What's your view on this,
In an mmo where the game focuses on community interaction and grouping, do you think the amount of guilds should be limited ?
The reason I'm asking is often mmos have hundred's of small guilds, everyone and their brother seem to make a guild. Hell, This spreads the community thin. People out of desperation for their guild to be popular make up numbers only to find they only have 7 true active members. How many people have witnessed this in their mmo life span ?
I don't buy this !...... " It's your fault, you should research good guilds on the internet "
Well yes somewhat BUT, because of freedom to make guilds on a whim this shouldn't have to be !
What's the harm in having the freedom of hundreds of guilds ?...........Lot's ! Players can't organize to the games full potential, simply spread too thin !.......How often have you had problems filling a group at say level 24. When you have guilds with only 21 members, the answer is clear, you can't. So what's your options ? Guild bounce ! Good players are left un-noticed because of lack of research external to the game !
Developers have all the control, it's a flaw in all mmo's.
Limit the number of guilds, what do you think ?
Comments
their no right answer as give to many options you go wow version with everybody wins a epic loot or force to much an you get hardcore mode only elitist get good loot an see end game content.
DAOC has alliances for this purpose, as does EVE and in both I've never observed any issues to getting larger content.
What I"d rather see is a cap on guild or alliance size, it seems I've seen a greater scourge from the presence of mega organizations rather than many smaller ones.
I've watched big guilds ruin titles such as Shadowbane or L2, even in EVE many distain the power of the big alliances.
Besides running a mega guild is a real chore, practically a full time job in EVE and many corps and alliances actually pay their leaders to run them.
While usually in the form of in game currency I've seen Plex (sub time) and even RL cash used. (even in WOW I met a guy who was paid $600 a month by his guild to tank and be their raid leader, and this was back in Vanilla WOW days.)
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Big guilds are often very stale and impersonal, which in my experience, leads to the game feeling more like a chore than a pleasure.
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Killing the early dragons in pre-expansion EQ with 18 to 22 people was a lot of fun.
I'd rather see limits on guild size before a limit on the number of guilds, though. I've been in too many guilds where the membership was in the hundreds, but never more than 5 people were online at a time.
I'd also like to see some game explore the concept of guild dues for individuals, and a sliding scale for the guild fees / taxes depending on membership beyond the usual guildhall fees.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
The positives could include new perspectives on player interaction and grouping, possibly even provide a greater sense of community (something that is very often sorely lacking).. The negatives remain as a "loss" of a feature that has been around since Ultima Online - Creating guilds..
To be honest, I am not really sure anymore.. I see positives and negatives to both.. And, seeing as I am trying to evolve the genre and build my own MMO someday, I am constantly having to examine and re-examine these kinds of ideas.. Maybe its time for guilds to become less of what they were and to now evolve in a different direction.. Or, maybe they need to remain as they are due to guilds being too set in stone and players not willing or not wishing to change..
Jury is still out.. But I do enjoy reading everyone's comments.. Really helps take the general (very general) pulse of the thoughts out there..
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You answered you own question about limiting the number of guilds. You could end up with a server full of mostly inactive guilds and all the people left on the server will not be able to create a new ones.
As far as pickup groups, some people like them and some don't. You can have pickup groups fine with lots of guilds around. Actually in early EQ. it made forming pickups easier as guilds had reputation so you have some idea about this unknown player wanting to join the group. With an unguilded person, you would have to take a chance or depend on the persons own reputation if such exist.
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But maybe make Guilds much harder to start ( add more pre requites ).
Like I say, many good points, but you have to admit, often mmos have hundreds of Guilds, many are made with a half assed assumption that the leader MAY decide to stick around or maybe not.
I guess what I'm more trying to say is at least stop that......What do you think ?
If people wish to join a larger one they easily can
You appear to be trying to force them into joining larger guilds which I see no real benefit to.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Sure. And thats how it should be.
Nothing stops you from joining a bigger guild. Nothing stops you from joining a smaller guild. Unhappy with the current guild ? Leave it, join one that fits your needs better.
I have no clue why you think we need to regulate how people are allowed to play.
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Limiting the amount of guilds in game does not make sense. More choice in this area is good.
If none of the options for guilds is a good fit for me, then I could start my own with a group of like minded players. If you limit the amount, then this becomes a problem. Nothing wrong with small guilds.
Redsalt... the other salt.
Having preset guilds would make them more meaningful. You could also have those guilds interact with the lore. In a fantasy setting, you could perhaps have a guild of bankers - players would join and participate on a variety of ranks, being part of the "banker guild". Others could perhaps join the guard, getting rewards and content more tailored to what a guard would do.
I had a similar concept on my Minecraft RPG server. You had one central town, with three different branches. The civic (allowing them to plan the city, allocate building materials, collect rent), the executive (setting laws, commanding the guard) and the trade (arranging for crafting imports, setting trade taxes). The players could then contribute to these branches on the lower ranks, or register to be elected into higher ranks and get more powers.
The design on my server had several features that made this possible. (I did not plan for these explicitly; they just turned out to complement the system very well):
- Players were affecting the guilds indirectly, even if they didn't mean to. If you sold something to a trader, the taxes would trickle down into the trade treasury. If you were selling a lot of swords, the guards would do better in combat. This allows players who do not reach the top ranks of the guild still contribute in a meaningful way.
- You did not have to be a member to notice the benefits. If the civic branch built a new hospital, every player would get a new respawn point to use. Higher spending on guards would make areas around the town more safe for all the players. Again, this partially eliminates the issue of being left out. All of the players had some connection to the guilds around them.
- The elected officials had significant impact. I was wary of this at first, as the Minecraft community is very young. To my surprise, the fact that these positions are elected meant those in power were quite responsible - everyone cared about reelection. Having access to potentially game changing features meant other players were inclined to engage with the guilds. For example, we had crafters regularly talk to the Trade officials to negotiate which imports would be ordered into the town.
I think this system has a lot of potential. By presetting guilds, you are encouraging players to interact with each other in a meaningful way. Even though our players were initially bummed they can't form small guilds for 2-3 of their friends, the interactions going on outweighed that in my opinion.It may be difficult to scale this into the numbers of AAA games though. You would have to instance this somehow, perhaps similar to the concept of UO Shards or traditional MMORPG "realms". It would not be possible to have these relationships with the community changing all the time, which seems to be the trend in design lately (e.g. automatic instances, megaservers).
Another thing I've always liked the thought of is racial adventuring guilds that players start in. Players could leave it at any time, but it would help new players. Maybe every 10 levels, it moves you into a higher tier guild that puts you with people who are in common areas and with whom you can discuss relevant topics.
For instance, halflings of Wild's End might start out in a guild called "Initiates of the End". When they hit level 20, they join Explorers of the End. Gives players an immediate community. They could leave at any time to join a player guild. Perhaps members of the starter guilds can get some sort of perks for staying in as a reward for providing a service to the general population.
I had hoped these types of organizations would be far more in-touch with the game lore, and have a specific function within the game world, as opposed to typical player guilds.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Would cool if such a game was made.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
In most of the guilds I have been in members do interact with each other in a meaningful way. If all I had to join was some generic preformed guild that would take a lot of the social aspects of the game away. Actually without player created guilds, I don't think I would even play the game in the first place.