Guild Battle

[BlackJackel]

dont cut the number of guilds that can participate in guild battles if your doing that because of the number of miniscule guilds in the lower 8 portion instead drastically cut the number of members allowed in a guild so that everybody stops swarming to the top 3 because thats what happened the minute guild battles were announced. if you cut the number of members allowed in guild it will also increase the chances of being able to fully energize the tree in guild chamber because lets face it....when tree comes around not all 150+ members allowed in higher level guilds will able to attend its rather ridiculous actually. not to mention there will be a LOT of angry players who actually do participate in guild battles currently and are in the lower 8 ranking guilds. everyone in those guilds are proud of what they have managed to accomplish and wont be happy to have to leave it. its like agreeing with someone that they can buy a house and pay x a month then after letting them get settled in saying no they can no longer live there because now only ppl who can pay 2-3 times what was originally agreed upon a month and kicking them out. seriously DONT cut the number of guilds able to participate in guild battle each week.

[GingerTheHutt]

+1 to this from me.

[horneys]

+1 ^

10char

[StevenDeschain]

drastically cut the number of members allowed in a guild so that everybody stops swarming to the top 3 because thats what happened the minute guild battles were announced. if you cut the number of members allowed in guild it will also increase the chances of being able to fully energize the tree in guild chamber because lets face it....when tree comes around not all 150+ members allowed in higher level guilds will able to attend its rather ridiculous actually.

The underlined is the best part of this suggestion, though I do agree with al of it. Why allow a guild to have more than 50 members anyway? That is the max number allowed in the guild battle. And if even one guild can provide a screen shot that they have actually managed to fully energize a tree, I would pass out from shock.

[Mormegil666]

+1 here too

[Rex_Typhoon]

While this is something like the third posting on the subject since everyone started checking out the patch, this is the one I'm actually going to post into because it has the most semi-cogent (if hard to read) OP.

Dropping GW from 16-8 is, in my opinion, the only significant flaw in the 1.5 patch and one that I cannot fathom the reason for. I'm assuming it might be linked to some of the whingers who don't like being spanked by high level guilds and want surrender buttons, but dammit, I WANT to be spanked if it comes with 450+ Honour and Insig. And I'm sorry, but offering 10 BGs a day to offset it does not work in my mind. Let me see - 10 hours a day to get trounced (as I will be once again the lowest in my tier for cross server BGs) will limit my honour intake in a way that a 1-hour losing GW will not. Not to mention that it will take 10 hours or so.

At the same time, as posted by BlackJackel and seconded by StevenDeschain, the surge to be in the top 8 Guilds is going to eliminate options for guilds like mine (Ranked 12th) to grow - we already have enough trouble competing with the higher level Guilds as we can't up our buildings fast enough due to lack of active member Guild Contribution, but the only actives we can really recruit are L13-25 who are still getting their teeth around the game and haven't committed to it (the addiction hasn't kicked in). For some reason as well, our Server seems to have morons running Guilds too. Here is a typical conversation regarding recruiting:

Malfaedor (in fancy clothes escorted by child and/or young woman and/or old woman so you won't swear at me when I knock on your door to preach the merits of merger): Would you be willing to consider a merger with MntyPython - we're L8 with L7 buildings and growing every time the cooldown timer lets us. We Guild War (well, not anymore shortly), run MP Dungeons together, and help each other with builds and development, plus we have a great Guild Chat window and have good times. We even have contests for a monthly VIP membership.
GM of L4/L5/L6/L7 Guild: You wish to merge with us? Excellent, how many guys do you have?
Malfaedor: No, I was thinking you would merge UP, rather than us merging DOWN.
GM of L4/5/6/7: Really? Well, how many L50's do you have in your Guild?
Malfaedor: Uh, we have X L50's.
GM: Well, we have X + Y L50's, therefore we are stronger than you.
Malfaedor: Really? You might want to check Guild Rankings sweetheart - last I checked you were ranked 25+, even with your L50's.
GM: Well, if you change your minds, let me know and we'll consider letting you join.
Malfaedor: *mumbles* ***-spelunker.

Now again, maybe that is just our Server or the people I run into, but now recruiting is going to be even harder.

The other issue with the Guild Mergers is the restricted opportunities for GW - assuming you wind up merging guilds you may exceed the 50 people limit of actives, which may drive some people away - this is not to say everyone will up and quit, but that people will not be happy.

If anything, I would recommend increasing GW to two tiers of 16 with the bottom Guild of A Group and the top Guild in B group swapping places each week. Have the same awards in each Group, which will help the lower level players develop. Trust me - I've seen some stubborn guilds that want to grow and I've watched some succeed and I want to help them - and yes, this may impact recruiting for mid-level guilds, but damn, it does give some impetus to develop Guilds too.

[Barbarossa]

Yea I had an epic facepalm over this when I saw the preview. They just killed the 9-16th guild. You flood the top ranked guilds and you leave 50 slots in GW? What happens when the top ranked guilds all have 100+ active members? Gonna be hard to fit everyone in GW. I'm not saying they need to increase the number of players in GW. They need to increase the number of guilds in GW and spread it out. This was just a very dumb move and I can't fathom the reason for it.

[KnowingEyes7]

Yea I had an epic facepalm over this when I saw the preview. They just killed the 9-16th guild. You flood the top ranked guilds and you leave 50 slots in GW? What happens when the top ranked guilds all have 100+ active members? Gonna be hard to fit everyone in GW. I'm not saying they need to increase the number of players in GW. They need to increase the number of guilds in GW and spread it out. This was just a very dumb move and I can't fathom the reason for it.

Reason: Server population.

[Mormegil666]

sUPER EPIC FACEPALM as u said. This can kill the game itself. R2 realy wanna kill 8-16 guild
Or u realy wanna see 8 guild per server and max 400 peeps in war. that will be the nature of the game.
Like i said on another post this will cause pvp unbalancement bcause of medaillons.
most ppl will simply continu in their no good guild and think the game is a mess lol
THIS IS A BIG NO

[MissAlv]

+1

It's already hard for Guilds below Top 8 to catch up the Top 8. If you cut it from 16 to 8, all the guilds from 9-16 will be having hard time. They will lose members, their active (but non casher) members improvement will slow down because couldn't save enough honor and insignia for Med & Pvp. Seriously, this changes will make the Top 8 remained strong and even stronger but 9-16 or even lower will gone because I'm sure many of their members will leave and join the Top 8.

[sarconwindsong2002]

at this point in most servers the top 8 guilds are so full anyways there is little room for anyone new, as far a GB goes the winning guilds have pretty much have a set 50 players
and the bottom 8 guilds are just floundering alone by themselves this can be a good thing if the members of those bottom 8 guilds can get over themselves and all come together to form one better guild than they all were alone thus making them possibly able to take over a spot in the top 8, but as long as people are just gonna cry and whine about the unfairness of things instead of finding solutions to make these new things work for them nothing will ever be accomplished.

[Learica]

If this is due to server population then why not adjust the number of guilds allowed based on the population of the server. I know our server is heavily populated and I would say that 13 of the 16 guilds are very active with a good amount of members. I also agree with setting a lower number of members allowed per guild. This would allow for more variety of guilds with higher standing.

Removing the bottom 8 guilds on every server is ridiculous. Terrible business decision.

[Barbarossa]

Reason: Server population.

That may be the reason but they can't attach a generic label to all the servers really. Our server is pretty active still. I know some of the lower ranked guilds that show up in the GW even though they can't win. Since our merger with a few other servers...our population is pretty good. They are going to drive all the actives into the top guilds and completely shift the balance of power. Part of these games is building a guild from the ground up and now they made that impossible. Recruiting will be impossible. Either join a big guild or don't do GW anymore. Those are the options. This was a bad decision.

[FarFallen]

Reason: Server population.

If by that, you mean it's been dwindling steadily on numerous servers and, as everyone else has pointed out in some form or fashion above, made mergers of Guilds and servers an unwanted necessity, that would still not be a good enough reason to warrant this. Perhaps towards the 'end game' scenario as it were, the point at which all Guilds have maximized Guild levels, Building levels, and individual players' levels and all else that could be maximized has been maximized, would this be even the slightest bit worthwhile of a notion, it's not at this stage of the game. I'll ask you to list off the top 16 Guilds on your Server, by name and Battle Rating, in order, and how each stacks up against one another, then I'll ask you to cut all of that in half and tell me how the game would function after that point? You went back and forth with Zephyric about this in the other thread, I saw you mention you were an insider to these sorts of things. You even once asked me to view things from a corporate mindset when addressing problems like this. As one insider to another, let me ask you how well that mindset has served you, how many games, especially MMO's, have thrived off of that, and how many corporations with them? Looking at Blizzard as a prime example, my God the number of lawsuits on their heads, and of course as a former Square-Enix employee who worked on the game Final Fantasy XI, do I really need to keep repeating myself about how much of a mess XI and XIV came to be because of said mindsets? You can argue with me practically anything you wish but in the long run I've seen enough to know what bad decision-making leads to, there really is no argument in the long run because things like this Guild Battle cut are always the first trickle leading to the downpour that shatters the dam and leaves behind a destroyed, flooded mess.

In short but sweet summation, this is bad and it can only get worse if it is not fixed post-haste. Corporate mindsets do not belong in video games, they destroy what is and what could be, and unlike Square-Enix which has a multitude of console-based franchise games to fall back on and retain their fortunes, I'll say it once more as I did before, R2Games' profit margins are very fickly finite and wholly dependent upon their ability to appease their players in accordance with said players' core values. Making R2Games more money ranks as a tiny speck underneath the very bottom of the list of those values, if R2Games wishes for more money they have to earn it first, proving they are worthy of it.

End speech.

[vondy]

I would recommend increasing GW to two tiers of 16 with the bottom Guild of A Group and the top Guild in B group swapping places each week. Have the same awards in each Group, which will help the lower level players develop. Trust me - I've seen some stubborn guilds that want to grow and I've watched some succeed and I want to help them - and yes, this may impact recruiting for mid-level guilds, but damn, it does give some impetus to develop Guilds too.

i really like the idea of 2 teirs instead of just 1 but i think top teir should get better rewards for 1s then teh 2nd group, but i think the top 2 teams of should replace the bottom 2 team of. so this is what i think it should look like
week 1 winner guild A, 2nd B, 3rd C, 4th D, 5th E, 6 F, 7 G, 8 H winner of 2nd group I 2nd J ect the rewards group G gets same reward as I H same as J but I and J get to compete in the strong bracket for better rewards next week if they happen to beat another guild while G and H move down but get the same rewards next week if they still win the lower group or only 1 guild could move up and 1 moves down so after a while you will have the top 8 guild competing for the top prize each week.

this system could be further implemented so every guild under say under rank 100 could compete so say guild rank 70 has 25 strong players that are able to play every guild battle could actually compete in top 8 or 9-16 they probable won't have a hope to win but i think it would bring a lot more enjoyment to them if they decided to do it. Or for LOLs 4 heavy cashiers could try and each take 1 tower and see if they could beat a guild of 50