Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Guild Gathering #10 - Guild vs. Guild Politics
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 #10 - Guild vs. Guild Politics
What tools do you wish you had in navigating the politics of guild-to-guild conflict?
Keep an eye out for our next Guild Gathering topic regarding spies and intrigue!
UPDATE: Hi again friends! Thank you all for taking the time to stop by and share your thoughts on guild vs. guild politics! We had a blast reading through them all! Check out some of the top notes you shared with us below:
- In addition to already planned alliance features, many players said they would like to mark other guilds and players for reasons such as friendlies, unfriendlies, bounties, etc.
- A few players expressed a desire for mechanics that would allow for allied guilds and players to participate in sieges, economics, crafting and other relations.
- Some players would like the ability to set an agreed-upon neutral zone or embassy so that disputes could be potentially mediated without combat.
I love seeing the difference in opinions and approaches! For example, the difference in these two quotes below. Great feedback, everyone! ^_^
The more systems are built into the game, the better
Vytywyn Donowgo wrote: »I think the less is better in this approach.
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Comments
The ability to have a calendar sharing option with ally guilds would be helpful to facilitate planning joint events.
The ability to mark on our individual maps via pins or whatever the territories of rival guilds or their freehold’s or whatever.
Me personally from a crafters mindset i would like the ability to see the stats of a enemy guilds players like what crafting discipline they have mastered and chosen, what level they have obtained etc. That would make my economic subterfuge easier on rival guilds.
-Mr. Sam Walton
Also, allowing guilds to place an embassy in the castle or nodes under your control when you own a guild Castle or Fort would be a good way to bring in other guilds to also benefit from your ownership of a region instead of just making it for your guild or alliance.
Another good ability would be if Guild leaders could classify other guilds outside of their guild for their members with special icons.
Examples would be placing a small Star icon next to a players name plate to indicate they are seen as friendly to your guild.
A skull could indicate it is an unfriendly guild.
This specific mechanic would make it so pvp players wouldn't have to keep up to date with what guilds they can hit and which they should avoid.
Not really a tool per say, but a good UI change would be have allied guild members name displayed in a different colour.
The tools they use to manage their tasks are interesting.
I would want to be able to look at some part of the interface listing alliances and enemies. Joining a guild, a member should be able to open a guild page that shows guild-to-guild relationships where and when they exist.
When Guild 2 toggles Guild 1 as "At War" or something of the sort, this would show up on Guild 1's list and notify its members. Guild 1 could then toggle "At War" to Guild 2 on their own, making it mutual. Even if this is just information and not affecting gameplay. There could be a war history tab as well, showing previous war engagements and alliances.
To build on this, it would encourage more activity if this window shows a list of guild-to-guild kills. "12:39 p.m. - Bob (Guild 1) slew Jimmy (Guild 2) at the Sunny Beach". This could tie into the bounty system where guild members can list enemy guild members as "kill on sight" but not necessarily for a bounty. In this hypothetical system, it would help if a beep notified you when a kill-on-sight enemy is in front of you, or it could add a small marker to their nameplate.
The more systems are built into the game, the better. Many players are not interested in reliance on third party applications/sites. With a fully developed guild system and useful functions, it would feel more satisfying to engage in the activities.
Honestly any sort of guild to guild communication system preferably a multi-guild com system vs two-way com system.
Embassy from either guilds from other nodes or at the very least other castle controlled areas.
Custom chats would help make guild to guild communication easier.
At the very least I would like to see friendly and hostile as options in between those. And tying it into the UI thread, I would like for players to determine the colors themselves.
''No to forced wars''
''Forced world pvp sucks''
''The node siege system is too punitive to the loser''
''Gankers will destroy this game''
Damn...sometimes i think some people just did not get the idea behind this game.
-A Bounty System, where guild leaders can set a price for the murder of a rival guild member, during guild wars, and this member would be tracked for the ones who accepted the ''hunt''.
-Keep forced wars, each guild has to make their alliances and find their ways to protect themselves, even the rp guilds or ''only pve'' guilds.
-Don't take away the possibility of allied guild members attacking each other if they want to. This is part of the political conflict, and in this universe, i guess ''betray you alliance'' should be possible. Deal with ur shit afterwards.
-I know that ''nodes'' are a player content and the competitive guild content will be the castle sieges, but i think its lacking guild competitive content on a smaller scale. Maybe some outposts or regions on the map that can be sieged by the guilds... but a small siege (50v50, 80v80? dont know). U guys will show us the objectives of the ''guild wars'' and maybe you already have a good shit about it.
I'm not sure what "tools to navigate the politics of conflicts" means. For that reason, I'll answer the question "What tools do you wish you had in the Alliances/Enemies interface?"
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't think the general interface for relationships with other guilds needs to be too sophisticated, opposite of what I'd like to see in the Guild management interface (and Steven has already said it's gonna be epic).
IIRC guild alliances will exist, therefore I would like to see an Alliance chat implemented. It would be nice to be able to easily identify players from your alliance and, possibly, on the minimap too. Something similar would be interesting to help identify players from friendly, neutral and enemy guilds. Last but not least, it would be interesting to see the alliance interface be useful somehow in Castle Sieges and Node Wars.
I don't think the question has anything to do with what tools we want to have in the Castle Siege or Node Wars interface, so I'll focus on the Guild Wars interface.
We don't have too much information regarding Guild Wars yet: we know that they will be present in Ashes and that they won't be meaningless like in other games, which is exciting. That probably means Guild Halls will be at risk and losing a war will probably mean losing gold and/or time investment. I expect that the "Guild War interface" will get a lot of input from the Guild interface. I imagine there won't be PK penalties for the guild members involved in a war, but I hope members from allied guilds won't be able to directly affect a Guild War without PK penalties.
This needs more context to really mean anything.
My honest answer though - is literally no tools at all. Any tools you add for this purpose will detract from it, not add to it.
A massive part of guild to guild conflict will be espionage. You straight up can't add tools in to the game for this. Don't even try, you will make it worse.
"i have not played nore studied deeply into what is available in A.O.C yet but i can tell you now i am keen as to throw my life into this game from what i have leart about it.
What are your thoughts
As well as guild embassies that may give bonuses such as but not limited to things such as quicker caravans for war resupply before the siege starts or just all the time. Embassy should prolly scale with nodes on max (fixed) number giving those guild a moderate boost as if they were almost the node owner without the actual control of the node. Prolly should be a single building that scales per node level to open up more slots. Performance and ease of use for one building for embassies. (Not that it has to be a single building for all guilds but seems to make more sense i think personally.)
I really enjoyed Guild Wars Guild System's. Guild Halls Alliance chat, guild chat, capes. symbols, & tags.
If you see someone on this list, then there will be some kind of visual indicator.
I guess a kill/death log would also go under this. Allow it to be filtered and sorted.
Ashes needs to add a in-game guild alliance option. Doing this will let the devs regulate alliances, have them follow some format. All other MMOs I played where there haven’t been an alliance system, people made them out of game, meaning there was nothing to combat massive alliances (that encompass most of the server (or faction, looking at you, New World)).
Massive, server wide alliances will still form, however if there are bonuses in game for being in an official, in game one, with limitations, that’s what most guild will want.
Gonna start with alliance weaknesses:
-Being in an alliance should impose a tax on each member guild. No clue about the economy yet, so I have no idea about the how much it should be, but big enough that it actually matters.
-There should be no limit on how many guilds can join an alliance. However, for each new guild that joins, the tax goes up for everyone (maybe even exponential, not linear).
This might seem counterintuitive to what I said above about mega guilds, but as long as the tax is actually meaningful, alliances will become very specific on who can join. I am, however, sure that there will still be alliances open to anyone. But think about this: will you join a mega alliance where you need to pay thousands of coins per week (exact value TBD) just to be part, or join a smaller one where the tax isn’t that much.
The guild’s money comes from players, so when they keep getting asked to contribute a lot per week, they might decide not to, and break away.
This won’t solve the mega alliance problem. A clan with 1000 players can simply form 2 or 3 or 6 small alliances, but that is a logistical nightmare and will lead to drama, conflict, wars (AKA content for everyone involved).
-Alliances should be public. Everyone can see who is part of what alliance. This ties in with some of their strengths (further down)
-Alliances should be formed for a specified period. A month, 2 months. And guilds must be part for that duration. The alliance should be treated as a “contract” between guilds rather than a “gentlemen’s agreement”. This ensures that guilds can’t flipflop around whenever they feel like it. Gives more meaning to an alliance and makes the end point of one an opportunity for others to try and break that alliance, rather than have them be in perpetuity.
Alliances Strengths:
So, for all those weaknesses, there needs to be some proper reasons to join one.
-Member guild have an innate defensive pact with each other. If one guild gets attacked, all guilds in the alliance get declared war on automatically. However, if an alliance member attacks someone, the other guilds aren’t dragged into that war (how defensive pacts work irl).
-Alliance member should be considered “honorary guild members” in their allied guilds. Either have a specific role or be given the lowest rank. This one I feel is the most debatable, however, in context of guild events or wars or simple logistics, this would be a big help. Also, depending on how freeholds act or guild buildings, this would be an easy way to allow/ban alliance members from certain areas. It does depend a lot on what guilds themselves can do.
-Have an Alliance-wide chat. This is kinda mandatory tbh. (Small tangent here, the system in NW where you can filter what chat shows in your chat is easy to use and works most of the time)
-Be able to make in-game contracts between guilds.
In the last guild discussion, one of the take away was “ability to create guild jobs, missions, contracts ….”. So that, make it alliance wide. Or rather, have the option to make a mission alliance-wide.
(Another tangent here, that idea is absolute pure gold. Missions in MMOs, especially “collect 500 wood” are boring, because you know that as soon as you turn in the quest, that wood Is gone in the void. However, having a player put up a contract for 500 wood, that you collect and deliver to them, because it is a real player and you know that the wood is going to be used to make something, a boat, siege engine, bow, whatever, that its going to be useful, transforms the whole experience in my eyes. Makes me think of RPGs like Witcher where there is a story behind every mission and you have a direct impact on the world around you. Giving players the opportunity to create content for each other will make this game something real special. Please, please, please really consider adding this, its going to change how we approach the game so much and in such an amazing way)
-Alliances should provide an economical advantage.
Being able to trade cheaper with allies should be considered, maybe hand-waving away some taxes, including the ones on the trade post. Not enough of a difference that players only want to trade within the alliance, but not small enough that it doesn’t matter at all. Values and tuning TBD by you guys.
That’s all I can think about for alliances. Not done though (told you it’s a wall of text). Now for GvG outside alliances:
-Be able to sign contracts between guilds.
The contract in this case would refer to mercenary work (one guilds hires another for just one defense of their castle), gathering work (depending on the quantity of resources that might be needed, it would make sense to hire a guild that does that).
This feature would encourage specialized guilds. Maybe smaller in size, but proficient in a certain area of the game and give rise to blacksmith guilds, boat builders, lumberjacks etc. This system would encourage to both form the guilds and to look for them when you need something specific.
Imagine a dwarf guild that spends all of its time in the mountains. No one there has made boats, at all. Then they are called into a naval fight to help their alliance. Rather than attempt to cobble together some rafts, hire a boat building guild to make boats.
-Have other options between ALLIES and ENEMIES
This one is kinda important. Most games go with “either you are drinking buddies or you want to murder each other”. And that’s not A) how IRL works and B ) not how players work. Its more of spectrum, so it should be represented in some way.
One way would be the ability to mark other guilds as friendly, allies, enemy, rivals.
The guild leader should be able to mark other guilds. What I mean by this is a colour change on the name of the player. A member from a guild we are friends with might have a green coloured name. A rival one orange. Declared enemy red. However, if this system is to be used for something else (flagged for pvp or whatever), add a small symbol next to their names.
This I think it should be added due to size of the server. 10.000 players means a LOT of guilds and its going to get harder and harder to remember who we are friends with, who we compete with, who are our outright enemies, especially for those that travel a lot. If you spend your time on the west side of the map and then go on east for 2 months, you won’t remember shit about who in that area is friendly and who isn’t.
If not this, then some other way to represent one guild’s view of another. Not entirely sure how, I’ll be honest, but something.
-A server council:
Now this might be a horrible, horrible, really bad idea. But maybe not. Have the mayors of the city meet once a month (maybe at the 2 week mark into their term (if I remember right, they get elected for 1 month)) and discuss and maybe even vote on server-wide events.
These events should be something relating to cities, a festival or something like that. Small, recurring events that maybe change the way a city looks, maybe the quests change in preparation of the festivals, stuff like that.
This one seems, in my eyes, as one that is most difficult to implement and require the most dev-time to it for maybe not the most impact. However, its another layer of attention to detail that I am sure people would love.
I also realize that this might not be the exact topic of the discussion, but not sure how often we gonna have politics as one, so that’s why I put it here.
Going back to Guild V Guild:
-Guild Membership History
Now this one quite simple. Have a way to check what guilds has someone been in before, what rank they had and how long they have been there. Some games have it, some games don’t. I honestly don’t know where I stand on this. On one hand, having something like this would help figure out if there are spies that want to join my guild. Which I like. On the other hand, it really hinters the spies I want to send to other guilds. Which I don’t like.
As you can see, it’s a real dilemma. While it doesn’t matter (to me anyway) which way Ashes goes on this, it still needs to be addressed, as it can have a lot of consequences either way. Spies are fun, when they are your spies.
Now this is over 3 pages in word by now (really hope the forum lets me post this in one chunk), so I am going to stop here, with this note:
I am not a dev so I have no clue about the feasibility of any of what I wrote. Some might be really easy, some really hard, I have legit no clue. This is just ways in which I wanted to do interact with other guilds before. I truly hope that at least something of what is in this massive wall of text leads to a lightbulb going off in someone’s head about a new, exciting feature that can be added to Ashes.
Love what I have seen so far and can’t wait to play.
Don’t rush the game though!!
This is the most obvious outcome, to the point where I'm surprised, consistently, at the answers some people give to people who don't want 'forced fairness' aspects.
Obviously if people who want to craft and relax are constantly completely forced into conflict and loss, they'll just pile into the strongest guild. They'll ignore the infighting and wait for the dust to clear most of the time too.
If anything, what Guild interaction needs is 'soft power' indicators like Influence, but this question doesn't feel like it makes sense before Alpha-2, because there's no way to know which systems are influenced by guild activity and which ones aren't.
So until Alpha-2 is shown, my answer to this is 'mu'. "The Question is wrong."
1. A Guild to Guild leadership chat. This could be through an in game interface such as a war board or alliance board. Just to make it easier for leadership between 2 guilds to communicate without the need to track them down in discord.
2. Player markers - a way to easily determine at a glance if another player is in a guild you are allied with or at war with. Its not often you see another player having trouble due to pulling a few to many mobs, but seeing they are your ally would prompt you to help that much faster, or if they are in a guild your at war with, join in on the attack.
3. This is required for the previous 2 but having a setting to determine allies and enemies, just a simple slider that can be used to determine your status with another guild. give us an option to search guilds by name and check a box that has them be displayed on a main page somewhere with their relationship off to the side.
I'm sure there are others and as many have said. the more options given the better. Things can always be removed if not necessary but having as many options as possible will help prevent 3rd party usage.
Alliances :
It would be great to allow smaller guilds to band together with an alliance system. Often in PvP focused games smaller guilds tend to become pointless and or limited in what they can do and engagements and zone control simply becomes a numbers game. Allowing smaller guilds to band together under a functional alliance system would help to combat this to some extent.
Rivals / Wars :
It would be nice to be able to declare a guild as a rival or war target publicly, or in a publicly visible way. A basic UI system that allows you to flag enemy / rival guild players in the open field would do a lot for pushing open world pvp. I would love if declaring a guild as a war target came with consequences as well. For example my guild declares war on a guild x, now any members of that guild can now openly attack me without penalties even if I am not opted in for PvP.
It would be nice to see guild / alliance features built in to allow officers to to create bounty quests or even guild versus guild leader boards internally. I have done this sort of things on my own in the past via external guild forums but having a built in functionality where I could assign a quest to kill 50 players from X guild, have the kills be tracked by the quest, and have the coin taken from a guild bank would be tremendous. It would streamline the system and give a different layer of interaction between officers and members in a guild setting.
Event Scheduling System :
A scheduling system would be a huge benefit. If you want to set events in a guild, or alliance it is extremely useful to have an internal scheduling system with a sign-up mechanism that synchronizes to a players local time. It would be great to be able to setup events with friendly and enemy players via an interface feature or war board. For example, I have an all dwarf guild that I want to run a resource caravan for. I want to make sure we get some action so having it as an event I could share with an enemy or rival guild in game would be great. It would cut down on a lot of external arranging via things like discord or guild forums.
Guild Standards / Trophies :
I would love there to be guild standards and trophies wield-able and collectable on a battlefield. Being able to capture an enemies banner or trophy and to then be able to have that trophy captured or traded back would be a huge in game motivator. For example, A rival guilds raids our castle and takes our flag. They display it in their castle as a trophy. My guild can then assault their castle or ransom with the enemy guild to get the flag back.
Sashimono Pole/ Tabards : I really like the idea of physically representing your guild in the game, especially with a purpose. Maybe it's the only way to actually earn PVP kills that count for guild quests /rep but allows you to be axed corruption-free by appropriate enemy guilds and such, or maybe it just gives some kind of bonus for wearing in PvP.
Perhaps that literally is the only way guild allegiance is shown (the nameplate would have to added somewhere on thehud when it's worn because no one is going to remember everyone's banner).
Cosmetic variations would be really cool for higher ranks.