I want to point out that large guilds that are organized, not zergs, will always out-perform smaller guilds, that's by design, like steven says here
now, I personally would love to see some of the suggestions people make thinking they would nerf large guilds implemented, things like OP guild buffs, and all sorts of benefits for guilds with lower member cap,
as a guild leader for a large guild I would love that - why?
because while these suggestions will definitely impact zergs, and make them struggle a little bit more - for myself, and many other GMs that don't lead zergs, and have organized structures, all this is simply more power in our hands and would make it even harder for actual smaller guilds to stand a chance,
see, when you have the structure and experience, it makes absolutely no difference to split a 1000 people guild into two 500-people guilds, or into ten 100-people guilds - leading it is the same, only zergs will have this issue, but I don't expect zergs to succeed in AoC anyways, they won't have support, good reputation, and there's a lot of other aspects, however, people seem to be under the impression that massive guild=zerg, and that couldn’t be further from the truth..
for example, the way my guild structure works, people will already be split into static smaller-sized groups, so adding more groups makes no significant difference, sure, maybe I'd have a little more work with logistics and moderation but not with leadership, the deciding factor of how many people will be in my guild is my decision, how many can fit in the in-game guild cap is irrelevant, the in-game cap means nothing for me,
so any benefit that the developer tries to add for guilds with a smaller member count is a direct benefit and power boost for us, large organized guilds that will have people split into those to acquire even more benefits than if there were none,
so yea, it's a tough decision, you can either nerf zergs and make large organizations stronger or don't nerf zergs and make it a leveled playing field, but in both scenarios - there is no "winning" for the smaller guild when it comes down to competing at the highest level against large guilds, that's how open world PvP MMOs work, there's no way to fix that because nothing requires fixing
I think you have a good intent, but not necessarily a working approach. I'll present you my countersuggestion, and we'll see how you like. Though before that, my personal opinion is that simple numerical buffs are simply a no when it comes to guilds, so I'm going to be using a more encompassing term "benefits".
The idea that I have is conceptually simple - a significant portion guild benefits should be a limited resource that comes from nodes through interaction with in-game political systems.
Think of it as benefits coming from positions of power in a society, and to achieve them (the benefits) a guild would need to have a right amount and/or type of these positions in their favour (aka either hold the position themselves, or have the highest reputation with the NPC that does etc.).
What this accomplishes (or at least I hope it would) is a creation of an environment where any guild is a potential destablziler, adding a fat layer of organization for mega-guilds, one which normal guilds wouldn't have to care about, and could just waltz into that King of the Hill battle and get a piece of the pie in the majority of cases.
I think I understand the gist of it. It's interesting. Can you give an example of one of those positions of power though? In what way would you prevent mega-guilds from controlling all the positions just through numbers alone? I assume few or no position comes from voting?
I want to point out that large guilds that are organized, not zergs, will always out-perform smaller guilds, that's by design, like steven says here
Of course. Organization wins. If you can keep 36 50-man guilds happy and organized and all working together, instead of 6 300-man guilds, more power to you. Not counting all the alt guilds of course. The game will be easy-mode for the mega-guilds who can do that.
I think you have a good intent, but not necessarily a working approach. I'll present you my countersuggestion, and we'll see how you like. Though before that, my personal opinion is that simple numerical buffs are simply a no when it comes to guilds, so I'm going to be using a more encompassing term "benefits".
The idea that I have is conceptually simple - a significant portion guild benefits should be a limited resource that comes from nodes through interaction with in-game political systems.
Think of it as benefits coming from positions of power in a society, and to achieve them (the benefits) a guild would need to have a right amount and/or type of these positions in their favour (aka either hold the position themselves, or have the highest reputation with the NPC that does etc.).
What this accomplishes (or at least I hope it would) is a creation of an environment where any guild is a potential destablziler, adding a fat layer of organization for mega-guilds, one which normal guilds wouldn't have to care about, and could just waltz into that King of the Hill battle and get a piece of the pie in the majority of cases.
I think I understand the gist of it. It's interesting. Can you give an example of one of those positions of power though? In what way would you prevent mega-guilds from controlling all the positions just through numbers alone? I assume few or no position comes from voting?
A position of power is pretty much anything tied to the governing body - a seat at a "council", so to speak. And holding the all the positions through zerg won't give you much cuz it fragments the benefits (they're limited in number, after all) across multiple guilds, plus the juicy stuff would be locked behind a high political power. Hope that explains at least a little more.
TL;DR - Give substantial benefits to small, specialised guilds to lower risk of mega-guilds and alliances monopolising the game content and resources. Also, it just makes for a more fun game IMO.
I agree with a lot of your post. I imagine some of it is already intended. Just cutting to the chase, strength in numbers is going to be unavoidable to some extent, no matter what Intrepid does. The benefits that small/large guilds get...it's just going to be meta'd by the game population at large.
Small guild benefits are an ok idea. Gee we have this problem where smaller guilds are just speed bumps to zerg guilds. I know, let's make it to where small guilds have really good benefits that balance it out some. All you've done is created demand for those really good small guild benefits. If the benefits are good enough, then large guilds will split up across sister guilds to get the benefits. If they're not good enough, they won't, but then what problem are you even solving in the first place. Catch 22. Maybe there is a certain sweet spot Intrepid could hit where it does have the desired effect. We'll see, there's lots we don't know right now.
Your post addresses a lot of what I guess I'd call the macro level of dealing with zerg guilds. Systems and such to contain them. I hope Intrepid leans into that some and does what they can to keep the game from becoming a zerg fest.
And I'd like them to do that on I guess what I'd call the micro level too. What's the problem with zerg guilds? They zerg. They overwhelm you with numbers. On the battlefield. So give us zerg busting mechanics. Strong aoe, strong cc. Make it to where we can turn their strength into their weakness. Don't make it neccessarily easy to do that, just possible.
Don't go overboard with the high TTK either. Achieve your goals of not having 1 shots, and also allowing someone who's randomly attacked in the open world to respond and fight back before being at 10% health. Those are worthy goals. Reach them and then chill, don't go overboard with it. Overly high TTK is a huge benefit to zergs. It makes them very hard to break up. It makes it hard to perform effective hit and run tactics on them. The higher the TTK, the more time they have to turn their entire zerg around on you when you've isolated and are in the process of annihilating a group of their over extenders.
And a sane open world flagging/corruption system. There's nowhere a mega guild prefers to be than in an objective based pvp event where they can just throw their numbers around in a very controlled way. Caravans, sieges, guild wars, these are generally the types of things mega guilds will dominate (still a lot we don't know about these systems, so we'll see). So give smaller organizations of players who routinely get zerged down in these types of events the ability to conduct some limited amount of assymetrical warfare, without insane penalties. The ability to hit mega guilds when and where they're not expecting it.
Ultimately though, numbers generally win out. Everyone will have a responsibility to ally or at least collaborate when needed with larger groups of players. But hopefully Intrepid is willing to give smaller groups some of the tools needed to make dynamic and BIG plays, instead of just coddling zerg vs zerg warfare.
Strength in numbers is unavoidable.
I have said it before, zerg guilds need to be tackled:
1) Guild Levels tied to hard, group quests like in L2. Make them harderer than L2.
A lv1 guild shouldnt be able to accept more than 15 members, nor should it be able to join an alliance, nor should it be able to have guild passives. Make them do hard quests until level 5 or 6. Let the goodies start being usable at level 4-5.
2) Guild passive points should be awarded only by specific, hard guild activities such as raiding open world RBs or completing hard group quests.
Let's see which guilds can manage to farm points in specific ways, in order to spend them for passives.
Not by simply members leveling up or giving gold. These things happen regardless. Let those that want to run 1 guild, let alone many guilds under one name, go out of their way and spend time in having to get guild points.
3) Bottle-neck those zerg guild numbers.
a) ships should have a debuff on all members. This debuff gets a stack every time a person is on the ship.
What's the maximum number of people a sconer, frigate, man-of-war ship can carry based on it's size?
If the debuff gets 1 more stack after that number, slow the speed of the ship down, slow the attack speed, weaken it's defense.
Let those zerg guilds build more ships.
b) FH permission limit should be capped at family membership, not at guild. I made a whole post about it.
Make it difficult for zerg guilds to award benefits to hordes of mindless members. Make it difficult to provide Guild1 Guild2 Guild3 Guild4 Guild5 with benefits.
Unless they work towards all that. If the leadership is willing to improve EACH GUILD , let them rule.
However, if the branch leaders do all the work, let them say "screw you, Guild4 will change it's name to 'Oath Breakers' and set their own course, with their own ships and their own FHs"
I opppse any systems that would make it easier to run a guild. It creates a couple of big camps, and the rest of the server is pawns.
I dislike specialization associated with power. This will just create fotm specializations(we all know this will happen ). I like specialization idea otherwise, but it should only give fluff stuff to profile your guild in certain way.
For guild levels, as wiki says, its planned that you level up your guild and unlock skill points. And for base level, I think even most casual guild should be able to get at least most of skill points without extra steps. Its just great guild narrative, through hard work, you are rewarded. This also support putting efforts before undertaking more challenging stuff.
Zergs are always problem in sandbox kind games, but until we know all the systems, its hard to say much to it. I think lot of discussion here forgot guild patron system associated with nodes, that can be one to discourage splicing guild up to small guilds. Other things is alliances:
" - A guild may only be a member of one alliance.[46]
- There is no member cap in an alliance, only a maximum of four guilds.[44]"
Before we see, how this systems turn out, its hard to say how guilds form, in-game at least.
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I really like this system. I don’t know if I was hoping for something quite as deep with that many trees but I sure do like skills trees so I’m not totally against that many.
I really do like this idea of being able to specialize as a guild a certain way. For the super specialized guilds that are small and become a formidable force in gathering market due to their high investment into that tree, but especially for the hybrid options.
It’ll be interesting for the smaller guilds that don’t want to specialize due to what their guild mates having different focused and the different ways you find to min-max to benefit the whole.
This is quite possibly a moot opinion though if they keep with the idea that a guild around 30-50 people could get all of the guild perks.
Strength in numbers is unavoidable.
I have said it before, zerg guilds need to be tackled:
1) Guild Levels tied to hard, group quests like in L2. Make them harderer than L2.
A lv1 guild shouldnt be able to accept more than 15 members, nor should it be able to join an alliance, nor should it be able to have guild passives. Make them do hard quests until level 5 or 6. Let the goodies start being usable at level 4-5.
2) Guild passive points should be awarded only by specific, hard guild activities such as raiding open world RBs or completing hard group quests.
Let's see which guilds can manage to farm points in specific ways, in order to spend them for passives.
Not by simply members leveling up or giving gold. These things happen regardless. Let those that want to run 1 guild, let alone many guilds under one name, go out of their way and spend time in having to get guild points.
3) Bottle-neck those zerg guild numbers.
a) ships should have a debuff on all members. This debuff gets a stack every time a person is on the ship.
What's the maximum number of people a sconer, frigate, man-of-war ship can carry based on it's size?
If the debuff gets 1 more stack after that number, slow the speed of the ship down, slow the attack speed, weaken it's defense.
Let those zerg guilds build more ships.
b) FH permission limit should be capped at family membership, not at guild. I made a whole post about it.
Make it difficult for zerg guilds to award benefits to hordes of mindless members. Make it difficult to provide Guild1 Guild2 Guild3 Guild4 Guild5 with benefits.
Unless they work towards all that. If the leadership is willing to improve EACH GUILD , let them rule.
However, if the branch leaders do all the work, let them say "screw you, Guild4 will change it's name to 'Oath Breakers' and set their own course, with their own ships and their own FHs"
I opppse any systems that would make it easier to run a guild. It creates a couple of big camps, and the rest of the server is pawns.
well, the zerg guilds will win the 2nd activity, unless all the bosses spawn at the same time in different locations all over verra.
I want to point out that large guilds that are organized, not zergs, will always out-perform smaller guilds, that's by design, like steven says here
now, I personally would love to see some of the suggestions people make thinking they would nerf large guilds implemented, things like OP guild buffs, and all sorts of benefits for guilds with lower member cap,
as a guild leader for a large guild I would love that - why?
because while these suggestions will definitely impact zergs, and make them struggle a little bit more - for myself, and many other GMs that don't lead zergs, and have organized structures, all this is simply more power in our hands and would make it even harder for actual smaller guilds to stand a chance,
see, when you have the structure and experience, it makes absolutely no difference to split a 1000 people guild into two 500-people guilds, or into ten 100-people guilds - leading it is the same, only zergs will have this issue, but I don't expect zergs to succeed in AoC anyways, they won't have support, good reputation, and there's a lot of other aspects, however, people seem to be under the impression that massive guild=zerg, and that couldn’t be further from the truth..
for example, the way my guild structure works, people will already be split into static smaller-sized groups, so adding more groups makes no significant difference, sure, maybe I'd have a little more work with logistics and moderation but not with leadership, the deciding factor of how many people will be in my guild is my decision, how many can fit in the in-game guild cap is irrelevant, the in-game cap means nothing for me,
so any benefit that the developer tries to add for guilds with a smaller member count is a direct benefit and power boost for us, large organized guilds that will have people split into those to acquire even more benefits than if there were none,
so yea, it's a tough decision, you can either nerf zergs and make large organizations stronger or don't nerf zergs and make it a leveled playing field, but in both scenarios - there is no "winning" for the smaller guild when it comes down to competing at the highest level against large guilds, that's how open world PvP MMOs work, there's no way to fix that because nothing requires fixing
If i remember correctly you are one of the people in this forum that played Lineage 2, so i believe you might understand the issue that both "massive guilds" or "zerg" will face with the "smaller number of players in giga-buffed small guilds" problem.
Friendly Fire in mass PvP conflicts.
I believe it will be an even harder thing to deal with in Ashes due to how much more prevalent action skills will be in it, than it was in L2.
Considering "The maximum size for a guild that chooses all available skill options will be between 30 and 50."
I expect it to be 40(1 raid) so an alliance of such clans will have a maximum of 160 players(4 clans), currently alliances can have no affiliation to each other as far as we know.
Do you have plans to deal with the aforementioned problem?
I want to point out that large guilds that are organized, not zergs, will always out-perform smaller guilds, that's by design, like steven says here
now, I personally would love to see some of the suggestions people make thinking they would nerf large guilds implemented, things like OP guild buffs, and all sorts of benefits for guilds with lower member cap,
as a guild leader for a large guild I would love that - why?
because while these suggestions will definitely impact zergs, and make them struggle a little bit more - for myself, and many other GMs that don't lead zergs, and have organized structures, all this is simply more power in our hands and would make it even harder for actual smaller guilds to stand a chance,
see, when you have the structure and experience, it makes absolutely no difference to split a 1000 people guild into two 500-people guilds, or into ten 100-people guilds - leading it is the same, only zergs will have this issue, but I don't expect zergs to succeed in AoC anyways, they won't have support, good reputation, and there's a lot of other aspects, however, people seem to be under the impression that massive guild=zerg, and that couldn’t be further from the truth..
for example, the way my guild structure works, people will already be split into static smaller-sized groups, so adding more groups makes no significant difference, sure, maybe I'd have a little more work with logistics and moderation but not with leadership, the deciding factor of how many people will be in my guild is my decision, how many can fit in the in-game guild cap is irrelevant, the in-game cap means nothing for me,
so any benefit that the developer tries to add for guilds with a smaller member count is a direct benefit and power boost for us, large organized guilds that will have people split into those to acquire even more benefits than if there were none,
so yea, it's a tough decision, you can either nerf zergs and make large organizations stronger or don't nerf zergs and make it a leveled playing field, but in both scenarios - there is no "winning" for the smaller guild when it comes down to competing at the highest level against large guilds, that's how open world PvP MMOs work, there's no way to fix that because nothing requires fixing
If i remember correctly you are one of the people in this forum that played Lineage 2, so i believe you might understand the issue that both "massive guilds" or "zerg" will face with the "smaller number of players in giga-buffed small guilds" problem.
Friendly Fire in mass PvP conflicts.
I believe it will be an even harder thing to deal with in Ashes due to how much more prevalent action skills will be in it, than it was in L2.
Considering "The maximum size for a guild that chooses all available skill options will be between 30 and 50."
I expect it to be 40(1 raid) so an alliance of such clans will have a maximum of 160 players(4 clans), currently alliances can have no affiliation to each other as far as we know.
Do you have plans to deal with the aforementioned problem?
There will be alliances in AoC. And I thibk they said that you cant flag against group member, guild member and an ally.
I want to point out that large guilds that are organized, not zergs, will always out-perform smaller guilds, that's by design, like steven says here
now, I personally would love to see some of the suggestions people make thinking they would nerf large guilds implemented, things like OP guild buffs, and all sorts of benefits for guilds with lower member cap,
as a guild leader for a large guild I would love that - why?
because while these suggestions will definitely impact zergs, and make them struggle a little bit more - for myself, and many other GMs that don't lead zergs, and have organized structures, all this is simply more power in our hands and would make it even harder for actual smaller guilds to stand a chance,
see, when you have the structure and experience, it makes absolutely no difference to split a 1000 people guild into two 500-people guilds, or into ten 100-people guilds - leading it is the same, only zergs will have this issue, but I don't expect zergs to succeed in AoC anyways, they won't have support, good reputation, and there's a lot of other aspects, however, people seem to be under the impression that massive guild=zerg, and that couldn’t be further from the truth..
for example, the way my guild structure works, people will already be split into static smaller-sized groups, so adding more groups makes no significant difference, sure, maybe I'd have a little more work with logistics and moderation but not with leadership, the deciding factor of how many people will be in my guild is my decision, how many can fit in the in-game guild cap is irrelevant, the in-game cap means nothing for me,
so any benefit that the developer tries to add for guilds with a smaller member count is a direct benefit and power boost for us, large organized guilds that will have people split into those to acquire even more benefits than if there were none,
so yea, it's a tough decision, you can either nerf zergs and make large organizations stronger or don't nerf zergs and make it a leveled playing field, but in both scenarios - there is no "winning" for the smaller guild when it comes down to competing at the highest level against large guilds, that's how open world PvP MMOs work, there's no way to fix that because nothing requires fixing
If i remember correctly you are one of the people in this forum that played Lineage 2, so i believe you might understand the issue that both "massive guilds" or "zerg" will face with the "smaller number of players in giga-buffed small guilds" problem.
Friendly Fire in mass PvP conflicts.
I believe it will be an even harder thing to deal with in Ashes due to how much more prevalent action skills will be in it, than it was in L2.
Considering "The maximum size for a guild that chooses all available skill options will be between 30 and 50."
I expect it to be 40(1 raid) so an alliance of such clans will have a maximum of 160 players(4 clans), currently alliances can have no affiliation to each other as far as we know.
Do you have plans to deal with the aforementioned problem?
There will be alliances in AoC. And I thibk they said that you cant flag against group member, guild member and an ally.
Yes but alliances have a limit of 4 Guilds and "A guild may only be a member of one alliance.".
As with L2, zerg guilds didnt need actual allies, which is terrible if left unchecked.
Dont make the mistake to dismiss valid concerns about the possibility of zerg guilds.
I disagree that friendly fire will be a concern. Dont ease up.
As with L2, zerg guilds didnt need actual allies, which is terrible if left unchecked.
Dont make the mistake to dismiss valid concerns about the possibility of zerg guilds.
I disagree that friendly fire will be a concern. Dont ease up.
Yes, Zergs were much more functional in L2 even without alliances due to the prevalence of Tab Target skills in L2. L2 maximum clan size was 200(disconsidering the sub lv40 20 academy slots) and alliances had 3 clans 600 players.
Don't take me wrong Zerg guilds can certainly be a thing considering the maximum ~300 guild slots x 4 guild alliances reach up to 1200 players.
My point is that pushing power into smaller guilds with limited slots does not help massive guilds like Liniker seems to believe because friendly fire will be a greater problem in Ashes than it was in L2.
But yeah, you are free to disagree tho.
My point is that pushing power into smaller guilds with limited slots does not help massive guilds like Liniker seems to believe because friendly fire will be a greater problem in Ashes than it was in L2.
This is kind of an interesting conversation to me but I didn't play L2 so I'm trying to pick up on what you're saying. I'm assuming you're talking about the friendly fire that can occur in a mass open world flagging combatant/purple battle?
So like if Liniker split his guild up into 50 player count guilds for the small guild benefits...Nova Ordem 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be allied. And Nova Ordem 5, 6, 7, 8 would be allied etc. So in a mass purple battle, Nova Ordem 30, 31, 32 and 33 could have some difficulty directly assisting Nova Ordem 1, 2, 3, and 4 because they're not all directly allied with each other. They would hit each other with friendly fire potentially.
Am I following that right? Total L2 newb, I know almost nothing about L2 or it's systems. But yeah I didn't think about that. You can't really just meta the small guild benefits vs the large guild benefits. It's a numbers game and there would be pretty big benefits going max guild size as well because you can have more people under the same alliance umbrella, unable to friendly fire each other. Bigger, more cohesive zergs basically.
L2 had this same system Ashes intends to have of small guild perks vs large guild perks? Do you have any examples of specific perks? Like how strong were the small guild perks vs the large guild perks.
Not trying to butt in, but genuinely curious about these systems and how they work.
This is kind of an interesting conversation to me but I didn't play L2 so I'm trying to pick up on what you're saying. I'm assuming you're talking about the friendly fire that can occur in a mass open world flagging combatant/purple battle?
So like if Liniker split his guild up into 50 player count guilds for the small guild benefits...Nova Ordem 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be allied. And Nova Ordem 5, 6, 7, 8 would be allied etc. So in a mass purple battle, Nova Ordem 30, 31, 32 and 33 could have some difficulty directly assisting Nova Ordem 1, 2, 3, and 4 because they're not all directly allied with each other. They would hit each other with friendly fire potentially.
Am I following that right? Total L2 newb, I know almost nothing about L2 or it's systems. But yeah I didn't think about that. You can't really just meta the small guild benefits vs the large guild benefits. It's a numbers game and there would be pretty big benefits going max guild size as well because you can have more people under the same alliance umbrella, unable to friendly fire each other. Bigger, more cohesive zergs basically.
L2 had this same system Ashes intends to have of small guild perks vs large guild perks? Do you have any examples of specific perks? Like how strong were the small guild perks vs the large guild perks.
Not trying to butt in, but genuinely curious about these systems and how they work.
Yes, you kinda got the gist of it.
But no, L2 did not had this system that Ashes is intending to use, clan sizes where only bound by clan levels and Clan passive skills were universal and also only dependant on the clan level and reputation.
That's another thing that made Zergs more functional in L2.
Ahh ok. Interesting stuff. I really want to see what Steven has in mind for these different small/large guild perks, how impactful they will be.
I guess in regards to your question to Liniker, it depends on how aoe/action cleave centric Ashes is, like you said. I do think that the better the small guild perks are, the more inclined Liniker would be to split his guild up to get them. And then if need be, he'd just have to get really good at orchestrating his 30+ splinter guilds into attacking in "alliance" waves, or at least creating some separation between themselves on the battlefield.
Sounds kinda pain in the ass but doable.
Honestly though I think a guild like his would probably have at least 1 300 player count guild, maybe 2. Then split the rest up into smaller guilds for the benefits. I dunno, it'll be interesting to see what guilds decide to do with the system.
Yeah, great leader can overcome this problem, but at that point they deserve the win, cause they managed to control over 1k people on the battlefield w/o it becoming a complete mess.
Yeah, great leader can overcome this problem, but at that point they deserve the win, cause they managed to control over 1k people on the battlefield w/o it becoming a complete mess.
Definitely. I can't say I'm a big fan of mega guilds. But it's a valid playstyle. And they will be competing against other mega guilds. So in some sense that balances out. They won't strictly be zerging down small guilds, they have other big fish to contend with as well.
That said, god I hope we get some zerg busting mechanics. Zergs that make mistakes should be able to be punished for making them, by smaller groups. Within reason. My opinion at least.
Aside from friendly fire, there's also a lot of about guild wars we don't know. There might be a limit to how many GWs a guild can have active at a time, as well as a cost associated with declaring. The cost could depend on the relative size of the guilds, and even how many GWs are currently active for either.
Mega-guilds who split up could up end not being able to bring more than a small percentage of their total numbers to help in specific guild wars. Their enemies could target specific sub-guilds to grind them down, without risking the full brunt of the mega-guild in retaliation. The mega-guilds can try to retaliate in kind, but they might still be limited in how many they can bring to bear against their enemies at any given time.
Then there's node wars. A mega-guild could try to enforce that all or most of their sub-guilds stay citizens in the same node or vassal chain, but if they don't, a node war could cause several sub guilds to be at war with each other, increasing potential friction and drama. Obviously this can happen within the guilds too, if the members are citizens of warring nodes.
These also factor in to why I would like to see incentives to split the largest guilds up.
I think you have a good intent, but not necessarily a working approach. I'll present you my countersuggestion, and we'll see how you like. Though before that, my personal opinion is that simple numerical buffs are simply a no when it comes to guilds, so I'm going to be using a more encompassing term "benefits".
The idea that I have is conceptually simple - a significant portion guild benefits should be a limited resource that comes from nodes through interaction with in-game political systems.
Think of it as benefits coming from positions of power in a society, and to achieve them (the benefits) a guild would need to have a right amount and/or type of these positions in their favour (aka either hold the position themselves, or have the highest reputation with the NPC that does etc.).
What this accomplishes (or at least I hope it would) is a creation of an environment where any guild is a potential destablziler, adding a fat layer of organization for mega-guilds, one which normal guilds wouldn't have to care about, and could just waltz into that King of the Hill battle and get a piece of the pie in the majority of cases.
I think I understand the gist of it. It's interesting. Can you give an example of one of those positions of power though? In what way would you prevent mega-guilds from controlling all the positions just through numbers alone? I assume few or no position comes from voting?
A position of power is pretty much anything tied to the governing body - a seat at a "council", so to speak. And holding the all the positions through zerg won't give you much cuz it fragments the benefits (they're limited in number, after all) across multiple guilds, plus the juicy stuff would be locked behind a high political power. Hope that explains at least a little more.
Right, so, I was aiming for a more specific game-mechanics example
So, for example, should a guild with the mayor of a node get the buffs? Who or what decides who get to be on the council?
so, the most recent experience I had with Friendly Fire was MO2 and part of our PvP training was dealing with FF
now, in AoC, this would definitely increase the teamfight skill cap however, organized guilds would practice, and this wouldn't really be an issue when you heavily outnumber the other group and have good shot callers and comp so, not sure how much this would help, maybe with zergs, sure, but they would still win if they had twice as many players - I think this would affect them more if they were fighting a group with similar numbers that didn't had to worry about FF,
but yea overall, I think this is definitely good, it's a nice addition that we didn't had in L2,
My point is that pushing power into smaller guilds with limited slots does not help massive guilds like Liniker seems to believe because friendly fire will be a greater problem in Ashes than it was in L2.
This is kind of an interesting conversation to me but I didn't play L2 so I'm trying to pick up on what you're saying. I'm assuming you're talking about the friendly fire that can occur in a mass open world flagging combatant/purple battle?
So like if Liniker split his guild up into 50 player count guilds for the small guild benefits...Nova Ordem 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be allied. And Nova Ordem 5, 6, 7, 8 would be allied etc. So in a mass purple battle, Nova Ordem 30, 31, 32 and 33 could have some difficulty directly assisting Nova Ordem 1, 2, 3, and 4 because they're not all directly allied with each other. They would hit each other with friendly fire potentially.
Am I following that right? Total L2 newb, I know almost nothing about L2 or it's systems. But yeah I didn't think about that. You can't really just meta the small guild benefits vs the large guild benefits. It's a numbers game and there would be pretty big benefits going max guild size as well because you can have more people under the same alliance umbrella, unable to friendly fire each other. Bigger, more cohesive zergs basically.
L2 had this same system Ashes intends to have of small guild perks vs large guild perks? Do you have any examples of specific perks? Like how strong were the small guild perks vs the large guild perks.
Not trying to butt in, but genuinely curious about these systems and how they work.
yeah you are correct. that can happen.
i havent seen the guild skills yet but since steven said big guilds will need to ally with a smaller guild for the passives, maybe the meta for mega guilds will be 2-3 max member guilds allied with 1-2 max skills guild.
or someone like liniker could just say fk it and not get any guild skills and put all his members in four 300 guilds. maybe make 1 guild with skills and the other 4 just pvp while the small guild does what they need to do behind them, completely safe
I think you have a good intent, but not necessarily a working approach. I'll present you my countersuggestion, and we'll see how you like. Though before that, my personal opinion is that simple numerical buffs are simply a no when it comes to guilds, so I'm going to be using a more encompassing term "benefits".
The idea that I have is conceptually simple - a significant portion guild benefits should be a limited resource that comes from nodes through interaction with in-game political systems.
Think of it as benefits coming from positions of power in a society, and to achieve them (the benefits) a guild would need to have a right amount and/or type of these positions in their favour (aka either hold the position themselves, or have the highest reputation with the NPC that does etc.).
What this accomplishes (or at least I hope it would) is a creation of an environment where any guild is a potential destablziler, adding a fat layer of organization for mega-guilds, one which normal guilds wouldn't have to care about, and could just waltz into that King of the Hill battle and get a piece of the pie in the majority of cases.
I think I understand the gist of it. It's interesting. Can you give an example of one of those positions of power though? In what way would you prevent mega-guilds from controlling all the positions just through numbers alone? I assume few or no position comes from voting?
A position of power is pretty much anything tied to the governing body - a seat at a "council", so to speak. And holding the all the positions through zerg won't give you much cuz it fragments the benefits (they're limited in number, after all) across multiple guilds, plus the juicy stuff would be locked behind a high political power. Hope that explains at least a little more.
Right, so, I was aiming for a more specific game-mechanics example
So, for example, should a guild with the mayor of a node get the buffs? Who or what decides who get to be on the council?
A guild with a memebr as a mayor should get a benefit, but not a top-of-the-shelf one. These should be locked behind more conditions imo (like having mayor and a guild perk, or a number of councilmembers in favor).
As to who gets to be on the council, most of the roles should imo be filled with NPCs, representative of various parties in a node (like blacksmiths, lumberjacks, artisans in general, militia, clergy, merchants etc.), who have varying conditions for reputation.
so, the most recent experience I had with Friendly Fire was MO2 and part of our PvP training was dealing with FF
now, in AoC, this would definitely increase the teamfight skill cap however, organized guilds would practice, and this wouldn't really be an issue when you heavily outnumber the other group and have good shot callers and comp so, not sure how much this would help, maybe with zergs, sure, but they would still win if they had twice as many players - I think this would affect them more if they were fighting a group with similar numbers that didn't had to worry about FF,
but yea overall, I think this is definitely good, it's a nice addition that we didn't had in L2,
I see, practice can certainly improve the FF problem in certain situations and up till a certain number depending on the game and such number still uncertain for me in Ashes currently, btw how many people you had in MO2?
I think you have a good intent, but not necessarily a working approach. I'll present you my countersuggestion, and we'll see how you like. Though before that, my personal opinion is that simple numerical buffs are simply a no when it comes to guilds, so I'm going to be using a more encompassing term "benefits".
The idea that I have is conceptually simple - a significant portion guild benefits should be a limited resource that comes from nodes through interaction with in-game political systems.
Think of it as benefits coming from positions of power in a society, and to achieve them (the benefits) a guild would need to have a right amount and/or type of these positions in their favour (aka either hold the position themselves, or have the highest reputation with the NPC that does etc.).
What this accomplishes (or at least I hope it would) is a creation of an environment where any guild is a potential destablziler, adding a fat layer of organization for mega-guilds, one which normal guilds wouldn't have to care about, and could just waltz into that King of the Hill battle and get a piece of the pie in the majority of cases.
I think I understand the gist of it. It's interesting. Can you give an example of one of those positions of power though? In what way would you prevent mega-guilds from controlling all the positions just through numbers alone? I assume few or no position comes from voting?
A position of power is pretty much anything tied to the governing body - a seat at a "council", so to speak. And holding the all the positions through zerg won't give you much cuz it fragments the benefits (they're limited in number, after all) across multiple guilds, plus the juicy stuff would be locked behind a high political power. Hope that explains at least a little more.
Right, so, I was aiming for a more specific game-mechanics example
So, for example, should a guild with the mayor of a node get the buffs? Who or what decides who get to be on the council?
A guild with a memebr as a mayor should get a benefit, but not a top-of-the-shelf one. These should be locked behind more conditions imo (like having mayor and a guild perk, or a number of councilmembers in favor).
As to who gets to be on the council, most of the roles should imo be filled with NPCs, representative of various parties in a node (like blacksmiths, lumberjacks, artisans in general, militia, clergy, merchants etc.), who have varying conditions for reputation.
Ah, so NPC council, gotcha. And you do quests for them and gain some rep or something I am guessing.
so, the most recent experience I had with Friendly Fire was MO2 and part of our PvP training was dealing with FF
now, in AoC, this would definitely increase the teamfight skill cap however, organized guilds would practice, and this wouldn't really be an issue when you heavily outnumber the other group and have good shot callers and comp so, not sure how much this would help, maybe with zergs, sure, but they would still win if they had twice as many players - I think this would affect them more if they were fighting a group with similar numbers that didn't had to worry about FF,
but yea overall, I think this is definitely good, it's a nice addition that we didn't had in L2,
Friendly fire would be a pain.
Also against corrupted team members.
I think you have a good intent, but not necessarily a working approach. I'll present you my countersuggestion, and we'll see how you like. Though before that, my personal opinion is that simple numerical buffs are simply a no when it comes to guilds, so I'm going to be using a more encompassing term "benefits".
The idea that I have is conceptually simple - a significant portion guild benefits should be a limited resource that comes from nodes through interaction with in-game political systems.
Think of it as benefits coming from positions of power in a society, and to achieve them (the benefits) a guild would need to have a right amount and/or type of these positions in their favour (aka either hold the position themselves, or have the highest reputation with the NPC that does etc.).
What this accomplishes (or at least I hope it would) is a creation of an environment where any guild is a potential destablziler, adding a fat layer of organization for mega-guilds, one which normal guilds wouldn't have to care about, and could just waltz into that King of the Hill battle and get a piece of the pie in the majority of cases.
I think I understand the gist of it. It's interesting. Can you give an example of one of those positions of power though? In what way would you prevent mega-guilds from controlling all the positions just through numbers alone? I assume few or no position comes from voting?
A position of power is pretty much anything tied to the governing body - a seat at a "council", so to speak. And holding the all the positions through zerg won't give you much cuz it fragments the benefits (they're limited in number, after all) across multiple guilds, plus the juicy stuff would be locked behind a high political power. Hope that explains at least a little more.
Right, so, I was aiming for a more specific game-mechanics example
So, for example, should a guild with the mayor of a node get the buffs? Who or what decides who get to be on the council?
A guild with a memebr as a mayor should get a benefit, but not a top-of-the-shelf one. These should be locked behind more conditions imo (like having mayor and a guild perk, or a number of councilmembers in favor).
As to who gets to be on the council, most of the roles should imo be filled with NPCs, representative of various parties in a node (like blacksmiths, lumberjacks, artisans in general, militia, clergy, merchants etc.), who have varying conditions for reputation.
Ah, so NPC council, gotcha. And you do quests for them and gain some rep or something I am guessing.
Yeah, pretty much. Some positions (like mayor) could still be reserved for players, but think the majority should be NPCs.
I see, practice can certainly improve the FF problem in certain situations and up till a certain number depending on the game and such number still uncertain for me in Ashes currently, btw how many people you had in MO2?
it's a different kind of difficulty compared to a regular MMO because in MO2 we had to worry about cleaving and AoE since most builds were melee and its an action combat game similar to chivalry 2, but it serves as an example that people can practice and overcome these issues,
Also, as I was writing this I remember this wouldn't be an issue at all, because you can invite random players to a raid group, so even if we were in separate guilds we just need to be in the same raid and I won't be able to damage you, so FF won't be a thing at all, in MO2 there is no party/raid system
Comments
now, I personally would love to see some of the suggestions people make thinking they would nerf large guilds implemented, things like OP guild buffs, and all sorts of benefits for guilds with lower member cap,
as a guild leader for a large guild I would love that - why?
because while these suggestions will definitely impact zergs, and make them struggle a little bit more - for myself, and many other GMs that don't lead zergs, and have organized structures, all this is simply more power in our hands and would make it even harder for actual smaller guilds to stand a chance,
see, when you have the structure and experience, it makes absolutely no difference to split a 1000 people guild into two 500-people guilds, or into ten 100-people guilds - leading it is the same, only zergs will have this issue, but I don't expect zergs to succeed in AoC anyways, they won't have support, good reputation, and there's a lot of other aspects, however, people seem to be under the impression that massive guild=zerg, and that couldn’t be further from the truth..
for example, the way my guild structure works, people will already be split into static smaller-sized groups, so adding more groups makes no significant difference, sure, maybe I'd have a little more work with logistics and moderation but not with leadership, the deciding factor of how many people will be in my guild is my decision, how many can fit in the in-game guild cap is irrelevant, the in-game cap means nothing for me,
so any benefit that the developer tries to add for guilds with a smaller member count is a direct benefit and power boost for us, large organized guilds that will have people split into those to acquire even more benefits than if there were none,
so yea, it's a tough decision, you can either nerf zergs and make large organizations stronger or don't nerf zergs and make it a leveled playing field, but in both scenarios - there is no "winning" for the smaller guild when it comes down to competing at the highest level against large guilds, that's how open world PvP MMOs work, there's no way to fix that because nothing requires fixing
I think I understand the gist of it. It's interesting. Can you give an example of one of those positions of power though? In what way would you prevent mega-guilds from controlling all the positions just through numbers alone? I assume few or no position comes from voting?
Of course. Organization wins. If you can keep 36 50-man guilds happy and organized and all working together, instead of 6 300-man guilds, more power to you. Not counting all the alt guilds of course. The game will be easy-mode for the mega-guilds who can do that.
A position of power is pretty much anything tied to the governing body - a seat at a "council", so to speak. And holding the all the positions through zerg won't give you much cuz it fragments the benefits (they're limited in number, after all) across multiple guilds, plus the juicy stuff would be locked behind a high political power. Hope that explains at least a little more.
I agree with a lot of your post. I imagine some of it is already intended. Just cutting to the chase, strength in numbers is going to be unavoidable to some extent, no matter what Intrepid does. The benefits that small/large guilds get...it's just going to be meta'd by the game population at large.
Small guild benefits are an ok idea. Gee we have this problem where smaller guilds are just speed bumps to zerg guilds. I know, let's make it to where small guilds have really good benefits that balance it out some. All you've done is created demand for those really good small guild benefits. If the benefits are good enough, then large guilds will split up across sister guilds to get the benefits. If they're not good enough, they won't, but then what problem are you even solving in the first place. Catch 22. Maybe there is a certain sweet spot Intrepid could hit where it does have the desired effect. We'll see, there's lots we don't know right now.
Your post addresses a lot of what I guess I'd call the macro level of dealing with zerg guilds. Systems and such to contain them. I hope Intrepid leans into that some and does what they can to keep the game from becoming a zerg fest.
And I'd like them to do that on I guess what I'd call the micro level too. What's the problem with zerg guilds? They zerg. They overwhelm you with numbers. On the battlefield. So give us zerg busting mechanics. Strong aoe, strong cc. Make it to where we can turn their strength into their weakness. Don't make it neccessarily easy to do that, just possible.
Don't go overboard with the high TTK either. Achieve your goals of not having 1 shots, and also allowing someone who's randomly attacked in the open world to respond and fight back before being at 10% health. Those are worthy goals. Reach them and then chill, don't go overboard with it. Overly high TTK is a huge benefit to zergs. It makes them very hard to break up. It makes it hard to perform effective hit and run tactics on them. The higher the TTK, the more time they have to turn their entire zerg around on you when you've isolated and are in the process of annihilating a group of their over extenders.
And a sane open world flagging/corruption system. There's nowhere a mega guild prefers to be than in an objective based pvp event where they can just throw their numbers around in a very controlled way. Caravans, sieges, guild wars, these are generally the types of things mega guilds will dominate (still a lot we don't know about these systems, so we'll see). So give smaller organizations of players who routinely get zerged down in these types of events the ability to conduct some limited amount of assymetrical warfare, without insane penalties. The ability to hit mega guilds when and where they're not expecting it.
Ultimately though, numbers generally win out. Everyone will have a responsibility to ally or at least collaborate when needed with larger groups of players. But hopefully Intrepid is willing to give smaller groups some of the tools needed to make dynamic and BIG plays, instead of just coddling zerg vs zerg warfare.
I have said it before, zerg guilds need to be tackled:
1) Guild Levels tied to hard, group quests like in L2. Make them harderer than L2.
A lv1 guild shouldnt be able to accept more than 15 members, nor should it be able to join an alliance, nor should it be able to have guild passives. Make them do hard quests until level 5 or 6. Let the goodies start being usable at level 4-5.
2) Guild passive points should be awarded only by specific, hard guild activities such as raiding open world RBs or completing hard group quests.
Let's see which guilds can manage to farm points in specific ways, in order to spend them for passives.
Not by simply members leveling up or giving gold. These things happen regardless. Let those that want to run 1 guild, let alone many guilds under one name, go out of their way and spend time in having to get guild points.
3) Bottle-neck those zerg guild numbers.
a) ships should have a debuff on all members. This debuff gets a stack every time a person is on the ship.
What's the maximum number of people a sconer, frigate, man-of-war ship can carry based on it's size?
If the debuff gets 1 more stack after that number, slow the speed of the ship down, slow the attack speed, weaken it's defense.
Let those zerg guilds build more ships.
b) FH permission limit should be capped at family membership, not at guild. I made a whole post about it.
Make it difficult for zerg guilds to award benefits to hordes of mindless members. Make it difficult to provide Guild1 Guild2 Guild3 Guild4 Guild5 with benefits.
Unless they work towards all that. If the leadership is willing to improve EACH GUILD , let them rule.
However, if the branch leaders do all the work, let them say "screw you, Guild4 will change it's name to 'Oath Breakers' and set their own course, with their own ships and their own FHs"
I opppse any systems that would make it easier to run a guild. It creates a couple of big camps, and the rest of the server is pawns.
For guild levels, as wiki says, its planned that you level up your guild and unlock skill points. And for base level, I think even most casual guild should be able to get at least most of skill points without extra steps. Its just great guild narrative, through hard work, you are rewarded. This also support putting efforts before undertaking more challenging stuff.
Zergs are always problem in sandbox kind games, but until we know all the systems, its hard to say much to it. I think lot of discussion here forgot guild patron system associated with nodes, that can be one to discourage splicing guild up to small guilds. Other things is alliances:
" - A guild may only be a member of one alliance.[46]
- There is no member cap in an alliance, only a maximum of four guilds.[44]"
Before we see, how this systems turn out, its hard to say how guilds form, in-game at least.
I really do like this idea of being able to specialize as a guild a certain way. For the super specialized guilds that are small and become a formidable force in gathering market due to their high investment into that tree, but especially for the hybrid options.
It’ll be interesting for the smaller guilds that don’t want to specialize due to what their guild mates having different focused and the different ways you find to min-max to benefit the whole.
This is quite possibly a moot opinion though if they keep with the idea that a guild around 30-50 people could get all of the guild perks.
well, the zerg guilds will win the 2nd activity, unless all the bosses spawn at the same time in different locations all over verra.
but point 3 is probs on point xddd
If i remember correctly you are one of the people in this forum that played Lineage 2, so i believe you might understand the issue that both "massive guilds" or "zerg" will face with the "smaller number of players in giga-buffed small guilds" problem.
Friendly Fire in mass PvP conflicts.
I believe it will be an even harder thing to deal with in Ashes due to how much more prevalent action skills will be in it, than it was in L2.
Considering "The maximum size for a guild that chooses all available skill options will be between 30 and 50."
I expect it to be 40(1 raid) so an alliance of such clans will have a maximum of 160 players(4 clans), currently alliances can have no affiliation to each other as far as we know.
Do you have plans to deal with the aforementioned problem?
Aren't we all sinners?
2 > 1 and it is hard to counter.
There will be alliances in AoC. And I thibk they said that you cant flag against group member, guild member and an ally.
Yes but alliances have a limit of 4 Guilds and "A guild may only be a member of one alliance.".
Aren't we all sinners?
Dont make the mistake to dismiss valid concerns about the possibility of zerg guilds.
I disagree that friendly fire will be a concern. Dont ease up.
Yes, Zergs were much more functional in L2 even without alliances due to the prevalence of Tab Target skills in L2. L2 maximum clan size was 200(disconsidering the sub lv40 20 academy slots) and alliances had 3 clans 600 players.
Don't take me wrong Zerg guilds can certainly be a thing considering the maximum ~300 guild slots x 4 guild alliances reach up to 1200 players.
My point is that pushing power into smaller guilds with limited slots does not help massive guilds like Liniker seems to believe because friendly fire will be a greater problem in Ashes than it was in L2.
But yeah, you are free to disagree tho.
Aren't we all sinners?
This is kind of an interesting conversation to me but I didn't play L2 so I'm trying to pick up on what you're saying. I'm assuming you're talking about the friendly fire that can occur in a mass open world flagging combatant/purple battle?
So like if Liniker split his guild up into 50 player count guilds for the small guild benefits...Nova Ordem 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be allied. And Nova Ordem 5, 6, 7, 8 would be allied etc. So in a mass purple battle, Nova Ordem 30, 31, 32 and 33 could have some difficulty directly assisting Nova Ordem 1, 2, 3, and 4 because they're not all directly allied with each other. They would hit each other with friendly fire potentially.
Am I following that right? Total L2 newb, I know almost nothing about L2 or it's systems. But yeah I didn't think about that. You can't really just meta the small guild benefits vs the large guild benefits. It's a numbers game and there would be pretty big benefits going max guild size as well because you can have more people under the same alliance umbrella, unable to friendly fire each other. Bigger, more cohesive zergs basically.
L2 had this same system Ashes intends to have of small guild perks vs large guild perks? Do you have any examples of specific perks? Like how strong were the small guild perks vs the large guild perks.
Not trying to butt in, but genuinely curious about these systems and how they work.
Yes, you kinda got the gist of it.
But no, L2 did not had this system that Ashes is intending to use, clan sizes where only bound by clan levels and Clan passive skills were universal and also only dependant on the clan level and reputation.
That's another thing that made Zergs more functional in L2.
Aren't we all sinners?
I guess in regards to your question to Liniker, it depends on how aoe/action cleave centric Ashes is, like you said. I do think that the better the small guild perks are, the more inclined Liniker would be to split his guild up to get them. And then if need be, he'd just have to get really good at orchestrating his 30+ splinter guilds into attacking in "alliance" waves, or at least creating some separation between themselves on the battlefield.
Sounds kinda pain in the ass but doable.
Honestly though I think a guild like his would probably have at least 1 300 player count guild, maybe 2. Then split the rest up into smaller guilds for the benefits. I dunno, it'll be interesting to see what guilds decide to do with the system.
Definitely. I can't say I'm a big fan of mega guilds. But it's a valid playstyle. And they will be competing against other mega guilds. So in some sense that balances out. They won't strictly be zerging down small guilds, they have other big fish to contend with as well.
That said, god I hope we get some zerg busting mechanics. Zergs that make mistakes should be able to be punished for making them, by smaller groups. Within reason. My opinion at least.
Mega-guilds who split up could up end not being able to bring more than a small percentage of their total numbers to help in specific guild wars. Their enemies could target specific sub-guilds to grind them down, without risking the full brunt of the mega-guild in retaliation. The mega-guilds can try to retaliate in kind, but they might still be limited in how many they can bring to bear against their enemies at any given time.
Then there's node wars. A mega-guild could try to enforce that all or most of their sub-guilds stay citizens in the same node or vassal chain, but if they don't, a node war could cause several sub guilds to be at war with each other, increasing potential friction and drama. Obviously this can happen within the guilds too, if the members are citizens of warring nodes.
These also factor in to why I would like to see incentives to split the largest guilds up.
Right, so, I was aiming for a more specific game-mechanics example
So, for example, should a guild with the mayor of a node get the buffs? Who or what decides who get to be on the council?
Edit: I misread what you said at first,
so, the most recent experience I had with Friendly Fire was MO2 and part of our PvP training was dealing with FF
now, in AoC, this would definitely increase the teamfight skill cap however, organized guilds would practice, and this wouldn't really be an issue when you heavily outnumber the other group and have good shot callers and comp so, not sure how much this would help, maybe with zergs, sure, but they would still win if they had twice as many players - I think this would affect them more if they were fighting a group with similar numbers that didn't had to worry about FF,
but yea overall, I think this is definitely good, it's a nice addition that we didn't had in L2,
yeah you are correct. that can happen.
i havent seen the guild skills yet but since steven said big guilds will need to ally with a smaller guild for the passives, maybe the meta for mega guilds will be 2-3 max member guilds allied with 1-2 max skills guild.
or someone like liniker could just say fk it and not get any guild skills and put all his members in four 300 guilds. maybe make 1 guild with skills and the other 4 just pvp while the small guild does what they need to do behind them, completely safe
A guild with a memebr as a mayor should get a benefit, but not a top-of-the-shelf one. These should be locked behind more conditions imo (like having mayor and a guild perk, or a number of councilmembers in favor).
As to who gets to be on the council, most of the roles should imo be filled with NPCs, representative of various parties in a node (like blacksmiths, lumberjacks, artisans in general, militia, clergy, merchants etc.), who have varying conditions for reputation.
I see, practice can certainly improve the FF problem in certain situations and up till a certain number depending on the game and such number still uncertain for me in Ashes currently, btw how many people you had in MO2?
Aren't we all sinners?
Ah, so NPC council, gotcha. And you do quests for them and gain some rep or something I am guessing.
Friendly fire would be a pain.
Also against corrupted team members.
Yeah, pretty much. Some positions (like mayor) could still be reserved for players, but think the majority should be NPCs.
it's a different kind of difficulty compared to a regular MMO because in MO2 we had to worry about cleaving and AoE since most builds were melee and its an action combat game similar to chivalry 2, but it serves as an example that people can practice and overcome these issues,
Also, as I was writing this I remember this wouldn't be an issue at all, because you can invite random players to a raid group, so even if we were in separate guilds we just need to be in the same raid and I won't be able to damage you, so FF won't be a thing at all, in MO2 there is no party/raid system