The one thing I have wished for in other MMORPGs that I've played is an integrated crafting Level/Experience/Patterns tracker for each guild member.
I.e. as you upgrade your crafting level towards master craftsman, your current progress is noted on your guild's roster. Imagine if you learned a rare pattern for a piece of gear and, instead of having to post somewhere in guild chat or spam trade chat etc., your guild's roster was automatically updated to note that you could now produce that piece of gear!
Your value as a guild member would be more obvious, especially of your gameplay style was mostly crafting-focused and you didn't participate in PVP as much.
Personally I LOVE the EVE Online Corp and Alliance management system. I know it’s designed for massive Corps but the whole management system, the finances, and asset ownership/management is really good! I would love to see some of those elements in Ashes!
For reference, here's my MMO background:
I currently run a competitive rated battlegrounds team in World of Warcraft (instanced 10 v 10 PVP). We are around 2.3 rating so not the most elite out there, but well above average. I've been doing competitive PVP since the start of the Legion expansion and have had multiple seasons where I've been in the top 3% of the North American Region. I've run this team via just my friends list/WoW communities as well as inside my current guild (where I am also the RBG officer with complete control on who I include/exclude in our high rated games).
Vanilla WoW and the first few expansions I was an officer involved in high-end raiding (including getting some server first kills).
Between these competitive PvP/PvE experiences I had a variety of levels of playing, sometimes very casual/solo, sometimes with guilds raiding 1-2 days/week. I've experienced every type of content WoW has offered. I've also dabbled in some other MMOs like Star Wars: The Old Republic, but I always went back to WoW. I played DAoC for a year before WoW came out. Overall I consider myself a PvX player who likes a variety in my gameplay.
Guild/Team tools outside of a game: Recruiting: Right now I use drustvar.com to look up the stats of new players before admitting them into my RBG team. This site has an addon in-game, but it really isn't that accurate so I'm usually using the add-on to copy a URL to look up the player's experience. I also use raider.io when evaluating players for Mythic+. I also use thelootdistrict.com to get a sense of what the current in-game meta is to help ensure I'm forming the right team comp and overall trends.
I'm a bit torn on the use of these tools (and other tools like warcraftlogs.com). On one hand, as a leader these are helpful for me to sift through the playerbase and find the good talent. On the other hand, these tools make it hard for players who do not already have experience to actually get a chance. So good for me as a leader, but perhaps bad for the broader community. A good compromise might be to have in-game damage/healing/etc meters (more on the importance of this below), but not the ability to export the data outside the game. If the data could not be exported (or aggregated over longer periods of time), then it would give people a chance to get into stuff that they might not be able to do otherwise (even though they might have the skill, but just not the opportunity to prove it).
Managing the guild/team: All I really need is a discord server. No need to build voice in game, cause Discord will do it better. No need for a guild website, I would prefer the non-discord features to interact with and manage a guild to be in game.
Guild/Team tools inside the game: Recruiting: Most of my recruiting is done through group finder + trying out players. I've had many nights where I've got 8 - 9 players of my core team and need to find 1 - 2 pugs to fill the gaps. The Group Finder system WoW uses for RBG/Mythic+ is FANTASTIC. (Note, this is VERY different than the automatic group formation used for more casual content like raidfinder and non-rated battlegrounds. Automatic matchmaking is something that can remove the sense of community). The Group finder tool helps because I can have people apply in real time for a specific activity, and I can see what their gear level is and I can chat with them to see if they will be a good fit for the team. This tool is WAY better than spaming in general or trade chat trying to find people (which will 100% happen if you do not have a system like this).
I do like the features for people to search for guilds and apply to them in-game. However I don't use this as much because before I invite someone to join my guild I want to play some games with them. As such, a group finder tool is a more effective/meaningful way for recruiting people to my guild/team.
Managing the guild/team: Guild chat and officer chat are needed for sure. The ability to create additional custom chat types could be helpful, but I typically just use discord if something like that is needed. The ability to post announcements in game (including links to external tools like discord or community sites like Wowhead) is also important. Being able to customize ranks within a guild and give certain permissions/perks to different ranks is also important. Things like access levels to guild bank, guild paying for repair bills, etc. It's also important to see how much each member if contributing to the guild/guild objectives. In AoC I could see this being things like contributing to a Node the guild is invested in, or contributing to guild v guild PvP.
It's also important to see when a user was last logged in (at a minimum. Even better would be stats like playtime over the last week/month so you could see who the inactives are when it comes time to clean up the roster).
I could see it being useful to be able to automatically see which characters have alts in the guild. Currently this is always done as a combination of guild ranks + guild notes. Since its manual, things always gets missed (having guild viewable notes and officer notes for each person is also a good feature to have).
Damage/healing/etc meters are very important for both recruiting and managing the guild/team: I play on a 35" widescreen. With my setup I run the "Details!" add-on in WoW. I've got multiple meters up and running on my screen to track: damage done, healing done, damage taken, interrupts, dispells, CC done, etc. Having quick/easy access to this data in real time during a game is critical for a few reasons: (1) If we are losing a game, its either due to our performance or our strategy. It's usually easy to tell when the strategy is not working, but without meters you cannot tell if its due to the team's performance. Seeing the real-time performance enables me as a leader to alter our strategy mid-game. (2) Meters help me evaluate the new players and determine if I want to actively pursue them for recruitment or not. It also helps me make more data-driven decisions on who I may need to sit for games when we have too many people on. Building a competitive team is a bit of a guessing game without in-games meters.
One other thought. I love that AoC is looking to make guild more meaningful. Guild vs Guild combat/alliances sounds so much more exciting than Horde vs Alliance faction war. In WoW I can fully run my RBG team with or without a guild structure and thats kinda sad.
Of course, don't go too far, I want to be able to bring people into my guild runs and try them out before tossing them a guild invite (or just play with friends who happen to want to stay in another guild).
One fantasy i have and see in most animes or read about in novels but never saw the light in mmos. Is a way for a guild to put or receive missions to or from outsiders.
For exemple :
If a guild managed to upgrade it guildhall it can have access to a board where it can put missions for outsiders to do some gathering or ask for a caravan escort.
Same outsiders or citizens of a node can post a request in the guild/node board asking for an escort or help in leveling...
This may have been said somewhere, but I've always wondered if it could work to have an optional progression system within Guild Ranks independent of higher ups. Like, if I as guild leader decide that people should be able to rank up, even if just to a certain point, without the intervention of a higher ranked member, then that should be doable. So a recruit could in theory contribute enough resources or XP to the guild that they attain a higher rank, if only like a mid tier rank. This assuming of course guilds have some kind of standardized rank system rather than only custom ranks or ranks determined outside of the game. It seems like it could really help particularly large Guilds maintain a sense of presence among the lower rank or less social members.
Other than that, in terms of retention, it would be cool if there could be a pop-up when you leave a guild asking why you left, that could go to the guild leader/officers so that the issue stated could be worked on. Members of course come and go in an active game, particularly with very large guilds, but as someone who's always tried to be in larger more active guilds, it would be nice to know from the more transient players what drove them out.
Also, a minimum contribution or time in guild to get guild related rewards could be nice. Just to prevent the kind of hopping I've seen in games like Warframe. It seems to me that if you're to receive any kind of reward related to your guild you should have to commit SOMETHING to that guild, be it time or resource.
OH~! Second comment so sorry for that but there should be some way to track how much an individual has contributed to their guild, one that sticks around if they should leave, that way if they're looking for a new guild it can be seen that they're a productive and social member. It would go a long way to curbing the one sidedness of the Officer/Normie power dynamic with more toxic players. I don't generally like measures that seem to plan for toxicity but I've seen officers lose it over personal crap and boot helpful players too many times to not want SOMETHING.
I think guild forums would be useless for most of the guilds out there. Every guild wants forums when they feel like they want to get serious but only hardcore guilds really use this consistently. I think a discord app would be more useful than a place for people to make guild forums.
I think it would be useful for the GM to be able to build an Organizational Chart for their officer hierarchy. That way new guild members can easily see which ranks are higher than others and which are equal power but in different divisions. Especially helpful if the guild uses custom officer titles.
I also think there should be some sort of soft cap on guild size. For example, capping a guild's size based on its rank or taxing a guild based on its size. This will encourage members to contribute/participate in the guild lest they be cut in exchange for someone more active/profitable. If you make the soft cap exponential in strength, it can help prevent a large guild from snowballing into an all devouring mega-guild. The same concept can be applied to alliances, too.
I personally am not fond of a ''guild finder'' menu in game, i'd prefer to join a guild based on social interactions, not some menu.
Maybe have an area in nodes where you can advertise your guild, or some kind of ''Guild wall/Guild board'' where you can put a flyer on it to advertise your guild.
Make people walk up to other players and inviting them to a guild! It will also make it easier for smaller guilds to grow, and not cause everyone to just join the biggest and baddest wolf.
Somehow limiting the amount of guilds there will be would be nice. The problem I have in other games is there are literally like 300 000 guilds and a majority of them consist of 1-5 people just clogging up the UI. So only like 1% of them are real guilds. Finding the real guilds is really hard. Even if you go to their recruitment places and start talking. They sometimes ignore you due to the recruiter being afk. xD
It would be really nice if the system to join a guild was something worth using over discord and other auxiliary methods outside of the game. Most games have pretty garbage guild finding mechanics. A lot of them are just closed communities not looking for new members so it would also be nice if full guilds or guilds not looking for more people were removed from the listings. Also be nice if inactive guilds were deleted if the guild leaders didn't log in for a while.
The way WoW handled retention is a good lesson to learn from as well. You see they would have people join the guild to raid and then use them while they are in the guild. Not give them anything and replace them a few days later with someone farther along the game. This practice that has always been in the game, but less so the longer you go in due to new players quitting. The ones that didn't quit had a better experience than that, but it would be nice if there were systems in place to prevent that from happening.
I don't want joining a guild to be a job interview either. It would be nice to have a toggle so I can turn all of the master looter guilds off.
Comments
I.e. as you upgrade your crafting level towards master craftsman, your current progress is noted on your guild's roster. Imagine if you learned a rare pattern for a piece of gear and, instead of having to post somewhere in guild chat or spam trade chat etc., your guild's roster was automatically updated to note that you could now produce that piece of gear!
Your value as a guild member would be more obvious, especially of your gameplay style was mostly crafting-focused and you didn't participate in PVP as much.
I currently run a competitive rated battlegrounds team in World of Warcraft (instanced 10 v 10 PVP). We are around 2.3 rating so not the most elite out there, but well above average. I've been doing competitive PVP since the start of the Legion expansion and have had multiple seasons where I've been in the top 3% of the North American Region. I've run this team via just my friends list/WoW communities as well as inside my current guild (where I am also the RBG officer with complete control on who I include/exclude in our high rated games).
Vanilla WoW and the first few expansions I was an officer involved in high-end raiding (including getting some server first kills).
Between these competitive PvP/PvE experiences I had a variety of levels of playing, sometimes very casual/solo, sometimes with guilds raiding 1-2 days/week. I've experienced every type of content WoW has offered. I've also dabbled in some other MMOs like Star Wars: The Old Republic, but I always went back to WoW. I played DAoC for a year before WoW came out. Overall I consider myself a PvX player who likes a variety in my gameplay.
Guild/Team tools outside of a game:
Recruiting: Right now I use drustvar.com to look up the stats of new players before admitting them into my RBG team. This site has an addon in-game, but it really isn't that accurate so I'm usually using the add-on to copy a URL to look up the player's experience. I also use raider.io when evaluating players for Mythic+. I also use thelootdistrict.com to get a sense of what the current in-game meta is to help ensure I'm forming the right team comp and overall trends.
I'm a bit torn on the use of these tools (and other tools like warcraftlogs.com). On one hand, as a leader these are helpful for me to sift through the playerbase and find the good talent. On the other hand, these tools make it hard for players who do not already have experience to actually get a chance. So good for me as a leader, but perhaps bad for the broader community. A good compromise might be to have in-game damage/healing/etc meters (more on the importance of this below), but not the ability to export the data outside the game. If the data could not be exported (or aggregated over longer periods of time), then it would give people a chance to get into stuff that they might not be able to do otherwise (even though they might have the skill, but just not the opportunity to prove it).
Managing the guild/team: All I really need is a discord server. No need to build voice in game, cause Discord will do it better. No need for a guild website, I would prefer the non-discord features to interact with and manage a guild to be in game.
Guild/Team tools inside the game:
Recruiting: Most of my recruiting is done through group finder + trying out players. I've had many nights where I've got 8 - 9 players of my core team and need to find 1 - 2 pugs to fill the gaps. The Group Finder system WoW uses for RBG/Mythic+ is FANTASTIC. (Note, this is VERY different than the automatic group formation used for more casual content like raidfinder and non-rated battlegrounds. Automatic matchmaking is something that can remove the sense of community). The Group finder tool helps because I can have people apply in real time for a specific activity, and I can see what their gear level is and I can chat with them to see if they will be a good fit for the team. This tool is WAY better than spaming in general or trade chat trying to find people (which will 100% happen if you do not have a system like this).
I do like the features for people to search for guilds and apply to them in-game. However I don't use this as much because before I invite someone to join my guild I want to play some games with them. As such, a group finder tool is a more effective/meaningful way for recruiting people to my guild/team.
Managing the guild/team: Guild chat and officer chat are needed for sure. The ability to create additional custom chat types could be helpful, but I typically just use discord if something like that is needed. The ability to post announcements in game (including links to external tools like discord or community sites like Wowhead) is also important. Being able to customize ranks within a guild and give certain permissions/perks to different ranks is also important. Things like access levels to guild bank, guild paying for repair bills, etc. It's also important to see how much each member if contributing to the guild/guild objectives. In AoC I could see this being things like contributing to a Node the guild is invested in, or contributing to guild v guild PvP.
It's also important to see when a user was last logged in (at a minimum. Even better would be stats like playtime over the last week/month so you could see who the inactives are when it comes time to clean up the roster).
I could see it being useful to be able to automatically see which characters have alts in the guild. Currently this is always done as a combination of guild ranks + guild notes. Since its manual, things always gets missed (having guild viewable notes and officer notes for each person is also a good feature to have).
Damage/healing/etc meters are very important for both recruiting and managing the guild/team: I play on a 35" widescreen. With my setup I run the "Details!" add-on in WoW. I've got multiple meters up and running on my screen to track: damage done, healing done, damage taken, interrupts, dispells, CC done, etc. Having quick/easy access to this data in real time during a game is critical for a few reasons: (1) If we are losing a game, its either due to our performance or our strategy. It's usually easy to tell when the strategy is not working, but without meters you cannot tell if its due to the team's performance. Seeing the real-time performance enables me as a leader to alter our strategy mid-game. (2) Meters help me evaluate the new players and determine if I want to actively pursue them for recruitment or not. It also helps me make more data-driven decisions on who I may need to sit for games when we have too many people on. Building a competitive team is a bit of a guessing game without in-games meters.
Of course, don't go too far, I want to be able to bring people into my guild runs and try them out before tossing them a guild invite (or just play with friends who happen to want to stay in another guild).
For exemple :
If a guild managed to upgrade it guildhall it can have access to a board where it can put missions for outsiders to do some gathering or ask for a caravan escort.
Same outsiders or citizens of a node can post a request in the guild/node board asking for an escort or help in leveling...
Other than that, in terms of retention, it would be cool if there could be a pop-up when you leave a guild asking why you left, that could go to the guild leader/officers so that the issue stated could be worked on. Members of course come and go in an active game, particularly with very large guilds, but as someone who's always tried to be in larger more active guilds, it would be nice to know from the more transient players what drove them out.
Also, a minimum contribution or time in guild to get guild related rewards could be nice. Just to prevent the kind of hopping I've seen in games like Warframe. It seems to me that if you're to receive any kind of reward related to your guild you should have to commit SOMETHING to that guild, be it time or resource.
I also think there should be some sort of soft cap on guild size. For example, capping a guild's size based on its rank or taxing a guild based on its size. This will encourage members to contribute/participate in the guild lest they be cut in exchange for someone more active/profitable. If you make the soft cap exponential in strength, it can help prevent a large guild from snowballing into an all devouring mega-guild. The same concept can be applied to alliances, too.
Maybe have an area in nodes where you can advertise your guild, or some kind of ''Guild wall/Guild board'' where you can put a flyer on it to advertise your guild.
Make people walk up to other players and inviting them to a guild! It will also make it easier for smaller guilds to grow, and not cause everyone to just join the biggest and baddest wolf.
It would be really nice if the system to join a guild was something worth using over discord and other auxiliary methods outside of the game. Most games have pretty garbage guild finding mechanics. A lot of them are just closed communities not looking for new members so it would also be nice if full guilds or guilds not looking for more people were removed from the listings. Also be nice if inactive guilds were deleted if the guild leaders didn't log in for a while.
The way WoW handled retention is a good lesson to learn from as well. You see they would have people join the guild to raid and then use them while they are in the guild. Not give them anything and replace them a few days later with someone farther along the game. This practice that has always been in the game, but less so the longer you go in due to new players quitting. The ones that didn't quit had a better experience than that, but it would be nice if there were systems in place to prevent that from happening.
I don't want joining a guild to be a job interview either. It would be nice to have a toggle so I can turn all of the master looter guilds off.
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