Please Don't Punish Casuals with Small Guild Caps @Intrepid
ArchivedUser
Guest
I read this quote on your Discord:
I want to implore you to expand this to at minimum 500. I wrote a great article about this in Gaiscioch Magazine titled "The Anti-Social Epidemic: MMOs Make Unconscious Move To Punish Casual Gamers" I understand a hard core PVP guild at 500 players all of them online at the same time would be detrimental to the game, however a casual / social community with 500 people would be lucky to have 40 online at the same time. With 300 you simply have 20-25 people. Spread across the different levels and playstyles this leaves next to nobody to play with.
Please read my article before you make the same mistake so many others have. I personally just rallied over 500 members to help crowdfund Ashes of Creation and now reading this news, Ashes of Creation might be taken off the table. We have never been able to keep members playing when their is a Guild Limit that cuts us in half or fourths.
Small Guild Ceilings hurt the Social Gamer so much more than the hard core gamer as the Social Gamers are Discarded like trash when Guild Limits require guild leaders only keep the most active players. Small guild sizes make it impossible for a casual player to find a home in a larger community.
Please reconsider this stance. It's hurtful to your community and the ones who will suffer the most are those that can't play everyday.
Some data to think about.
In 2001 the average mmo gamer:
- Was between 16-25 years of age
- Paid $15 per month to play
- Average Playtime: more than 40 hours a week
In 2016 the average mmo gamer (Per SuperData Research)
- Average Age: 33 Years of Age
- Average Playtime: 10 Hours a week
So your target demographic is a more mature demographic that doesn't mind paying a subscription but doesn't have time to play like they used to. Thus your Guild Limit targets these players and alienates them. The communities that have been around for 10+ years are now faced with picking and choosing which of their legacy members can come along and play with them. They're forced to choose which child they love more. This burns people, and breaks communities.
Please think about this, look at the data, research the data, and forecast the long term effect of this choice. Ashes of Creation stands above every other MMO on the horizon right now but this one fact will kill it's potential to bring large pre-existing guilds into the game which is what the original pitch was aimed at.
Thanks for your consideration.
Foghladha
Founder & Activities Director
Gaiscioch Social Gaming Community (Est. 2001)
Footnote:
Something to think about:
Games with Small Guild Limits at Launch:
- Blade & Soul limits guilds to 50
- Black Desert limits to 100
- ArcheAge limits to 100
- Age of Conan limits to 100
- Devilian limits to 95
- Aion at launch only supported 90 characters
- Skyforge begins with a 30 person limit and requires grinding to raise that up to 250
- Final Fantasy XIV limits to 512 accounts
- EVE limits 12,600 Accounts
- Everquest 1 & 2 do not limit
- RIFT does not limit
- Ultima Online does not limit
- World of Warcraft limits to 1000 characters
Comments
I still manage more than 10hrs a week though, so this data was very elightening to me. I assumed a small guild cap helped casual players as it forced the to join more casual friendly guilds.
Also, didn't he Dev team say there would be guild perks that allow for an increase in the player cap?
This reduction of support is a godsend for any developmental effort, particularly for a start-up. As a developer myself, I can tell you it's not the upfront costs that scare me, it's the behind the scenes cost of support that often get underestimated, especially when players are so conscious of support levels and word travels so fast.
Please consider amending the current direction of thinking to allow for large guilds. Alternatively consider the ad absurdum from a business perspective, is someone on the dev team actually thinking, "Oh, we don't want such big clients buying and supporting our product."
It insteads creates a stigma around the casual player where the best option is to create your own guild with a few real life friends, but being part of a larger community is out of the question for you. You will be kicked and exiled out of most large communities as they need your seat for someone more active. Thus you will never enjoy the in game benefits of a large community.
This kind of Outcastings was exactly the reason Gaiscioch formed in the first place. In DAOC guilds kicked casuals out because they needed people to be more active. I collected them and turned us into a family to be reckoned with. The only people who suffer in a game like this are the casuals. How long will they stick around when they are outcast time and time again for having a real life.
I image there would be way more guilds that have 500 active hardcore members than than ones with casuals and only less than 50 on at a time.
Why can't you just split the guild into sub-groups who play at the same time period? And then form an alliance?
You have a guild of 1,000. Split the guild into 4 groups of 250.
All 4 guilds can be in the same city and form an alliance.
They can work towards the same goals, just like they would if they were a 1K guild.
Same number of people would be online regardless.
If from the games i saw in my lifetime its not just the Game systems that make the game, Its also the Community and the Tools that the community has that truly make a game memorable, The Human aspect to say, I do Like the concepts and where this game is going, But With out having the community of friends to play it with its fragmented and lonely experience.i for one would not mind supporting you provided that i knew i could play and work with ALL of my friends. I am sure im not the only one who feels the same way.
So in the end i ask, Is this what you really want? Do you really want the larger Gaming communities with there many members and respective Wallets to go elsewhere. Causing all that potential support and More importantly for a business the Potential Profit and user base to go out of your grasp. All because you wanted to force Guild communities small and in so preventing people from playing with there friends and connections made in the past. Without people you know sharing the experience, all a game is that another game to play and then throw on the pile to gather dust. Easy to forget right.
And that ends my Message. I understand this is your game Intrepid, But for the best of the people. Please Hear out your community and not shoot your self in the foot down the road.
~Marean Lumia(MDlumia)
And a 1K megaguild can be an alliance that's made up of 4 guilds in the same city.
So, plenty of community still there. If you want it.
The problems I could see being faced is communication between all of the members if they are separated by guilds in an alliance where there is no alliance text channel, or participation credit for things completed within a singular "guild" where others could not benefit from if they're just in an alliance.
There has to be a "Reason" for exclusion. And that's what this is at its basic form, is exclusion of friends if this game cannot house a sizable guild or gaming/family community.
Please, @Intrepid do not make this a game we have to pass up because you can not accommodate our size. The family I'm a part of has the potential to bring over 800 people through different time zones.
Ashes is a diverse game, so guilds may necessarily have to participate in all of PvP, PvE, artisan, religion, etc in order to maintain their competitive edge in any single activity. Given this, small casual guilds may not even be viable if only a couple of people online at any one time.
Disadvantages of large guilds comes from the overhead of managing and organising people, which gets exponentially more difficult as the guild grows in size. Hardcore guilds have the added difficulty of attracting top players. This results in fierce and often underhanded competition between top guilds. These guilds need excellent management skills in the officer ranks, including recruitment, trialing and HR resources that know how to resolve conflict and keep things focussed.
GMs of top guilds will probably also know from experience that competition with other guilds can often become dirty and subversive. Some guilds will try to headhunt, undermine and incite toxicity in their competition to encourage valuable people to jump ship and cause the guild to disband or fall in the rankings.
TL;DR The challenge of running large hardcore guilds is in a way self-balancing, often leading to guilds disbanding or downsizing due to pressures from internal management and external competition. If Intrepid tunes the game correctly, they may view this challenge as a "soft cap" rather than requiring an artificially imposed guild cap.
I believe limiting the size of guilds will have people pop in... play a short while... and then leave. Not the kind of game I even want to waste my money on to start with.
Furthermore, I do not agree with the fact that "you'll be lucky to have 1-2 people to play with if you have a guild size of 300 people. I have been playing MMORPG's for over 20 years. I have found that guilds with "over" 300 people are usually largely filled with tons of players' alts-which is forming those massive numbers of 600+ members. It's mostly still the same people. There are a few exceptions, of course...but for the most part, this is true.
I used to be an hardcore. These days, being in my late 30's-with a wife, kids, career, extracurriculars etc-I am more casual. The last several years my guild sizes on ESO, SWTOR, EQ2, GW2 and such, have not been big guilds. They range between 150-200 members. This just makes me choose my guilds more carefully. I choose a guild based on personality matching, active players, progression goals. Active players are important. Even with these "few amount of players", I have found it quite easy to find people to play with. Normally logging in with 20-30 people online, even during the "off" hours of 2-3am. If you're just getting 1-2, perhaps you should take a look at the last activity of these players. I would guess that the majority haven't logged their character in at least a month.
Do not get me wrong, I am not arguing for guild limits.I am arguing that your logic is flawed, as well as your conclusion that this one detail is what makes or breaks games their first year.
Small guilds members are valued and appreciated.
large guilds you become a statistic.
Many of us 30 somethings have lifestyles and responsibilities now that cant sustain the time investment we used to commit to in the days of yore.
There has to be cap to guilds numbers, what that cap is has yet to be tested and established.
We have learned the hard way in the past that trying to merge the gap with multiple guilds usually entails 5x as much work on the administrative end so that everyone can be included. There would have to be an alliance system complete with a text channel and a participation system that worked alliance wide rather than individual guilds for this sort of thing to work for us. Please consider not including such a small cap for guilds!
Thank you for your time,
Dharkon
Member of The Gaiscioch Family
Better read it later.
Ashes game design includes alliance chat. Also cannot attack others in the same party, raid, guild and alliance.
As suggested, guilds just need to form an alliance.
All intrepid would need to do is to include "Alliance chat" and that would solve the problem. You can have 2000 accounts linked through alliance chat, and this should satisfy Everyone.
To simplify: ADD ALLIANCE CHAT... end of discussion
Not like mega guilds would have any point. You know all 500 of that player? Certainly not. That's just a bunch of players on the same chat with the same guild name under their name.
lol even managing like 50player is a big deal, so you can guess how managed is that 500 player(=auto invite bot sends a invite to them, and then they farm guild xp, that's the cooperation in such guilds).