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Preventing Guild Alliances
Eathan
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
So, maybe this has already been addressed, and I am sure it has, but I have not been able to find it. So, my one and only worry with the game coming out is how Intrepid will keep the highest level guilds from teaming up. For example, it is already known that only 5 nodes within a world can be the highest level at a time, and in order for a new one to be formed an old one must be destroyed, at least to some degree. Now what if the highest 5 guilds within a server were to claim there nodes and then decide to team up to lock their 5 nodes into place for a long extended period of time? Is this something that others would find discouraging or is it a tactical play you guys would like to keep in place? If there are any Developers who wish to chime in please do so! Let me know, I am curious what the community thinks.
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So if you're concerned break it. Or demonstrate during testing or footage that it can be done and they will listen to it, and if deemed necessary fix it.
How would this discourage people? Would it not also encourage people to rise up and take them out?
Having played a few games now with similar guild v guild or zone v zone types of battles, these huge alliances do exist, but the beauty is, they don't exist in a vacuum, the server is always in flux, there are always power plays, new guilds, new alliances, new circumstances and sometimes just random chaos.
I played Archeage, and there were 2 huge guilds, that teamed up to take two castles when they opened up. They then bought each other's first siege token to avoid getting sieged. The server was pretty pissed. So guess what happened? Random people started donating to a third larger guild to help them buy the siege token the next time they were available, and they got it. By then, the two large guilds had merged and so essentially one guild owned both castles. And they lost one. Because the server said "no today you fucks".
It was glorious. And watching this unfold (and being partially involved) was something amazing I'll never forget.
This is why I don't see large guild alliances being a problem. They are content.
edit. Fixed spelling mistake that was driving me nuts
I wish that was always the case though, Similar situation in Albion Online but the biggest guilds teamed up and kept it that way. The mecha guilds would allow people to join them and that was the only way people could get certain things and so they did. In the process the bigger guilds only got stronger because of taxing goods. Point is, is in an ideal world I'd love to think that one strong guild would fight another, but that hasn't always been the case. If it's true that even a max capacity guild would have trouble holding a node then that puts my mind to ease a bit, but if for some reason that isn't the case because time and time again players have been underestimated in online games with what they can achieve then I hope some guilds out there can team up to take out the higher guilds. Realistically it just doesn't happen. People have complained in games in the past to the point where they have to add dungeon finders because they struggle to find a 5 man party. Finding enough people to take out the current strongest guild on the server might be worrisome. Now with this said I do want there to a possibility for a guild to hang on to there node forever given they put in the work. I just don't want it to be due to the number of strong allies they have. This game has a huge emphasis on PvP, and if you take away the fights amongst the strongest guilds it can quickly becomes a slaughter amongst the smaller guys.
Sure there is a guild limit, but people make more guilds until they have as many as required or needed.
The problem with it getting to this point is new players will consider the game impossible to get into if it gets to a state like this. There isn't anything in the game right now to actually stop it from happening either. That's the problem.
The reason guilds have ruled the MMO genre for so long is because there is never any downside to forming them to be as big as possible aside from sucking the entire server into it and have no opposition. Which actually happens in retail WoW to this day. For the servers that aren't completely dead.
The devs needs to look into preventing Guild Alliances above what they want to allow into the game. No matter how unlikely or annoying it may seem to do. People will probably do it anyway if it gives them a completely unopposing advantage.
Honestly I would sacrifice the guild systems in the game and promote the node systems instead whenever possible. The alliances that would form from them are more natural to the state of the world. There isn't really a downside to limiting guilds however if the goal is to make the game not rely on them, but that isn't really what is happening yet. Right now everything in the game to make guilds as annoying as possible is in the game.
So good luck on brainstorming every possible way that guilds can potentially ruin the game. There is a crap ton of them. xD Right from day 1 they will already be at an overwhelming advantage. Not even accounting for how badly streamers are going to break things. I wouldn't be surprised if this is how the overall world defaults to at first
They probably also want to look into nodes and guilds not devolving into being the same thing. That is another possibility.
U.S. East
So you are saying there are things to make it to where guilds can be annoying? Maybe due to demands of good etc, but there isn't any disadvantages to how big the guild itself can be? I think thats what I am taking away from your comment, I may be wrong, but if that's the case then what causes the guild itself to be a disadvantage? Only thing I can potentially think of is because there will be "More to feed", but with this games market being completely player driven and only being able to spec into one profession I think it'll completely make that ideology false.
That has always been a false argument against this. There is no More to Feed in an MMO. All of these guilds are usually self sufficient in getting their own supplies and simply all blindly follow the same solo leader. That's the thing is I don't want to play a game with bee colonies. I want to play a game with real guilds actually working as they were intended in game.
Since the guilds are technically not 1 guild it actually makes them more efficient completely unintended. When commanding large armies the hard part is dividing them by what they should do. So having slave guilds makes it easy to divide tasks. Which means they can get gear and stuff like that impossibly faster than a single guild on it's own.
If they actually followed real life army mentality then I want to see their characters get deleted if they don't eat every 5 days and drink for every 3 days.
U.S. East
Guilds do not control Node Sieges.
Anyone can drop a siege flag on a Node at any time, and then everyone who wants to can join.
Hold up elaborate a bit more on this please, because this is not how I've been led to believe it
U.S. East
My thoughts exactly, and for anyone who feels I am bashing the game, that isn't the case. We haven't even entered Alpha l. I have hope for the game and hope it takes the necessary steps to launch well, live, and grow.
Now that being said can there be hidden alliances between big and small guilds? sure.
but since that is the case you could seriously "divide and conquer".
They cant defend all nodes at once. The server could ally with each other, declare a siege on each mega node with a very small guild and then team up against 1 trying to confuse them which city will be attacked.
that makes them lose progress, another node can prosper and someone else can take over the leadership and control.
As much as the big guilds will find ways to dominate, the small guilds will find a way to overcome them. That's the beauty of player-driven, dynamic worlds.
I have heard of this as well
This goes back to one of the beginning statements someone made. The fact is it's not a perfect world and most people who care enough are likely already in one of the more prosperous guilds, finding enough people to overcome an alliance of mega guilds is likely just not in the cards. The game as far as I am aware has nothing in place to stop it and history of mmo's speaks for itself. It's happened time and time again.
Yeah, but the other side also happens time and time again. So I would have to disagree with you on that because if it's the economy itself that is being manipulated then it would piss enough people off to rise up. In my opinion, you can tone it down a bit but shouldn't remove it completely. Since it's a player-driven world and there are so many factors in-game and in humanity itself, it would be wrong to totally forbid it from happening. In games like this, it is the constant "drama" that keeps people involved.
How? Why? Because players are grouping up and playing the game?
I get where your coming from with mega guilds.
In one of the recent streams this was touched on in the Q&A portion.
Steven said pretty much that. Player agency is paramount.
Nodes take a lot of people a mega guild could make a bunch of smaller guilds and dominate a server. So?
Nodes are meant to be dominated, not servers. Ofc you are in constant competition with the server but never in constant war.
That's the point in this thread. To limit it in a way it isn't game breaking. It's an mmo and being as "Group play" focused as Steven has said of course not. They have put in a couple things into the game to prevent any groundbreaking group play but they have catered to the players in other aspects
How could they stop this?
So they don't want to just 'control the server' - they want to fight. That is their motivation, fighting. So the big guild alliances will tend to fight each other, for the fun of it. This empowers the smaller guilds because the big ones want more allies in their wars, so the balance of power on a server will always be shifting.
That is also the likely reason for five metropolis. Not six, which would split 3-3. Not three, because 2 vs 1 can often dominate. But 2 vs 3 can be a decent fight, particularly if the 2 get smaller groups to help. I think it will probably keep things stirred up, and not lend itself to long term static dominance.
Literally nobody has said that...
With that logic you could use that argument to the advantage of what I'm saying. For example, by the time someone does rise up, which is already unlikely, they get 1v4'd.
I really hope this is how it would turn out. But I still have my fears on latter option. If it were to turn to that then I really feel that new player retention would be so low. As I said in my other forum post, players who are not partaking in Alpha or Beta would be at a severe disadvantage.