A frustrated, guildless guild leader

steve

I’ll hazard a guess and say this topic has already been addressed at length somewhere in the forums, but I’ll lay out some observations and suggestions regardless.

First, let me applaud those who reached GH20. I feel guilty after taking a long break since now all the hard work is done and it’s relatively easy to get into a guild with full boons. Still, my appreciation for those players is sincere.

Unfortunately, the current state has fundamentally broken Strongholds for many of us. Perhaps broken is too strong a word, but it has created a barrier where new guilds are struggling.

There are very few players motivated to join a new guild, go without boons, and participate in the grind required to grow a guild. Strongholds as game content are declining since there’s now little reason to visit those zones. You simply join a guild, select your boons, and off you go.

Unfortunately, this seems to create a perfect storm of social dysfunction. Healthy gaming guilds are usually groups of similarly motivated people working together toward a common goal. I’m sure that was the climate as the guilds progressed to 20, although the common thread is often portrayed as frustration associated with the astronomical cost associated with the build. Now that the end has been realized the weather has taken a turn.

From my limited view, I see guilds where many of the veteran players have burned out and faded away. The remainder continue to recruit to maintain a roster, but the “playing together” aspect common to healthy guilds seems to be suffering. Players with gear scores over 15k, as most legacy guildies have, aren’t motivated to join up with players still confined to grinding out early campaign content. Newer players have limited ability to participate in the dungeons the top tier players are grinding for their next BiS acquisition. A divide exists.

Let’s examine one player, using me as the example. I tend to be a bit ADD and have 18 toons. My best gear score is just shy of 11k without guild boons. I left the game shortly after Underdark dropped, but I’m back and hoping to enjoy myself. I’m cursed, since I’m old school and my ideas about the social aspect of the game seem more personal than those held by younger generations. I like voice, for example.

I also have a long history of creating and leading guilds. I enjoy it and some great friendships have come as the reward. How can a player like me hope to attract others to grow a guild? Any player who joins with me agrees to go without boons and must divide their time to grind guild content... perhaps FOR YEARS just to get the boons they could easily get by joining an existing guild.

The current environment creates a barrier to entry that is simply too steep. As a commercial interest, Neverwinter has diluted a point which could attract and retain new players. Instead, “Strongholds” has been neutered. I always saw it as a way to siphon surplus from the economy as well as a gimmick used to consume play cycles, but at least everybody was in the same boat. Today, it has run its course. Unless the cost to get to 20 is drastically reduced the attitude of the player population won’t change. All advice leans toward, “Do not bother with creating a guild.”

I guess I could be missing the point. Was this the long term strategy all along? Was the plan always to burn out the players, create dysfunction in the guilds, and discourage new guild creation? If so... mission accomplished.

This is obviously the opinion of a single player based, supposedly, on personal observations. I’m not here to rant, but I feel it’s important to let the frustration show.

I don’t want to diminish the achievements of those who persevered all the way to 20. I suppose a significant reduction in cost would result in backlash from legacy players, but the legacies are burning out and commercial viability demands a constant stream of new players, perhaps not to grow but at least to handle attrition.

Although I’m a returning player, lump me in with the new. What do you have for those among us who’d like to have our own guilds? If your collective answer is the current version of Strongholds, it’s time to hold another strategy meeting.

draco16

Blaming guilds for the broken state of the game is an oversimplification. The guilds did not cause the player base to shrink, if anything good alliances are a few of the things that keep players coming back since they provide a ready player base to run content. To get to the real reasons why there are insufficient new players we need to look at decisions that have antagonized players and cause them to quit such as removal of coal wards, nerfing of bonding stones, and the introduction of Chult content which done as solo content. The situation has not been helped by other new games such as destiny which siphoned off many players from never winter. Now players have to run endless t9 content just to get a slim chance at ultimate stones to upgrade their enchantments that were previously end game. Maybe that is a nice challenge for end gamers but not for new players. Content is made obsolete in the next update which is frustrating and turns players off.

Where guild may be at fault is in leadership that is closed minded. There are many leaders that really have no business running guilds. I would hate to be a beginning players in some of the drama filled guilds that I see treating players poorly and even taking advantage of players.

As an alliance, we support the building of guilds by running dragonflight and supporting content for all level players. Some folks have called us elitist for requesting certain players for content but we believe in players being free to put together groups for successful content. Our alliance is a community that interacts and helps players and guilds and where are leaders are engaged in the game and not absentee owners. We let players be free so that activity is always going on in the alliance.

steve

This hijacks the thread, changing it to your pet peeves. My comments stand.

mordekai

One of the problems caused by Random Queues is where people who were previously happy to plod along in a small guild with a character around the 9-10k mark, no longer gain RAD from running daily epic dungeons. They are corralled into leveling dungeons until they unlock FBI and MSP and acquire 11k.

Likewise, people with multiple alts below 11k get free access to dungeon unlocks where mains have achieved the required campaign progression, so only need to get that IL bump to enter Random Epic Dungeon queues.

This is why small guilds are losing players.

Previously people might put aside the need for L10 Guild Boons in order to stick with a guild and help build it, but since even a completely irrelevant Guild PvP Boon will offer 500 IL towards hitting the magical 11k gateway, of course people will go where they need in order to avoid the lockout from the extra RAD.

When I used to recruit in PE I used to see a lot of requests from people asking to join guilds... in the past week all of these that I have seen have added the qualification "needs to be L20". I don't know how many are getting what they ask for, but I don't see anyone coming back 10 minutes later with "Ok... level 17+ will do..."

The next mod will see a change in the 60-70 xp system, allowing faster growth between those levels. Apart from the double edged "well, some players can now earn more Dungeoneers Shards" I'm seeing nothing to help smaller guilds speed up their growth in the hope of retaining players who are jumping ship due to an ill thought through change in the fundamental way in which the game is played.

Moderator removed rule violation.

sundance777

Building a guild is a different task than leveling a stronghold, to build a guild you simply need like minded players, if you are ok without boons and others are not, then the minds are not alike....to level up a stronghold you need a strong core group of players, the more the merrier....and lots of AD helps as well.

Players go where they want to go, during the course of leveling our guild hall we had massive turnover, at times it felt as if we were a leveling guild to boost people to 3.5K or whatever the new number would be and poof, off they go to that GH20 with requirements. I think there is actually only one person that is still in guild from the early days of beginning to build it up. Even now we have players that leave our guild from time to time. I have had one player take a break from this guild to start her own guild and things are going well for her, so it is very possible to run a guild even with low or no boons.

It does seem there are lower requirements to land in a level 20 guild these days as vacancies open up from those that may have left the game, which makes it difficult to recruit those that simply want the boons, but then again, are those the players that are like minded???? I personally use the same criteria now as day 1 for membership, be nice, be active and give when you can. It has been a rewarding (and expensive) journey. I think it can still be done, although you are right, maybe the costs could be a bit lower (again). I think one GH20 costs like a trillion AD, maybe more...but that is also what makes the journey special, if it were easy or cheap, it would not be special.

Good luck deciding which path to go down.

steve

I really appreciate the comments. I decided to go for it. I've really enjoyed running guilds in the past, and have had some very good times. Success came from focusing on the people and building the social environment. That built loyalty and the core remained solid. We might not have been one of those top tier guilds, but we were there for our friends and we were all in it together. Ultimately, we went on to challenge harder content, but that wasn't our initial goal. It happened naturally, once we made it through our forming and storming and moved on to norming.

Soooo. My guild is pretty much still me. I'm in no rush and want to continue to find a couple of people I click with to form a cadre of founders and potential officers. Leadership is key, formal or informal. I'm not looking for people who prize boons over a rewarding social environment. I understand many are happy running solo and would love to jump into a GH20 where they have no real social interaction, but those aren't the people I'm interested in. I like party chat, playing together, helping each other... All the rest of it feels isolating. Sure, many in those guilds would argue they play together, but there are tons that don't, or when they do there's no conversation.

I'm an old hippy. I kinda like people, and I thrive on conversation. I'm completely down to play and grind, but it's more fun for me when I'm laughing with somebody I enjoy.

johnnyreklaw

Your initial observations, while they exist, are somewhat inflated in proportion...at least where I sit.

I have been a part of 3 guilds in my Neverwinter Career. The first was with exactly 4 other people and our goal was to do it ourselves. We were young, dumb, and immature (in terms of Neverwinter) and didn't want to bring in other people. Obviously, we barely built a lumberyard....let alone anything else. The second we joined was a GH15. They threw the word "Boons" at us like crazy in advertising, and mandated we drop everything at set times to run T3's and other regular nonsense. When I was looking at potential FBI, I was told to go to SOMI and never tell anyone it was my first time.....

Then I found my home. We left that other guild and went to a GH 10. The boon drop was real, and I wasn't initially happy with the move. But I found a group that was accepting and helpful. The lack of boons were made up for in environment. When runs were posted, they took me and carried me through. When I asked about a first FBI, I was met with a PM a few minutes later, a party invite, and a group (with my Guild Leader, her 2nd, an officer, and senior member) who talked me through the mechanics and treated me like one of the group.

As I've grown into a leader in the guild, I've learned a lot. I explored T9G with some of the same people as we learned that dungeon together (or spent 2 hours trying and failing.....), but the environment you want is possible. I gave up on the boon hunt a week into this new guild and just played the game. I donated, I participated in raffles, I spent hours in the Siege event farming Dark Gift vouchers because we needed it.

Boons are attractive, but not necessary. Build a supportive environment that accepts and helps players, and you will gain loyalty. Yes, you will lose people. The "Legacy Guilds" as you put it will snipe or attract some players, but a good leader will build a place everyone wants to play.

Seven months after joining that budding GH10, I sit in an officer's chair of a GH20 that is forming an alliance built on this idea. We've located a lot of guilds with this same mindset. We don't exclude people from runs and are actively working on that environment. This isn't just our guild who feels this way as we've found several that do the same. I find myself chatting on discord when I get a break at work and partying up to take others through dungeons when I get on later.

Get them in, show them a community, and you will gain a following. You will lose some, but eventually you'll find your followers are there.

Good Luck!