So in the upcoming release of alliances it seems the biggest issue is how to give everyone motivation to ally that benefits everyone involved and helps smaller guilds grow. I think I have a good solution to this dilemma.
If you have three tiers of an alliance in the form of Helm guild, Sword guilds, and Gauntlet guilds this is what I suggest so that all guilds can benefit:
Helm Guild: All items in marketplace are reduced by a certain percentage by each guild they have in their alliance. i.e. 2% per guild up to 24% for max alliance. All guilds below alliance are taxed 2% of their influence which will automatically go to helm guilds coffer. .5% structure cost decrease for each guild in their alliance up to 6%
Sword Guilds: Ability to purchase from Helm guilds marketplace (wards, drains, gear etc). Ability to use Helm guilds boons when in Helm guilds SH for HE/Dragons. 5% decreased structure cost for each guild underneath them in alliance up to 15%. All guilds below Sword guild are taxed 1% of their influence which will automatically go to the sword guilds coffers.
Gauntlet guilds: Ability to purchase from Helm guilds marketplace (wards, drains, gear etc). Ability to use Helm guilds boons when in Helm guilds or use Sword guilds boons when in Sword guilds SH for HE/Dragons. 20% decreased structure cost.
Optional would also be to allow the Sword and gauntlet guilds the ability to use Helm guilds boons in SH siege which would allow for more guild resource farming while benefiting from being in an alliance.
In this fashion larger guilds get guild mark discounts and influence that they need. Medium sized guilds get good structure cost decreases and influence. Smaller guilds get large decreases in their structure costs.
The numbers could be adjusted as the percentages were mainly to show the idea behind how it could work. A system like this allows guilds to fall naturally in place according to their rank and benefits all guilds in the ways they need it most.
On ambush rings: "How would you like PVE if all the mobs were invisible?"
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Not bad ideas though.
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Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
I would never consider for one second forcing an alliance member to contribute to other alliance members. Encourage? Give motivation? Sure. Require? Absolutely not, they don't have to join an alliance at all for that matter and can avoid the entire scenario.
Honestly, it's absurd to ask guilds that have it all to freely give it to smaller guilds for the sake of altruism. This is a very affordable (and VERY beneficial) way to give every guild in the Hierarchy motivation to ally with one another.
A: Helm guilds are sacrificing nothing.
B: They are asking guilds that have it all to join with smaller guilds for the sake of additional bonuses.
The bonuses have to be worth it for all involved - but that doesn't necessitate a penalty be levied from the lower ranks.
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
If the benefits aren't obvious then you are letting your bias influence your understanding.
Thanks for your reply.
High level guilds shouldn't be the government that gets to collect taxes. I can't imagine anyone would agree to that. Dragonfang gear and masterwork are not that important to the game, except if you are a min-maxer. And those people already are in high level guilds anyway.
You get access to the entire market, rank 2 wards/drains, Lionsmane, Dragonflight (BIS PVE and PVP) gear. Food from our vendor, maps for resources. Dude you are either 1) Uninformed on the SH market 2) Unable to understand it's value or 3) Both.
The method I described benefits the gauntlet guilds the most lol. You guys are SOOOO hung up on the taxation thing it's blinding you completely to the very simple math. I'm surprised that, besides beckylunatic, you guys aren't even looking at the numbers, you just see the word TAX and that's it. Just lol.
Thanks for another well thought out reply.
A rank 2 Guild Hall costs 32K influence. If the gauntlet guild donates 1% of that to its sword guild then they get 320 Influence. 320 Influence... LOL I mean come on man, that's one days worth of HE's. Now let's take that same structure and see what discount they get. After a 20% discount the 32K influence becomes just 25,600 influence. That's 6400 Influence less, 1% of that would be 256 influence.
Guys.. this math is so simple, the amount of "Tax" from influence is so minute compared to the savings I hope this explains it so that you can see directly the savings vs. what is donated to the sword and helm guilds. The only reason it's of any benefit to the sword and helm guild is that if they have 3 guilds under them donating then it's like having a few extra HE's being run by your guildmates to help towards leveling their own exorbitantly expensive structures while encouraging them to incorporate more guilds into their alliance.
This is literally a win-win that the bottom guilds get the most benefit from.
Rather than taxing anything, just give the helm guild bonus loot based on what swords are donating to their coffers.
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
Anyway, if you spend blood and sweat playing a video game, maybe you should consider that you are taking things a tiny bit too serious.
If you have something of value that's pertinent to add besides your own information-less opinion on what you want from the game, feel free to post it and I'll be glad to consider it.
Thanks for your reply
Thanks again for your informative response.
Let me add one more thing, as you seem to be on this anti hierarchy kick (and good on you for it mate, fight the man!). They are using a pre-existing mold from STO and tailoring it to this game. That is also hierarchical. So if you're hoping to sway the opinion of the devs completely away from a template towards a peer-based alliance. Go for it! Feel free to create your own forum post and I'll go there and give you a +1 if it's well thought out and beneficial to all involved. Perhaps you'll garner enough attention by stating that you don't want anything from an end game guild except their boons. I think that will go over well.
Just lemme know when you post it so I can make sure to check it out
The thing is, you are not "the man", as in some kind of authority figure just because your guild hall has a higher level.
But if alliances only give a small percent to xp to everyone like it seems to be planned, I don't really care if someone calls himself the "helm" or "head" or "brain" or "alpha". Just keep the benefits small and everyone can avoid people they don't wanna play with. You can't force people to work together that have totally different attitudes about how to play this game. These differing attitudes are the reason why some guilds are higher level than others.
And I don't have to build an alliance network because I'm not making these decisions in my guild, thank the heavens! But I do have to deal with the results in the end.
Firstly, I wasn't referring to myself or my guild as "the man" but cryptic because they set the rules. Secondarily, in order to play all the content in the game you're already forced into a guild. Taking that a step further and forcing guilds into alliances is most likely what will occur either by alliance locked content or the necessity of what the alliance affords you. Thirdly, I don't "look down" on you for being casual and wanting to play a very relaxed style, as I told you twice already.. you do you bro (sorry maybe it'll sink in on the third try).
Now to address your other issues about alliances. Noone end game cares in the slightest about XP. We really don't care at all because we already have a guild XP boon, rank 12 azures for our utility slots, and inscribed pants and shirts for more XP. Combine that with the Sharandar quest that now gives you a power point at completion EVERY TIME and XP is useless for most of us.
The whole point of alliances, as you seem to continue to miss, is to build smaller guilds up. It's to benefit guilds with casual players or a small guild that is a group of friends so that they can experience all the content and grow their guilds faster to be on more equal footing with larger guilds. XP won't help that at all, it's almost like you haven't been seeing the point behind this maneuver. The point is for larger guilds who've made it close to end game to help smaller guilds in achieving their goals as well.
Your solution accomplishes none of those tasks, I'm guessing that your idea won't be very popular with ANY guild leaders because it offers nothing in the way of really tangible benefits.
So, if you would be so kind as to stop assuming that I'm looking down my nose at you and actually read the content, you'll realize that I hope you have fun doing whatever it is you like to do in game but your opinion about SH alliances is extraordinarily biased and doesn't address any of what the devs have already said is the plan. Good luck, however wishing they would stop the grind forward and the associated power creep.
Thanks for your objective reply.
I'd also challenge the statement that the point of alliances is for bigger guilds to boost smaller guilds strongholds. I think it is more for smaller guilds to either (1) band together to focus on upgrading 1 guild (not all 13) or (2) small guilds to join with and share everything with larger guilds, effectively making it pointless for the small guilds to worry about upgrading their own stronghold. I think it's an unnecessary stretch to try to incentive big guilds to grow the smaller guilds. Just give the small guilds the big guild benefits, and reward the big guilds with guild marks and more players focused on upgrading their alliance stronghold.
Iyon the Dark
Ultimately, in order to make what I enjoy more fun, that being PVP, I'd like to see all the smaller guilds have a chance to get on more equal footing with larger guilds so that there won't be as much of a gear gap (i.e. BIS tenacity equpment from SH market and upgraded boons). I know you had said you posted your ideas in a forum post in greater detail, I believe, would you mind to link that here as well?
Thanks
Taxes are not needed. Helm gets wealth, Gauntlets progression and Swords a mix of both. I don't see why you additionally need to milk the alliance. The bonus also disappears once the Stronghold is fully upgraded.
I like the conditional boon sharing.
1) Allow it, if a lower guild will take a higher guild as its underling then so be it. The higher guild will finish it's last level or so faster. Then it will want to become a helm guild anyway because it will only want GMs at that point.
2) Place a formula in the coding that doesn't allow lower level guilds to be over higher level guilds in the hierarchy.
As far as the "Taxes" go the whole "milking the alliance" bit is back to the other arguments further up. There is no "milking" man, even saying so leans the evidence towards you didn't read the original post. Like how many ways do I have to say it that 1% of just influence compared to a decrease of 20% of all resource costs of building structures is a joke. If you consider that "milking" then you're simply not doing any math here at all.
Model 1.
Beta/Gamma guild pays 100% on own buildings. Alpha guild gets nothing.
Model 2.
- Each donation in Beta/Gamma guild splits into X + Y parts.
- X part goes to own buildings with same price, no discounts. Beware of discounts, it opens door to all sorts of exploits and abuse. If small guild looks for relief, it should ask other guilds to donate to her chest. If it deserves, it gets it.
- Y part goes to Alpha. Y part is between 0 % -20 % established once and forever.
- Benefit for Beta/Gamma guild is Alpha guild develops faster, some common things can be unlocked faster. Alpha guild benefit is obvious.
— (The unwritten rule)
Model 2 would be acceptable in terms of the Alpha guild gets payback essentially for access to its markets (assuming that is still part of the alliance in your models). However neither of these accomplish the goal of building smaller guilds and trying to spark motivation in the alliance to do so imho.
Perhaps I'm not getting your full idea?
You propose a marketplace discount based on the number of guilds in the alliance. If the specific percentage of how much discount a guild is granting the Helm is affected by guild level, then the OP doesn't clearly state it.
I won't get into a defining war about the term milking. Helms are getting a minor cost reduction as well which also affects Influence. That's your tax. Even if it's mathematical irrelevant, people will dislike the fact that they are working for the Helm.
If you want Helms to get resources from Swords and Gauntlets, they shouldn't be getting any structure discounts themselves and the "taxes" needed to be extended to all coffers. But I personally dislike this system a lot as it's too hierarchic and in my eyes alliances should ideally be a system where Gauntlets have at least the same power as Helm.
Instead of forcing guilds to contribute to other coffers the system should up the incentive to do so voluntary to help the alliance or oneself. Like a 10% Guild Mark bonus when contributing to alliance coffers.
Influence is a problem on all guild levels and the solution is not a tax but providing more and more diverse ways of earning it.
Dude.. you still haven't done the math. You're looking at one word "TAX" jeebus lol. You're like the other guy who can't get past a single word and still see that the gauntlet guilds BY FAR get the best out of the deal. This is simple math so I won't explain it again.
As far as "forcing" guilds to contribute, if the swords and gauntlet guilds get access to the Helm guilds marketplace then you have just "forced" the Helm guild to contribute to the other guilds by freely giving access to what they worked hard for.
What I've seen so far is a bias from lower guilds against higher guilds. Lower ranked guilds want all of the advantages that higher ranked guilds have striven hard to achieve for free and want to give nothing in return. Instead of a symbiosis some of the forum "contributors" want to be parasites. Take all you can from the Helm guild but heaven forbid you give them something back....
What it means is that there is more requirement per person, and that's not something that we can "compete" against with larger guilds.
In my example below, this is our current "roadmap" for the Stronghold. What I've done here is added up what is required to get us through to GH L10, then broken that down by "per player". No, we don't expect everyone to come up with those numbers (as an example, we have many payers still working on boons.. especially for IWD), but in an ideal world, this is what the breakdown would be.
To contrast our membership numbers vs. a guild with 150 players, the second chart outlines the breakdown per player
To further contrast our membership numbers vs. a guild with 500 characters in it, the last chart breaks that down.
As you can see, there are significant differences:
So, please... all I ask is that before you preach about how the bigger guilds have somehow worked "harder" or "more" to reach L15 or L20 Guild Halls, remember that the smaller guilds are putting in 3 and 4 and 10 times the amount of effort.
Could we disband and be in a larger guild? Sure. But we've all made the conscientious decision to stay in our guild.. the guild that we've built together.. that we've labored over and cried over. Because while, congrats to the ubers who have everything maxed out, it's really not a race. Since we don't PvP, the boons aren't all that important... well, no moreso than the campaign boons.
Anyway.. cheers!
"...I grab my wiener and charge!" - ironzerg79
Small guilds do need some form of assurance that either A. they're getting enough of a structure discount that they aren't crippling themselves by giving up some portion of resources or B. it doesn't matter because the helm guild is providing everything or C. it's automated such that the % of resources that get passed along doesn't reduce your initial contribution. Trickle up or trickle down models of resource sharing could both function reasonably, so C. has the advantage of letting guilds in any position advance themselves while passively adding to the advancement of all allied guilds. Locking specific coffers from outside donation would still prevent them from getting filled too quickly and blocking your own donations. Just spitballing, really.
XP bonus is just a poor incentive for everyone at this point. Currency bonuses (+ guild marks and/or + salvage) make more sense.
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