Making GW fun? (an invitation to discussion)
Here's the current situation.
Level 4 and up guilds can accept 70+ members.
The Tynon-imposed player cap means that there are never more than 70 power players in any given realm.
This appears to frequently result in one power guild having all strong players and having all cities in Guild Wars, with all other guilds combined having only a fraction of their power.
This is true in all 5 realms on 1.tynon.com, Wrath of Odin, for instance.
There's little incentive for the power guild players to quit their guild, since they'd lose the huge benefits from GW cities and all their guild tech, so the power imbalance will never change.
This is a shame, since guild competition would make the game so much more fun.
How can Tynon fix this? Some possibilities (none of which are clear fixes, hence the invitation to discussion) include:
1) Capping guild membership MUCH lower, say 30 members. Let it be 20 at lvl 1, 25 at lvl 2, and 30 at 3 & above.
2) Capping power players. For instance: a guild may not recruit a member if that would give them more than 50% of the top 20 ranked players by power (if current members rise in the rankings that's fine).
...#1 or #2 could be implemented by setting up a 2 week period for guilds to rearrange and comply with the new limits, after which, if they're not in compliance they cannot participate in Guild Wars (and will not be able to defend their cities).
3) Make guilds exist across all realms on a server, or increase the # of players per realm 5-fold (although I don't think the servers could handle that). The situation (active on some realms?) of letting a guild in one realm bid on a city in any realm may make GW more interesting for the #1 guilds in each realm, but doesn't fix the only-one-power-guild-per-realm problem.
4) Giving players who leave a #1-ranked power guild for a lower ranked guild some breaks:
-Let them carry their guild technologies with them (as potential credits if their new guild doesn't support that level of tech yet).
-Let them cash in their guild tech for contributions to their new guild (at 50%, 75%, 100% value?)...
...these contributions might be personal only (for tech or chests) & not increase the guild's spendable contributions...
...or you might allow players to chose whether to keep them to spend on tech or chests, or contribute them to increase their new guild's spendable contributions - essentially letting a bunch of players spend away some of the tech they had in their prior guild to level up a new guild fast.
-Or, possibly, any new guild started by a player leaving a #1 power guild begins at a level 2 less than their original guild & with guild technology at the same level (this should apply only to people who have been members of that guild for, say, over a month or two).
-Let new guilds started by ex-members of the #1 ranked guild in the realm skip cooldown times for rising in levels (if done w/in 24 hours of the guild's founding).
-To avoid guild-hopping shenanigans, keep the 24 hour cool-down for joining or starting a guild after leaving one, but then have the credits/conditions above apply to the 1st guild they join or start within the following week.
-Maybe let these benefits apply when someone leaves _any_ guild to join a lower-ranked or new guild.
I know many people really like their guild mates and would hate to seem to turn against them. However, if their old guild-mates thought for a few seconds they might well thank them for making the game more interesting. And if it's really a concern, they could always switch realms.
Comments & ideas appreciated,
-Hellion
