I understand the logic of OP, but I think it will be hard to justify a huge guild cap for the casual players.
What I have heard so far is that there will be guild leveling, and you can either spend on perks that boost stats and such, or increasing the guild size. This gives an edge to casual guilds who traditionally are small and have no use for huge guild caps.
To suggest a guild cap of 200-300 is "punishing" casual gamers is not exactly right. I understand the rationale of wanting to create a casual "all are welcomed" guild, and given the diversity, a huge guild cap is required, but given the devs logic, it will be hard to accommodate this rationale.
There will always be give and take for implementation, and I feel like the current direction works best for most of the players and the game overall. I think in your case, it would be better to find a casual guild that players at about the same time as you.
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.
Your fear is pointless, as in fact most of the servers will be ruled by one or two big alliance anyway...
Was looking at ARK for something new to try, but as usual did some research before I dropped any cash. Apparently huge guilds dominate and decimate smaller guilds, leading to just one large guild controlling everything on each server, with some guilds having a dominating presence on multiple servers. If not watched out for could be exactly what happens here. No fun for anyone to join as a starting character, since apparently you are just repeatedly killed before you can advance at all by the controlling guilds.
Was looking at ARK for something new to try, but as usual did some research before I dropped any cash. Apparently huge guilds dominate and decimate smaller guilds, leading to just one large guild controlling everything on each server, with some guilds having a dominating presence on multiple servers. If not watched out for could be exactly what happens here. No fun for anyone to join as a starting character, since apparently you are just repeatedly killed before you can advance at all by the controlling guilds.
ark and ashes are completely different and will have vastly different systems in place to control things like that. the problems you see in ark couldnt happen in ashes for many reasons. also if yourgoing to play ark it is a veryvery good game.youjust have to play on unofficial servers
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.
Your fear is pointless, as in fact most of the servers will be ruled by one or two big alliance anyway...
Yeah murder and such is going to happen anyway. May as well just let it happen and do nothing to help mitigate the issue right
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.
Guild design is very different in Ashes than it is in other games.
There will be more for guilds to do. There will be more guild perks.
There will be a variety of ways that a guild actually impacts the world and the ways in which the world changes.
In addition, one has to factor in how guilds relate to and interact with a city.
And what it means to virtually live in a city or metropolis.
You keep talking about how difficult it will be for a community to stay together as if being in the same guild is the only way to stay together rather than contemplating keeping the community together by having the sub-guilds you create in Ashes focus on the city/metropolis where your family chooses to live.
I'm not aware of Ashes punishing guilds for being small.
What in the game design punishes guilds for being small?
I have been with multiple guiilds with in rift and the problem i see with small guilds is that like stated the casual player gets left out. I myself have had guilds fold under me because of a lack of intrest in the game and many with in fighting because of poor leadership the amount of members in gaminging community guilds like GSCH have an established group of members( I am one Hgielak) that play and join social events sponsored by the group constantly keep things fresh and help very much in keeping away the Burnout feeling the idea of small guild alliances would bring the the co-op to the game but would not help one people have hit the burnout. many would lose intrest and they would fold up.
I think you are in for a rude awakening....
Guild "A" has 400 members half hardcore and half casual players
Guild "B" has 200 members all hardcore... who do you think wins a war between them??
We will go off the assumption that an alliance is automatically included in wars which I highly doubt will be the case..
Guild "A" will still most likely lose. Guild "B" will deliberately go where the lower levels are found, hunt them quick and take off. This is a VERY popular strategy in PvP. I know i've said it a lot but I have done a LOT of PvP wars and again.... this is looking to be the same type of combat system. I doubt the war system will be much different.
@Dygz I think you meant to say you WILL go off that assumption? By going off the assumption you include the alliance in the scenario... if not it's 1 guild vs 1 guild
meaningful conflict is irrelevant. Even if it was, Lineage 2 has "meaningful conflict" such as Castle Sieges and Taking a fortresses.
But, we are talking about wars. This is a completely different subject and there is no "meaningful conflict" involved. Wars are declared because one guild leader decides he wants to war another guild leader and they hash it out.
Guild "A" has 400 members half hardcore and half casual players
Guild "B" has 200 members all hardcore... who do you think wins a war between them??
Hint: Guild "A" has almost no chance
You are heavily wrong, in your own example.
You actually said that in 200hardcore vs 200 hardcore + 200 casual the team with fewer players win lol... That makes nonsense. If the 200 casual player wouldn't participate, then the two team would be equal. But that +200 player heavily increases A's power. Even if they are just ruining around naked as meat shields, it still helps enough to cause A to win it.
If your example would be 200 hardcore vs 400 casual, then you would be probably right, as you can easily expect that half of the casuals would be inactive anyway, so effectively 200 skilled vs 200 noob.
thats because you didn't pay attention to my reasoning on why they win. The Guild with fewer players WILL win because they will feed kills on the lower (casual) characters. This is a proven strategy. Am I the only heavy PvP'r in this conversation?
Your assumption is that everyone is in the same spot at the same time
I'm not going off the assumption that alliances will be automatically included. As in both Guild A and Guild B will automatically and comparably form alliances. That is not my assumption.
Meaningful Conflict cannot be irrelevant because it's a pillar of the game design... as are Nodes. And that is what's going to be driving guilds to attack guilds. And that is what's going to be driving guilds to form alliances to defeat other guilds.
Sieges aren't Meaningful Conflict. Meaningful Conflict is what motivates people to want to siege. Rather than just "I like PvP combat." In Ashes, Meaningful Conflict is what motivates the wars.
@dygz crafting is an element of the game design too but I mentioned wars
Well if you are assuming they won't be automatically than you can assume they won't be part of the war. There is no way they will add 1-way wars without the other guild accepting. A smart guild would finish the first one and not take more they can handle Contrary to what you think a large majority of wars will be guilds with animosity to towards other guilds
Sieges are motivation because of the extra benefits received from obtaining a castle. Such as extra skills and taxes not to mention the influence. If there was no reason nobody would take a castle if it served no benefit.
I don't know why you keep saying meaningful conflict as an argument to me bringing up wars specifically. If your talking about fighting for a node than that will change everything depending on the length it goes on for and how it all works
I have done massive amounts of pvp. I started my pvp role way back in classic wow....before they even had BG and you had to actually camp horde bases and hangouts for your rank. I did achieve Grand Marshall-rank 14-not once, not twice, but thrice. Not the new system, It was horrible. Grinding 18-20 hours a day for 4-6 weeks straight. Ugh Most games, that is what I do, pvp. Especially if the armor/weapon rewards are comparable to high end PVE.
Anyway, not the greatest example of pvp, since this is a bit different, was just showing where I got my start.... @WinterAssassin is right pertaining to the strategy of feeding. It's a very well known strat in the pvp realms. The thing to take into account with the 400 vs 200 scenario is: Is the 400 mainly pve based? If so, pve dynamics and pvp strategy are vastly different. In most MMO's, so is the armor/weaponry. You have pvp gear, then you have pve gear. I would put 200 hardcore geared pvpers against 400 pve any day.
thats because you didn't pay attention to my reasoning on why they win. The Guild with fewer players WILL win because they will feed kills on the lower (casual) characters. This is a proven strategy. Am I the only heavy PvP'r in this conversation?
Your assumption is that everyone is in the same spot at the same time
dfq? What would they earn if they would farm some low level player in crap gear? Also dfq are you talking about in general? You fight in guild vs guild, by throwing your players one by one into the enemy? or what? You expect a group of under geared and low level player to Rambo into the enemy fortress so they can feed on them?
Idc, if there's a castle defended by 200 hardcore players, and 400 other player attacks it, and you start farming the casual ones, the rest 200 will destroy your shit by the time you done. True you will get more kills, but if they destroy your base in exchange, then you will lose more in general.
Lets get this part out of the way. I said "Wars" not "sieges" not "fortresses" I said WAR. There is no bases or anything like that involved in a guild on guild WAR
You will earn kills which in wars determines who wins in the end.
Wars are not "lets all meet up and fight" wars are "this is going to be several days if you see them, kill them"
Lets get this part out of the way. I said "Wars" not "sieges" not "fortresses" I said WAR. There is no bases or anything like that involved in a guild on guild WAR
You will earn kills which in wars determines who wins in the end.
Wars are not "lets all meet up and fight" wars are "this is going to be several days if you see them, kill them"
It's just a matter on how you describe a war. Generally wars waged for a reason, for some benefit. Randomly slaughtering players with a gang isn't war.
Also how would that kind of "war" affect this topic in the first place? It's about strong guilds controlling the server which means control over the resources, the cities/fortresses whatever. So tell me how's randomly killing casual guild members would affect the server control in a any way? If you don't siege their bases, then they won't really lose anything. Ok you can say that "We killed more than U, so we owned U", but in the end, they will still going to have control over most of the server, so?
@dygz crafting is an element of the game design too but I mentioned wars
Crafting is an element of the game design.
Meaningful Conflict is a pillar of the game design. Wars are going to be, "We need to destroy them in order to prevent their negative influence on the node(s)/region/world."
Since guilds in aoc are character based, not account, then a guild full of alt-o-holics would only be able to house around 50 people. In a casual guild/community like GSCH that would mean that I would probably have a hard time finding like minded people to group up with when I feel like playing.
Any guild size cap is bad, especially when it is character based.
Literally... that is a war. Killing and slaughtering the enemy. They are going to allow wars to be started for the reasons determined by guilds. A lot of top guilds will war each other for political reasoning. These could be minute to most people but some guilds take actions between their guild and other guilds very seriously.
I didn't say it will affect the server control. PvP isn't always about server control.
hgielak's reasoning to increase war size was to be able to include the "casual" gamer since they get left out.
I simply was pointing out that when they said "in small guilds the casual gamer gets left out" didn't make sense. It's better for casual gamers to stay in smaller, casual guilds and then I continued to point out why that is. The separation in levels within a guild will make it more likely for another guild to war them over small/petty reasons because of the fact they KNOW that they will win. These reasons could be just because they took their spot and are killing the mobs they need for this quest. Yes, this does happen and it happens A LOT. Simply a war started because of a petty argument. Welcome to PvP
Simply put, if you have too large of a guild you won't really be influential like everyone is making it out to be. In the longer scheme of things... If you have a large level gap in your guild you will keep losing wars... which will lead to you being weaker from losing levels and too much time focused on wars, which will lead you to not having as big of an impact on the other "meaningful conflicts" You won't have the levels necessary and will fall behind because of this.
This isn't new and this is going to be why (a month or so after release) top guilds will have a recruiting limit on what level you need to be, regardless if they are massive.
@dygz If that is what you think most wars are going to be about... I strongly disagree and from experience with always being involved in a heavy PvP guild. Drama is going to take over and egos are going to be shattered by other egos. This is the world of open PvP. Notice, PvP is open... not only when a node is being taken. This is for a reason
@Booie no-caps are a horrible idea in open PvP. By removing a cap you are allowing a monopoly. This simply isn't going to happen, why have alliances when you can just fit everyone in the same guild? Character based is the best way to cap it. 200 is always a good number.
@dygz If that is what you think most wars are going to be about... I strongly disagree and from experience with always being involved in a heavy PvP guild. Drama is going to take over and egos are going to be shattered by other egos. This is the world of open PvP. Notice, PvP is open... not only when a node is being taken. This is for a reason
Because you have no experience playing a game that has Meaningful Conflict as an intrinsic part of the game design. Meaningful Conflict is not merely restricted to "taking a node".
@Dygz I feel like you are just trying to troll me now. I already pointed out PvP will be open for this game. That has been said, these wars will happen regardless of if it's going to need meaningful conflict. I don't even know why you just made that snarky reply but just because they call it meaningful conflict doesn't make it different.
Besides, you have already announced you don't take part in PvP, so to tell me i'm the one lacking the experience in this subject is a bit ridiculous
I'm just informing you how wars will work. This is going to happen. like... it really is going to happen and there won't only be pvp because of this meaningful conflict.
I'm not making a snarky remark. I'm telling you that Ashes PvP is not the same as in previous MMORPGs because Meaningful Conflict will be driving the tensions that lead to PvP combat. The only other game design I'm aware of that used the concept of Meaningful Conflict is EQNext.
I didn't use the word "just". The large majority of wars will be fomented by Meaningful Conflict and even for the ones that aren't, it will be easier than what has been typical in previous MMORPGs to form and maintain alliances due to Meaningful Conflict - because the reasons to engage in war won't merely be due to the egos of people who like PvP combat. Because guilds intrinsically influence the world in ways that will be competitively detrimental to other nodes and regions. (That's not limited to guilds, the same will be true for individual player characters and cities and religious groups, etc. But, guilds have a significant impact.)
Comments
What I have heard so far is that there will be guild leveling, and you can either spend on perks that boost stats and such, or increasing the guild size. This gives an edge to casual guilds who traditionally are small and have no use for huge guild caps.
To suggest a guild cap of 200-300 is "punishing" casual gamers is not exactly right. I understand the rationale of wanting to create a casual "all are welcomed" guild, and given the diversity, a huge guild cap is required, but given the devs logic, it will be hard to accommodate this rationale.
There will always be give and take for implementation, and I feel like the current direction works best for most of the players and the game overall. I think in your case, it would be better to find a casual guild that players at about the same time as you.
In addition, one has to factor in how guilds relate to and interact with a city.
And what it means to virtually live in a city or metropolis.
You keep talking about how difficult it will be for a community to stay together as if being in the same guild is the only way to stay together rather than contemplating keeping the community together by having the sub-guilds you create in Ashes focus on the city/metropolis where your family chooses to live. I'm not aware of Ashes punishing guilds for being small. What in the game design punishes guilds for being small?
Guild "A" has 400 members half hardcore and half casual players
Guild "B" has 200 members all hardcore... who do you think wins a war between them??
Hint: Guild "A" has almost no chance
We will go off the assumption that an alliance is automatically included in wars which I highly doubt will be the case..
Guild "A" will still most likely lose. Guild "B" will deliberately go where the lower levels are found, hunt them quick and take off. This is a VERY popular strategy in PvP. I know i've said it a lot but I have done a LOT of PvP wars and again.... this is looking to be the same type of combat system. I doubt the war system will be much different.
I'm not aware of other games that have similar guild incentives motivated by Meaningful Conflict.
I think you meant to say you WILL go off that assumption? By going off the assumption you include the alliance in the scenario... if not it's 1 guild vs 1 guild
meaningful conflict is irrelevant. Even if it was, Lineage 2 has "meaningful conflict" such as Castle Sieges and Taking a fortresses.
But, we are talking about wars. This is a completely different subject and there is no "meaningful conflict" involved. Wars are declared because one guild leader decides he wants to war another guild leader and they hash it out.
You are heavily wrong, in your own example.
You actually said that in 200hardcore vs 200 hardcore + 200 casual the team with fewer players win lol...
That makes nonsense. If the 200 casual player wouldn't participate, then the two team would be equal. But that +200 player heavily increases A's power. Even if they are just ruining around naked as meat shields, it still helps enough to cause A to win it.
If your example would be 200 hardcore vs 400 casual, then you would be probably right, as you can easily expect that half of the casuals would be inactive anyway, so effectively 200 skilled vs 200 noob.
Your assumption is that everyone is in the same spot at the same time
I'm not going off the assumption that alliances will be automatically included. As in both Guild A and Guild B will automatically and comparably form alliances.
That is not my assumption.
Meaningful Conflict cannot be irrelevant because it's a pillar of the game design... as are Nodes. And that is what's going to be driving guilds to attack guilds. And that is what's going to be driving guilds to form alliances to defeat other guilds.
Sieges aren't Meaningful Conflict.
Meaningful Conflict is what motivates people to want to siege.
Rather than just "I like PvP combat."
In Ashes, Meaningful Conflict is what motivates the wars.
Well if you are assuming they won't be automatically than you can assume they won't be part of the war. There is no way they will add 1-way wars without the other guild accepting. A smart guild would finish the first one and not take more they can handle
Contrary to what you think a large majority of wars will be guilds with animosity to towards other guilds
Sieges are motivation because of the extra benefits received from obtaining a castle. Such as extra skills and taxes not to mention the influence. If there was no reason nobody would take a castle if it served no benefit.
I don't know why you keep saying meaningful conflict as an argument to me bringing up wars specifically. If your talking about fighting for a node than that will change everything depending on the length it goes on for and how it all works
Most games, that is what I do, pvp. Especially if the armor/weapon rewards are comparable to high end PVE.
Anyway, not the greatest example of pvp, since this is a bit different, was just showing where I got my start....
@WinterAssassin is right pertaining to the strategy of feeding. It's a very well known strat in the pvp realms. The thing to take into account with the 400 vs 200 scenario is: Is the 400 mainly pve based? If so, pve dynamics and pvp strategy are vastly different. In most MMO's, so is the armor/weaponry. You have pvp gear, then you have pve gear. I would put 200 hardcore geared pvpers against 400 pve any day.
My assumption is that the "casual" gamer is a much lower level
dfq? What would they earn if they would farm some low level player in crap gear? Also dfq are you talking about in general? You fight in guild vs guild, by throwing your players one by one into the enemy? or what? You expect a group of under geared and low level player to Rambo into the enemy fortress so they can feed on them?
Idc, if there's a castle defended by 200 hardcore players, and 400 other player attacks it, and you start farming the casual ones, the rest 200 will destroy your shit by the time you done.
True you will get more kills, but if they destroy your base in exchange, then you will lose more in general.
Lets get this part out of the way. I said "Wars" not "sieges" not "fortresses" I said WAR. There is no bases or anything like that involved in a guild on guild WAR
You will earn kills which in wars determines who wins in the end.
Wars are not "lets all meet up and fight" wars are "this is going to be several days if you see them, kill them"
Also how would that kind of "war" affect this topic in the first place? It's about strong guilds controlling the server which means control over the resources, the cities/fortresses whatever. So tell me how's randomly killing casual guild members would affect the server control in a any way?
If you don't siege their bases, then they won't really lose anything. Ok you can say that "We killed more than U, so we owned U", but in the end, they will still going to have control over most of the server, so?
Meaningful Conflict is a pillar of the game design.
Wars are going to be, "We need to destroy them in order to prevent their negative influence on the node(s)/region/world."
As a preference to changing guild sizes, I would prefer to see management for alliances and sub-clans... friends with benefits!
Any guild size cap is bad, especially when it is character based.
Literally... that is a war. Killing and slaughtering the enemy. They are going to allow wars to be started for the reasons determined by guilds. A lot of top guilds will war each other for political reasoning. These could be minute to most people but some guilds take actions between their guild and other guilds very seriously.
I didn't say it will affect the server control. PvP isn't always about server control.
hgielak's reasoning to increase war size was to be able to include the "casual" gamer since they get left out.
I simply was pointing out that when they said "in small guilds the casual gamer gets left out" didn't make sense. It's better for casual gamers to stay in smaller, casual guilds and then I continued to point out why that is. The separation in levels within a guild will make it more likely for another guild to war them over small/petty reasons because of the fact they KNOW that they will win. These reasons could be just because they took their spot and are killing the mobs they need for this quest. Yes, this does happen and it happens A LOT. Simply a war started because of a petty argument. Welcome to PvP
Simply put, if you have too large of a guild you won't really be influential like everyone is making it out to be. In the longer scheme of things... If you have a large level gap in your guild you will keep losing wars... which will lead to you being weaker from losing levels and too much time focused on wars, which will lead you to not having as big of an impact on the other "meaningful conflicts" You won't have the levels necessary and will fall behind because of this.
This isn't new and this is going to be why (a month or so after release) top guilds will have a recruiting limit on what level you need to be, regardless if they are massive.
@dygz If that is what you think most wars are going to be about... I strongly disagree and from experience with always being involved in a heavy PvP guild. Drama is going to take over and egos are going to be shattered by other egos.
This is the world of open PvP. Notice, PvP is open... not only when a node is being taken. This is for a reason
It will be rare for an elite guild to surpass 200
Meaningful Conflict is not merely restricted to "taking a node".
Besides, you have already announced you don't take part in PvP, so to tell me i'm the one lacking the experience in this subject is a bit ridiculous
I'm just informing you how wars will work. This is going to happen. like... it really is going to happen and there won't only be pvp because of this meaningful conflict.
I'm telling you that Ashes PvP is not the same as in previous MMORPGs because Meaningful Conflict will be driving the tensions that lead to PvP combat.
The only other game design I'm aware of that used the concept of Meaningful Conflict is EQNext.
I didn't use the word "just". The large majority of wars will be fomented by Meaningful Conflict and even for the ones that aren't, it will be easier than what has been typical in previous MMORPGs to form and maintain alliances due to Meaningful Conflict - because the reasons to engage in war won't merely be due to the egos of people who like PvP combat.
Because guilds intrinsically influence the world in ways that will be competitively detrimental to other nodes and regions.
(That's not limited to guilds, the same will be true for individual player characters and cities and religious groups, etc. But, guilds have a significant impact.)