[2022] Guild Finder

Hey fellow Adventurers,

Albion has long been a game about guilds. Be it to build Hideouts, grow and sustain large armies for ZvZ, or simply find a group of like-minded players to enjoy all the group content the game has to offer, guild play is the heart of Albion.

In the past, finding a fitting guild had its challenges. With no real search or filter function, even if players and guilds found each other on reddit or the forums, finding each other in game was a completely different issue.

To remedy this we are introducing the Guild Finder. Though this system is live with Patch , it will be activated and accessible later after initial Guild data is collected (our current estimate is 1 week after Patch 6 launches).
The Guild Finder is a new menu accessible via the Guild Dropdown or via the Hotkey Shift+G.
It is a tool containing 3 tabs, each with a different approach to matching players with guilds, and should provide all the info players and guilds need to find each other.

Guild Finder

Beginner Recommendations Tab
The Beginner Recommendations tab is the first tab in the Guild Finder, and as its name suggests, it is mostly geared toward beginners.
Our goal with this tab is to make it very easy to find guilds that fit your language and schedule without overwhelming new players with too much information that isn’t relevant to them yet.
This tab will automatically recommend up to 9 guilds per login that we think best fit the searching player. The recommendation algorithm takes into account:

1. Whether the guild says it is open to beginner players
   
2. Language(s) spoken
   
3. When the guild is active
   
4. How well we determine the guild is suited is for beginners
   
5. How active the guild is
   
6. The guild's home location in-game
   

Some of this data is set by the guild leader, some of this data is collected automatically while guild members are playing.

forum.albiononline.com/index.p…099c2586d8a824d37cd68ec31

Guild Name Search Tab
The Name Search tab is geared toward players that already know what guild they want to join.
This tab uses a Substring search to find all guilds that contain the given search string, so you don’t need to remember the complete name. Knowing only a part of it should already give you the guild you are looking for.
In addition it also can substitute some numbers for letters and vice versa (e.g. 3 = E).
forum.albiononline.com/index.p…099c2586d8a824d37cd68ec31

Guild Filter Tab
The Guild Filter tab lets players use a variety of filters and sorting options to find a guild that best fits their playstyle.
With this tab veterans can set their individual criteria for a guild and will be presented with an array of guilds that meet them.
Filter options are:

• Their preferred guild language
  
• The guild's home city in-game
  
• How many members logged in last week
  
• The time frame(s) during which the guild is active
  
• Activities in which the guild regularly participates
  

Apart from this, some additional interesting information will be available directly in the Guild Finder, such as how much Fame in different categories the guild has collected in the past week, or how strong their seasonal performance is.

forum.albiononline.com/index.p…099c2586d8a824d37cd68ec31

Guild Management

Recruitment Tab
A lot of the data on which the Guild Finder is based must be set by the guild itself.
For this there is a new tab in the Guild Management UI where the Guild Leader can set everything, from the guild language to the activities the guild regularly participates in.

This must be set up at least once before a guild can be recommended or filtered for in the Guild finder.
(Name Search will still work without this step.)

Join Settings
We expanded on the old "looking for new members" concept by introducing a 3-level status that guilds can choose from:

1. Closed
   
   • Your guild is effectively removed from the Guild Finder. Players can still find you if they search your name, but won’t be able to apply.
     
2. Application
   
   • The old application process. An in-game message is sent to the guild, and the receiver can then accept or decline the application.
     
3. Open Join
   
   • When a guild has set itself to open join players can directly join the guild without needing to apply first
     

Requirements
Guilds can now also set the requirements they have for their new recruits in the Recruitment Tab.

They can set Fame minimums players must meet before they can apply to the guild via the Guild Finder.
Players that do not fulfil these requirements can still find the guild in the Guild Name Search Tab and Guild Filter Tab, but won’t be able to apply/join.

Setting Requirements removes your guild from the Beginner Recommendation screen.
This is because we want new players to find guilds they can interact with as quickly as possible.

Launch

In order to have a fully functioning Guild Finder we need the guilds to setup their Recruitment Settings as well as track some data about these guilds.
This is why we will disable the Guild Finder until we have a satisfactory data set (our current estimate is 1 week after launch of Patch 6)

We hope the Guild Finder will be a big quality of life improvement for players of all levels, and we look forward to hearing your feedback once the feature is active