A plea for an increase in guild membership limit

SantieClaws

I'm part of a really great guild. Social, friendly, help out new players, good trade - everything a good guild should be.

We are all full up though! Despite us removing inactive players after about 20 days we just can't meet the demand.

It saddens me we have to either kick players or turn people away. Either friends of current guildmates or new players looking for a really good guild. We want good players and they want us.

We have had nearly a year now of seeing how things work in game and we have an obvious influx of new players tonight. Just stand by the gate in Daggerfall and you will see exactly what I mean.

All these new players want to feel welcome and are looking for a great guild to be part of. Great guilds make a huge difference to the player experience. Players make friends and then they want to stick around - even at the times the gameplay may be getting them down a bit.

So please could you consider upping the guild limit a bit, in line with the increase in population? I know you don't want there to be really big guilds that dominate. I am not saying remove the limit but please consider increasing it - to 750 or 1000 or more if you think it will not affect the game too badly.

You want to keep players and we want to help you keep those players. Please give us the means to do so.

Thanks for the consideration.

Panda244

750 to 1000 is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. Way. Way. Way. Way. Too much.

Bump it another hundred, or two hundred at most. It's so much easier to manage two guilds of 400 than one guild of 800.

SantieClaws

The thing is we don't want to split the guild - we want everyone together in the same chat and interacting with the same good people who make the guild what it is.

We have no trouble at all managing the people we have - the trouble comes in having to kick people you would rather keep in order to make room for someone else.

Panda244

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

The thing is we don't want to split the guild - we want everyone together in the same chat and interacting with the same good people who make the guild what it is.

We have no trouble at all managing the people we have - the trouble comes in having to kick people you would rather keep in order to make room for someone else.

True... i still can't believe you have 400 active members, guild chat would be insane, I couldn't do it haha. I mean raising the guild limit won't effect much... Chat will just become outrageously hard to keep track of and I'll prolly have to turn it off for some guilds, still I think 1000 is way to much for a guild. 750 is more reasonable but still a bit much, i dunno.

SantieClaws

I'm only in the one guild - I like it that way

We really do have a full and active membership - like I say we remove inactive players.

Not everyone chats all the time but chat is usually busy and active. Rarely quiet. We have a great website too and people also tend to chat there a lot.

There are so many new players coming in right now and we would like to be able to welcome them and make them feel at home in the game but this limit holds us back on this.

Animus_Igneus

ITC Guildmaster here - We have 500 active members actually :') we had a dip last year but worked our way back up fairly quickly. We're currently sat at 500 members with our longest inactive at 14 days, with ~450 of that 500 online in the past week ;_;

So you can probably see why this wound be a boon for us and the other major Guilds our there - I'm sure we're not the only ones encountering this problem, especially amongst guilds that are primarily dedicated to trade.
We did consider creating a sister Guild, but the issue with that is you can't have the same GM for both, and if things go sour you wind up with two Guilds with the same name. We actually trialled this back near launch, and unfortunately it just created cliques of higher-ups and killed the main guilds' chat because the most talkative members joined the sub-Guilds.

Aerdrie

I'm like Wen, I only have one guild, call it a holdover from WoW days. But I can only keep track of people in one spot. The Imperial Trading Company was so attractive to me last September that I left the NA megaserver behind and started over just to be with them.

We are mostly trade related with how many are active, but our chatty socially active population has grown dramatically in the last few months since the holidays. From a close knit group of 15-25 chatting randomly throughout the day we now have conversations that can involve upwards of 50 people. While not a huge drop in the bucket against that 500 limit, we would like to welcome more trade and social members to the ranks. We have guild members across the globe as well, and even tho I myself am from NA when I log in at 2-4am UTC there are still more than 20 people online with a handful or 2 willing to strike up a conversation.

Would really appreciate raising the cap. I understand not wanting to abolish it completely, you risk a trade guild becoming a monopoly or creating a one stop kiosk for all trade goods, which ZoS has worked hard against, but I could see 750 being a good number.

Pseudolo

I'm sort of an officer in ITC, and though I have 5 guilds, that's the one in which I'm most active. I too think the capt needs an increase, to 1k or more players.
I played other MMOs, and they all had very large guilds, and nothing bad happened ever due to too many players. If we could have more slots, we could be more relaxed with our membership deletion protocols, and people could be inactive for a longer period.
Managing guild chat would hardly be a problem, and regarding guild power, there's nothing you couldn't already accomplish with 500 guild members in PVP...

s7732425ub17_ESO

500 players per guild is massive. Also, you can be in 5 guilds at the same time (so 2500 people total). I have not seen another game that lets you be in a guild with so many people. This limit is fine.

Thelon

I understand that you would like more people to be a part of your social guild. However, a change such as this will have major impacts on trading guilds. The large, established guilds will benefit, as we have name recognition and can recruit with ease. However, start-up guilds will have a greater mountain to climb, and a more challenging benchmark to reach.

Rosveen

Are we holding an unofficial ITC meeting? Splendid. Anyone wants a banana muffin?

I have to admit I'm not quite so enthusiastic about drastically increasing the guild size limit. I don't think most guilds even reach the current limit, trading guilds typically try to stay near the cap. So technical issues aside (because we don't know if there are any limitations on ZOS's side), there's always the matter of trade centralization. Also, what is the current population limit in Cyrodiil campaigns and is it - theoretically - possible to completely lock a campaign with members of one guild?

Still, I agree with the general sentiment. Perhaps the limit could increase gradually with the age of the guild, rewarding long-term communities? If we ever get some sort of housing, it would tie in nicely with unlocking features such as a guildhall.

hiyde

Not sure how I feel about raising the limit. Maybe another hundred or two but I wouldn't want to see more than that personally (and I'm GM of a similarly full / active Trading Guild).

Another idea: Custom chat channels. Then if you do want to have a 2nd guild - at least they can all talk in a unified chat which would be great for being social / running contests / etc.

pugyourself

hiyde wrote: »

Not sure how I feel about raising the limit. Maybe another hundred or two but I wouldn't want to see more than that personally (and I'm GM of a similarly full / active Trading Guild).

Another idea: Custom chat channels. Then if you do want to have a 2nd guild - at least they can all talk in a unified chat which would be great for being social / running contests / etc.

BBC rocks.

SantieClaws

Custom chat channels would be great for building alliances between guilds. I'm all for custom chat channels.

It would not solve the problem of separate traders and guild banks though and trying to manage a group of players across guilds is so much more tricky then trying to manage one group of players - whatever the size of that group.

I'm not asking for world domination - just a reasonable increase in guild size in proportion to the mass of new players coming in. A bigger playerbase overall means you should be able to increase the guild size limit for each individual guild without adversely affecting the game.

Srjon

Please raise the limit there are Players wanting to join the Imperial Trading Company Guild.
Please with a cherry on top.

Hypertionb14_ESO

Crown Store Option

5000c

Increase Guild limit by 500 (max of 5000, only applies to one guild if you are creator or have certain Permissions)

Problem solved and Zenimax gets money out of it.

steelrose0

as a returning player, i'd love for the cap to be raised on guild membership.

my four old guilds seem to be dead, including my med-large trading guild, and i'd love to join an active guild but a lot of interesting ones are full.

i don't want to kick out someone who's just been inactive for a week or two - that seems terribly unfair for the GMs to have to do...

there have to be a lot more new & returning players now who plan on sticking around - would it really unbalance the game to allow for somewhat larger guild limits to let us into an established guild? i feel a little late-to-the-party here..

tomroark

This is a simple fix, and I don't see why there's a debate about it. Personally, I'm not in a huge guild, but why do people feel a need to impose their preferences on others?

Raise the guild cap. If you're a GM and don't want a big guild, you have the full ability to artificially cap your guild membership. For those guilds that need the extra room and actually have those players active and participating, it's a huge boon to them and the community.

Stop imposing your preferences on others- the bottom line is that choice and ability to do so should always be heavily promoted, it makes a much more enjoyable atmosphere for all. There's no reason to oppose something because it doesn't fit into your gameplay ideals.

I think raising the guild cap would be a great idea.

Hurbster

I'm a traditionalist so I don't feel comfortable being in more than one guild. Er, so a higher cap would be great.

SantieClaws

The reason always stated for limiting guild size was that they didn't want any one guild dominating trade. However if there is an increase in the population in players it is not unreasonable to increase guild limits in proportion to that change. In fact it throws things out of balance overall if you don't.

Xelphos

Why is everyone making a fuss over guilds having more than 500 members? It's not like it is going to affect anyone. 500 is too little, I would like to see at least 1000 members. Also allow us to have 500 friends.

Lifsteinn

1000 limit seems fine to me!

Dreamo84

Raising the cap will affect everyone though. The whole design of the system is to require guilds to be somewhat selective and deterring the possibility of a mass trade guild dominating and becoming the one stop shop.

It's already hard for some smaller and startup guilds to get members, you think that would be any easier? Raise the cap to 1,000 how many players you think will jump ship to go join the big trade guilds that all have openings now?

I like the system as it is and I think it will negatively affect the entire game if it is changed. The OP mentioned not being able to invite new players, well..: good! Let a smaller guild take them under their wing. Is 500 active members not enough to be content?

SantieClaws

It isn't about being content - it is about letting people be a part of our guild when they want to. We have a waiting list right now. We are not aiming for world or trade domination of any kind.

We have players who want to join us - right now they can't.

We are a long established guild with good trade, good guild chat, good social activities. New players want a freindly guild with some players who already know their way round the game. We want to be able to provide them with that but we were already practically full when B2P launched.

All we want to do is welcome new players to the game and give them a guild that they feel is worth sticking around for.

This would not be an issue if not for the recent large increase in population but now it is and so I think there needs to be an adjustment made for that - if, for example, there are 50,000 more people playing then surely increasing the guild limit from 500 to 1000 is not going to affect the balance of power between guilds significantly? Unless guild limits go altogether (unlikely) then I don't think you will see a small number of guilds ever dominating this game in any aspect.

Divad Zarn

Fully agree with guys, especially about friend list, 100 is way too low for some players =\ About guilds 500.. well our guild have 500 members all the time, despite of there are hard requiments to join and max offline 4-5 days, still alot of people want to come to us (about 50+ asks for invite each day i think and i'm not able to let them come). We dont taking players lesser then VR1, from those 500 only 3 have permissions (including me) to invite, i post in zone chat about guild recruitment maybe once a week and its still cant help us.. And as someone mention there are many old school players who are part of only 1 guild and hate those 5 guild's system so while guys who dont care have 2500 passive contacts such old players like we have only 500 and spam in /w or mail so @ZOS pls give us such opportunity increase guild's size

Elloa

While I'm not against increasing the player cap by guild, but I really do not see it as neccessary. If Zenimax can do it without meeting technical issues, why not.
But otherwise I think that 500 people is already enormous, especially as you consider that it's 500 unique account, not 500 characters. I think the limit in World of Warcraft is 300 characters. Which prove that Zenimax is pretty generous already.

SantieClaws

Thing is most games don't have any cap on guild membership at all and it is only because of the relationship between guilds and trading outlets (and the choice not to have a central AH) in this game that led to there being any limit at all. It seems to be a side effect of the trading system more than anything else.

New players are coming in and being quite surprised that there is any cap at all. Have some cap if you must but I still think that, proportional to the size of the playerbase and the recent increase, the current limit of 500 is too low.

I'd like to be increased to 1,000 but I'd settle for 750/800 for now and then having it be reviewed again in 3 or 4 months time.

If a small increase does not lead to any great balance of guild power issues then why not a slightly larger one?

Rosveen

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

Thing is most games don't have any cap on guild membership at all

What games don't have a cap? Every popular MMO I can think of has some kind of cap - and often you invite characters, not accounts, so you actually have fewer individual players than in ESO.

SantieClaws

LOTRO didn't have a guild cap as far as I can recall. I think there were some very big guilds.

It was invite by character though and you could only be in one guild for each character.

Rosveen

I see. But LotRO Kinship FAQ says it's max. 1500 members at rank 10? I don't know, I never played it. Still, it would be a high enough limit.

SantieClaws

Yeah I'd be happy with anything from 800 to 1500 members. I have not played LOTRO since ESO launched but I was there for 6 years and I don't recall any kinship limits while I played - though then again if it was 1500 I don't think most guilds would have even noticed it was there.

Most seemed to be more concerned with not slipping below the 10 characters needed to keep the guild going.