What if Guild mechanics in MMOs were limited to 7 to 10 player max like the Legends of Vox Machina

MMOExposed

Season 2 of The Legend of Vox Machina came out today. Wow I like this show. it sparked this conversation.        
         
generally, MMO Guilds have large rosters and this always seem to lead to Guild Politics, because so many people, with limited group slot for game content.  lot of times the large guilds have a top down social favoritism management system for how leadership runs the thing.

But what if we replace that with limit for the number of people in a guild and limit it to a small cap like this group in the show.

I theorize that guilds would become a more social experience in which everybody gets to know each other and develop a name for themselves rather than just being another person with a guild tag, like we see in large guilds.

there would also be less guild invite spam as well since slots are limited.

Also with this new approach I could see a new guild management system grow out of this, in which everybody share in the guild ownership, so there isnt a single sole owner.  

Brainy

MMOExposed said:

Season 2 of The Legend of Vox Machina came out today. Wow I like this show. it sparked this conversation.        
         
generally, MMO Guilds have large rosters and this always seem to lead to Guild Politics, because so many people, with limited group slot for game content.  lot of times the large guilds have a top down social favoritism management system for how leadership runs the thing.

But what if we replace that with limit for the number of people in a guild and limit it to a small cap like this group in the show.

I theorize that guilds would become a more social experience in which everybody gets to know each other and develop a name for themselves rather than just being another person with a guild tag, like we see in large guilds.

there would also be less guild invite spam as well since slots are limited.

Also with this new approach I could see a new guild management system grow out of this, in which everybody share in the guild ownership, so there isnt a single sole owner.  

How can you account for all the churn?  So many people quit, you would need to update your guild list way to frequently.   How would casuals fit into this since they dont play very often.

Seems like its too hardcore to me.

Smaller guilds usually dont have a very active guild chat.  Its not newbie friendly at all.

People that dont have alot of friends in the game can join large guilds then speak in guild chat occassionally.  Overtime they can become more familiar and play a larger role.  If all you have is 14 super close people in a guild, how does the 1 newb fit in?

Yeah I am not seeing this as a good thing.  Alot of dead guilds if you ask me.

kitarad

I also watch their table top campaigns.

OG_Solareus

Could be brigades , for small pvp based fights for resoures where any all can come ! Shadowbane mine fights was the best pvp small scale experience.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Ralphie2449

That implies it would eliminate politics and preferential treatment.

It wont, anyone who has done high end content, especially in brand new guilds has seen how cliques are formed early on, it is often quite clear who is a good player and who is average from the first few runs and usually you end up spending more and more time with the people who are more competent doing other forms of content than the ones who are not on the same level, if anything people dislike having to go "help" the "bad ones" and just do it as a favor to the guild leader.

And this is only based on performance, if you add more social elements like boyfriends, close buddies or just suck ups it becomes infinitely more complicated.

For the first issue, problem is that guilds are never full of equally competent people, you always have people who excel and carry and people who are average or bad both mechanically and dps performance wise, especially when there's content that requires 20 damn people.

Maybe if the content is limited to 3-5 people it is more likely to find people of equal capability, but the more people you demand for your content the bigger the issue becomes.

Scot

I can see why it would be worth trying but it would come with its own problems that large guilds do not have. Also it sounds more like a co-op group to me and I think that's how it would be run, not sure it could be called a guild.

Quizzical

A guild-size cap of 10 would have two plausible outcomes:

1)  Only hard-core players or those who play with real-life friends would ever see more than a couple other players in their guild online at once.

2)  If you want to use guilds at all, it would be customary to resign from your guild when you log off and find a new guild when you log in.

cameltosis

When I ran my own guild, I found I needed roughly 5 active players in the guild per endgame slot.

So, with 12 person raids (lotro), I needed a minimum of 60 active people in my guild in order to be able to put together a raid. With the 24 mans, I needed 120 active people in my guild.....and thats then a pretty big guild.

As to all the politics, cliques and drama, well, yeh. Find a better guild?

I kinda feel that whenever you get a large group of people together, there are going to be negatives that need to be managed. If you have a good guild leader, supported by decent officers, then all those negatives can be mitigated. If you've got a bad leader, then you're eventually gonna implode.

MMORPGs could definitely do more to help guild leaders be better at running a guild. I'm thinking things like built-in calanders and event planners, raid signups, maybe some built in loot rules. Hell, maybe event town boards where guilds can advertise for new members.

But being a guild leader is a ROLE in the roleplaying game, and giving it a try and learning from the experience is very valuable. I made a ton of mistakes when I started running my guild, had all the usual endgame complaints, but by the end of my tenure pretty much everything ran smoothly.

Brainy

cameltosis said:

When I ran my own guild, I found I needed roughly 5 active players in the guild per endgame slot.

I think this number will fluctuate depending on how hardcore the guild is.

I was a leader of a hardcore guild in WoW that needed less than 1.5 players per slot.  Otherwise people would quit because there were not enough raid spots.

On the other side, I was in a very casual guild in ESO that only couldnt even fill a 12 man raid with a full max guild (I think max was like 500 people).

I think casual guilds would suffer the most from a cap on players, especially a really low cap.

Nilden

10 people is not a guild. It's two groups. I have no idea why anyone would ever even entertain a guild max this abysmally low. The only thing I can picture a MMORPG with a guild max of 10 doing is crashing and burning. Not that it will ever happen since there would never be a developer that implemented something this utterly restrictive.

Kyleran

I'm thinking 100 per guild would be about the lowest cap and only for good reasons.

After all, nothing prevents players from setting the cap much lower if they chose to.

I recall back in DAOC's early days running into a number of guilds who ran 8 mans in RVR with low membership limits, even 10 to 15.

Members were required to play pretty much nightly at the same time, otherwise they were punted and replaced.

delete5230

Brainy said:

MMOExposed said:

Season 2 of The Legend of Vox Machina came out today. Wow I like this show. it sparked this conversation.        
         
generally, MMO Guilds have large rosters and this always seem to lead to Guild Politics, because so many people, with limited group slot for game content.  lot of times the large guilds have a top down social favoritism management system for how leadership runs the thing.

But what if we replace that with limit for the number of people in a guild and limit it to a small cap like this group in the show.

I theorize that guilds would become a more social experience in which everybody gets to know each other and develop a name for themselves rather than just being another person with a guild tag, like we see in large guilds.

there would also be less guild invite spam as well since slots are limited.

Also with this new approach I could see a new guild management system grow out of this, in which everybody share in the guild ownership, so there isnt a single sole owner.  

How can you account for all the churn?  So many people quit, you would need to update your guild list way to frequently.   How would casuals fit into this since they dont play very often.

Seems like its too hardcore to me.

Smaller guilds usually dont have a very active guild chat.  Its not newbie friendly at all.

People that dont have alot of friends in the game can join large guilds then speak in guild chat occassionally.  Overtime they can become more familiar and play a larger role.  If all you have is 14 super close people in a guild, how does the 1 newb fit in?

Yeah I am not seeing this as a good thing.  Alot of dead guilds if you ask me.

I agree it's not a good idea, Add that 7 to 10 players are not going to be on in sync unless they players are good friends.  And if so their many friend guilds in all games.

If the game mechanics force this, EVERYONE WILL COMPLAIN. 

Darkhawke

Altho , not a good approach for the game Dev. It can work for some players ..

I had a static group of 5-8 that went into each MMO together and were the core of the guild and dependable and all we really needed to complete most end game content ..We did however recruit also to most times 16-24 range/ number of members ..But for many years it was that core group .. That ran together , was great fun .. We are all still together in a Disc channel but game interests have spread us out .. Waiting for an MMO that will pull us altogether again.

Brainy

Darkhawke said:

Altho , not a good approach for the game Dev. It can work for some players ..

I had a static group of 5-8 that went into each MMO together and were the core of the guild and dependable and all we really needed to complete most end game content ..We did however recruit also to most times 16-24 range/ number of members ..But for many years it was that core group .. That ran together , was great fun .. We are all still together in a Disc channel but game interests have spread us out .. Waiting for an MMO that will pull us altogether again.

Seems to be the general concensus with all the people I know also.  People all waiting around for the next big MMO, but that has been going on for YEARS now.

According to some people on this site they will lead you to believe all the best MMO's are current ones and everyone is happy LOL.

Unfortunately it seems that in MMO's at aleast I will be waiting around awhile to find something worthy of bringing the friends together.  I dont see anything on the horizon at all.

Iselin

Not a raiding guild obviously with those limits lol.

Iselin

Kyleran said:

I recall back in DAOC's early days running into a number of guilds who ran 8 mans in RVR with low membership limits, even 10 to 15.

Members were required to play pretty much nightly at the same time, otherwise they were punted and replaced.

I was invited to an exclusive RvR guild like that in DAoC... I passed and stayed with my casual friends

Sovrath

I think it should be the choice of the guildmaster and officers as far as how large or small a guild should be.

People are going to be people and things are going to happen. Members of a guild should be adult enough to comport themselves in a decent manner and if they can't it's up to the guild leaders to do something. If it's the leaders who are the issue, players can leave.

I do like how Lineage 2 and Black Desert have things that guild members can do to strengthen or level a guild. Just a point of note.

Guilds should have benefits and should require the entire guild to actually participate in, and benefit from, being in a guild.

delete5230

Sovrath said:

I think it should be the choice of the guildmaster and officers as far as how large or small a guild should be.

People are going to be people and things are going to happen. Members of a guild should be adult enough to comport themselves in a decent manner and if they can't it's up to the guild leaders to do something. If it's the leaders who are the issue, players can leave.

I do like how Lineage 2 and Black Desert have things that guild members can do to strengthen or level a guild. Just a point of note.

Guilds should have benefits and should require the entire guild to actually participate in, and benefit from, being in a guild.

agree, but that's already how it is.

Slapshot1188

Sovrath said:

I think it should be the choice of the guildmaster and officers as far as how large or small a guild should be.

People are going to be people and things are going to happen. Members of a guild should be adult enough to comport themselves in a decent manner and if they can't it's up to the guild leaders to do something. If it's the leaders who are the issue, players can leave.

I do like how Lineage 2 and Black Desert have things that guild members can do to strengthen or level a guild. Just a point of note.

Guilds should have benefits and should require the entire guild to actually participate in, and benefit from, being in a guild.

Yeah leveling a guild is usually something fun in an MMORPG.  I like when it's balanced so that activity matters vs just zerg recruiting.  Not saying a small guild should get all the accolades that a large one can get, but when a small dedicated team can make a name for themselves... thats usually the type of game I like.

Dibdabs

Nothing they could do would get me to join a guild these days.  Absolutely nothing.

Sovrath

delete5230 said:

Sovrath said:

I think it should be the choice of the guildmaster and officers as far as how large or small a guild should be.

People are going to be people and things are going to happen. Members of a guild should be adult enough to comport themselves in a decent manner and if they can't it's up to the guild leaders to do something. If it's the leaders who are the issue, players can leave.

I do like how Lineage 2 and Black Desert have things that guild members can do to strengthen or level a guild. Just a point of note.

Guilds should have benefits and should require the entire guild to actually participate in, and benefit from, being in a guild.

agree, but that's already how it is.

Which is why I don't think the OP's suggestion is necessary. Guild size can already be controlled. No reason to cap it low artificially.