I can’t speak for others, but for me personally my goal in this game (and really ANY game I play) is maximize efficiency. I am in one of the top guilds so this is fully achievable option for us. MY goal and likely many in our guild is to achieve everything possible (with the exception of solo leaderboards, they simply aren’t efficient),
The extremely high target coupled with the fact that there is absolutely NO ROOM for error, means this will rarely be a achievable. It frustrates me to no end that no matter how hard our guild tries and how much effort we put in, we simply won’t be able to achieve this goal on a regular bases. Truth be told, I don’t actually CARE about the reward difference it’s the fact that they have put a goal in the game that will be rarely achievable, even for top guilds.
EDIT: The funny thing is, even if they made the goal 60k I wouldn’t care PROVIDED there was room for error, it’s the fact that NO mistakes can be made and each guild member needs to perfectly achieve it that is frustrating for me. IT’s the 45k goal combined with the 1500 cap that makes me crazy. If there was no cap, they could put it at 100k for all I care.
I do think it’s wasteful to design content that few will ever see. But I don’t see a problem with creating goals that even the best cannot reliably achieve. Otherwise, they have nothing to challenge them. I’m not sure this is an appropriate place for that kind of goal, because of the strain it may put on guilds, the tension it may cause between members. Suppose, however, that they reduced the amount necessary to unlock the highest-level chest to give a margin of error. Would there still be a problem with recognizing in some way the occasions on which a guild does perform perfectly for a week? Or would that still induce pressure, even if it’s meaningless, like the current guild leaderboard puts pressure on trophies, despite them having no value?
I really have no stake in it all. I don’t expect my current guild to be competitive, and it’s unlikely they’ll ever unlock the highest level guild chest. I don’t really care all that much. If at some point I do, I’ll either try to encourage the guild to perform better, or I’ll look for a better guild. But as it is, I’m comfortable where I’m at. I’m just interested in understanding player motivations and developer intent, and seeing where they mesh and where the discontinuities are, because I have a general interest in game development.
Not at all, then it would be completely on us for not making up for whatever circumstances made a few of our guild members unable to achieve it. The problem is not the goal itself, it’s the fact that there is no margin for error. If there was margin for error, other members in our guild could make up for whoever missed the 1500 goal w/o issue.
I guess the core issue for me is that in the current advertised state, it’s impossible to achieve that goal regularly, and it would be due to no fault of our guild members. The system is too strict as advertised and punishes effort. As long as we had a way to make up for guild members not making their cap through effort, it wouldn’t bother me
Let me clarify: What if the chest only required 40,000 seals, but at the cap of 45,000, the guild got a “gold star”, a marking somewhere that every member of the guild hit their personal cap that week. Would that matter? What are the traits that make the goal so important?
That would also be fine, simply because our effort wouldn’t be punished due to real life circumstances. The gold star would be a great target to aim for, but now the guild as a whole would not suffer and lose efficiency simply because of real life.
So the distinction, at least for you, is that the reward is useful, rather than just decorative or symbolic? That’s what determines how important it is that you can reliably obtain it?
I’d say that’s neither an unreasonable position, nor an uncommon one.
To expound on this:
If a reward is useful to a guild in some way it should be achievable based on effort alone. Collectively /w effort, the guild should be able to achieve it.
If there is a useful reward that can only be achieved if the stars align and everyone has a perfect day, then that is a problem and should be looked at again.
The guild as a whole should be able to make up for other members shortcomings, whatever the reason may be. If that cannot happen, then all you are doing is setting up a lynching.
Think of this as a game like any other: If you get sick and miss a few practices then your performance will suffer, it will adversely affect the team as a whole, and you all may lose as a result. This is no different.
Casual guilds absolutely should not get the same rewards as hardcore guilds. And as @Spherix has already stated, if you miss a week, just sit on your Seals until next week and no real harm done. If the Guardians are supposed to take 2+ months to fully ascend then what’s a week matter?
Ahh, but teams have backup players for just such an occurrence, the backup may not be as good as the person that is out but he can help the team to an extent.
EDIT: In the example you gave, the team should just give up and forfeit the game because nothing can be done. No use even TRYING to win because it is now 100% impossible.
The current advertised system allows for no such backups, unless the backup is named money.
To those that think trophies aren’t important. They are.
Trophies represent how active a guild is and guilds with more trophies will be able to get players that play a lot, easier than it would be to get those kind of players for a guild that doesn’t have much trophies.
So you may think that trophies are just for chasing each other on the leader board, but they play a very important role in recruiting new members.
As for seals cap yes it’s bad to be forced to have a perfect score and force your whole guild to be perfect every week.
Putting that cap at 40.000 (double of the tier before) would still require from 30 members to earn 1.334 seals each to reach that. That’s also a hard goal to achieve but much more reasonable. And also it doesn’t force a guild to have 30 members, because even 27 members can get to that mark (but with everyone doing their maximum).
I still don’t understand where people are getting the idea that there’s this pressing need to hit the cap every week. Sure, some guilds are going to want to do it, particularly at the top, but I don’t see a substantive benefit over doing it every other week, for instance. Your own seal earnings are entirely in your own control. What your guildmates do, in terms of seal collection, doesn’t affect how much you earn each week, only which weeks you may feel it’s worth spending those seals. And depending on the troop availability in the guild chests, people may end up saving seals for particular weeks anyway. That’s when I would think there would be a concerted effort for the whole guild to hit the cap, and I can understand if there’s concern about failing to do so on a particularly important week. But it’s not clear that that’s the reason people are so up in arms about this.
But that’s the thing, you can’t just decide to go for it every 2 weeks. It can happen that every week a different member has super busy life schedule and he won’t pass 1000 seals. And it’s enough for it to happen for 1 member and 45k is not reachable. And such situation can happen every week for just a single guild member. Because let’s be honest 99%+ players had at least one week where they barley reached tier 1 in PvP.
I thought the top guilds had considerable weekly trophy and gold donation requirements, and players got kicked for not meeting them. How is this suddenly an issue when it comes to seals? Is it because with donations, a non-performer didn’t actually hurt the guild as a whole during the week they didn’t perform, because another player could make up the difference? Does the existence of the cap make contributions feel more measurable, because they have a goal to meet, rather than just contributing as much as possible, without it really mattering?
I’m guessing that the caps, both on gold donations and seals, make people feel like they’re penalized if they don’t hit the caps every week, rather than rewarded for their contributions. An open-ended system makes it harder for people to measure themselves, or rather, they have to make up their own goals, rather than being handed one by the developers.
To put it another way, the caps make it easier to interpret the guild’s performance for the week as a binary “success” or “failure”, rather than a scale of “we put in this much effort, and got this much reward.”
I would agree with all that and I appreciate your well thought out reply. I still hope the devs figure out some way to make Treasure Hunt viable for mid to high level players again, if only for the selfish reason that I enjoy playing it and would play it more if the rewards were comparable to other time sinks.
Guilds are a TEAM first and foremost, they are friendly to each other and help each other out as needed.
Top guilds DO have considerable requirements, HOWEVER they also know that real life happens. In the instance when you cannot meet the requirements for any reason, other guild members can pick up your slack. Not to mention in the top guilds most people go FAR above the weekly requirements.
Putting a seal cap on a reward that is useful to the guild as a whole with absolutely NO ROOM FOR ERROR puts considerable stress on each and every guild member. Rather then being a unified team that help each other, you become a unified mob with pitchforks because no member can help or make up for any other member.
The issue is not the cap itself or the amount required to upgrade. It’s the fact that no mistake can be made EVER and real life CANNOT happen if you hope to achieve the goal with ANY regularity whatsoever.
If you’re in a guild that its actually possible to hit 45000 seals (very few) you are still likely going to miss it some weeks due to real life for one or more players. However using that same real life it costs the guild, on average, less than $1 each to fix it for the week. Bargain! “Problem” solved.
But it’s supposed to be F2P I hear you say…
It is, but if you want everything then sacrifice - like the games creators are by giving you a way to get EVERYTHING for free.
My question to you is: Do you think that they (the devs) get food and rent provided to them by ‘just shopping more, but they all have to shop otherwise they get less chance of good food’?
How about we wait for the update before getting upset.
However that is completely ridiculous and not realistic. The actual comparison would be one guild member each week would have to pay $20.00, which is far less of a bargain and actually asking a lot of your guild members. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but it certainly shouldn’t be a requirement.
I’m not even sure what the point of your 2nd comparison is other than the fact that the devs are in the game making business to make money which is obvious, and there are plenty of ways they already do.
The only thing I actually agree with you on is that we are all just theory crafting right now, but there is a very real concern here that is being dismissed (not necessarily by the devs, I am sure they are reading all of it and trying to come up with a plan)
@Spherix has reasonable points, your points are a stretch at best.
Considering it’s mostly the top 0.5% of players’ Guilds will be the ones with the realistic opportunity to actually reach 45k Seals, and the same 0.5% were the targets for the nerfing, I say the 45k level is a small consolation prize for the top players and their Guilds.
I think you lower-level players got enough in this Update, stop being so damn greedy.
If you’re a daily player you should be spending some cash. If every member spent $20 every other month it’d be easy to get. But if you want totally free with no expectation to spend, go play checkers at the local community center.
I am VIP level 8 and have spent plenty of money on this game, this contributes nothing to the conversation other then just trying to antagonize people.
You are also wrong to assume everyone in a guild is willing to throw down money regardless of how hardcore that guild may be.
