Max players per guilds

There are a lot discussions about weather 1200 players (4 guild alliances x 300 players each) will make the gameplay experience of small guilds bad. And in each discussion the answer is: "it will affect small guilds in 1 way or another in negative way".
So why not make the max players per guild for example 100, and you can ally with 2 other guilds for a total of 300 players?
This way the already formed communities of 300 players can still play together and the difference between small guilds 3x50 vs largest guilds 3x100 wont be that big and can be neutralized in some extend with guild perks when you choose not to go for large guild.

Pros:
1. small guilds wont have negative experience coz of zergs.
2. 1200 players allied means that its possible for all zones of influence to be ruled by a single large guild and small guilds wont be able to accomplish much. With 300 players alliances you will see much more strategic non aggression pacts or conflicts, more communication between different alliances, more dynamic changes happening between the players, and a place for smaller guilds since - if a 300 vs 300 players guilds fight, a 50-150 players guild can affect the outcome and will be viable, and if its 1200 vs 1200, 100 players wont be able to change anything.
3. On node/castle sieges with 1200 players you wont require any outside help since you will have all the players you can get. And if your alliance is 300 players its highly possible that you wont get 250 players for a castle siege since some part of your players wont be on in the particular time. This means you will have to rely on some other smaller guilds that will actively change the fate of the battle. They can act as mercenaries for example where the larger guild pay them in order for them to fight for them.
4. In open world PvP 300 vs 150 seems more balanced than 1200 vs 150. Yes there are all the things like small gorilla warfare or taking their resources, but in reality they will just zerg you and if you try to attack their caravans or resources they can just siege your nodes or outnumber you. And yes the map is big and 1 large guild cant be everywhere , but you can have 1 big guild in every ZOI so small guilds still wont have place.
5. The players skill wont matter when its zerg vs zerg fight. The smaller the scales the more the skill matters.
6. players in small community are much closer to each other than large communities. For example 500 humans living in a village will know and talk with every other of the 499 players there. And in a 1 million citizens cities you dont even know the person living next door in your flat. Its very philosophical but in short in large communities the bond between humans break and you start to search for your personal isolated space there.

Cons:
There may be already formed alliances of more than 300 players (especially with streamers) and this will break their group.
But since we are PRE ALPHA 2. those groups should be pretty small amount. + 1200 group in the first place will be formed in order to dominate the ZOI/castle. They are not created by the idea of cloze relationship between the members.

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Githal

And about the "MAJORITY OF ANSWERS" - these are just players that have already joined a massive guild. And they can feel the ground shaking if the guild size and alliance size is reduced. They just know that they wont be able to exist as a massive zerg together so they comment here in hope the devs see my comment as insignificant

Githal

I even have experience with such stuff to back my claims:
In a mobile game called LOTR: rise to war... yes yes It is mobile game, and has nothing in common with AOC.
So in this game at first the guilds were x 100 players each, but you join a server choosing faction and each faction at first had 500 players max. So you would see massive 5 x guilds joining same faction in same server to dominate everything. But then the devs reduced the faction cap to around 170 (was floating so not exact number) (and this was maybe the only good update they made - everything other was money grab updates so i dont recommend the game

). So now those guilds playing together started joining same server different factions to again play together and dominate... Can you guess what happened? Well not what you think.. They did exactly what they wanted on the server and helped 1 of the guilds win (which means all other lost), and then they never joined another server together... so they split and were joining servers as 150 players per server

And the funny part was that those 500 players were spamming all chats after the update that reduce players per faction - that "They have made 499 friends and now have to split and for the devs to reconsider the update so they can keep domination servers". So dont take everything people say at heart, usually they are just driven by their own interests.

daveywavey

Githal wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

I think I see the issue here. The rest of us are expecting these large guilds to be run well and have good organisation. I hope that helps explain the majority of answers you've had here.

It doesnt matter how well they are run. Why? Pretty simple.. The players joining such massive zerg guilds are always with the same mentality - to dominate server/area/content. They dont join to be the "third wheel" and to help someone else achieve things while they get nothing. And as long as the system allows them to dominate the server together as 1200 players - they will play together.
If they have to choose to take things themselves or to give them to their other out of game alliance - you can guess what they will choose. And this will instantly put the alliances in fight between each other, and it doesnt even matter how well they are run.

I think you're underestimating the teamwork that goes into being a part of one of these large guilds. The organisation for this is already underway, and the game is years from release. Players from the same external-guild that are in different in-game guilds/alliances will still be playing as if they're in the same external-guild, cos as NiKr said, it's all going to be arranged in the full group, rather than the individual sections.

And sure, there will probably be a fair bit of friendly light-hearted rivalry between the different sections, but ultimately they're all going to be pushing the same goal. And sometimes, that goal involves someone else getting something good, and you have to wait your turn. You accept that when you join the large guild, as the price of success.

Githal

daveywavey wrote: »

I think you're underestimating the teamwork that goes into being a part of one of these large guilds. The organisation for this is already underway, and the game is years from release. Players from the same external-guild that are in different in-game guilds/alliances will still be playing as if they're in the same external-guild, cos as NiKr said, it's all going to be arranged in the full group, rather than the individual sections.

And sure, there will probably be a fair bit of friendly light-hearted rivalry between the different sections, but ultimately they're all going to be pushing the same goal. And sometimes, that goal involves someone else getting something good, and you have to wait your turn. You accept that when you join the large guild, as the price of success.

And this all depends on the way AOC make the game, If they make it as you say - today Alliance 1 get this reward, tomorrow Alliance 2 take it and ect. then yes it will be same as you say.
When 1 guild occupies a castle infinity amount of time (until sieged), or have guild hall in metropolis. Or have to fight for some guild reward that will be once per 6 months reward for example ( so for alliance 2 to take it will have to wait 6 months, alliance 4 will have to wait 2 years). Or there can be many more examples. In this case you will see fights between those alliances, not rivalry. You will also see backstabbing, bad blood and ect

daveywavey

Githal wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

I think you're underestimating the teamwork that goes into being a part of one of these large guilds. The organisation for this is already underway, and the game is years from release. Players from the same external-guild that are in different in-game guilds/alliances will still be playing as if they're in the same external-guild, cos as NiKr said, it's all going to be arranged in the full group, rather than the individual sections.

And sure, there will probably be a fair bit of friendly light-hearted rivalry between the different sections, but ultimately they're all going to be pushing the same goal. And sometimes, that goal involves someone else getting something good, and you have to wait your turn. You accept that when you join the large guild, as the price of success.

And this all depends on the way AOC make the game, If they make it as you say - today Alliance 1 get this reward, tomorrow Alliance 2 take it and ect. then yes it will be same as you say.
When 1 guild occupies a castle infinity amount of time (until sieged), or have guild hall in metropolis. Or have to fight for some guild reward that will be once per 6 months reward for example ( so for alliance 2 to take it will have to wait 6 months, alliance 4 will have to wait 2 years). Or there can be many more examples. In this case you will see fights between those alliances, not rivalry. You will also see backstabbing, bad blood and ect

Again, this goes back to the "being run well with good organisation" thing.

If I'm in Guild 2, and I've just spent the last few weeks helping Guild 1 to siege and take a Castle, then you can be damn sure that I'm going to do my very best to keep Guild 1 in that Castle. Even though I'm in Guild 2, and it's Guild 1 with the Castle, it's still my Castle.

Will there be large guilds that break apart due to in-fighting? Sure, of course there will be. But, there will also be large guilds that stick together and thrive by working as a team. It's these ones that have the better organisation with reward structures in place to encourage teamwork.

Noaani

Githal wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

It seems to me the OP is still missing the issue.

NiKr correctly said that guilds exist outside of games. I know this to be true due to being in a guild, yet not currently playing any MMORPG's at all.

I also know of a number of multi-game guilds that count numbers in 5 figures.

Reducing the number of players in a guild, and number of guilds in an alliance may well prevent organic guild and alliance formation in game getting to a massive scale, but there is nothing stopping two alliances agreeing to work together, and nothing stopping a large pre-existing guild from just running 4 alliances on a server as their in game presence.

Basically, it seems to me that the OP is only looking at half of the picture.

Well you are right.... but as you said i am looking half the picture, and that is exactly the HALF YOU DONT SEE.

This is incorrect.

Because...

As long as there is at least 1 in game content, with rewards that are worth fighting for, that will put the 2 alliances to confront each other - then this alliance wont exist.

This is also incorrect.

You are only looking at this from the perspective of people joining the guild in game - you are ignoring the fact that these guilds already exist today and are already playing games together.

A guild is essentially a concept, a state of mind between people. The in game guild sctructures are designed to facilitate that - they do not and can not control it.

An out of game alliance can exist for decades, and span multiple games.

Noaani

Githal wrote: »

And about the "MAJORITY OF ANSWERS" - these are just players that have already joined a massive guild.

My guild has 30 core members, with about that many again as periphery members.

I'm not arguing against you because I have anything to gain, I'm arguing against you because you are wrong.

Githal

Noaani wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

And about the "MAJORITY OF ANSWERS" - these are just players that have already joined a massive guild.

My guild has 30 core members, with about that many again as periphery members.
.

And this is the reason why you talk like this. Because you are part of small 30 players core members group. In 1200 players groups things dont stand the same way. 30 players may become close enough to help eachother even if this means you yourself will get less.
With 1200 players for how many of the players you will be ready to sacrifice your own well being? 30?50?200?. The point is that 80%+ of the players wont care about you. They will be with the guild because they have interest in being with thw guild. And the moment this interest is gone, they will split

You keep talking about organisation, but you cant organise people who dont care about the group, no matter how good the leader is.
And yes they will care about the group as long as being with the group is bringing them benefits

Githal

daveywavey wrote: »

Again, this goes back to the "being run well with good organisation" thing.

If I'm in Guild 2, and I've just spent the last few weeks helping Guild 1 to siege and take a Castle, then you can be damn sure that I'm going to do my very best to keep Guild 1 in that Castle. Even though I'm in Guild 2, and it's Guild 1 with the Castle, it's still my Castle.

It for sure wont be "your castle", because when all the players from guild 1 rip the benefits of being the owner of the castle, while you dont, you will see what i mean.

And yes if you play together like guild 1 + guild 2 doing same content together, then yes, you can claim in such situations that "its your castle as well"
BUT... How many of the game content will be for 600 players on 1 side? The answer is NONE. This means when guild 1 form a group of 8 players they all will have the benefits of the castle. And when guild 2 form group of 8...then none will have the benefits

And before you start talking about merged groups of 4 players from guild 1 +4 from guild 2...this wont be a thing because in big groups you wont see friendship ideals. And strong players will form group with other strong players only

Noaani

Githal wrote: »

And this is the reason why you talk like this. Because you are part of small 30 players core members group. In 1200 players groups things dont stand the same way. 30 players may become close enough to help eachother even if this means you yourself will get less.
With 1200 players for how many of the players you will be ready to sacrifice your own well being? 30?50?200?. The point is that 80%+ of the players wont care about you. They will be with the guild because they have interest in being with thw guild. And the moment this interest is gone, they will split

None of this makes any sense to me.

Even in my small guild, while our members all care about each other to differing degrees, the expectation is still that every member of the guild is better off in the guild than out of it. I don't expect anyone to be sacrificing anything - we are a guild, not a cult.

With a larger guild, this becomes even more true. If you are in a guild of 1000 players, if you decide to leave, the first thing that happens is you lose access to that 1000 players to participate in content with - or at least most of them.

The second thing that happens (often, though not always), is that you have that 1000 player guild now quite happy to attack and kill you on sight.

Your final statement that people will stay as long as it brings them benefit is the key thing here - there is rarely ever a point where there is more benefit to leaving than staying.

Ludullu

Githal wrote: »

It for sure wont be "your castle", because when all the players from guild 1 rip the benefits of being the owner of the castle, while you dont, you will see what i mean.

As I've told you before, the only direct benefit to players from a castle is the money. That money can be spent on items and those items are then traded to the rest of the megaguild. Everyone who helps get/secure the castle gets the reward equally (in a well-coordinated and well-led megaguild).

Githal wrote: »

And yes if you play together like guild 1 + guild 2 doing same content together, then yes, you can claim in such situations that "its your castle as well"
BUT... How many of the game content will be for 600 players on 1 side? The answer is NONE. This means when guild 1 form a group of 8 players they all will have the benefits of the castle. And when guild 2 form group of 8...then none will have the benefits

All of the content in Ashes is content that's way better for someone who has 600 players on one side, EXACTLY BECAUSE it's all content that can only be cleared by a smaller group.

Ashes will have wars and open world pvp. This means that you need to defend your loot. You know what makes it easier to defend the loot? PEOPLE. You use those 600 people to defend each and every source of loot in the game (or at least as much as you can farm/defend) and you redistribute the loot accordingly.

This has been done in L2 since it came out. And I've seen alliances of ~1k players divide all that loot quite nicely.

This also directly ties into the desire to dominate and win. If you're a part of a huge alliance - you're safe as hell from the majority of enemies on the map. Barely anyone is brave (or stupid) enough to aggro onto a player from a strong alliance, because that would mean that this attacker is now a KoS target of, potentially, thousands of people. This is power. This is also the reason why these huge alliances exist in the first place and why they keep existing even when the game limits in-game member quantity.

Obviously the week mega guilds who have shitty leaders and bad cases of corruption and preferential treatment will fall apart sooner or later due to those factors, but this is the case in all guilds, from a tiny 16-member one to a huge mega alliance of thousands. You seem to only know this kind of guilds, so your perspective is stuck on their behaviors. Some of us have experienced, or at least seen, guilds with much much better leaders and members, who succeeded for a very long time despite in-game limitations.

Githal

Noaani wrote: »

Your final statement that people will stay as long as it brings them benefit is the key thing here - there is rarely ever a point where there is more benefit to leaving than staying.

The thing is that with out of game alliance of 1200 players that you all talk about, its no longer about if there is reason for you to stay in the guild or not, its about weather your 300 player alliance (3 guilds x 100 players) is worth playing together with the other 3 alliances, even tho its not your alliance that on the castle, not your guild with guild hall in metropolis, and the the actual benefits are not that big when you are in out of game alliance.
So the answer is obvious, even little things will break this 1200 players group in 4 x300 alliances(that is the in game system with my peoposal) and each of those will be enemies and fight for the same stuff between eachother

Ludullu

Githal wrote: »

The thing is that with out of game alliance of 1200 players that you all talk about, its no longer about if there is reason for you to stay in the guild or not, its about weather your 300 player alliance (3 guilds x 100 players) is worth playing together with the other 3 alliances, even tho its not your alliance that on the castle, not your guild with guild hall in metropolis, and the the actual benefits are not that big when you are in out of game alliance.
So the answer is obvious, even little things will break this 1200 players group in 4 x300 alliances(that is the in game system with my peoposal) and each of those will be enemies and fight for the same stuff between eachother

Do you have any concrete quote that says "guildhalls and castles are beneficial in a way that can be shared with others"? You linked quotes for castles, but the only direct benefit to players is money, which can be redistributed in a variety of ways (and has been done in L2 in the past, because the core mechanic is the literal same there).

And as for Halls, they're literally on per node per guild basis. Every guild in a mega alliance will get their own hall. You know why? Because the mega alliance will make sure they do. They'll pull money or repell competitors or do whatever it is that needs to be done to achieve that goal. That's the point of a mega alliance - you have way more people than any other given group to achieve your goal. And in a game like Ashes, that's HIGHLY beneficial.

daveywavey

The best thing I can suggest is that you have a read through of the guilds for your server, find a few that you like the look of, and see what their goals are for the game. See if any match your own goals, and look into joining them.

Presumably the mindset/playstyle of a mobile-gamer is different to the mindset/playstyle of a PC-MMO-gamer. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you can find.

Githal

NiKr wrote: »

As I've told you before, the only direct benefit to players from a castle is the money. That money can be spent on items and those items are then traded to the rest of the megaguild. Everyone who helps get/secure the castle gets the reward equally (in a well-coordinated and well-led megaguild).

WTF you talking about? Castles dont mean taxes at all.

1. Guild castles provide benefits and trophies for guilds that capture and control them.[11][25]
These benefits increase the longer a guild holds its castle.[11]
(yes yes as always you will say we have no info, but this doesnt mean you have to disregard them as non existent because they will be there)
2. Activate events and abilities that benefit node citizens under their rule.
3. Unlock additional types of buildings in nodes.[
4. Exert control and pressure over one of the five economic regions.
5. Flying mounts.

NiKr wrote: »

Ashes will have wars and open world pvp. This means that you need to defend your loot. You know what makes it easier to defend the loot? PEOPLE. You use those 600 people to defend each and every source of loot in the game (or at least as much as you can farm/defend) and you redistribute the loot accordingly.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHY GUILDS MAX PLAYERS SHOULD BE RESTRICTED.
And this means reducing the value in being in outside of game alliance and increasing the PER GUILD rewards. If the only value in being in this alliance is the open world pvp, but per guild values are a lot more, this will create in fights, and will break the out of game alliance completely

TBH i have no idea what you trying to achieve with your comments here... You are just bored and trying to chat with someone?
Instead being the "know it all" - provide solution how this can be fixed.

Githal

daveywavey wrote: »

The best thing I can suggest is that you have a read through of the guilds for your server, find a few that you like the look of, and see what their goals are for the game. See if any match your own goals, and look into joining them.

Presumably the mindset/playstyle of a mobile-gamer is different to the mindset/playstyle of a PC-MMO-gamer. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you can find.

Just coz i gave you example with mobile game doesnt mean i dont play MMO games, and if you try to put some personal argues with me i will just ignore you, dont have time for kids.

Ludullu

Githal wrote: »

WTF you talking about? Castles dont mean taxes at all.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Castle_taxes

Githal wrote: »

1. Guild castles provide benefits and trophies for guilds that capture and control them.[11][25]
These benefits increase the longer a guild holds its castle.[11]
(yes yes as always you will say we have no info, but this doesnt mean you have to disregard them as non existent because they will be there)
2. Activate events and abilities that benefit node citizens under their rule.
3. Unlock additional types of buildings in nodes.[
4. Exert control and pressure over one of the five economic regions.
5. Flying mounts.

All of those except for the first one is completely indirect to the players, and, as you agree, we don't know what the first one even is. Though if you listen to the references used for that first point - Steven mostly mentioned "economic influences on the region that better the relationships with others". So outside of taxes I still don't really expect the guild members to see huge direct benefits.

Githal wrote: »

THIS IS EXACTLY WHY GUILDS MAX PLAYERS SHOULD BE RESTRICTED.
And this means reducing the value in being in outside of game alliance and increasing the PER GUILD rewards. If the only value in being in this alliance is the open world pvp, but per guild values are a lot more, this will create in fights, and will break the out of game alliance completely

Again, the in-fighting only exists in badly-managed guilds, as pretty much everyone else in this thread have already told you.

Githal wrote: »

TBH i have no idea what you trying to achieve with your comments here... You are just bored and trying to chat with someone?
Instead being the "know it all" - provide solution how this can be fixed.

I already have, but you've conveniently decided to ignore that comment.

NiKr wrote: »

We know jackshit about wars. We don't know how they'll work. We don't know what they'll cost. We don't know how the declaration will work or what it'll cost. None of that (and more) is known.

But it'd be logical to assume that a 300-member guild would have huge costs related to guild decs if they wanted to go to war with a 50-member guild. And if this is somehow not a logical thing to Intrepid - I sure as fuck will yell it at them several hundred times, until it is.

Splitting up the megaguild into smaller sub-guilds could instead lead to a situation where it's easier for them to declare war on smaller guilds, while the megaguild suffers barely any penalties for being in 12 guilds rather than 4.

We also know that picking Growth instead of Power, when it comes to Guild specialization, would mean that your members don't have some passives that give them direct combat benefits (or maybe not direct, but simply more beneficial that just "you got 300 people"). And that means that any megaguild that decides to just have zergs will have way weaker zergs than any small well-coordinated guild with full power passives.

In other words, I want bigger pressure on bigger guilds, so that it's not so easy to manage them. This would naturally decrease the amount of huge guilds and would also make their lives more difficult, which directly helps smaller guilds to fight against them.

Githal

So if there are no guild benefits as you say, then they just need to add some.
Like the game is pre alpha 2, it is yet to get balanced. And this here what i am writing is not so much to chat with the community, but to bring AOC atention to the problem at hand.
Ofc discussing it with the community will help them see both sides since my personal opinion is based. And seeing some counter arguements is always good.

But the discussion should not resolve around "this dont exist", but more like... "if this exist it may help with..."

Depraved

Githal wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

I think you're underestimating the teamwork that goes into being a part of one of these large guilds. The organisation for this is already underway, and the game is years from release. Players from the same external-guild that are in different in-game guilds/alliances will still be playing as if they're in the same external-guild, cos as NiKr said, it's all going to be arranged in the full group, rather than the individual sections.

And sure, there will probably be a fair bit of friendly light-hearted rivalry between the different sections, but ultimately they're all going to be pushing the same goal. And sometimes, that goal involves someone else getting something good, and you have to wait your turn. You accept that when you join the large guild, as the price of success.

And this all depends on the way AOC make the game, If they make it as you say - today Alliance 1 get this reward, tomorrow Alliance 2 take it and ect. then yes it will be same as you say.
When 1 guild occupies a castle infinity amount of time (until sieged), or have guild hall in metropolis. Or have to fight for some guild reward that will be once per 6 months reward for example ( so for alliance 2 to take it will have to wait 6 months, alliance 4 will have to wait 2 years). Or there can be many more examples. In this case you will see fights between those alliances, not rivalry. You will also see backstabbing, bad blood and ect

there are more than 1 castle. 1 big dominating alliance could have them all

Depraved

Githal wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

And about the "MAJORITY OF ANSWERS" - these are just players that have already joined a massive guild.

My guild has 30 core members, with about that many again as periphery members.
.

And this is the reason why you talk like this. Because you are part of small 30 players core members group. In 1200 players groups things dont stand the same way. 30 players may become close enough to help eachother even if this means you yourself will get less.
With 1200 players for how many of the players you will be ready to sacrifice your own well being? 30?50?200?. The point is that 80%+ of the players wont care about you. They will be with the guild because they have interest in being with thw guild. And the moment this interest is gone, they will split

You keep talking about organisation, but you cant organise people who dont care about the group, no matter how good the leader is.
And yes they will care about the group as long as being with the group is bringing them benefits

not always. guilds can divide themselves in cp. so basically each 8 man party is a mini guild inside the big guild. you play with your party, you help your party even if sometimes you get less, but in return they help you get your stuff. you become more coordinated and better. a guild with 1200 players is not the same as a guild with 1200 players divided in cp

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