Why disallow large guilds?

kvet · June 2015

So, I understand the balance problem, but I ask - is it fair to ban large guilds because there are small guilds? Because make no mistake - Cryptic BANNED large guilds this week. ALL OF THEM in one fell swoop. We can't even add alts of existing members when the account balance would be neutral. Until we bleed down to medium-small size, we can't recruit, we can't move members around, nothing. Large guild have been banned.

I can't help but think there was a better way to handle it. Maybe... I don't know... Maybe talking to those of us who have lead the largest guilds in the Neverwinter for years? Maybe? Oh. no, Cryptic doesn't do that sort of thing, they just ban organizations that have, over time, housed THOUSANDS of players...

Seriously, there's GOT to be a better way find a balance than this.

EDIT: Especially since this ban on large guilds directly effects the most loyal, the most active and the most likely to PAY YOU MONEY group in the game. Cryptic has basically taken that segment of their players - the ones worth the most money to them, and flipped them the bird. Maybe, just maybe, there will be some awesome new thing in guild management that will allow big guilds to stay around. If so -- awesome. Cryptic should announce it sooner rather than later. If not - what I've said above here stands.

helpimblindinrl · June 2015

Obvious solution, empty guild of unplayed alts and fill guild with 150 main characters who can add some alts

kvet · June 2015

Thanks genius. So..... like most large guilds, we already have many more than 150 active accounts. I define active as having logged in within the last 42 days. If you're over 150 accounts, like we are, you can't invite any characters even if they already are in your guild (so, existing members can't invite their alts).

Thanks for the reply though, you posted a picture to represent my reaction to your comment, I see. thanks for that too.

EDIT: oh, we also have a long-standing 1-alt per account policy, we have a whole separate guild for alts.

azlanfox · June 2015

Cryptic seems to listen, kind of, sort of how a little child stops listening after they hear what they want to and ignores everything else.

In this case, they looked at the problem from small guild side and large guild side. They averaged it and took the lowest and harshest possible route. Other game companies, who are more mature in the market, try to take the route that pleases the paying side and the largest contributors. Not saying that that approach is right either. You will have to assume (I hate doing that) that Cryptic is taking the route that is best suited for the future of the game.

Historically though, they have a habit of having the most short sighted, blinders wearing, barely passed creative thinking, lowest in their graduating class designers who put too much emphasis on money. They'll design, jam it through test/dev/staging and slam it into prod. Then when it doesn't work as intended, run around trying to fix it or band-aid it, which compounds onto existing issues already present.

helpimblindinrl · June 2015

At least its nice that they are thinking about the amount of work a guild with a set amount of people will have to do instead of picking very large numbers at random, you know like normal

kvet · June 2015

I this case, if they were putting an emphasis on money, they'd have left the large guilds alone regardless of balance issues because people in large guilds, other than a few... not so, er... rules-frendly? guilds.. are where their most active players are. Their most active players are also the ones most likely to pay up. So, this is a direct cut at their most lucrative market, so clearly money had nothing to do with this decision.

Again - if there is some offset here that makes it possible to have a large organization without the major pain in the backside it was before... great! But I already lead 5 guilds...

Reasons I've come up with so far:
1: Time gating
2: They're planning to sell guild account expansions to allow us to enlarge our guild.

It can't be technical the limit on instances now is like, what, 40 or 50 maybe before things basically become unplayable? So they already wouldn't have been able to handle 300, so worrying about 1000 is just right out. No, I don't buy the technical argument. And if the real reason is #2 - it's downright underhanded. I wouldn't put it past them, but it seems lower than even PWE usually goes for money grabs.

So.. time gating? Maybe - but making it so a guild has less resources to put to its stronghold in order to make it slower to build? Why not just set the build timers longer? There's way better ways to timegate the Stronghold.

PvP? Ok.. I can see that -- so... make the guild vs. guild instance (and we can see from the map dev blog it WILL be a seperate instance map) only allow 25 or something per guild. or 20. or whatever, so that the sides stay even. Having an account limit is a hamfisted jab and their most loyal and active players and I see no good reason for it.

ironzerg79 · June 2015

kvet wrote: »

So.. time gating? Maybe - but making it so a guild has less resources to put to its stronghold in order to make it slower to build? Why not just set the build timers longer? There's way better ways to timegate the Stronghold.

Indeed. Cap the amount of resources that can be contributed each day. Or cap the number of daily quest turn ins. Or put a cap that only counts the top 150 contributors each day.

If it's an instance balance thing, just put a cap on the number of people in the instance at any given time, like you have now. Our guild has a pretty strong international presence, so it's highly unlikely we'll ever have 150 concurrent accounts on, but over the course of 24 hours you can bet that cap would be a problem.

Regardless, I think we should all (players and developers) have an open and honest conversation about how to deal with the Stronghold instances as it relates to guild caps.

azlanfox · June 2015

ironzerg79 wrote: »

Regardless, I think we should all (players and developers) have an open and honest conversation about how to deal with the Stronghold instances as it relates to guild caps.

They are already on a set path and think they know how all this is going to work. If there is a dialogue between players and developers, it is not going to happen how you want it to. They ask us for input, suggestions, and feedback all the time. They, however, don't want to hear us telling them what to do. They ignore that stuff, they are way to hard up about control and pride in some twisted vision, no what they want from us is the "aha!" things that they could not come up with themselves, or interesting ideas they might not have thought of. They also like our theories, both for a good laugh and to get an idea of how we might work outside their intent so they can try and slam big blocks on those. It is also to draw out those little instances that we all let slip when we get comfortable that might give them insight on how they can monetize and exploit our moments of weakness.

kvet · June 2015

ironzerg79 wrote: »

Regardless, I think we should all (players and developers) have an open and honest conversation about how to deal with the Stronghold instances as it relates to guild caps.

I couldn't agree more. I've asked for it in fact, even offered to help organize it. Cryptic isn't interested in any meaningful dialog with it's players.

Just one more in case it's not clear:
Cryptic isn't interested in any meaningful dialog with it's players.

I took that deep breath, btw, ironzerg like I promised you I would yesterday... I'm still pissed. I had to turn a bunch of people away today, and had countless conversation with members concerned about this. I couldn't tell them anything, because there's nothing to tell other than that Cryptic banned large guilds for no good reason. I would LOVE to take part in a conversation about this, but you, me, other guild leaders, players - we can talk until we're blue in the face, but if Cryptic doesn't listen, it won't matter. And they DON'T LISTEN. If they did, things would be a lot different.

burkaanc · June 2015

kvet wrote: »

Reasons I've come up with so far:
1: Time gating
2: They're planning to sell guild account expansions to allow us to enlarge our guild.

maybe they plan to add member limit based on stronghold size

karakla1 · June 2015

Most likely it is technical limitation. Look at Tiamat with 25 fighting characters.
The game is build around pretty "small" 40-50 character big instances. The new map seems pretty big and if you assume you want every of your guildmates of the same map and not in clone because it reaches it limits the 150 seems reasonable enough, to simple hang around in the same area without fighting. For example in the Protectors Enclave we had a lot more people around like 50 at the same time. I think in beta we got like 100-80 characters per instance and many people said they have frame drops which was the reason for the new max. of 50 characters.

Now time goes on and after 2 years many people have upgraded their systems and a lot of stuff in the engine got fixed to run better. I mean it serious. I have more frames than before with the overhaul of the FX System and Stuff. So 150 seems also the maximum for the new Stronghold to have better gaming expierence.

rinat114 · June 2015

You know what I'm furious about? The sudden hotfix. Absolutely NO communication, prior notice, anything. Gladly our guild found a solution to fight this, but this is just absurd. I even submitted a ticket thinking it was a bug I can't invite anyone over. A day later I find out Cryptic forced this change on us without giving any notice. Congrats, that's a giant slap to the face for your most loyal, active players.

quspiv · June 2015

They did good job to improve the game. Old cap was very unhealthy for the game. As a long time MMO player i can already predict that:

1. Certain top guilds will split their alts and mains to alt guilds just so they can control more than one stronghold and then re-sell it to other smaller guilds for in game stuff or maybe even for real $ outside of the game.
2. Smaller guilds will die, or become nonfactor as it's a lot harder to recruit skilled and geared players to new growing up guilds.
3. In best case scenario servers will split in to 2 sides, each supporting different guilds and their alt guilds.
4. In worst case scenario one guild will get ahead with alt guilds holding everything that can be competed via pvp.

Then new and casual players will start losing interest, because they will realize that "catching-up" all those exploit and bug abuser would require either no-lifing for several years or spending several thousands of real $.

The gap between old and new players is already way too big and i doubt that mod 7 will make it any better.

karakla1 · June 2015

Actually i would say we could assume the worst scenario because this already happened with arena and open pvp.

drkbodhi · June 2015

What do you mean they banned large guilds?

karakla1 · June 2015

Because there is a new limit. 150 different @handles and 500 different characters (like 3,3 characters per @handle in a guild).
This uproar is ridicules. It was announced (there is a blogg entry) and 150 seems totally reasonable. I mean, how do you manage guilds with like 200-400 different players that are constantly online? You lose even track in the guildwindow.

query523 · June 2015

drkbodhi wrote: »

What do you mean they banned large guilds?

Yeah what? None of the guilds I am in are that large. But as to how to deal with it (whatever it may be. Something with Strongholds then?). UmmI am on 4 or so multi-guild chanels anyway. Build a chanel and split into 2 guilds. Problem solved.

drkbodhi · June 2015

The guild I am in has a little over 400 members. The leaders have been culling members who have not been active for over a few months.
Some of the older inactive members have a bunch of different accounts/ handles.

karakla1 · June 2015

Sounds not like a problem to kick out inactive and be in shape for the new module.

karakla1 · June 2015

why have a 500 man guild anyway? It is not like it is needed in Neverwinter anyway. You have 5 man dungeons. 5 to 10 man pvp and the biggest "raid" is tiamat with 25 people which most likely is chosen random while the biggest areas can hold 50 character at the same time. And the guild bank doesn't support such big guilds anyway.
And it is not like such a big guild is easy to handle. I saw a lot smaller guilds broken apart because some player said "not their style" "too unpersonal" "i feel more like a number" etc.

And overall it is not like many player doesn't seem it coming, even in my guild they said: Not really a limit but it would not strange if they implement some later. AND you will not be disbanded. Big guilds can stay, they can't simply invite new members.

ghosty2a · June 2015

To start with, I too am one of the PISSED OFF guild leaders about this sudden and unannounced change. Like Magenubbie sais a littel warning to give us time to get prepared for it would have been nice. Now I am stuck with rejecting new members untill we can set up Alt guilds. There are so many comments in this thred that I want to reply to, but just do not have the time or paitience to type out. But let me say that our guild, Tyrs Paladium , has grown a lot since mod5, and even faster since mod6. This growth was not due to any active recruiting, but by folks simply reading about our guild in the Guild section of these forums. It should also be noted we are not a PvP guild in any way. We are a casual, no drama mostly PvE family. Now to answer those who ask whats the point of a large guild, it is so players can have others to play with that they know and trust. I t would seem a large percentage of folks do not like PUG-acide. As for manageing a large membership, it realy is not that hard in a casual no drama guild like ours. People tend to manage themselves when they themselfs want a no drama atmosphere. But with this new limit we will, like others have noted and done, splitt in multi guilds. This will complicate guild management.

Now personaly I think that this limit will backfire on them from their stated purpose of makeing thing more fair or even for the smaller guilds. Now let me also say that this need for "fairness" is only a need in respect to the PvP portion of the new area, and game in general. Have got to say, from my perspective, what need is there for fairness in relation to PvE? It was with intrest that I read quspiv's prediction about what this limit will do. And I agree with the annalysys that it will only lead to the current large PvP guilds will end up running the stronghold map. They will just split up into multi guilds that are still under one command and dominate smaller guilds. Which seems to be the exact opposite what they are trying to accomplish with the new limit. They would be much better off putting a limit on the number of players that can join up to raid other guilds.

There is some good they did that I can point out and support. The changes to the guild window that allow us to srt by account and the banner that shows how many accounts we have is a great and highly welcomed edition.

And is'nt it funny, like Azlanfox pointed out, that they can kinda sorta listen to us?

ambisinisterr · June 2015

Did you all miss this?

It was announced.
It was explained.

Does that mean I like this change? No.
I agree with ironzerger but acting like this is anything malicious and sneaky is...silly.

First and foremost there has ALWAYS been a 500 member limit. That did not change at all. The aspect which changed is the 150 Account Limit which is to properly balance Strongholds.

Does that mean it is the right way to do it? No. 150 is extremely easy to reach if you don't remove inactive members and quite frankly there should not be a character limit at all and they should only limit the number of accounts and do all dailies based on the number of accounts.

But what has been said here is throwing things way out of proportion.

rinat114 · June 2015

ambisinisterr wrote: »

Did you all miss this?

It was announced.
It was explained.

It was announced AFTER the hotfix, NOT before. No warning, no nothing. Seriously, stop defending the HAMSTER move on cryptic's behalf, even if they needed a change for whatever reason, one should warn the player base and not HAMSTER everyone off with a sudden hotfix and no warning.

ambisinisterr · June 2015

Warning or not it would not have made a difference. What would a warning have done? Given you a week to remove to conform to an account limit?

No. There is no warning needed.

Now change your tone please.

wylonus · June 2015

some players are loyal to some specific guilds due to good leaderships, friendly partners for groups, and players to be trusted with.
many other players left previous guilds because of rude, often demanding for the cost, or badly loot options, or just plain jerks who not worth spend time with, sometimes when the guilds seem inactive.
being in wrong time zones if they have to meet on time shedule or able to speak native languages.

eldarth · June 2015

rinat114 wrote: »

It was announced AFTER the hotfix, NOT before. No warning, no nothing. Seriously, stop defending the HAMSTER move on cryptic's behalf, even if they needed a change for whatever reason, one should warn the player base and not HAMSTER everyone off with a sudden hotfix and no warning.

Um...so what. Nothing is different - you're existing guild is grandfathered in...

"For those guilds that already have over 150 account, you will not be forced to reduce the amount of characters in your guild. Your guild is considered to be grandfathered into the system, keeping all 150+ accounts. You can add new accounts to your guild once you have reduced your guild's size to the new guild cap (150 accounts and 500 characters). Guilds with over 150 accounts will also be able to participate in the Strongholds content, so don’t worry about needing to make guild adjustments to be able to play."

championshewolf · June 2015

I am still curious how the guild was banned. I mean were the accounts physically blocked from playing Neverwinter? Otherwise, you're using that word wrong.

ambisinisterr · June 2015

Yes the word usage is completely incorrect and misleading to the discussion.

I try not to edit thread titles but this is one case where I would if I could.

Why disallow large guilds?

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