Co-op services - opinions and suggestions please

I've had this idea of creating a thread similar to Knights of Ash. A topic, where people can go and ask for help. Where me and anyone willing to join will post their SL, system and playing hours. Then we will coordinate with the person requesting help and provide the best jolly co-op possible.

The services would have several rules though.

• We would do it for free. You can accept a reward, of course, but never ask for anything in return.
  
• If possible, ask clients to write if they were satisfied with our services, or not, here on forum. That way we can improve the quality, I get feedback on other members and it will help spread the thread.
  
• Only people genuinely interested in helping others will be allowed to join.
  
• Do not intentionally gank at any cost.

I'd like to avoid any trades while doing so, so that we don't interfere with Ash's Store of Wonders.

My only problem is, that Knights of Ash didn't work out too much and got deeply buried in the threads, so I'm worried if this thread will meet the same fate. That's the reason why I didn't do it just yet. I'm working on it though.

Meanwhile, I'd like to know if you guys, especially long time forum members think if it will work, or not. You guys must've seen several atempts at this, so I'd like to know what to do to make it work.
And the other thing is, that I'd like to request one of the mods, or admins, to make it Sticky (no White Stuff jokes intended), so that everybody, even the newcomers can see it right away.

While i think it COULD be a good idea , people do already have the trading and player help section made for that.

This will allow players to find help in one topic, so they don't have to create a new topic themselves, or ask people when they need a hand.

It will also allow them to see a list of players who can help them right now, with their SL, timezones and even playstyle all neatly lined up. They can choose a player whos playstyle will compliment their own, or the area they're to venture into and they don't have to wait for replys in their newly created topic and just contact them directly via PMs here, or on PSN/Live/GFWL.

I for one, am present on forums while I'm in work. As soon as I get home, I play the game and don't visit the forum anymore. I don't have a PC at home, so I would have to quit DkS and use PS3 browser to go here and check if somebody wants help. This way, they can contact me, or anyone who will want to participate directly on my console. It will also cut the time they have to wait to actually receive the help by a lot.

Sentiel wrote:This will allow players to find help in one topic, so they don't have to create a new topic themselves, or ask people when they need a hand.

It will also allow them to see a list of players who can help them right now, with their SL, timezones and even playstyle all neatly lined up. They can choose a player whos playstyle will compliment their own, or the area they're to venture into and they don't have to wait for replys in their newly created topic and just contact them directly via PMs here, or on PSN/Live/GFWL.

I for one, am present on forums while I'm in work. As soon as I get home, I play the game and don't visit the forum anymore. I don't have a PC at home, so I would have to quit DkS and use PS3 browser to go here and check if somebody wants help. This way, they can contact me, or anyone who will want to participate directly on my console. It will also cut the time they have to wait to actually receive the help by a lot.

Now i see your point Well in that case yes , it is a good idea!

So are you asking if we should create a new thread? or if we should start a network between players?

I know on GFWL, the DkS steam group is a REALLY good place to find help. I'll usually jump on the group chat to see if anyone needs help when I get on DkS.

PSN, it'd be nice to start a group/thread, but you just said that you can't help at home if it's a thread, because you'd need to check up on it, which is a pain.

If we start some kind of network, or.. Covenant.. if you will, then the group could have multiple appointed Antennas. They're the ones who find the people that need help, and then alert the group. These would have to be the most active people on the server, and it would have to rotate.

Granted, I'm sure it could be that everyone is an antenna, if they can. That works, too.

But covenants are hard to maintain, as members seem to die out faster than they can come in.

Honestly, a good way to make sure everyone has help is to make friends, add them on PSN, and create a community that way. If you simply make friends with everyone who needs help, and everyone who likes helping, you can alert each other and help others in a more natural way.

Granted, you can always have a website you can send people in order to make sure they can always have help. In that case, you can just send them to soulswiki.forumotion.com. I've done this a few times. Just put down your summon sign, help someone, then send them a friendly message like

"For more help, and people you can summon and trust! visit soulswiki.forumotion.com. The best place to find a Dark Souls community!" or something haha!

These are all "opinions and suggestions" I guess haha! They're mostly my thoughts on the situation, and hopefully they help you find out what the best option is.

I wasn't going so far as to create a community, or a covenant.

The idea was simply to create a thread where people who want to help others can post their IDs, available builds and time when they're online. So that when someone is in need of help, they don't have to create a new thread to ask for help, but they can simply pick one of the guys with the same platform and compatible SL and time and contact that person directly on their PSN/XBL/GFWL ID.

I wanted to do this alone. I made enough builds to co-op with anyone on SL 1-149 and I wanted to let people know, that if they need help, they can contact me and we can do kill the boss together. But then I thought it may be best to include other people, so we can cover more platforms and time.

If this was a MMORPG, I guess it could've been called a guild, or something, because those games actually support such features, but creating a guild/covenant/clan purely on a website, while the game doesn't support the idea of mutliple players banding together seems silly to me. So to do it differently, I thought that a collective of players willing to help others would be better. People looking for help would just pick one of the guys that suits them the best and ask for help directly.

The difficult thing is managing some kind of system. Will it be like Lord Ash with employees, or will it be a kind of thread where anyone can pick it up and help someone? How would you determine who needs help and who doesn't? How can you determine who's already been helped?

I think the informality of the current system, or rather lack of, works very well(for most, there are plenty whose threads get skipped over).

densetsushun wrote:The difficult thing is managing some kind of system. Will it be like Lord Ash with employees, or will it be a kind of thread where anyone can pick it up and help someone? How would you determine who needs help and who doesn't? How can you determine who's already been helped?

I think the informality of the current system, or rather lack of, works very well(for most, there are plenty whose threads get skipped over).

No it's the other way around. Instead of posting "I need help" it would be "I can help you".
The first page would shortly explain SL ranges and it would be followed by a list of members with their ID and SL. The idea is that the person looking for help can simply contact a member via their ID instead of PMs, or creating threads/posts here and get the help he/she needs asap.
Of course, it is also possible to do it Lord of Ash style, where there would be a leader of some sort, who would distribute the help request among the members. This can be done via PMs here, but I'd prefer to do this all directly by each platforms respective online services.

Only need to manage this, is to update the member list.
Determining who needs help is easy, because the person will contact one of us asking for help, or they will just post it here on forum.
Determining if the said person needs help, or not is pointless. If they want it they can have it.
Determining who has been helped is as easy as quoting their post and add "resolved" (if they don't post it themselves). If they don't post it here in the first place, then there's no need to do that at all.

Oh, I see, that could work. Definitely sounds like an idea

The NK was a user co-op cov and we had a stickied thread in the player help section. We got a lot of messages on PSN asking for help so there is a market for this sort of thing.

DoughGuy wrote:The NK was a user co-op cov and we had a stickied thread in the player help section. We got a lot of messages on PSN asking for help so there is a market for this sort of thing.

So there aready is something like I'm suggesting?

The past time suggest it got disbanded, or something. What happened?
Also, if I make this, how can I get the thread to get stickied?

Yeah the NK is disbanded. Lack of activity killed it.
To get a thread stickied you have to PM an admin but you have to also convince them its worth it.

DoughGuy wrote:Yeah the NK is disbanded. Lack of activity killed it.
To get a thread stickied you have to PM an admin but you have to also convince them its worth it.

That would be a tough cookie. I already send Emergence the idea and the finished version of the thread yesterday and haven't got a response yet. I wanted to know his opinion before starting this.

Alright.
I'll just go ahead an put it in the Trade and Help section and see how it goes.

Thank your all your help guys.