This isn’t really a solution for the current situation, in which the starting Bracket for any new guild is already 400-500+.
Sure, each new guild that registers pushes that number even further, but doesn’t address pre-existing guilds.
Moreover, it’s not just the fact that the guilds are created, it’s also that registration is simple, encouraged (“Register Now!”, and guaranteed rewards) and irreversible (even if the guild is disbanded…).
Another compounding factor is, imo, the Guild and Guild Search interface.
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New players are prompted to join a Guild as one of their early tutorial (or Adventure Board?) tasks.
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While a completely dead guild won’t show up in the Guild Search for them, guilds that only have a small amount of activity, and potentially lots of inactive (‘Zzz’) players, will.
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While IN a guild, you can’t use the Guild Search to look for another
- And for a new player who doesn’t know the benefits of being in a guild or the consequences of leaving (‘Leave Guild’), there isn’t necessarily a clear reason or motivation for them to leave and go searching until/unless they get frustrated with the lack of progress and go searching for solutions, not necessarily successfully.
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The Guild Search also lacks nuance, and transparency. Being able to filter and sort ALL non-inactive Guilds, or at least a sorted list with the possibility of scrolling to the next page, by categories such as:
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Requirements (Seals, Gold, Trophies, Level), Guild Level, League Rank, GW Rank, Tasks and Event stages completed the previous week (or if not sorted by, then somehow visible), ‘Zzz’ players – tbc.
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The Guild experience component of the game is huge, and I think relying on the current Guild Search or Chat to home new players is insane.
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While some players may enjoy or aim for solo play,
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The possibility remains for new players to be unaware of the opportunities out there, and spread out amongst various minorly active guilds that only slowly trickle down the Brackets.
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Solo play doesn’t necessarily have to come at the expense of competition participation for group/full-guild play, even if it currently can.
In sum, I think the general sentiment that “there are too many guilds” and that “it’s too easy to make a guild” isn’t the right angle to look at, particularly because the development team has already (I believe) indicated they don’t think this is a problem and/or they still want people to be able to make guilds and experience the various aspects of the game as a solo and/or low-level player. My take is that ignoring this means that (reasonably/fairly or not) much of what could be fruitful discussion gets shelved as unable to be acted upon.