I ran a raiding guild in WoW for 7 years, and the arguments in this thread all sound very familiar and have been beaten to death on the WoW forums ever since that game came out. Higher-end players argue that they worked for their rewards, lower end players look up enviously to something they will never achieve, and neither side understands where the other is coming from.
I am still quite new at this game so take my opinions with a grain of salt, but from my years as a guild leader I have learned a few important things that I would think apply to any game that features guilds/clans/communities:
Guilds with a strong community are extremely important for the overall longevity of the guild (and by extension, the game). I know many people (myself included) who would have quit years ago had it not been for the guild community. For this reason I believe that the focus from the devs should be to encourage community-building, that is encourage āloyaltyā in the sense that people stay in the guild theyāre in instead of jumping ship at the first sign of something better.
When WoW introduced passive guild bonuses they were gated behind āguild reputationā. That meant that upon joining a new guild it would take some time to actually earn the rewards, and this was done specifically to discourage guild hopping. It seems to me like something like this would work in GoW - if say a person joining a new guild would receive zero benefits of any kind for a week or two I feel that someone would certainly think twice about jumping ship when their guild stumbled for a week and didnāt hit 40k or when the opportunity to join a guild that completes a few more LTs a week comes up. Put another way, adding a ācostā to switch guilds would eliminate switching for very minimal upgrades.
In my time playing WoW raids needed 25 people (it has since moved to a flexible scaling model). This often caused issues because on some nights a few people would be out and youād be short. The answer was to recruit additional players, but then you had the problem where you had MORE than 25 on most nights and as such had to sit people out which quickly became an administrative headache. The guild/seal cap in GoW sounds very much like this situation, and in an abstract sense there needs to be some sort of buffer so that a single bad week can be handled. The easiest thing to do (as has been suggested in this thread already) is lower the requirement down from 40k, but there are more involved solutions like having ābankedā seals or something that can be used to hit the 40k mark on an off week.
I would prefer that they reward those that are loyal instead of punishing someone for moving to another guild for whatever reason. For example, if someone is with a guild for x (really long amount of days), they could get some exclusive benefit such as card trading with other long time members. Card trading is just an example. But, it could be anything like card crafting or any other long desired game mechanic/bonus.
I think you both are really saying the same thing just giving different examples. I agree with both that this would be nice and would encourage guild loyalty with a carrot rather than a stick.
Right, the actual implementation can be all kinds of things, I tried to use the simplest thing possible as an illustration to not muddy the waters with discussions about how feasible some features are to implement in an F2P/mobile game.
I do agree that incentives are better than punishments in general, and you could pretty easily have a system where you for instance get increasing personal rewards for every week youāre with a guild (not unlike consecutive daily login rewards in many F2P games). Granted this has its own problems such as it really sucking when you donāt leave voluntarily, but you get the idea.
As someone who spends a lot of time in global I see a large number of people recruiting all the time.
What really gets me is when I see people who are new to the game decide to start their own guilds. As much as I really like to offer the best advice possible to new players, I dont feel particularly good about telling these new players that what they are doing is a bad idea.
The game allows you start your own guild and in other games starting your own guild is often times a good idea, so as a new player in GoW you really dont realize that the same is not necessarily true here. In almost every circumstance a new guild is a continuous battle to first fill and then retain players who have very little incentive to stay, and a lot of incentive to find a better guild as soon as they realize what is going on and what they are missing out on.
I think one way to curb the problem would be to limit guild creation to players at a much higher level, like say 200. At that point in the game I feel players would have a much better understanding of what guilds are all about, and how difficult and unrewarding starting a new guild can be.
Can it be done? Of course. Look at Concealed Supremacy. Full up and doing 40k seals after 2 weeks of being created. But the difference is it was started by an seasoned veteran who had something of value to offer to both new and established players. For every Concealed Supremacy there are probably 50 guilds that get started and never go anywhere.
Good comment, went into much more specifics than I did but you nailed it.
I have said in other comments that the first step is to force players into āsystem guildsā until they get to level 25, then allow them to exit that guild and enter/create the one of their choosing. Players will then get immediate action/feedback of their actions, and they will quickly be able to experience the difference when they make their inevitable first mistake.
One major difference between (raiding) guilds in an MMO and guilds in GoW is that, in the former, you are literally working as a team (basically performing a dance with others, and you establish a cadence as you play to your strengths and away from your weaknesses). If you wish to progress, you need specific roles filled by competent players, and there is a very real skill cap associated with high-end progression. Bonds form in this shared experience, and players stay because of friendships and memories they have created with their teammates.
By contrast, GoW guild collaboration essentially boils down to sacrificing personal resources for team gain. Thereās no skill cap to speak of, and thereās no teamwork evident in the day-to-day milling about. As a result, thereās really no opportunity for bonding or loyalty to become a permeating currency. A guild is a tool, and players will of course depart for greener pastures at the earliest opportunity. Any incentives to stay, or penalties to leave, are handicaps artificially restricting this tendency. Unless the game can give players an established sense of āplaceā in a team ā which to my eyes is inseparable from a skill cap and ārolesā ā this will remain the case going forward.
Step 1) remove the limit on guild seals.
Step 2) when guild finishes all tasks, the members can opt to complete LTs or use their gold to buy Guild Keys (or both if youāre Daddy Wargolds) for an amount like 30k for 50 guild keys.
Step 3) everyone wins
This is a really good point, I was going to mention something about it but the post was already getting a bit long. A huge aspect of MMO guilds is the fact that you are almost always doing something alongside your other guildmates, something requiring constant communication (often via voice chat). That obviously does a lot more for bonding than just putting gold into a task.
I do think that a gentle nudge in the direction of keeping people in guilds by offering incentives for staying would lead to a more constant community within each guild due to lower turnover, which will lead to more of seeing the same faces.
Still, even with that there needs to be some sort of joint playing experience that requires communication to bring people together - something like a timed event where guild members complete various objectives in a given time frame (this creates a scheduled time for everyone to be on together, and forces communication in order to figure out who does what).
I havenāt bothered reading the whole thread. What if devs just raised the guild member limit from 30 to 40 while keeping everything the same? Guilds could reach 40k seals much easier; 3 players who are on vacation or something wonāt be a detriment to the whole guild. Fringe 100 guilds could actually complete all tasks and get the LT. Top guilds would get more LT but there is already a cap to how many LT you can complete a week and at high end-game the rewards for LT are just icing on the cake for those players.
As a former GL in a top (console) guild, i can certainly understand the OPās points. I was constantly feeling as if i had to babysit grown people to make reqs, and then having to boot after 2 weeks of not getting any results. We had people join us for 2 days, dump in thousands of gold, then go to the the other ātopā guilds because of the ārecruitā part of looking at a players profile. I donāt play on PC/Mobile, but i will tell you, console guilds do in fact āpoachā.
I miss the rewards now that iām not in that position anymore. I will never see my current guild get 2500 seals because i am the only one putting in to the statues/seals. When i was in the āBig Leaguesā weād hit the statues in 2-3 days, then all that was left was LT. and then weād get (for example) 30 brown little traitstones and some souls. They werenāt worth it, but i had to make my reqss, so thereās where my gold went. Frankly, iām perfectly OK with playing in this tiny guild, because now itās a GAME again, instead of a full time, stress inducing, unpaid, job.
I made many good friends, and we linked up on FB, and the xbox club, and all because of being in a guild where we took it upon ourselves to communicate.
Iād like to see a way where i (and the thousands of other 99%ers not in a top producing guild) could get access to Mythics once we got, say, level 300, but were not in a top guild with 30 hardcores. Iād also like to not be a completionist, but whoās to say which would be easier to change?
The main issue with that is that the devs donāt want most guilds to complete LTs or 40k chests; those were put in place by them for the 1%ers (though it actually turned out to be more like the 5%ers lol). Iām not saying this is right or wrong but the devs would have to have a change of heart to even consider that and nothing Iāve seen them say (though I may have missed it) indicates this is even up for debate.
Why would the devs purposely gate beginners and newer players? If youāre a mid-casual player in a guild that barely completes one task a week, youāre not going to be motivated to continue playing the game. Motivation comes from progression; getting new troops and currency to level up or acquire new troops. I personally have an experience like that. I was in a guild ranked around 1500 and we did not complete any tasks. My enjoyment of the game waned until I joined my current guild (rank 110) and I was able to enjoy the game.
The current system only rewards hardcore players (5%er) which is rightfully so because those are the players that are investing time and often times real money into the game. But if they allow mid-casual players to progress quickly through guilds then those players could theoretically join the 5%ers.
Because low to mid level players donāt need 40k chests and LTs to progress. LTās and 40k chests were, rightly or wrongly, put in to give end-game players something else to do. Thereās already plenty for new and mid level players to do; LTās and 40k chests arenāt really going to give them much additional bang for their buck.
