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The realities of a small guild
markeen
Member Posts: 302 Arc User
The reality is Neverwinter isn't friendly to the growth of smaller guilds. Even with the additions to strongholds it's nearly impossible for a small guild to grow. The majority of players flock to the larger guilds because of boons, market place gear and false promises. We've had our guild for almost a year and have only been able to get to rank 2 and Market rank 1 (2 of 15 putting in work). Fact is the resource requirements (specifically influence) are far to high. But, it's my reality that a small guild like ours will never be able to reach the status of some of the more established guilds. When it was announced changes were coming to strongholds to allow smaller guilds a way to level up I was excited. However, the reality is the update fell short of expectations. I'm not one who expects hand outs or anything to be easy. But, I would like a better way to level strongholds. A lot of the players we've recruited either left for higher ranked guilds or literally stopped playing after joining. This is another reality. Our plan was to level up enough to have something more than a guild name to offer new members. Some kind of incentive for a player to stay. But we are struggling. I've had successful guild/clans in other games but those strategies don't seem to work here. Many have suggested to 'merge' to another larger guild but we've put in so much to get the little bit we have I personally couldn't do it.
Founder of Knights of Ra guild in Neverwinter PS4. Founder of The Arashikage Clan in Defiance, formally of PlayStation Home.
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Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
Ok, so you've put in a lot of effort in order to get nowhere, and you don't want to give up on it. Are you going to be happy putting in another year of effort and having your efforts count for increasingly less? Because as you rank up, each subsequent build requires more and more and more resources. There is no time to cut your losses like the present, or you're going to have to change your approach. You can only expect this system to accommodate you to some degree.
I run a very small guild, one so small that by most standards it would be perceived as failing. I only recruit players who express understanding that the trade-off for a guild leader leader who essentially leaves you the hell alone* is that the upgrades and boons are slow in coming. It works well for most of the players who end up with me, and for anyone it doesn't work for, I hope they are happier where they choose to go next, even try to place them elsewhere if they're good people.
If you can get with a good alliance, it helps a lot. You can participate in activities that you don't have the members to run otherwise. Your few guildies can jump in on runs with allies, rather than having to pug everything. You can use the market of your highest-ranked ally. And of course you can hope for, or actively facilitate, cross-donation. But an alliance formed entirely of small, struggling guilds isn't going to be hugely better off than solo (slightly more players for content, but resources spread thin), and making connections may be difficult.
My guild is currently rank 10, with an active roster maybe as small as your inactive one. Not all members do SH activities every day, but we are able to be self-sustaining with having a Recruiter (temp structure) operating full-time and sometimes a Gemcutter. I'll switch this out if we end up needing Gems more urgently than Influence for the next builds, which is possible.
We're as high in level as we are because of members who work their butts off, allies who contributed a ton of shards, smart/opportunistic purchases, and making as much use of events as possible. Also, we have a good rotation for tending our buildings; not being able to do this interferes with bigger guilds than mine being able to make full use of the temp structures, but that's their problem.
*As it turns out, how I lead a guild is substantially more hands-on than guilds that recruit actively and try to maintain a big roster. At least I am able to get to know all my players, know why they're picking LoL over a larger guild, etc. I'm able to provide a lot more support to a smaller roster than I'd be able to with more members. Likewise in our alliance, I've done a lot of the legwork in getting our member guilds together. It's a solid line-up, but a lot of effort went into that. Leading a guild to any degree of success is a ton of work.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
But there are few things here: False promises ?
If a guild is successful it must be deceiving in some way ? This is slow, GH2 needs 32k influence, a single person doing 3HEs per day, for 345 influence will do that in ~100 days. If you have a guild where only 2 people contribute, and 13 doing nothing, you probably should reconsider the whole thing, either disband, and no, your already invested effort is just Sunk Cost Fallacy and nothing in compared what you are going to loose.
Or if you do want to proceed, you probably should reconsider what requerments you make, what you give, and what you ask for. (I"ll return to this) When we started we thought so too, and accepted it as a price worth to pay to stay in a 'culture' we like.
Now we are GH20.
(though to be fair: we were something like 10 active players, we all contributed, and we were/are not beginners) Why they left? Did they leave because of the boons? Or because it's dead quiet (I'll bet on the second) And this is truly the crux of the issue, if you can't offer boons, consider what you actually can offer new joiners.
I've looked at your post here:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1233310/knights-of-ra-recruiting
You say you are mostly solo, meaning to me as a potential guild joiner, that I wont find some to talk to, someone to join in runs, or help me do dailies. I will need to ask for everything, and it's not the culture of the guild. So what indeed are you offering me ?
I'm not trying to offend, and I hope I'm not, but in a practical view, there are probably a lot of guilds at this stage that say that they offer game knowledge and willing to help. So, IMO, you need to explain that part.
So few suggestions:
Edit / remake that thread, reading it I don't see a lot of reasons why to join you and not someone else, looks the same. Either explain in what you are different, if you have expiriance and builds perhaps talk about your builds and chars.
If you and others have sense of humor and it's a thing, write the post that way.
What important for you? What is the guild 'vision' ? Otherwise you are exactly like all the rest to a random reader, but without boons and dungeons.
You are low on people ? People will join see that nothing happens and leave. Try organizing times where you actually do things so people online and can at least party for a dungeon. You are console don't have custom channels for groupings (sucks), so you will have to do some 'footwork'. Same with DF, with 10 people you can do 4 dragons with well made parties, but lacking that arrange time and do 2/3, group activity is healthy. Mraddurus
If you are not in alliance, join one, even a medium small one (doubly large one will accept you). That will give your guildies more grouping options, more communication, and things like market, and access to MW (if they have) and such.
Console people are very active on things like reddit (apparently there is NW ps4 Facebook and stuff too, but can't say much about it) https://www.reddit.com/r/Neverwinter
There is a guild recruitment sticky, add yourself there.
You have 15 members but only 2 donate at all ? Why is that ? Are they not active ? Or just don't feel like being part ? 3HEs are fast and easy, maybe they don't know what to do? Or what the issue there?
If I join a guild and the spirit is that no one contributes I wont contribute either. If I see everyone contribute I will feel that it's expected out of me too. So, IMO, this should be taken care of, one way or another.
You can also use PS4 communities to gather your members and open a community chat so members of the community can join without being on your friends list. We use this on and off, generally when we have an influx of members and we want them to know we are available to them without the rest of the guild inundating them with friend requests.
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
And we have no rules that everybody have to spend x Ad or have to farm so and so much influence per day/week.
No, if someone is in the mood to farm influence he will do it, if not then not.
Sure we have members wich are more active, or they don't care farming with 3 or 4 toons per day (something i really can't, i fell asleep after the second toon).
But for example what do we do, if we need not that much influence for the next goal..we are starting influence runs at the weekend, when everybody has more time, sitting together in teamspeak, building groups to farm the big HEs and we have lot of fun if someone is running with an toon and have zero clue how to play it properly, he/she is constantly dying, and someone who main this toon is constantly mocking him/her.
So how do we reached this goal even if we are small? As i said we are very active, doing AD farm runs, clearing content, so most the time everyone is in an good shape with AD, so we often buy stuff we need.
And yes we have two very lucky members with the lockbox stuff and/or Masterwork crafting, so both of them and our beloved young female guild leader buying most of the stuff we need.
So also during the Sommer event everybody bought influence coffers (spelling?), we did that last year and also this year and that helped us alot.
What do we also have, some "Pusher" in the Guild like our Guild leader and one or two members, constantly kicking our lazy bu***, in farming AD, and or running content.
Alliance, we are now Helm Guild in an very big alliance after the first guild reached Rank 20, and if we are 20 we will give the next most active Guild the Helm status.
So you can see, there must be no pressure in an guild, we did never invite people to us if we had the feeling "this guy/girl doesn't fit", we want to stay small without drama, have a lot of fun together and we could trust eachother.
What I meant by "false promises" is a few guilds have recruited players from smaller guilds with promises of boons and such and once the player dumps their goods into the coffer they get kicked from guild. Also, note that it's pretty known of some high ranked guilds (PS4) didn't earn their rank legit like others have.
I have always welcomed every recruit into our guild personally and when I log in and check the roster and I always make an effort to spark conversation, offer help with quest, gear and class builds (I have a toon of every class all level 70 except my warlock is 62). I send out guild mail when we have an opportunity (like joining an alliance) or are in need of something specific (like influence). I never asked anyone to do anything I wasn't doing myself. Nor did I expect anyone to do as much or more than me.
We haven't joined an alliance yet mostly because I wanted any resource we earned to be applied to our guild not an alliance guild (I know not all alliances call for this).
We will not disban or merge to another guild. I've already dumped hundreds of real money into a former friends guild just to be kicked out over differences we had and then dumped money, time and AD into my own getting us to almost rank 3.
Almost every resource needed to level up is pretty quick and easy to earn. Just the influence is taking forever. And my opinion still stands that even with the updates to strongholds it's nearly impossible for a small guild to level up.
I have lead a few successful guilds/clans on ther games and it was great. I can't seem to find the right..... thing to pull this one together.
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
You also have to be able to tend buildings 3x per day to keep this operating. Which you can do with one or two people, but you absolutely must be consistent. Not much point building a Recruiter at all if you're just going to let it fill and sit.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Shame on anyone kicking sahha and spending silver tickets on anything but strongboxes if their guild has needs. (Not kicking sahha, well... personal choice. It's a grind, but it's also a valuable shortcut.)
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I think the siege is coming up, which our people are already planning on farming in groups for the weekend. I didn't even ask them. Drunken farming for the weekend!
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
Big guilds often lean toward the impersonal and/or have a few small cliques within the ranks. A lot of people don't mind this but many do seek out the 'personal' experience and would trade it for the maxed boons of a GH20.
As a very small guild, when you bring in new members it really helps to get them into voice chat immediately, otherwise you're losing the one and only advantage you have - personal contact.
The other thing is explaining that influence needs to be run - but can be run as a group. This makes is faster and less of a burden - a 5 minute daily chore that pays for itself. If 5 members run 2 characters daily, that's 4k inf per day - 28k per week. In other words, enough to build to GH5 within 2 months.
As things stand (for you) it looks from the outside like you're not offering anything other than a silent experience with no boons and no hope of anything changing.
You need to either get serious, take charge & create an experience - or kick everyone, leave an alt at r7 and use it for storage.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
However, if you add a player that counts for the full month even if they leave that day.
Let's create an example....
You have a guild with 10 players. The cost would be smaller. However, if another players joins just to donate and than leave, the guild building now has to account for 11 players in that month. Even after that player leaves, any additional player added will add to the cost. After a month it reduce the player count by one and the guild building cost would go done.
This way no one can abuse the guild system to build new structures.
Or you didn't login a week? You damn casual ! Insta kick - you cost me discount.
Or just wait a month, gather resources, rotate people, np. Do 2-3 guilds in parallel for best rotation and boon retention.
Put the SKT currencies under the IWD stuff
Give influence for ALL heroic encounters no matter where they are
Increase the amount of influence that can be gained per character per day.
Increase voucher drops across the land for people in or out of guilds and make them unbound so that non-guild people can sell them on the AH.
The temp structures are a step in the right direction, but if by adventuring wearing the guild tag you could pick more stuff up (add vouchers to dungeon chests in addition to other things) to help the guild that would make life a lot easier for the smaller guilds trying to stay small.
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
Often small guilds have benefits that large guilds do not, a sense of closeness, camaraderie, usually more social, etc. They should not have or expect to have all the benefits of a large guild without putting in the work.
I am in a large guild on Xbox and PS4. The PS4 guild has always been a large guild, started/joined in early access and at cap a few weeks into the game. Reach a point, where it began requiring a donation to join from new members and progressed very quickly to GH 20 (4th, I think. Somewhat Serious is the guild)
But the Xbox guild (Casual Gamers) didn't start until Strongholds and consisted of players who played solo, but wanted only experience the Stronghold expansion. We required no donations, no activities, no ilvl and no minimum level (We accepted level 20 and up). We were a bunch of lone wolves, each doing our own thing. So, we were never a strong social guild (It's a better now). We could barely get enough players to attempt one dragon during DF and progressed slowly, but steadily. Everyone knew they had to donate to grow and wanted to see that growth and we had fun. We went through three rapid changes of guild leadership, but kept to the philosophy of the guild, but rarely had more than 20-30 active players. It was exciting to finally build our first boon structure.
When alliances was introduced (On xbox, there was a bit of time in between, unlike PS4) we thought we might have problems getting into one due to our level and philosophy, we were lucky to have two level 20 guilds invite us and accepted one and are still in that alliance. As time went on, we grew to a guild that is almost always at cap (often with a waiting list), but still maintains the no mandatory donations, no mandatory activities, no min ilvl, and we still accept under level 70 in limited numbers (but minimum level 60 these days). It took 1 year and 9 months, with help and support from the alliance, but we completed construction on GH 20 and Rank 10 boons in July. I should add that the alliance moves the highest guild under 20 to helm to help with cost reductions and donations in the final stretch (When you start needing 1 mil or so of an item for construction, 20% off is great). There are now 5 level 20 guilds and the 6th started construction on GH 20 yesterday. These high guilds focus on getting the new temp helm to 20 and provide all the new temp structures for shopping.
Although I enjoy both guilds for different things, the process on Xbox was much more satisfying and would have been cheapened with reduced costs back in the early days. We worked hard to get where we are and it made the experience a good one for me and those few members that have been there since the beginning or close to it. Anyway, that's why I think reduced costs is a bad idea unless there are corresponding reduced benefits.
> Guild building cost should be based on the number of players (not characters) in the guild. This would help with building up a smaller guild.
>
> However, if you add a player that counts for the full month even if they leave that day. "
I was actually going to drop this idea into the feedback section. I agree. Leveling cost SHOULD be based on the number of players in a guild.
> I do think there should be better/more ways to get what you need to grow a guild.
>
> Put the SKT currencies under the IWD stuff
> Give influence for ALL heroic encounters no matter where they are
> Increase the amount of influence that can be gained per character per day.
> Increase voucher drops across the land for people in or out of guilds and make them unbound so that non-guild people can sell them on the AH.
> The temp structures are a step in the right direction, but if by adventuring wearing the guild tag you could pick more stuff up (add vouchers to dungeon chests in addition to other things) to help the guild that would make life a lot easier for the smaller guilds trying to stay small.
Interesting ideas, specifically the one for influence. Maybe remove the daily cap?
Why is SKT and Icewind Dale two separate campaigns? Bryn Shandar and SOMI aren't considered part of the Icewind Dale zone. The map has them referenced the same but if you pick up the daily IWD quest from the stronghold it only considers Caer-konig quest as Icewind Dale.
Maybe have vouchers drop from heroics, dungeons and skirmishes. Im not sure if the devs on this game consider farming an exploit or cheating. The last mmo I played they announced 4 yrs later that farming was unfair and a form of exploiting the intended system.
The temp structure cost almost as much as leveling.