Oh boy! I already regret backing this game. I can already see this is just going to be one huge gank fest. I am going to save this post written on 6/24/2017 and repost it on 6/24/2019 just to prove my wisdom.
No, it is. Literally, the designers favorite game was Lineage 2 and PvP is described the same. Mirror imaged after that game. To the point the only difference i see in the description is one of the colors your name changes is different and you will be debuffed if you pk. Other than that do you honestly think it's a coincidence the designer loved Lineage 2 so much and it's going to be so much different with the description given?
Yes, it had meaningful conflict. More than you apparently know. I mean, they had monthly Olympiads which were extremely meaningful. The skills and strength you got from being labeled a hero of your class played a HUGE role in later PvP such as taking a castle. So Yes, Dygz a game that you don't know about did have meaningful conflict
the only game design you are aware of because you take what I say with a grain of salt and dismiss it as if the game is a figment of my imagination.
I don't even know why this is an argument that wars are going to happen outside of meaningful conflict. That's definitely a fact
@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.
It will be rare for an elite guild to surpass 200
If that was even remotely true, there would only be GSCH in our community, however it is not. We have multiple guilds that all run with individual leadership and I assume with own goals/wishes for the game they play. GSCH is just the biggest of them.
Being broken up in GW2/ESO into multiple guilds just meant that when you logged in, you often found yourself alone even that many was online. If GSCH decides that 3rd time is not a charm with dealing with the multiple guild nightmare and stays out of aoc, then I wouldn't blame the leadership for it. It would suck for me and I suppose that could try and find a new guild for this game, but it isn't likely that I would find what I got in GSCH and after my 4 paid months, I would probably not renew subscription.
That I wouldn't renew isn't a threat and aoc can do their game however they want, but I liked how guilds are in Rift and I would expect from any new game that I committed too that it wouldn't try to separate me from my friends.
@booie I said character limits are best because it's not uncommon for events to be held. Lets say an event is held and each character gets a chance to perform said task to accumulate points. Is it fair for one guild to have more opportunities than another guild because they have more alts in their guild?
As for the monopoly i didn't say it WILL happen. It's opening the door for it to be possible. and in some MMOs it has come pretty close. only to be stopped because of a limit. after a game has been out for a while new players will flock to the strong guilds, it gives them protection in a hostile world, unlike smaller guilds.
I'm basing this off open PvP games, keep in mind i don't have much experience in a game that doesn't have open PvP. So, it's possible it wouldn't happen, but from how PvP players will manipulate systems to win, it shouldn't be made possible
Yes there will be a Zerg, it will be there regardless if the guild size is 5 or 5000. People are mindlessly sucked into the zerg. This is true for any game with open pvp (WAR/GW2/ESO), would be a problem in rift too, but their client craps out if you put too many people in the same zone. Yeah we did crash their servers on multiple occasions.
The developers should spend their time combatting zergs and put in mechanics that breaks that up. But having developers breaking up guilds because they don't want to spend the time developing a game that rewards smaller groups over a zerg, is just lazy.
No, it is. Literally, the designers favorite game was Lineage 2 and PvP is described the same. Mirror imaged after that game. To the point the only difference i see in the description is one of the colors your name changes is different and you will be debuffed if you pk. Other than that do you honestly think it's a coincidence the designer loved Lineage 2 so much and it's going to be so much different with the description given?
Yes, it had meaningful conflict. More than you apparently know. I mean, they had monthly Olympiads which were extremely meaningful. The skills and strength you got from being labeled a hero of your class played a HUGE role in later PvP such as taking a castle. So Yes, Dygz a game that you don't know about did have meaningful conflict
Um. Monthly Olympiads are conflicts you found to be meaningful. That's not the same thing as Meaningful Conflict. Meaningful Conflict is when your day to day actions negatively impact the objectives of other players: Your harvesting in one region negatively affects another region. Building a bridge negatively affects trade in another region. The Temples for one god built in one region negatively affects worship of a different god in another region. The government of your city raises taxes too high. A Scientific city becomes a metropolis and starts work on a fast travel network, but the rest of the server doesn't want a fast travel network.
Wars are not just going to be about guild egos. People are going to be eager to attack guilds because the rival guilds intrinsically have a negative impact on their objectives.
So, back to my point: It is not a given that just because Guild B has more members than Guild A, Guild B will win a war. There may be many more players among other guilds and alliances who will side with Guild B against Guild A because Guild A influences the server in a way that most people on the server don't like. Rarely will wars in Ashes be just about the kinds of conflicts that have driven wars in previous MMORPGs. Meaningful Conflict will be increasing tensions and driving people towards PvP combat much of the time.
Being broken up in GW2/ESO into multiple guilds just meant that when you logged in, you often found yourself alone even that many was online. If GSCH decides that 3rd time is not a charm with dealing with the multiple guild nightmare and stays out of aoc, then I wouldn't blame the leadership for it. It would suck for me and I suppose that could try and find a new guild for this game, but it isn't likely that I would find what I got in GSCH and after my 4 paid months, I would probably not renew subscription.
That I wouldn't renew isn't a threat and aoc can do their game however they want, but I liked how guilds are in Rift and I would expect from any new game that I committed too that it wouldn't try to separate me from my friends.
I still don't understand what you mean by being broken up and alone when you're online. Why wouldn't you form guilds in the same city from people who log on at similar time frames? It's still the same number of people online at any given time whether you're in sub-guilds or one mega-guild.
Hm, let me get this straight. @MADE thinks the megaguild is good, bringing in 1700-2000 people in a single guild on a 10k person server is great for the game. As well, is for full loot upon death. Yeah, I kind of see where that is going. Lol
Hm, let me get this straight. @MADE thinks the megaguild is good, bringing in 1700-2000 people in a single guild on a 10k person server is great for the game. As well, is for full loot upon death. Yeah, I kind of see where that is going. Lol
You probably marked the wrong player as I never said anything about how big player limit would be good for guilds...
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 rarely see mega-guilds unless it's some Korean raid/PvP swarm fest MMO.
Seems TheRed will be such a guild from what I gathered with yesterday's Guild Fair. Looks like they'll be aiming for 600 members from multiple guilds who "crush everyone in the world".
Tis a little strange for me because I tend to find small guilds in MMOs who have a progression mentality and get things done. Wrongly or correctly, I've always thought that being in a large guild means you lose out and if there's a clique, which you're not a part of, then you're going to miss out. However, with this type of game it may actually be beneficial to be in a large guild or at least allied to one.
I assume quantity will be a factor when it comes to assaulting a node/city, especially at Stage 3+.
As I wrote here before, there has never been real "home" of a guild with hundreds of people in it. Mega guilds are just easy way to say I don't want to manage alliances. Which kinda ruins the whole game design of guilds/alliances/economy based game.
Alliances make game much more interesting, rather than mega guilds. Why? Alliances break, they get angry to each other, they will develop new ideas that rest of the alliance might not have. And stuff like that. <-- Is healthy for the game. Mega guild just stands there and have no evolution to any direction. Which is bad for the longevity of any game.
Personally I hope they cap it to 200, there is literally no need for more. no one knows that many people, even in real life. So why pretend here that you do? It's just easy way to say I'm too lazy to manage alliances.
But hey, how about the fact that if you have 500 casuals, there is still too few online at the same time to have meaningful gameplay as a guild? Well this can be tricky. But are you sure you need to take even the most casual ones, like those that have 1-2 hours per week? Are you sure you could not just add active players and keep those rarely online players in a friendlist if you had to stay in touch?
All in all, majority of reasons favor medium(100-200)guilds, and some favor bigger ones. For the health of the game, there is no choice between those in my opinion.
It's still too early to say if 250-300 is the hard cap. When the game is closer to the release date, they may increase the guild size to 400 or 500 as more guilds well be asking for more room. As for now, I would say wait and see what happens.
@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
My apologies then I misinterpreted your intent =< On the bright side this is a rather well constructed discussion all around. I have yet to see anyone resort to name calling or causing issues. So indeed to everyone Kudos!
Once we gather some more concrete information on the current determination of guild cap + world population sizes then at least we can discuss in more detail what could be a good compromise.
It's still too early to say if 250-300 is the hard cap. When the game is closer to the release date, they may increase the guild size to 400 or 500 as more guilds well be asking for more room. As for now, I would say wait and see what happens.
Aye, agreed. I'm sure we'll see a lot of changes along the way.
I still think fog's original post was a good one because it's feedback that Intrepid can consider and weigh against other perspectives. If what we've seen so far is any indication, Steven and Intrepid will be responsive to the community, so they'll be trying to find a compromise while also realizing that larger guilds will have more power to be vocal in a concentrated manner.
I'm with @WinterAssassin on this. Regardless of the meaningful arguement PvP will happen most likely often regardless of resources/strategic location control. People "for lack of a better term..." are stupid. We do things we shouldn't for no reason other than to be spiteful and we abuse systems we can before it gets fixed as much as possible.
In the scenario of 400(half and half) vs 200(hardcore) even in the event you have the most numbers and your casual forces are guarded/following orders you still penalized yourself in this fight. Say guild A400 is defending a position such as a castle or freehold in the even guerrilla tactics are applied by guild B200 they can easily chip down defenses as GuildA400 can't defend and give chase. If they choose to do so they either send capable combatants ie hardcore players or casual which = out to cannon fodder in both scenarios.
In the even the hardcore leave to fight then the base is in a weakened state and tactically speaking the counter offensive party will most likely be dragged around to keep them out of the fight. Now your base has what 100+200casuals vs probably a rough army of 150 hardcore... Basically you gimped your meaningful combat defenses.
On the hand of sending the casuals out their literally just feed and I imagine quite a few would be like "wtf? No we wouldn't even kill one of them...". Then you have the issue of sending your "meat shields" out. Now not only are your shields gone it is an unknown with how the system works if they can make it back in time to help defend. Couple that with the penalties and gear damage sustained.
Your literally making your casuals weaker by destroying their gear and their xp to buy yourself a small amount of time.
Finally if you just stand and defend. If your good with the numbers you might be able to dead lock with coordination but it'll then just become a brickwall scenario that drains both sides resources. In that event they may simply wait you out. Odds are pretty good your not going anywhere and your all trapped in a base.
The classic "starve em out" scenario of medieval combat. The enemy can still somewhat farm from the outlying resources you can't being pinned in as you are. Obviously this is a rather specific scenario but people were complaining about "meaningful combat".
I would like to add my opinion of someone who hasn't just created an account. Several of you are dismissing his opinion purley because it doesn't aligne with your own. SaeyoPrayers said:
From what I have seen, minus 1 or 2...almost everyone agreeing with this is from the community and made their accounts today.
I enjoy being in one of the larger communities just for the fact that I can usually find someone online playing the game I'm playing. I joined my community on this simple fact that it would be larger and would have people online when I played. I had come from a smaller guild and often found that I was the ONLY one online from my guild at the time. Now you've dismissed this as oh, but just join another guild, or other people are online in game. why not play with them? My answer I know the people in my larger community and have made freindships with them. I've been with my community for 3 years now and have played several games with them. And as my community grows so does my circle of freinds And it's hard when you have such a large community to decide who goes to which guild when you have guild caps. Yes ,they will have an alliance system, but as of yet we don't know how involved that will be. Will we able to fight in PVP as if we were a single guild during a castle seige, will you be able to share a guild bank / alliance bank with them, will there be Alliance buffs on top of guild buffs, or is it purely one big chatroom and that is it? So I completely understand his desire to have the player cap increased.
I'm with @WinterAssassin on this. Regardless of the meaningful arguement PvP will happen most likely often regardless of resources/strategic location control. People "for lack of a better term..." are stupid. We do things we shouldn't for no reason other than to be spiteful and we abuse systems we can before it gets fixed as much as possible.
I like your reasoning. Meaningful conflict is one of the design pillars, but Intrepid also talks about a "world with consequences". They mention this so often that to me is like the fifth design pillar. Blending these together I think will be the key to not letting stupidity or griefing run unchecked.
It should be challenging and risky to make any significant change to the narrative. IS talks about the need for coordination, planning, teamwork and skill, not just brute force and gear check. IS have said that zerging and griefing will not be viable playstyles in this game. In PvP, there are pretty steep consequences such as loot and gear loss. In PvE, maybe there will be wiping mechanics that simply cannot be ignored.
TL;DR No system, no matter how well tuned, will stop people from trying to play like antisocial idiots, but the goal shouldn't be to totally squelch our playstyles, just to have fitting consequences for decisions that we make.
I'm with @WinterAssassin on this. Regardless of the meaningful arguement PvP will happen most likely often regardless of resources/strategic location control. People "for lack of a better term..." are stupid. We do things we shouldn't for no reason other than to be spiteful and we abuse systems we can before it gets fixed as much as possible.
I like your reasoning. Meaningful conflict is one of the design pillars, but Intrepid also talks about a "world with consequences". They mention this so often that to me is like the fifth design pillar. Blending these together I think will be the key to not letting stupidity or griefing run unchecked.
It should be challenging and risky to make any significant change to the narrative. IS talks about the need for coordination, planning, teamwork and skill, not just brute force and gear check. IS have said that zerging and griefing will not be viable playstyles in this game. In PvP, there are pretty steep consequences such as loot and gear loss. In PvE, maybe there will be wiping mechanics that simply cannot be ignored.
TL;DR No system, no matter how well tuned, will stop people from trying to play like antisocial idiots, but the goal shouldn't be to totally squelch our playstyles, just to have fitting consequences for decisions that we make.
@dygz Ok we will continue pretend that i never mentioned 1-way wars probably won't be a thing.... This would mean guilds can't just jump in and join a war regardless of alliances
Assuming another 200 hardcore joins the 200hard/200casual. They still don't have a good chance. a good guild will beat most any guild who has that level gap.
This argument has become stupid and you don't even take part is PvP so I don't know why you even wanted this argument. It's like me arguing the best PvE only game when that's just not what I do
@dygz Ok we will continue pretend that i never mentioned 1-way wars probably won't be a thing.... This would mean guilds can't just jump in and join a war regardless of alliances
Assuming another 200 hardcore joins the 200hard/200casual. They still don't have a good chance. a good guild will beat most any guild who has that level gap.
This argument has become stupid and you don't even take part is PvP so I don't know why you even wanted this argument. It's like me arguing the best PvE only game when that's just not what I do
What you mentioned is irrelevant if I don't agree with you.
There will be a variety of types of wars.
Including wars where pretty much anyone can just jump in and join a war regardless of alliances - as is the case specifically with node sieges.
Citizens of a node that is under siege will be flagged as a defender of the node. Everyone else on the server can join as an attacker. Unless you are in a party, raid, guild or alliance with the defenders.
As I stated, there is no reason to assume how many will choose to ally with either Guild A or Guild B. There is no reason to place a limit on how many will ally with either guild.
There is no reason to assume what types of guilds will ally with either guild.
Because Meaningful Conflict will usually be a significant factor driving who supports whom in a war, when and why.
I actually have never stated that I never take part in PvP combat, that is another false assumption on your part.
Not that it matters. You clearly have no understanding of what Meaningful Conflict entails and how it will foment PvP combat.
I have a keen understanding of Meaningful Conflict because it is basically the Ashes equivalent of PvP conflict in EQNext. And the EQNext did a great job of explaining the concept to us during SOE Live 2014.
So, no, it's not like you arguing with me about a PvE game.
The reason discussing this with you is futile is that you think guild rivalries and PvP combat and wars will be just like previous games - even just like Lineage 2.
It's actually all going to be significantly different.
Obviously this is a rather specific scenario but people were complaining about "meaningful combat".
Uh. No. The pillar is Meaningful Conflict; not meaningful combat. Meaningful combat isn't really a thing.
Meaningful Conflict refers to the motivations that drive players to engage in PvP combat beyond simply a love for PvP combat - beyond fighting simply due to egos and whether a guild is hardcore or casual or whether it's fun to gank and loot lowbies.
But, this is a significant derail in any case. We should probably get back to discussing guild caps.
I'm having trouble seeing where a guild cap will remedy an issue of a monopoly. They can easily work around that and take care of each other as if they were still one warband; the "You mess with one you mess with them all" sort of thing.
In the case of Gaiscioch, we're the entity that will be there to provide help for the smaller guys who need it when they're pushed by the wicked monopolizers. We have tons of people in our family from all over the world. I would estimate we might have up to 200 players online at one given time during the launch. After 5 months I would be surprised if you see more than 50% of that online at a time, but you would see a decent population of online members throughout the entire day. We're big, but we're spread out over all time zones. That's what we mean by a home for the casual. You don't have to worry if your work schedule changes or whatever comes up, there's always people on who you're familiar with to play with when you log on.
If the alliance system takes care of all of that by itself, then that'll work as far as I'm concerned. Over the years we have just developed a sense of looking down the road at things that could create potential issues for our community, and try to have them looked at before things are set in stone.
@dharkon messing with a guild isnt the same as a guild being able to protect a castle because of it's sheer size.
Alliances will be limited to how many guilds can be in them, hence this will limit the amount of players able to defend or attack under the name of the alliance. Sieges and stuff will be registered ingame events. You will have to register under a name, if we have 3 guilds in an alliance with 600 in each guild. Who is going to prevent them from taking whatever they want?
@dharkon messing with a guild isnt the same as a guild being able to protect a castle because of it's sheer size.
Alliances will be limited to how many guilds can be in them, hence this will limit the amount of players able to defend or attack under the name of the alliance. Sieges and stuff will be registered ingame events. You will have to register under a name, if we have 3 guilds in an alliance with 600 in each guild. Who is going to prevent them from taking whatever they want?
My short answer is game systems and mechanics that are specifically designed to stop brute force and zerging.
IS have talked about this several times. The exact details haven't been revealed yet, but there are many ways to make an encounters difficulty scale in proportion to the army size (attackers or defenders).
The simplest way to favor smaller armies is to include wiping mechanics, such as an AOE seige engine attack that delivers a killing blow to anyone within X yards of impact. The higher the concentration of players (defenders in this example), the more casualties this attack will cause. This is just an random hypothetical example.
Another way is to introduce encounter mechanics that require intensive coordination. The more people in the army, the harder it is to coordinate movements and positioning. A smaller defending army might be able to notice "tells" of incoming fire, that would be largely hidden in the fog of war for larger defending forces.
The encounter designers at IS will undoubtedly have a huge pallet of mechanics that can be mix and matched to counteract zerging by weight of power and/or brute forcing by weight of sheer numbers.
one of those details could easily be limiting guild sizes don't you think? I just can't imagine an unlimited number of guild members being a good idea in a PvP objective type MMO
@Dygz I have been holding back for a while now across multiple posts you have made. You seem to just be here to troll and gather points. You troll damn near even post on here and disagree with people making valid points continuously. Google active listening, you would greatly benefit from what it may teach you....long story short though, you need to chill.
Comments
Yes, it had meaningful conflict. More than you apparently know. I mean, they had monthly Olympiads which were extremely meaningful. The skills and strength you got from being labeled a hero of your class played a HUGE role in later PvP such as taking a castle. So Yes, Dygz a game that you don't know about did have meaningful conflict
the only game design you are aware of because you take what I say with a grain of salt and dismiss it as if the game is a figment of my imagination.
I don't even know why this is an argument that wars are going to happen outside of meaningful conflict. That's definitely a fact
Being broken up in GW2/ESO into multiple guilds just meant that when you logged in, you often found yourself alone even that many was online. If GSCH decides that 3rd time is not a charm with dealing with the multiple guild nightmare and stays out of aoc, then I wouldn't blame the leadership for it. It would suck for me and I suppose that could try and find a new guild for this game, but it isn't likely that I would find what I got in GSCH and after my 4 paid months, I would probably not renew subscription.
That I wouldn't renew isn't a threat and aoc can do their game however they want, but I liked how guilds are in Rift and I would expect from any new game that I committed too that it wouldn't try to separate me from my friends.
As for the monopoly i didn't say it WILL happen. It's opening the door for it to be possible. and in some MMOs it has come pretty close. only to be stopped because of a limit. after a game has been out for a while new players will flock to the strong guilds, it gives them protection in a hostile world, unlike smaller guilds.
I'm basing this off open PvP games, keep in mind i don't have much experience in a game that doesn't have open PvP. So, it's possible it wouldn't happen, but from how PvP players will manipulate systems to win, it shouldn't be made possible
Yes there will be a Zerg, it will be there regardless if the guild size is 5 or 5000. People are mindlessly sucked into the zerg. This is true for any game with open pvp (WAR/GW2/ESO), would be a problem in rift too, but their client craps out if you put too many people in the same zone. Yeah we did crash their servers on multiple occasions.
The developers should spend their time combatting zergs and put in mechanics that breaks that up. But having developers breaking up guilds because they don't want to spend the time developing a game that rewards smaller groups over a zerg, is just lazy.
That's not the same thing as Meaningful Conflict.
Meaningful Conflict is when your day to day actions negatively impact the objectives of other players:
Your harvesting in one region negatively affects another region. Building a bridge negatively affects trade in another region. The Temples for one god built in one region negatively affects worship of a different god in another region. The government of your city raises taxes too high.
A Scientific city becomes a metropolis and starts work on a fast travel network, but the rest of the server doesn't want a fast travel network.
Wars are not just going to be about guild egos. People are going to be eager to attack guilds because the rival guilds intrinsically have a negative impact on their objectives.
So, back to my point:
It is not a given that just because Guild B has more members than Guild A, Guild B will win a war. There may be many more players among other guilds and alliances who will side with Guild B against Guild A because Guild A influences the server in a way that most people on the server don't like.
Rarely will wars in Ashes be just about the kinds of conflicts that have driven wars in previous MMORPGs.
Meaningful Conflict will be increasing tensions and driving people towards PvP combat much of the time.
Why wouldn't you form guilds in the same city from people who log on at similar time frames?
It's still the same number of people online at any given time whether you're in sub-guilds or one mega-guild.
As well, is for full loot upon death. Yeah, I kind of see where that is going. Lol
You probably marked the wrong player as I never said anything about how big player limit would be good for guilds...
Seems TheRed will be such a guild from what I gathered with yesterday's Guild Fair. Looks like they'll be aiming for 600 members from multiple guilds who "crush everyone in the world".
Tis a little strange for me because I tend to find small guilds in MMOs who have a progression mentality and get things done. Wrongly or correctly, I've always thought that being in a large guild means you lose out and if there's a clique, which you're not a part of, then you're going to miss out. However, with this type of game it may actually be beneficial to be in a large guild or at least allied to one.
I assume quantity will be a factor when it comes to assaulting a node/city, especially at Stage 3+.
Alliances make game much more interesting, rather than mega guilds. Why? Alliances break, they get angry to each other, they will develop new ideas that rest of the alliance might not have. And stuff like that. <-- Is healthy for the game.
Mega guild just stands there and have no evolution to any direction. Which is bad for the longevity of any game.
Personally I hope they cap it to 200, there is literally no need for more. no one knows that many people, even in real life. So why pretend here that you do? It's just easy way to say I'm too lazy to manage alliances.
But hey, how about the fact that if you have 500 casuals, there is still too few online at the same time to have meaningful gameplay as a guild?
Well this can be tricky. But are you sure you need to take even the most casual ones, like those that have 1-2 hours per week? Are you sure you could not just add active players and keep those rarely online players in a friendlist if you had to stay in touch?
All in all, majority of reasons favor medium(100-200)guilds, and some favor bigger ones. For the health of the game, there is no choice between those in my opinion.
Once we gather some more concrete information on the current determination of guild cap + world population sizes then at least we can discuss in more detail what could be a good compromise.
I still think fog's original post was a good one because it's feedback that Intrepid can consider and weigh against other perspectives. If what we've seen so far is any indication, Steven and Intrepid will be responsive to the community, so they'll be trying to find a compromise while also realizing that larger guilds will have more power to be vocal in a concentrated manner.
In the scenario of 400(half and half) vs 200(hardcore) even in the event you have the most numbers and your casual forces are guarded/following orders you still penalized yourself in this fight. Say guild A400 is defending a position such as a castle or freehold in the even guerrilla tactics are applied by guild B200 they can easily chip down defenses as GuildA400 can't defend and give chase. If they choose to do so they either send capable combatants ie hardcore players or casual which = out to cannon fodder in both scenarios.
In the even the hardcore leave to fight then the base is in a weakened state and tactically speaking the counter offensive party will most likely be dragged around to keep them out of the fight. Now your base has what 100+200casuals vs probably a rough army of 150 hardcore... Basically you gimped your meaningful combat defenses.
On the hand of sending the casuals out their literally just feed and I imagine quite a few would be like "wtf? No we wouldn't even kill one of them...". Then you have the issue of sending your "meat shields" out. Now not only are your shields gone it is an unknown with how the system works if they can make it back in time to help defend. Couple that with the penalties and gear damage sustained.
Your literally making your casuals weaker by destroying their gear and their xp to buy yourself a small amount of time.
Finally if you just stand and defend. If your good with the numbers you might be able to dead lock with coordination but it'll then just become a brickwall scenario that drains both sides resources. In that event they may simply wait you out. Odds are pretty good your not going anywhere and your all trapped in a base.
The classic "starve em out" scenario of medieval combat. The enemy can still somewhat farm from the outlying resources you can't being pinned in as you are. Obviously this is a rather specific scenario but people were complaining about "meaningful combat".
And it's hard when you have such a large community to decide who goes to which guild when you have guild caps. Yes ,they will have an alliance system, but as of yet we don't know how involved that will be. Will we able to fight in PVP as if we were a single guild during a castle seige, will you be able to share a guild bank / alliance bank with them, will there be Alliance buffs on top of guild buffs, or is it purely one big chatroom and that is it? So I completely understand his desire to have the player cap increased.
It should be challenging and risky to make any significant change to the narrative. IS talks about the need for coordination, planning, teamwork and skill, not just brute force and gear check. IS have said that zerging and griefing will not be viable playstyles in this game. In PvP, there are pretty steep consequences such as loot and gear loss. In PvE, maybe there will be wiping mechanics that simply cannot be ignored.
TL;DR No system, no matter how well tuned, will stop people from trying to play like antisocial idiots, but the goal shouldn't be to totally squelch our playstyles, just to have fitting consequences for decisions that we make.
Assuming another 200 hardcore joins the 200hard/200casual. They still don't have a good chance. a good guild will beat most any guild who has that level gap.
This argument has become stupid and you don't even take part is PvP so I don't know why you even wanted this argument. It's like me arguing the best PvE only game when that's just not what I do
What you mentioned is irrelevant if I don't agree with you.
There will be a variety of types of wars.
Including wars where pretty much anyone can just jump in and join a war regardless of alliances - as is the case specifically with node sieges.
Citizens of a node that is under siege will be flagged as a defender of the node. Everyone else on the server can join as an attacker. Unless you are in a party, raid, guild or alliance with the defenders.
As I stated, there is no reason to assume how many will choose to ally with either Guild A or Guild B.
There is no reason to place a limit on how many will ally with either guild.
There is no reason to assume what types of guilds will ally with either guild.
Because Meaningful Conflict will usually be a significant factor driving who supports whom in a war, when and why.
I actually have never stated that I never take part in PvP combat, that is another false assumption on your part. Not that it matters.
You clearly have no understanding of what Meaningful Conflict entails and how it will foment PvP combat.
I have a keen understanding of Meaningful Conflict because it is basically the Ashes equivalent of PvP conflict in EQNext. And the EQNext did a great job of explaining the concept to us during SOE Live 2014.
So, no, it's not like you arguing with me about a PvE game.
The reason discussing this with you is futile is that you think guild rivalries and PvP combat and wars will be just like previous games - even just like Lineage 2.
It's actually all going to be significantly different.
Meaningful combat isn't really a thing.
Meaningful Conflict refers to the motivations that drive players to engage in PvP combat beyond simply a love for PvP combat - beyond fighting simply due to egos and whether a guild is hardcore or casual or whether it's fun to gank and loot lowbies.
But, this is a significant derail in any case.
We should probably get back to discussing guild caps.
In the case of Gaiscioch, we're the entity that will be there to provide help for the smaller guys who need it when they're pushed by the wicked monopolizers. We have tons of people in our family from all over the world. I would estimate we might have up to 200 players online at one given time during the launch. After 5 months I would be surprised if you see more than 50% of that online at a time, but you would see a decent population of online members throughout the entire day. We're big, but we're spread out over all time zones. That's what we mean by a home for the casual. You don't have to worry if your work schedule changes or whatever comes up, there's always people on who you're familiar with to play with when you log on.
If the alliance system takes care of all of that by itself, then that'll work as far as I'm concerned. Over the years we have just developed a sense of looking down the road at things that could create potential issues for our community, and try to have them looked at before things are set in stone.
Alliances will be limited to how many guilds can be in them, hence this will limit the amount of players able to defend or attack under the name of the alliance. Sieges and stuff will be registered ingame events. You will have to register under a name, if we have 3 guilds in an alliance with 600 in each guild. Who is going to prevent them from taking whatever they want?
Who determines if something is under siege or not, can one guy just start a siege?
Anyone that can complete the prerequisites of node sieges can start it, and anyone can participate. Castle sieges however are intended for guilds.
Who can participate in node sieging?
Anyone can participate in node sieges; the castle sieges are different however.
IS have talked about this several times. The exact details haven't been revealed yet, but there are many ways to make an encounters difficulty scale in proportion to the army size (attackers or defenders).
The simplest way to favor smaller armies is to include wiping mechanics, such as an AOE seige engine attack that delivers a killing blow to anyone within X yards of impact. The higher the concentration of players (defenders in this example), the more casualties this attack will cause. This is just an random hypothetical example.
Another way is to introduce encounter mechanics that require intensive coordination. The more people in the army, the harder it is to coordinate movements and positioning. A smaller defending army might be able to notice "tells" of incoming fire, that would be largely hidden in the fog of war for larger defending forces.
The encounter designers at IS will undoubtedly have a huge pallet of mechanics that can be mix and matched to counteract zerging by weight of power and/or brute forcing by weight of sheer numbers.