I would like to put this out there while its still up for discussion.
Pirate Software has finally begun masse recruiting for his mega-guild Actual Pirates:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXHVpLWp35A)
In this recruitment message, he's making the argument that guild sizes ought to be increased from the currently planned 300 member maximum, up to somewhere between 10-15k. He states this number is too small because he has 12,000 members in his guilds discord - according to him, this will be the norm.
A few concerns.
1)
Connections.
He has direct contacts with the devs - a few are even apart of the guild. This gives him great influence towards a bad idea. Hence I felt compelled to write here, hoping to counter it.
2)
Privilege.
Streamer has around 12k concurrent viewers every day all day. Of course his discord numbers are egregiously large. This will not reflect the average guild by any means. He's intelligent and aware of this - it benefits his position if he can fit more people into less alliances. Presuming the numbers not change, he can currently fill a minimum of 10 alliances. This will be a weakness against his ability to organize in-game. Increasing this limit will not benefit the average guild looking to carve themselves a node, it benefits him. Do not be fooled by his propaganda.
3)
Game Design
Server / Guild sizes should be determined early, as this will have a ripple effect into other parts of the game. Each node will have a finite amount of space for players, mobs, resources, dungeons, etc. If the space is too large, the server feels dead. If it's too small, you're going to be surrounded by strangers who may or may not roll you for all your materials. You will never be able to explore in peace. Instead, it will almost certainly be a constant brawl.
4)
Consequences.
EVE was a great example of what happens when you have a few corporate sized giga-guilds made up of free labor chumps who are sold on their corps ink-stamped propaganda pieces controlling 90% of a server: a handful of privileged nerds that realize that peace is profitable. Profit maintains power.
But to the average gamer, peace is boring. This will be the fate of whichever server Actual Pirates lands on. If they have their way, this will be the fate of every server eventually. Because in politics, groups already naturally converge to give themselves greater affluence. Tribes become an alliance. Alliances become superpowers. Superpowers conspire with one another to uphold the status quo.
5)
The Alternative
Right now, it seems the team projects and designed around 50,000 players per server (
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Servers). These servers will currently have guilds at most the size of 300 people (guild points pending). Giving power to smaller guilds will be what fends off the peace-creep, and maintain a continued struggle in the politics of sandbox MMOs. Becoming a piece on the board should be a relatively simple task. Maintaining the piece should be an achievable struggle. Difficult? Yes. But it should be possible.
If you've ever looked into the social-politics of Albion Online's "Black Zone", you know its a constant flux of power struggles which has kept that player base entertained for years. How? They have a 300 player limit on guilds, which can be apart of an alliance that's limited to 4 total guilds. Sound familiar?
Do not let some ancient EVE raddled nerd with streamer privilege convince you or the devs to follow the steps of a dead game which he himself quit.
Thanks for reading gamers.
- Drone, the Mask.
