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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Noaani

Merek wrote: »

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.

If we have a game with no instanced content, and all open world content is crated using an automated system, then we have a game with absolutely shit PvE. With Intrepids design goals for Ashes, the game will only be as good as the PvE content, so lets all hope that this isn't what will happen (it isn't what will happen, we know there will be instanced content).

We aren't really talking about farming, we are talking about killing content designed to be taken on at the guild level. Not at the individual level, nor at the group level - but at the guild level.

mcstackerson

Noaani wrote: »

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.

Yes, which is why that was not the only thing i mentioned. It's an option you can try and in some situations it might work, some it might not. A lot of a these situations won't have one surefire solution and players will have to figure out their way through it.

Noaani

mcstackerson wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

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.

Yes, which is why that was not the only thing i mentioned. It's an option you can try and in some situations it might work, some it might not. A lot of a these situations won't have one surefire solution and players will have to figure out their way through it.

Indeed.

However, this could take time (months is a reasonable time frame).

In the time it takes to work through a solution, these guilds still need a game to play at the guild level, otherwise they wouldn't bother sticking around to work out that solution.

Again, this is why instanced content needs to exist. It isn't and shouldn't be the top end of guild focused content - if it were, guilds would have no need to work through a solution to the above issue. However, it needs to exist so that guilds that are working through these issues (which will be most guilds wanting to operate at that guild level, honestly) still have a game to play.

I really don't understand how people can't grasp the basic concept that people (and/or guilds) need content in order to stick around in a game.

How long do you honestly think a guild that wants to raid would stick around in a game if they are unable to do so?

tautau

I think that we have been trained by WOW and most other games to see Raids and the core content of these types of games. Indeed, we have become so accustomed to centering our game play around Raids (fun as they are) that our minds have become closed to seeing other aspects of game-play as potential game goals which ourshine Raids.

Owning castles, running a guild, learning to craft, fishing...all these things are part of having fun in our game worlds. But I am a bit saddened that the game makers have focused on Raids so much that the incoming generation of gamers see them as the core of the game.

For me, and I know I may be in the minority here, raids are a fun incidental part of gaming...but not a particularly important part of the game. I am looking forward to the community, the politics, the node building, the non-level progression in societies (like religion or bounty hunting), the crafting, the building of my freehold or housing, the improvement of my reputation as a healer (or whatever) as the sources of my pleasure in the game. Yeah, I will enjoy raiding, but that won't be particularly high on my 'to do' list.

mcstackerson

Noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

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.

Yes, which is why that was not the only thing i mentioned. It's an option you can try and in some situations it might work, some it might not. A lot of a these situations won't have one surefire solution and players will have to figure out their way through it.

Indeed.

However, this could take time (months is a reasonable time frame).

In the time it takes to work through a solution, these guilds still need a game to play at the guild level, otherwise they wouldn't bother sticking around to work out that solution.

Again, this is why instanced content needs to exist. It isn't and shouldn't be the top end of guild focused content - if it were, guilds would have no need to work through a solution to the above issue. However, it needs to exist so that guilds that are working through these issues (which will be most guilds wanting to operate at that guild level, honestly) still have a game to play.

I really don't understand how people can't grasp the basic concept that people (and/or guilds) need content in order to stick around in a game.

How long do you honestly think a guild that wants to raid would stick around in a game if they are unable to do so?

For starters, my original comment had nothing to do with your instance recommendation. Atama mentioned a situation and I was bringing up options a group could take in that situation.

Yes, there needs to be content post max level and instances are an option for it. Do they need to be instances, I don't think we can tell until we play it. Just because a guild is locking down one area doesn't mean there can't be other areas to farm.

HellFrost

mcstackerson wrote: »

For starters, my original comment had nothing to do with your instance recommendation. Atama mentioned a situation and I was bringing up options a group could take in that situation.

Yes, there needs to be content post max level and instances are an option for it. Do they need to be instances, I don't think we can tell until we play it. Just because a guild is locking down one area doesn't mean there can't be other areas to farm.

I think you are not getting my point. I just used raids as example to make my point how you can't avoid dominating guilds to lock down content. This so far happened in every single sandbox MMO ever.

What I mean:
"Event A happens 19:00 server time"
"Even B happens 20:00 server time"
"Event C happens 21:00 server time"

This is literally the most common scenario in most sandbox games and top guilds have enough time to finish "Event A" and move to "Event B" and later to "Event C" this way locking the content.

I'm rising the concern that open world content should happen in close enough time window so guilds would have to choose which ones are more important to fight over and couldn't lock it down.

mcstackerson

HellFrost wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

For starters, my original comment had nothing to do with your instance recommendation. Atama mentioned a situation and I was bringing up options a group could take in that situation.

Yes, there needs to be content post max level and instances are an option for it. Do they need to be instances, I don't think we can tell until we play it. Just because a guild is locking down one area doesn't mean there can't be other areas to farm.

I think you are not getting my point. I just used raids as example to make my point how you can't avoid dominating guilds to lock down content. This so far happened in every single sandbox MMO ever.

What I mean:
"Event A happens 19:00 server time"
"Even B happens 20:00 server time"
"Event C happens 21:00 server time"

This is literally the most common scenario in most sandbox games and top guilds have enough time to finish "Event A" and move to "Event B" and later to "Event C" this way locking the content.

I'm rising the concern that open world content should happen in close enough time window so guilds would have to choose which ones are more important to fight over and couldn't lock it down.

I was responding to Noanni in that comment.

I can agree with that. I think another factor could be the size of the map and lack of fast travel. You can't just finish an event and port to another.

Noaani

mcstackerson wrote: »

HellFrost wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

For starters, my original comment had nothing to do with your instance recommendation. Atama mentioned a situation and I was bringing up options a group could take in that situation.

Yes, there needs to be content post max level and instances are an option for it. Do they need to be instances, I don't think we can tell until we play it. Just because a guild is locking down one area doesn't mean there can't be other areas to farm.

I think you are not getting my point. I just used raids as example to make my point how you can't avoid dominating guilds to lock down content. This so far happened in every single sandbox MMO ever.

What I mean:
"Event A happens 19:00 server time"
"Even B happens 20:00 server time"
"Event C happens 21:00 server time"

This is literally the most common scenario in most sandbox games and top guilds have enough time to finish "Event A" and move to "Event B" and later to "Event C" this way locking the content.

I'm rising the concern that open world content should happen in close enough time window so guilds would have to choose which ones are more important to fight over and couldn't lock it down.

I was responding to Noanni in that comment.

I can agree with that. I think another factor could be the size of the map and lack of fast travel. You can't just finish an event and port to another.

The thing both of you are missing here is that this game is reliant on that conflict. Open world mobs exist to be fought over. You can't fight over mobs if you are the only guild that shows up to them.

If you have 6 raid mobs and spawn them all at the same time, you may allow 6 guilds to get kills, but you also kill off a huge amount of competition on each - and in fact may not have any conflict at most mobs.

Open world mobs are about conflict and contest. That can't and shouldn't change.

As such, these encounters simply aren't the answer to ensuring all guilds have something to do. That is literally the opposite of what open world encounters are designed to do.

AidanKD

Steven's vision seems to center around the idea of the threats of larger guilds being that only the select members in the top demographic benefit from the most of the rewards, leading to the hungry few biting at the heels wanting to branch off.

You then also have the smaller guilds in the node zone of influence either settling for content lower down the pecking order or banding together to try and dethrone the big fish.

We wont know until live if the politics will play out this way but i hope it does. There will for sure be some instanced content but i will agree that inserting conflict into the game at all avenues will build the community and in a natural way incentives people to group up.

80 20 open world to instance is the rough plan and that sounds fine to me.

HellFrost

AidanKD wrote: »

Steven's vision seems to center around the idea of the threats of larger guilds being that only the select members in the top demographic benefit from the most of the rewards, leading to the hungry few biting at the heels wanting to branch off.

You then also have the smaller guilds in the node zone of influence either settling for content lower down the pecking order or banding together to try and dethrone the big fish.

We wont know until live if the politics will play out this way but i hope it does. There will for sure be some instanced content but i will agree that inserting conflict into the game at all avenues will build the community and in a natural way incentives people to group up.

80 20 open world to instance is the rough plan and that sounds fine to me.

The thing is that with my suggestion of the system design were for example all open worlds raids would spawn within 1 hour of server time during prime time, the top guilds would still be taking icing on the top leaving smaller guilds to fight for other parts of the pie. There would still be desire to attempt better raids but the smaller guilds would not be left with nothing.

Basically my vision for guild activities design would look like that:

19:00 -20:00 server time all open world raids are spawning
20:00-21:00 node battles or w/e
21:00-22:00 Some other activity.

Rest of the time players could focus on solo/party play.

The thing is, if you will let bigger guilds dominate everything, there will be a problem with player retention. Eventually smaller guilds will give up, get bored and move on. We know how this will play out because this so far happened in every single sandbox MMORPG ever. This will leave only few most hardcore players, which often is not enough to support the game longterm.

My suggestion doesn't eliminate political aspect, drama or aspiration aspect, it just forces top guilds to prioritize the content they want to control but also leaving carrot on the stick for smaller guilds to try and move up the ladder while still having fun doing some raiding and fighting.

These days MMORPG's live and die by the content. Just look at New World. Most people will leave the game due to lack of content if top guilds are allowed to take all the raids and nodes and really the only solution is to saturate this content in some sort of time frame, where top guilds would physically not be able to gobble everything up.

QuiQSilv3r

HellFrost, consider this. the reason multiple guilds will exist is because of guild player caps, if the guild focuses heavily on extending its numbers then its benefits are low and most likely its participation, a smaller guild might not be able to fight that larger guild but it might have the chance to wait until the dragon is low and the losses are heavy on the guild fighting it and try to steal it, also it appears that each node will have different node levels which will spawn different raid bosses. so a level 1 node might have a pretty easy boss and a level 5 node a really difficult boss, letting guilds have opportunity all around. Yes most likely the world will be ruled by a dozen or so super guilds with 3 or 4 having an obvious advantage. However there will likely by 1000s of guilds that care more about their level 1-2-3 nodes that like to farm and enjoy the immersive aspect of the experience instead of the fight for the T1 bosses. I know for a fact this is atleast partially true because my friends and I have already planned to make a guild control a small level 3 or below node and focus on raiding caravans and breeding animals/mounts

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