myself. However, we've found ourselves in a bit of a dilemma since, while we'd really like to have a city of roleplayers, it's been a bit difficult to find those and still meet at least the first deadline for the city. We're hoping to either change that or, even better, get some of the newer SWG players interested in roleplaying by setting an example ourselves.
We did create a welcoming package for our first few citizens. It wasn't much sincewe didn't have mountains of cash lying around--- just a small house, 10k credits, and whatever help they needed in moving in or (in some cases) getting started in the game. After reading all of your posts, I'm thinking we should probably expand that if we can. For instance, none of us even thought about offering vehicles to starting players.
As for citizen retention, we've been sending out regular emails with updates and offers of assistance to those needing it. Our borders recently expanded (it wasn't much, but we we're thrilled to have made it this far. 
, so we've got a few more spots where people can build. We still have a minor problem with razorcats and wrix trying to maul those moving, but our militia is on hand constantly when someone's moving in seeing as we don't _quite_ have a cloning facility, yet. It sounds like there's more we can do, but it's at least a start of sorts.
Have any of you had luck with events drawing people in? If so, what did you do? Our guild's hosted a few RP hunts and was able to pull in several newer players that way. I'm thinking that something slightly less combat oriented might be better for this, though....
CoretDenvin
Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:26 am
#9
There is a reason so many cities and guilds start up fast, get to 80 people then fail miserably due to political in fighting, drama, etc.
SCION City, a guild/city on Lok, Gorath has a recruiting policy of quality over quantity. We've spent 6 months at a level 1 outpost. We just got our 18th member a couple days ago. I would rather have a group of individuals that work well together and all enjoy playing the game over a shuttleport with 100 members in my guild.
I never have to worry about members of my guild taking care of each other because I know the quality of every single person in my guild and that all the members are great people.
Just my personal opinion and thoughts.
SCION City, a guild/city on Lok, Gorath has a recruiting policy of quality over quantity. We've spent 6 months at a level 1 outpost. We just got our 18th member a couple days ago. I would rather have a group of individuals that work well together and all enjoy playing the game over a shuttleport with 100 members in my guild.
I never have to worry about members of my guild taking care of each other because I know the quality of every single person in my guild and that all the members are great people.
Just my personal opinion and thoughts.
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