Mega Guilds

Hey guys, I was watching the Pirate Software Vlhadus video, and I had a thought. I think many people are worried about what’s going to happen when we get guilds that dominate a server. But hear me out—what if there were a few servers that allow a higher population and also permit larger guild sizes? This way, mega guilds would be forced to fight for power in a setting with real stakes, while smaller guilds wouldn’t get pushed aside.

If this is technically absurd or unreasonable, let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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George_Black

GoldenAbsolute wrote: »

Hey guys, I was watching the Pirate Software Vlhadus video, and I had a thought. I think many people are worried about what’s going to happen when we get guilds that dominate a server. But hear me out—what if there were a few servers that allow a higher population and also permit larger guild sizes? This way, mega guilds would be forced to fight for power in a setting with real stakes, while smaller guilds wouldn’t get pushed aside.

If this is technically absurd or unreasonable, let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How would you convince those mega guilds to play on those servers?
The answer is the first step to convince IS to create such servers.

Apok

people like that announce where they go, I just avoid servers where streamers are going and never deal with this.

GoldenAbsolute

George_Black wrote: »

GoldenAbsolute wrote: »

Hey guys, I was watching the Pirate Software Vlhadus video, and I had a thought. I think many people are worried about what’s going to happen when we get guilds that dominate a server. But hear me out—what if there were a few servers that allow a higher population and also permit larger guild sizes? This way, mega guilds would be forced to fight for power in a setting with real stakes, while smaller guilds wouldn’t get pushed aside.

If this is technically absurd or unreasonable, let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How would you convince those mega guilds to play on those servers?
The answer is the first step to convince IS to create such servers.

Well they would be incentivized by the fact that they would be able to have this larger guild size and consolidate rather than do the {Guild Name} {Number of Branch of Guild}. I feel like most mega guilds like this want those large conflicts with other large guilds and don't necessarily want to just dominate the world so hard that it turns into a pve server

I however am fully willing to accept the fact that I am wrong and mega guilds 100% do wanna just crush everything.

George_Black

I dont think mega guilds are good for mmos. I think that Devs should protect the game from zergs, by making sure that guilds are formed from people that have bonded together and that can be done by:
Requiring guild members to complete hards quests and sink gold to unlock more slots
Require owpvp raiding and questing at the low guild Lv to unlock the option for guild passives.
Further tasks to unlock each guild passive.
Further quests to allow the guild to participate in castle ownership and alliance decleration.
Less ingame tools to manage large number of people with no effort.

Wars should be between individual guilds vs other players, or true guild alliances with distinct leaders and flags vs rival alliances.

If somebody is dedicated enough to Lv up 10 or so guilds, to provide thousands of members (stranfers to each other as they will be..) with benefits, let them dominate.

Your conversation should aim at finding ways to protect servers from mega guilds. Not how to spend money and development to accomodate mega guilds, which may quit playing as soon as their streamer tells them to.
Unless you like mega guilds and you are here to lobby for them.

GoldenAbsolute

I share your sentiment I also don't think mega guilds that have the power to not only destroy anything that moves in the game but also to dramatically shift the economy (Or just basically own the economy all together) is a fun concept for most people. With that said though, they are going to exist one way or another, and If we put leveling up 10 or more guilds into the context of the sheer power that they will control, gaining those levels and completing those quests in a primarily open world perspective will be trivial at best.

With that said I think that providing the resources to the larger servers that host the mega guilds is a worth while investment. I also think in the spirit of Ashes previous sentiments on wanting to bring content creators into the fold, they understand the amazing marketing value that popular streamers bring to the table. These servers would allow a buffer between those us who enjoy that close knit almost familial interaction with our guild members and people who want to essentially praise the king. (No disrespect intended to those who are interested in the mega guilds of your content creator)

I do also understand your point of well what happens when these huge ass guilds inevitably burn out and leave their communities in the dust for the next big thing. That I don't have as much of an answer to, but Intrepid has talked about the modularity of their servers so that might be an option. I do however see the issue with a server that has just been completely sundered by these huge communities dissolving.

George_Black

I am convinced that you have a vested interest in accomodating content creators.

GoldenAbsolute

I have nothing personal to gain from helping them out I'm kind of looking at this from the opposite perspective on how do we help those that have no interest in servers that are death gripped. But it really could just as simple as Apok said earlier just see what servers they're on and avoid them. But I guess that's what the alpha is here to test as well it might also just be a hard thing to tell before we play.

Vargan

There is simply no way to stop or hinder large guilds from having a strong presence in a social sandbox MMO.
It's the way of the land.

Personally, I just hope Steven decides to make node sieges instanced.

Kilion

GoldenAbsolute wrote: »

Hey guys, I was watching the Pirate Software Vlhadus video, and I had a thought. I think many people are worried about what’s going to happen when we get guilds that dominate a server. But hear me out—what if there were a few servers that allow a higher population and also permit larger guild sizes? This way, mega guilds would be forced to fight for power in a setting with real stakes, while smaller guilds wouldn’t get pushed aside.

If this is technically absurd or unreasonable, let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What I will do if an influencer settles on the server I am playing on is leave, I am there to play with people who also do this for recreational purposes, not to earn money from it. I don't want anything to do with such people, I don't want them to freely be allowed to use me as a prop in their videos or streams.

As for mega guilds, which can obviously form without influencers: They ARE allowed, but there is no need for the system to cater any more to them than it already does. You have a zerg army of 20'000 players you want to take to a server? Well, tough luck server limit is 10k. Just like its tough luck for me that I will most likely have to pay a fee to change servers away from those where big influencers commercialize the game and recreational players around them.

So: No to special accomodation for Zerg/Mega Guilds.

SmileGurney

I remember seeing that on my YT timeline, and I seriously doubt AoC is going to be anywhere close to the scale he wants. This isn't Eve Online spreadsheet simulator. I doubt the game could support the scale he expects, especially in large events, yes even if the server meshing tech and all those optimisation passes.

I never played Eve Online, but due to the lag issues in large battles they had to implement few tricks to make the game playable at all: https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Time_dilation

AoC isn't a turn based game

GoldenAbsolute

Yeah its 1000% possible you guys are right and I am dramatizing the possible effect of this in my mind. Little bit of brain scope creep you could say.

I guess I'm mostly just worried about the possible destruction of communities and not being able to explore some game mechanics without a toll or something crazy like that. I guess the immediate solution is to just work with the little guild I'm in and try to push us away from being on a server that would have this problem.

BTW thank you everyone for all the discourse so far has given me much to ponder

TheAshen

On the topic of guild size ashes is on the lower side with WOW having 1000 and FFXIV having 512 both of which have similar or lower concurrent users than ashes plans.

I’m not saying they should increase it, fragmenting the mega guilds into smaller guilds will make them harder to manage and provide more interesting gameplay, but ashes already have incentives for smaller guilds.

The skills vs size will likely see big guilds break into multiple due to max skill guilds only having 30-50 members. I don’t know if that’s for both combat & artisan or just one.
It will likely be a balancing issue whether it’s worth having a full size guild at all.

While I agree with needing ways to compete with mega guilds I have to disagree with some of the methods suggested, mega guilds will have more than enough players and resources to throw at sinks, pvp & quests.

Omitting guild management tools would make it harder and less fun especially for inexperienced leaders & guilds.
Mega guilds can just use a single discord to communicate and plan, but any guilds cooperating against them would likely be using in-game tools and communication.

The separate realm is an interesting idea but I doubt it would work as most zergs/streamer guilds are short lived, it would also be a matter of scalability. It could be fun as a streamer event or something.

Dygz

Steven wants those mega-guilds to fracture into smaller guilds.

Kreed

Dygz wrote: »

Steven wants those mega-guilds to fracture into smaller guilds.

By doing so they will then be able to completely dominate an entire section of the map and completely have a structure that insures they stay on top and protect the main guild node. Having alliances within each other will make it nearly impossible to have a successful raid against them. A complete buffer once setup if its done proper and well coordinated.

mfckingjoker

No matter what you do you can't stop mega guilds, mega alliances, super duper zergs from forming. It's up to the community to try to stop them with various ways ingame...

GoldenAbsolute

TheAshen wrote: »

On the topic of guild size ashes is on the lower side

You see Im mostly just worried that these segmented guilds will not be harder to manage bc of discord. If it was still 2008 and we were still using Vent I wouldn't have this concern as much. I would however also like to note I do understand that there is a good probability that if a guild has like 20 branches at least 25 or 50% of those branches will be painfully disorganized. That does still leave 10 guilds of a prospective 3000 members (for the max cap standard guild) that have good management and the ability to just absolutely dominate.

Yeah I am extremely interested on how Ashes is gonna make them both feel fulfilling. I personally don't have much interest in bigger guilds but that just most bc of the close knit nature of smaller guilds and the fact that having alliances with other small guild fills a really cool diplomacy fantasy.

The issue of how the community manages these guilds is one that I am having a hard time seeing an organized way of doing so. Other than maybe Ashes releases a discord for each server so that all of the guilds(Or possibly guild leaders) have somewhere to talk and plot with each other. Although I think it is an important topic to talk about, I am not dead set on my server idea was just a cool little brainstorm.

See I just am not sure how much omitting guild management tools is really going to effect that if each subsection of the guild has a trusted leader appointed to the top. Discord is an amazing tool for modern mmos that we just didn't have in the past. It would be the equivalent of a guild putting together an entire website and forum in the olden days of mmos but even more accessible.

This is a very true point especially for streamer guilds, they burn hot and bright but for a short period. But if I'm not mistaken there are some mega guilds out there that have been around for a long time (of which are not streamer guilds) and are built off of basically a god damn corporate ladder, which makes them incredibly organized. I also wonder in the spirit of scale ability how viable it would be to scale back a server with higher guild caps as demand either increases or decreases. (This is a part we really wont know until we get in the game and see the capabilities)

Kreed wrote: »

By doing so

mfckingjoker wrote: »

No matter what you do

I guess what I'm asking in the end here is how do we avoid this? Is it as simple as just having the smaller guild leaders all band together in defiance of these guilds? Just literally playing the waiting game and waiting for these guilds to burn out? So what are some ideas for this that are either implemented via the community or via Ashes having an in game system for it?

Aszkalon

GoldenAbsolute wrote: »

many people are worried about what’s going to happen when we get guilds that dominate a server.

I see this as a social Experiment.

No. No, honestly. Not trying to sound arrogant here. I see this as a "Ultimate-kind-of-Test" if People can band together against Someone.

Do they have the Willpower ?
The Willingness ?
The Motivation ?
The Strength of Character ?

How hard can it be to band together against Someone who might or might not - but "MIGHT" annoy the everliving crap out of You ?

Not all Megaguilds are nice.
Not all Megaguilds are friendly.

They might have quite a few Bullies in their Ranks. And MAYBE - intentionally.

AirborneBerserker

Xit wrote: »

There is simply no way to stop or hinder large guilds from having a strong presence in a social sandbox MMO.
It's the way of the land.

Personally, I just hope Steven decides to make node sieges instanced.

I mean there is this game just doesn't do any of them.

Yoh

The problem as I see it, is with organizational tools like Discord, your going to get mega guilds no matter what. Trying to fracture them into smaller guilds is a mild annoyance at most. I think you have to accept the fact they will exist and work around that as best your able.

And having certain servers with expanded guild rosters, would be a way to incentivize them to go there rather then more small guild friendly servers. So that that you try to have multiple mega guilds on the same servers, so they can fight each other rather then bully the smaller guilds.

I think actively managing mega guilds is more proactive and useful, then taking half measures that only make organizing them in game a bit more tedious.

George_Black

Yoh wrote: »

The problem as I see it, is with organizational tools like Discord, your going to get mega guilds no matter what. Trying to fracture them into smaller guilds is a mild annoyance at most. I think you have to accept the fact they will exist and work around that as best your able.

And having certain servers with expanded guild rosters, would be a way to incentivize them to go there rather then more small guild friendly servers. So that that you try to have multiple mega guilds on the same servers, so they can fight each other rather then bully the smaller guilds.

I think actively managing mega guilds is more proactive and useful, then taking half measures that only make organizing them in game a bit more tedious.

How is it a minor annoyance when guild members have to perform tasks with the individual guilds leader, in order to increase slots and gain access to benefits?
If these things dont get undertaken the streamer overlord cant have members (to join sieges and wars).
And if these things are undertaken by the small leaders and their members, wouldnt they feel pride in themselves and possibly look after themselves, instead of being the pupets of some streamer?

It's not like as long you have a discord channel to bark orders, people will be able to benefit what guild systems offer. Unless they all do the work.

And as I said, if somebody has 10 generals, who level up and increase their guilds sizes and perks, let that overlord dominate.

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