Mega Guilds

I have been watching the dev videos and I was wondering what precautions are going to be implemented to avoid mega guilds taking and controlling the entire PvP aspect of the game. This was a large issue early on in ESO and why a 3 faction system did not take off. The Mega Guild goes in and the other guilds do not have the mere numbers to overtake it. The Mega Guild controls the map and then there is no way to over take them due to sheer numbers. Both sides then get bored and the game's PvP dies because there is nothing to do to overtake the guild and the mega guild gets bored because they have no competition.

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maouw

apmax wrote: »

Its hard enough to organize one big guild, I don't imagine inter-guild politics on the scale of over a thousand people are going to lead to very long lasting alliances, especially given the growing economic potential of betrayal as a node or castle matures.

Also the fact that taxing is a legitimate perk for being in power - you KNOW people are going to fight dirty

Khronus

Noaani wrote: »

KHRONUS wrote: »

I will end up getting my guild to whatever population cap it will be. A ton of time will go into weeding people out who don't fit the community mold I am building. For alliances, Council will only ever use an alliance defensively and never for offense. I don't plan on taking 1200 people to a fight but 1200 to defend our 1's and 0's....yeah sure why not lol.

I personally don't see many successful guilds being over 100 players, in all honesty.

In order for a guild to be rtuely successful - especially if we are talking long term - the guild needs a good number of actual good players. These players are good beucase they do what they need to do in order to be as individually good at the game as possible - and one of the things that they will need to do to be as individually good at the game as possible is they need to be in a smaller guild.

I can see smaller guilds running alliances of them plus 3 larger guilds of players that don't have this same drive to be as good as they can, but players in guilds like that come and go, and so the power of such alliances will come and go.

A guild of ~80 players that are all playing the game to be as good as they can be though? that is the guild to be wary of.

I agree to an extent. When I ran my guild in wow we had 70 raiders for 7 ten player groups. We were all very competitive and often passed each other up for content. Each raid had a guild "leader" who was in charge of their own branch of the Council. We all recruited to the pool and from there players tried out for groups based on the people/comp/raid times.

Wow did not offer any other form of player other than PvP so we capped out at around 150 players. PvP had one leader who organized content but if I had continued I would have ended up with 3 which would have meant more content and more players. In AoC, there are more things to do in the end game. Professions, homes, pvp raiding, crafting that means something. I feel like with more that can be done, more players will want to join this style of community where jumping on discord while you aren't even in the game is still viable. Our current core group is really great and often communicate as a group of friends would. Once this extends to the content of AoC, we "should" be able to get 150 minimum.

At the end of the day, small guilds of 10-20 are just going to continue to be a cancer in a game like this (especially with alliances being limited to 4 currently). Giant mass invite guilds will also prove to be sink holes of players who just join for immediate events or to leech gear/resources and then hop to the next. We need more leaders willing to put in the time to grow the community and hold down some castles.

darthaden

Bricktop wrote: »

That's the nature of an open world game. If a mega guild is controlling the server there should still be 1000s of players who aren't in the guild. Alliances will begin to form and war declarations will be sent when the players of the server get tired of 1 alliance being in control and the server will police itself in that regard.

Mega alliances always get bored of dominating if they don't start being challenged and fall apart after some time. Usually breaking apart into several smaller guilds composed of the various cliques that tend to form in a zerg guild and going to war with one another.

I was in such a guild in the Xbox version of Black Desert at launch and this is exactly what happened.

The guild consisted of players who came over from the PC version who already knew the game inside out so naturally we destroyed the Xbox noobs. Then I missed a few days of playing due to working 12+ hour shifts at work. When I got back I found myself without a guild because it had split into 3.

The guild lasted maybe a month before breaking up.

Khronus

apmax wrote: »

Its hard enough to organize one big guild, I don't imagine inter-guild politics on the scale of over a thousand people are going to lead to very long lasting alliances, especially given the growing economic potential of betrayal as a node or castle matures.

It's not hard at all to manage a big guild. These are the types of typical guilds and leaders.

Elitist guilds - They don't communicate or work with anyone. They want to do the content like a pro gamer....and may do so but this craps on the community and they typically only log on for raiding or pvp content.

Mass invite guilds - everyone can invite so everyone joins. toxic players for days. Loot leechers. They definitely die out and are always greedy from the top down in terms of loot.

Tiny guilds - Someone with a small group of friends who want to roam and pvp and often quit because they can't fight 15 vs 40. They get discouraged and think "this game sucks cuz zergs". Sometimes end game content gets done, sometimes not.

Casual guilds - Farm all day and don't care about the rest of the content. Just chill and hangout. No end game content focus at all.

Very.....VERY rarely is there a true community of players looking for a collection of "good" players. I recruit other leaders who enjoy coaching/training players to be better at the game (I do a lot of this myself). I look for people who can attend content and want to complete end game raiding and PvP. Nobody can do this alone and I expect an effort from each member just like I know they expect the effort from me to keep it together. If everyones works at the goal of "let's have some fun and actually learn from our mistakes" we will clear content, murder our enemies and truly enjoy what AoC is offering,

Ventharien

An in game alliance of separate guilds coming together and staying together might have these organizational problems, But there are open game communities of people who go game to game, and bring in pre-existing organizations of hundreds. And they are entirely capable of forming separate mini guilds to keep efficient.

X guild name alpha, x guild name beta, and so on. Or just a guild name with a [Tag] to denote their community.

Kreed

Ventharien wrote: »

Kreed wrote: »

Interesting, so a guild that has over 1000 players can make alt guilds and be their own alliance..

Well if they all had one alt, they would have to make a separate alliance at that point. So their alts wouldn't be on the same 'team' technically.

I think you misunderstood what I stated, to clarify There are guilds that have a over 1000 players can make 4 or 5 separate guilds. Then those guilds can make their own alliance. Each would have enough active players to accomplish this. This means one guild thats large enough can have its own active alliance that controls and is spread right out.

Ventharien

Oh i got the statement, you just said alt. So if the guild had 1000 people, and sprung for 4 guilds, 3 at max capacity and 1 for the remainder, if they wanted alts to be included, they would have to be in seperate alliances, or unrelated.

Merek

If anyone has ever played EVE, they'd understand that once you get solid core together for your group, you can branch out quite effectively. But as others have said there will always be issues and the ability to stop them from tearing a huge group apart is all on the leadership.

Now, my concern isn't actually a "mega guild" running a server, it would be the developers involving themselves in a negative way to break it up. I enjoy watching empires rise and fall in games, sadly though, current MMO's don't really allow that to happen. Here's hoping the developers don't involve themselves unnecessarily.

Kreed

Ventharien wrote: »

Oh i got the statement, you just said alt. So if the guild had 1000 people, and sprung for 4 guilds, 3 at max capacity and 1 for the remainder, if they wanted alts to be included, they would have to be in seperate alliances, or unrelated.

Ahh gotch ya, alts are going to be pain, alts and guild space is always a struggle if you have a guild count cap.

I am not sure if I like what Steven had said that using alts for extra storage and other support for main characters. Over the years I found that just a painful needless use for alts. I enjoyed games that eliminated that and opened up storage and crafting a bit. Shared crafting and storage made it much easier.

RaidGoblin

So instead of speculation forever have they actually come out and said if they would do anything to fix mega guilds from dominating or do they want them to completely dictate how a server is played? I know Steve really enjoys that kind of stuff so i'd expect him not mind it. But i can see a lot of exploits coming from this, which will leave both sides really bored and not wanting to play the game. (Adversaries being too huge and strong or too small and weak.)

I however think its very problematic when you have organized streamers or huge discord groups who are ready to jump in and dominate a server with their sheer popularity and population. I feel bad for the people who are naively saying the guild size limited will help or distance will help but casual or even smaller guilds will be easily ran over or assimilated. My group of friends run a huge multi-mmo guild server on discord and can easily dictate who gets what and set up multiple guilds. The game even has features to deal with people who don't follow the rules (Group of PKer's or excluding them from node/guild rewards and economy, tagging and even banning from the Guild for promoting in-fighting). I'm assuming the most dedicated no-lifers will be either leaders or high-ranking members of such mega guilds and thus be players who are the most better of.

I feel like people are overestimating how prepared some people can be to really unify to try to take over a server. All of this is a little too much for a casual player with a small guild and not a huge amount of playtime (FFXIV, GW2 players) and people who don't like feeling like they are just a cog in a 2000-3000 player collective being bossed around by the no-lifers. Also the excuse that the rest of the server should just join up and fight the guild is very naive as well, people who arent already joining mega guilds won't bother with that kind of content at all and are more likely to just stop playing (Which i assume will be the majority from recent mmos or people who don't have the time to no-life) If they encounter barriers set by others players.

TL:DR: If this game is to survive it will need to cater to both players at a balanced level, i legit have no idea how to fix this problem except for ways to incentivise in-fighting and in-guilds betrayal and plot destruction which is rewarded but tbh outside of the game this stuff can be easily circumvented. But i have a feeling Steven wouldn't like that, he seems adamant to want to stick with some very outdated and unbalanced concepts, like using alts for storage or thinking people are going to be constantly nice and not exploit the plot system.

Kreed

According to the AOC wiki guild size will be a determined path selection guild tree the max will be a possible three hundred , doing so means giving up other abilities that the guild can obtain. The highest guild abilities that a guild can obtain means the guild player base will be between 30 to 50 max members.

This means daily active players will be more like likely to be in such elite guilds.

With this information mega guilds maybe inclined to split and create an alliance with themselves and with active players this would mean they could spread out more and take control an area.

Possible make up of the alliance guilds would mean 1 and 2 maybe the elite tight groups that function as the high end players and the 3 to 5th guild are support and the bulk of the players. Organised right and depending on the guild tree abilities and what they provide the elite players may get buffed right up and would be the core defense. I guess it will be wait and see.

Mojottv

RaidGoblin wrote: »

So instead of speculation forever have they actually come out and said if they would do anything to fix mega guilds from dominating or do they want them to completely dictate how a server is played? I know Steve really enjoys that kind of stuff so i'd expect him not mind it. But i can see a lot of exploits coming from this, which will leave both sides really bored and not wanting to play the game. (Adversaries being too huge and strong or too small and weak.)

I however think its very problematic when you have organized streamers or huge discord groups who are ready to jump in and dominate a server with their sheer popularity and population. I feel bad for the people who are naively saying the guild size limited will help or distance will help but casual or even smaller guilds will be easily ran over or assimilated. My group of friends run a huge multi-mmo guild server on discord and can easily dictate who gets what and set up multiple guilds. The game even has features to deal with people who don't follow the rules (Group of PKer's or excluding them from node/guild rewards and economy, tagging and even banning from the Guild for promoting in-fighting). I'm assuming the most dedicated no-lifers will be either leaders or high-ranking members of such mega guilds and thus be players who are the most better of.

I feel like people are overestimating how prepared some people can be to really unify to try to take over a server. All of this is a little too much for a casual player with a small guild and not a huge amount of playtime (FFXIV, GW2 players) and people who don't like feeling like they are just a cog in a 2000-3000 player collective being bossed around by the no-lifers. Also the excuse that the rest of the server should just join up and fight the guild is very naive as well, people who arent already joining mega guilds won't bother with that kind of content at all and are more likely to just stop playing (Which i assume will be the majority from recent mmos or people who don't have the time to no-life) If they encounter barriers set by others players.

TL:DR: If this game is to survive it will need to cater to both players at a balanced level, i legit have no idea how to fix this problem except for ways to incentivise in-fighting and in-guilds betrayal and plot destruction which is rewarded but tbh outside of the game this stuff can be easily circumvented. But i have a feeling Steven wouldn't like that, he seems adamant to want to stick with some very outdated and unbalanced concepts, like using alts for storage or thinking people are going to be constantly nice and not exploit the plot system.

I think the best way to fight these mega guilds is by limiting member numbers along with limiting rewards given to huge guilds and alliances. Simply, limit stuff like freeholds, player housing, citizen number at nodes, everything that makes being a cog in 3000 people aliance not worth your while...so if your guild has a castle yet you dont benefit from most of its perks, theres no point for you to be in that guild. Or if only half of this guild are able to access freeholds, that means the half that cant access them, have an incentive to join other guild, other node, to be able to access this content. 1200 people is 10more than 10% of active server population. Thats huge, and it is not hard for most of them to log in for a siege on the weekend...

Ventharien

RaidGoblin wrote: »

So instead of speculation forever have they actually come out and said if they would do anything to fix mega guilds from dominating or do they want them to completely dictate how a server is played? I know Steve really enjoys that kind of stuff so i'd expect him not mind it. But i can see a lot of exploits coming from this, which will leave both sides really bored and not wanting to play the game. (Adversaries being too huge and strong or too small and weak.)

I however think its very problematic when you have organized streamers or huge discord groups who are ready to jump in and dominate a server with their sheer popularity and population. I feel bad for the people who are naively saying the guild size limited will help or distance will help but casual or even smaller guilds will be easily ran over or assimilated. My group of friends run a huge multi-mmo guild server on discord and can easily dictate who gets what and set up multiple guilds. The game even has features to deal with people who don't follow the rules (Group of PKer's or excluding them from node/guild rewards and economy, tagging and even banning from the Guild for promoting in-fighting). I'm assuming the most dedicated no-lifers will be either leaders or high-ranking members of such mega guilds and thus be players who are the most better of.

I feel like people are overestimating how prepared some people can be to really unify to try to take over a server. All of this is a little too much for a casual player with a small guild and not a huge amount of playtime (FFXIV, GW2 players) and people who don't like feeling like they are just a cog in a 2000-3000 player collective being bossed around by the no-lifers. Also the excuse that the rest of the server should just join up and fight the guild is very naive as well, people who arent already joining mega guilds won't bother with that kind of content at all and are more likely to just stop playing (Which i assume will be the majority from recent mmos or people who don't have the time to no-life) If they encounter barriers set by others players.

TL:DR: If this game is to survive it will need to cater to both players at a balanced level, i legit have no idea how to fix this problem except for ways to incentivise in-fighting and in-guilds betrayal and plot destruction which is rewarded but tbh outside of the game this stuff can be easily circumvented. But i have a feeling Steven wouldn't like that, he seems adamant to want to stick with some very outdated and unbalanced concepts, like using alts for storage or thinking people are going to be constantly nice and not exploit the plot system.

I'd agree that guild limiting numbers won't do much to curtail mega guild activity. This is pretty common in open world games, and they are used to it. But i think you are underestimating the effect distance and lack of fast travel can do to these guilds. This world is going to be large, and they have few forms of fast travel. Spread out like that, mega guilds tend to dominate an area, not the entire server.

Along with their inability to ever really remove someone from the fight, and with multiple of these organizations around, I'd expect to see a shifting territory war between 3-5 large groups per server.

Bookystuff

Maybe this was already mentioned, but lower population guilds will also have more perks than high population ones. Not sure what these perks will be buy they aim to help balance the size gaps. As far as non siege goes, large guilds will struggle with taking control of nodes except for economic nodes. In order to partake in elections you have to be a citizen. And nodes have citizen caps. Econ you could just funnel gold though.

I am worried about the larger guilds I see in disc who have thousands of members in their channel forming multiple guilds and coordinating offline. Hopefully they turn on each other XD

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