test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
A Question to the Devs about Guild Boons vs. Not
pterias
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 661 Arc User
@nitocris83 @mimicking#6533
Are there any internal discussions or plans regarding the giant gulf between players with GH20 Guild Boons vs. those with little or none? I'm not really asking for, or expecting, any details (though they would be welcome), I'm just looking for a simple yes or no. For the record, I'm NOT asking about making it easier to level a guild.
So basically, is the Guild Boon gap something that is thought about internally or is it just considered a closed case?
Thanks.
Are there any internal discussions or plans regarding the giant gulf between players with GH20 Guild Boons vs. those with little or none? I'm not really asking for, or expecting, any details (though they would be welcome), I'm just looking for a simple yes or no. For the record, I'm NOT asking about making it easier to level a guild.
So basically, is the Guild Boon gap something that is thought about internally or is it just considered a closed case?
Thanks.
1
Comments
I don't mind having lower guilds get at least something, but [edited].
I mean, it's like that with the characters too - you invest more time, you become a better player, with better gear etc.
[crickets]
anyway, i don't care too much about it. i mostly play guildless (bank guild) chars right now, and it's alright for me. i also see the differences dwindling slowly with ever rising game wide IL.
@gromovnipljesak#8234 no merits last for ever in MMO RPG. the nature of the game is ever new challenges, targets. try playing a BIS modul 6 char now, for instance... same with old guilds merits.
my guess is there will be no marked intervention, in order not to anger/frustrate big guild public. it will all wear off by itself -- or maybe at some point level 20 guilds will get new challenges, so they can make a big new effort (money and timewise) and gain some new advantage by it.
I'm not making an argument, I'm asking a simple yes or no question.
To address some of your criticisms though: First, I've never wanted a free ride. If I wanted a free ride, I'd just join an already high level guild and freeload like everyone else does (and like everyone else tells me I SHOULD do). I've always been dumbfounded about how people react so ferociously to someone wanting to grind away in their own little corner, insulted by someone who doesn't want to freeload off of your (the generic "you") hard work. I've genuinely given the Guild Evangelists(tm) the benefit of the doubt for years, but the consistent reactions leave me no choice but to think most people don't actually want to be in your guilds, they just do it for the boons, or at least you all are afraid so.
Second, Cryptic is never going to do anything on my behalf, that's not even an option, so what harm is there is asking if they have anything in mind or not? I'm getting at a crossroads and am trying to make a decision about my place here and whether I have one. This subject is one of the bigger variables in my equation.
The max-rank guild boons were too large when first introduced. They created a large disparity between players able to quickly rank up a guild and players not in such an organization. Although the contribution from guild boons is indeed less significant as character power has grown, it still significantly affects end-game. At the rate power grows in the game, the max-rank boons will still be consequential for some time.
People did work hard to rank up guilds. They worked on that in lieu of other activities that would benefit their character or account. If a change were to be implemented at some point, it should not be overwhelming. If something should ever be taken away from guild boons, I would hope something else would be added as well... perhaps something that adds to convenience (like much of the VIP benefits) rather than to character power.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
Guilds, like relationships, are give and take in a broad aspect, in some guilds you can 'freeload' in others you will not, the interaction, company, opinion, participation (also in discussions for example), grouping, helping others, etc... Are all part of the 'price' and 'gain'. It is the reduction to the simple accounting of how much one donates influence and how many boons they gain what skews guilds into a discussion about freeloading, security issues, and some fear. MMOs premise is the social aspect, guilds facilitate that, this is their main purpose. Reducing a guild to the sum of it's boons and requirements of donations is gross misunderstanding of the concept.
A guild that wants almost nothing, will give almost nothing, and yes, boons are only part of the package.
How about thinking about this the other way. Letting you use the boons of some guild, is a small price for stopping with these threads. See, you get boons, other people get peace of mind.
Also please, when you claim that "everyone freeloads" lets not go there.. You very well know, that is simply not true. This is not exactly what you ask. You are free to grind whatever you want. But once you touch my hard grinded work, gloves off!
More like:
Guilds are/were expensive, much more than now, a lot of AD, blood and sweat went into it, especially for the smaller guilds. Now the benefit from that effort erodes with time, if back then 30k power was the standard, today we are close to double.
Same with HP, with 15k from a piece of gear now is doubled. Power creep grows and with it the fixed stat boons erode into less and less significance. But to erosion aside, why are you surprised there is resistance for further making that effort insignificant?! Took me some time to understand what you mean here, but simply, no. You are saying that if the boons removed people will not have a reason to stay in a guild? Sorry to disappoint, but you are very wrong, guilds (or small private channels) existed before SH, and will exists as long as it's MMO. This is the last thing, at least I'm afraid of. We login for the people, not so much for the game.
So feel free to take the boons, but make sure you compensate me (and the rest) for that damn hard work everyone put in into making those boons. (But no one can do that, so we are where we are).
I wonder what you expect to find in other MMOs..
In any case, you have your issues, reasons, or what not, sure, do whatever you want, "live and let live", but then please lets not force the consequences of those issues on others very very hard work.
Especially when the solution is very simple, and amazingly costs you nothing, except what ? Pride in asking to join a guild? A chance of rejection? A chance to be kicked ? So what?
I'm sure many guild leaders will rather have 1 freeloader than a nice dandy nerf to their investment in the last 2 years, just because someone can't find their place.
At the end, how about joining one of the guilds that made for solo players, and instead of accounting donations, think that any donation (and I know they are not mandatory) goes towards a place for people like you. Or how about joining a guild that doesn't ask for contributions, get boons, and as a 'trade' help the new players to run things? A run per week I"m sure wont harm anyone, or is the principle is so important that helping others can't be done?
It could have been argued quite some time ago that there are only few SH20 guilds, with restrictions, prices, demands and etc.. That creates a disparity between players that can join and those that can't. This is not true for a long time now (arguably wasn't ever true, except maybe a very short time when one guild progressed fast), and not joining is simply a choice, and not some hard to get spot that costs your soul.
I truly was not trying to change anything with my post or spark a conversation (this time). I really am just looking for a yes or no from the devs. I shouldn't have bothered with most of my response to Grom, he just fired a rather dramatic shot across my bow and I had a few minutes to spare.
---
To briefly touch on a couple points: No, I don't really think that's the case, but it seems to me that a lot of you are afraid that without the boons, most wouldn't bother with being in your guilds. It's one of the few things I can think of that would evoke the commonplace, violent tissue rejection to the whole idea of an alternative. If you say that's personally not a fear of yours, I'll believe you, but I still think it's a broad-based fear, deep down. Hahaha! With a little bit of luck and some good sense, this will be my last MMO. I thought this one was different, and it was, until it wasn't.
---
I'd like to do a little thought experiment. Assuming you're in a maxed out guild and have been there from the start. Think about all the work and investment you have personally put into your guild, GH 1-20. Now add 20% onto that. Now imagine someone else sitting around alone doing that to get just the boons with no other benefits. Have you lost anything? Have they taken anything from you? Is that a threat to you?
I probably shouldn't be bothering with this either, but whatevs.
If I were to pay 500 000 AD for 100 power increase (end game problems :P) how much would cost me getting that 100 power grom guild? Using Janne's handy site we needed 80k conqueror shards. When I leave other currencies to others, and I would buy 1 conqueror for 112 AD (2x shards, sales) I would need 9 million AD for 8k power. Cheap if you ask me and I've personally leveled few barrack ranks in our guild by myself. Of course you need to upgrade many building but that's why you get more guildmates (to share pain and labor).
So if you're smart and know how to upgrade with least cost you can do it even without many dedicated members.. I don't think it's not possible for new players. If we could do it anyone could do it. After all guild boons became less and less important with powercreep and it's easy to join sh 20 now (end game players leaving game and so on, normal for any MMO) that I don't think there is any issue*
*Well it would be nice if boons didn't exist in first place but if they introduced them together with grind then don't remove it or make it depreciated. I'm fine with making some parts of the grind easier though - easier getting vouchers/influence is fine for me.
The only benefit to players is the boons and access to vendors, though some members may still run heroics for Influence and some guilds actively support their members and some even do guild or alliance social activities
For many new players, joining a guild is pretty much the easiest campaign you can complete (just get someone to admit you) and then, just like Sharandar or Dread Ring, you are pretty much done and you don't have to worry about it anymore
Though all the guides encourage players to find a level 20 guild to join as quickly as possible, my own guild has never had a problem recruiting new members from when I joined at SH4 up till now at SH14, and we've always had a sufficient number of members, new and old, to help gather enough of whatever we need to steadily grow
As the resident Care Bear and main DC, I usually had a pretty large percentage of our new members on my friends list, so I can say fairly confidently that most of those that left our guild did so because they quit the game, though there were always those that left to join another guild (though probably only half of those ended up in a larger SH)
Point is, there are still plenty of new players that aren't interested in "freeloading," but the game itself gives no reasons for players to help grow Strongholds anymore
- honestly don't know having never joined a guild
However, if you have ever had to try to get an invite to a party outside of a guild, the extra 2000 IL seems like it would make a big difference in getting that invite.
The difference between being in a guild with max-level boons and not being in a guild at all contributes to problems with our attempts to balance the level 70 experience. For players with very high item levels, the guild boons may not seem to be that big of a deal. However, for a relatively fresh level 70, the guild boons can account for up to a 15% DPS increase, 33-50% additional health or a big chunk of extra defense. That gap makes a big difference in the experience - big enough that we need to ask ourselves whether we assume players are in a guild or if they're running solo when adjusting difficulty.
This problem becomes painfully relevant when looking at catch-up gear sets. Lately, we've been trying to do a better job of getting new players geared up faster to be successful in our newer content. Since we can't guarantee a player is in a guild and we don't want to force anyone to join a guild, if we hand out sufficient gear upgrades to get players strong enough to fight without any guild boons, does the addition of the guild boons trivialize the content? In some cases it does.
At this point, I don't know for sure where we'll go with this but there are a few things we've talked about. One idea the team has been bouncing around is to add a store in Protector's Enclave where guildless players can buy access to lesser guild boons for a period of time. This would allow us the freedom to assume players have access to some level of guild boons. Something we might consider doing sooner is to reduce the build time of some of the really big structure upgrades. My personal opinion is that reducing those times would be a mostly positive change for everyone. Again, none of this is set in stone.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
First of all, thank you very much for an answer! I wasn't sure if I'd get one, especially after things started looking a little heated. This is actually far more detailed than I would have expected too, so thanks for that as well.
Secondly, this is all very encouraging! I know it's a very complex issue (I've theorycrafted a couple of pretty involved strategies myself), but I'm a patient person. For the record, I would personally hate for folks who've worked so hard for what they have to feel like it's being taken from them. If it's going to be done it needs to be done fairly. I think many would agree that the original design of guild boons were a bit too hefty, but it would not be right to take any of that away at this point.
From my own perspective, the contribution of Guild Boons to Item Level is every bit as problematic as the stats themselves. The playerbase has a long tradition of segregating itself based on IL (and its various predecessors). When boons were added to the IL calculations last year, player group IL demands quickly got jacked up an extra 1500-2000 IL. In and of itself I guess that's "survivable", but combined with the Bonding Nerf and the newer 4 support + 1 GWF meta, if you're playing a non-favored class and are below 15k, there is basically no endgame for you. A 13k solo player without that extra IL making the difference in whether they get to participate in the rest of the game or not is... there are no polite words to describe it. It's especially insulting when you consider PvP boons, that very specifically don't even function in PvE, can add an extra 500 IL in PvE. On a side note, I think you can safely remove that from the IL calculations outside of PvP and consider it a bug fix.
While I don't really share some (most) of frogwalloper's sentiments, I'm not sure I'm fond of renting boons like that either. I would like be able to earn them myself, something I can keep, just without the requirement to do it with other people and without the fruits belonging exclusively to a guild leader that's gracious enough to let me keep benefitting from them. Including them as a rental as a stop-gap measure while someone builds their own up would be ok though, but not as an exclusive means of access. I also think it would be nice to allow people IN guilds to benefit from this as well. It would give them access to extra options and allow overachievers in small guilds to not have to suffer for the sake of their friends.
My favorite idea is linking "Solo Boons" to some kind of personal housing system, but a really long-term campaign could work as well. Any kind of solo boon would have to be mutually exclusive though, so for example, you could only pick one "Offensive" boon from a combined pool of guild and solo boons.
A completely different idea that occurred to me recently was to flesh out the 5 D&D factions (Harper, Zhentarim, Lord's Alliance, Emerald Enclave, and Order of the Gauntlet) as pseudo-guilds that anyone can join, guilded or solo. They would each have pre-determined Boon stats, but you could only gain access to them and improve them by gaining ranks within the faction by doing a campaign or something. If you want access to a different set of stats, you have to start over with a new faction.
The point is, it should be something you can build, earn, and keep. It would be a wasted opportunity for personal investment in the game to turn it into a glorified overload enchant.
Costs to advance are reduced.
Max guild level is 16, 3 rank 8 boon buildings as against 4 rank 10 max.
Smaller limit on number of accounts/characters.
This allows smaller guilds to compete. @scarabman you miss a large part of the point:
"The difference between being in a guild with max-level boons and not being in a guild at all contributes to problems with our attempts to balance the level 70 experience. For players with very high item levels, the guild boons may not seem to be that big of a deal. "
it may not be that big a deal but the loss of 2K IL means you won't get on a channel organised endgame dungeon as a 15K DPS when you might as a 17K.
So many directions to go from there: boons as you mentioned, special quests or campaigns, the ability to take on temporary companions such as Boward or Shay Cutter - probably all kinds of things you could do with this.
IMO:
Yes:
1. Going up to 80% of the boons is a good idea. Someone want 100%, guild..
2. PvP boon should only count when flagged for PvP.
No:
1. Degrading boons are a huge NO. We saw how well Black ICE / Vivification worked. Once that cat out of the bag for boons I don't want to know where it will end up. So no, not in any form or way. No maintainable, rent-able, degradable.
2. Going to 100% by some estimation of work - Can't quantify cat heading for 2 years. The investment per person for a small guild is significantly larger than large guild (per person).
If guild boons were "rented" by solo players, the time/money investment could be approximately the same as that... just as if faction boons (terrific idea btw) were to require not only building up rep to get in but some sort of maintenance activities (fighting off enemies, etc) that would need to be performed in order to keep the boons
Guild boons are much more powerful than campaign boons, so maybe they should be thought of differently... instead of fire and forget, what if they were contribution based?
All a new player has to do is find a recruiter that will admit them to a SH20 and they never have to do anything else... does that seem right?
I would suggest that faction boons AND guild boon benefits and item level be a percentage of a total value based on the contribution the player has made that month, which would help <SH20 guilds grow faster since many members that contribute nothing to their guild would at least invest the minimum effort to keep their boons up
As I said, Strongholds have no compelling content anymore, so why not add some? Whether you are a member of a player guild or a faction, shouldn't you have to participate in that somehow in order to benefit from membership (boons and access to temp structures/markets/etc?)
Take the Marauders concept and make it actually interesting and worth doing, tied to faction wars... Instead of random mobs attacking in such a boring and pointless way, make it so the Zhentarim have invaded your guild's map and you have to fight them off before they damage stuff or stop production, and then your guild members can counterattack by following their retreat into Zhentarim territory
That's just a random idea... point is, Strongholds need SOMETHING to do, so if you are planning on doing something for those that choose to remain unguilded, throw a bone to the guilds that already exist and try to make it an upgrade for everyone with interesting new content that's not just for the elite end-gamers
On a more rational topic, the idea to allow players to join a particular faction (Harper, Zhentarim, Lord's Alliance, Emerald Enclave, and Order of the Gauntlet), and gain "levels" within that faction is one of the better ideas I have heard in a long time. Allow players to do faction-specific quests to earn achievements, gear, bonuses and so on - and it would make perfect sense to re-use some of the faction-specific assets and NPCs that are already in the game - just make the factions mutually exclusive so you can only be an active member of one at any given time.
This would be great for RP purposes and would give people something to do. Mod 16, maybe? Mod 14 should be ready for testing soon, Mod 15 is probably mostly designed by now, but getting something like this in Mod 16 should be realistic.