Feedback Requested: Cross-Realm Arena and Guild Warfare

[BigPapa]

Perhaps part of the problem here is the guild level structure itself. Back a ways, someone mentioned that building new guilds isn't really feasible because of the time and cost involved in leveling them up. One nice thing about Evony was that you could form new guilds and compete because the players themselves were the power. If there were a way to level the ground a bit and make it easier to form more guilds, you might see more guilds splitting up because splitting off wouldn't be such a devastating thing to game play.

What if we did away with guild levels altogether? Just throwing it out there.

[mattp169]

The whole gwf and guild system was not thought out well imo. the solution though is not what is happening on 11+ . Maybe a few servers have the optimum situation for it to work well. But from what I read in forums and hear from others it is not working well on most servers. You get 1 uber guild.

Now with that being said
ULTIMATELY you do want 1 uber guild at end game and then server is finished. But with either current GWF system thats not what happens. 1-10 can never have this and so no competition for the top 5 guilds. And on 11+ you get that uber guild way to early in the server.

[Herby]

The answer is not resoundingly 'no.' It is mixed at best, and the population that takes the time to post on the forums is not representative of the majority of the players on the servers. The overlords should do what is best for the game, and making guild wars into a complete joke on servers 1-10 that legitimately have 5 strong guilds to compete is not what's best for the game.

I agree fully on this.

Most of those from servers 1-10 only base their judgement on their "logic" or their "what-ifs" or what they see posted by a few in the forums from servers 11+.

I wonder why they are so scared to have Cross-Realm warfare in their servers.

[Herby]

The whole gwf and guild system was not thought out well imo. the solution though is not what is happening on 11+ . Maybe a few servers have the optimum situation for it to work well. But from what I read in forums and hear from others it is not working well on most servers. You get 1 uber guild.

Now with that being said
ULTIMATELY you do want 1 uber guild at end game and then server is finished. But with either current GWF system thats not what happens. 1-10 can never have this and so no competition for the top 5 guilds. And on 11+ you get that uber guild way to early in the server.

How do you know this, have you looked at servers 11, 12, 13, 14 ... until the very last server?

Put in some hard data here, not just "assumptions'.

[xxdannisouthxx_7889427]

I agree fully on this.

Most of those from servers 1-10 only base their judgement on their "logic" or their "what-ifs" or what they see posted by a few in the forums from servers 11+.

I wonder why they are so scared to have Cross-Realm warfare in their servers.

I play on one of those 11+ servers, as well as earlier ones. The only difference in guild wars between them is instead of an uber guild dominating a single realm, the uber guild dominates the ENTIRE server. The result is that servers die a quicker death. Believe me the difference in activity between earlier and later servers is obvious, even if it's essentially the same result.

What this has caused is the seasonal migration patterns, in which there are not actually that many "new" Tynon players as much as old ones hopping server to server to start over. I am part of one of these uber guilds, and several members of my guild do this regularly where they go to a new server and just play the first week until the beginner's rewards are up, then move on to the next one. On a cross-realm setup, the competition is over within the first two weeks, the uber guild and some stragglers remain while everyone else moves on.

This happens on the earlier servers as well, however the main advantage is if you are super unhappy you still have 4 more realms to jump to in order to find a guild you like, or avoid people singling you out for extinction. On later servers there are only 3 realms, and since only Cerb and Baal are realm events there really is no escape wherever you go.

The reason why people are "scared" is I believe the older servers have a far greater investment regarding time and money. Taking down the barriers completely is untenable to them, as it now opens the server to experience this same result, which would have far greater consequences than it would on a server only 2 weeks old.

The formation of an uber-guild is inevitable, particularly when people spend money here. No one wants to lose, no one wants a losing investment, so as soon as one guild begins to coalesce into a superpower you have 2 movements: those that move towards the guild not to be left behind, and those who move to the next server. So imagine the frustration were this to occur among players who may have invested hundreds or even thousands of dollars into their characters, rather than low-level VIPs or freebies.

To some extent yes, people get too comfortable. However, at this point the answer is not to change the older servers so drastically.

The responses in this thread advocate for some server-wide activities, while protecting against a free-for-all scenario by dropping all the gates.

As a player on a later server, I actually advocate that later servers mirror the 1-10 setup, as the level of activity is much greater, there are more options in life, and a greater life-span of the server itself, as well as the people in it.

From the technical side it seems to be more efficient to do it this way, as it's simple math that infinite expansion is not possible in a world of finite resources, so the "overlords doing best for the game," per Qualan, should already be looking at how to contain the brush fire to make this game feasible in the long term.

From the personal side your friends stick around longer, rather than moving on one by one because there is simply nothing left to do as the server dies out faster. Unless you are willing to continually invest time and money into more and more characters, you simply become left behind.

So while the population posting here may not be "representative" of the majority of players, this majority who recently joined on a 11+ server have no conceptual difference between the two types and what the consequences would be of making them all the same. I'm also willing to stretch and say there are much less "pure noobs" around than people think, so perhaps in fact the forum does represent the majority. Qualan is well-intentioned, but apparently hasn't seen that the choices are either 1 uber guild in each of 5 servers, or 1 uber guild on a server that becomes much emptier, much faster.

[Dodger]

All the top players will end up in 1 guild in 1 realm making matters worse. My suggestion would be to have non-player mercenary armies to challenge any city not challenged by another guild. The more cities you own the more difficult the mercenary army becomes. Guilds would have to concentrate on the cities they want leaving other cities to be challenged by other guilds.

[Andy]

I keep on saying that the problem is not with GW but with the Guilds. If there was a way to limit the power/top players or something on any one Guild it would create several competitive guilds.

[Klepto]

I keep on saying that the problem is not with GW but with the Guilds. If there was a way to limit the power/top players or something on any one Guild it would create several competitive guilds.

I actually think both are the problem. Guilds should not be able to hold more than 30 members, IMO, maybe even 20. At least, not with how small servers are right now (10+ servers anyway) and how much sway a single powerful player can have on those servers.

Additionally, it would be better for 10+ to follow 1-9's lead on GW, with GW happening on a realm-specific basis, then having a new event for server-wide competition that would allow realms to team up together against more powerful realms. THAT would help things out a lot. Right now, things are just terribly lopsided toward the most powerful realm on my server and it gets worse day by day as they continue to reap the rewards of maintaining ownership of the good cities (not helped by GW bugs either).

[Andy]

Limiting the Guilds 10 members i not the answer, What would happen is that one guild would have most of the top players and would dominate anyway. I admit that I do not have a solution to the problem, but I ma not a game designer. There has to be a way to insure that the power in the server is distributed fairly among a number of Guilds. I do not mean all the Guilds, but maybe 3 or so on every realm and they are also balanced across the realms so one realm does not end up with all the top players.

[TOJ1656_6401947]

GW should be Realm wide so that one guild cannot dominate the whole GW.