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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Design Heavily Favors Large Guilds. Expected?
Hespera
Member, Alpha Two
This is a discussion about how large guilds have taken over the realms. My observation is that larger guilds that are PVP focused have been able to dominate the realm due to shear numbers. Let's assume there are no exploits happening for this discussion.
LargeGuild has many more players on and find it easier to create well-formed groups, getting better experience and high gear drops. The 50 guild numbers does nothing since LargeGuild just has 3 or more smaller guild names in game. It doesnt really change the size of their guild...just makes it harder to manage some ingame things.
SmallGuild does not always have a balanced group and tougher to hit higher content areas or areas that have good gear drop. LargeGuild gets stronger faster and push SmallGuild out of good areas...they also can bring in more people to get the farm area and SmallGuild cannot compete so they have to move to a substandard area to XP. LargeGuild begin to become strong faster.
SmallGuild runs a small caravan and get attacked by LargeGuild. LargeGuild has people spread out across nodes watching for caravans and have higher numbers on. SmallGuild do not have the equivalent numbers and do not have enough defenders most of the time...if they do have a fair enough defenders, LargeGuild just calls in all their groups to take them down. LargeGuild gets their cargo and reaps the reward.
SmallGuild retaliates by organizing certain times when a large number are online. They successfully take down a few of LargeGuild's small caravan runs. LargeGuild retaliates back....they organize their troops, prepare for battle, then find out where a bunch of SmallGuild are at. LargeGuild has three time more than people on than SmallGuild. They locate areas where SmallGuild are at, hit their Declare War scroll and kill SmallGuild who are scattered and not organized.
Declare War is skewed to benefit of the guild that declares the war because they have plenty of time to organize and locate targets without the other guild even knowing it will happen. LargeGuild benefits by looting those they kill and then getting a reward for winning.
The pattern is that SmallGuild is constantly under numbered, poorly geared and in a constant state of having a lack of resources (gold and glint) because of all the loss and inability to get to the resources needed.
The current design means that people will have to decide whether they need to join the larger guilds or give up on the game because it is not fun to be constantly beaten.
Was this the intent of the game or is the current scheme not working the way they expected? I feel like the intended design is not to support very large guilds since guild sizes are limited to 50. If so, it is not working.
One more thought...there are a large number of people that really want to mostly do the PVE and are not interested that much in PVP. Those players are leaving the test because they cannot do enough without getting killed. Right now we are trying to test the economy but the state of the game currently prevents that from happening. LargeGuilds control the economy by ganking...preventing real trade capabilities.
I want to say that I am not against PVP and I like the concept of the caravans and the choices you get for the event but the problem I see is LargeGuild will always win in the end.
I would like to hear from other players but also from @AshesCreation designers.
LargeGuild has many more players on and find it easier to create well-formed groups, getting better experience and high gear drops. The 50 guild numbers does nothing since LargeGuild just has 3 or more smaller guild names in game. It doesnt really change the size of their guild...just makes it harder to manage some ingame things.
SmallGuild does not always have a balanced group and tougher to hit higher content areas or areas that have good gear drop. LargeGuild gets stronger faster and push SmallGuild out of good areas...they also can bring in more people to get the farm area and SmallGuild cannot compete so they have to move to a substandard area to XP. LargeGuild begin to become strong faster.
SmallGuild runs a small caravan and get attacked by LargeGuild. LargeGuild has people spread out across nodes watching for caravans and have higher numbers on. SmallGuild do not have the equivalent numbers and do not have enough defenders most of the time...if they do have a fair enough defenders, LargeGuild just calls in all their groups to take them down. LargeGuild gets their cargo and reaps the reward.
SmallGuild retaliates by organizing certain times when a large number are online. They successfully take down a few of LargeGuild's small caravan runs. LargeGuild retaliates back....they organize their troops, prepare for battle, then find out where a bunch of SmallGuild are at. LargeGuild has three time more than people on than SmallGuild. They locate areas where SmallGuild are at, hit their Declare War scroll and kill SmallGuild who are scattered and not organized.
Declare War is skewed to benefit of the guild that declares the war because they have plenty of time to organize and locate targets without the other guild even knowing it will happen. LargeGuild benefits by looting those they kill and then getting a reward for winning.
The pattern is that SmallGuild is constantly under numbered, poorly geared and in a constant state of having a lack of resources (gold and glint) because of all the loss and inability to get to the resources needed.
The current design means that people will have to decide whether they need to join the larger guilds or give up on the game because it is not fun to be constantly beaten.
Was this the intent of the game or is the current scheme not working the way they expected? I feel like the intended design is not to support very large guilds since guild sizes are limited to 50. If so, it is not working.
One more thought...there are a large number of people that really want to mostly do the PVE and are not interested that much in PVP. Those players are leaving the test because they cannot do enough without getting killed. Right now we are trying to test the economy but the state of the game currently prevents that from happening. LargeGuilds control the economy by ganking...preventing real trade capabilities.
I want to say that I am not against PVP and I like the concept of the caravans and the choices you get for the event but the problem I see is LargeGuild will always win in the end.
I would like to hear from other players but also from @AshesCreation designers.
3
Comments
There's a relatively smaller but actively meaningful demographic of players, usually PvP/PvX, for whom this is the fun and the intent of these games.
Some of them are nice/rational about it, and some of them are trying to get the feelings associated with winning/oppressing others. The reason doesn't usually matter though.
If you weren't aware, Steven Sharif himself used to be one of those players, a big guild leader in prior similar games. He understands the dynamics well, and the reasons why people find this sort of thing appealing enough that he can make a 'niche' game and still see some success.
The parts of the current implementation that you mentioned are the parts that he considers important/fun to the MMORPG experience. The friction, the adversity, and the dominance of those who band together.
What AoC is trying to 'remove' is the standard model of it, where the loyalty is built up through power. Basically, other games have more trouble here because the players of this type don't have any reason to develop any loyalties specific to something other than their shared 'wish to dominate'.
When you put 5000 people into a game, the 500 who want to dominate quickly clump together and achieve their goal, and then stay like that awhile until one of probably three things happens:
1. Everyone else quits or devalues their achievement
2. Someone stronger shows up and/or steals something from them and they fracture internally
3. The game adapts to remove some of their dominance and they feel they 'won' and leave
These are the problems that AoC needs to solve if it wants to achieve its design goals. The intent is to do this via Nodes.
So i have no idea why there are even guilds in the game. A node should be considered as a faction for all the citizens in it + the vasal systems connected to it. And everyone else is enemy. Negotiations about piece and ect should be between node x node.
The whole "guild" system seems like something that doesnt have any place in the game, but is there solely for the purpose of zerging. Even on node wars. Citizenship > guild membership. Meaning guild mates can fight against each other.
For me the right thing Intrepid can do is remove guilds as a concept as a whole. And leave the game entirely node based, Or if they want to include the Guild bonuses- then guilds should be formed only with members in the same node/vasal system, and no non-citizens can be invited in the guild. (leaving the node leaves the guild as well)
Let them dominate the entire world, let them get fat.
Infiltrate the guild, weaken it from the inside.
When they least expect it. RED WEDDING. Burn to the ground their capital, **** their mounts and kill their characters
Removing them altogether on the ingame side might slow down recruitment and 'clumping' of the player type I mentioned, but it would cost a lot, 'socially', and force an even stronger reliance on external tools than we already see in this genre.
Nodes fall because of someone else. Guilds fall because they don't form correctly in the first place. Any combination of those into one thing would be even worse.
@Githal that is an interesting thought...and I have to agree. It is strange to be apart of a node that you have to also build and defend but then also have a guild you also have to do the same.
That 50 is just the base level.
You can then form alliances of up to 1200.
This doesnt make sense. It doesnt matter if guilds live outside the game, if the game is focused on nodes.
Lets say you have guild of 1k members outside the game that take 2 different nodes. They may try to work together and help each other, but this will most likely destroy their communication with all other neighbor nodes. Also there will be cases where for 1 of those nodes to prosper the other will fall behind and ect
Also if you declare war against 1 of those nodes, then the rest 500 members of this guild that are in the other node cant participate
Not to mention that a guild will almost never take all citizenship spots in the node. So decisions about who to ally with, who to fight as enemy, what to develop and ect wont be taken by the guild entirely.
And when we include the vasal system that nodes decisions are connected with their vasal systems - the guild wont matter much.
You can find that information in more detail here:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Guilds#Guild_size
So while it might not be possible currently (I haven't paid attention or checked this part) in terms of design intent, both of those things were mentioned.
The sort of players that actually dominate in these games do not have these trivial issues in organization.
I think you're underestimating Pirates in general.
Its not about organization. Its about what the game allows you to do as out of game guild and what is not allowed
Like if the game allows when you declare war against 1 node, for other nodes to get involved in this same war - then yes its about organization.
If the game doesnt allow other nodes to participate- then its not about organization
Imagine what i am talking about is like in WOW-
Pirate Software go in some WOW server with their 11k members. But they are forced to join 5500 members in Horde and 5500 members in the Alliance faction. And imagine its in the earlier expansions where hordes and alliances cant cooperate to do the same content together. So where the "organization" matters there?
They will go to some world boss and the horde side will donate the boss to the alliance side since they are in same guild? - may happen once/twice until they break all out of game ties and start fighting. Since you dont get anything by doing this.
The whole idea behind Zerg guilds is that by following the mass you get rewards. Yes the reward is split between all members, but since you control everything on the map - if you are not in the organization then you dont get anything, and if you are in - then you get small rewards.
But the moment when being in the organization brings more negatives than rewards- then it wont exist
Now you're talking about Factions, which AoC doesn't have.
When AoC implements systems to strongly prevent a group from hindering or disrupting another group, then it will probably matter more.
Right now, though, because of the way the game is designed, the subgroups of Pirates would just be assigned different tasks to disrupt the enemy.
Games can find ways to even out the numbers in direct conflict, and if OP was only talking about direct conflict, then you would be right, but their post wasn't limited to that.
ye but those sub groups will need to be in a node themselves, which may also be in war against other node and ect. I talk about factions, because if guilds dont exist, the only way a target is friendly and is not in your group/raid group will be if they are in the same node as you. Meaning if citizens of 2 different nodes are in the same place and they are combatants, then they will be threated as enemies and aoe spells and ect will hit eachother
Also if we include Vasal systems. Pirate software with their 11k members will take for example the whole ZOI of metropolois, 2 cities, 2 towns and ect. and when their enemy is a whole other ZOI with the same nodes in the vasal system, the war will be pretty balanced, even if the other zoi is not consisted of outside of game guild
From here, I believe it's best to leave it to @Hespera to decide if the things you are mentioning would resolve or alleviate their concerns, based on whatever experience they have with skilled PvP groups.
And as a random note, this has nothing to do with 'how PvP' the game is, it has to do with the specifics of the game's power structures.
The number of MMORPGs that set up power structures that are intended to actually make large organizations 'pay' any of the real life 'costs' of that organization is 1.
Because it specifically is making a part of the game that is very visible, but also very visibly not fun by most people's standards. Like planting a big red flag that says 'Complain Here!'
There's no benefit to most devs to make a system that does not turn out the way CROW3 described, in this genre, in this era.
The key is to find what enjoyment you can with the people you enjoy playing with. If the game's design squashes even that path, then either it's not the game for you(all) or the devs need to fix something, but Ashes of Creation is a game explicitly about 'having winners and losers', and that makes 80% of us losers almost by definition.
Well, while I know it is intentional, Nodes are not intentional guild content, but in the current state, they are. That's a bad signal that MAYBE game foundations are disconnected. Anyway, its hard to give any feedback right now, the game is years behind the release. It's incomplete, so anything we say now is subjected to change.
Rogue • Empyrean • youtube.com/@TebTarget
Might always be.
That is what I'm afraid of. The game turns out to be a toxic cesspool.
The game is built to be a toxic cesspool.
Gank anyone at any time at any level.
Take half thier mats when they die.
Zone others out of content with giant groups of people.
Destroy what other people have built so you can have more.
Maybe the game will fail as a PvP game and they'll release a PvE server with more controlled PvP content. Like when your Node goes to war PvP is flagged for players of those two Nodes.
It's so odd being in a group with someone then being in PvP with them an hour later... There's no clear line of who is an enemy or not. I assume Node's are a way of encouraging a Realm vs Realm environment and behavior, but it's not at this point in A2P2. Your enemy one day is your ally the next. This encourages the random ganking. That and it's consequence free basically. There's no criminal list, who's the murder? who grave robs? it's all word of mouth unless you see it. A guild can make a list of bad actors, but that'll be tracked out of game, and anything that takes me out of the game to play the game sucks. I like PvP too, I just don't like FFA PvP, which is what this game feels like.
I'm not saying they should change it. They should follow through on their vision and maybe I'll be surprised and like it. Listening to everyone and trying to make everyone happy is a sure way to just piss everyone off. So really it's Steven's games and he should make it how he wants it. And it may not be for me, and that does suck for me, but I'd rather see the game succeed to encourage more publishers fund some MMO passion projects.
Thats because you are part of 2 "factions". And unfortunately it will get worse when the guild size increase.
ATM you are part of guild of 30 members that can easily all be citizens of the same node. When the guild size is 300 with alliances for total of 1200 - members will be scattered across multiple nodes, And from the look of it the intended design of AOC is that node citizenship > guild membership, but in reality people will stick to their guilds and disregard their nodes, making unintended gameplay, resulting in bad experience for everyone else in the nodes that the big guilds sacrifice for the good of the guild.