Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III 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.
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III 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.
Comments
How is that prediction valid? You're the only person with this crazy 'vote for the guild leader' system. You know how you survive as a small guild? Don't make a system that can be gamed by other people to take over your guild!
A guild is like the Soviet Union, my missunderstanding comrade! We are a dictatorship, not a democracy and it works fine this way. A democracy leads to things not getting done.
EDIT: Besides, if you intend on having a small guild with elections, then none will be interested in falling a small guild when everyone is invested in diplomacy with the larger guilds that are forming alliances and rivalries with other large guilds to enhance the node they are fighting for.
Guild coffers? Is that what this is about?
I mean, you can always make a new guild...
If you choose to work outside the game mechanics, you are responsible to fix this problem you yourself are creating (which as it stands, only will affect you, because I’ve yet to see another small guild leader comment to say they would be easy prey to takeovers).
If your guild is small, you should know all of your members. If you’re worried about randoms voting to usurp your guild, narrow down the candidates based on merit since you should know them well enough to have a general idea how they’d function as a leader. If you still believe your small guild to be an easy target, then you’re falling short as a guild leader.
Leadership through voting doesn’t mean you let that 1-day in newbie have the same chance to win as a year-experienced trusted guildmate.
Ok, please stop being so defensive. You’re not asking a question. No one here has anything against how you want to run your guild, but you need to stop insisting it’s the game’s fault when you don’t have any precautions when working outside established game mechanics. The game isn’t here to save you from yourself.
Democracy isn’t abhorrent to the community, but it is your personal choice, and shouldn’t be affecting other players like you’re asking it too.
Why can you not tell at a glance what character is an alt? Because there isn’t any difference from a “main” to an “alt”, not even time played is a for-sure indicator.
It can be changed at any time if someone decides they enjoy a different play style better and moves on.
Having “ALT” besides every character’s name that wasn’t the first created would be an eyesore, on top of probably not being accurate anyway.
You need to understand, no one except you is bringing this up as a problem. Therefore, it is something you have to account for. Ask people if they’re applying with a character that isn’t their current main. Put in checks when someone wants to apply for guild leadership. That’s more than the game can do anyway, because it’s not going to annoy everyone else with eyesore name-attachments or pointless symbols all over just for a problem only one person is having because they have made the choice to work outside the game’s mechanics.
I wasn't going to engage you again since you have massive protagonist delusions about yourself but this is absurd. Ignorant people ask questions? Do you even hear yourself? If you fail to provide a comprehensible question, if you are unclear we could just assume your thoughts with our magic mind reading, or we can ask you to clarify yourself. Stop being so fucking self righteous please. The community does not think democracy is abhorrent, your framing of that question is clearly biased, again... stop with your protagonist delusions, you are not some special defender of democracy and everybody is out to get you...
Edit: I'm actually so freaking annoyed at your "it's a strategy of ignorant people to ask a question of a person asking a question"... fuck all of science and philosophy then right? Ignorant, every single one of them.
Literally nobody can identify a primary toon from an alt toon because there is no uniformly applied definition of an alt. In WoW I played a hunter for a long time, sunk lots of hours, learned it well etc but when I rolled a resto shammy I loved it even more and would prefer to play my shammy. I had a raid spot on my hunter though and still played him but would much prefer my resto shams. Which one is my alt?
Again, I repeat myself, you are asking IS to solve a problem of human social psychology. If you are worried about evil alts taking over your guild (ahem, protagonist syndrome), you can't ever actually know or prevent that in advance with lines of code. Just like how we can't prevent people from climbing ranks in companies or government for their own selfish reasons. If you could, fuck AoC, society itself would be a better place.
During BC and WotLK I raided on my Discipline priest as heals or my Mage depending on what was needed that night. I preferred the mage but ran both quite well. But the question still remains how to determine an alt from a main.
If someone plays rogue for a year then changes to cleric and plays that most of the time is it now the main after 2 weeks? a month? 6 months?
Democracy - Two wolves and a sheep discussing whats for dinner.
Also why mechanics exist that allow guild leaders some ability to discover who may be an alt.
But there is no way to tell what constitutes an alt rather than a main, that’s the issue. Some people have multiple mains they devote near equal time to. Some people switch mains and now their 50 hour playtime character is their main instead of their 500 hour playtime character.
The most that the game can reasonably give information on is if the account has multiple characters, and that information won’t do anything that would make OP content.
Their voting system is not a game mechanic so there’s no way for IS to design a system to prevent someone from voting. In-house rules have to have in-house stipulations and preventative measures. Many suggestions have been offered here by others:
- Requiring citizenship within the guild’s node
- Having applications
- Creating merit-based nominations
- Requiring some amount of time in the guild before allowing someone to vote
- Having a council voted in rather than a singular leader calling the shots
Lol wtf, get your politics out of here please. Nobody cares what you have to say about politics.
Honestly, at this point I am under the impression there is ulterior motives for wanting to know which characters are linked to which accounts.
I might operate a spy house for my node of residence. A guild that is strictly made of characters that belong to other guilds for the single purpose of spying. The goal would be to buy/sell information, or use what we collect to better guilds we are otherwise actually invested in.
***House of Glass! If you want to help your fellow citizens by engaging in espionage, join us today!***
I do not want you to know which characters (alt or main) I have associated with my account (friend, guild mate, guild leader, idc). I don't want you to judge all interactions with all of my characters based off the content I choose to do with one of them. I do not believe anyone outside of IS has the right to know which characters are associated with my account for any reason. Now, if IS wants to publish that information or make it an inherent part of the game that's on them (and they will have the right by EUA).
From a RP perspective, all my characters are different, and your Character(s) would have no way of knowing they are all related. What you are asking for is meta-gaming imo.
You are an absolute treasure to this community and I hope you never change.
And I would hope that a vote would take place over hours since it may be that not everyone in the guild can be online at the same time.
I'm usually in voice chat with the people I play with, so we know who is playing multiple characters.
Be~cause... they want to? Don't get me wrong, IS probably isn't thinking "hur hur hur... small guilds suck! LET'S MAKE IT WORSE!". Small guilds, by definition, are easier to control and manage member wise. They function best by STAYING small. You've suggested that you've been in guilds like this before, in other games, how did you cope with the exact same possibility? Other than Black Desert, I can't think of any MMO I've played that automatically dumps all your characters into one guild. ESO dumped your account into the same guilds, but you could join 3 or 5 or something stupid like that, so all of your characters are in all of the guilds you joined.
You can't. "Alts" is terminology invented by players to refer to characters they only sometimes use. Whether players use this term to refer to such characters, or to characters they aren't playing that moment ("Hey, my alt could use that sword!"), or to characters they never play anymore/have retired, is entirely subjective. As has been suggested, you can use in-house guild rules to help minimize the threat of espionage and sabotage by requiring all members to be citizens of the same node, run a guild with heavily vetted friends rather than inviting strangers, and routinely cleaning your ranks of idles.
I would say none at all, as that would directly undermine the point both allowing alts to join multiple guilds in the first place, and directly mentioning this specifically to alert prospective guild leaders of these possibilities. It would be silly for IS to make a decision to allow a thing, then actively put in safeguards against it.
It's probably harder to break or take over a small guild than a big one. Small guilds have far more oversight on their members while big ones cycle them out in droves. However this largely depends on the guild's leadership.
From where I sit, having a small guild in a very competitive game has serious advantages, however having elections for a small guild has serious DISadvantages and no real advantages whats-so-ever. After all, any disgruntled member (spy or not) can just take the guild by winning the election and bombing the f* out of it, and leadership of the guild wouldn't have to stagnate if the guild's membership actively participated in guild meetings and discussions. Elections in small guilds serves no real purpose.
My advice is, if you want to form a democratic small guild, maintain guild ownership, and hold elections for a rank just below yours which has the full powers of the guild leader (or as much as possible) and simply don't interfere unless the elected "leader" breaks rules. You still run many risks, but maintaining control of the guild means you can always rebuild.
However, as has been repeatedly stated, this system is being set into the game specifically for this reasoning. While, yes, small guilds are more or less at risk for sabotage and espionage, the returns for such actions are likely less substantial.
As for elections, again, this seems unnecessary for a small guild. If I were a game developer, I can honestly see no reason to spend weeks coding fail safes specifically for small democratic guilds, let alone months trying to plan such code work (identifying a solid meaning for alts alone might take weeks). Especially when this element of your guild is a choice you specifically made and should understand the risks for it.
And even if it were an issue, it isn't that hard to make characters in a guild have to provide some input to the guild (caravan runs, helping in PvP etc) before being promoted to a rank that allows for a vote. If a larger guild of players put in the effort to join a smaller guild, and help that smaller guild enough to get all of those characters promoted to a rank that has a vote, then that larger guild has earned the opportunity to take over the smaller guild, imo.
Typically, the leaders are the ones who play most consistently and have a clear vision of the guild’s primary purpose. Vote on new objectives if you want, but it probably just takes a discussion to evaluate what most of the members of a small guild are interested in.