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Did Buy to Play kill Guilds
Existentialist
Member UncommonPosts: 60
Just something I'm interested in, wondering what others think.
When I look at the 9 game shortcuts on my desktop, I realise that I don't pay a sub for any of them.
Let me divide them up this way:
In a guild: Lotro, Darkfall New Dawn
Not in a Guild but play with friends: Diablo 3, Warframe, Killing Floor 2
Not in a Guild and know no one: Black Desert, Fallout 76, Legends of Aria
Single Player: Witcher 3
(I'm a lifetimer in Lotro - hence no sub)
So for the old school games I have communities, the shooters I play with friends without guilds and the more recent games I play just as a loner. The reason I do the latter is that I chop and change so much between games depending on updates that I don't want to commit to any more guilds.
So I wonder, if most games cost a monthly sub and I was forced to limit myself to one or two games, would I be more likely to get involved in guilds? I think so. Am I missing out on content in these newer games because I don't join guilds. I think so.
Is there a solution or do I just keep kicking the can along the road playing what I feel like on any particular night?
At this stage yes.
When I listen to MMO podcasts it seems that what I do is the new norm. Guilds have turned into Discord communities.
So do you think the ability to Buy to Play makes it more likely you'll keep swapping games, effectively killing off guilds?
Please let me know what you think.
When I look at the 9 game shortcuts on my desktop, I realise that I don't pay a sub for any of them.
Let me divide them up this way:
In a guild: Lotro, Darkfall New Dawn
Not in a Guild but play with friends: Diablo 3, Warframe, Killing Floor 2
Not in a Guild and know no one: Black Desert, Fallout 76, Legends of Aria
Single Player: Witcher 3
(I'm a lifetimer in Lotro - hence no sub)
So for the old school games I have communities, the shooters I play with friends without guilds and the more recent games I play just as a loner. The reason I do the latter is that I chop and change so much between games depending on updates that I don't want to commit to any more guilds.
So I wonder, if most games cost a monthly sub and I was forced to limit myself to one or two games, would I be more likely to get involved in guilds? I think so. Am I missing out on content in these newer games because I don't join guilds. I think so.
Is there a solution or do I just keep kicking the can along the road playing what I feel like on any particular night?
At this stage yes.
When I listen to MMO podcasts it seems that what I do is the new norm. Guilds have turned into Discord communities.
So do you think the ability to Buy to Play makes it more likely you'll keep swapping games, effectively killing off guilds?
Please let me know what you think.
Comments
I wonder if it's linked to micro-transactions. In a game with micro-transactions, the individual experiences of people are quite different. You can have a person who spends nothing, whose experience will be qualitatively different to a person who buys everything in the shop. In a case like this, it's difficult to relate to others.
Most of the monetisation in micro-transaction games is driven through the individual player. Rarely is it driven through guilds. The big spenders will be buying items for themselves - equipment, time savers, skins, pets. They usually won't be buying things that benefit groups of people. The thinking there being that it's much more predictable to monetise an individual. As a result though, the game ends up being designed around the individual experience at its core. Even if you have social features, the monetisation (which funds your product) is a solitary experience.
When I was designing the payment model for my Minecraft servers, it was always F2P with tiered subscriptions. I chose this very specifically to drive the community aspects. Most of the features of the subscription allowed you to benefit the whole community. For example, it would unlock skins for your cities - which are there for all the people. Another example would be a highlight on the game's website for your character biography - this drives the RP/interaction elements.
The whole idea of a guild by developers is NOT the way guilds operate in games.Yes there are some real friends and some who become real friends but for the most part players in guilds want something selfishly.
Most of gaming now a days in mmorpg's is soloing,so yeah you think people join guilds has anything to do with the game or more about THEM,the ME factor.
Then guilds are sort of forced by design because all the players want that best of loot and guess where the developer hid that loot,yep on a boss that takes a group/raid.
So imo if players did not NEED to group they would not,so there would be very few guilds in spite of sub fees or not.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
So basically you apply to get into guilds that often die off within a couple of months of a game launch and then you're left shopping for another one. This gets so tiresome after your fifth guild. Then you have all the politics that drain you of all the fun you might have had but on the other hand playing without a guild is almost unthinkable. How lonely is that with no one to talk to?
Wasn't like that when I played Everquest I basically stayed in just one guild the whole time until we moved to another server but even then it was the same guild minus a few members who didn't want to move.
It seems these days that I Buy to Play something, give it a month or so, do as many of the solo parts as possible, then see a new shiny thing and move to the next game. I've experienced this new way of playing now with Fallout 76, with Black Desert and recently with Legends of Aria.
I know that if I join a guild or community in one of these I'll probably stick with it, but I like being able to jump between the various new titles as they update/improve them without leaving a trail of neglected guild behind me.
Does this have something to do with the expectation that games are released unfinished now, and I know I want to toggle between them after go-live to work out which one is going to end up the best?
Just wondering whether everyone is doing this now or whether that says more about me than about games. As has been suggested, are game designs (eg microtransactions) being used to get people to Buy to Play, spend money on Microtransactions and then move on, or do designers still use guilds to try to keep players?
Its like having 9 girlfriends but no wife, but then not being able to decide who to go out with on Friday night so you stay home with a beer and Netflix.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
No other guild would care, I don't think.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
sub or no sub didn't seem to have an impact.
I had fun once, it was terrible.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The true question to your answer is probably an array of factors. Buy to play, micro transactions, but also Steam, the frequent cancellations of games, relatively low innovation,instanced maps, and the blending of singleplayer/multiplayer genres.
The overall environment 10 years ago was one where guilds thrived. Today the environment is one where it's a challenge.
To make it work, you'd have to align your game design, community team and monetisation all in line to support long term community relationships. A game like Crowfall seems to be quite close to that - many of their game systems are designed primarily about interaction. It might be a very niche concept for the market today though. Who knows. I think a game that goes for this needs to be happy with a slow start that builds the community up over time. Crowfall probably isn't going for that. So it might see the typical drop off in players.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
In other games, where you know every single piece of behind-the-scenes math going on in the game, the nerdlings break out the calculators, spreadsheets and other tools and break the entire game down.
They have the best specs worked out, the best rotations worked out.. etc etc.
In Conan, the only thing you knew was how much damage you did to them, and how much damage they did to you. All the other math was hidden. Which means that my guardian spec was just as valid as your as long as we could both old aggro, swap aggro and live through the encounter.
Not only that, but having top damage, wasn't always a good thing. In fact, it was pretty easy for DPS character to over damage, pull the raid boss and wipe the group, but you really didn't know what the limit was, so you were always dancing with death trying to do a lot of damage, but not break the bank.
In SWTOR, however, I was told what spec I had to have, what rotation I had to use and when to use it. If I didn't follow the rules precisely, then I wasn't invited to the next raid. I really really cannot stand that kind of gaming.
Many games seem to go for the big payday early on then have very limited ongoing budgets.
*shrugs* still thinking this through
Guilds:
75 people
25 online
2 at your level range to play with, and they don't "feel like' at your time
Too bad you can't link friend's together so they can communicated to each other. Sure when your grouped it's like a group text. But somehow all the time would be nice.
people killed guilds.
their stupid "uh i don't wanna work to kill that boss, dont you know a group that allready cleared him" mentality killed guilds. (PvE)
cross server killed guilds.
if you don't know your enemy, you can't know yourself. (PvP)
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
I join a guild because they are like-minded players. When my guild would move on to a new game, I most likely would follow if I'm done with the game.
Originally, Most guilds were tied to the game the player joined in, if or when you left the game, you also left the guild behind. A few guilds did try to make cross platform games, but all too often people remained loyal to one game at the expense of all others, and thus the leader of the guild often had to play several games to keep presence, if they left the game, the guild presence in that game often also declined or vanished outright.
With the rise of discord community Guilds, players can join a guild, and go play whatever they want, and if they can meet up with a guild mate, great, if not, well, a lot of guilds in most games are just social things anyway, with a vast number of the players soloing or breaking off into cliques anyway, that they are not as integrally important to the games survival, and developers should take some time to consider this when they think they are going to make "group" content.
Just kinda my feels on it.
That's all fine and dandy but that's not how I EVER want to explicitly game. I don't need like minded people, I need people who share my immediate goals:
"Do you want to kill the dragon?"
"Yes"
"Raid invite"
Beyond this the idea of the "guild" has been losing it's purpose for me for some time.
Pass. It has nothing to do with the payment model for me. I don't know about other folks.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯