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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.
Guild Gathering #3 - Measuring Success
MargaretKrohn
Moderator, Staff Staff ›
Glorious Ashes community - we're excited to continue our new series called Guild Gatherings! Guild Gathering topics are a "reverse Q&A" similar to our Dev Discussions, where we ask you about your thoughts on everything related to guilds.
Our team has compiled a list of questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding guild tools, gameplay, your previous experiences, and more. Join in on our Guild Gatherings and share how your gaming family is special to you!
Guild Gathering #3 - Measuring Success
How do you measure your success as a guild in a game? What kinds of things would you like to see in Ashes of Creation to help you measure that success?
Keep an eye out for our next Guild Gathering topic regarding team building!
Hello again friends! After gathering up your feedback for our team on how you measure your success as a guild, check out some of the top notes you shared with us:
- Some shared that stats and achievements (server firsts, castle ownership, war outcomes, retention, active players) help them define their success and compare it against others
- Many agreed that simply having fun was their biggest measure of success, making it more difficult to quantify
- Rather than overarching rankings, several noted that a guild’s best measure of success was comparison directly against its own goals
- A few defined their success by how well they were able to accomplish their goals as a guild without outside assistance
As a bonus, here was a quote we enjoyed from y'all
Voltmeister wrote: »A good guild is where the boys pog together and flex on some nerds together.
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Comments
Server First Raid Boss Kill
World First Raid Boss Kill
PvP:
Castles Owner x Period of Time
Guild Wars won
Kill Counts
When you do that, you can actually make winning matter (which is important) without destroying the fun for everyone else.
I like that.
Holding a castle or being patron guild of a node will definitely count as success too.
Additionally, helping each other and especially members that are weaker or newer to the game and growing together as a guild into strong players is what gives me the biggest feeling of success.
2°Accomplishments records: [May it be PvE related(First guild to kill a world boss or finish a specific hard instanced dungeon, and a record on how many times those world bosses were killed or how many times the instanced dungeon was cleared by the guild )
or PvP Related (How many war against other guilds was won and which guilds were those , and possible record for which guilds ever owned which castles in the history of a server and maybe a reputation system similar to lineage 2?)
3° Territory influence: maybe a record on how much exp a Guild and its members provided to a node and how many members of that guild is a citizen of the node.
4° Guild Overall and total gear score.
Aren't we all sinners?
World Firsts should be also given attention too, same with server firsts.
The big thing that helps guilds be more successful in any MMO is a reason to be in a guild, to begin with. Having systems for management and structure, a nice UI/UX for the guild, and incentives to being in a guild is important.
would love to see some sort of PvP League existing in Ashes,
where u can throw ur guild in -
and won GvGs, BGs, Sieges accumulate credits that start ranking the Guilds in the League.
after a period of like a month, top 10 get rewards - top 3 run around with a bad-ass title.
for me, a League system is an ez way to visualize the success of a Guild on a server, PvP/PVE alike~
I am also a big fan of leaderboards, that show off individual players (with a guild icon/name).
Top of dueling charts.
Land owned
Castles Owned x Time
....
Are we fuckin' killing it and having a good time? Lets go.
Leader boards and achievements help with this overall but even in games like classic wow with less world content to dominate and no leader boards or statistics, reputations for groups or guilds are still built and massively impactful on if you get group invites or just how the average player base treats you.
So, just reputation as a whole, whatever type of guild it is, can gain notoriety in its field, crafters, gankers, trolls etc.
Ultimately the best way to measure this is rankings, statistics or leader boards but if you can put in systems to facilitate all aspects of content it would help guilds or groups to achieve a good reputation, improve and just know where they stand.
Without leader boards, rankings or statistics?
Considering ashes will be a heavily player driven environment, add avenues for player choice in who is successful via events, fashion events, dueling tournaments, gvg tournaments, gathering or crafting time based events, putting people or groups in the public eye and giving them a platform to shine in/on via streams or server announcements would essentially have the same effect as static leader boards or rankings but would provide it in a more involved and interesting way, let reputations grow and foster rather than slapping a #1 next to someone's name.
A server wide announcement, a discord announcement or a highlight on stream of a player or a group winning something makes it special and adds notoriety, rather than a name on a board.
There are comments of world firsts or wars won which are sort of OK units of measurement for guilds but for me, I think a successful guild is one that has a high member retention or is known for being social and enjoyable to play with.
Not only should people enjoy the game but they should also enjoy the people they play with. The game my guild mains, Archeage, we have members who don't play anymore but still chat in discord and join voice since we all get along so well and I think that's what every guild should strive for, to have a guild that "outlives the game they play" in a sense.
How I think this could be implemented in a game:
A "Guild Ranking" could be shown on the guild information page. It could have the usual rankings
of [S, A, B, C, D] and these could be graded on guild interaction.
For example: How active the guild is, guild activities, guild grouping, guild achievements where you need to have a certain amount of members to participate in etc.
How many events or activities are achieved as a guild. It's not all about raids and dungeons. Sometimes it's about what everyone is able to accomplish together. Pooling resources, building things in the world. Getting together to compete and take down challenges as more than a small niche of players; as a guild. Every little bit counts and should be showcased in a guild achievements section for the guild and others outside the guild to see.
What I would like to see are measures of a guild's success compared to itself. For instance, even if my guild is not the first to down PvE content, a note or achievement with the date of completion, or better yet a trophy for a guild hall. Even if my guild doesn't sit in a castle, a hall of records about which node sieges we fought, or a cool furniture piece indicating how much money our guild stole from caravans. I would love to see thing like this implemented rather than a single equation ranking.
To elaborate:
On Guild Profile page (both the public one, and the one you see when you open Guild Menu for your current guild), you (Guild Master) can showcase a number of accomplishments, which you can select from a very large list. These are not "achievements", but rather counters for specific actions your guild / guildmembers did. Each counter comes with several options on how to present the counter, so that smaller / more casual guilds can also showcase their smaller accomplishments without feeling completely inferior.
Example for counter presentation:
Let's say there's a World Boss called Green Dragon, and a counter for GD kills by guild members.
It can be showcased in many different ways, depending on the guild's goals:
- Defeated Green Dragon: 53 times (your guild regularly hunts GD, and you feel proud every time this counter goes up)
- Defeated Green Dragon (your small guild only killed GD couple times, so you don't want to draw attention to the number of times - but it is the only World Boss you killed and you are very proud)
- Rank #2 in Green Dragon kills (you are competing for top GD kills, so to you the rank is more important than the number of kills)
Example for variety of accomplishments that could be showcased:
- Monster kills - for specific type (World Boss, etc.), monster name, region, etc.
- PvP kills - for enemies in specific guilds, for specific events (Caravan, Siege, in the wild...), etc.
- Collected gatherables - for rare ones, or to demonstrate that your guild is #1 in collecting dandelions
- Total gold accumulated by guild members, or avg earned gold per day per person, etc.
- Caravan routes completed by guild members, or with guild protection
- Legendary items crafted by guild members
- Castle sieges - participation, conquests; for specific castle, overall; time held, # currently owned, etc.
- Number of ships owned by guild members - overall, or for specific high-end ships
- Node population in specific node - by % or by rank, to showcase that your guild "owns" that node
- All of the above (if applicable) but over specific time period - last week/month/year
- etc.
This way every time I open Guild Menu - I see a measure of exactly what I consider being success for my specific guild.
Certain counters should ideally only become available if your guild did corresponding action at least once, otherwise it might lead to spoilers (what if nobody found Green Dragon yet, or the only guild that found and killed it - keeps it a secret).
I'm more on the hardcore PvE side with raids etc but I agree that pushing any sort of ranking is a quite bad idea.
The community will define a ranking by itself anyway but if the game try to say who are the "best", it also means that the less dedicated guilds or more "fun oriented" will probably be flagged as "bad" guild by any success measuring system.
Nothing should be "measured". A simple visual reward showing that the guild is powerful is enough. It can be a rare trophy for their hall, a little icon next to each player's name in that guild etc. Just to allow them to show to others that they are strong. And that's enough.
Another reason why it is not a good idea to measure success is that all guild have different objectives.
An RP guild can consider to have achieved a great success just by having a good pool of RPers with a great ambiance and low turn-over. There are no way to measure this, that's only a feeling.
I've been a guild leader of a GW2 raiding guild for almost two years. At some point we were not far behind world first kills. But I've never considered the guild to be a great success, because we had a lot of turn-over and not enough friendship inside the group. If a measuring system was in place, yeah this guild was a full success. But for peoples inside it, not necessarily.
TL;DR : Don't try to "measure" success. Success means something different for everyone. Simply give displayable rewards for big achievements (killing a boss, holding a castle for X days, etc). That's enough.
1. World firsts are a must!
2. Top guilds with reputations that can change from month to month examples: wealthiest, most combatitive, friendliest, slayed the most creatures, harvested the most material, successfully defended most seiges, Escorted most caravans, crafted most legendaries.
3. I think having seasons of PVP is already in place. Why not also have seasons of PVE were guilds could run dungeons/raids in full with the highest speed. And not have repeating rewards so that older guilds are more likely not to disappear. Having old cosmetics available to them that were only unlockable during the season. (Thinking World of warcraft challange modes but even more brutal! I like having achievement that majority of players cant obtain without significant skill.)
Moderate success is owning a guild hall and be a fearsome danger to better guilds. In other games this meant winning against big guilds out in the open world in guerrila fights. A few famous members and most of the members having the best gear.
The end goal is obviously to have fun and for raiding guilds at least that means usually some form of progression (internal or external), but just that can be pretty misleading.
To truly gauge the health of a guild there are usually a lot of smaller signs that something might be wrong that are hard to measure, even for what seems to be an otherwise successful guild:
-Is the guild constantly in a recruitment loop? Trying to train new people to fill in gaps for the raid team while others leave? It might feel like things are stagnating/stuck for current members...
-Do team members feel like they have an equitable chance to be a part of things (or at least that rewards are based on a fair system)? This definitely applies to in guild DKP/gear distribution.
-Are the time requirements too pressing? Or not strict enough? Do you find it hard to get people in one place and ready? Sometimes people just have other commitments and over scheduling wears on their enjoyment of the game and vice versa.
-Is the game not providing enough good progression incentives or activities and are players just stuck grinding old content for loot? This definitely happens the most between content updates and when content just isn't engaging enough. Challenges are important - people don't generally just play to win, they play to prove something by winning (or at least enjoy the experience of trying).
-Is the guild a good social atmosphere for people? Or is there personal drama between members? I've actually seen an embarrassing amount of guild 'breakups' where people are forced to choose a side
Any of these really can break guilds, even high level ones. Some of them are things the game needs to provide, but some are things the people in the guild need to figure out themselves. At the end of the day what makes a good guild is if people have a good connection to the people around them and are in an atmosphere they enjoy.
Working as a guild to create a really awesome guild house/hall/area in world. It's a great feeling to see a building in game with guild banners and thinking “that's an awesome guild.” though I think this is also because it builds guild recogniseability prestige, people know your guild and it's emblem, and sometimes it's players.
I'd like to see names of guilds, or player names with a guild tag/emblem come up when they do awesome things in the world. Even if it's just finishing constructing something big, or pushing a node, maybe delivering stuff? Heck, even do something like the original guild wars series where they had a guild spotlight on the forums. You'd feel successful after that for sure.
1. Creating and building a sense of community between members.
2. In game power and proficiency
A sense of community is what most people look for when they are looking for a guild and I believe this is the most important measure of success. If a guild feels like a group of friends that you can be comfortable around and is welcoming to new players then it is certainly a successful guild. It is important to support this with in game systems. Guild members should be able to help each other out and game mechanics should encourage that.
In game power is a more direct measure of a guild's success and it is also important. If you are a part of a guild that tops a weekly leaderboard or gets a world first kill on a raid then you can share a sense of accomplishment with your guildmates. This also needs to be supported with in-game mechanics, whether they be more direct like leaderboards and GvGs or indirect like server announcements on raid kills and upgradeable guild halls.
I think that direct measures of a guild's power work best. If there is a weekly resetting leaderboard for guilds and you can see your guild slowly improving it feels awesome! And if you push for one of the top spots to get a fancy reward to share with your guildmates that's even better!
Thank you for spending so much time gathering feedback and ideas on guild related things, communities are what make mmos so great! An mmo that supports communities well is a fantastic mmo in my book.
Overall agree with this dude.
2 ways to measure guild sucess
1-Community reach
2-Power through land
Both can interact and also both can work on their terms. Lookin' into the Nodes and War for space system, I guess that hopefully those types will need to interact a lot.
Community reach Guilds normaly can be a fun guild to enjoy some friendship, they can be focus on competitive stuff but is not the main point. They're those guilds that chase PvE stuff, that plays 4fun, that focus RolePlaying, that focus on gettin data from the servers (like a Bard's guild), that create events for players, that focus on being mercenaries, focus on finding secrets, focus on costumes, etc. Usually they posses a lot of helping guildmates and a lot of charisma.
Power through land Guilds are those that focus on PVP mostly. They measure sucess by who own more stuff, who gets more castles (or keep 'em castles for more time, even that castle with a lot of disadvantages that they sucessfuly protect), some wanna be the Guild with more money (probably there will be guilds only focus on trading goods - probably on a Economic node), some wanna control the market of some item, some wanna be the Guild that take an entiry continent. They mostly measure the sucess by force, they want to be a power to be recogn
So, to resume, the sucess is measure by the goals of each guild. The Guild Masters and respective hieararchy should define what they are and, by the systems the game provides, there's should be ways to interact between the diferent types of Guilds.
I'd love to see an afilliate system, a prospect system, a rivalry system and ally system. The afilliate could get some advantage other than only protection, the prospect could donate or participate of guilds affairs to learn about the game and the guild they are checkin', rivalry and ally system are really straight foward by it's own name.