For me the problem is that with the current limit the game debs suggest that every 4 characters out of 5 have gleamclub. Because that’s how the limit gets decided. The amount of members that have gleam club.
Portal seekers belongs to the less of 5% guilds that has more then 100 playes. 317 of the 212 avaible spots. So in our current state we have 1 out of 3 that has gleam club. Not strange because most people joining a mayor guild is new, wants to enjoy the buffs too, and wants to figure out what a guild does.
The real thing that would help immensely is guild management tools. Give players and guild leaders the possibility to increase the cap and better tools to make rules. Like ways to see who has gleam club and who is actively play the game. Then it would be possible to kick people without feeling bad.
and i was going to make my own post on this (i commented breifly on what turns you off… thread)
But basically get rid of the fact people have to pay to join a guild now (if its at max cap, then officially cap it and let no one else in! otherwise remove the pay to play/win/guild mehcanic on this!)
won’t say anything else here as i explain more in=depth there
Why is there a cap on guild members at all? I’m assuming some technical limitation but don’t understand it. Other games manage well without limits.
This is a pain point you just don’t have to consider in other MMOs I’ve played. Seems like a headache for guild leaders and players and it makes the game/devs look a bit… well, amateur.
Edit; just to clarify, I know they’re not, but it gives that appearance.
Said it before but I think that buffs should be paid by things you do, not coin. Everyone plays but not everyone has coin. Plus people need to donate while paying by your actions means it is automatic.
For instance grapple and run could be paid with amount of metres travelled.
Basically it is what Endeavour already is but not simply xp.
This will make sure that even a level 2 player is helping, plus people can suddenly afford to be in a small guild…
I don’t understand why that would be surprising. There are only a few key guilds that have the funds to run fully time max buffs and be attractive to members. Added to that there the game is so skewed towards people focusing on being part of the primary portal networks or few key locations that are the center of the universe.
Just a general comment … Personally I am mixed on this topic. I think a limit is needed for some of the larger guilds - they just need to stop trying to control the universe and be everything in this game for all people. For others that are just trying to support cities, I am against the cap.
Overall I see this as another problem that the devs created because they have a specific mindset with this game and put other decisions in place. This was massively created because people were forced to use ALTs over single characters and forced into needing ALTs for specialization. Consistently the fundamental design and approach leads to scenarios where there just are not any good solutions.
Technical limitations are one reason to cap, but more relevant to this discussion are the design limitations. Guilds provide buffs which make them both a social system and a gameplay advantage system. The social system seems silly to cap. Why not let everyone join one guild? But there are a lot of reasons to cap buffs.
Since Boundless has a player run economy the devs have to be very careful not to create chasms between the haves and the have-nots. Guild buffs are static cost which means the net benefit gets cheaper the more members you have. 100 players dropping 100k coins is like saying one week of a buff costs the individual 1k coins. Let that guild grow to 1000 players and now that same buff costs only 100c. A new player joining the game must either be absorbed into a mega guild or be at a huge economic disadvantage. Players effectively get to say who is allowed to play the game and who isn’t by using the guild system to enforce socio-economic classes. Eventually the game distills down to a handful of very strong guilds with a lot of power. Devs are smart to prevent this.
Some players recognize the economy of scale effect between guild size and static buff cost and ask for buff prices to scale with number of members. That removes the economy of scale and fixes the problem, right? Nope, this too will have adverse effects on the game. Realistically not everyone in the guild is paying for buffs. A few well-established guild members foot the bill and in return they get an army of guildmates to amplify their in-game effectiveness. The current system may be 1k coins per head but anyone can pay it. Under a scaling cost system new members must either be willing to pay their share or they effectively raise the cost for all other members. So this provides incentive for guilds to shrink and to consolidate around economic power. Again we end up with a class system.
I think the guild system is working fine as a social buff platform. I think the players who want the cap raised are jumping the gun and presenting a solution rather than a problem. It is much more beneficial to share what administrative problems they are facing so the devs can find a way to provide them which isn’t tied to guild buffs. The guild cap number should be seen as an invariant. I think the weird change last patch is something the devs will come to regret.
As usual I will place the blame for this situation squarely on the existence of alts. If one player meant one character this would all be going much more smoothly.
Incorrect. Instead of laughing you should probably take more than 3 seconds to try to understand what I mean.
The city use case Moe mentioned was a specific thing. The larger guilds I am mention about are people that are trying to run portal networks, cities, hunts, and a million other things inside one group. They are trying to be everything for everyone… just like what I said. So maybe they need to stop trying to run everything in the game.
Basically we need to allow any members that want to be in a guild. But we need to limit the functions with the guild like buffs. This way you can help with the social but control the other challenges the devs see happening.
When guilds released i said there shouldnt be a coin requirement. Endeavor only wouldve been a better choice imo. Its easy to get by simply playing the game. Forcing a recurring coin cost makes people consolidate into a few big guilds just for buffs and now we have the problem that we have. Even if the buffs aren’t necessary, most people will make their primary whatever is giving the top buffs.
I still think a better alternative would be buffs are earned through a one time purchase, be it coin or endeavor only, then give them a cooldown to change buffs or let them run indefinitely.
As far as technical limitations just set the max guild member to whatever the game can handle and let people join the guilds they want instead of feeling forced into a big guild just for buffs. Maybe find another coin sink like some sort of cosmetics
If they remove the buffs from guilds, then what happens to all the investment in Helix’s? These become useless expensive machines. So a suggestion on what to do with those is probably needed. They can return the resources but how do they compensate someone that paid coin for them? What could they be repurposed for?
Does using endeavor for buffs versus coin do the same thing? The more people you have in a guild the more endeavor and the higher the buffs so I think this probably creates the same problem with players wanting to be in the largest guild possible to get the buffs.
Not sure and maybe we need to ask the developers, but if what they imagined was a guild that focused on portals and one that focused on running stores and one that focused on farming, then maybe that is why they like the limits. If guilds are for players to join so they can play the game with other players that want to focus on the same things or have similar play styles, then should a guild be able to have half the game population as members? Does this place a lot of power in the hands of the few players that are at the top of the guild hierarchy? It certainly gives them possible access to a lot of coin and resources.
And those are all valid questions. The problem I have with my guild specifically is that I don’t have a way to increase it or bear the weight of the cost in order to increase the cap. Regardless of coin or cash limitations, there are core members of guilds who can and would always front the bill if they had to.
