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Mega Guilds
Gilbria
Member
I have been watching the dev videos and I was wondering what precautions are going to be implemented to avoid mega guilds taking and controlling the entire PvP aspect of the game. This was a large issue early on in ESO and why a 3 faction system did not take off. The Mega Guild goes in and the other guilds do not have the mere numbers to overtake it. The Mega Guild controls the map and then there is no way to over take them due to sheer numbers. Both sides then get bored and the game's PvP dies because there is nothing to do to overtake the guild and the mega guild gets bored because they have no competition.
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Comments
Mega alliances always get bored of dominating if they don't start being challenged and fall apart after some time. Usually breaking apart into several smaller guilds composed of the various cliques that tend to form in a zerg guild and going to war with one another.
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
Let the oligarchy live while it lasts - eventually it will implode and create space for new rule (hopefully that means a bunch of nodes shift, and then the server rolls into something new!)
According to The wiki the max guild size will be 300 people, with a total of 4 possible guilds per alliance.
Internal strife is bound to pop up in a video game relationship between 1200 people.
sorry, I got confused
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
It's not going to be just guilds fighting each other, because of the node system. You will be fighting for your node.
A mega guild would be fighting against itself if it spread out all over, so I don't see why they would do that (and that would negate your problem anyways).
Edit: But, mostly I think you're using an example from ESO that doesn't apply in AoC. Never played ESO, but it sounds like very different. One mega guild controlling the "map", doesn't sound like anything I can relate to AoC. A guild could be "kings" of a node, but they can't control other nodes, and everyone of a node can come together and attack/defend, not just guilds.
@maouw
I think thats exactly how ashes will play it so long as they maintain the open world nature of the game. I hate to use this so much but it really will be like a "shifting of the sands". Rivalries will be born through conflict and betrayal. Massive guilds will sweep through the server and then fall apart under the pressure of constant warfare with smaller guilds popping out of the ashes. Huge alliances will rise and dominate just to fall apart overnight through internal fighting. Nodes will be built up and maintained for months possibly years only to be brought to ruin, and have the entire area start anew. Trading guilds will align themselves with war-focused guilds to form a partnership.
This is how your server will have a story. When it's all said and done, player interactions and how they shape the world will be the most interesting content in Ashes. This is what you will remember 15 years after you stop playing the game. The story that was forged through conflict and diplomacy all through other players.
@Xyphien Hey, just wanna make a small correction. If you look here it says there will be 4 guilds max per alliance.
The problem here Mega Guilds in relation to an open world game blow anything in eso out of the water. When they aren't restricted to a certain zone, and can attack players anywhere, having a pre formed group of hundreds come over, leaves a bad taste in most people mouths, and since they organize outside of the game in existing communities, systems like alliances mean little to them (They just make allied alliances essentially) It's entirely possible one of these communities could become the dominant force on a server, to such a degree that no combined force could beat them.
But I don't think this will be how it plays out often. I see enough mechanics to lower the efficiency of groups like this taking hold, and without full loot drop mechanics there isn't a way to remove an enemy completely from the fight, so people you beat yesterday could be back today at full strength or even stronger. Plus when it does occur, as others have already noted, eventually they have no more valid fights, get bored and their alliance falls apart, or their server dies unfortunately.
That is unless the alliance can prove profitable for more opportunistic players.
Well if they all had one alt, they would have to make a separate alliance at that point. So their alts wouldn't be on the same 'team' technically.
I personally don't see many successful guilds being over 100 players, in all honesty.
In order for a guild to be rtuely successful - especially if we are talking long term - the guild needs a good number of actual good players. These players are good beucase they do what they need to do in order to be as individually good at the game as possible - and one of the things that they will need to do to be as individually good at the game as possible is they need to be in a smaller guild.
I can see smaller guilds running alliances of them plus 3 larger guilds of players that don't have this same drive to be as good as they can, but players in guilds like that come and go, and so the power of such alliances will come and go.
A guild of ~80 players that are all playing the game to be as good as they can be though? that is the guild to be wary of.
This is my experience of guild alliances too.
1 highly competitive guild allies with a bunch of semi-competitive ones
I don't imagine the top 1% of players dominating all servers... but then irl this happens... either way I'm heaps excited to see how it plays out. Whether the 1% rules everyone or not I'm gonna be all "I WAS HERE".
Also the fact that taxing is a legitimate perk for being in power - you KNOW people are going to fight dirty
I agree to an extent. When I ran my guild in wow we had 70 raiders for 7 ten player groups. We were all very competitive and often passed each other up for content. Each raid had a guild "leader" who was in charge of their own branch of the Council. We all recruited to the pool and from there players tried out for groups based on the people/comp/raid times.
Wow did not offer any other form of player other than PvP so we capped out at around 150 players. PvP had one leader who organized content but if I had continued I would have ended up with 3 which would have meant more content and more players. In AoC, there are more things to do in the end game. Professions, homes, pvp raiding, crafting that means something. I feel like with more that can be done, more players will want to join this style of community where jumping on discord while you aren't even in the game is still viable. Our current core group is really great and often communicate as a group of friends would. Once this extends to the content of AoC, we "should" be able to get 150 minimum.
At the end of the day, small guilds of 10-20 are just going to continue to be a cancer in a game like this (especially with alliances being limited to 4 currently). Giant mass invite guilds will also prove to be sink holes of players who just join for immediate events or to leech gear/resources and then hop to the next. We need more leaders willing to put in the time to grow the community and hold down some castles.
I was in such a guild in the Xbox version of Black Desert at launch and this is exactly what happened.
The guild consisted of players who came over from the PC version who already knew the game inside out so naturally we destroyed the Xbox noobs. Then I missed a few days of playing due to working 12+ hour shifts at work. When I got back I found myself without a guild because it had split into 3.
The guild lasted maybe a month before breaking up.
It's not hard at all to manage a big guild. These are the types of typical guilds and leaders.
Elitist guilds - They don't communicate or work with anyone. They want to do the content like a pro gamer....and may do so but this craps on the community and they typically only log on for raiding or pvp content.
Mass invite guilds - everyone can invite so everyone joins. toxic players for days. Loot leechers. They definitely die out and are always greedy from the top down in terms of loot.
Tiny guilds - Someone with a small group of friends who want to roam and pvp and often quit because they can't fight 15 vs 40. They get discouraged and think "this game sucks cuz zergs". Sometimes end game content gets done, sometimes not.
Casual guilds - Farm all day and don't care about the rest of the content. Just chill and hangout. No end game content focus at all.
Very.....VERY rarely is there a true community of players looking for a collection of "good" players. I recruit other leaders who enjoy coaching/training players to be better at the game (I do a lot of this myself). I look for people who can attend content and want to complete end game raiding and PvP. Nobody can do this alone and I expect an effort from each member just like I know they expect the effort from me to keep it together. If everyones works at the goal of "let's have some fun and actually learn from our mistakes" we will clear content, murder our enemies and truly enjoy what AoC is offering,
X guild name alpha, x guild name beta, and so on. Or just a guild name with a [Tag] to denote their community.
I think you misunderstood what I stated, to clarify There are guilds that have a over 1000 players can make 4 or 5 separate guilds. Then those guilds can make their own alliance. Each would have enough active players to accomplish this. This means one guild thats large enough can have its own active alliance that controls and is spread right out.
Now, my concern isn't actually a "mega guild" running a server, it would be the developers involving themselves in a negative way to break it up. I enjoy watching empires rise and fall in games, sadly though, current MMO's don't really allow that to happen. Here's hoping the developers don't involve themselves unnecessarily.
Ahh gotch ya, alts are going to be pain, alts and guild space is always a struggle if you have a guild count cap.
I am not sure if I like what Steven had said that using alts for extra storage and other support for main characters. Over the years I found that just a painful needless use for alts. I enjoyed games that eliminated that and opened up storage and crafting a bit. Shared crafting and storage made it much easier.
I however think its very problematic when you have organized streamers or huge discord groups who are ready to jump in and dominate a server with their sheer popularity and population. I feel bad for the people who are naively saying the guild size limited will help or distance will help but casual or even smaller guilds will be easily ran over or assimilated. My group of friends run a huge multi-mmo guild server on discord and can easily dictate who gets what and set up multiple guilds. The game even has features to deal with people who don't follow the rules (Group of PKer's or excluding them from node/guild rewards and economy, tagging and even banning from the Guild for promoting in-fighting). I'm assuming the most dedicated no-lifers will be either leaders or high-ranking members of such mega guilds and thus be players who are the most better of.
I feel like people are overestimating how prepared some people can be to really unify to try to take over a server. All of this is a little too much for a casual player with a small guild and not a huge amount of playtime (FFXIV, GW2 players) and people who don't like feeling like they are just a cog in a 2000-3000 player collective being bossed around by the no-lifers. Also the excuse that the rest of the server should just join up and fight the guild is very naive as well, people who arent already joining mega guilds won't bother with that kind of content at all and are more likely to just stop playing (Which i assume will be the majority from recent mmos or people who don't have the time to no-life) If they encounter barriers set by others players.
TL:DR: If this game is to survive it will need to cater to both players at a balanced level, i legit have no idea how to fix this problem except for ways to incentivise in-fighting and in-guilds betrayal and plot destruction which is rewarded but tbh outside of the game this stuff can be easily circumvented. But i have a feeling Steven wouldn't like that, he seems adamant to want to stick with some very outdated and unbalanced concepts, like using alts for storage or thinking people are going to be constantly nice and not exploit the plot system.