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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
For a game like Ashes of creation to be the best it can be, guilds are going to have to have the tools they need to thrive and have as much functionality as they can get their hands on. Some of the things I wish for and some of the things I have seen from other games that are must haves are these:
One thing that I would love to see and is my number 1 wish, is the ability to interact with my guild via an app that I can make use of with my phone and hopefully smart watch. I would love the ability to send/receive messages to guild mates from it, have chat groups with them while they are in game and I am not, would love the ability to see rank lists and membership lists through it. Would love to have the ability to access my character and gear, to see interactions in and from the guild bank. To be able to see the status of my auction listings and get notifications of sales. Access to a guild calendar through it. In short I really hope the functionality of a app that can encompass guild features as well as other features will be in the cards.
In game I need things like:
Guild halls that actually have functions that members can interact with
Guild banks and all the ability to set permission levels and access to records of what's being deposited and withdrawal
The ability to create special ranks and permissions so that things can be allowed and un allowed via a players rank level. For functions like access to MOTD, invite permission, demote or the ability to kick players, etc
access to a guild calendar so that the guild can organize events and meet ups in an easy and functional way
The ability to assign titles and bonuses to members of the guild by the guild leader in recognition of great deeds or accomplishments
give people the ability to set information about themselves on rosters and such so they can list their roles, their nicknames, maybe a bio page so that role players have somewhere to catalog a character story for others to read.
Need good in game chat options so that we don't have to look outside of game for this situation.
Need to have the ability to set up a recruitment page of some sort so that when prospective members inspect us they can have the ability to see the "about us" stuff so that they can decide whether they want to join or answer any questions.
When viewing the roster and activity icon of some sort so that people can actually know who is online or not, sounds like such a minute thing but can be immensely helpful. Also the ability to have a notification that players have joined or left the realm can help also. The ability for the individual player to turn these features on or off for themselves is nice too.
customizable gear or banners or placards or something so a guild can show off their colors or insignia is a must.
The ability to create player written books in game for people to read and trade is something that is such a cool feature that would help a guild log their accomplishments for the world to read.
The ability to set up something like DKP so that the guild members have a currency they can spend on items in a guild shop or things like that is neat.
The ability for leaders in the guild to create events or quest lines so that guild can more effectively interact with the game on their own terms type of thing.
Some sort of contribution list so that leaders and members can see who is contributing.
Ok I think that's about it for now, can you tell I love this topic LMAO
-Mr. Sam Walton
In Game
There should be built-in UI functionality to post guild recruitment advertisements for guilds on a given server. Players can filter through this list based on what they are looking for in a guild (PvP, PvX, RP, Casual, Hardcore, nomads). These postings would only be visible to players on the guild's server. The posting would include the name of the person(s) to contact. No auto-inviting mechanisms.
Out of Game
Each server should have their own forum where guilds on that particular server can post recruitment threads without worrying about the noise from guilds on other servers. In my opinion, posting guild recruitment threads on server forums that the guild isn't a part of should be against forum ToS to avoid spam.
Guild Retention
Basic guild UI functionality displaying an online list of players, while also containing player metadata such as level, race, archetypes, professions, location, status, achievement points and other worthy information.
Players should have the ability to post their own personal note for others to see (ex: I'm on vacation. Be back next week.).
It would be nice to have an organizational chart of the guild hierarchy, displaying the names of the Guild Master and officers, as a quick reference for members.
Other guild perks to sustain retention: Guild Bank, Guild Activity (roster updates, player activity/achievements), Guild Missions (see Guild Wars 2) and Guild Calendar to schedule events.
Most of the guilds I've been in died because the guild leader stopped playing.
- Most common solution was after x days of the guild leader being AFK, the officer with the highest guild contribution was allowed to replace the guild leader.
I don't like this, it makes a mess of social dynamics in the guild - I'd prefer a voting system so we can decide on a guild leader based on personality, not an in-game score.(I want to flag that I mostly play in social guilds, not hardcore ones so the score system might work better for hardcore guilds but I don't know.)
For player retention, I usually stayed in guilds because I liked the guild members and because we did guild quests that were rewarding.
Some people, make heavy use of the forums, reddit, or discord. Other people just make their own websites to recruit players. Whatever the DEVs spend time developing is just competing with already established systems people use to find each other.
In addition. Any system that parses in game character information such as WOWs armory or FFXIVs lodestone is really only used for stocking and gating. I have only ever found myself or seen others using systems like these to see what people are wearing, and thus gage what they have done or are capable of. These systems tend to gate people out of groups and guilds more than let them in.
I would highly encourage the DEVs not to waste any time developing extra tools for guild recruitment, and leave guild recruitment to the players. Take that would be wasted on developing recruitment tools that probably wont be used often, and put it into just making sure guilds are as polished as can be.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I have founded and worked at the top of quite a few guilds in my time, and in my experience the most useful tools for guilds are the ones available in-game rather than those outside of it. External tools are more supplementary after a guild is already established, at which point they already have the pooled resources to create those themselves, so they aren't particularly necessary for most guilds. In-game tools for recruiting have a better chance of reaching potential members, and in-game tools for retention give more reason to be active and invested in the guild and consequently the game itself.
For recruitment, the best features would be in-game locations to go recruiting. Locations ONLY for recruiting. Being drowned out by traders and raiders is incredibly tiring, and there are two simple in-game features which would be very useful for most guilds to overcome this issue. One would be a billboard in a highly trafficked location of each town where guilds can post recruitment notices. The other would be a tavern or town square for guilds to meet each other and prospective members, preferably along the main road of town. Both of these are features which would be indispensable to most guilds. Another idea for recruitment would be a seasonal guild recruitment event, one which encourages guilds to recruit new members and for guildless players to join guilds. Of course the benefits for the guildless shouldn't be so large that solo players feel slighted, but it should be enough to encourage people who aren't committed to playing solo to participate. This would most likely be exclusive event cosmetics and mounts, and with that even solo players would be encouraged to participate as long as they can still retain those rewards after leaving the guild they joined. Such temporary membership ultimately benefits both sides by encouraging players to build relationships with each other, and as a result I think quite a few players who join with that intention will end up staying in their new guilds when it turns out to be a fun experience.
For retention, there are many ideas which could be implemented, but I think the most useful would be giving periodic rewards for players who stay in the same guild. Rewards which would increase the longer a player remains in that guild. Perhaps even a tiered reward system which varies based on how active members are within the guild by measuring stats such as how often they party up with guildmates and use guild chat. Of course the requirements shouldn't be so high that players feel forced to do it, but it should be enough to complete a quest with a guildmate once a week and talk in chat a few times per week to get the highest reward. The biggest difficulty in implementing features like these is figuring out what the rewards should be, but again I think exclusive cosmetics and mounts would be plenty for most.
Those are just some of my thoughts on how guild recruitment and retention should be handled. While I have not covered everything, I believe these are the key foundational features which would be easy to implement and iterate upon over time.
TL;DR
-In-game locations to go recruiting (locations ONLY for recruiting, such as a guild tavern or guild square)
-Recruitment billboards in highly trafficked locations of each town
-Seasonal guild recruitment events
-Guild membership rewards which scale up with time spent in the same guild
-Exclusive cosmetics and mounts for active players in guilds
Roles will be very important as one leader cant possibley give time to every single person they would not have time to do the things they wanted to do. I would say that roles shouldnt be limited in number either.
I am not a fan of GW2 guild halls. Since housing in AOC is more akin to Archeage, it would be a much better fit if housing was left to the players. One of the primary motivators of guild halls is personalization and feeling a connection. Everyone having a similar castle or mansion blueprint really diminishes that. There's something really sweet and memorable about everyone pooling up resources and pimping out an archeage townhouse.
Aside from a decent Chatbox system, this post has everything.
I am of the opinion that we should go back to roots, with less tools and less member capacity.
1) I think it's best for guild invites to be about meeting a person, learning about them through actual gameplay sessions and a simple click on target /invite from up close instead of a distance. So, I am against guild application mechanisms.
2) It has been said that guild leaders can spend guild points to either increase member capacity or provide more and stronger guild passive skills for fewer members. Meh... 40 players with a few passives won't beat 2000 of the same lv and gear. I would like to see the return of many banners of 60-70 guild members (with the addition of a 10 member academy spare allocation), instead of half the server displaying 1 icon and the other half displaying the opposition icon.
Alliances of real guild leaders with their own banners looks better than 1 mega guild leader, his 20 real friends and 2000 pawns.
So I am against high capacity for guilds.
3) For me real retention can be achieved by knowing all the guild members well and having spent time with them in various activities, be it the normal 4-5h lv up session, gear crafting goals, raiding, PvP assisting, organized PvP functions, guild events and fairs, all while you proudly display your guild emblem by the side of your names.
Only in L2 and Tera online did I felt like socializing with my guild members due to the low member capacity. We talked in the same tone of familiarity, appreciation and respect as squad or platoon members talk to each other, real life friends that have grown up together etc etc. Not "we need 1 more dps for the instanced raid". You know who the dps are. Call them by name.
Not "can somebody craft me 100 healing pots?". You know who the alchemist is, call them by their name.
I personally don't like it when a world chat is spammed with guild recruitments.
So I would like to see some ingame interface where people looking for a guild can easily search for a guild and apply.
But they can also post something that they are looking for a guild and a guild can then contact them.
It would also be fun and useful if there where message boards in taverns or the town square of a node.
And players can run up to this board to see all the guilds that are in that node looking for more members.
Emblems
I would like to see the ability to make emblems with a lot of different options.
I don't like it when multiple guilds have the same or similar emblem because of a lack of options available.
If you allow to import images into the game to be used as emblems I would like it to be moderated.
As I do not like it when there are emersion braking emblems.
There is already guild armor and cloaks in the game.
The possibility to pick where the emblem goes on the armor would be very fun.
Chat window
Give the option for officers to have there own ingame chat window.
If you have a phone app that is linked to the game allow us to see guild chat in it as well.
And officers to manager member roles with the app.
And also send guild invites to members that applied for the guild on the message board
UI
The guild UI ingame should be clean and easy to read.
Not a mess of symbols and titles.
Maybe you can group guild members together with the same rank and make sub categories inside of the member list.
It is also very useful to just be able to right click on a member name in the UI or the world and be able to change their guild rank.
An ingame event calendar would also be very useful.
On a separate tab you could have a log of who left and joined the guild.
A log for the guild bank will also be useful. But not in the same log as the joining and leaving of members please.
For the alliance UI it would be useful to not have all members of the alliance in a single list.
Maybe have 4 buttons with each guild emblem on. And then you click the emblem you see the member list of that guild.
Also would be useful if guild members and alliance members have different color names out in the world.
So that you can easily see who is a guild member or alliance member.
But if they are in a node you are at war with you don't see the color.
I would also like to see a very in depth permission system.
So we can create as many guild ranks as we need. And provide each with there respective permissions.
That be access to guild bank deposit or withdraw, the ability to place furniture in the guild hall, send guild invites, promote/demote members, access the guild ships/caravans, ect.
Guild Halls
Guild halls need to be a little more than just a building in the world or a node.
If it is just a building I don't see guild members visiting it often.
So maybe in order to take or deposit items from the guild bank you need to go to the guild hall.
And maybe also the option to access your bank of the nearby node from the guild hall.
There is a tavern system in the game where players can sell food to visitors.
Maybe have something similar in the guild hall where guild members can go to buy food from the guild and receive a buff.
Other options
It would also be fun to have a option to lend out your ships or caravans to guild members.
So that if you have one amazing ship in your guild but the member owning that ship is not online they can set it so the guild could still use it. Maybe also add the option to pick the guild rank that can use it. So that only a officer or leader can pull out the ship.
In BDO the guild members receive a daily pay and have a contact with the guild. This is a interesting system.
Maybe a guild can earn money by doing guild missions and then pay members based on their activity.
A daily pay might be to much. But a system where a guild leader can send out a pay to all members that attended an event.
Giving a guild these types of tools will make it easy to recruit and manage members.
And also keep members active and interested in participating in guild activities.
Recruiting: It all depends on what type of guild you want to have. A massive 1000+ army or a small gang of 10. But it all starts with them filling out a simple form and how we can contact them. This needs to be as easy as possible. Then depending on the situation I would have a individual chat to get to know them better. If they fit the guilds motto and goals then they in.
Retention: Talk to everyone individually, not in a lobby. Take the time as leader and hear if they have any issues or suggestions. They joined to be social and will almost appreciate your time. Do this regularly unless the person don’t want to.
I don’t want to comment on the technical stuff.
Feel free to ask if I was unclear. Much love ❤️
- customisable ranks rather than fixed ones so you may give certain members gathering titles etc. Or perhaps a person is assigned one rank but can be assigned multiple customisable roles to that individual so people have their responsibilities for the guild.
- guild house where guild can easily meet up (perhaps instanced so it does not affect real world travel?)
- message boards can fit message of the day, guild objectives, guild events etc
- Not sure how guild work exactly in Ashes but if you contribute money to the guild in a way then a contribution ranking system would be nice
- Most people use Discord at the moment in my experience, so if there's any discord integration that could be done that would be awesome.
- Most important, guild objectives/activities that actually serve a purpose!
When we had a lot of members, I used to take screenshot of the raidframe in ArcheAge and put a tick next to the player names on our sheet to keep track of attendance. In World of Warcraft, this is not needed because raider.io website is doing that for you. And also possible thanks to addons. Since we will not have any addons in Ashes, an attendance tracking system would be very useful especially for large guilds. As soon as a 10+ player raid is made by an officer or a guild leader, the system should start tracking who joins and who leaves, post the results on a guild calendar or something. This will also help the guilds who are using DKP system to reward their players fairly.
Guild bank with detailed transaction log. Allow officers and leader to add custom notes to transactions. For example, on a "-2500g withdrawal" log I should be able to add a short note such as "Geared up the guild leader's girlfriend"
A proper ranking system within the guild with highly customizable permissions. All games have officer rank yes. But let the guild leader decide which officer(s) can declare a war, which can take money from the guild bank and which can accept/reject the new in-game applications to the guild.
Outside of the game:
I have always admired the character tracking section on the websites of Korean MMOs. You could see their items, skill set-up, spec, enchants, rankings, everything... World of Warcraft also did it right (this is my pleb character's page for the referance: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/character/eu/ravencrest/Demonron). The reason I like this as a guild leader is because I don't want to put the burden of "updating your information on the guild sheet" on members. I can just assign an officer to check member's character page and in 1 hour he should be done finishing everything. Instead of asking members to update their informatin on a daily basis. Also without a character page, there is no way to keep track of every single detail on members' gearpieces. So instead of expecting them to update their stuff, I can just go check their character profile and see how they are doing. Also when I need to distribute World Boss loot as a guild leader or officer, character pages would help me to see who needs it the most.
Keeping track of players' rankings on the game's official website will also help organise best-of-the-month kind of guild events and encourage members to take a part in the competitive environment.
Retention.
For retention, honestly, make an ingame calendar. Make it easy all for members to both to join and setup guild events: Raids, dungeon runs, RP sessions, node sieges, whatever. Include both time and date obviously, as well as a location marker on the map, and a description.
A guild often lives and dies based on how much the members do stuff together. Make it easy to organize ingame, instead of having to rely on 3rd party tools that take you out of the game.
Sync the ingame calendar to the companion app for the phone, and let people easily add those events to their RL calendar as well, if they so choose.
Recruitment
I suppose a searchable database ingame for guilds would be nice. Like a matchmaking service, where guilds choose from a bunch of descriptive tags and then players can filter using those. Obviously, let guilds add a recruitment post and description of their guild ingame as well.
Application functionality
Discord integration
Being able to clearly see what guild that player belongs to is important, as well as being able to click on that person and view their guild's info page. Simple links to UMG elements. But that guild info page is your advertisement, so giving some flexibility and modularity to this page will go a long way to satisfying the different types of guilds out there, and give guilds the ability to be unique and not just another newspaper classified ad. I'd love to give a good example, but I'm not there yet.
At it's core, a guild offers communal bonds. Some guilds can stand on this alone, others benefit from in-game rewards/ranks, etc. Each guild has their own niche and suit a specific playstyle or even morality standard. Their introduction page should be able to reflect this.
In-game questionnaire or application process, but most guilds already have one out of game using google forms or discord reaction setups, or full websites. At this point, we're talking about a luxury item, really. Not necessary, but helpful if available. Given the time to implement and usefulness, I'd consider this low-hanging fruit. It's 80% UMG work and 20% code/graphics.
The most important tool for retention is keeping members engaged outside of the game. For me, this is Discord. Even when players are not able to play, having one singular place that they can commune via phone, or pc is important. No game can (or has) done this well enough, and why... These tools are already out there.
NOW, if a game were to integrate/partner with Discord, that would be awesome. Partnering with a single product like this is a risky proposal, but adding in some limited functionality that could be easily expanded to other platforms via api would be good. Guild feed (guild chat to rss feed). Guild LOG to rss would be cool. Role/Rank sync, etc. These are unnecessary but would be awesome features.
I slightly disagree with you.
As the practice of our guild shows. People who do not support communication in non-games. As a rule, they do not stay long. Because nobody and nothing keeps them in the guild.
For the rest, I agree with you.
Especially with the publication of links to guild resources. It will be very convenient
Unless I missed someone's mention of it, it would be nice to be able to create some sort of uniform or some clothing item with the guild's logo.
This can be useful for a number of reasons, but also it's just a cool option
A guild recruitment channel and rules to ensure that no other channels can be used for that purpose. Helps to avoid spam in public channels.
A searchable guild list and options for guilds to indicate what they want to recruit, e.g. dps, heal, tank, pve, pvp, pvx...
For retention:
Some games have guild buffs other offer guilds the ability to share guild funds with players.
The easiest way to give that purpose - is to implement a solid system of guild wars, daily conflicts on spot (pvp in open world), open-world boss fights, sieges etc. When people have allies, rivals and enemies, as well as goals to work together towards., they will stick to their guilds.
Because even if they don't publicly admit it - most people who play competitive MMO's are looking for a sense of of belonging. In a world full of drama, battles, friendship, love and betrayals, and unique guilds - this alone will keep people playing, even if the game declines.
In games that don't have that, 99% of guilds will be just a "bunch of random dudes having fun". And that type of guilds, while being "nice" and all, just don't retent people. If they bored, they will leave, and you will not be able to stop that (well, if only maybe by deceit - temporarily).
As a new player, little visual cues like this would pique my curiosity.
I have some interesting ideas:
1- See references 📍 in the map about others members of guild.
I never seen something like an "option in the map for see the members of the guild" in other game.
Could be a great option for little groups of players...
Maybe if u can see where are the members in the map, you can go to do missions or gather items in an enemy zone with the knowledge than they can help you if someone attack you.
It´s a simply option for dont spam in the chat of guild.
2- Voice chat in-game for groups of 5 to 10 players
Could be great for have more social connection, and dont stay using other program as discord than consume RAM...
3- I love the system of "proposition for a new member in the guild". Have references of a new player will be neccesary for big guilds.
4- A system for vote or decline members, among all members of the guild, could be very social.
(Choose a system democratic✉️/oligarchy⚔️/totalitarism👑 for choose new members.)
Sorry for my english and long live to AOC!
This would give players a tremendous resource for determining which guilds they might be interested in, and the real-time data ensures that the information is accurate and reflects the current activity level of the guilds.
There might also be metrics that could be added to the list (e.g. number of node contributions made by members in the past 7 days), but I'm not sure which game metrics would be useful yet without seeing the implemented systems first.
I second that!
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
Bank with logs. In house currency for items- As in if you deposit (item A) you get 12 G coins for it. Allows you to buy from the guild a copper shield for 10 G coins.
Guild building system based off of crafters in the guild. If we have master blacksmith, guild castle can have a repair npc. So on so on.
Guild competitions.(fight for another guilds space) Special gear markings for guild, not just top pvp rank. Things like most money made, best miners, best whatever.
Guild alliances system including with npc factions.
Unique builds for different types of guilds.(Like Guild boats)
Also please ensure you cant be spammed with invites if you running solo. Please dont add an auto LFG. Those are guild killers. Ensure guilds are needed for some aspects of the game. Thats what brings players back.
Multiple ways to convey needs to entirety of guild. As in, they go to guild tab and can see the guild needs more iron.
AOC page for guilds. I don't like using external.
Ability to do server transfers would be nice. Sometimes, you lose the war or pop gets to large and its time to go. Would be nice to have easy way to swing at least some of the assets over without starting from ground zero.
In house way to run votes to guild. Like if I ask the guild, "Yes or No, who would be willing to Ally with the insufferable coonts guild." I can get send it out and check on completion rates and answers.
Items unique to guilds with certain types of craftsmen. Like 2 master blacksmiths and 2 master jewelwers will unlock a schematic for memebers to produce the "Rusty Trombone".
Thank you
Locust
Adding filters like specific goals that the guild will peruse is super important to the foundation of the guilds themselves. For instance I would want to join a finance guild that focuses on getting rich over PvP, PvE, or crafting.
Keeping track of a players guild history; some sort of reputation for participating in a guild, and letting players rate guilds would really let the guilds compete with each other on who the best guild is and who the best guild members are.
As a guild master I wouldn't want to recruit a member that gets kicked out of lots of guilds and only scores a minimal amount of participation. These players are a drain on resources and just have a hard time finding good guilds that fit their playstyle because they choose at random and maybe don't get invested because they land in the wrong group.
Think of the way you structure guilds in your game more like a dating app. You want to know the psychology of the players and find them groups that best match them or they wont have such a good time in the game.
Guilds will come and go, but the last thing you want is everyone migrating into one or two super guilds and collectively quitting the game over some drama. I also have a crazy suggestion.
Let players toggle a setting called "Professional Guild Member" Players that are professional can create a contract with the guild that earns them game currency, but they can no longer quit without paying a fine and they can be traded to other guilds. If a guild disbands the professional members are added to a pool and any guild can place bids on them.
Hopefully my madness doesn't upset anyone, the down side to a Guild Score or a player score is that its a lot like socialisms, it works great on paper, but real power can be yielded if it falls into the wrong hands.