So are some of us going to miss out on some of the game?

dude you keep on showing your ignorance more and more every day
and just where did you pull that tidbit out of? oh nevermind, I know...

edit - and even more speaks to the fact who WOULD know what to expect, and if you're never or very very rarely able to access it, is that a knock on the player or the ability to try it out?

Soooo true and A-net needs to rethink how they are going to implement this since it will futher divide the player base even more now.

Best suggestion I've seen yet, of course it could get a little tricky over time (you can't add another player or your alliance membership will be revoked).

So a little design might be necessary (ie designate yourself as a 'x' capped guild, maybe they're set ranges like 20/50/100, to accomodate)

But as others have suggested I think ANet might be trying to stomp out small guilds.

I concede that it will be a challenge. BUT, I remain hopeful that a small group of dedicated players could beat out a large group of not so dedicated players.

Now, if a "mega-Guild" has a majority of hard core players, that WILL be hard to beat. I guess that's the big fear, that these mega-Guilds will destroy smaller ones, much like Wal-Mart kills small businesses.

But, I would hope if such a situation arises, Anet will change the system.

After all, the whole point of having Factions is to make the game more fun to play. If it fails, then so does Guild Wars as a whole.

"So many problems would go away if they would cap an alliance at 1000 people instead of 10 guilds."

1000 is a LOT of people. I've gamed with, MAYBE, 50 in my time playing GW. We're a small family/friend guild with ten members. We want to enjoy the end-game content, but it's just not possible the way it's built. This will be multiplied tenfold in Factions.

hmmm let me check if i posted here before.....nope, since i could have swore i saw dozens of threads like this one before.

Since not many pples response after i post my comments, let me kill this thread as well

Being guildless or in an Alliance that dont get a chance to hold a city even if they try have been a major concern for any guild since no half decent guild leader will want any guildies to be missing out on content that they have paid for just because they prefer to play in a more casual fashion. That only leave most with the option of either merging with a larger guild or join an Alliance. But the problem doesnt even stop there, there are much more considerations within Alliances that the lone player need not even borther with *Guild/Alliance drama* if you will.

Truth is, you are not royally screwed over if you are not in a guild but rather those who are more stressed are those already in a guild but lack numbers.

The Alliance metagame is more complex and players should not need to concern themselves with it if they dont want to. An example of lack of access to content in the game would be favor and the UW/FoW, if you never entered and played in them before would you feel you missed out in GWP? I wholly agree with issues that should be addressed with city control and Elite missions just for the record.

Those who are guildless can opt to join a large alliance, and need not feel as pressured as the small group of friends that have a small guild they like playing with casually in. However keep in mind that city control comes at a price, a carebear lovey dovey guild will have a harder time to convince members to change their playstyle to grind for the faction points within the guild...now think of this in an alliance of 10 guilds. Dont forget 15k armour will need amber and jadiltes. How the problem of leeches in the alliance are gonna be solved remains a mystery to me. Personally i think the current system will froster more ill will towards other players more than anything else despite what is mentioned as: "lets visit each other's guildhall and have hugs and tea"

All will be releaved in 17 days.

edit for grammer

Some good points and some bad points here... lets start with the bad:

The rare areas right now, in which most ppl dont come ARE available to everybody. If you WANT to enter/use/buy it you CAN (you need skill, time and money.. but you can...) With this new setup there are areas you will NEVER see...

After that opening you used some good arguments and points: I totally forget the presense of several districts. Maybe Anet will introduce standard a large amounts of districts so even the lowest alliance have a town (ok not as good as the top.. but no matter how top you are.. you cant enter THAT town...)

Also the faction decrease over time is a powerful tool to prevent alliances to hold towns continuesly.

^ Towns control are more likely to be Region/server based not districts. There are no differnet districts version of the world map.

Last i read from about towns up for grabs, theres only 55 in whole of Cantha per region unless they changed it.

Aillance standing point degens at 10% your current amount per day.

1/10 of the population is an overestimation i assure you.

just as they changed favor when japan, taiwan couldn't get it. Oh right, they prefer to answer with shut up and go and win it yourself...

that really fortifies my trust in them solving it. Or when they said we might increase the number of charslots in the lifetime of the game..., while x months later we still have no extra charslots...

Well, if it isn't apparent by now, the way they're heading is basically ANet's "vision".

Any changes we as a playerbase would like that would change or even have the slightest effect on this vision are going to be summarily ignored. No amount of discussion, no amount of feedback will ever make them shift their stance, even if it screws over large numbers of the playing population at once (see favor, and what seems to be the current implementation of alliances holding towns).

TBH, as a company it shouldn't be too surprising that ANet has a "developer knows best" mentality. Whether the consumer base agrees with such behavior is another thing altogether though.

^agreeded with both Renegade ++RIP++ and Slimcea sadly on this point thats why supporting C3 is always on the lip of everyone concerned with Factions. It just a pity friends found playing GWP together will have to look for a MMO to call home again which is a diffcult thing to do. Hopefully it wont come to this.

Gaile was on last nite and i asked about the Alliance cap of 10 Guilds, she said that its 10Guilds OR 1000People, so you could have 30-40 smaller guilds in an alliance.

Where did I say having special weapons made you leetsauce? I said that they were elite content... or at least I sure as hell meant to. And the ability to ebay stuff does not change the fact that I'm not going to have a perfect Chrysty in my bag anytime soon.

Factions seems to be an attempt by anet to move things away from ebay by forcing it to be non-transferrable player stuff. Like faction.

Changing having the cap at 1000 players, not 10 guilds, is Anet smarty smartness. Just trust them, its worked thus far.

Well, that solves that problem doesn't it! Great news, Divinus.

With this and the news about more Gold quests in Factions, I'm excited and happy about buying Factions again!

Good Job Anet!

this is so not true...

First ask yourself how many updates A.net did about stuff the player base wanted to change...

ALOT !!

Have a look at faction points for skill unlocking etc... and much more.

A.net is one of the company's who really listen to their customers, but don't forget its still a company and they still need an income.

Whichever is largest or whichever is smallest? Big difference.

And most smaller guilds don't-won't care to be in an "alliance" with other similar family/friends guilds.

Well, that's their loss. The point is, smaller guilds are not screwed anymore.

I think a large alliance of smaller, more dedicated guilds could beat larger, more sprawling "Mega" Guilds.

I disagree.

I would not care to merge my guild with another, but I would ally with other small, like-minded guilds.

The major issue for the small guilds is basicly trust. We formed our guild the way we did because, we know each other in the tangible world. I live with over half our guild, so its easy to go to another room and thwap the wammo on the back of the head for agro-ing the mob.

Alliances with other such guilds would be the first step in building trust with others that we don't have physical association with. Over time, those trust bonds may lead to merging into larger, more active, stable guilds.

There are very large guilds out there, but I dare say, not many of them can claim full active status by all members of the guild.

I would rather ally with people that shared the same interests and goals our guild does then merge and hope for the best.

I run a medium sized guild...

If any of you smaller guilds want to talk to me about a potential alliance -- drop me a line... but lets wait to see what this all becomes before losing our heads over it, heh?

Ok, I have just skimmed over a few of the posts here and want to clear some things up that I am worried about. (Some may be slightly off topic)
#1. Do I have to choose a faction, for my whole account (Kurzik or Luxon) and then stick with it, and only go in the towns of my chosen faction.
#2 Does the control of towns change from faction to faction?- how?
#3 Do I have to be in an alliance that owns some towns to ever be able to go in them?
#4 What if I am in a PvE guild and cant get into a PvP alliance? Am I stuck for getting into these 'elite' places?
#5 Can the new factions be spent just like Balthazar's, or is there a wider range of rewards?

Thanks, please give these a go

1) you don't have to choose a faction. But you'll miss out on part of the coopmissions. So on the main storyline. You can change your allegiance by simply doing some odd jobs for the other faction. However, you will only be looked upon favorably by th eother faction if your factionrating is better then your factionrating with the other. It maxes at 15k for each.

2) yes, by doing so called pvp or pvpve missions. More stuff like hoh. You however determine the alliance that holds it by spending more factionpoints then the others.

3) no, but you need to be in the controlling alliance to ever get a chance to do some of the elite missions. Meaning if you have an alliance of 10 guilds with in total 70people, chances will be slim you will ever get enough faction to controll a city, speak alone do some of the pve missions with the best rewards and the biggest challenges. Prolly sorta knockoffs of uw or fow.

4) pvp moves the controlling factionline, pve determines the controlling alliance althiough pvp would do the same only to a lesser extent. Ergo I could get 2k faction in 5 minutes and this quest was repeatable. In any case you will never get in an elite mission if your alliance never holds a city/town. Therefore only the people farming faction and being uberactive will stand a chance in the end. Smaller fry will not have a chance, at least not in my opinion.

5) kurzick/luxon faction can't be spent towards the unlocks of skills, that is still only balthazar faction. However you can spend it on alliancerating, or rare item rewards (jadeite and amber) which are used in special 15k armour. Well prolly a step between 15k and FoW armour.

At least that where the mechanics during the beta event. But chances will be high they will work the same now.

Hmmm, I kinda took that statement as 10 guilds or 1000 people, whichever comes first (ie 10 guild limit). I hope your interrpretation is the right one.

ay same here.

imagine top 100 banding together. I fear the remaining top 5000 won't stand a chance ever...

Thanks for that, it helps a lot.
But I think there will be a big problem if all the top guilds join together, most average players will never get a chance to play some parts- its not because they arnt very good players in pve... its because they are not lucky enough to be in an elite pvp alliance.

[sarcasme]
well with the famous words of gaile: shut the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up and go fight for it...
[/sarcasme]

ay, feel the same

It is a 10 guild cap. I think Gaile muddied it when she introduce the "or" word.

Each guild is capped at 100 people. That's where the 1000 people are coming from. You can have 10 guilds and still only have 50 people total, but you can't have 20 guilds just to make it up to 1000.

In speaking with our guild leader, it was stated that we may have to lose something (our own guild) to gain something more ( a larger more active pool of players to enjoy the game with.) That's not the end of the world as we know it.

The options are:

1) Status quo, play through the story and watch how the big alliances handle things.

2) Recruit to grow the guild. Could yield good members or not.

3) Network and ally with other small guilds to complete missions and see if personalities work together. Later choosing to create a new, larger guild from the two.

Maybe it is time that the small family guilds start to network. No one is screaming MERGE MERGE MERGE yet, but there is no reason to not start working together to find others that share the same goals. Trust must begin some where, and for the first time, Anet is giving us a reason why perhaps such a step should be taken.

Or, they might just be giving us a way to be forced to play in a manner we don't want to play.

Far be it from me to complain about something I haven't seen, though.

Hope it's all fun in the end... for EVERYONE.

Are you sure? Why even mention the 1,000 people at all? If it's only guilds capped at 10, then obviously we can't have more than 1,000 players...

However if it's 10 guilds OR 1,000 people, that implies there can be more than 10 guilds in an alliance.

I guess we'll find out soon enough.

it is a 1000 person cap whichever way you do it.

otherwise they automatically knock out 90% from it.

sheesh 10 guilds?

No, I can't be sure until we are in it on the 28th.

That said, think a moment. 10 guild cap. You can not exceed 10 guilds.

Guilds are capped at 100 people. That is where the 1000 is coming in.

Lets be extreme a moment. 1000 guilds of 1 person each is also 1000 people. Do you really think that is realistic? Caps are placed for a reason, usually UI and/or database purposes, else we might as well have infinite membership.

You are correct, I don't know why she brought that up either. If you have 10 maxed out guilds, its 1000 people. Now how many guilds are there that are that maxed to begin with? If they are, how many actually have 100 ACTIVE players? They are going to have to keep their faction up some how, and if 25% is doing the work for the other 75%, there is going to be a lot of internal "discussion."

I honestly do not see this as a favor to the big guilds. I think we may see smaller guilds merging or creating small alliances, as much as we see big guilds kicking deadwood to make room for active players.

There will definately be a lot of social dynamics.

The new chapter is well named. I feel we are seeing "factions" forming already that have nothing to do with Luxon or Kurzick.

It's not the cap on the high end that we're worried about. It's the low end cap of 10 guilds, which is what Anet has been saying it would be until Gaile's chat from the other night, that will be trouble for the smaller guilds.

I've just resigned myself to not being able to access the elite content period. I just hope the rest of the content makes up for this loss. As for the small guilds banding together I t hink you will see isolated cases of it but for the most part there won't be 10 small guilds that can compete with the mega guilds so I think a lot of the smaller guilds will pretty much feel like I do and say,"What's the point?" I personally will not be seeking an alliance in Factions simply because there is no point in trying to get anything done with my small guild. I think I will just play the game.

There's something we're all missing out here.

TRUST

Everytime you donate 5,000 faction points to turn into Alliance Standing, it goes to the Alliance-(Guild)Leader (ie the guildleader not guild leader). And for sure, there's an alliance kick out option.

huge trust is needed here. Scammers are rampant, we can be scammed one way or another. How much are we willing to unite?

Even if we merge for example, how can we guarantee that we will not be kicked out later?

Maybe to some its not a problem since its easy to gain money and easy to gain faction points and start all-over, but to the majority who are casual players, it will be a problem.

And oh, guild policies and all that

It's easy to say you can trust me or trust us.

So we end up, do we really want the exclusive-town content or not? That's the golden question. If your answer is no, then no need to think about merging and alliances, or even to worry about donating faction points.

But if your answer is yes, then trust.

Wow, I still find it hard to believe that so many people can't make a simple logistical analysis based on what we know. If the town control system stands as it did in the FPE, then small aliiances, 100 or fewer will have next to no chance of ever getting even a far outpost town.

People keep crying "Superior Tactics" you whiney noobs!

Tactics? What tactics? You get 500+ people together, grind faction all day, you're guarenteed a town. There's NO tactics about it, skilled players might be better at what they do, but we all run in the same time/space continuum.

If you need some simple math here:
Let's say Alliance A, has 30 active members, all in the same time zone for simplicity.
Alliance B will have 50 active members.

Each active member generates +30 Alliance Standing a Day. 4-5 hours played a day.

For the sake of simplicity again, no one dies/gets sick/has a life, they just grind faction during their entire playing time.

Also 10% decay per day.

Days: Standing A: Standing B:
1. +900 +1500
2. +1710 +2850
3. +2439 +4065
4. +3095 +5159
5. +3686 +6143
6. +4217 +7029
7. +4695 +7826
8. +5125 +8544
9. +5512 +9190
10. +5861 +9771
11. +6175 +10294
12. +6457 +10765
13. +6711 +11188
14. +6940 +11569
-----------------------------------------
6940 - 11569 = -4629 * -1 = 4629

Alliance B has 4629 extra faction to spare if something happens, and that's only after 2 weeks. Also, both Alliances were under 100 members, now try and imagine pitting one of them against an active alliance of 200 or 300 people?

200*30 = +6000 Standing in the first day. +5400 on day 2. Almost matching two weeks of farming by Alliance B.
300*30 = +9000 Standing on day 1. +8100 on day 2. That outdoes two weeks worth of farming by Alliance B.

Alliance A? What Alliance A? Have you heard of any Alliance A? No, have you? No.

The ONLY way the current system could work with limited abuse would be an increasing decay penalty as the numbers rise. i.e. after 10k Standing the penalty becomes somewhere around 15% daily, after 20k, 20%, so on and so forth.

This isn't funny or amusing, smaller alliances/guilds are NOT being paranoid. They have a legitimate reason to be worried from the the information available, and the lack of new information being given out. It's easy to say "wait and see" if YOU don't care, but not everyone is YOU, and unfortunately for YOU, this game is supposed to be for all the playerbase. Besides, we're alll waiting, and trust me, we WANT to see.

The YOU is plural, not directed at anyone specific.

I have faith in A.Net, they've never failed me before, but even this is rattling me cage.

EDITTED for Spelling

Well actually now that you put it that way...hell no. Screw the exclusive content. I never though about the potential scam factor involved in that. I have only a few goals in this game...to get some FoW armor legitimately, that is find all the components myself and what have you, to figure out a great warrior build that does not involve the monk secondary or any of the FotM skills, and to not get scammed.

The bigger, the merrier. Let's not jump from our pants right away though. Two weeks to release and then it shows how much exclusive content there is.

I'm in a guild of around 30 members and we have couple alliance guilds, but I doubt we ever get hold to one city with that capacity.

I'm keeping fingers cross that someday our alliance might get to play in the Elite Areas though.

I think it will be the end of a lot of small guilds, and even bigger guilds where many members are very little online. As a consequence many players will be looking for a new guild, one that's a member of a strong alliance. But since they were comming from weaker guilds they probably will be voted away by ballot.

I think Arenanet should act as a gouvernment here, and protect the ones who are unable to join an alliance. E.g by giving them access to differend 'elite' content or by granting them a membership to public 'gouvernment' alliances.

I agree. Right now Anet refuses to use any worthwhile ideas or "vision" unless it coincides with its own. I remember that the ENTIRE GW community was looking for an auction system. They promised it at first, but the story now is that it won't added until much later. So GW is still without an auction system.

There is also a thread in Sardilac forum which compiles a NUMBER of ideas and the list has hardly been touched. A lot of them are reasonable and very simple.

But I am not suprised, just about every other coporation does this. Just like every PR person is a just a front for the company(Gaile I am looking at you).

Well theres already much negativity (not without good reason) from the entire section of this forum so i will try not to add towards it but rather comment on those looking to have Access to Elite content by joining large alliances.

Remember that when you look into the mirror your reflection looks back at you. If you looking to join a large Alliance that actively controls towns via 12v12 and Faction farming, you will also have to ask yourself how much time you as an individual is willing to invest helping the guild increase its Alliance standing and how äctive you think you need to be to prevent being precieved as a idle/leech and kicked or how will you feel about leeches in the guild/alliance getting 15k armours while you grind away barely having enough gold/mats for your own.

The drama.... soon Alliances will make a mesmer out of everyone in Factions.

Would you rather have it rushed... or working right when implemented?