Block new guild creation* until players have compressed into mostly full guilds.
Do some data mining and math and come up with a realistic goal.
Whatever percentage of full guilds we have now, or whatever percentage of guilds are empty, just keep Guild creation on hiatus until those numbers improve.
They don’t have to be perfect: 100% full guilds, or guilds with 0% empty slots–that would be incredibly unrealistic. I’m just saying let’s try to steer the numbers in that direction for a little while.
I thought there were too many guilds *_before Guild Wars started_*, but since GW it’s impossible to keep the guilds filled. And since 3 or 3.1 it’s even harder to retain players.
The real Guild Wars are the guild recruiting wars…and they are a lot less fun.
*I realize this would be highly controversial but I’d even recommend unilaterally disbanding guilds with fewer than 15 members. This game is guild to win and the game is not doing newer players any favors by letting them languish in a small, ineffective guild.
I used to be the leader of a top 6 guild. So, I know how hard it can be to recruit great new players. However, the solution surely isn’t to institute draconian actions like disbanding guilds with less than 15 members. Some people have guilds for just family, RL friends and/or co-workers. I see no need to hinder that play style.
I think the real issue is that the game does a terrible job of making it easy to find and recruit. If you try to find a guild as a new player, there are no search criteria, it just pulls stuff seemingly at random. Including a lot of half full and semi active or even dead guilds. And as a leader your only option is to shout in Global. It’s so bad. Especially for a game where Guilds are absolutely central to the experience.
Yea, that is true. That part of the guild system needs a serious upgrade. In another game that I played, they automatically placed new players into a random guild that was set to open enrollment. Plus, they set a moderate player level before you could create a guild. I think that system might be helpful in GoW.
Of course, the player could move on to another guild to find a better fit whenever.
Assuming they can find one. As far as I can tell, it appears to just give you a list of mid-tier, half-empty guilds, regardless of your level, progress, etc.
Well, yea, like I said, the devs need to overhaul that part of the system. The most obvious change is adding a simple search by name or guild minimum requirements.