WvW restructuring without guild Alliances is a mistake

[TheGrimm.5624]

9 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.

Agree and was waiting for Alliance discussions to bring up. What Anet is missing is Max Guilds are not the same as an Alliance. An Alliance is all guilds have a vote. No one side has control. All sides get a vote. Be they 500 or 5, these are not the same things. So WR is WR, but adding a sixth slot is a band aid but not an Alliance system.

[SweetPotato.7456]

If giving an extra guild slots did not solve your problem, everyone still fighting , what makes having alliance UI better ? people will still fight over nothing, 

[Dawdler.8521]

5 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Not so much, close but not the same.

So have we ever called server community guilds anything other than community guilds because they are a community on that server?

Super Happy Friendship Alliances?

Meta Bro Clubs?

Manpower Organisations?

[Chaba.5410]

6 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Not so much, close but not the same.

That was a rather short post for you without going into any explanation about why guilds are not a type of community.

[MedievalThings.5417]

Inb4 certain guilds spend all their non-playing times running into walls in EB just to make sure they can always play where they want.

[Dawdler.8521]

52 minutes ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

Inb4 certain guilds spend all their non-playing times running into walls in EB just to make sure they can always play where they want.

The same guilds playing WvW now? Yeah I guess they will do the same thing if that’s what you see 🤷‍♂️

[Chichimec.9364]

17 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.

 

8 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Agree and was waiting for Alliance discussions to bring up. What Anet is missing is Max Guilds are not the same as an Alliance. An Alliance is all guilds have a vote. No one side has control. All sides get a vote. Be they 500 or 5, these are not the same things. So WR is WR, but adding a sixth slot is a band aid but not an Alliance system.

 

13 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

...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.

 

12 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

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.

Both irl groups and in GW2 guilds I've come across people with such big egos that they try to act like dictators. I think Chaba has the right of it - petty dictators can be found in any human groups and thus this is not solely a WvW problem. ArchonWing has the simple solution though. It's an old idea called voting with one's feet. If you like the group or guild, then stay. If you don't, then leave and find another one or even start your own. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

That was a rather short post for you without going into any explanation about why guilds are not a type of community.

lol  I try and go for brevity to not distract at the time. A guild is a family. A community is a lot of families all in the same place. They may not be related and linked but they interact every day. A family may follow the rules of their elders but are not answerable to those other families in the community. An Alliance is not the same as a Guild, but the way they structure it, it is. So now we are left with an elder that can decide that your brother is not in your family and remove them.

To put it another way, a Guild is a group that has chosen to play together. Communities are groups of these that have stayed on the same server and though they may not be all in the same guild have played around each other for a decade. Voice comms or not, it doesn't mean they haven't seen these others as neighbors and then aid to each other. Guilds are communities in more of a sense of gated communities, your in or your out which is not the same thing. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

3 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

So have we ever called server community guilds anything other than community guilds because they are a community on that server?

Super Happy Friendship Alliances?

Meta Bro Clubs?

Manpower Organisations?

Community guilds still allow one or a few to control. Servers are open to all. I have seen Alliance systems, Anet's version is not one of those.

Edited May 24 by TheGrimm.5624

[TheGrimm.5624]

4 hours ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

If giving an extra guild slots did not solve your problem, everyone still fighting , what makes having alliance UI better ? people will still fight over nothing, 

Its a matter of trying to prevent future drama, servers already addressed this.

[XenesisII.1540]

14 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Servers are open to all

Blackgate would disagree being locked 11 out of the past 12 years. 🤭

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Blackgate would disagree being locked 11 out of the past 12 years. 🤭

lol, during linkings, I don't ever remember being linked with them either. Might have been interesting. 

[Dawdler.8521]

18 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Community guilds still allow one or a few to control. Servers are open to all. I have seen Alliance systems, Anet's version is not one of those.

Meanwhile, someone above suggesting certain guilds reserve slots on EBG by AFKing there not letting anyone else in 🙄

Do you have any example of a server community guild which has this kind of dictatorship control instead of just being open to all? Seems like it's common. People in WvW must love following dictators.

[TheGrimm.5624]

14 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Meanwhile, someone above suggesting certain guilds reserve slots on EBG by AFKing there not letting anyone else in 🙄

Do you have any example of a server community guild which has this kind of dictatorship control instead of just being open to all? Seems like it's common. People in WvW must love following dictators.

Easy, so you have never seen a guild or a group ask for others to leave a map so that their players can get on it? I kind of doubt that unless you have never been on a server that queue fills. 

Or you also didn't play during the tournament years.

Edited May 24 by TheGrimm.5624
edit: or

[Dawdler.8521]

Just now, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Easy, so you have never seen a guild or a group ask for others to leave a map so that their players can get on it? I kind of doubt that unless you have never been on a server that queue fills. 

Is it the community guild leaders that come on the border and demand people leave on behalf of their community guild? 

We where talking community guilds, not discord fight commanders gathering their 50 mans and wanting other people to leave. That has nothing to do with the leadership of a community guild and how it's being controlled.

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Easy, so you have never seen a guild or a group ask for others to leave a map so that their players can get on it? I kind of doubt that unless you have never been on a server that queue fills. 

That's not really a dictatorship, because they have no way of enforcing this demand. What's the penalty for not complying? Nothing.

In PvE there's a stronger argument, because they can use force to remove you from the instance. But in WvW, they have no such power. It is quite the opposite of a dictatorship. It's just a crazy person yelling at a cloud.

I suppose in an alliance, they could deny you from the alliance. But that still can't remove  you from the wvw map, only from the next matchup. However, an alliance does that isn't going to last long. And I am not sure why you would want to form an alliance with those kinds of people. Wouldn't it be better if they were not on your team?

If anything these groups benefit the least from an alliance, and will most likely just be by themselves.

3 hours ago, Chichimec.9364 said:

Both irl groups and in GW2 guilds I've come across people with such big egos that they try to act like dictators. I think Chaba has the right of it - petty dictators can be found in any human groups and thus this is not solely a WvW problem. ArchonWing has the simple solution though. It's an old idea called voting with one's feet. If you like the group or guild, then stay. If you don't, then leave and find another one or even start your own. 

Well, in these cases, the majority will still rule because it is trivial to make a new guild, and thus said dictator will be alone.

It would be disruptive, and that brings into problem with what is invested in the guild bank and upgrades. But atm there is no need to invest in the alliance guild, now that it's a 6th slot and you can just use personal guilds to claim stuff.

The guild system is only a problem with investment. Though in all fairness, they should indeed fix up the guild systems a bit to prevent abuse, and of course not just WvWers use guilds.

Also a  WvW guild of that I was involved with  was the subject of a hostile takeover (it's now a splinter group), but the El Presidente and crew that presided over the takeover is pretty much what is the laughingstock of WvW, and definitely will not survive the alliance world-- they've spent years  leeching off the server and other people, and it's unlikely they will do more harm. Of course they did great harm to the server involved, so it's not like servers gave any protection against that either.

Edited May 24 by ArchonWing.9480

[TheGrimm.5624]

Lets drop the side car discussion of dictatorships and more that Guild logic in most games and Alliance logic are not the same. We never got to this point since we never got far enough along to talk about Alliances. Guild logic remains as single points of potential issues. Guild logic is the way it is launching so it is what it is. Guilds implode all the time here, Alliance logic in other games have tools to make sure that is contained in some way. Just giving word of warning that players should make sure that whoever they have lead their Community Guilds make sure they do it with considerations. 

 

[Chaba.5410]

5 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

lol  I try and go for brevity to not distract at the time. A guild is a family. A community is a lot of families all in the same place. They may not be related and linked but they interact every day. A family may follow the rules of their elders but are not answerable to those other families in the community. An Alliance is not the same as a Guild, but the way they structure it, it is. So now we are left with an elder that can decide that your brother is not in your family and remove them.

To put it another way, a Guild is a group that has chosen to play together. Communities are groups of these that have stayed on the same server and though they may not be all in the same guild have played around each other for a decade. Voice comms or not, it doesn't mean they haven't seen these others as neighbors and then aid to each other. Guilds are communities in more of a sense of gated communities, your in or your out which is not the same thing. 

Thanks for the answer.  To me that doesn't really contradict what I wrote about a guild being a type of community, although arguably I wouldn't use the word family for that.

Players who stay on the same server have chosen to play together.  Players sometimes decide a server or a guild isn't for them.  No one is beholden to stay in a guild or on a server.  It's free association by choice.

[Dawdler.8521]

8 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Guilds implode all the time here, Alliance logic in other games have tools to make sure that is contained in some way. Just giving word of warning that players should make sure that whoever they have lead their Community Guilds make sure they do it with considerations. 

True, it’s almost as if a community require commitment both from members and leaders.

[TheGrimm.5624]

48 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

True, it’s almost as if a community require commitment both from members and leaders.

Yup that's the point. So one rogue leader can delete a community. So you agree caution yes? An Alliance system allows for tools to prevent a rogue lead from wiping something out. An Alliance system allows for checks and balances to block this sort of behavior. Anet just didn't get there yet. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

9 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Thanks for the answer.  To me that doesn't really contradict what I wrote about a guild being a type of community, although arguably I wouldn't use the word family for that.

Players who stay on the same server have chosen to play together.  Players sometimes decide a server or a guild isn't for them.  No one is beholden to stay in a guild or on a server.  It's free association by choice.

"Players who stay on the same server have chosen to play together. "

Yes, this is what I have termed as Pub style to define a passive way that disparate players might have grouped and though they are not in the same voice, nor guild, might have seen more laid back views of community. Mileage varies. A server to some of us might have been a community,  even in linking they saw guilds and names and knew how they would move, react, respond and could you could act in tandem. If I see servermates being jumped, odds are good I am going to attack, I am going to react based on what actions I know server mates will do, I will likewise try and encourage them to do what I know that they can do. Be that while roaming, Havoc or pugmanding. Links have been great to meet and see and fight and play with others. I know some have said it was a bad ideas, but to me, its been fun interactions. So WR might be more of the same. What I will miss, unless I take action which is an issue on my part, is seeing those others that I have enjoyed stepping into the pub and waving and raising a pint to. Part of me wants to see how the sorting is working and part says other things. Not sure where that is going. But after decades, have seen drama, have seen alliances, have seen guilds implode, and since I enjoy this game, I try and be what might be seen as paranoid.

lol, side note I was brief before since I mostly agreed but had concerns, so don't take my short reply as anything more as not wanting to distract my friend. It 4:30 AM, so now you have me rambling as I need this coffee to wear off so I can sleep and havoc in the afternoon. kitten vampire life styles.

[Mabi black.1824]

1 hour ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

"Players who stay on the same server have chosen to play together. "

The discussion of this post should be a bit more extensive. in the sense that we should start reasoning from the server. The server is a very large container (2000 people) you choose it and if there is room you enter. Freedom of choice is absolute. Don't ask anyone else, besides yourself, if you can or can't be a part of it. Inside this container, then, sub-groups are formed, for the most varied reasons you want to imagine. playing time, style of play, language and nationality, real-life friendships, same way of thinking, same way of joking, same age, in short, any reason. All these parts are united by the design that WVW has always had. They will all participate in the comparison/competition compared to all other teams/servers of similar size. The change that Anet proposed, has shifted towards a concept of alliances. with a much smaller size (500 players). The impact of a smaller environment is to reduce the opportunities to form the most varied subgroups precisely because the numbers have been reduced. In addition to this negligible aspect, the substantial change is that in order to enter this container you have to ask another player for permission. it is no longer a free choice. And even when an alliance manages to contain sub-groups, what is missing is the ''motivation'' aspect because the WVW deisgn is still the same as before, Comparison and competition is still reported on a server basis (2000 players) and not alliances (500 players). Then we were told that we will not have alliances but can only group into a guild, because the limit is the same. true. But from a ''community'' point of view, the advantage of an alliance (even if we don't know how Anet would have imagined them) is that to enter or to stay in that reduced container you have the possibility to ask for it from more than 1 player. If for any reason you can't comply with any restrictions your Guild had imposed, let alone any stupid personal reason of your Guild Leader, you could have asked other Leaders in the same Alliance. A sort of social mitigation, if you like being in a group you have more opportunities to count on being part of it, and maybe overcome any misunderstanding rather than a real-life incident that didn't give you access for more than seven weeks (I'm making this up at random)

All of this, however, is practically telling us, that from a ''social'' point of view, this change is a devolution.and definitely not an evolution. Whichever way you want to look at this change, you're going to see opportunities, freedoms, mitigations, groupings, sharings, reduced compared to what we've always had. Not to mention the motivations, because the latter are not reduced, they simply no longer exist. Because WVW's design isn't changing it. They delete the server, but the weekly matches, the score, the comparison, the competition are still referred to the server.

It's clear that we'll have a few small problems to sort out along the way. But hey at least we get balanced teams.🙄

 

Edited May 25 by Mabi black.1824

[Zyreva.1078]

2 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Yup that's the point. So one rogue leader can delete a community. So you agree caution yes? An Alliance system allows for tools to prevent a rogue lead from wiping something out. An Alliance system allows for checks and balances to block this sort of behavior. Anet just didn't get there yet. 

One can not delete a community. One can delete a guild. But guilds (just like alliances or servers) serve only as vessel for a community and if one gets destroyed it should be easy for the community inside to simply create a new one without that problematic person. In that regard guilds might be actually less fragile than alliances, because they are so easy to (re)create. It only becomes a problem if people start investing too much into such server/community guilds. But alliances might lead to a lot more discussions, fights and "break ups". Having multiple people "in charge" isn't always better.

Also keep in mind that we do not know, how alliances were supposed to work exactly and which features they would bring, especially when it comes to player management. Because that system simply never existed and we only ever got some vague ideas but never anything substantial and there were many unanswered questions in this regard. So whatever concept you have in your head - it's just your own ideas and not necessarily how alliances would actually work.

@Mabi black.1824

Isn't it common for large guilds to have many players with "invitation rights"? And wouldn't it make sense for a server/alliance guild to simply give every member the ability to invite others (I'm not very familiar with guild systems, but that should be possible, right?) in oder to get as many players from a server as possible and therefore there's many players someone could ask for an invitation? Many more than there would be in an alliance, because regular guilds probably wouldn't want to mess with their permissions, so the inhibition threshold to join those "server guilds" should be as low as it gets.

So what's stopping a player like you (or anyone really) from simply creating such an "everyone from deso is welcome" guild? Name it "Desolation [Deso]", and make it clear that it is supposed to be a "server alliance" and with as little "hierarchy" as possible and start inviting people. And if your "server community" is actually a thing and people want to stay together, then everything else should basically flow by itself, no?

Edited May 25 by Zyreva.1078

[Mabi black.1824]

8 minutes ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

So what's stopping a player like you (or anyone really) from simply creating such an "everyone from deso is welcome" guild?

but of course you can. and anyone can do it. In 12 months' time, we will continue to do so, maybe not in reference to the old servers but in reference to anything else. However, I wasn't denying the possibilities you have in grouping friends and players into a guild. I was pointing out the differences between server - alliance - guild from a ''social'' point of view, because someone claims that there are no differences, while I am trying to show you that there are huge differences between servers.

P.S. The corporations of desolation are practically all already organized. My guild is taking care of the last ones left to prevent them from being reduced to a 'filler' if they wish to avoid it. just in these last 3 weeks that remain. Even now there are players who don't know what 14/06 is.  You should know that we are RG. We're not worried about running with anyone, let alone against anyone. We just care that no one from our team is left behind. at least as long as the server community are a thing. After that good luck to all.✌️

[Zyreva.1078]

8 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I was pointing out the differences between server - alliance - guild from a ''social'' point of view, because someone claims that there are no differences, while I am trying to show you that there are huge differences between servers.

I don't think anyone denies the difference between servers and guilds, however we don't actually know how different alliances would actually be from guilds and whether they would work better and "fix" whatever issue players have with guilds right now.

I think the biggest issue with that extra guild slot instead of an alliance system is a psychological one. People seem to have a set idea about what/how a guild is supposed to be and they have troubles realising that a guild can be whatever the players make out of it - even an alliance like construct. Maybe it would help if anet labels that extra guild slot different?