This is a good issue that was raised on the Keen and Graev blog with their post: Guilds are simply too important.
I can definitely see where he is going with the argument, and I agree to a great extent.
There was a time on MMOs where a guild could be formed for any manner of reasons or purposes. It could be just friends and family. It could be for roleplay or story purposes. It could be for a theme like all-orcs or all-women or who knows what. But nowadays, unless you want to completely divorce yourself from any hope of meaningful “end game” participation, your guild is hugely important.
Whether it is raiding or RvR style PvP, you are almost required to be part of a large, effective, well organized guild with stringent membership requirements and all sorts of policies (DKP or others). All too often, players are faced with a very real and uncomfortable choice between guilding with friends they actually LIKE, or guilding with people who are good enough at the game to successfully partake in the same level of content.
Guilds have become too important. They have lost their purpose and have become a burdensome barrier to fully enjoying the gameplay and content in MMOs.
As always, your thoughts are welcome.
The solution seems readily apparent to me: we need to separate out the social grouping functions of guilds from the gamteplay-related functions. Easiest way to do this is to allow two different types of long-term groups. One is social in nature, and allows players to join any number of them. I might have my work group, my old D&D college buddy group, etc.
The, we allow guilds to be a gameplay structure, and only allow the player to join one of them. This is a tradeskill guild, or a raiding guild, or whatever.
So, if you and I are friends, but I’m a hard-core raider and you’re a very casual guy who logs on weekends, we can both belong to the same group, but I’m in my hard-core raider guild and you might find a guild of casual people that provide ready groups when you log on.
This would seem to solve the problems pointed out, or is there something I’m missing?
I’ve often read this suggestion: allowing people to be members of multiple groups/guilds. That might be the answer. One question I have is that I wonder how many of these groups people can be a member of and still feel a real sense of belonging. Exclusivity adds a lot to a relationship, so that would definitely be a concern.
I think you are right on with the idea of separating gameplay from “guilds”, and instead making guilds just a way people can work to accomplish some kind of larger group goal or even just maintain social contacts. I like games where guilds can level up, work on building a large, functional guild hall, and things like that. But when a guild of a certain skill or membership size becomes a virtual requirement to partake in content, that is when things have broken down.
Guilds would never allow ‘multiple memberships.’ If they found out you weren’t devoting your life to them, they’d kick you in a heartbeat. It has nothing to do with whether the game supports it.
Keeping 50+ anonymous volunteers in lock-step is effectively impossible without the severe iron-fisted rules that large guilds have. If you weren’t devoting your full-time to them specifically they’d need to drop you in order to pick up someone who was.
The problem isn’t the guilds, the problem is the games. Someone else just mentioned this recently. MMOG’s have focused on the ‘achiever’ aspect of the players that they’ve totally abandoned everyone else. There’s no ‘in-game’ gain to be had from a ‘social guild.’ (Which, BTW is currently called a ‘friends list’)
There are plenty of small guilds. These friendly guilds and themed guilds still exist and always will. There are plenty of people playing the ‘real game’ on these MMO’s. However, the developers have shunned them and marginalized them. Every patch, every line of the notes say “We’re only fixing the game for the achievers. Nothing here applies to anyone who’s not raiding or PvP’ing at a top-level.” Then, when the expansions come out it says, “Here are a lot of new toys and goodies for the achievers. Those of you who feel like playing the game differently are stuck with the same stuff you’ve been stuck with for years.”
This thread wasn’t supposed to be about casual/social vs hardcore gaming, but I think the answer to your question lies there. Why does it appear that all large successful guilds are single-minded and absolutely strict in their behavior? That’s because that stark devotion towards climbing to the top of the PVP or GearScore ladders is the only thing that is actively rewarded by the developers.
The guilds will chance once the game changes.
My girlfriend and I are “older” players. I have been playing online since 1999 release of EQ1 and never stopped since. We were part of a top raiding guild on our server but as time goes by, core player diferences, arguments, ppl stop playing, and now what is left is just a casual group of friends that have been guildmates for 3 years so far. They are not the best raiders but yet, they are good people, but end game progression is not an option with them.
Now my girlfriend and I are a formiddable team. We play side by side and are excellent raiders. When it comes to survivability and knowing our roles as Tank/Healer/DPS we outdo everyone else. We have since raided with other guilds and they keep pleading us to quit our guild and join theirs. Although they are good raiders, majority of their personalities seem immature and rude. Something we dont want to have to listen to day by day.
So yes, I would love to see a multiple guild scenario. Sure you can quit and join another guild and yet still be friends with the old guild… but its just not the same. You will only have 1 on 1 contact with your non-guildie friends and not the same guildchat where the entire group of friends can join in.
We have since created toons on another server just so we could raid with serious raiders and yet we can go back and play with our old time friends on the othre server. That seems like the best solution. Ther are certain “chat groups” that can be created but that just gives ppl the choice if they want to join the group or not the “forced guidchat” that they see when they login.
As a soloist/pvper, I definitely agree guilds are too important. Guilds are more fun to me when there’s no drama, no ridiculous obligations, and people are there mostly to have fun. Once it starts becoming a job, I’m done.
I’m not sure the multiple guild idea is much of a solution. If you are able to do that, you still would have to split your playtime between the guilds, and with the way modern mmos are, the time sinks would really be a barrier to that.
I think where this topic is concerned a distinction really needs to be made between themepark and non-competitive sandbox games vs competitive sandbox games with open PVP/full loot.
In terms of themeparks and other games where heavy competition/pvp isn’t the central focus I’m inclined to agree there’s too much focus on being in a “competitive” guild in endgame content design. I’m wagering the greater percentage of the playerbase is there just as much for the social as the game aspects.
Then there’s MMO/MMO FPS like Planetside, World War II Online, Darkfall, EVE, Mortal Online. Optimal way to enjoy these games is with a skilled guild – mostly due to how heavy the competition is. But as long as the skill is there, the guild doesn’t need to be large to enjoy most of the content. And atmosphere wise, I’ve been in several PVP guilds that were considered “high ranked” on the server…yet things were very relaxed.
Eh.
Ultimately, I think the issue lies with the gaming culture rather than guilds. People bemoan how games often leave them with the choice of playing with their friends or playing with people who can clear content. Why not help improve your friends so they can start clearing the content you want? Sure, it may take some time, but in the end, you’ll have your gear and you’ll have great experiences with your friends.
What you want to enjoy from any game and how you want to enjoy it are your choice and responsibility, the former often lost in a haze of uncreative solutions to problems and the latter ignored by a culture who historically has an issue with gratification and entitlement.
The problem is that your friends may never be able to clear that content. Speaking for myself, I have friends that I enjoy gaming with, but they aren’t very good. After years of gaming, they still zone out, occasionally don’t pay attention, fail to assist, attack CC’d mobs, and all sorts of other things.
And before someone says “help them learn to play better….” You can’t MAKE someone learn, and you can’t MAKE someone a better gamer. After many years of coaching, teaching, etc. you reach a point where someone is just at their maximum ability.
I’d still like to play with those people, but the whole raid and even dungeon mentality, with fixed party sizes and such means you can’t take extra people.
So if you want to play with friends who aren’t good gamers, you basically have to play a screw around alt you don’t really care about, or you have to do super weak content that you have already done 100 times and thus it has no potential character development benefit.
This is not a good choice, frankly.
Muckbeast:
You might like City of Heros – from what I”ve heard the group content in that game is very flexible about group sizes and character levels. Regardless of that though, the content would still probably have to be run at a level of SKILL that you wouldn’t find enjoyable (aka too easy).
The way group content tends to be set up, if extra players are allowed the content usually scales to accomodate that. Even if it doesn’t – if the content is “challenging” and interesting then unskilled players can still run off and draw more monsters cause friendly fire problems ect.
I tried playing through Neverwinter Nights dungeons with less skilled friends that had geared characters of the same level I was at. Problem was they’d constantly die in dungeons I could solo through – and I’d get bored to sleep doing content suited to their skill level. NWN servers generally didn’t place limits on number of people in a party and usually didn’t increase spawn rates for more people.
I guess what I”m saying is that I’m not sure it’s even possible for developers to make content that scales for the variance in SKILL levels within a group.
City of Heroes is possibly the easiest MMO I have ever played. And it is fearsomely repetitive. After you’ve run a warehouse mission at level 1, you have basically played the entire game.
It is actually not that hard to make content scale for skill – just don’t limit the number of players. People who suck can bring 10 more people. People who are awesome, can bring less.
Capping the number of people allowed in an instance to JUST the exact number of people you “need” has been one of the major downfalls of raiding.
Are you suggesting the players would scale for skill themselves, by choosing to bring fewer people if they wanted to gain a greater challenge?
I see a problem with that. As an MMO gamer, I’m a skilled player, personally. I know my class, and I’m well-geared. I don’t play often enough to maintain membership in a “serious” guild, though, and as a result, I’m stuck playing in “pick-up” groups. Many of the players in those groups are still good at the game, and many of them are players like me that would love a skill-based challenge. However, many others, perhaps because they also have little time to play, prioritize quick advancement above a challenge. If they’re just there for the boss, a lot of them are going to run in with a huge group so they can just plow through. Some of the members of that group might be people that want that ‘smaller group’ challenge but simply can’t find a group of people that don’t want to invite 10 more people, with or without the need to do so.
Thus, the only option for those players becomes joining hardcore raiding guilds that like doing “skill” runs, and we’re back to guilds becoming a requirement.
Yes. Because people who want challenge WILL do this. People of less skill will at least be able to throw more bodies at a problem. And yes, some lazy people will always take way more people than needed, but you aren’t going to make those kinds of people love challenge by trying to force it on them.
You cannot change these attitudes by force. What happens instead when you force a limit of 10 people is that then these same “don’t want a challenge” people refuse to run the content unless the other members of the team have already done it (the old “have you completed X quest yet” which signifies having run the dungeon already), or they will only play with really high level people or people with really good gear.
That’s an even worse type of discrimination imho.