According to the AOC wiki guild size will be a determined path selection guild tree the max will be a possible three hundred , doing so means giving up other abilities that the guild can obtain. The highest guild abilities that a guild can obtain means the guild player base will be between 30 to 50 max members.
This means daily active players will be more like likely to be in such elite guilds.
With this information mega guilds maybe inclined to split and create an alliance with themselves and with active players this would mean they could spread out more and take control an area.
Possible make up of the alliance guilds would mean 1 and 2 maybe the elite tight groups that function as the high end players and the 3 to 5th guild are support and the bulk of the players. Organised right and depending on the guild tree abilities and what they provide the elite players may get buffed right up and would be the core defense. I guess it will be wait and see.
So instead of speculation forever have they actually come out and said if they would do anything to fix mega guilds from dominating or do they want them to completely dictate how a server is played? I know Steve really enjoys that kind of stuff so i'd expect him not mind it. But i can see a lot of exploits coming from this, which will leave both sides really bored and not wanting to play the game. (Adversaries being too huge and strong or too small and weak.)
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.
I think the best way to fight these mega guilds is by limiting member numbers along with limiting rewards given to huge guilds and alliances. Simply, limit stuff like freeholds, player housing, citizen number at nodes, everything that makes being a cog in 3000 people aliance not worth your while...so if your guild has a castle yet you dont benefit from most of its perks, theres no point for you to be in that guild. Or if only half of this guild are able to access freeholds, that means the half that cant access them, have an incentive to join other guild, other node, to be able to access this content. 1200 people is 10more than 10% of active server population. Thats huge, and it is not hard for most of them to log in for a siege on the weekend...
So instead of speculation forever have they actually come out and said if they would do anything to fix mega guilds from dominating or do they want them to completely dictate how a server is played? I know Steve really enjoys that kind of stuff so i'd expect him not mind it. But i can see a lot of exploits coming from this, which will leave both sides really bored and not wanting to play the game. (Adversaries being too huge and strong or too small and weak.)
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.
I'd agree that guild limiting numbers won't do much to curtail mega guild activity. This is pretty common in open world games, and they are used to it. But i think you are underestimating the effect distance and lack of fast travel can do to these guilds. This world is going to be large, and they have few forms of fast travel. Spread out like that, mega guilds tend to dominate an area, not the entire server.
Along with their inability to ever really remove someone from the fight, and with multiple of these organizations around, I'd expect to see a shifting territory war between 3-5 large groups per server.
Maybe this was already mentioned, but lower population guilds will also have more perks than high population ones. Not sure what these perks will be buy they aim to help balance the size gaps. As far as non siege goes, large guilds will struggle with taking control of nodes except for economic nodes. In order to partake in elections you have to be a citizen. And nodes have citizen caps. Econ you could just funnel gold though.
I am worried about the larger guilds I see in disc who have thousands of members in their channel forming multiple guilds and coordinating offline. Hopefully they turn on each other XD
Comments
This means daily active players will be more like likely to be in such elite guilds.
With this information mega guilds maybe inclined to split and create an alliance with themselves and with active players this would mean they could spread out more and take control an area.
Possible make up of the alliance guilds would mean 1 and 2 maybe the elite tight groups that function as the high end players and the 3 to 5th guild are support and the bulk of the players. Organised right and depending on the guild tree abilities and what they provide the elite players may get buffed right up and would be the core defense. I guess it will be wait and see.
I think the best way to fight these mega guilds is by limiting member numbers along with limiting rewards given to huge guilds and alliances. Simply, limit stuff like freeholds, player housing, citizen number at nodes, everything that makes being a cog in 3000 people aliance not worth your while...so if your guild has a castle yet you dont benefit from most of its perks, theres no point for you to be in that guild. Or if only half of this guild are able to access freeholds, that means the half that cant access them, have an incentive to join other guild, other node, to be able to access this content. 1200 people is 10more than 10% of active server population. Thats huge, and it is not hard for most of them to log in for a siege on the weekend...
I'd agree that guild limiting numbers won't do much to curtail mega guild activity. This is pretty common in open world games, and they are used to it. But i think you are underestimating the effect distance and lack of fast travel can do to these guilds. This world is going to be large, and they have few forms of fast travel. Spread out like that, mega guilds tend to dominate an area, not the entire server.
Along with their inability to ever really remove someone from the fight, and with multiple of these organizations around, I'd expect to see a shifting territory war between 3-5 large groups per server.
I am worried about the larger guilds I see in disc who have thousands of members in their channel forming multiple guilds and coordinating offline. Hopefully they turn on each other XD