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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
All of the content in Ashes is content that's way better for someone who has 600 players on one side, EXACTLY BECAUSE it's all content that can only be cleared by a smaller group.
Ashes will have wars and open world pvp. This means that you need to defend your loot. You know what makes it easier to defend the loot? PEOPLE. You use those 600 people to defend each and every source of loot in the game (or at least as much as you can farm/defend) and you redistribute the loot accordingly.
This has been done in L2 since it came out. And I've seen alliances of ~1k players divide all that loot quite nicely.
This also directly ties into the desire to dominate and win. If you're a part of a huge alliance - you're safe as hell from the majority of enemies on the map. Barely anyone is brave (or stupid) enough to aggro onto a player from a strong alliance, because that would mean that this attacker is now a KoS target of, potentially, thousands of people. This is power. This is also the reason why these huge alliances exist in the first place and why they keep existing even when the game limits in-game member quantity.
Obviously the week mega guilds who have shitty leaders and bad cases of corruption and preferential treatment will fall apart sooner or later due to those factors, but this is the case in all guilds, from a tiny 16-member one to a huge mega alliance of thousands. You seem to only know this kind of guilds, so your perspective is stuck on their behaviors. Some of us have experienced, or at least seen, guilds with much much better leaders and members, who succeeded for a very long time despite in-game limitations.
The thing is that with out of game alliance of 1200 players that you all talk about, its no longer about if there is reason for you to stay in the guild or not, its about weather your 300 player alliance (3 guilds x 100 players) is worth playing together with the other 3 alliances, even tho its not your alliance that on the castle, not your guild with guild hall in metropolis, and the the actual benefits are not that big when you are in out of game alliance.
So the answer is obvious, even little things will break this 1200 players group in 4 x300 alliances(that is the in game system with my peoposal) and each of those will be enemies and fight for the same stuff between eachother
And as for Halls, they're literally on per node per guild basis. Every guild in a mega alliance will get their own hall. You know why? Because the mega alliance will make sure they do. They'll pull money or repell competitors or do whatever it is that needs to be done to achieve that goal. That's the point of a mega alliance - you have way more people than any other given group to achieve your goal. And in a game like Ashes, that's HIGHLY beneficial.
Presumably the mindset/playstyle of a mobile-gamer is different to the mindset/playstyle of a PC-MMO-gamer. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you can find.
WTF you talking about? Castles dont mean taxes at all.
1. Guild castles provide benefits and trophies for guilds that capture and control them.[11][25]
These benefits increase the longer a guild holds its castle.[11]
(yes yes as always you will say we have no info, but this doesnt mean you have to disregard them as non existent because they will be there)
2. Activate events and abilities that benefit node citizens under their rule.
3. Unlock additional types of buildings in nodes.[
4. Exert control and pressure over one of the five economic regions.
5. Flying mounts.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHY GUILDS MAX PLAYERS SHOULD BE RESTRICTED.
And this means reducing the value in being in outside of game alliance and increasing the PER GUILD rewards. If the only value in being in this alliance is the open world pvp, but per guild values are a lot more, this will create in fights, and will break the out of game alliance completely
TBH i have no idea what you trying to achieve with your comments here... You are just bored and trying to chat with someone?
Instead being the "know it all" - provide solution how this can be fixed.
Just coz i gave you example with mobile game doesnt mean i dont play MMO games, and if you try to put some personal argues with me i will just ignore you, dont have time for kids.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Castle_taxes
All of those except for the first one is completely indirect to the players, and, as you agree, we don't know what the first one even is. Though if you listen to the references used for that first point - Steven mostly mentioned "economic influences on the region that better the relationships with others". So outside of taxes I still don't really expect the guild members to see huge direct benefits.
Again, the in-fighting only exists in badly-managed guilds, as pretty much everyone else in this thread have already told you.
I already have, but you've conveniently decided to ignore that comment.
In other words, I want bigger pressure on bigger guilds, so that it's not so easy to manage them. This would naturally decrease the amount of huge guilds and would also make their lives more difficult, which directly helps smaller guilds to fight against them.
Like the game is pre alpha 2, it is yet to get balanced. And this here what i am writing is not so much to chat with the community, but to bring AOC atention to the problem at hand.
Ofc discussing it with the community will help them see both sides since my personal opinion is based. And seeing some counter arguements is always good.
But the discussion should not resolve around "this dont exist", but more like... "if this exist it may help with..."
there are more than 1 castle. 1 big dominating alliance could have them all
not always. guilds can divide themselves in cp. so basically each 8 man party is a mini guild inside the big guild. you play with your party, you help your party even if sometimes you get less, but in return they help you get your stuff. you become more coordinated and better. a guild with 1200 players is not the same as a guild with 1200 players divided in cp
Even if somehow there are such huge benefits - all the mega guild needs to do is to reimburse the other sub-guilds with other stuff. Members of a castle-owning guild get some uber buff? Balance that out by using taxes money to buy members of sub-guilds better gear and/or enhancements on their current one.
And outside of some form of buffs I don't really see how anything else can be seen as such a huge benefit that reducing guilds from 300 to 100 would be impactful in any way.
You're suggesting to make billionaires split their money into more offshore banks in hopes of those banks failing once in a while, while I'm suggesting to let those billionaires keep their money in one bank, but tax THE EVERLIVING FUCK OUT OF THEM, if they do.
Both our suggestions accomplish the same thing, except mine would also benefit the game in more ways, rather than simply punishing people for grouping up in numbers bigger than 3 digits.
Sure some people will join and only want to be in it for the money and leave but those people get cycled out and new better people will replace them. You always have bad apples and find more of them the larger your group. But those bad apples effect all guilds at the end of the day, and those kinds of apples don't generally do anything anyway.
Well maybe this is just my opinion, but what you talking about is small guilds, since being part of small guild means you know every other person there, make friends, and you are ready to sacrifice some self stuff to help someone else.
and in my opinion large guilds x 1200 players are consisted of like 30-40 core members who start the guild and they will do whatever it takes to help the other of the core members, and the rest 1160 members are all in the guild solely coz of the benefits it provide. I dont think any person who searches for friendly community will join 1200 players guild, The sole mentality of players joining zerg guilds is to dominate everything. And again in my opinion - if they have to sacrifice things from their selves to make the other guild members better, they wont do it, because this is their mentality
Cause I've led several-hundred member guilds and was part of alliances of such guilds - and all of those people were more than willing to help others in the alliance even w/o anything in return. And guilds in these alliances always had agreements on loot sharing, so everyone in the alliance knew that if they help - they'll get their fair share.
And I've experienced that across ~a decade of playing L2, across multitude of servers and server setups (from ones with very slow progression to ones that only lived for a few weeks, but people still "finished the game").
So I'm curious where your statements come from.
The difference is that in L2 there is nothing to lose by being in large guild. Only things to gain. So yes players will be willing to make some sacrifices in order to stay in the guild and to be "on the good side of the community there".
And the real thing that brings the in guild fights is when part of the guild gets X benefits, other part get Y benefits, and you are there in third part of the guild with no benefits at all
or ofc there is 1 more thing that brings in guild fights, and this is if the guild start losing a lot, and win little. But this is completely out of scope so not talking about it.
I feel like you have not been in a big guild before everything you are talking about doesn't exactly sound true. I've had these discussions before based on what you are saying. I also feel like you didn't understand what i just wrote previously.
First off you talk about sacrificing what you have, to me it sounds like you are giving things away (or maybe you view your own time as that thing) like you are losing a lot. Unsure what mmorpg you are giving all your money / mats to a guild for no reason. I also don't feel like you giving that much that it becomes that big a deal that actually effects your pocket. And generally in games giving to the guild gives you some sort of resource back as payment for donating in recent trends. IE you are complaining about some small donation of 100 gold out of you 10k as an example
I don't see you breaking your back and really sacrificing anything. Of course we could think of a unique situation where the guild is like we need everyone to gather wood so we can make defensives for the castle, which would be more of a guild event type thing so they can make sure it is properly protected. General guild members have pride in something special they own and want to keep it as it is their image for their guild and a symbol of power.
The mind set of I gathered wood for you now you need to pay me for my sacrifice isn't really guild mentality.
As a GM i'd pretty much kick you from the guild and you would lose out on the benefits and groups of people to play with. That would just be a selfish mind set and not really needed that you need to be paid to work together and play the game with everyone.
Which than a guild full of people with that mentality would be a group of people that care about themselves and not actually concerned about growing the guild or their standing. Meaning that would be the type of guild that would not really get anywhere.
Though based on your take, the obvious example is you are trying to suggest for some reason all guild funds and mats are given to certain people to make gear for them (mainly leadership and friends) and not other people. Which you keep ignoring the fact people are telling you to stop using bad leadership as an example of your point. Or atleast experience a good guild and gain some experience on how things work.
That or you are salty and join a guild but don't help with much except once in awhile, don't go in any fights or help raids. And then wonder why you aren't getting free hand outs. Generally based on how competitive a guild is it is the active members that re going to be getting geared out. Cause you need those people to be where you are at, as those are the people helping with pretty much everything you do.
IE when i played new world and i made sure the people in the siege were getting more gear and upgrades so we had more of a edge in fights. Cause you know those are the people fighting.
And that's not even mentioning the obvious loot distribution of "we have these 2 parties that are already super strong and have contributed a lot, so they'll get all the loot, while the dudes in the back that just joined our 200-member guild will get jack shit".
L2 didn't have a "everyone gets a prize" design, so huge guilds worked in the same way they would in Ashes. Only well-coordinated and well-led guilds would succeed, because otherwise they fall apart for all the same reasons you hope out-of-the-game alliances would fall apart.
As Depraved said. In party-based games, guilds have constant parties that are their own little guilds, which can lead to in-fighting even in 40-man groups.
So no, there was quite a bit to lose if you were in a large poorly-managed guild in L2.
But you didn't answer my question. Are you speaking from experience or from theorizing?
most of the discussion here is about OUT OF GAME ALLIANCES. Since the counter arguments to what i said is that if max members count of guilds is reduced "it wont matter because guilds exist out of game". So everything you said has 0 connection to the actual discussion here
And I am talking about AOC, not Any other MMO you been playing for decades.
In AOC even if you are in 1 guild and donate all the mats to 1 person, you may decide to declare war on a node and this person may be citizen and he will be against you. and this is people in same guild, now imagine the scale when players are in different guilds
1) by the number of players on a server.
Theoretically all on server could be peaceful to each-other. Bring Asmon and his friendly streamers onto the same server and see what server they shape.
2) by the number of players in a metropolis nation.
We have maximum 5 of them with some nodes outside. These nations will want to get whatever is better for their nodes and there is resource scarcity in the game. So it might happen that some will want to take things from the others.
We also have these 5 nations on 2 separated continents by a full PvP area. So an imbalance with some "disagreements" between them is highly likely.
3) by dynamic hard to control parent vassal relationship.
Node sieges will reshape the world. Guilds which were initially in the same metro nation might end up in different ones and have to fight for resources. Moving many players to get all their desired citizenship will not be easy because of costs and node type preferences. So players will be forced out of the guilds and forced to listen and observe more what mayors do and try to change them during the monthly elections.
Those who get into a node while that was level 3 will not want to move away once it becomes level 5.
Now you can estimate how many players fit into a node and you will get some numbers. Some guilds might be bigger some smaller... but with the resource scarcity it will be hard to keep large players together and to cooperate. Will be easier if they observe the game rules and play the game as it is better for their freehold providers, node and nation.
You missed the entire point of my post by trying to say its from a different game when I'm bringing up examples lmao.
At this point I'm just convinced you don't know what you are talking about when it comes to guilds with these examples you keep bringing up. You are trying to make a narrative that guilds are going to fight each other when that isn't going to be the case.
When i have a bunch of guilds there is no reason for us to be fighting as my leadership will be running each of the guilds.
I have given comment about personal experience in the comments above.
And the things you explain here are very different, since even if you dont get as mush as some other players in the guild than other members, first you still get some, and second you have no way to fight and win vs them if you decide to split.
In AOC you have the option, since from 1200 players, if for example 250 split, they can declare war on the castle and take it in 250 vs 250. (this is just example so pls dont start with the "castles wont matter"). so those that split can win.
guess this is where the gap between us not understanding each other stands.
You think that as long as leaders between 2 guilds cooperate everything is fine.
And i think that even if the 2 leaders cooperate, if 1 of the 2 guilds get a lot more, the players in the other wont stand and take it as something normal
You don't' understand guilds that is the issue here. You think everyone is a solo player in a guild looking to get money.
No i think there are mainly 2 types of players in guilds ( ofc there are a lot more types, but most can be generalized in those 2)
1. players that are in guild for the community, friendship, to help eachother - and those players join small guilds
2. players that want to dominate servers, take everything without having any competition from enemies, - they join zerg guilds, and are not there for the friendship
2. If their goal is to dominate the server and they are on top they aren't going to be dipping out of a guild that is on top. It also doesn't mean they won't make bonds during that time it depends on the players. So long as the guild stays competitive those players will generally stay without going into more finer detail.
If you are talking about selfish players that want everything and guild hop constantly, ya those are the types that will dip out for any reason.
This is getting into the psychology of things overall guilds will be fine and keep their people or recruit new ones at the end of the day. They aren't going to fight each other.
I'll give you advice the more you go on this angle the worse its just going to drag out a pointless conversation as you are missing major points of guilds. You should be advocating for content for different sizes of guilds so more types of guilds can be competitive in those elements of content.
Or really you should be advocating for content to not be won by a zerg automatically because of numbers. Balls in your court if you want to argue for something pointless or something meaningful if you really are against larger guilds just winning everything.
Again, The conversation here is not about people fighting withing the guild itself....
Its about fight between different guilds that are connected by out of game source such as discord group.
I'm fairly certain no one here is talking about an alliance, we are talking about Guilds that will have multiple guilds. IE some ones guild of 1200 people. Split between their sub guilds.
One of the biggest wars on one of the official russian servers for L2 started because one of the strongest parties in the strongest guild on the server decided to split and make their own guild. This rival guild then contested majority of farming spots, sieges and other general pvp encounters.
Here's that exact party fighting against that guild on highest value farming spots at the time (and then entrance to them).
And afaik this party split off exactly because there was a lapse of judgement on the guild management's part.
Also, this strongest guild had sub-guilds that didn't get the benefits from the main guild's castle (in L2's case it was stat passives), but they were still under the banner of this strongest guild, because that's where the power was.
The same would be true in Ashes if instead of 300 max members it was 100. Except I expect majority of strong guilds to never even go beyond 40 members, because getting direct power through guild abilities is way more valuable than just having members in the same guild. But these strong guilds will still have hundreds of people under their command, because that's how big strong guilds work. You seem to be talking about weak guilds full of solo players.
Let me give you example so things get more clear...
You have 1200 players group that played in another game together before AOC. They have discord server where they are all together.
Now IF AOC allows 100 players per guild, you get 12 guilds that play together in game. In reality they are not connected in any way in game, just in discord server. So the conversation is about if those 12 guilds will fight each other even tho they have played together before, and have common discord server
A group of people with the same cause (that is, their guild group being prosperous and strongest) won't suddenly fight each other simply because they are now collected in small groups in-game, all while being in that big group discord.