Why forcing players to become guild members

Unknown

This content has been removed.

dread4moor

Hi, OP.
NON guild member 3+ year continual player here with a polite response.

I have spent half my time in a large guild (pre and post stronghold) and the last year out of a guild by choice. I have 4 toons >4K IL, so obviously it is a personal choice, for now, to go solo. Not isolated... I have a long friend list and never PUG... just not in-guild.

That said, I strongly disagree with your suppositions: guild pressure is unfair, guild boons are unfair advantage .

MMOs are social games by definition. An isolated player is at a disadvantage. Even out of guild,

I spent months helping my guild build the SH. Guilds earn their boons. I have zero resentment. I feel zero pressure to be in a guild. My toons hold their own fine.

But I always play with online friends, even though not in guild. You must be social to keep up with this or any MMO.

Don't like socializing? Okay. There are hundred of SOLO RPGs available. Download an RPG , unplug your internet and play alone all you want. This is NOT one of those games.

pterias

Khangaax, I think you are overestimating how far behind you are. If you have rank 10 enchants, perfect bondings, and a perfect weapon enchant, you are still doing great in that department! You also seem to act like those things have no future and can't be upgraded. Upgrading past rank 10 / perfect doesn't require a 2nd copy of the enchant like lower ranks do which actually can make them rather cheap to upgrade by comparison if you farm the RP yourself. Weapon and armor enchants still require Coal Wards, but normal enchants and bondings can be effectively upgraded with Pres Wards. For example, in the last few weeks, I upgraded 5 enchants to rank 11 (5%) and 4 to rank 12 (3%) with just over100 Pres Wards, although I admit I was rather lucky. Even without upgrading though, your perfects/rank 10s are fine as is.

The real gap you're running into is actual gear. Yes, the old sets are dead. They were already behind without the tens of thousands of HP provided by new gear, but a couple months ago they removed the set bonuses too, making them dead-dead. High Vizier and High Prophet were still being used by high end players up to that point.

I know it may seem sad, but lvl 61+ blue gear from the auction house is better than anything lvl 60 or below, even old purples. If you have some old trade bars lying about, you can buy some good body and feet armor from the TB vendor too, though I might suggest staying away from Frostborn unless you want farm the HAMSTER out of voninblood in the mod 10 areas (think Black Ice empowerment 2.0). After that, you can get campaign currency for Drowcraft armor/shirt/pants and a chance at decent rings by running Underdark content like Demogorgon trial, Throne of the Gods / Prophecy of Madness skirmishes, and Demonic HEs that appear in the Well of Dragons, Icewind Dale, and Dread Ring (although Dread Ring tends to be the emptiest). By that point you should be up and running pretty good on armor.

Artifact Neck and Waist pieces can be gotten for (fairly) reasonable prices on the AH, you'll get a lot of mileage from them by just refining them up to 35. Even green, they're better than just about everything else. You can browse the options in the Collections. Artifacts themselves now go up to rank 140, which takes a lot of RP but can be lessened by feeding other artifacts into them (assuming you buy them when they're cheap like now and not during 2x Refinement).

Weapons are another issue. Almost all weapons worth using are Artifact weapons now, which are black holes of refinement sucking. The old Golden Dragon weapons are obsolete, but can be refined into new weapons that will be way better, even at purple. The easiest to acquire are the Elemental Fire weapon set you get from completing the last chapter of the Elemental Evil campaign and reaching level 70. Refining them up to purple (lvl 35) is quite good. Twisted is a bit harder to obtain (and better), but Burned, Drowned, Howling, and Earthen sets can be bought from the AH now for not a crazy amount of money. Pretend the new Relic weapons from mod 10.5 don't exists, for you own sanity, though they are the best atm. There are also some new weapons coming next mod which should be nearly as good and slightly easier to get, but still might be a bit crazy.

I know change can feel disappointing, but it's not really quite as bad as it seems. It's been quite a bit more gradual for those of us who've been around the whole time, but there's been lots of rage along the way too.

pterias

dread4moor said:

Don't like socializing? Okay. There are hundred of SOLO RPGs available. Download an RPG , unplug your internet and play alone all you want. This is NOT one of those games.

The thing that annoys me is that the game started out as exactly one of those games. It was largely a solo game, but with other people too! A couple years later, they decided it wasn't gonna be anymore. Now a bunch of people assume it never was and anyone that ever thought it was and still wants to play the game as it was originally designed is obviously having badwrongfun.

dread4moor

@pterias "...the game started out as... a solo game, but with other people too! A couple years later, they decided it wasn't gonna be anymore."
I must respectfully disagree. It may have become more inter-dependent, but the emphasis has always been on cooperative play.
Even in leveling you could not complete any campaign region without grouping for a dungeon.
Party-up for the dungeon was the reward, the best part. And even before the campaign ended, the weekly quests and special dungeons were ALWAYS meant for parties.
August 2013
Mod 1: You did Witches fen alone? You did Gnarlroot Cave solo? I have a leprechaun witness who says you did not.
December 2013
Mod 2: Dread Ring Skirmish was hugely popular. HR and paragon paths cemented the "class role" standard.
Party queue evolved with queue replacement and vote kicking (for better or worse), party was still emphasis. Those tower weekly quests were very hard solo for most of us in Mod2. LFG or Guild quest parties were standard. Dungeon Hour was absolutely awesome! PK. Mad Dragon. Spellplague!
[Editorial: BRING BACK DUNGEON HOUR]
None of that was for solo play.
May 2014
Mod 3: "TT LFG for HE in IWP". Black ice was hard to get without friends. How did that weekly dungeon with those undead frost giants go solo? Not well, usually. You always did open world PvP solo? I think not.
@pterias , I just reviewed the entire first year of Neverwinter's existence. Which of those components was "largely solo"?
Back on the OP's point and the topic of the thread, parties were needed but Guilds were never mandatory.

pterias

@dread4moor: Lol, ok, for the sake of clarity, when I say "solo", I mean "solo/pug". So does every single person who has ever claimed to play "solo". No one who plays the game is against ever playing with other people. That's a silly straw man.

As for your examples, let's break'em down:
- Sharandar Lairs: Solo, often, multiple characters. (Never trust a leprechaun!)
- Dread Ring Lairs: Solo, often, multiple characters.
- Dread Ring Skirmish: Random pug Q, every time.
- Dungeons: Random pug Q, all of them. Successfully. Dungeon Hour was awesome!
- Icewind Dale Biggrin's Tomb: Solo, often, multiple characters.
- Icewind Dale HEs: Showed up when they popped, frequently soloed small and medium HEs, even a couple BHEs.
- Icewind Dale PVP: Always solo, never partied, even killed a couple parties solo (though in fairness that was Mod 4 when CWs owned the realm), showed up when BI Dom popped.

So yeah, for me most of that content was solo, the rest was pugged. I use LFG too, it's basically pre-arranged pugging the way I use it, I never cared about GS or IL. Even LFG was a later development. I'm even in some channels. Being a "solo" player isn't about never playing with other people, it's about independence and freedom to choose your level of involvement, if any. Hence why I said "but with other people too!" But to expand the list up to Mod 7:

- Dom PVP: Always pugged, never been in a pre-made, don't care to.
- GG / GG PVP: Joined a "only a guild to get into GG" guild, showed up alone when it was up. Said "hi" when I joined, and "bye" when I left over a year later.
- Tyranny of Dailies: Showed up for Dragons, soloed dailies, weeklies, and lairs.
- Rise of Tiamat: Showed up for Dragons, soloed dailies and lairs, walked through Tiamat's door alone.
- Elemental Evil: Soloed everything on multiple characters. Actually kinda enjoyed it!

Part of it too is the challenge. Heck, I even like to run singletons through RPGs where you can have a full party!

schietindebux

I accept the way cryptic went by supporting the guilds, but I do not accept the massive advantage you get vs a guildless player, concerning stats. This was never needed and did split the community from the start in PVP as so in PVE.
I am definitely against those 8k power, defence etc boons from the very frist moment, even though i am in a nice guild with SH lev 20 and all those benefits.
Imo boons like xp, gold, mount speed, revive sickness, group healing bonus, glory bonus would have been sufficient and a downsizing of this endless stupid grind is and was needed by sure.
Those stat boons are way to much and every newcomer to this game is immidiately confronted with the reality that at lower IL things are pretty challenging without those crazy "buffs".
You are 2. choice you deal low dps and tanking without 4k-8k defence boons might be problematic.
It´s a failing concept and a bad choice to go that way. All you achieve is preventing a big part of player from enjoying this game at lower IL in case they are no member of a guild.

micky1p00

pterias said:

@dread4moor: Lol, ok, for the sake of clarity, when I say "solo", I mean "solo/pug". So does every single person who has ever claimed to play "solo". No one who plays the game is against ever playing with other people. That's a silly straw man.

I'm sorry, but there are plenty of people who are exactly that, solo only. Never done any group content. Some were vocal about it. IIRC, sockmonkey for example.

So solo and pugging is not the same. If pugging worked for you, all the power for you.
The game always had group content at the end game, if it's old dungeons t1/t2/CN or later added MC and VT and later elol, kr.
And it's not the game shift, when the game released, the dungeons were difficult (relative to the average gear and skill).
A pug who didn't exploit would have usually fail, from killing valindra under the floor, the jumps in SP, the skips with lava at Karru, and lets not to mention TRs who spawned you at the last camp.

If you wanted to do it right, pugging or /lfg was not the place. Only much later mod4/5 when the power creep creeped so much everyone could solo every group content (except tiamat, but it was trivial too and you could finish 3-4 kills in one go)

Nothing changed in this regard, there are several 3k, 4k, zerg channels where you can 'pug' msva and fbi the same way at old times there were 14k, 15k, 19k, zerg_academy or other names etc channels for 'selective pugging', some actuallycare about the GS / ilevel other didn't and still don't.

Why I'm saying it's not a game shift, it's population size change. Many think it was mod6 that killed a lot of the population, but actually it was the combination of mod5. At mod5 the content became trivial to the point of extreme boredom so most of the players who were above average (and no insult to anyone, but this is life, there always will be average and because of it bellow and above) left. Later mod6 hit, with it's ArP bug, and a lot of the bellow average and average players got hit. Mainly because the average became lower. Due to the mod5 issue. If the changes were faster and mod5 introduced harder content, mod 6 wouldn't have any impact, the population mix would have been ok.

Bear with me, I'm getting there: Now FBI / MSVA is not harder than at mod0 SP, DV, CN. On the opposite, it's easier. CN and DV back then had their timings, and everything would tick or fail. (And I don't mean using double AS)
The reason you can't just queue now, is because the total population is smaller, the average is lower, and people drifted, most (or more correctly all) the players I know, picked their channels, found their friends, and so on.. It is not specific to guilds. We had guilds and custom channel to counter /lfgs LF 14k CW for pirate kings when 15k was BiS long long before guild boons and it's exactly the same now.

armadeonx

"I don't know in what planet you live but since the monsters are stronger while my enchants keeps the same level and they add better ones while keep their original power is NERFING, any person in the world could realize about this, well, except you."

You're really a 'glass half empty' person, huh? Why don't you just refine your rank 10 enchantments?

The reality of the game is there is constant progression where they will keep bringing out bigger and badder monsters and you'll need to keep improving your gear to deal with them. I'm ok with that and so are many others. When we haven't had new gear and harder content for a while people start complaining about getting bored and wanting more difficulty.

I suggest you just accept it isn't going to change, which means you have a choice to make as to whether you're going to continue with it or not.

Either way, complaining on here isn't going to improve things for you.

plasticbat

"I don't know in what planet you live but since the monsters are stronger while my enchants keeps the same level and they add better ones while keep their original power is NERFING, any person in the world could realize about this, well, except you."

I don't know where you are but you are probably alone in your own world. For those who are frozen in time,
they usually are lonely.

They make monster stronger and in the meanwhile making you much more stronger (if you did not go away).
They gave your stronger monster but they also gave you even much more stronger through more boons, more feat,
mount insignia, mount power.
I don't even know why you even need to talk about r10. Most of my toons do not even have that and they
are doing just fine.

If one finished his computer science degree 30 years ago and then be frozen until now, do you
think what he learned is still competitive today at all? If you consider that as NERF, yes, you are being
"nerf'ed" everyday in real world. However, fortunately, you do get experience everyday to compensate
the 'nerf'. On the other hand, if you were frozen in time, tough.

pterias

schietindebux said:

I accept the way cryptic went by supporting the guilds, but I do not accept the massive advantage you get vs a guildless player, concerning stats. This was never needed and did split the community from the start in PVP as so in PVE.
I am definitely against those 8k power, defence etc boons from the very frist moment, even though i am in a nice guild with SH lev 20 and all those benefits.
Imo boons like xp, gold, mount speed, revive sickness, group healing bonus, glory bonus would have been sufficient and a downsizing of this endless stupid grind is and was needed by sure.
Those stat boons are way to much and every newcomer to this game is immidiately confronted with the reality that at lower IL things are pretty challenging without those crazy "buffs".
You are 2. choice you deal low dps and tanking without 4k-8k defence boons might be problematic.
It´s a failing concept and a bad choice to go that way. All you achieve is preventing a big part of player from enjoying this game at lower IL in case they are no member of a guild.

Add in PVP Drains (which is really more of a PVP problem like Ambush Rings), and this right here is like 90% of my feelings on the matter. I'm glad someone on the other side of the fence sees it too. Thank you. To me, 32,000 HP is the thing that drops my jaw.

I got side-tracked earlier, but I've said my peace on Strongholds (I think I might start calling them Strongarms though ). I mostly got this worked out of my system a long time ago. I don't imagine anything is going to change to help narrow the gap though, so no point worrying about it, I just got it back on the brain a couple weeks ago. I also didn't want Khangaax to feel like he was the only one with grievances, even though he had many other gripes that actually weren't connected to Strongarms.