I don't mean this in a negative way, but I'm wondering how many people who're agreeing are from the Gaiscioch community. If they not, then I'm pretty surprised at how many people seem to like the idea of Mega guilds.
Haha, I personally always thought casuals just joined guilds for various reasons, like fun people, having players to around to help, guild that provide free items, guilds where their friends are at, guild size, chances to meet familiar faces and friends (which having "smaller" guilds does help).
It's pretty strange to me to say that limiting guilds to a paltry 300 hurts casuals but I do speak from a position of someone never being in a guild that's been more than 80, so perhaps you guys have some magic formula going. Are mega-guilds with 800+ casuals common? Haha, wouldn't it be more efficient casuals just aim to join a guild with active gaming hours that matches them?
From what I have seen, minus 1 or 2...almost everyone agreeing with this is from the community and made their accounts today.
I'd have to agree with that... I rarely see mega-guilds unless it's some Korean raid/PvP swarm fest MMO. Even then their not that common and typically split into subsections that do their own thing. The last major one I saw actually got disbanded forcefully by the devs because they caused major issues and were "trading" PvP wins for gains.
I don't mean this in a negative way, but I'm wondering how many people who're agreeing are from the Gaiscioch community. If they not, then I'm pretty surprised at how many people seem to like the idea of Mega guilds.
Haha, I personally always thought casuals just joined guilds for various reasons, like fun people, having players to around to help, guild that provide free items, guilds where their friends are at, guild size, chances to meet familiar faces and friends (which having "smaller" guilds does help).
It's pretty strange to me to say that limiting guilds to a paltry 300 hurts casuals but I do speak from a position of someone never being in a guild that's been more than 80, so perhaps you guys have some magic formula going. Are mega-guilds with 800+ casuals common? Haha, wouldn't it be more efficient casuals just aim to join a guild with active gaming hours that matches them?
From what I have seen, minus 1 or 2...almost everyone agreeing with this is from the community and made their accounts today.
I mean it's not wrong that they support that their community's way of thinking. That's kinda what I meant by "not in a negative way". Was just something I was curious about haha.
I thought casual players play the game to experience the story, develop their characters, socialize with people, experience the world etc. If looking for other players to play with the is argument, then I just thought joining a community with an active timing that's similar to yours seems to tick more boxes than a giant guild.
I don't mean this in a negative way, but I'm wondering how many people who're agreeing are from the Gaiscioch community. If they not, then I'm pretty surprised at how many people seem to like the idea of Mega guilds.
Haha, I personally always thought casuals just joined guilds for various reasons, like fun people, having players to around to help, guild that provide free items, guilds where their friends are at, guild size, chances to meet familiar faces and friends (which having "smaller" guilds does help).
It's pretty strange to me to say that limiting guilds to a paltry 300 hurts casuals but I do speak from a position of someone never being in a guild that's been more than 80, so perhaps you guys have some magic formula going. Are mega-guilds with 800+ casuals common? Haha, wouldn't it be more efficient casuals just aim to join a guild with active gaming hours that matches them?
From what I have seen, minus 1 or 2...almost everyone agreeing with this is from the community and made their accounts today.
I mean it's not wrong that they support that their community's way of thinking. That's kinda what I meant by "not in a negative way". Was just something I was curious about haha.
I thought casual players play the game to experience the story, develop their characters, socialize with people, experience the world etc. If looking for other players to play with the is argument, then I just thought joining a community with an active timing that's similar to yours seems to tick more boxes than a giant guild.
I agree. I am not trying to speak bad of them. Just pointing out the facts. I do not want to come off as being rude, condescending or angry. That's hard to do over text when you disagree, however.
I made Some points earlier on That most casual gamers, like me, do not want to be in a massive guild. If you read my original posts, it was against their logic, not for limiting. However, what I see here-and I could be wrong-but this isn't so much about "coming together and helping casuals", as Ashes have announced the alliance tools and chats. This is more about trying to integrate an entire community of multiple guilds from multiple games into a massive one with thousands in its ranks onto a single server that would not only upset the balance of said server, but made to dominate all. The dominating part is fine. There is always going to be top guilds. I do not, however, agree that would in anyway help casuals whatsoever, nor do i agree that it's the right thing to do. I feel alliances and alliance chat should be adequate if they want to make such a move.
The question could be looked at from the angle: Why does Intrepid want to limit guild sizes? Do they have pretty valid reasons to want to do so?
If it is just to "help prevent zergs" or server domination well then the same workaround for large guilds splitting into a smaller number of "allied" guilds kind of wrecks the effort put into a solution to those perceived problems, doesn't it?
If that is the logic behind the whole thing then another question would be: Why spend time creating limits if you leave easy workarounds to them?
Intrepid is promising quite a few marvelous things in their Minimum Playable Client, just by itself. If setting limits and having to do extra work to empower ALL guilds from small to maximum takes up more time than no limits, they should bag all of it into the waste basket, IMO.
Let the sandbox be a sandbox and let players decide how large their guilds can be.
I join a pretty big size guild/alliance/clan and at some point the officers "purge" the people that we all refer to as casuals. They do this to get more active members. Well a lot of the active members like and missed the "casuals" that were booted, and in turn end up leaving. Then the great exit happens and a flood of sctive members leave.
Why not just have the casuals form their own sub-guild? They get their own guild house. They can participate at their own leisure - and it will be a casual who chooses whom to purge from the casual guild.
I think it really should be dependent on how big the server is going to be, say for instance if the server is 1000 people a 300 person guild would be just under 1/3 of the population. And game would end up stagnant. If it is a 10,000 person server 300 person guild would be 1/30. Maybe we should be looking at server size and asking for a larger server for the larger gaming communities?
I need to think about this a bit more.
Well rough estimate let's say a few thousand as to many more than that could cause lag issues with the sheer amount of background stuff that'll happen. At least that's where I'd be on it.
So my low end would be 1k with the high end being 5k hopefully it leans somewhere to the middle or higher end of that. While also being beautifully stable of course!
Server stability is a factor world size is another. If the server is capable of holding 10,000 but the world is only big enough for 4,000 then there wouldn't be a point to having all 10k
It is all a matter of scale which is determined by a lot of different factors, the larger the scale the more work it is in the development side, especially when trying to keep smaller guilds relevant to the grand scheme of things.
My question to IS is how many players are you planning on making the map to handle, and how many people are you designing nodes/town/cities ect to hold?
If there are Alliances, and alliance chat channels it should mitigate the need for larger guild sizes. However it becomes a bit more of a management undertaking to organize separate guilds.
As for my members posting here I asked them to read it and voice their opinions one way or another. They too are looking forward to this game. The biggest concern right now is if we'll be able to play together or if the game is going to force us to split. Which historically (GW2, ESO, BDO, AION) has done very bad things to our community and their enjoyment in a game.
Keep in mind that my articles, and my perspective come from leading Gaiscioch for nearly 16 years across a journey through 5 different games. I've seen guild systems thrive such as in Rift, and I've seen them annihilate player bases like ESO. We've had great launches like in Rift that were smooth sailing and everyone was happy and we've had not so great releases like bringing 1,700 people into ESO to have most of those people quit within the first 6 months because they couldn't communicate across the guilds. You might not see the long term effects from your perspective but I have lived them. I have seen them at work, and I have listened to countless members feel like outcasts because they aren't in the "main" guild which they perceive the other one to when in fact the one their in is actually the most active. It's been a challenge to make work and while many eastern games are cutting guild sizes below 100 we hoped, that Ashes of Creation would be different and not punish people for wanting to play together.
Time will tell what the cost will be. If there's an alliance chat, you can bet Gaiscioch will be here full steam. We just want to be able to play together and not punish people who can't commit 5+ hours a week to playing games. It's not how we roll.
I join a pretty big size guild/alliance/clan and at some point the officers "purge" the people that we all refer to as casuals. They do this to get more active members. Well a lot of the active members like and missed the "casuals" that were booted, and in turn end up leaving. Then the great exit happens and a flood of sctive members leave.
Why not just have the casuals form their own sub-guild? They get their own guild house. They can participate at their own leisure - and it will be a casual who chooses whom to purge from the casual guild.
Why do any of it if creating the limits requires extra work and those limits have very easy workarounds?
If it ends up that there aren't easy workarounds, somehow, then any arguments "to not worry because you can make small allied guilds" is an invalid solution to the OP's main point.
The question could be looked at from the angle: Why does Intrepid want to limit guild sizes? Do they have pretty valid reasons to want to do so?
If it is just to "help prevent zergs" or server domination well then the same workaround for large guilds splitting into a smaller number of "allied" guilds kind of wrecks the effort put into a solution to those perceived problems, doesn't it?
If that is the logic behind the whole thing then another question would be: Why spend time creating limits if you leave easy workarounds to them?
Intrepid is promising quite a few marvelous things in their Minimum Playable Client, just by itself. If setting limits and having to do extra work to empower ALL guilds from small to maximum takes up more time than no limits, they should bag all of it into the waste basket, IMO.
Let the sandbox be a sandbox and let players decide how large their guilds can be.
This has been touched on by @Bannith I will quote some of what he said: As I see it guild limits provide grounds for guilds to work together without having 1 cohesive mass of players taking full control of the entire spectrum of an alliance. If over half the players are in a single guild well... then no matter what people on the other side may want; that guild has the say... Think of it sort of like the US party system-it should really be 3 parties but it's not.
Instead you have one that typically has majority control and pushes things through rather than compromise and balance out with the whole. What I'm getting at here is if a bunch of groups have varying leaders, playstyles and numbers it's going to force them all to compromise rather than get forced into one prospective.
Major guild A might have backing from 3 other major guilds in the alliance they formed but if guilds B, C and D all have varying opinions it's more of a split than a ok 1 path 1 purpose or as Kane would say "Peace through Power."
The question could be looked at from the angle: Why does Intrepid want to limit guild sizes? Do they have pretty valid reasons to want to do so?
If it is just to "help prevent zergs" or server domination well then the same workaround for large guilds splitting into a smaller number of "allied" guilds kind of wrecks the effort put into a solution to those perceived problems, doesn't it?
If that is the logic behind the whole thing then another question would be: Why spend time creating limits if you leave easy workarounds to them?
Intrepid is promising quite a few marvelous things in their Minimum Playable Client, just by itself. If setting limits and having to do extra work to empower ALL guilds from small to maximum takes up more time than no limits, they should bag all of it into the waste basket, IMO.
Let the sandbox be a sandbox and let players decide how large their guilds can be.
This has been touched on by @Bannith I will quote some of what he said: As I see it guild limits provide grounds for guilds to work together without having 1 cohesive mass of players taking full control of the entire spectrum of an alliance. If over half the players are in a single guild well... then no matter what people on the other side may want; that guild has the say... Think of it sort of like the US party system-it should really be 3 parties but it's not.
Instead you have one that typically has majority control and pushes things through rather than compromise and balance out with the whole. What I'm getting at here is if a bunch of groups have varying leaders, playstyles and numbers it's going to force them all to compromise rather than get forced into one prospective.
Major guild A might have backing from 3 other major guilds in the alliance they formed but if guilds B, C and D all have varying opinions it's more of a split than a ok 1 path 1 purpose or as Kane would say "Peace through Power."
This argument is sound but only includes the perspective of one type of alliance decision making process. There are many, many ways that alliances decide major courses of action and goals.
I don't know what gameplay/balance implications the decision will have. Not just gsch in particular, but if it could be abused by others, it could be a cause of possible cause for concern. I'll defer to the developers on this.
For me however, In a server of 12k players, I'd find it a little... Unpleasant to see about 10% of the players from the same guild. But that's just me. I like variety. It could end up being a server community health vs. Gsch community health issue.
I don't know what gameplay/balance implications the decision will have. Not just gsch in particular, but if it could be abused by others, it could be a cause of possible cause for concern. I'll defer to the developers on this.
For me however, In a server of 12k players, I'd find it a little... Unpleasant to see about 10% of the players from the same guild. But that's just me. I like variety. It could end up being a server community health vs. Gsch community health issue.
The problem I have seen with these mega guilds is it is less about supporting a single game, and making it so that your "family" has fun and succeeds and more about cashing in. It becomes all about getting that corporate sponsorship and selling merch.
I would have to agree that I would find it unpleasant-since there is not going to be a megaserver, there are going to be multiple servers...to login on a server with a 5-10k population, to find that 1700-2000 (hovering between 20%-40%) of the entire server, is in a single guild. Personally, I would probably find a different server.
I do not see it as a "punishment for wanting to play together." I see it as a balancing issue.
I join a pretty big size guild/alliance/clan and at some point the officers "purge" the people that we all refer to as casuals. They do this to get more active members. Well a lot of the active members like and missed the "casuals" that were booted, and in turn end up leaving. Then the great exit happens and a flood of sctive members leave.
Why not just have the casuals form their own sub-guild? They get their own guild house. They can participate at their own leisure - and it will be a casual who chooses whom to purge from the casual guild.
Why do any of it if creating the limits requires extra work and those limits have very easy workarounds?
If it ends up that there aren't easy workarounds, somehow, then any arguments "to not worry because you can make small allied guilds" is an invalid solution to the OP's main point.
I don't understand why it would take extra work - which is why I'm asking questions.
@foghladha When I play, I'm typically also monitoring and communicating via twitch and twitter, so I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to communicate with the entire guild. twitch can hold thousands of players in chat. twitter allows you to communicate with thousands if not millions of people.
Aye. Your basically asking to control a server. It's really not fair to the rest of the gaming community. I'm not telling you it's wrong to be organized with good leadership or run a massive guild but they tend to lend towards takeover rather than camaraderie.
As for the comment about it being one perspective way to run things... It's really not. All guilds lend towards a leader class maybe some officers then delegation falls off to less and less from there. Regardless of what decision making system you think your doing in the end the top are always the final say. Sure some are run more or less fairly by a small group working for their members.
However at the sizes your implying your basically rending any form of balance a server could manage. Now if we were at the tech level to cost effectively have servers with 50k players in a massive world then sure that's all fine and dandy have your 800-1200 member guilds. At least in that scenario you can't just dictate how the server does things on a whim because X small guild pissed you off.
As a final note I am a casual gamer. I play a lot of different games but I never really focus on stuff entirely. With that being said a mega guild vs. a myriad of small guilds does not appeal to me. It shows a lop sided build design and crushes any ability for small guilds to stand a chance. I will again quote myself with what typically happens with mega guilds
I'd have to agree with that... I rarely see mega-guilds unless it's some
Korean raid/PvP swarm fest MMO. Even then their not that common and
typically split into subsections that do their own thing. The last major
one I saw actually got disbanded forcefully by the devs because they
caused major issues and were "trading" PvP wins for gains.
Again to reiterate I'm not telling you it's wrong to have a massive guild or a large "family" of players. However when you get to that size in the current server number limitations in play you simply ruin the balance and tip the scales entirely in your own favor.
I think it really should be dependent on how big the server is going to be, say for instance if the server is 1000 people a 300 person guild would be just under 1/3 of the population. And game would end up stagnant. If it is a 10,000 person server 300 person guild would be 1/30. Maybe we should be looking at server size and asking for a larger server for the larger gaming communities?
I need to think about this a bit more.
Well rough estimate let's say a few thousand as to many more than that could cause lag issues with the sheer amount of background stuff that'll happen. At least that's where I'd be on it.
So my low end would be 1k with the high end being 5k hopefully it leans somewhere to the middle or higher end of that. While also being beautifully stable of course!
Server stability is a factor world size is another. If the server is capable of holding 10,000 but the world is only big enough for 4,000 then there wouldn't be a point to having all 10k
It is all a matter of scale which is determined by a lot of different factors, the larger the scale the more work it is in the development side, especially when trying to keep smaller guilds relevant to the grand scheme of things.
My question to IS is how many players are you planning on making the map to handle, and how many people are you designing nodes/town/cities ect to hold?
No Ninja I totally agree with what your saying my wording was probably a bit off. What I mean is as it handles it mechanically and world based. If it's roughly set for 2k people sure that's what the server should be to give everyone breathing room. The main problem we have now is not knowing jack about it. =P
@Bannith I agree the main problem is not knowing enough.
I didn't mean to imply any kind of disagreement I just wanted to expand the train of though to farther flesh out the discussion I am a bit rusty on posting on forums been a few years since I was last really active on one
It seems to be this magic number of 300 that is getting thrown around. I don't remember them putting a limit on anything as of yet. However they have stated that the servers are going to be around 10k in size. They acknowledged that by using Unreal 4 that they may have some limitations as to how many people they can pack in an area, but were going to code on their end to make it possible, but mega-servers of 50k people are not going to happen. I think they will try to be inclusive as possible to let those with megaguild aspirations try to achieve stuff. I can also see them shutting them down when they invariably try to flaunt the "You should listen to us, we have a large chunk of players, so cater to us or we will leave!" mantra that always crops up when they don't get their way.
Having experienced trying to cram a family of 1200 into rooms that only handled up to 500 of them at a time with no alliance setup along with an alliance chat channel, I have seen people whine they are in the wrong one or if something happens and they get reassigned they say they lost all their friends though they are in the same guild. It makes it feel like family that lives in different states even if in the same game and we can use voice chat.
Since I have seen all sorts of issues from passive aggressive take overs to outright anger due to having to split a community due to the game's guild size, I honestly have to say 500 really is a good number if it even needs a max and including a TRUE alliance system with a built in alliance chat channel in the game would be great. I foresee alliances going on because of the building of empires and if a community coming in, no matter how they play, find that one guild seems to get the benefit and another does not for whatever reason, they are going to be dealing with people wanting to be in the better room.
Though, this game does have alliance setups and channels... So, the way I understand this is: you are a gaming community, not a guild. You are comprised of many guilds throughout many games. Yet, you want the ability to setup your entire community in ashes without having to go through alliance chat.
While you are trying to speak of a problem on divvying up who goes in what guild-you are leaving out the difficulties you will come across combining multiple guilds, and guild leaders from multiple games into a giant one on this game. I do not see the dynamics of organizing that being any easier. Especially when you can just use the alliance system and alliance chat that has already been announced.
I'm sorry. I'm afraid you got it wrong at the base. Gaiscioch is not a multitude of guilds with different people from several games. We are a community, for sure, and many of us play different MMOs together in all the games we officially support as a community. I'm not talking about the myriad games around where we don't have official chapters but community members still play.
Now, this same community, mostly the same players, join in when a new chapter is opened in a new MMO. So we are not talking about alliances. We're talking about the same people, the same voices and faces, all members of the same community, forming a new guild in a new game, willing to explore a new world, to brave the challenges devs devised to be faced and tackled. Together, as a community, once again.
Put it another way, the community existed first, and the guilds were created by the community, not the other way round. And we are only forced to create more than one guild in the same game if there are guild caps.
Also, we do offer alliances, our community is open that way, and allies can participate in community events. However, alliances are in no way mandatory —this word, in fact, is not part of our daily vocabulary—, and those alliances need not be in game, or solely in game.
We are a community where you "play what you want to play, the way you want to play it". The fact is, as a large community, we tend to prefer to play together.
In the end, we tried to explain with numbers, with facts about how good it is to be in a community that's been around for 13 years.
The fact is, we are a large group of players, members of the same community, who like to play together... in the same guild. It's simple as that.
100-200 members tops is more than enough for a guild size. mega guild or not. IMO i dont care for mega guilds. i only ever see them in korean or grindy games like bdo. and they always die out. last game i really enjoyed allowed 200 members max in a guild. it was a perfect size.
I am with Dygz, it seems like there is some sort of impression that there is no one to play with or raid with if they are not in your guild. Am I missing something? MMO's, I'll admit, are not my usual thing.
So, can you not raid with people not in your guild? If Dygz and I are not in a guild, or in separate guilds, but enjoy doing stuff together can we not raid together?
Absolutely. Steven has said a few times that no content will be locked behind guilds. So I have to ask my question again why would caps make any difference if you can ally with other guilds on Discord or pug from the highest rated PvX players?
If you want to organize a 500 person siege on a metropolis, then you could pick from 5 of the best 100 person PvX guilds in your area. In this scenario, a small alliance cap will just force people out of the game to use other ways of grouping together.
Instead of hard caps, would it not be better to have game mechanics (such as certain perks to smaller guilds as @Dygz mentioned) to encourage more inclusive and challenging gameplay?
I'll start with @Azathoth's comment. Asking for higher guild caps (if any) has nothing to do with the existence of players outside the guild to play with. Higher caps or no caps simply allow really large communities to stay together in a new game. Why prevent that? Why force a group of 500 friends to be part of more than one guild?
As I said in another post, it's logical that communities who've been playing together for a long time, would love to keep playing together, as one guild! The banner of the community carried by all of its members.
And now to @lexmax comment: "why would caps make any difference if you can ally with other guilds". Well, because communities will prefer to stay as a single group, a single guild. And that doesn't prevent alliances to be made. Or for a 500 person siege to be organized with mixed players from the large guild and smaller ones, allied or not.
If the design of the game mechanics punishes smaller guilds for being small, and culls larger ones so they do not become to powerful, perhaps a re-balancing is in order. As @Dygz and @lexmax posted perks or other mechanics my be a good answer for smaller guilds, without preventing larger ones to exist.
Chance are very good that I would have wasted the founder donation if GSCH isn't a part of this game.
I don't understand why creators of MMO's want to force people into a narrow box where guilds becomes a revolving door instead a place you can make a home.
Maybe they just want this game to be all about alliances. And more guilds there is, more the politics play a role. Everyone needs to realize this is healthy for the game, more so than unlimited guild space where so called casuals can hang around with each other. Mega guilds rarely or never are as much "home" as one might think. No one really has 300 close friends anyway. No, facebook is not about friend. And you know that ^^
But this just my 2 cents, if your story is different, great! This just what I have picked up since internet came out.
Maybe they just want this game to be all about alliances. And more guilds there is, more the politics play a role. Everyone needs to realize this is healthy for the game, more so than unlimited guild space where so called casuals can hang around with each other. Mega guilds rarely or never are as much "home" as one might think. No one really has 300 close friends anyway. No, facebook is not about friend. And you know that ^^
But this just my 2 cents, if your story is different, great! This just what I have picked up since internet came out.
nah you are right. its impossible to actually have 300 literal friends. there is no, my mega guild has 500 people and everyone is close friends with everyone.nope.not true. it just cannot happen. because all 500 people do not play with the entire other 500 people. its a bunch of groups in guilds who might mix into other groups here and there. but never fully to the point every person can name off all 500 "friends" and their backstory. and that right there is why ive never understood the fight for unlimited guild size or even large guild sizes(301+)
Id say given the fact that there is a server limit of 10k players. 500 would be too much. Sure it makes it okay for the casual gamers, but imagine a strong guild recruits 500 active players, perhaps not right away, but over time...That guild would pretty much undoubtedly dominate the entire server.
I do love your article and evidence, but I'd love to see the server cap for each of those games you mentioned in the last section of your post.
Id say given the fact that there is a server limit of 10k players. 500 would be too much. Sure it makes it okay for the casual gamers, but imagine a strong guild recruits 500 active players, perhaps not right away, but over time...That guild would pretty much undoubtedly dominate the entire server.
I do love your article and evidence, but I'd love to see the server cap for each of those games you mentioned in the last section of your post.
Forgot to mention this too. 10k limit is very very small. You just can't have mega guilds or the whole purpose of node wars is taken out. Not to mention if those mega guilds have allies too. 10k limit means they should go even lower than 300, maybe even to 150 to keep the servers healthy. If the server limit was like 50k, then there would be choises to make guilds bigger. But for now, 300 max feels too high already.
Comments
I thought casual players play the game to experience the story, develop their characters, socialize with people, experience the world etc. If looking for other players to play with the is argument, then I just thought joining a community with an active timing that's similar to yours seems to tick more boxes than a giant guild.
Many of the people who were hardcore challenge/hardcore time in their younger days are now hardcore challenge/casual time.
Yes.
I made Some points earlier on That most casual gamers, like me, do not want to be in a massive guild. If you read my original posts, it was against their logic, not for limiting. However, what I see here-and I could be wrong-but this isn't so much about "coming together and helping casuals", as Ashes have announced the alliance tools and chats. This is more about trying to integrate an entire community of multiple guilds from multiple games into a massive one with thousands in its ranks onto a single server that would not only upset the balance of said server, but made to dominate all.
The dominating part is fine. There is always going to be top guilds. I do not, however, agree that would in anyway help casuals whatsoever, nor do i agree that it's the right thing to do. I feel alliances and alliance chat should be adequate if they want to make such a move.
The question could be looked at from the angle: Why does Intrepid want to limit guild sizes? Do they have pretty valid reasons to want to do so?
If it is just to "help prevent zergs" or server domination well then the same workaround for large guilds splitting into a smaller number of "allied" guilds kind of wrecks the effort put into a solution to those perceived problems, doesn't it?
If that is the logic behind the whole thing then another question would be: Why spend time creating limits if you leave easy workarounds to them?
Intrepid is promising quite a few marvelous things in their Minimum Playable Client, just by itself. If setting limits and having to do extra work to empower ALL guilds from small to maximum takes up more time than no limits, they should bag all of it into the waste basket, IMO.
Let the sandbox be a sandbox and let players decide how large their guilds can be.
It is all a matter of scale which is determined by a lot of different factors, the larger the scale the more work it is in the development side, especially when trying to keep smaller guilds relevant to the grand scheme of things.
My question to IS is how many players are you planning on making the map to handle, and how many people are you designing nodes/town/cities ect to hold?
As for my members posting here I asked them to read it and voice their opinions one way or another. They too are looking forward to this game. The biggest concern right now is if we'll be able to play together or if the game is going to force us to split. Which historically (GW2, ESO, BDO, AION) has done very bad things to our community and their enjoyment in a game.
Keep in mind that my articles, and my perspective come from leading Gaiscioch for nearly 16 years across a journey through 5 different games. I've seen guild systems thrive such as in Rift, and I've seen them annihilate player bases like ESO. We've had great launches like in Rift that were smooth sailing and everyone was happy and we've had not so great releases like bringing 1,700 people into ESO to have most of those people quit within the first 6 months because they couldn't communicate across the guilds. You might not see the long term effects from your perspective but I have lived them. I have seen them at work, and I have listened to countless members feel like outcasts because they aren't in the "main" guild which they perceive the other one to when in fact the one their in is actually the most active. It's been a challenge to make work and while many eastern games are cutting guild sizes below 100 we hoped, that Ashes of Creation would be different and not punish people for wanting to play together.
Time will tell what the cost will be. If there's an alliance chat, you can bet Gaiscioch will be here full steam. We just want to be able to play together and not punish people who can't commit 5+ hours a week to playing games. It's not how we roll.
Foghladha
Why do any of it if creating the limits requires extra work and those limits have very easy workarounds?
If it ends up that there aren't easy workarounds, somehow, then any arguments "to not worry because you can make small allied guilds" is an invalid solution to the OP's main point.
As I see it guild limits provide grounds for guilds to work together without having 1 cohesive mass of players taking full control of the entire spectrum of an alliance. If over half the players are in a single guild well... then no matter what people on the other side may want; that guild has the say... Think of it sort of like the US party system-it should really be 3 parties but it's not.
Instead you have one that typically has majority control and pushes things through rather than compromise and balance out with the whole. What I'm getting at here is if a bunch of groups have varying leaders, playstyles and numbers it's going to force them all to compromise rather than get forced into one prospective.
Major guild A might have backing from 3 other major guilds in the alliance they formed but if guilds B, C and D all have varying opinions it's more of a split than a ok 1 path 1 purpose or as Kane would say "Peace through Power."
This argument is sound but only includes the perspective of one type of alliance decision making process. There are many, many ways that alliances decide major courses of action and goals.
For me however, In a server of 12k players, I'd find it a little... Unpleasant to see about 10% of the players from the same guild. But that's just me. I like variety. It could end up being a server community health vs. Gsch community health issue.
Personally, I would probably find a different server.
I do not see it as a "punishment for wanting to play together." I see it as a balancing issue.
@foghladha
When I play, I'm typically also monitoring and communicating via twitch and twitter, so I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to communicate with the entire guild.
twitch can hold thousands of players in chat. twitter allows you to communicate with thousands if not millions of people.
Aye. Your basically asking to control a server. It's really not fair to the rest of the gaming community. I'm not telling you it's wrong to be organized with good leadership or run a massive guild but they tend to lend towards takeover rather than camaraderie.
As for the comment about it being one perspective way to run things... It's really not. All guilds lend towards a leader class maybe some officers then delegation falls off to less and less from there. Regardless of what decision making system you think your doing in the end the top are always the final say. Sure some are run more or less fairly by a small group working for their members.
However at the sizes your implying your basically rending any form of balance a server could manage. Now if we were at the tech level to cost effectively have servers with 50k players in a massive world then sure that's all fine and dandy have your 800-1200 member guilds. At least in that scenario you can't just dictate how the server does things on a whim because X small guild pissed you off.
As a final note I am a casual gamer. I play a lot of different games but I never really focus on stuff entirely. With that being said a mega guild vs. a myriad of small guilds does not appeal to me. It shows a lop sided build design and crushes any ability for small guilds to stand a chance. I will again quote myself with what typically happens with mega guilds
I'd have to agree with that... I rarely see mega-guilds unless it's some Korean raid/PvP swarm fest MMO. Even then their not that common and typically split into subsections that do their own thing. The last major one I saw actually got disbanded forcefully by the devs because they caused major issues and were "trading" PvP wins for gains.
Again to reiterate I'm not telling you it's wrong to have a massive guild or a large "family" of players. However when you get to that size in the current server number limitations in play you simply ruin the balance and tip the scales entirely in your own favor.
No Ninja I totally agree with what your saying my wording was probably a bit off. What I mean is as it handles it mechanically and world based. If it's roughly set for 2k people sure that's what the server should be to give everyone breathing room. The main problem we have now is not knowing jack about it. =P
I didn't mean to imply any kind of disagreement I just wanted to expand the train of though to farther flesh out the discussion
Now, this same community, mostly the same players, join in when a new chapter is opened in a new MMO. So we are not talking about alliances. We're talking about the same people, the same voices and faces, all members of the same community, forming a new guild in a new game, willing to explore a new world, to brave the challenges devs devised to be faced and tackled. Together, as a community, once again.
Put it another way, the community existed first, and the guilds were created by the community, not the other way round. And we are only forced to create more than one guild in the same game if there are guild caps.
Also, we do offer alliances, our community is open that way, and allies can participate in community events. However, alliances are in no way mandatory —this word, in fact, is not part of our daily vocabulary—, and those alliances need not be in game, or solely in game.
We are a community where you "play what you want to play, the way you want to play it". The fact is, as a large community, we tend to prefer to play together.
In the end, we tried to explain with numbers, with facts about how good it is to be in a community that's been around for 13 years.
The fact is, we are a large group of players, members of the same community, who like to play together... in the same guild. It's simple as that.
As I said in another post, it's logical that communities who've been playing together for a long time, would love to keep playing together, as one guild! The banner of the community carried by all of its members.
And now to @lexmax comment: "why would caps make any difference if you can ally with other guilds". Well, because communities will prefer to stay as a single group, a single guild. And that doesn't prevent alliances to be made. Or for a 500 person siege to be organized with mixed players from the large guild and smaller ones, allied or not.
If the design of the game mechanics punishes smaller guilds for being small, and culls larger ones so they do not become to powerful, perhaps a re-balancing is in order. As @Dygz and @lexmax posted perks or other mechanics my be a good answer for smaller guilds, without preventing larger ones to exist.
But this just my 2 cents, if your story is different, great! This just what I have picked up since internet came out.
I do love your article and evidence, but I'd love to see the server cap for each of those games you mentioned in the last section of your post.
10k limit means they should go even lower than 300, maybe even to 150 to keep the servers healthy.
If the server limit was like 50k, then there would be choises to make guilds bigger. But for now, 300 max feels too high already.
we don't know yet but i'm sure something will come of benefit from being in an alliance other than just the fact you are "allies".