Tier 3/Tier 4 clan support

I've played L2 for a long time. I've been in Tier 1 and Tier 2 clans for the longest time but due to life eventually moved to Tier3/4 clans and I can tell you that life really becomes very boring for Tier 3/4 clans. One of the problems is obviously lack of strong organizational structure and the other is lack of incentive, because players know Tier 1/2 clans will come and swoop your ass so they don't even bother trying. While few moments against other tier 3/4 clans are very nice and rewarding because you are fighting same level players as you.

Is there any mechanics planned to support Tier 3 / 4 clans? Like over-laying events where Tier 1 event like raid spawn would also coincide with less important raid spawns at the same time, allowing smaller tier clans claim lesser raids, because tier 1 clans are too busy to protect more important raids.

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Nerror

I haven't seen or heard anything about them implementing a tier system like that in Ashes, so I don't think you need to worry about that aspect at all.

Atama

Guilds in Ashes of Creation do have the ability to advance over time, and as the guild advances it can choose to either increase in maximum size or choose benefits for individual guild members to enjoy (either passive bonuses or new augments). So, as guilds level up, they must choose between quantity and quality, so to speak.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Guilds#Guild_progression

As you're leveling up the guild and you're getting these points to either allocate towards expanding the guilds member count or allocate towards adding certain passive abilities that your guild members can gain by being guild members. You're also going to see as you're leveling up the guild through different type of quest-based, participation-based, node-based, organization-based systems and ways that those quests hook into the world. You're also going to see perhaps some augment abilities at the upper tiers of the guild levels become unlocked for certain members that have a classification of officer or knight, will have access to those different types of augment abilities that might get unlocked should you go down the non expansive member lane; and the idea there is to offer these benefits to smaller groups. – Steven Sharif

That being said, I don't know how any of that relates to how L2 handles clans. My guess is that you should throw all of that out of the window and not worry about it, because what AoC will be doing will probably bear very little resemblance to L2.

I think the only thing they are taking from L2 is the penalty for nonconsensual PvP, and even that isn't going to be a total copy, but rather an adaptation.

George_Black

What the guys is saying is "competitive guilds push casual guilds to the sidelines and that's not fair" and mb lower raidbosses should spawn as soon as sought after raidbosses spawn, in order to prevent big guilds from taking both. Have a double timer perhaps.

Atama

George_Black wrote: »

What the guys is saying is "competitive guilds push casual guilds to the sidelines and that's not fair" and mb lower raidbosses should spawn as soon as sought after raidbosses spawn, in order to prevent big guilds from taking both. Have a double timer perhaps.

I dunno, I guess that could happen in Ashes of Creation, but I wouldn't worry about it until it does happen.

George_Black

In my experience, as people progress they dont bother with less valuable content. Non issue.

Vaknar

If I understand what you're discussing here - Guilds can always ally with one another! There is nothing stopping smaller guilds to ally with larger ones for a competitive advantage :J

HellFrost

Vaknar wrote: »

If I understand what you're discussing here - Guilds can always ally with one another! There is nothing stopping smaller guilds to ally with larger ones for a competitive advantage :J

In Lineage 2 people also had this option but it never ever was effective. No offence but what are you suggesting in reality almost never happened in my 10 years of Lineage 2. Organizational structures of Tier 1 / 2 guilds are simply superior. The amount of cooperation required for such feat with less organized people is almost impossible to achieve due to issues with authority, loot/benefit distribution etc.

There were attempts, but at the first sign of things going south these resistance alliances disband quite quickly, because top guilds are able to put enough pressure on smaller guilds to make this happen. To make things worse, people get conditioned to the fact that they will not achieve anything anyway and don't even try or even if they do, they do half measure.

The only way for Tier 3 / Tier 4 guilds to have their own meta is to have at least some activities to split and happen at the same time. So for example raid bosses would spawn every day from 20:00 to 21:00. Meaning top guilds will be busy fighting over more important raids, where lower tier guilds will be fighting for less important raids while both will be having fun at the same time. However if you have raids spawn for example from 18:00 to 23:00 at random, most of the raids will be taken by top tier guilds.

HellFrost

Atama wrote: »

Guilds in Ashes of Creation do have the ability to advance over time, and as the guild advances it can choose to either increase in maximum size or choose benefits for individual guild members to enjoy (either passive bonuses or new augments). So, as guilds level up, they must choose between quantity and quality, so to speak.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Guilds#Guild_progression

As you're leveling up the guild and you're getting these points to either allocate towards expanding the guilds member count or allocate towards adding certain passive abilities that your guild members can gain by being guild members. You're also going to see as you're leveling up the guild through different type of quest-based, participation-based, node-based, organization-based systems and ways that those quests hook into the world. You're also going to see perhaps some augment abilities at the upper tiers of the guild levels become unlocked for certain members that have a classification of officer or knight, will have access to those different types of augment abilities that might get unlocked should you go down the non expansive member lane; and the idea there is to offer these benefits to smaller groups. – Steven Sharif

That being said, I don't know how any of that relates to how L2 handles clans. My guess is that you should throw all of that out of the window and not worry about it, because what AoC will be doing will probably bear very little resemblance to L2.

I think the only thing they are taking from L2 is the penalty for nonconsensual PvP, and even that isn't going to be a total copy, but rather an adaptation.

It's not about how clans/guilds are handled in game, it's about how TOP GUILDS/Clans consume 90% of the content leaving almost nothing for lesser guilds to fight for.

I will give you example with open world raid bosses. Lets say we have 2 tiers of raid bosses. Tier 1 raid bosses have high chance for full items and fragments to craft full items. Where tier 2 bosses have very low chance for full items and high chance for craftable fragments. Now imagine that we have 20(10 tier 1 raids / 10 tier 2) raids that spawn randomly from 18:00 to 23:00 server time.

Scenario #1
In this scenario top tier guilds will dominate both Tier 1 raids and Tier 2 raids, leaving almost nothing to smaller clans simply because statistically raids will spawn far enough apart that they will be able to kill a raid and move to another raid.

Scenario #2
However if we make raids spawn only between 20:00 and 21:00 and we have 20 raids top guilds will not have enough time to consume all the raids, they will have to focus on most important ones. This leaves opportunity for tier 3/4 guilds to fight over tier 2 raids as top guilds are busy with tier 1 raids.

In Lineage 2, raids would spawn 8/12 hours after kill with +/-4 hour random window. So all the raids were almost always taken out by top guilds. Even raids that dropped lesser tier gear, because they could sell that gear for adena(gold). Hence my suggestion, to design systems in a way that activities would overlap, preventing domination of all content by few clans.

Atama

Well then let's see how raids work in AoC, which we haven't seen yet.

Noaani

This entire discussion is why I have been saying for a while now that the game needs to have some instanced raid content for guilds to progress at least some way on.

In order to play an MMO, guilds need to know that they have access to some content.

It needs to be assumed that any open world content of any actual value will be dominated by three guilds per server - because it will be.

Atama

Noaani wrote: »

This entire discussion is why I have been saying for a while now that the game needs to have some instanced raid content for guilds to progress at least some way on.

In order to play an MMO, guilds need to know that they have access to some content.

It needs to be assumed that any open world content of any actual value will be dominated by three guilds per server - because it will be.

Maybe not the same 3 guilds for all content, but yeah, I could see strong guilds dominating their own turf in different places. And that could squelch progression for others.

I know that competition is going to be the lifeblood of this game, but if you have guilds that can monopolize content you are effectively removing any competition. It's not competition if you never have a chance.

People who might counter with "git gud" are missing the possibility that you can never improve if you are locked out of the very content you need to access in order to advance enough to become competitive.

"We can't fight the Blood Wolves because our gear isn't strong enough."

"Then get better gear."

"To improve our gear, we need Moonsteel which requires Moonsilver ore that is only found in the Crimson Cavern, and the Blood Wolves guard it constantly."

Caww

upto 10,000 concurrent players is gonna be a lot guilds pushing at each other...

mcstackerson

Atama wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

This entire discussion is why I have been saying for a while now that the game needs to have some instanced raid content for guilds to progress at least some way on.

In order to play an MMO, guilds need to know that they have access to some content.

It needs to be assumed that any open world content of any actual value will be dominated by three guilds per server - because it will be.

Maybe not the same 3 guilds for all content, but yeah, I could see strong guilds dominating their own turf in different places. And that could squelch progression for others.

I know that competition is going to be the lifeblood of this game, but if you have guilds that can monopolize content you are effectively removing any competition. It's not competition if you never have a chance.

People who might counter with "git gud" are missing the possibility that you can never improve if you are locked out of the very content you need to access in order to advance enough to become competitive.

"We can't fight the Blood Wolves because our gear isn't strong enough."

"Then get better gear."

"To improve our gear, we need Moonsteel which requires Moonsilver ore that is only found in the Crimson Cavern, and the Blood Wolves guard it constantly."

First option, if you can't beat them, try to outnumber them. Recruit and make allies. If they are hogging all the resources, then your guild is most likely not the only one who is being left out.

A guild will most likely not be able to "locked down" an area 24/7. There will be times they are less active. As time goes on, their activity in an area will slow down as they gear up from the place and don't need as much from it.

The other option is to find something else to farm. Ashes is supposed to be a Sandbox, so it isn't supposed to have a linear path. Move somewhere with a similar value resource that is either next to guild that is friendlier or one that doesn't need a lot of it anymore.

If all else fails, since everything can be sold, you can focus on making money to buy what you need.

Geophysical Ninja

Vaknar wrote: »

If I understand what you're discussing here - Guilds can always ally with one another! There is nothing stopping smaller guilds to ally with larger ones for a competitive advantage :J

In my experience, this is not an effective way to counter large, powerful guilds. I have literally never seen a non-management approach work in any game, which is why I try to make it into the top competitive guilds on a server.

One reason why these approaches don't work is, as you stated, guilds can ally with one another. So, what you almost always have is a super guild that establishes feeder guilds at the low and mid levels and sister guilds to pump numbers up beyond the max of a single guild. I have seen this more often if the game is more PvP orientated. If established, these guilds will destroy servers.

Noaani

mcstackerson wrote: »

First option, if you can't beat them, try to outnumber them.

While this may be an option, keep in mind that it is an option for both sides.

Imagine you are leading a guild that is trying its best to get on in Verra. You're good players, but not at the top - and you are smart enough to know this.

Now imagine you have two guilds offer you a proposal.

One guild says "ally with us to try and beat these top end guilds, so that we can get the occasional kill on the weekly spawning raid mobs. If we ever manage that, your guild can occasionally get some loot from the kills".

The second guild says "we have been killing these mobs for months, and have most of the loot from them that we want. However, we don't want these upstart guilds claiming they have taken kills from us so we plan to keep killing them long after the loot is of any real use to us. They are mass recruiting right now, so we will need numbers in order to achieve our goal. If you join us in this, you and what other guilds join will get to share in the loot basically straight away, without our guild taking any as we have no need for it any longer".

As a guild leader, with responsibilities to your guild members, which deal do you think is best? The side that are trying to stop the top end guild will need more people, which means the loot is spread out thinner - and they are less likely to win. The top end guild side is more likely to win, has a core component that don't need the loot, will need fewer people due to having better gear in that core, and have proven that they know what they are doing.

To me, it's a really easy decision as to what would be best for my guild, if I were given these two options.

Boanergese

Each castle controls 20% of the map and the realm influence. So, pick which of the five regions you want to live in. Unless you can form a huge alliance formally or informally, you won't be able to control 2 castles. We also don't know all the loot drops, world boss respawns, and really a lot of information in the game. We don't even know what the best in slot does versus the next gear level. What if the difference between tier 1 and tier 2 is only 5%? I don't think this game will be like Star Wars the Old Republic where the rated gear versus the unrated set made you godlike in PVP. There is also nothing to say every server will have a mega-guild on it. Pick a server that doesn't have a mega-guild and have fun in your own way. Alternatively, the Borg are recruiting now. Resistance is futile.

PPR45296-STAR_TREK_borg_quote-511x768_800x.jpg?v=1571792407

PPR45296-STAR_TREK_borg_quote-511x768_800x.jpg?v=1571792407

HellFrost

Noaani wrote: »

This entire discussion is why I have been saying for a while now that the game needs to have some instanced raid content for guilds to progress at least some way on.

In order to play an MMO, guilds need to know that they have access to some content.

It needs to be assumed that any open world content of any actual value will be dominated by three guilds per server - because it will be.

As I said, there're work arounds even without instanced content. You just need to make sure there would be priorities for guilds and all the events happening at the same time. This would greatly reduce top guild interference in low levels of matters.

Merek

Noaani wrote: »

This entire discussion is why I have been saying for a while now that the game needs to have some instanced raid content for guilds to progress at least some way on.

In order to play an MMO, guilds need to know that they have access to some content.

It needs to be assumed that any open world content of any actual value will be dominated by three guilds per server - because it will be.

Yes and no. Yes, the "best" content will be dominated by the top guilds and that's just part of the game. No, they shouldn't add instanced content. Rather, there should be such an abundance of content that naturally changes, by either node progression or world events, that it's not a consistent issue.

Noaani

Merek wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

This entire discussion is why I have been saying for a while now that the game needs to have some instanced raid content for guilds to progress at least some way on.

In order to play an MMO, guilds need to know that they have access to some content.

It needs to be assumed that any open world content of any actual value will be dominated by three guilds per server - because it will be.

Yes and no. Yes, the "best" content will be dominated by the top guilds and that's just part of the game. No, they shouldn't add instanced content. Rather, there should be such an abundance of content that naturally changes, by either node progression or world events, that it's not a consistent issue.

Your desire for that amount of content is honestly unreasonable. Development of top end content is time consuming - individual encounters can take several months in some cases.

Top end guilds will monopolize content for the sake of monopolizing it.

So, in a realistic setting, the top end content in the game will always be able to be dominated by a few guilds.

This has always been the case for open world content. It is the very nature of open world content. In fact, it is the very reason developers add open world content to games now over instanced content - so that one guild will dominate it and t he rest will essentially pine after it (Steven has said he wants some content in the game that is there for most players to aspire to, rather than for most players to patriciate in).

Merek

Noaani wrote: »

Your desire for that amount of content is honestly unreasonable. Development of top end content is time consuming - individual encounters can take several months in some cases.

They can automate it like most of the nodes other features. I don't see this game having events or boss encounters as detailed as Final Fantasy XIV, so, it shouldn't be a problem.

Noaani wrote: »

Top end guilds will monopolize content for the sake of monopolizing it.

So, in a realistic setting, the top end content in the game will always be able to be dominated by a few guilds.

This has always been the case for open world content. It is the very nature of open world content. In fact, it is the very reason developers add open world content to games now over instanced content - so that one guild will dominate it and t he rest will essentially pine after it (Steven has said he wants some content in the game that is there for most players to aspire to, rather than for most players to patriciate in).

Alright... and? If the node system is as grand as the developers are making out, it shouldn't be a consistent issue. There will be fluctuations of guild dominance, rather than an Arche Age incident where half of a nation can't farm in a predefined area because an entire guild is gatekeeping it, etc.

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