Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
And in terms of a node, why do people believe that the optimal node population is, "As many as possible". The game will know how many people are citizens of a node, and we have already been told that if you chop too many trees then trees stop growing.
I just think it makes sense that if you have a PvP, or PvX game, you have something that evens up the teams. I suspect that getting a node to level 6 and keeping it there is going to be quite tricky anyway, and impossible if you have over-populated the node with half the server as citizens.
Good game design means discouraging anti-social play by design. This occurred to me in 20 minutes, I can't believe this is my own personal genius, I'm not that smart.
I have been trying to understand this from game mechanic, node development, and vassal perspective. Exactly how many players would be needed to maintain a metropolis with all vassals enslaved. It potentially is going to be thousands of players needed. To maintain the trade routes, to maintain the nodes from atrophy, defend in wars, and be good citizens. Doing things like going to a forest two nodes away to gather wood because there are no more trees to chop in the metro...and then defend the caravan that will bring that wood back to the metro. Lol
I think there will be plenty of contributions you can make to you guild even without being a citizen in the node where the guild hall is.
Then I came across this in the wiki. Is this just outdated information?
"The maximum size for a guild that chooses all available skill options will be between 30 and 50.[27]" https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Patron_guilds#cite_ref-livestream-2019-06-28-1:25:24_27-0
The most recent info is from 3 months ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vygDXte1AX8&t=2100s
The exact number 30 to 50 needed for small guilds probably has no reason to change.
For anyone who has seen New World's launch fall so hard, one of the major factors was this exactly. "100 cap" guilds just had 3 or 4 guilds on a 2,000 player server, so they were essentially 25% of the server's player base. Nobody could compete against the zerg in open world, so open world died. They held on all the nodes, so nobody could pvp there either. The players would drop guild, join the next, defend, drop, next, defend. They farmed up gold to create alts and they spread to other servers, to collect more gold. Amazon eventually *attempted* to put a stop to it, by putting 3 day cooldown restrictions, etc. But then the bug abusers found ways around that - server transfers, join kick join bugs, etc, that remove cooldowns.
Then, they play politics on top of it. 2 mega guilds own 90% of the map, and never fight each other. Everyone else fights over 10% of the map.
I sincerely hope Ashes of Creation takes this very seriously because this is a game killer. The majority of players do not want to play on a PVP-DEAD server. They want fun, constant action.
As i said in another thread - Intrepid just need to put "friendly fire" for anyone that is outside of your 8 man group even if you are in the same guild.
So If a guild has 300 players, and they want to make a zerg - they will get 37 groups x 8 members each, and each of those 37 groups can hit other groups.
This would not apply when the players of the groups are green (Non combatants), but if they want to pvp, they are flagged as combatants, so they get friendly fire.
And this wont apply in guild wars/ sieges/ node wars, caravan runs and other such situations,
BUT SHOULD APPLY for World bosses,
I think you're missing the forest for the trees. This weird idea would only apply to certain open world battles, and then you'll have in-guild griefers, it just doesn't make sense in an MMO with AOE abilities, it's not a FPS. The over-arching issue is coordinated discords and the "seal team 6" that flows between them. They roll over nodes, and then the 1% of top players tired of losing join them, creating a snowball effect. It's not the size, splitting to groups of 8 does not matter. They will strategize and find mechanics to abuse to maintain map control and have a mexican standoff with each other.
The mechanics I'm more specifically alluding to, are account-based cooldowns. For example: you compete in a node war today, you're not on cooldown and can participate in 6-8 more node war battles as a mercenary for your alliances. Now all your nodes are generating revenue. Soon, you're the only guild who gets to play the game once you take over the entire map. It's content gatekeeping.
If a server intends to support 10k players, and each guild is 300 players, you ideally can support about 33 completely full competitive guilds on this server. Realistically there will probably be 10-15 completely full competitive guilds from launch quickly taking lots of control, and the rest of the playerbase spread across smaller guilds. When a smaller guild's part of the maps gets encroached - the large ones gobble them up with more elite players. It's a snowball effect.
What compounds this even worse, are, for example, Thorwich's 12k discord where he intends to own an entire server by itself. Sure, he'll have maybe 10x 300 player guilds, and then they just trade nodes with each other, all getting the same payouts, and maybe putting practice wars with each other, but again, the remaining playerbase on the server is essentially locked out. Join them or quit. They are locusts.
There's obviously hard mechanics that can curb some of this locust behavior, but some of it may also need to be done via in game GM policing if players are intentionally abusing game mechanics.
Let me put this into smaller numbers, for perspective. Imagine joining a FPS game lobby with 40 players. Teams are split into 2 - 20 players each. You joined with 3 other buddies, so there's 4 of you on one team. Little do you know, there's 36 other players all on the same side, farming the system. The 20 on the other side kill you 4 over and over, while the remaining 16 stand around or outright avoid the fight. The match ends very quickly, as they intend. They get a reward. They queue next match and repeat.
Now imagine this idea spread to node wars, guilds, and larger scale. It's a fundamental problem that will always be attempted to be abused, but it needs to be clearly against the spirit of the game - and mechanics and policing are the only solution.
but there 0 reason to increase the guild size past 300 since there what 10,000 concurrent players players not to mention there alliances aswell if i recall.
You guys might be getting spun up about nothing. I think someone even mentioned destroying capitalism a few responses back. I think we'll be fine guys lol.
Either way guilds are going to form alliances and pacts regardless to get ahead. You will definitely be contending with large player organizations one way or another.
We'd keep lots of players we will otherwise lose.
More-so than any size increase would.
My God Emperor !! The Plebs on YouTube are talking Trash out of their behinds like no Tomorrow again !! They are feeling emboldened by the Delay of the mighty Alpha Two Crusade into October.
Please allow us to silence these Heretics by purging all of them with the righteous fury of Meme's. Just give the Order and it shall be done.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
12000 players in one guild is the most cancer thing I can possibly imagine in any game I have ever played. What a complete waste of time to have that many players. None of the content would be playable, in any way.
Interesting take from Actual Pirates 2nd in command.