Social Guilds & Account Threshold

annetagonist · July 2015

I am having such a difficult time with the new limit to guild membership and was wondering if others felt the same. Our guild is more of a social guild, and so we are less selective with our recruitment process (not basing it on IL/PvP experience, having specific enchants, etc.) Basically we allow anybody who wants to be a part of our community to join the guild as long as they remain an active and a reasonably-kind person in the group.

Since the limit of 150 unique accounts was set, it has been such a difficult process for us to trim our people to even add existing members into the guild on their alt characters. We more than doubled the unique account limit when the limit was implemented. With the Strongholds being such a focal point, I understand that part of this limit is to try and even the playing field, but it puts some of the less selective, social guilds into a difficult spot.

I rarely post in forums but having it as a strain on our ability to recruit, I was wondering if there were any others in the same position.

Solutions?
-Raise the threshold
-Allow guilds to opt out (similarly in how one could sign up for a specific faction or side in both IWD and GG)
-Allow guild leaders to create special units who would only take part in Stronghold related activities/benefits

I know I sound rather ill-informed, but I am wondering how to keep our guild afloat in game, since we have some really amazing people who are in for the friendships.

-Anne
Clan of Proteus

ecubedd · July 2015

I agree with the thread starter. I think that the relatively new rules are pushing out certain types of guilds and, maybe, certain types of players. I know my experience has been worse now that my guild can't recruit we don't get fresh people in.

Hopefully, this policy will be reversed so that we can go back to building a community within the game and enrich the experience for everyone.

thererchers · July 2015

I completely agree, if not just for larger communities. In many MMOs I tend to see communities having to make multiple guilds just to fit everyone can be annoying, or having to remove someone also sometimes reflect onto other members.

Say you have the following choice about one of your old members. The one that basically taught your guild how to do dungeons and even lead most of your current members through learning the game better. Unfortunately hes been inactive for a while and you really need another healer to defend your stronghold. Do you kick this legend from your guild for all of the people who joined your guild because of him to see? or do you keep him because they bring up stories about him all the time in guild chat in VOIP?

Also a less dramatic reason could be just limit how many people can enter the instance from each guild during pvp. Not everyone likes to PVP. Some just love to PVE and some like to just log in do some tradeskill, make gear for other members and keep a calm environment for the guild.

Guilds are where friends are made and everyone loves to talk and play with their friends.

Thank you for reading.
~Therercher

kvet · July 2015

I agree with you completely. The 150 limit was an arbitrary and a hamfisted way to "balance" the system and mostly serves to punish the most active players. In my case, I regularly trim inactives from my guilds at 42-days of inactivity. The limit didn't cause me to start doing this, but unfortunately Greycloaks is over the limit (Greycloaks was consistently at the 500 character limit throughout it's lifetime anyway) and is now bleeding out very slowing because Cloaks are very active overall. We have several guilds to put people in, but having to resort to a multi-guild system because we're so popular that a single guild doesn't cut it really is a pain. We'll rarely be able to do SHPvP, we'll end up competing against ourselves to accumulate resources to build our various Strongholds and each group will end up with it's own, the result being each group will become more insular. When one group outdistances the others because that guild has members contributing more, it will create insecurities and divisions in the overall guild... the whole situation is really bad. To make matters worse, the more hardcore guilds are already working on ways to exploit the system by rotating members around to dominate in PvP - m7, while an incredibly cool notion for the game overall is shaping up to be a potential disaster that could drive the massive wedge called m6 even further down. I'm still optimistic, but what's I saw in Collections on the Preview server yesterday (all NEW artifact gear, all NEW rings, all NEW gear sets - with set bonuses) makes me really depressed. Having to effectively start over ever couple of months is NOT fun. Make me wonder if Cryptic's income is based on new member churn more than long-term player cultivation. It has to be, because they're really trying hard to alienate their long-time players.

kreatyve · July 2015

I have had to start enforcing a 90-day inactivity policy for Team Fencebane, which is not something that I really ever wanted to do. We've been hovering close to the limit since I got us under capacity, but we took a vote and we will probably start a 2nd guild once the first one gets full, as a "waiting list" type guild. I know it's not the same, but kinda don't have a choice on it anymore.

beckylunatic · July 2015

I'm very torn as to what to do. So many people have left, and I don't think most of them are inclined to come back, but the idea of kicking out their accounts breaks my heart, yet I'm going to have to because all the inactives have me well over capacity.

I've been in a holding pattern because taking over completely doesn't sit well with me for various reasons, and it's going to be hard letting people know what's going on. It's not the same guild I joined and I can't bring that back.

blacksladdi · July 2015

to essentially go from 500 member cap down to 150 is really steep, it's telling guilds to cut their playerbase by over two thirds just because you want to do an update, it really isn't fair please raise the number of unique accounts you make having a large guild become small because 150 is small.

demaden · July 2015

I too am concerned about this cap. I appreciate the balancing that Cryptic is doing to make thresholds good for everyone, but I feel we hit a common line with many MMOs. The line for casual game play versus more focused game play. I feel that this is an unintended consequence to a decision meant to bring the new content to all players of the game. Unfortunately it is doing the opposite.

I like the opt out option. While i am very excited about the Strongholds expansion, at the same time i feel it is naturally being geared to more focused PVP players or even focused PVE players.

airza707 · July 2015

annetagonist wrote: »

I am having such a difficult time with the new limit to guild membership and was wondering if others felt the same. Our guild is more of a social guild, and so we are less selective with our recruitment process (not basing it on IL/PvP experience, having specific enchants, etc.) Basically we allow anybody who wants to be a part of our community to join the guild as long as they remain an active and a reasonably-kind person in the group.

Since the limit of 150 unique accounts was set, it has been such a difficult process for us to trim our people to even add existing members into the guild on their alt characters. We more than doubled the unique account limit when the limit was implemented. With the Strongholds being such a focal point, I understand that part of this limit is to try and even the playing field, but it puts some of the less selective, social guilds into a difficult spot.

I rarely post in forums but having it as a strain on our ability to recruit, I was wondering if there were any others in the same position.

Solutions?
-Raise the threshold
-Allow guilds to opt out (similarly in how one could sign up for a specific faction or side in both IWD and GG)
-Allow guild leaders to create special units who would only take part in Stronghold related activities/benefits

I know I sound rather ill-informed, but I am wondering how to keep our guild afloat in game, since we have some really amazing people who are in for the friendships.

-Anne
Clan of Proteus

I agree. We try to recruit as we are a rather large community, but with the @ limit, we can't recruit.... That leads to a dead end - we reach the limit, no recruit until purge.... we're one of the most known guilds ( Clan of proteus, On fridays we wear pink, win or lose we booze ) are most known... idk what on EARTH cryptic was thinking.

bitterblur · July 2015

New guild restrictions are horrible. One of the few things left that I enjoyed about the game is now gone. I enjoyed meeting new people, I enjoyed recruiting. My guild will have to reduce the accounts in the guild by more then half for us to be able to add just 1 new person to the guild. Reducing guild members to such a low number does not help the games activity or its enjoyment. This games been out 2 years and the company has squeezed it dry. Tons of people have quit because of many anti-user company decisions and better games have been released by other companies. Basically one of the last remaining reasons to play the game was the ability to build and maintain a community and that's no longer possible for the larger communities. Really whats stopping people from leaving this game at this point?

glowingember · July 2015

I am a member of clan of proteus and have been watching our guild slowly bleed down in numbers since the change happened to the guild player limit. We are a guild that is spread across many countries and span many time zones. We welcome casual and more intent players, caring more about a players happiness and ability to play well with others. A number of our players who were not strong english speakers recently left so they could join another guild that was in their personal time zone and spoke their mother tongue in preperation for mod 7.

We would most likely play the pvp portion of strongholds in a casual setting, but then it would be impossible for us to gather 20 players at the same time given our 150 player limit without an extreme amount of real life scheduling time and personal commitments. Some of these players would be playing early morning, some middle of the day and others late at night in order to piece together that 20 player team.

Many other guilds are in the same international boat, so I don't understand what these guilds are supposed to do with the suggested upcoming rules for the next mod.

Thank you very Much.

xaeiownux · July 2015

As a player for almost 2 years, I also feel the low cap on guilds is a bad decision that will only hurt the overall community.By limiting guilds to such a low number you restrict our community and capabilities, which is just going to force guilds to open a 2nd/3rd/4th branch of the same guild and spread out their teammates(as it is they will split into 2 guilds anyway ..1 for pve +1 for pvp).So now my teammates are spread out i have harder times getting groups with ppl i want to run with,i dont learn as readily from them,not involved in as many conversations i normally would have been in,bonding with new ppl isnt as readily , and the list goes on. I understand the balancing act, but in all the games i have played none had set a limit so low.Over this time as we purge our guildies we are also causing alot of alarm and insecurity for our members that arent as active and/or not up to date on what or why this needs to take place. Every guild has the opportunity to have the high capacity of max members if they wanted, but some guilds decide to keep themselves small for several reasons and if they dont want to lead 500 ppl thats their decision.Or mayb the strongholds arn't that critical to them since they are all BiS players or just want a small community of their personal friends.the fact is they can recruit to the cap if they choose , so why pnish the bigger guilds that already did their due diligence to get a large player base.Many ppl take breaks for many reasons and now we are being forced to lower or cap and kick ppl that yes some needed to be but others are loyal and very likely to return(imo we have alot of inactives due to cryptics inability to hold up their end on the game mechanics/promises and now they are waiting to see how cryptic handles the situation).so in turn our loyalty gets put to the test.With such a small guild cap it will become neccassary to only recruit from your time zones and time schedules,again really reducing commnity interaction from others accross the globe (of which i find very interesting talking to ppl in other countries I never been to let alone an opportunity to go there).I hope cryptic seriously reconsiders the guild cap or like our guildy base I feel they will be purging their player base regardless of loyalty or how much money they have spent.as for solutions with the raised cap. 1st any/all guilds should have the option to opt out regardless(mayb a fee to reinstate to strongholds if wanted at a later date ). 2. I like annes idea of special units that will participate (as we kno not all will want to be involved and for the more casual player wont want to do or have time to do,therefor not going to be to interested in strongholds either)which leaves the other 1/2(per say ) of the guild that wants to particpate in that aspect of the game.yet we all learn and interact with each other as a guild does.I also think that with the difficulty not many are going to be starting new guilds unless they are very popular, kno alot of ppl and have some good incentives to draw ppl to them,otherwise ppl are going to flock to the top 20 guilds , as soon as there are openings the smaller,less defined guilds will suffer by not keeping a solid base,which in turn creates less security/loyality for those that are willing to tough it. I think the real concept of why we are in guilds is being overlooked,our community is based on, people > gaming. with with our current situation our feelings to friends cant be considered if we want our guild to grow and flourish.
>> please reconsider your restrictions cryptic and lets keep the community communicating as a whole not thru multiple paths that pulls apart <<

beckylunatic · July 2015

revjimjones wrote: »

Hmmmm The joys of Open recruitment, See now The Smaller more discerning Guilds have the opposite problem how to attract and keep people whom are willing to work on the SH as a Mid to Long Term Project and keeping their Interesting the guild long enough to Mutually benefit Both the Guild and the player without having the guild become a revolving training door for people waiting to join the larger and Faster(SH wise) Guilds when the opportunity arises.

The guild I'm in never recruited openly or indiscriminately, and I still can't even invite an alt unless I sit down and kick 50 accounts to the curb.

Which I can probably manage, but first I have to write a message explaining why I'm doing it, and that it's because of Strongholds, and nothing personal, and people will be welcome back if they want, and and and....

glowingember · July 2015

Please don't think that guilds like Clan of Proteus have an open revolving door policy. We are careful about who we invite into the guild. We don't base are invitation decisions are equipment, or skill level, or by the amount of time that you play. If you can only play 1 hour every two week, that's ok. We look forward to spending time with you. You have to leave near the end of a dungeon run because something unexpected came up, that's ok because people are more important than gaming. We don't require that you use a voicechat program, but we have access to a voicechat server if you want to use it.

We focus on playing in a fun family environment. We have a wide age range of players in our guild from 8 yrs old to 60+ yrs old, ranging from north america to europe, asia and australia (yes new zealand i didnt forget you

The only demand that we put on our players is that they have, and because of that they stick around or a long time.

annetagonist · July 2015

The issue I have is that it was implemented with such little thought to the impact it would have on social guilds. It is not that we are keeping people in there who are inactive; we've always reinforced a 31 day activity quota with just a few exceptions (people who have stated that they will be away for school/vacation). We have also discussed possibly expanding out to have multiple guilds, but unfortunately, there will be a preference for being in the main guild versus an alternate. It also pushes for a more competitive and selective model for those who have no interest in that.

In a game like this, it is not that we choose to be less in line with the times, but we've always pushed for community being the greatest factor of the game. Many of our guildies have commented that they prefer this, since in the past, they had to comply with other guilds asking for applications and proof of skill; we choose to build people up by playing together and helping weaker players with the higher aspects of the game. I think that 150 is just so incredibly low that it does promote guilds to only seek out players who have the gear or skill sets rather than building them from beginners. We have been a large guild since close to the beginning of the game, so the limit really does impede many of our reasons for being a guild. We just love building community with players of all skills and types.

mariosxx · July 2015

blacksladdi wrote: »

to essentially go from 500 member cap down to 150 is really steep, it's telling guilds to cut their playerbase by over two thirds just because you want to do an update, it really isn't fair please raise the number of unique accounts you make having a large guild become small because 150 is small.

This lad is spot on. It was a rather steep move after a single update. Forcing you to clean up half your guild before you're able to invite new people.

Solutions?
-Raise the threshold
-Allow guilds to opt out (similarly in how one could sign up for a specific faction or side in both IWD and GG)
-Allow guild leaders to create special units who would only take part in Stronghold related activities/benefits

I couldn't agree more.

Although I have no similar problems since my guild is small, I can see it's a real issue for guilds focusing on the social part of the game and it's a real shame. If it stays like that it will force people to start making "additional" guilds for their extra players and use it as a B-team. It was a bad idea to balance things out imo.

weaver936 · July 2015

Try making an IN-Game Custom Chat channel... use that as your Guild Chat.. you ARE social after all.. don't need to use /g to talk to one another...

Also... it's been my experience that mega guilds really aren't very helpful at all.. about as useful in game stuff as a Pug group. But thankfully.. the devs have made the content (and Guild Membership Limit) more geared towards a smaller more close knit group... that actually HAS to work together to progress... I for one LOVE this.

weaver936 · July 2015

Btw.. "Opting out" of having a Stronghold will kill your guild. Guild Gear and Boons will be far superior than anything else you can get without a SH.

vidarus · July 2015

When I first saw the announcement of the new limit on guilds I thought it was some very odd type of joke. Cutting it in half I maybe could I have gotten behind but 150 is downright ridiculous. All this kind of limit does is make the larger guilds have to choose between what members to keep, stop inviting new people all together or have to make splinter groups which will in turn encounter their own problems when they try and build up their own strongholds.

Personally, I find this entire decision to be incredibly ridiculous and worrisome. Just going to have to wait until after the release of Strongholds to see the full negative impact. But, I think it's going to be not great.

jardelbambirra · August 2015

This new threshold is awfull and are killing Guilds, we cant invite new member to increase our activite and the older members are losing the will to go on fighting:/
create a secondary Guild is a awfull decision, because make all idea of a Guild means nothing! All Guilds wants have their names knowed!we want play together and grow up together!
i agree with Annetagonist

Solutions?
-Raise the threshold
-Allow guilds to opt out (similarly in how one could sign up for a specific faction or side in both IWD and GG)
-Allow guild leaders to create special units who would only take part in Stronghold related activities/benefits

cryptic cannot go on trying destroy what we constructed fighting years together, we want be more than a guild, we want be Clans, we are friends playing together and Cryptic are forcing us to choose who will go on and who will be kicked in our list of friends, this is horrible !

aandrethegiant · August 2015

Thank you all for speaking up. I forewarned this would be the outcome.

There is NO GOOD REASON for a hard 150 guild cap. There is NO GOOD REASON NOT to have a single currency so guildies can remain with friends and play the way they like to.

There are small, medium AND large guilds that are paying a price... just like I said they would... whether its TIME, MONEY or OUR MOST VALUABLE ASSET, OUR GUILDIES.

So WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT Cryptic? Continue to make it hard on our guild leaders? Continue to make it hopeless for smaller guilds? Continue to BREAK APART the guilds who PUT YEARS INTO MAKING THEIR GUILD great?

The real Cryptic plan all along: Force people to BUY their way OUT of playing what they don't want to play??? <---- REALLY?

For now, Cryptic is laughing all the way to the bank. But the PR damage done has angered many. I believe the deceit shown towards the Neverwinter community in relation to how this Stronghold content was developed AND MARKETED will overshadow the good this content has brought us, and that's a real shame.

aandrethegiant · August 2015

The reason for the cap I believe is to FORCE the creation of MORE GUILDS. The more guilds... the more micro-transactions. It is that simple. It is short sited, poorly conceived, and ill fated. Player satisfaction be damned.

Social Guilds &amp; Account Threshold

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Social Guilds & Account Threshold