Alliance Guild Cap and Guild Player Cap

I wanted to share my thoughts on the current expectation of guild size and how many guilds will be in alliances. I'm curious on your thoughts about these two topics and the positive/negative outcome we face when they decide to set a decision in stone.

Guild size - 300 is the assumed max guild size. The way guilds currently work is, the more players you have, the less benefits those players will receive. I like this idea. I certainly don't see my guild getting to 300 members as this is not something I would enjoy managing so my guild members will enjoy whatever benefits are given by having only 150-200 characters. This system has potential but it depends on how they balance these abilities. I don't want zerging to be viable and I also don't want a guild of 25 players be able to take on 50 people and win because of buffs.

Guilds in alliance - The assumed number of guilds will be 4 to each alliance MAYBE. Steven did mention this is subject to change in the recent dev update. You are not allowed to be in multiple alliances (rightfully so). What I dislike with this direction is the inevitable 1200 player alliance (which usually means a secondary alliance is formed so they can continue recruiting) that takes over a massive area and just stalls progress for everyone else until they get bored and quit the game on both sides.

Maintain a mayoral position, owning a castle, successful sieges, defending sieges, PvE, roaming for PvP, caravans, and naval combat should all feel like a challenge to maintain and win. Nothing should feel easy just because you have the numbers. Losing your city or castle should invite the losing side to bust their asses and get back into the swing of things to take it back. This feeling simply will not come to fruition if you just lost to 1200 players that can continue to zerg you into finding a new game. zerging sucks and it completely and utterly ruins games. Last Oasis has an average of 300 people playing in monthly now. THREE HUNDRED and all because of zerging at the launch of the game.

What if they make it so alliances have a player cap of "X". This would allow small alliances to organize to take on 1 or 2 large guilds. Alliances are essentially worthless to small guilds as it currently stands unless they organize the community/citizens to take part in what they want to do....which honestly won't happen with the state of todays internet gamer : (.

What are your thoughts?

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Comments

maouw

I don't think there are too many zerg fans, and we know Steven is anti zerg - the wiki has a pretty good documentation of this:

"The best way that I found in games I played previously to take down a zerg is to cause drama from within... It's that conflict inside of the politicking that happens in that big organization. If we provide opportunities for division to occur then it also provides stability to keep a server healthy away from that zerg mentality"

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Zergs

I think these ideas are ok, but unforch as much as you place caps guild size and alliances, massive guilds will have meta alliances that they'll organize on their own platforms - and there comes a point where your explicit boundaries start overcomplicating processes that impinge on the average player's experience (not in this case, but further down this road).

I find explicit boundaries in game design takes away from the experience, so I'd prefer if they're a last resort solution. Steven's idea of removing zerg tactics (by having no fast travel, etc) and providing reasons to stir internal conflict in large guilds sounds like a much more natural and interactive way to bring out equilibrium.

George_Black

I will use L2 as an example.

A guild had a member cap of around 70-90 when I was playing.
A guild leader could create an alliance and open 90 member slots, if their guild reached lv5.

To reach lv5 you had to do a series of challenging quests as a guild leader, together with many guild members.
Any guild that wanted to join an alliance and reach 70 member slots, had to reach at least lv4.
In order for guild leaders to provide passive guild abilities, the guild had to do a lot of raiding.

An alliance was 4 guilds, one was the leading guild.
So there, you have ONE alliance leader with 3 more guild leaders being loyal to that person. 280-360 people worked hard for this alliance.
280-360 people did a lot of questing and raiding.

But what you have in the end is 4 guilds bound by friendship. Each guild has it's own banner, like the eu country flags or the us state flags. They all belong to the same alliance, sharing the alliance banner, like the eu flag or the usa flag.

All the people in each guild are known by name. "Xxxtemplar66 will tank", "need HolyJim to heal", "Dandelion will join our group as a bard".
You never heared "lf 1t 1h 6dps" in an L2 guild chat.

Now you tell me.
If you have to do a lot of activities for guild passives and guild capacity, is it easier to make a zerg guild with 300 member guilds? Or is it easier to make a zerg guild will 100 member guilds?

George_Black

But let's be honest here.

On this matter, there are only two types of peole.
The ones that want to be a guild leader that want to EASILY manage 1k strangers to fill in the requested roles. "I need 2t 2h 16dps and I dont care who you are, as long as you reach the Gear Score for this activity", and deliver them a castle.
And the other ones want to actually see real guilds, real guild leaders and real bonds of friendship and loyalty, in a social video game, instead of a Group Finder lobby.

Merek

No matter what restrictions they put in place, as @maouw said, they will create meta-alliances via 3rd party applications. The best way to combat it is to form a strong alliance of your own, then you won't have to worry about it. And you can't stop zerging, it will always be a 'problem'.

Khronus

maouw wrote: »

I don't think there are too many zerg fans, and we know Steven is anti zerg - the wiki has a pretty good documentation of this:

"The best way that I found in games I played previously to take down a zerg is to cause drama from within... It's that conflict inside of the politicking that happens in that big organization. If we provide opportunities for division to occur then it also provides stability to keep a server healthy away from that zerg mentality"

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Zergs

I think these ideas are ok, but unforch as much as you place caps guild size and alliances, massive guilds will have meta alliances that they'll organize on their own platforms - and there comes a point where your explicit boundaries start overcomplicating processes that impinge on the average player's experience (not in this case, but further down this road).

I find explicit boundaries in game design takes away from the experience, so I'd prefer if they're a last resort solution. Steven's idea of removing zerg tactics (by having no fast travel, etc) and providing reasons to stir internal conflict in large guilds sounds like a much more natural and interactive way to bring out equilibrium.

I didn't look at it from this perspective and this honestly helps ease my thoughts. I think the "internal strife" mentality is a really silly way to approach anti zerg though. I don't intend on stirring shit up with any other guilds (from within) regardless of their size and to expect some sort of covert "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" style officer loyalty tests is weird imo haha.

I agree that zerging will always be an issue but there could be ways to further hinder their efforts by how the design the guilds/alliances. The more I thought of it, the more I like the idea of putting a player cap on the alliances instead of a guild cap. What if I do decide to keep my guild at 50-75 players....or even less? If numbers end up being the more advantageous approach to controlling zones and content, then small guilds are screwed. Allowing a large number of small guilds to form an alliance, you create anti-zerg alliance opportunity. 4 guilds of 1000 members vs 9 guilds of 1000 members makes sense to me. 4 guilds of 1000 members vs 4 guilds of 280 members (because of a guild cap) does not.

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