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1,200 member Guild Alliances and Server Control
Leiloni
Member
So as we know, you can have up to 300 people in one guild and they can create an alliance of 4 such guilds that have enough bonuses to effectively act as one single mega-guild.
So my question is - what's to prevent a 1,200 member mega-guild, or two, from completely taking over the server and ruining the game for the rest of us? No node competition because they can just take what they want so the rest of us are only left to control the scraps with nodes they don't want. No real ability to successfully siege a node or a castle because hey, they have 1200 people to defend it. No real ability to contest world/regional bosses, caravan trade routes, dungeons, anything.
Even if you don't want to contest those spots, but are more PvE oriented and merely want to go through a specific dungeon or kill a certain regional boss for their loot - if this guild decides it's theirs, they can camp it 24/7 with their tons of members and you'd never get a chance at the content.
If you're in one of those guilds - do you really expect to have any real competition? If you like PvP, you're not going to get it. You're just going to steamroll people which isn't fun for you or them.
Am I missing something key here or is this a massive game-killing flaw in the system?
So my question is - what's to prevent a 1,200 member mega-guild, or two, from completely taking over the server and ruining the game for the rest of us? No node competition because they can just take what they want so the rest of us are only left to control the scraps with nodes they don't want. No real ability to successfully siege a node or a castle because hey, they have 1200 people to defend it. No real ability to contest world/regional bosses, caravan trade routes, dungeons, anything.
Even if you don't want to contest those spots, but are more PvE oriented and merely want to go through a specific dungeon or kill a certain regional boss for their loot - if this guild decides it's theirs, they can camp it 24/7 with their tons of members and you'd never get a chance at the content.
If you're in one of those guilds - do you really expect to have any real competition? If you like PvP, you're not going to get it. You're just going to steamroll people which isn't fun for you or them.
Am I missing something key here or is this a massive game-killing flaw in the system?
4
Comments
That being said, bigger alliances will always have power in MMORPGs (as they do in real life as well), but as long as there are incentives to not handhold too much and create some need for competition that the alliance can't share very well (i.e. node/castle control, resources etc.) and as long as the server population is significantly greater than the maximum possible alliance size the system should work just fine.
That being said, the truth is that with any open world game, numbers will often result in an advantage. And honestly, why would they not? Numbers are power in games and in real life. It's almost impossible to stop that because there is no natural way to do it.
I prefer small scale/solo content as well, but the reality is that open world games often favor big groups. It's just how things work naturally.
It's just unlikely to happen often as maintaining guilds that size is difficult. Even when it does happen, guilds that large usually don't stick around that long.
While zerging content can make it safer, the more people you commit to something and the more time they spend doing it, the less profitable it is.
From my experience, when a large alliance forms like this usually is when the game becomes the most fun. The alliance becomes an enemy you are motivated to beat which leads to a lot of resources being dumped into things like wars and sieges. If you are on the alliance's side, it can become a you against the world scenario as you start to find yourself being hit from all directions.
Popular streamers are definitely going to have a huge advantage and will most likely be castle lords or metropolis mayors. But outside of this, I expect the politics of keeping 1200 players all on the same track to be quite difficult. If you can succeed, then you deserve it.
These alliances will rise and likely people will be in awe of them for "years". Their might and organisation paving the way for swaths of new content being completed, to the possible benefit of all those living within their sphere of influence.
Their military might will likely aid newer or lower level people keep safe from random PKers in their areas.
Artisans will thrive as there is an increased demand for all type of materials and resources and goods.
Metropolis and castles will be controlled with a sense of stability.
Then after "years" egos will begin clashing within the alliances. Guild X wants to develop deeper to the North. Guild Y wants to develop to the South.
Why should the leader of Guild Z be the one in control of that castle, when it's Guild W that's been working the hardest in that area.
Smaller alliances will being to form as they are displeased with the total control from this massive alliance. Bribes will begin spreading. Suddenly, all the caravan transports from Guild Y are being attacked and looted. And somehow Guild X is seeing a boom in their productivity and stocks.
Skirmishes at the edges of their controlled area begin to increase. Players in their area demand better protection, but the alliance is too focused investigating inwards. Money has gone missing. Players are defecting and other materials keep being raided.
One day the alliance officially breaks up and the guilds, once friends in a formidable legion, declare war on each other for the spoils of what ruins remain of their empire.
And new guilds will fight and ally to fill the power vacuum and new stories will be written.
This is usually how things go with these type of situations. Just look at any famous story from EVE Online,
It's kind of one of the biggest things they need to look into as it is something that can kill the game if it is too out of control. This game probably isn't going to be new player friendly to begin with, but if they don't look at this concern then eventually new players will just completely stop coming to the game.
I have some confidence that the game won't devolve to that point, but some of the downsides are unavoidable. It's probably not something they want to leave up to the players on launch because every other game that did that devolved into a zerg invasion and the most 1 sided pvp imaginable.
There might need to be a few more incentives to avoid the army meta.
U.S. East
Numbers will always play a part, no doubt, but incentivizing it is the problem. That is literally pushing for the zerg. I don't complain too much when I get zerged down in an ow game, sometimes I get annoyed, but its the not knowing whats going to hit you that makes it so fun. Problem I have is rewarding zergs, that will destroy the small scale clan. I hope they are doing more, I'm not totally giving up on it, but..just lost a ton of excitement for sure.
I feel a little bad for the people that missed the dawn of mmo's. The first I played was Ultima Online. To date, one of the best games I've ever played. But a lot of that was because it was actually like entering into a new world. No one knew each other. Think about that...the ramifications of it. There were no mega guilds, or guilds period because online gaming itself was in it's infancy. Everything formed naturally in the world of Ultima Online.
Friendships were formed organically. Guilds, alliances, enemies, all formed organically. At server/game launch, there were no mega guilds tee'd up and ready to plow through all content in the game, ready to run over any solo or small group in pvp that gets in their way.
Solo and small group players could really make an impact in the world. It was the wild west. Because there were no mega guilds, or even just regular organized guilds, with built up synergies from gaming with each other over decades.
It was truly a magical experience and I'm sorry for anyone that missed it. That magic lasted and steadily waned off over the next couple years. Guilds formed in games, then stayed intact and went to the next game. By the time Warhammer Online came around, I became aware of guilds like Ruin and Goons, with thousands of members, whose sole purpose was to coordinated zerg and overwhelm whatever unfortunate server they chose to roll on.
Well the magic isn't coming back unfortunately, that ship has sailed. But it IS a beautiful thing to see gaming guilds that have been gaming together for decades. The friendships that have formed. Some of them even have real life meet and greets. And now there are guilds that have rivalries with others and follow each other to servers in the games they play to continue the rivalry. All good stuff.
So it's the job of devs to create mechanics that ensure mega guilds don't run over everyone. Real, preventative mechanics, not things that players can just side skirt, manipulate and exploit. I think Ashes is doing that. God I hope so.
May it be greed, envy or pride, internal conflict will always rekt them, the bigger the group the faster it happens. Zergs are born and killed reasonably frequently, specialy in a game without factions, in which you don't have a permanent common enemy. I can bet the servers will fluctuate between 2-10 sides because of the number of Castles.
Aren't we all sinners?
When leveling up your guild, you are given a choice between passive boosts for your guild members or guild size increases.
This means that each player in a smaller guild will be stronger than an equally geared player in a larger guild.
This is done to assist smaller guilds in still being g relevant on the server as a whole.
This is what people are missing. You don't need all 1200 to make a difference. When the average small guild is 30-50 people, and at any one time they may only be running around with a fraction of that, it's super easy for a 1200 person guild to pull a tiny fraction of their members to lock down a world boss or dungeon. It doesn't take much at all to over come a small guild that on their absolute best day, can't field more than 4% of your numbers.
It's super easy to say oh the mega guild will play elsewhere and the game offers small guilds things to do. But the reality is if there's 1200 people all united, they have the power to do whatever they want and there's no way the thousands of other players on the server are going to get together to fight them back. Have you seen it on other games? I haven't. What I have seen is these mega guilds survive year after year regardless of low level member turnover - there's always people to replace them and several of them exist in all major games.
No we get that. But like it has been said, 1,200 is still a small portion of the overall server population. The other guilds can come together and do something about it... it’s a MMORPG after all.
When I'm tired of that, I'd just go farm somewhere else, some other dungeon or boss. But that is dependent on there being other worthwhile things to farm. And so I'm hoping in Intrepid's design decisions, they've realized and factored in that there's going to be gigantic mega nerd guilds, and they need many many multiples of points of interest on the map so they can't all be camped at once.
What I'm more worried about with the mega guilds is what Dynasty did in Atlas. Dynasty was a guild that was like the blob, spreading around the map, conquering and absorbing guilds. You had no chance winning against the zerg so if you were lucky they allowed you to live as an ally. If not, you were just destroyed. It wasn't even a fight.
Ashes has the 250vs250 node siege mechanic, so that will always be a pretty fair fight. The siege itself. But can a giant zerg guild that abuses the alliance system (you can only have 4 official alliances, but infinite unofficial alliances), can they effectively choke out other nodes in all other ways than the siege (caravans, random pvp, stopping resource gathering), to the point where when the siege happens, the other side is so weakened, demoralized and frustrated with the game that they stand little chance even in the 250vs250 even fight.
Of course that all of that is subject to change, but I’m just pointing out that node sieges are not currently capped.
I have no idea how they will make it work with such big numbers, but we’ll have to wait and see what they’re cooking.
But so yeah then, at present node wars are sounding like a more freewheeling system of whatever happens happens. And you just better hope you build your freehold in a node that is the zerger instead of the zergee. I dunno, we'll see, hope they have a vision and it's a fun system.
Yup, just remember that smaller guilds will be more powerful. Numbers are great, but extra power or abilities might just be enough to win the fight!
An important thing to note is that you can't put a cap on anything at all. A guild can form as many smaller groups as they want and even pretend to not be associated with one another. In fact, this is exactly what is going to happen without question.
Aside from the simple raw numbers attributing one guild or another, lets look at at it from another real world example of how I have watched an organization of people steam role entire servers. lets look at resources. A common tactic is for the massive group to simply role through the server and collect all the rare resources needed for upkeep.
Contrary to popular belief, people are going to pay for multiple accounts. We know there will be no regulation around number of accounts in AoC at all. This also means that community accounts can be used. These alternate accounts can then be used to camp the most important areas. Worth noting, looking at you AoC, that if the nodes or creatures are set on a simple timer then these alternates will also know exactly when to log in and reap the benefits of paying for multiple/community accounts.
Now, you could make spawns very frequent and/or character specific as other games have. But, this destroys many aspects of the game. For reference, look at how repetitive and silly gathering is in ESO.
These mega guilds will first and foremost be looking to coordinate with each other and join separate servers. The most important thing for them is to insure they are dominant. Those castle sieges sound amazing and all but trust me it's not so amazing when you have thousands of players in your guild you are trying to keep happy and a loss could mean 6 more months to regain your loss.
I've heard about 50,000 person servers and that being the answer to mega guilds. It in no way shape or form addresses the issue at all. First and foremost I don't believe for a second there will be anywhere near 50,000 concurrent players. For perspective, comparable games shoot for around 5,000 players at the absolute max. For a game on release day 1-2000 concurrent players would be a very ambitious but probably feasible goal. So, I hope this puts into perspective what kind of impact a group of 1200 of the most dedicated players and all of there alts can possibly have when this game releases.
Alternate accounts are never a good idea for the health of a mmo from your average players perspective. I'm sure the increased revenue is very tempting but it is playing with fire in my experience. Magnified during the early release days when games are trying to make a footprint or name for themselves. However, that in and of itself isn't going to fix the issue. That I know of there really isn't any easy fix here. Once a permanent alpha/beta server is up you can start to get an idea of how this is going to unfold. Even then, if they are smart they won't play their cards until release. Because once the go button is pushed you can't really take it back.
I'm all for Ashes of Creation. As a whole I agree with the direction Steven has steered the game to what we are looking at now almost entirely. But, this topic is sort of the elephant in the room. No one ever really succeeds on this and AoC is going to become mighty boring if mega guilds move in and take over servers with sheer numbers and excessive money thrown at alternate accounts.
Given the sheer size the Ashes world, and the traveling distance between nodes, and that high level contents will eventually be near highest level nodes, and those highest level nodes cannot cluster together by design, I'm not worried about one or two megaguilds taking over the whole server.
It might be possible for multiple "mega"guilds to each carve up a portion of a server though
There can, and very likely will be, some mega alliances. In-game restrictions can't stop people from running multiple orgs through a single Discord and there is very little downside to gathering a large number of players.
That said it doesn't mean they'll inherently dominate an entire server. Verra is supposed to be massive which means travel will be a huge deterrent to those large groups trying to do anything outside of their territory.
On top of that, the lack of any kind of server transfer means high level players will need to rely on their in-game reputation. If you and your guild make it known that you're just a bunch of trolls people will rally just to ruin your day...it's a tale as old as old as gaming.
Then maybe there needs to be.
How can a company control what you do outside their game? If your not breaking TOS through using programs to alter the intended use of their product then it is none of their business. What is the cost of maintaining a group to monitor everyones use of discord , TS3 or any of the others out there?