WvW restructuring without guild Alliances is a mistake

[niteskate.3641]

It is a mistake to make World Restructuring perma-beta with the guild Alliances feature.

People have set up discord servers and there is a community around the individual GW2 worlds which have grown over the years. People will inevitably lose the opportunity to play with some of their favorite mates and / or commanders.

Anet Devs, please look into what currently happens in the discord forums / discussion forums and see the difficulties people have forming new meta guilds and how a lot of WvW players are desparately trying to organise, so they don't lose their peers.

For example a meta guild immediately runs into the 500 people limit and also tends to draw people away from smaller active guilds. Currently there is no nice solution.

The solution would be Alliances where guilds would keep their "character" and fight together with other guild - as was originally planned.

I would postpone the World Restructuring until I had a minimum viable Alliance solution. For example give guild leader a comma-separated list of preferred guilds and let the World Restructuring algorithm put a heavy weight on the preferred guilds when deciding which guilds play together.

As the *multi-player* game, you would honor the communities the players forge, not destroy them. 

[Chichimec.9364]

Hmm, I'm a WvW foot soldier, not a commander nor a guild leader. So I'm not privy to all the ins and outs of putting an alliance together. From what our guild leader reports though, our alliance has been in the works for quite a while and is coming together quite nicely atm. With the extra guild slot, our allied guilds are forming a new guild and it should be ready to go by the deadline. I'm also not privy to the ins and outs of Anet's now discarded vision of alliances but I think what's happening on our server is along the lines of what they intended all along. Each guild keeps its own identity, while being able to run together under a common banner. If my understanding of that is wrong, I'm sure someone in this sub-forum will quickly correct me.

The one possible sticking point I see is the 500 member limit. If that's too small, Anet may increase the membership limit for WvW guilds. Though, given their track record with WvW, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Anet to correct any problem in this cornerstone.

[Draygo.9473]

The limit for alliances was 500 members anyway, which is the same cap for a guild. Unless anet was going to allow alliances to have more than 500 members the whole alliance feature is just redundant with a guild slot, so I see why they just scrapped it for just an additional guild slot. 

An additional guild slot works almost exactly like the alliance system was supposed to work. You simply set the alliance guild as your 'wvw' guild, and you continue to represent your normal small wvw guild as normal. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

They should probably have increased guild size in general. It's been like 11 years, but then again it took them so long to even give us a 6th guild slot and items still come in stacks of 250. Wonder if it's because spaghetti code means it'll break some random pve map if a number gets changed.

If there are no long term plans to really implement alliances, and let's be realistic here, at least they should make actual guilds a bit more robust.

[Sviel.7493]

If the alliance size is too high (and 500 may be as high as they're willing to go), then they won't be able to do proper matchmaking.  If you're on a massive server, there will inevitably be some people split off whether it launches now or after a later update with strict alliances.

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

I believe someone mentioned that the WvW population was not that big and around 1,500-3,000. Having an alliance or guild capacity over 500 members makes no sense if that is the case.

[niteskate.3641]

On my server it is not working well (Deso). Everybody postponed/avoided the subject and now there are a couple of active WvW guilds which are too big to form am "alliance" guild. Looks very much like many if not most people may either join one of the active guilds and loose contact to the players of the other active WvW guilds. The active guilds are too big to form an allience guild due to the 500 member cap. Also: If you form an alliance guild, why should people fight for their actual WvW guild? 

Banding these active WvW guilds together would be the solutioin. That was my understanding of the Alliances feature.

Edited May 23 by niteskate.3641
clarify

[Zyreva.1078]

51 minutes ago, niteskate.3641 said:

On my server it is not working well (Deso). Everybody postponed/avoided the subject and now there are a couple of active WvW guilds which are too big to form am "alliance" guild. Looks very much like many if not most people may either join one of the active guilds and loose contact to the players of the other active WvW guilds. The active guilds are too big to form an allience guild due to the 500 member cap. Also: If you form an alliance guild, why should people fight for their actual WvW guild? 

Banding these active WvW guilds together would be the solutioin. That was my understanding of the Alliances feature.

Did they already fill their "alliance guild" (if yes, how much more space would be needed to fit everyone?) or is the whole "can't fit everyone" narrative just an assumption based on guild roster size without considering how many of those guild members are actually active WvW players?

Also like it was already mentioned, alliances where never supposed to fit more than 500 players, so regardless of whether the issue is perceived or real, alliances wouldn't have made a difference.

 

[Custodio.6134]

1 hour ago, ChrisWhitey.9076 said:

I believe someone mentioned that the WvW population was not that big and around 1,500-3,000. Having an alliance or guild capacity over 500 members makes no sense if that is the case.

We don´t have any data about WvW-population in terms of player-numbers. So all of that is pure speculation. However: they used to aim for alliance-sizes of:
 

Quote

somewhere between 500-1000 members

Source: one of the earlier posts from back in 2018 

which would mean either a maxiumum of one or two full guilds. Also, since the member-limit of a single guild is 500, it also only makes sense to put the alliance-cap to a multiplicative of 500. however: we don´t even know how big a full team is intended to be (but considering the old post, it´s probably at least 1000 active players). And tbh: the lower the player-cap for an alliance the easier it becomes to distribute everyone equally. 

keep in mind: this is 6 years old by now, and IF alliances ever come, it´s probably subject to change. 

[niteskate.3641]

I get the point that a large guild might suffice if the member limit is about 500. But if I join such a guild, what about my "normal" WvW guild? Which would I represent? I would become meaningless over time because WvW activity would center around this large guild and not the community around the current guild. Please explain! 🙂

[Dawdler.8521]

1 minute ago, niteskate.3641 said:

I get the point that a large guild might suffice if the member limit is about 500. But if I join such a guild, what about my "normal" WvW guild? Which would I represent? I would become meaningless over time because WvW activity would center around this large guild and not the community around the current guild. Please explain! 🙂

Community guilds already exist. There are commanders that gather 50 man groups every time they log on. 

Have you been meaningless all these years?

[ArchonWing.9480]

  

8 minutes ago, niteskate.3641 said:

I get the point that a large guild might suffice if the member limit is about 500. But if I join such a guild, what about my "normal" WvW guild? Which would I represent? I would become meaningless over time because WvW activity would center around this large guild and not the community around the current guild. Please explain! 🙂

Alliances overwrite servers, not guilds.  As is, most will do it just to be on the same team and don't even have to rep the alliance guild at all.

Edited May 23 by ArchonWing.9480

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 hours ago, Chichimec.9364 said:

The one possible sticking point I see is the 500 member limit. If that's too small, Anet may increase the membership limit for WvW guilds. Though, given their track record with WvW, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Anet to correct any problem in this cornerstone.

Keeping it linked to the Guild size was a good call. Making it bigger might have various issues. Making it smaller impacts maxed guilds. We also potentially already might be facing groups looking to make the normal maps EotM v2 by trying to actively avoid fighting each other and coordinating while on different servers to make the maps into a ring around the rosy. Which with all the defense nerfs, might be even easier to do. I still remember some tags asking players to stop defending so that the enemy could take the keep since they were told they could while we took theirs. We will be living in interesting times.

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 hour ago, niteskate.3641 said:

I get the point that a large guild might suffice if the member limit is about 500. But if I join such a guild, what about my "normal" WvW guild? Which would I represent? I would become meaningless over time because WvW activity would center around this large guild and not the community around the current guild. Please explain! 🙂

So someone needs to create a guild for that extra guild slot they gave us. "Puppy Monkey Baby (PMB)" is created with the min required for a guild startup. That guild lead(s) now controls that guild. They invite other people to that guild that want to stick and move together thru the WR. Everyone that does marks PMB as their WvW guild for sorting will be sorted together outside of bugs. After sorting they just rep their own or no guild as they play thru the linking period. They then just need to make sure they have their WvW set before the next resorting.

Hope I keep that neutral tone. I hadn't tested this since was saving that testing for the Alliance rollout but based on prior feedback others did. This is also why Anet looked at their Alliance logic and the current team said, hey that's really just a big guild so why add a new AI, lets just try it as a big guild and go from there. Again won't add more points there just to keep the facts.

If someone who already tested the community guild during the beta wants to add it didn't work that way please do so for clarification. Hope that helps.

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

The biggest issue with both the guild system, and the proposed alliance system, is that in the end, when the rubber meets the road.  The systems are dictatorships, where 1 person can, at a whim, change or dismantle them as they deem fit.   Making them simply unsuitable for community building, unless you 100% trust the person in charge.

[Chichimec.9364]

19 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

So someone needs to create a guild for that extra guild slot they gave us. "Puppy Monkey Baby (PMB)" is created with the min required for a guild startup. That guild lead(s) now controls that guild. They invite other people to that guild that want to stick and move together thru the WR. Everyone that does marks PMB as their WvW guild for sorting will be sorted together outside of bugs. After sorting they just rep their own or no guild as they play thru the linking period. They then just need to make sure they have their WvW set before the next resorting.

Hope I keep that neutral tone. I hadn't tested this since was saving that testing for the Alliance rollout but based on prior feedback others did. This is also why Anet looked at their Alliance logic and the current team said, hey that's really just a big guild so why add a new AI, lets just try it as a big guild and go from there. Again won't add more points there just to keep the facts.

If someone who already tested the community guild during the beta wants to add it didn't work that way please do so for clarification. Hope that helps.

 

1 hour ago, niteskate.3641 said:

I get the point that a large guild might suffice if the member limit is about 500. But if I join such a guild, what about my "normal" WvW guild? Which would I represent? I would become meaningless over time because WvW activity would center around this large guild and not the community around the current guild. Please explain! 🙂

Our alliance tested this during the last beta. The leaders of several WvW guilds set up a shell guild which those interested could join. It worked well except for a few folks who didn't get put in with the rest of us. The individual guilds kept their own identity, commanders, and run times. One could ride with the other guilds during their run times if so desired but we can do that with the friendly guilds on our server already, so it was not a big deal. After WR is launched, I'll still be running with my current WvW guild on a regular basis. As far as I can tell now, WR will not have much effect on who I run with. It remains to be seen what effect it will have on who we fight each week.

As for repping, everyone in my WvW guild is a member of several guilds, be it pve, raid, or other WvW guilds. During our runs, we are free to rep whichever one of our guilds we want to. That doesn't dilute our community in the slightest. 

[Chaba.5410]

6 hours ago, niteskate.3641 said:

The active guilds are too big to form an allience guild due to the 500 member cap.

If you thought an alliance was going to allow guilds to get around the 500 member cap, you'd be mistaken.

Alliances were advertised as being limited to 500 members.

Edited May 24 by Chaba.5410

[Chaba.5410]

5 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

We don´t have any data about WvW-population in terms of player-numbers. So all of that is pure speculation. However: they used to aim for alliance-sizes of:
 

Source: one of the earlier posts from back in 2018 

which would mean either a maxiumum of one or two full guilds. Also, since the member-limit of a single guild is 500, it also only makes sense to put the alliance-cap to a multiplicative of 500. however: we don´t even know how big a full team is intended to be (but considering the old post, it´s probably at least 1000 active players). And tbh: the lower the player-cap for an alliance the easier it becomes to distribute everyone equally. 

keep in mind: this is 6 years old by now, and IF alliances ever come, it´s probably subject to change. 

Since that post was made, all that's been talked about is a cap of 500 instead.

See a few months later:

 

Quote

Alliance size

We are currently leaning toward alliance size being 500. This is technically easier, as we already support groups of this size (guilds), and it gives us more flexibility to make the worlds even.

 

[Chaba.5410]

3 hours ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

The biggest issue with both the guild system, and the proposed alliance system, is that in the end, when the rubber meets the road.  The systems are dictatorships, where 1 person can, at a whim, change or dismantle them as they deem fit.   Making them simply unsuitable for community building, unless you 100% trust the person in charge.

A guild is a type of community.  So disingenuous...

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

Of course you think it's disingenuous, you are no doubt in the inner clique of whichever guilds you partake in.  I find the cliquishness of guilds disgusting even when I'm in the inner clique.  And I just can't not see it.  Ignorance is bliss I guess.

[Chaba.5410]

24 minutes ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

Of course you think it's disingenuous, you are no doubt in the inner clique of whichever guilds you partake in.  I find the cliquishness of guilds disgusting even when I'm in the inner clique.  And I just can't not see it.  Ignorance is bliss I guess.

Just because you find a particular community isn't something for you doesn't mean it's unsuitable for community building.

What you seem to be upset with is cliques, which have little to do with the mechanics of guilds and more to do with human social psychology.  Cliques show up in any social context, including on servers.  It's not news that people have friends and they play games together and sometimes make guilds together too then invite others and sometimes they don't make new friends of the others.  Find your own group of friends.

Edited May 24 by Chaba.5410

[ArchonWing.9480]

4 hours ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

The biggest issue with both the guild system, and the proposed alliance system, is that in the end, when the rubber meets the road.  The systems are dictatorships, where 1 person can, at a whim, change or dismantle them as they deem fit.   Making them simply unsuitable for community building, unless you 100% trust the person in charge.

Any "dictatorial" attempt is thwarted by just making a new guild at the cost of 1 gold. It amounts to little more tha self eviction.

It is really only a problem if people have devoted significant resources to the guild that could be stolen. But at the moment, the alliance guild is merely an anchor that really only to work when teams are created.

Edited May 24 by ArchonWing.9480

[roederich.2716]

9 hours ago, niteskate.3641 said:

It is a mistake to make World Restructuring perma-beta with the guild Alliances feature.

People have set up discord servers and there is a community around the individual GW2 worlds which have grown over the years. People will inevitably lose the opportunity to play with some of their favorite mates and / or commanders.

Anet Devs, please look into what currently happens in the discord forums / discussion forums and see the difficulties people have forming new meta guilds and how a lot of WvW players are desparately trying to organise, so they don't lose their peers.

For example a meta guild immediately runs into the 500 people limit and also tends to draw people away from smaller active guilds. Currently there is no nice solution.

The solution would be Alliances where guilds would keep their "character" and fight together with other guild - as was originally planned.

I would postpone the World Restructuring until I had a minimum viable Alliance solution. For example give guild leader a comma-separated list of preferred guilds and let the World Restructuring algorithm put a heavy weight on the preferred guilds when deciding which guilds play together.

As the *multi-player* game, you would honor the communities the players forge, not destroy them. 

there are alliances discords for NA and EU which are player hubs. people can find or advert their alliances there. 

you and your friends find a new alliance soon.

 

[niteskate.3641]

Ah, that was very helpful. Thanks for explaining it to me. The whole thing sounds much better, now. 🙂 Hope we on Deso can sort it out and not loose half of our fellows.

[TheGrimm.5624]

5 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

A guild is a type of community.  So disingenuous...

Not so much, close but not the same.