kalina311Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,082Arc User
edited May 2016
Nobody in a high end guild or even medium guild will want their resources donated to level another guild because their coffer is full for a few guild marks (new enchantment drop guild marks anyways) they will just stock pile the more valuable resources and donate again on the next structure this whole thing is just going to be a complicated mess with major guild drama
Why not raise the guild cap to 500, or even higher again? Boot your alts, trim after 20 days or less. What is the purpose of tons of tiny guilds? Hey, less players, less resources. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
If they release this guild alliance junk as a 'mod' I think I'm going to trade my zen in for airplane glue and sniff it.
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bluebubbl3sMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 121Arc User
in one day i have already learnt much. Everyone is talking about it, and i have had discussions to make me change my initial thoughts.
i think the small guilds who have done nothing to progress thier guild halls will fall away. members will leave for bigger more active guilds, the boons are worth it.
medium to large guilds will ally and it wont be to progress thier guild halls, because they can already to that. the Alliance channel between 13 decent sized guilds will hopefully kill off pugging dungeons. Thats going to be the biggest drawcard to an alliance, a larger more active player base to play within.
Dont stick your head in the sand, if you are a leader, get onto it now, start scoping it out because other big guilds are already doing it.
When donating to the mimic the default setting needs to be set to donate to the guild that the member belongs to. I am in a gauntlet guild and when i first tried to donate to my guild it had selected my helm guild to donate to and I almost donated (the clarification on what guild you are donating to is a good thing there, nice work). This default needs to be changed to prevent mistakes
Guild - The Imaginary Friends We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
It's easy for people to go to the dark side here and talk about how big guilds will abuse people, and generally how awful humanity is...
The important thing is to keep in mind that YOU pick your alliance, just like you pick your guild. If you walk into an alliance with a guild that's shady and they abuse you, it's your own fault - you can leave at any time. I know people hate the whole buyer beware thing, but sometimes one needs to put on their big-boy pants and take responsibility. If you join a guild or ally with a guild that has a reputation for abuse, you should expect to be abused.
As the founder of the Greycloaks, I'm being VERY careful about what guilds I'm willing to consider for alliance. The Cloaks are community-driven and casual. Guild that require tithes from their members (for example), or guilds that have elitist ilvl requirements are generally not going to be considered. I don't want the sort of attitudes that usually come from guilds like that becoming a part of my community. Sure -there's good players in those guilds, but a good player doesn't make a good community - so while I may like a few individuals, it doesn't mean their guild is one I want to formally associate the Cloaks with.
This means, unless some guild I'm totally unaware of comes along with a very high level GH, that I won't be shopping around for a "top guild" to be a Helm guild over the Greycloaks. Why not? Because it's not about being the best, but rather having fun, and being associated with a guild with a "hardcore" (which usually means "bad") reputation is just not something I'm willing to do.
Instead, I want to find solid, like-minded guilds that are community based, casual in their approach, and open-minded and accepting of anyone. In other words, guilds that will enhance and enrich the community we've already build within the Cloaks and that will be likewise enhanced and enriched by the awesome people in the Cloaks.
Anyway, having said all that.... the bonuses are secondary to me. Seems to me, the Sword guilds will have it the best since an XP bonus is really not that great given the ultra-poor quality of the overflow reward. When it comes down to it, the Helm guilds are the ones that get the shaft. The alliance carries their name, but at the end of the day, the under-guilds seem to get more useful bonues. I suppose the idea is that the helm guild will already be maxed and won't need any SH-related buffs... but seems to me something other than an XP bonus would be a lot better. Maybe an RP reduction, or even an AD discount (like with VIP). Still, again.. not a big deal anyway - the bonus are just icing to me. The read deal is access to others to run dragonflights and other events with. Greycloaks down 4 dragons without any trouble, but we have to plan it to make sure enough people are on. With an alliance, most likely a 4-dragon BBQ will be able to happen a lot more frequently. same with Tiamats and eDemo and whatever else.
Sure wish we could do alliance-only SH pvp! (HINT HINT)
As the leader of a small guild (Order of the Raven), I'm extremely concerned about protecting our members from pressure or abuse from larger allied guilds. It's scary how often nowadays that I hear about people jumping from guild to guild in the vain search for a guild that doesn't demand tithes or have an elitist attitude. Our members are used to a fun-first, zero-pressure environment, so that's what I'll be looking for when it comes to alliances. We can't name and shame, but guild leaders *will* need some sort of tool or mechanism to determine which guilds are compatible and which aren't.
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Amen. The only "agreement" I would seek from ally members are that they follow our rules
1: Play how you want. 2: Don't be a jerk 3: If #1 and #2 conflict, see #2.
No need to name - I think most people are well aware of "those" guilds. Avoid them. A very open and honest conversation should be had between the leaders of each guild and everyone will need to make their own choices. The only real advice I have is that.. if something doesn't feel right - don't do it. There's PLENTY of guilds out there to ally with. One word of caution though - if a small guild only allies with other very small and barely active guilds, they'll probably will see very little benefit.
Part of what makes this really awesome is that you can gain economies of scale - where a small guild can barely (if at all) muster enough people to kill one dragon in their SH, 13 small guilds might be able to get enough to do 2 or even 3. But if that same small guild is a gaultlet guild to a medium sized guild (say... GH 7-10) which is allied to an even more active guild (say 10-15 -- I have yet to find a guild in the 16+ range I would want anything to do with.....) - that small guild will be able to truly flourish without giving up it's identity or internal community.
If you make sure you make your alliance is with a like-minded, casual guild... there's really not much of a downside to be honest.
I have a strong feeling that smaller, lower ranked guilds are going to largely be left out. Its not right, but there are reasons for it. The game is meant to be fun, and for the most part it is, but the several guilds I've talked to over the last few days all seem to have the same things in common for what they're looking for:
-Relatively large and active player base -Self-sustained and motivated to improve their own GH without aid -SH cost reductions -Having a larger community to pull from for end-game and SH content
Most smaller and/or lower ranked guilds just don't fit that mold. We used to be a small guild ourselves, but shortly after SH launched we saw the writing on the wall and decided to do something about it quickly so we didn't get left behind. My suggestion to smaller guilds interested in Alliance, look to join medium sized guilds that have enough room for your active player base. Doesn't mean you can't play with your friends anymore, they'll be right there with you, and you might make even more.
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bluebubbl3sMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 121Arc User
i agree completely with the Kvet & Jmiller. Its sad whats going to happen, because i too am very wary of elitism within the game and want to avoid it as much as possible.
my biggest conundrum is making sure that we align our guild with active guilds, my number one goal from alliance is to get a larger player base so that the members of our guild have more people to run with, be it dungeons, Tiamat, whatever. Our guild tries to focus on improving each other as much as we can, to make the game easier and more fun for everyone. i want to ally with guilds of a similar mantra, who protect thier players and aim for community within, without any egos.
i still maintain my previous comment, act fast because you will find yourself without an alliance, big or small.
Nobody in a high end guild or even medium guild will want their resources donated to level another guild because their coffer is full for a few guild marks (new enchantment drop guild marks anyways) they will just stock pile the more valuable resources and donate again on the next structure this whole thing is just going to be a complicated mess with major guild drama
When everything is max'ed out, there will be no structure to build.
Stock pile means you are losing inventory space. When you have tons of X vouchers you want to get rid of, the alliance provides a way for individual character to offload to free up inventory space and get some guild mark. For our guild, we want to dump AD, gold, labour vouchers. The coffer of these are filled up within an hour after a new building is built. it is a race to coffer these days. If you are 'late', you stuck with them (unless you discard them) for a while.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
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josiahiyonMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 396Arc User
With 4 guilds past probation status, we now finally start to see some bonuses. Pretty small so far with just 4 guilds (helm, 2xsword, gauntlet):
Helm: 0.2% structure discount, 0.05% xp bonus Sword: 0.1% structure discount, 0.1% xp bonus Gauntlet: .05% structure discount, 0.2% xp bonus
Please send me a message to add your guild to the ptr alliance. Would like to see what the bonuses are with 13 guilds past 24 our probation period.
The bonuses for the lowly Gauntlet Guilds are opposite of the Helm. I would have thought that the Discount would be more for the lower level guilds. The Sword guild had .1% for both bonuses.
FEAR NOT!!!! Opening up the guild bank in anothers SH, opens up your own bank.
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
That seems backwards (bugged). It doesn't make any sense for the helm guild to get a structure discount when the gauntlet guilds are expected to be smaller and thus struggling to gather resources.
The discount is also really pathetically small from this example. Sorry, I have no preview guild to add to help check out how it scales.
Bonuses: * Your alliance level L is just the sum of all the guild levels in the alliance. * Your bonus is L times a constant. The constant is tiny because L can get pretty big, so for playtest server alliances the bonuses will look small and sad, but for real alliances they will be much better. * The bonus is biased towards Structure Discount for Helm, and towards XP for Gauntlet, with Sword being equally balanced. * iirc, the constants are to 0.025, 0.05, and .1 (Gauntlet/Sword/Helm for Structure Discount; reverse it for XP).
I hope this is helpful. I know it's hard to test this kind of thing in a PTS environment, so I understand that some feedback will need to be theorycrafting. What I'm most interested in is finding a spot where bigger guilds like the helm bonuses, smaller guilds like the gauntlet bonuses, and everybody thinks they are getting a fair deal relative to the other guilds in the alliance (I understand everyone will probably want bigger bonuses :P)
Bonuses: * Your alliance level L is just the sum of all the guild levels in the alliance. * Your bonus is L times a constant. The constant is tiny because L can get pretty big, so for playtest server alliances the bonuses will look small and sad, but for real alliances they will be much better. * The bonus is biased towards Structure Discount for Helm, and towards XP for Gauntlet, with Sword being equally balanced. * iirc, the constants are to 0.025, 0.05, and .1 (Gauntlet/Sword/Helm for Structure Discount; reverse it for XP).
I hope this is helpful. I know it's hard to test this kind of thing in a PTS environment, so I understand that some feedback will need to be theorycrafting. What I'm most interested in is finding a spot where bigger guilds like the helm bonuses, smaller guilds like the gauntlet bonuses, and everybody thinks they are getting a fair deal relative to the other guilds in the alliance (I understand everyone will probably want bigger bonuses :P)
Ok, so that make no sense. I don't see how that's going to work at all.
I get you need incentives for the Helm to share their playerbase and Stronghold/Marketplace with the lower tier guilds, but giving the guild the best structure discount that has probably already advanced the most is... interesting. Unless I don't get the whole concept and the Helm shouldn't be the highest ranked guild within an alliance.
Anyway. So I'm a Helm guild building an alliance, getting the best structure discounts, maybe even forcing my Swords and Gauntlets to contribute to my coffer. And then when I'm fully upgraded? I just leave the alliance, right? Because the structure discount is not worth a penny at that point. I mean with such a system, why would Helm help Sword and Gauntlet grow? And yes, smaller guilds get more progression because they can participate in greater Dragonflights and use the marketplace, but you actually wanna sell them that they help a big fish progress even faster? Ok...
Second, XP is a pretty weak bonus. You can level in lightspeed in this game, especially now with the revamped Elemental Evil campaign. Overflow rewards are technically getting replaced by the Sharandar campaign task, so nobody is going to need XP bonuses any longer.
Sharing Strongholds is great, donation sharing has all sorts of drama potential and the bonuses are just a joke. I sincerely hope you got that mixed up.
That seems backwards (bugged). It doesn't make any sense for the helm guild to get a structure discount when the gauntlet guilds are expected to be smaller and thus struggling to gather resources.
I went back and forth on this one. The logic of the current version is: * small guilds can include feeder guilds which have pre-70 characters (alts especially), who can use the XP more * everything is % based, and having a % of a big cost is more valuable when your costs are big -- the costs are a lot smaller for the small guilds (and remember they should have some help from other guilds now; bringing up a smaller guild gives you just as many guild marks, and it's a quick and easy way to raiser your alliance level) * the number of guilds that are actually completely maxed out (and thus unable to use the cost discount) is fairly small
That said, if everyone thinks larger guilds will want the XP buff, and smaller guilds will want the cost discount, it's an easy thing for me to change. The thing I really do NOT want is weird inverted alliances where the rank 17 guild tries to arrange to be in the gauntlet position to get the structure discount -- and I was afraid that would happen with the big discounts going to the gauntlet position.
Another possibility is to just punt on the whole "custom benefits based on position" idea and give the exact same benefits to everyone -- so everyone gets the current sword benefits, say. In theory, I like the idea that the benefits in each position are ideal for the guilds that are likely to be in that position. But it seems hard to make it work in practice.
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josiahiyonMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 396Arc User
Bonuses: * Your alliance level L is just the sum of all the guild levels in the alliance. * Your bonus is L times a constant. The constant is tiny because L can get pretty big, so for playtest server alliances the bonuses will look small and sad, but for real alliances they will be much better. * The bonus is biased towards Structure Discount for Helm, and towards XP for Gauntlet, with Sword being equally balanced. * iirc, the constants are to 0.025, 0.05, and .1 (Gauntlet/Sword/Helm for Structure Discount; reverse it for XP).
I hope this is helpful. I know it's hard to test this kind of thing in a PTS environment, so I understand that some feedback will need to be theorycrafting. What I'm most interested in is finding a spot where bigger guilds like the helm bonuses, smaller guilds like the gauntlet bonuses, and everybody thinks they are getting a fair deal relative to the other guilds in the alliance (I understand everyone will probably want bigger bonuses :P)
Thanks for getting back to us!
Couple comments on that math. Our particular PTR alliance has 3 lvl 20 guilds and 1 lvl 2 guild. I think this means "L" in the equation above, our Alliance Level, is 62.
Gauntlet (balanced) example: 0.1%/62 = .0016% per Alliance Level. 13 guilds at rank 20 --> L = 260. 260 * .0016% = 0.42% = max benefit
I suspect this is much less than you're thinking, so the guild levels may not be appropriately read on the PTR. However, it could also be a bug. Not sure.
Assuming the percentages above are incorrect and grossly understated, I think this approach is interesting. Could potentially be better for a big Helm guild to spend resources upgrading the sword/gauntlet guilds in order to get more bonuses to reduce the costs of their higher cost structures. This is consistent with the otherwise counter-intuitive choice to give helm guilds disproportionate discount on their structures as the alliance level increases. Another similar bonus to consider would be adding a percentage bonus to guild marks gained.
The max discount value for a full alliance of 13 lv 20 guilds = alliance level of 260 = discount of 26% for the helm guild, 13% for the sword and 6.5% for a gauntlet guild. If you have 1 lv 20 guild and 12 lv 12 guilds = AL of 164 then helm is 16.%, sword is 8.2, gauntlet is 4.1% If you have a lv 14 helm and 12 randomly leveled guilds between 4 and 13 (i will give that a total level of 108 = alliance level of 122) - helm is 12.2%, sword is 6.1% and gauntlet is 3.1%.
Honestly, with these numbers it sucks to be a gauntlet guild. Sucks really bad. You get a pittance of a discount (which admittedly is better than nothing) while the high level guild at the top is basically profiting off your hard work and effort for having leveled your guild up to contribute to a higher alliance level. Unless you have a lv 20 maxed out guild as the helm that high level guild is unlikely to contribute any resources to your own guild. Because anything that they produce is likely still in very high demand for their own guild and so there is no way a guild acting in its own self interest is going to donate them to someone else outside of a deliberate trade agreement (trading influence for glory or similar). The resources that any helm guild has in plenty like AD and labor are things that the sword and gauntlet guilds also have many of and thus will have capped on their own already.
I really want to stress this. any high level guild that is not maxed needs all the resources they can generate on their own and will have no reason to help a small guild with the items that they need but every reason to "exploit" the smaller guilds by inviting them to the alliance just to boost the alliance level. There are some potential cases such as dragon flight where all guilds could benefit mutually but if the large guild has 30 people already for dragonflight then that means only 10 people from other guilds can join for dragons even there are 15 or 20 people who want to join.
With this, unless you are a helm guild in a full alliance everyone will feel like they are getting the short end of the stick. Gauntlet guilds are contributing to the well being of swords and helms but get very very little return for it. Having the XP bonus reversed is rather silly. No one needs more XP anymore, not now that power points are available from sharandar. And leveling to 70 is not such a hard thing that you will be glad and thankful that you are in a gauntlet guild and can get a better xp bonus lol.
Honestly, I understand you wanted to reward a guild for being at the helm of an alliance, but it really doesn't seem like a helm guild has any responsibilities that need a reward like that. If the idea of an alliance is to join together to achieve mutual goals through teamwork then the structure discount and XP bonus should be equal between all members of an alliance. That makes it fair for all participants. Give the helm guild a bonus to AD if you want to reward them. a 5% bonus to Raw AD gained is a reason worthy of being a helm guild while not making any of the other guilds in the alliance jealous or leaving them feeling used.
edit- other people have mentioned giving a guild mark bonus to helm guilds when donating. This is a pretty good idea, I would modify it though and only apply the bonus for guild marks when the helm guild donates to alliance members. This promotes helm guild members to go out and support alliance members once their own guild is maxed
Post edited by scathias on
Guild - The Imaginary Friends We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
Couple comments on that math. Our particular PTR alliance has 3 lvl 20 guilds and 1 lvl 2 guild. I think this means "L" in the equation above, our Alliance Level, is 62.
Gauntlet (balanced) example: 0.1%/62 = .0016% per Alliance Level. 13 guilds at rank 20 --> L = 260. 260 * .0016% = 0.42% = max benefit
I suspect this is much less than you're thinking, so the guild levels may not be appropriately read on the PTR. However, it could also be a bug. Not sure.
Assuming the percentages above are incorrect and grossly understated, I think this approach is interesting. Could potentially be better for a big Helm guild to spend resources upgrading the sword/gauntlet guilds in order to get more bonuses to reduce the costs of their higher cost structures. This is consistent with the otherwise counter-intuitive choice to give helm guilds disproportionate discount on their structures as the alliance level increases.
Your bonus is L times a constant. For 13 guilds rank 20, Helm would get 260*0.1 = 26.4%, Gauntlet 13% and Sword 6.5%.
And you're correct that the system would make sense if it was better for Helm to upgrade the alliance first before their structures. I fear there might be a turning point though and people are going to find it. And there's still the question why a maxed Helm guild would need to help its Swords and Gauntlets at all. If it's about guild marks then you can easily create a sister guild with alts and let your members donate to its coffer.
* iirc, the constants are to 0.025, 0.05, and .1 (Gauntlet/Sword/Helm for Structure Discount; reverse it for XP).
It sounds like Sword Guild will be an undesirable position. If you sum the bonuses, Sword Guilds get less than Helm Guilds and Gauntlets Guilds. (0.05 + 0.05) < (0.1 + 0.025)
Couple comments on that math. Our particular PTR alliance has 3 lvl 20 guilds and 1 lvl 2 guild. I think this means "L" in the equation above, our Alliance Level, is 62.
Gauntlet (balanced) example: 0.1%/62 = .0016% per Alliance Level. 13 guilds at rank 20 --> L = 260. 260 * .0016% = 0.42% = max benefit
I suspect this is much less than you're thinking, so the guild levels may not be appropriately read on the PTR. However, it could also be a bug. Not sure.
Assuming the percentages above are incorrect and grossly understated, I think this approach is interesting. Could potentially be better for a big Helm guild to spend resources upgrading the sword/gauntlet guilds in order to get more bonuses to reduce the costs of their higher cost structures. This is consistent with the otherwise counter-intuitive choice to give helm guilds disproportionate discount on their structures as the alliance level increases.
Your bonus is L times a constant. For 13 guilds rank 20, Helm would get 260*0.1 = 26.4%, Gauntlet 13% and Sword 6.5%.
That seems like the intended result. It's just not working that way on the PTR currently, which may be a PTR-only bug or may be a bug that hits live. Our guild alliance level L is 62 on the PTR, and as you can see from the screenshots and information above, the Helm guild doesn't get anywhere near 62 * .1 = 6.2%. The Helm guild gets 0.2%.
I went back and forth on this one. The logic of the current version is: * small guilds can include feeder guilds which have pre-70 characters (alts especially), who can use the XP more * everything is % based, and having a % of a big cost is more valuable when your costs are big -- the costs are a lot smaller for the small guilds (and remember they should have some help from other guilds now; bringing up a smaller guild gives you just as many guild marks, and it's a quick and easy way to raiser your alliance level) * the number of guilds that are actually completely maxed out (and thus unable to use the cost discount) is fairly small
That said, if everyone thinks larger guilds will want the XP buff, and smaller guilds will want the cost discount, it's an easy thing for me to change. The thing I really do NOT want is weird inverted alliances where the rank 17 guild tries to arrange to be in the gauntlet position to get the structure discount -- and I was afraid that would happen with the big discounts going to the gauntlet position.
Another possibility is to just punt on the whole "custom benefits based on position" idea and give the exact same benefits to everyone -- so everyone gets the current sword benefits, say. In theory, I like the idea that the benefits in each position are ideal for the guilds that are likely to be in that position. But it seems hard to make it work in practice.
Nearly every way I am running math (just small calculations) here says that a guild (that is still leveling to 20) is better off saving its own resources to use on itself to advance rather than helping another guild achieve a higher guild level. GH levels are expensive to achieve, no matter that lower levels have lower costs. A helm guild trying to help an alliance member to increase their guild hall will usually spend more resources helping that other member then they will save by having their discount increase by .1% (the amount that the discount would increase for the new GH level gained). There are edge cases of course where a lv 19 guild would totally be willing to raise a lv 2 guild to lv 3 or possibly even lv 4 as the cost of raising those levels is possibly outweighed by the increased discount received. But as the level of the lowest alliance member increases the costs increase substantially and it becomes non productive to help allies to save yourself resources. Also, guilds that are of similar level who have formed an alliance (like 13 lv 12 guilds) also don't see any savings by helping each other. at a high level where you might need 11.6k heroic shards to get a warehouse to lv 7 a .1% reduction saves you 11,600 x .01 = 116 heroic shards... which you can buy from the zen store for 150k AD. granted, it is not just the heroic shards you save on when building a warehouse, and that bonus is permanent (unless that allied member leaves the alliance and so your investment is lost) but as I see it, unless there is math that can prove me wrong, in both the long and short run a helm guild is better off saving their resources for themselves and getting discounts based off the efforts of allies to improve themselves rather than assisting them. This goes 100% more for a sword guild since they get half the discount, and 200% more for a gauntlet guild since they only get 25% of the discount of a helm guild.
Any resources that a guild has in excess at a point in time will be needed soon to build something else the guild needs provided that the guild is not maxed out. Giving them away is counter productive.
My posts are totally ignoring the potential for a true cooperative effort to level guilds. For a cooperative effort like that to work all guilds must trust each other and the organizational toll (there is an actual word for the loss in productivity /effort expended i am thinking about here) that must be expended to make sure that members farm and donate where they need to, when they need to becomes very large, especially as the alliance increases in size. It would also involve wasting days in probation as the guilds that needed to upgrade a structure would have to be rotated to the helm position in order to benefit from the best discount.
If everyone gets the same benefits though then all guilds can be equal partners. It is still best for them to save their resources for their own use, but it makes the potential for a trusting environment in an alliance to increase. Right now though I think all the largest guilds will want to band together so as to get the best total alliance level and then take turns in the helm position while they level things up. once they are all level 20 and maxed they would be interested in taking in new guilds and placing them in the helm position and basically boosting them up really fast, but that is many months in the future i think
If i have a flaw in my reasoning or just plain missed something in my posts please point it out.
Post edited by scathias on
Guild - The Imaginary Friends We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
* everything is % based, and having a % of a big cost is more valuable when your costs are big -- the costs are a lot smaller for the small guilds (and remember they should have some help from other guilds now; bringing up a smaller guild gives you just as many guild marks, and it's a quick and easy way to raiser your alliance level)
Small guilds are small, the bonus evens out.
Another thing I don't understand is why any guild should add to another guild's coffer? What does a guild gain from that? Please elaborate.
Also, now that XP are no longer needed to get power points they are much less worth. What's the point in getting even more XP after level70?
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lazaroth666Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,332Arc User
Hello, @rgutscheradev Feedback: Based on what I've seen so far, not just in the new system that you are providing to us but also knowing how some alliances are being crafted right now on the live server, I would like to give my feedback.
Most guilds are going to be working based on a council system, meaning that the “Alpha” won't be really the head of the alliance. Several players (guild leaders) will agree on how everything related to the alliance will work. If the players are going to band together is simply because they want to enjoy the bonuses but it's troublesome in certain scenarios which were described before like Alpha getting too much benefit or weird alliances with the high lvl guilds being gauntlet. The best idea would be to keep the same discount for every guild in the alliance regardless of their level in the hierarchy. The “Helm” will have that title just because they were the guild that started the alliance and brought others to it. “Sword” guilds were the first that joined the Alpha in his crusade and the “Gauntlet” guilds joined afterwards. That's all regarding to the titles or hierarchy.
I would like to recommend the following: First, an alliance bonus that will grant an additional % of extra Guild Marks for donating only in another guild and keep the discounts for the structures. These bonuses are the same for every guild in the alliance. By doing so, this will encourage to help the other guilds by giving them surplus of any resources while having the benefit of earning extra guild marks. Now, it's up to the alliance how to distribute these resources among every guild and you gave us the block incoming/outgoing donations that will make it work.
Second, let the leader or officers send resources directly from the mimic to other guilds even including a tax (which could be lowered depending on the alliance level). It is fairly reasonable to consider that once you are already producing much more resources than what you need, you can dispose of them by sending them to others in exchange of something or simply because you want to help them. This will create a system where the players will help each other and encourage them to give their best to keep the benefits.
These bonuses doesn't overlap each other because the first bonus is aimed for the players that will donate campaign resources to other guilds while the second one is for the production structures which are usually full in the Mimic. I.e If a low lvl guild requires a boost in any resource like wood, stone, etc a high lvl guild can send them some in exchange for some shards or other stuff that can be farmed.
With these simple bonuses, there's a cycle: high lvl guilds will help the smaller ones because that's how they get more guild marks. Small guilds will have the advantage of receving a boost for their structures helping to increase the whole alliance lvl that will increase the alliance bonus for earning guild marks and we know that getting these marks is useful to get a good amount of AD thanks to the Masterwork professions. You can also add more purchasable items in the Marketplace of every guild in order to make it much more desirable. The players of the guilds that are already maxed will get extra bonus guild marks by donating resources to the other guilds.
Bonuses: * Your alliance level L is just the sum of all the guild levels in the alliance. * Your bonus is L times a constant. The constant is tiny because L can get pretty big, so for playtest server alliances the bonuses will look small and sad, but for real alliances they will be much better. * The bonus is biased towards Structure Discount for Helm, and towards XP for Gauntlet, with Sword being equally balanced. * iirc, the constants are to 0.025, 0.05, and .1 (Gauntlet/Sword/Helm for Structure Discount; reverse it for XP).
I hope this is helpful. I know it's hard to test this kind of thing in a PTS environment, so I understand that some feedback will need to be theorycrafting. What I'm most interested in is finding a spot where bigger guilds like the helm bonuses, smaller guilds like the gauntlet bonuses, and everybody thinks they are getting a fair deal relative to the other guilds in the alliance (I understand everyone will probably want bigger bonuses :P)
This is bad. So all the high level guilds will group together leaving the low level guilds behind - enlarging the gap between the high level and low level guilds even more.
There needs to be an incentive for high level guilds to group with low level guilds.
Another way of doing this is to make the bonus independent of the guild level. Base it on the number of guilds instead. Thus there is less incentive for high level guilds to group with high level guilds only.
edit- other people have mentioned giving a guild mark bonus to helm guilds when donating. This is a pretty good idea, I would modify it though and only apply the bonus for guild marks when the helm guild donates to alliance members. This promotes helm guild members to go out and support alliance members once their own guild is maxed
I agree. There needs to be an incentive to add to another guild's coffer. Otherwise it will just not happen. Why would anyone do this? The own guild comes first. Period.
The whole cross-guild donation system is problematic to say the least. If I understand it correctly, you can block certain coffers from the alliance. So if Guild Marks could only be generated by donating to your alliance, then you will be constantly grinding Conqueror Shards, campaign currency and Influence for the other guilds, because they won't unlock the easy Labor coffer for you.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the system probably works best for super-guilds that have control of all the childs. Most of the problems disappear and even the bonus hierarchy suddenly makes sense, because in that case you actually do want to progress your Strongholds from top to bottom. And you could even freely move guilds around depending on what Stronghold you're currently pushing.
Also what scathias posted fits my suspicion as well. It's probably not worth for Helms to push the alliance beyond a certain point because what they could save does not match the invested currency in the other guild levels.
I believe we need a system were high level guilds will be willing to group with low level guilds. We also need some way of distributing resources. No guild will be willing to add to another guild's coffer. There just is no incentive.
Why not do something like this?
Whenever someone adds to the own guild's coffer all other guilds get their share. E.g. by adding 1000 influence to the coffer the other guilds also get some influence (but not taking away from the original 1000 influence of the spending guild). The amount they get can depend on the number of guilds and the rank in the alliance.
Thus there is no need to add to other coffers. No incentive is needed.
Comments
Made an attempt to help out an Ally by building a tower.
-The Alliance should have a new name other than the Alliance leader's guild name.
-An Alliance "Message of the Day" should be added....controlled by the leader.
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they will just stock pile the more valuable resources and donate again on the next structure
this whole thing is just going to be a complicated mess with major guild drama
Boot your alts, trim after 20 days or less. What is the purpose of tons of tiny guilds?
Hey, less players, less resources. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
If they release this guild alliance junk as a 'mod' I think I'm going to trade my zen in for airplane glue and sniff it.
i think the small guilds who have done nothing to progress thier guild halls will fall away. members will leave for bigger more active guilds, the boons are worth it.
medium to large guilds will ally and it wont be to progress thier guild halls, because they can already to that. the Alliance channel between 13 decent sized guilds will hopefully kill off pugging dungeons. Thats going to be the biggest drawcard to an alliance, a larger more active player base to play within.
Dont stick your head in the sand, if you are a leader, get onto it now, start scoping it out because other big guilds are already doing it.
Guild Leader - Valaurakari Ascension
VA is the creator and proud member of The Round Table Alliance
When donating to the mimic the default setting needs to be set to donate to the guild that the member belongs to. I am in a gauntlet guild and when i first tried to donate to my guild it had selected my helm guild to donate to and I almost donated (the clarification on what guild you are donating to is a good thing there, nice work). This default needs to be changed to prevent mistakes
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The important thing is to keep in mind that YOU pick your alliance, just like you pick your guild. If you walk into an alliance with a guild that's shady and they abuse you, it's your own fault - you can leave at any time. I know people hate the whole buyer beware thing, but sometimes one needs to put on their big-boy pants and take responsibility. If you join a guild or ally with a guild that has a reputation for abuse, you should expect to be abused.
As the founder of the Greycloaks, I'm being VERY careful about what guilds I'm willing to consider for alliance. The Cloaks are community-driven and casual. Guild that require tithes from their members (for example), or guilds that have elitist ilvl requirements are generally not going to be considered. I don't want the sort of attitudes that usually come from guilds like that becoming a part of my community. Sure -there's good players in those guilds, but a good player doesn't make a good community - so while I may like a few individuals, it doesn't mean their guild is one I want to formally associate the Cloaks with.
This means, unless some guild I'm totally unaware of comes along with a very high level GH, that I won't be shopping around for a "top guild" to be a Helm guild over the Greycloaks. Why not? Because it's not about being the best, but rather having fun, and being associated with a guild with a "hardcore" (which usually means "bad") reputation is just not something I'm willing to do.
Instead, I want to find solid, like-minded guilds that are community based, casual in their approach, and open-minded and accepting of anyone. In other words, guilds that will enhance and enrich the community we've already build within the Cloaks and that will be likewise enhanced and enriched by the awesome people in the Cloaks.
Anyway, having said all that.... the bonuses are secondary to me. Seems to me, the Sword guilds will have it the best since an XP bonus is really not that great given the ultra-poor quality of the overflow reward. When it comes down to it, the Helm guilds are the ones that get the shaft. The alliance carries their name, but at the end of the day, the under-guilds seem to get more useful bonues. I suppose the idea is that the helm guild will already be maxed and won't need any SH-related buffs... but seems to me something other than an XP bonus would be a lot better. Maybe an RP reduction, or even an AD discount (like with VIP). Still, again.. not a big deal anyway - the bonus are just icing to me. The read deal is access to others to run dragonflights and other events with. Greycloaks down 4 dragons without any trouble, but we have to plan it to make sure enough people are on. With an alliance, most likely a 4-dragon BBQ will be able to happen a lot more frequently. same with Tiamats and eDemo and whatever else.
Sure wish we could do alliance-only SH pvp! (HINT HINT)
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
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1: Play how you want.
2: Don't be a jerk
3: If #1 and #2 conflict, see #2.
No need to name - I think most people are well aware of "those" guilds. Avoid them. A very open and honest conversation should be had between the leaders of each guild and everyone will need to make their own choices. The only real advice I have is that.. if something doesn't feel right - don't do it. There's PLENTY of guilds out there to ally with. One word of caution though - if a small guild only allies with other very small and barely active guilds, they'll probably will see very little benefit.
Part of what makes this really awesome is that you can gain economies of scale - where a small guild can barely (if at all) muster enough people to kill one dragon in their SH, 13 small guilds might be able to get enough to do 2 or even 3. But if that same small guild is a gaultlet guild to a medium sized guild (say... GH 7-10) which is allied to an even more active guild (say 10-15 -- I have yet to find a guild in the 16+ range I would want anything to do with.....) - that small guild will be able to truly flourish without giving up it's identity or internal community.
If you make sure you make your alliance is with a like-minded, casual guild... there's really not much of a downside to be honest.
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
-Relatively large and active player base
-Self-sustained and motivated to improve their own GH without aid
-SH cost reductions
-Having a larger community to pull from for end-game and SH content
Most smaller and/or lower ranked guilds just don't fit that mold. We used to be a small guild ourselves, but shortly after SH launched we saw the writing on the wall and decided to do something about it quickly so we didn't get left behind. My suggestion to smaller guilds interested in Alliance, look to join medium sized guilds that have enough room for your active player base. Doesn't mean you can't play with your friends anymore, they'll be right there with you, and you might make even more.
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OP: Vee
DC: Evee
CW: nezterV
Leader - Valaraukari Ascension
my biggest conundrum is making sure that we align our guild with active guilds, my number one goal from alliance is to get a larger player base so that the members of our guild have more people to run with, be it dungeons, Tiamat, whatever. Our guild tries to focus on improving each other as much as we can, to make the game easier and more fun for everyone. i want to ally with guilds of a similar mantra, who protect thier players and aim for community within, without any egos.
i still maintain my previous comment, act fast because you will find yourself without an alliance, big or small.
Guild Leader - Valaurakari Ascension
VA is the creator and proud member of The Round Table Alliance
Stock pile means you are losing inventory space. When you have tons of X vouchers you want to get rid of, the alliance provides a way for individual character to offload to free up inventory space and get some guild mark. For our guild, we want to dump AD, gold, labour vouchers. The coffer of these are filled up within an hour after a new building is built. it is a race to coffer these days. If you are 'late', you stuck with them (unless you discard them) for a while.
Helm: 0.2% structure discount, 0.05% xp bonus
Sword: 0.1% structure discount, 0.1% xp bonus
Gauntlet: .05% structure discount, 0.2% xp bonus
Please send me a message to add your guild to the ptr alliance. Would like to see what the bonuses are with 13 guilds past 24 our probation period.
Iyon the Dark
The bonuses for the lowly Gauntlet Guilds are opposite of the Helm. I would have thought that the Discount would be more for the lower level guilds. The Sword guild had .1% for both bonuses.
FEAR NOT!!!! Opening up the guild bank in anothers SH, opens up your own bank.
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The discount is also really pathetically small from this example. Sorry, I have no preview guild to add to help check out how it scales.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
* Your alliance level L is just the sum of all the guild levels in the alliance.
* Your bonus is L times a constant. The constant is tiny because L can get pretty big, so for playtest server alliances the bonuses will look small and sad, but for real alliances they will be much better.
* The bonus is biased towards Structure Discount for Helm, and towards XP for Gauntlet, with Sword being equally balanced.
* iirc, the constants are to 0.025, 0.05, and .1 (Gauntlet/Sword/Helm for Structure Discount; reverse it for XP).
I hope this is helpful. I know it's hard to test this kind of thing in a PTS environment, so I understand that some feedback will need to be theorycrafting. What I'm most interested in is finding a spot where bigger guilds like the helm bonuses, smaller guilds like the gauntlet bonuses, and everybody thinks they are getting a fair deal relative to the other guilds in the alliance (I understand everyone will probably want bigger bonuses :P)
I get you need incentives for the Helm to share their playerbase and Stronghold/Marketplace with the lower tier guilds, but giving the guild the best structure discount that has probably already advanced the most is... interesting. Unless I don't get the whole concept and the Helm shouldn't be the highest ranked guild within an alliance.
Anyway. So I'm a Helm guild building an alliance, getting the best structure discounts, maybe even forcing my Swords and Gauntlets to contribute to my coffer. And then when I'm fully upgraded? I just leave the alliance, right? Because the structure discount is not worth a penny at that point. I mean with such a system, why would Helm help Sword and Gauntlet grow? And yes, smaller guilds get more progression because they can participate in greater Dragonflights and use the marketplace, but you actually wanna sell them that they help a big fish progress even faster? Ok...
Second, XP is a pretty weak bonus. You can level in lightspeed in this game, especially now with the revamped Elemental Evil campaign. Overflow rewards are technically getting replaced by the Sharandar campaign task, so nobody is going to need XP bonuses any longer.
Sharing Strongholds is great, donation sharing has all sorts of drama potential and the bonuses are just a joke. I sincerely hope you got that mixed up.
* small guilds can include feeder guilds which have pre-70 characters (alts especially), who can use the XP more
* everything is % based, and having a % of a big cost is more valuable when your costs are big -- the costs are a lot smaller for the small guilds (and remember they should have some help from other guilds now; bringing up a smaller guild gives you just as many guild marks, and it's a quick and easy way to raiser your alliance level)
* the number of guilds that are actually completely maxed out (and thus unable to use the cost discount) is fairly small
That said, if everyone thinks larger guilds will want the XP buff, and smaller guilds will want the cost discount, it's an easy thing for me to change. The thing I really do NOT want is weird inverted alliances where the rank 17 guild tries to arrange to be in the gauntlet position to get the structure discount -- and I was afraid that would happen with the big discounts going to the gauntlet position.
Another possibility is to just punt on the whole "custom benefits based on position" idea and give the exact same benefits to everyone -- so everyone gets the current sword benefits, say. In theory, I like the idea that the benefits in each position are ideal for the guilds that are likely to be in that position. But it seems hard to make it work in practice.
Couple comments on that math. Our particular PTR alliance has 3 lvl 20 guilds and 1 lvl 2 guild. I think this means "L" in the equation above, our Alliance Level, is 62.
Gauntlet (balanced) example: 0.1%/62 = .0016% per Alliance Level. 13 guilds at rank 20 --> L = 260. 260 * .0016% = 0.42% = max benefit
I suspect this is much less than you're thinking, so the guild levels may not be appropriately read on the PTR. However, it could also be a bug. Not sure.
Assuming the percentages above are incorrect and grossly understated, I think this approach is interesting. Could potentially be better for a big Helm guild to spend resources upgrading the sword/gauntlet guilds in order to get more bonuses to reduce the costs of their higher cost structures. This is consistent with the otherwise counter-intuitive choice to give helm guilds disproportionate discount on their structures as the alliance level increases.
Another similar bonus to consider would be adding a percentage bonus to guild marks gained.
Iyon the Dark
If you have 1 lv 20 guild and 12 lv 12 guilds = AL of 164 then helm is 16.%, sword is 8.2, gauntlet is 4.1%
If you have a lv 14 helm and 12 randomly leveled guilds between 4 and 13 (i will give that a total level of 108 = alliance level of 122) - helm is 12.2%, sword is 6.1% and gauntlet is 3.1%.
Honestly, with these numbers it sucks to be a gauntlet guild. Sucks really bad. You get a pittance of a discount (which admittedly is better than nothing) while the high level guild at the top is basically profiting off your hard work and effort for having leveled your guild up to contribute to a higher alliance level. Unless you have a lv 20 maxed out guild as the helm that high level guild is unlikely to contribute any resources to your own guild. Because anything that they produce is likely still in very high demand for their own guild and so there is no way a guild acting in its own self interest is going to donate them to someone else outside of a deliberate trade agreement (trading influence for glory or similar). The resources that any helm guild has in plenty like AD and labor are things that the sword and gauntlet guilds also have many of and thus will have capped on their own already.
I really want to stress this. any high level guild that is not maxed needs all the resources they can generate on their own and will have no reason to help a small guild with the items that they need but every reason to "exploit" the smaller guilds by inviting them to the alliance just to boost the alliance level. There are some potential cases such as dragon flight where all guilds could benefit mutually but if the large guild has 30 people already for dragonflight then that means only 10 people from other guilds can join for dragons even there are 15 or 20 people who want to join.
With this, unless you are a helm guild in a full alliance everyone will feel like they are getting the short end of the stick. Gauntlet guilds are contributing to the well being of swords and helms but get very very little return for it. Having the XP bonus reversed is rather silly. No one needs more XP anymore, not now that power points are available from sharandar. And leveling to 70 is not such a hard thing that you will be glad and thankful that you are in a gauntlet guild and can get a better xp bonus lol.
Honestly, I understand you wanted to reward a guild for being at the helm of an alliance, but it really doesn't seem like a helm guild has any responsibilities that need a reward like that. If the idea of an alliance is to join together to achieve mutual goals through teamwork then the structure discount and XP bonus should be equal between all members of an alliance. That makes it fair for all participants. Give the helm guild a bonus to AD if you want to reward them. a 5% bonus to Raw AD gained is a reason worthy of being a helm guild while not making any of the other guilds in the alliance jealous or leaving them feeling used.
edit- other people have mentioned giving a guild mark bonus to helm guilds when donating. This is a pretty good idea, I would modify it though and only apply the bonus for guild marks when the helm guild donates to alliance members. This promotes helm guild members to go out and support alliance members once their own guild is maxed
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And you're correct that the system would make sense if it was better for Helm to upgrade the alliance first before their structures. I fear there might be a turning point though and people are going to find it. And there's still the question why a maxed Helm guild would need to help its Swords and Gauntlets at all. If it's about guild marks then you can easily create a sister guild with alts and let your members donate to its coffer.
Iyon the Dark
There are edge cases of course where a lv 19 guild would totally be willing to raise a lv 2 guild to lv 3 or possibly even lv 4 as the cost of raising those levels is possibly outweighed by the increased discount received. But as the level of the lowest alliance member increases the costs increase substantially and it becomes non productive to help allies to save yourself resources. Also, guilds that are of similar level who have formed an alliance (like 13 lv 12 guilds) also don't see any savings by helping each other.
at a high level where you might need 11.6k heroic shards to get a warehouse to lv 7 a .1% reduction saves you 11,600 x .01 = 116 heroic shards... which you can buy from the zen store for 150k AD. granted, it is not just the heroic shards you save on when building a warehouse, and that bonus is permanent (unless that allied member leaves the alliance and so your investment is lost) but as I see it, unless there is math that can prove me wrong, in both the long and short run a helm guild is better off saving their resources for themselves and getting discounts based off the efforts of allies to improve themselves rather than assisting them. This goes 100% more for a sword guild since they get half the discount, and 200% more for a gauntlet guild since they only get 25% of the discount of a helm guild.
Any resources that a guild has in excess at a point in time will be needed soon to build something else the guild needs provided that the guild is not maxed out. Giving them away is counter productive.
My posts are totally ignoring the potential for a true cooperative effort to level guilds. For a cooperative effort like that to work all guilds must trust each other and the organizational toll (there is an actual word for the loss in productivity /effort expended i am thinking about here) that must be expended to make sure that members farm and donate where they need to, when they need to becomes very large, especially as the alliance increases in size. It would also involve wasting days in probation as the guilds that needed to upgrade a structure would have to be rotated to the helm position in order to benefit from the best discount.
If everyone gets the same benefits though then all guilds can be equal partners. It is still best for them to save their resources for their own use, but it makes the potential for a trusting environment in an alliance to increase. Right now though I think all the largest guilds will want to band together so as to get the best total alliance level and then take turns in the helm position while they level things up. once they are all level 20 and maxed they would be interested in taking in new guilds and placing them in the helm position and basically boosting them up really fast, but that is many months in the future i think
If i have a flaw in my reasoning or just plain missed something in my posts please point it out.
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Another thing I don't understand is why any guild should add to another guild's coffer? What does a guild gain from that? Please elaborate.
Also, now that XP are no longer needed to get power points they are much less worth. What's the point in getting even more XP after level70?
Feedback:
Based on what I've seen so far, not just in the new system that you are providing to us but also knowing how some alliances are being crafted right now on the live server, I would like to give my feedback.
Most guilds are going to be working based on a council system, meaning that the “Alpha” won't be really the head of the alliance. Several players (guild leaders) will agree on how everything related to the alliance will work. If the players are going to band together is simply because they want to enjoy the bonuses but it's troublesome in certain scenarios which were described before like Alpha getting too much benefit or weird alliances with the high lvl guilds being gauntlet. The best idea would be to keep the same discount for every guild in the alliance regardless of their level in the hierarchy. The “Helm” will have that title just because they were the guild that started the alliance and brought others to it. “Sword” guilds were the first that joined the Alpha in his crusade and the “Gauntlet” guilds joined afterwards. That's all regarding to the titles or hierarchy.
I would like to recommend the following: First, an alliance bonus that will grant an additional % of extra Guild Marks for donating only in another guild and keep the discounts for the structures. These bonuses are the same for every guild in the alliance. By doing so, this will encourage to help the other guilds by giving them surplus of any resources while having the benefit of earning extra guild marks. Now, it's up to the alliance how to distribute these resources among every guild and you gave us the block incoming/outgoing donations that will make it work.
Second, let the leader or officers send resources directly from the mimic to other guilds even including a tax (which could be lowered depending on the alliance level). It is fairly reasonable to consider that once you are already producing much more resources than what you need, you can dispose of them by sending them to others in exchange of something or simply because you want to help them. This will create a system where the players will help each other and encourage them to give their best to keep the benefits.
These bonuses doesn't overlap each other because the first bonus is aimed for the players that will donate campaign resources to other guilds while the second one is for the production structures which are usually full in the Mimic. I.e If a low lvl guild requires a boost in any resource like wood, stone, etc a high lvl guild can send them some in exchange for some shards or other stuff that can be farmed.
With these simple bonuses, there's a cycle: high lvl guilds will help the smaller ones because that's how they get more guild marks. Small guilds will have the advantage of receving a boost for their structures helping to increase the whole alliance lvl that will increase the alliance bonus for earning guild marks and we know that getting these marks is useful to get a good amount of AD thanks to the Masterwork professions. You can also add more purchasable items in the Marketplace of every guild in order to make it much more desirable. The players of the guilds that are already maxed will get extra bonus guild marks by donating resources to the other guilds.
Thanks for your attention.
There needs to be an incentive for high level guilds to group with low level guilds.
Another way of doing this is to make the bonus independent of the guild level. Base it on the number of guilds instead. Thus there is less incentive for high level guilds to group with high level guilds only.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the system probably works best for super-guilds that have control of all the childs. Most of the problems disappear and even the bonus hierarchy suddenly makes sense, because in that case you actually do want to progress your Strongholds from top to bottom. And you could even freely move guilds around depending on what Stronghold you're currently pushing.
Also what scathias posted fits my suspicion as well. It's probably not worth for Helms to push the alliance beyond a certain point because what they could save does not match the invested currency in the other guild levels.
Why not do something like this?
Whenever someone adds to the own guild's coffer all other guilds get their share. E.g. by adding 1000 influence to the coffer the other guilds also get some influence (but not taking away from the original 1000 influence of the spending guild). The amount they get can depend on the number of guilds and the rank in the alliance.
Thus there is no need to add to other coffers. No incentive is needed.