Small guild boosts. Where do they count? Do they hurt the game?

George_Black

We heard that guild points (from various guild activities) will be used to strengthen guilds. One way could be by using the points to bolster the member capacity, another would be by using the points for guild passive combat buffs. Perhaps there will be more features for points to be allocated.

Let's talk about the scenario of small guilds, whose members benefit from passive combat buffs.

When will those buffs be active?
Should they be active all the time? Seems like a fair design.
Should they be active only during sieges, caravans and naval combat? Seems lackluster.
Should they be active during instanced content, both PvP and PvE?

So many queations arise from the need to benefit small guilds, in an attempt to combat big zergy gameplay.

-It's not fair, you got your passives from your small guild.
-Well, I chose to be in a small guild.

I invite you to imagine the scenarios in which this feature will cause imbalance. Try not to be biased. I will be in a small guild and I will reap the rewards of the current design. Answers like "I will only PvE so idc" etc etc arent constructive.

Some people might find this an non-issue. But I thing the cause of this issue lies elsewhere and I will write a bit more about it (again) on the post bellow.

George_Black

I think the core of the issue I raise above is the need to "combat zerg guilds" and instead of resteicting large guilds, IS chooses to empower small guilds.

I am all for guild activities rewarding guild points with which guilds can strengthen their tactics.

But I disagree that member capacity should be a choice, which if made, prevents the guild from accessing passives or other empowerments.

As I have said many times, all guilds should have a max capacity of 70, and that is by reaching a Lv5 guild painstaikingly.

Lv2 guild cant attack a castle. Needs quest and gold to become lv3. Member capacity 20.
Lv3 guild can attack a castle, cant form an alliance Needs quest and a lot of gold to become lv3. Member capacity 30.
Lv4 guild can attack a castle, can form an alliance (becoming the leading guild). Needs tough quest and a lot of gold to become lv3. Member capacity 40.
Lv5 same as Lv4. Max capacity 70 members.

No matter how much people will try to organize in discord, the above system will prevent a zerg megaguild from joining a siege with full strength, unless their leaders raises FOURTEEN LEVEL 5 GUILDS.
If 1 leader manages to raise 14 Lv5 guilds in order to siege with 1000 members then congratz! This guy deserves to dominate the server.

I think capacity should not be a part of guild points strategy. I think all players that join a guild should eventually benefit from passive combat buffs to avoid imbalances.

Percimes

One buff I can see working well would be special siege engine ammunition. The stronger ones only available, point-wise, if the guild remains small.

Works for castle defence and attack vs larger force. Bigger AoE, or damage, or special effect, or a combo of multiple bonus. It could help overcome part of the number differences in these scenarios.

In a city siege, having the help from smaller guilds with this buff makes it interesting to integrate them in the battle planing.

Not much use outside sieges, so there is that to consider.

More an active buff than a passive I guess.

George_Black

Member capacity could be 100 members or so. But 300 or whatever is is too large and is enabling zerg gameplay

McShave

I think having large guild who have zerg potential will be ok. I am always a fan of more options instead of less options, and if a guild chooses to have more people instead of specific perks, that is their choice.

As much as it would suck to have be a member of a node close to, or in, a node with a huge zerg guild, that will just be part of the game and I'm ok with that. A small guild in that scenario will have many options: group up with many other small guilds, move to a different node, work with the zerg guild, etc.

I know there is a difference between real world and game world, but oftentimes you cannot chose who your neighbours are. Maybe they are nice, quiet, and friendly. Other times they are loud, obnoxious, and rude.

As for what the guild perks are, I remember Steven saying that a potential perk would be an aoe buff in the form of a big banner that a guild officer can place. The specific scenario Steven mentioned was during a siege, but I would prefer not to limit it to when you can use it. Also I assume it will have a long guild-wide cd.

Other perks I also assume will be persistent permanent buffs that can affect many different aspects of the game.

daveywavey

Without seeing what the perks are, it's hard to say what's going to happen.

Noaani

George Black wrote: »

Answers like "I will only PvE so idc" etc etc arent constructive.

If anyone were to attempt to make this point, my response se would be "how do you know there won't be PvE guild buffs?"

I expect this to cause an imbalance in every aspect of the game, but this is reliant on a specific definition of the word "balance".

Of you expect balance to be on the individual player level, then yeah, this causes imbalance literally everywhere.

On the other hand, if you consider balance to be on the guild level, then this works towards addressing some of the inherent imbalance that larger guilds have.

It won't prevent that imbalance. A larger guild going up against a smaller guild will still have the advantage, however a single-player from a smaller guild going up against a single player from a larger guild would have an advantage.

To me, that is a form of balance - two imbalanced situations, one to either side

Dolyem

Top tier buff should be no player collision with guildies, that would allow for some serious anti zerg gameplay lmao. Call it "cohesion" or something haha

tautau

I would hope that the small guild buffs (assuming a guild has acquired several of them) would allow an identical small guild player to defeat an identical large guild player in 1 vs 1 combat. By 'large guild' I imply a guild with the same number of guild advances as the small guild, but the large guild spent them on getting larger while the small guild spent them on getting better.

I could see this being relevant in at least a couple of situations:

- Similar level/gear players meet in 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2 or other small and equal group combat in the open world, caravan fights, sieges, etc. and the 'small guild' players routinely win.

- In arena contests, again 1 vs 1 or other equally sized group combat, the players from the 'small guild' would normally defeat the 'large guild' players, all else being constant. This would be particularly relevant in determining the leadership of Military Nodes, since this is by 1v1 combat rounds. This could lead to 'small guilds' tending to be the owners of Military Nodes, which would then give the small guilds access to better gear and the other benefits of those nodes. If these benefits are sufficiently significant, which is likely, then it may well be that small buffed guilds are seen as a better choice than large, unbuffed, zerg guilds.

Perhaps we will find that a dozen 'small guild' members can hold the castle entryway against 20 'large guild' attackers just fine.