Make guild membership, mail and banking character-bound instead of account-wide

AngryNord

This game would be a lot more alt friendly if guild memberships were bound to each character instead of to your account. Same thing with sending/receiving mail (would also mean you could mail stuff between your characters). Banking would be a bit of both, you'd still have the current account-wide bank, but also a character-bound bank. Would reduce the need for both extra bank space, but would also make banking alts more versatile.

TalonShina

The mail thing i could see maybe however i like i can buy something and then just swap to the character i was buying it for and pull it out of the mail. I can easily mail starter gear for new characters to my husband and have him return to sender to get them back quickly (i know this is something not all can do) I like that guilds and bank is account wide I don't want to have join the guilds I like on every toon I create especially since I tend to have this weird quirk of recreating until I am completely statisfied then i usually stick with one toon only but i might dabble a little and it allows me to talk with my favorite people while leveling without having to ask for an invite on the new toon.

I actually think the way it is setup is better for quality of life (allow I wouldn't mind being able to mail myself but it's not gamebreaking for me)

clayandaudrey_ESO

Yes I actually like the way they have it setup and hope that it will stay the same.

Armenua

I like the guild system the way it is. It's really nice. But I do wish I could mail stuff to myself. That would help a lot and keep having to always clearing out your bags... sometimes going to town to unload is really inconvenient.

TheShadowScout

AngryNord wrote: »

This game would be a lot more alt friendly if guild memberships were bound to each character instead of to your account.

Yes, it would!
It would also mean we could have each guild being "faction-locked", which might make things a bit less... unfortunate... in some PvP instances.
The drawback of course is that people busy "alt-ing" would miss out on guild-wide "call to arms"... (or call to event, in many cases)
Of course, the lore firmly supports "neutral" guilds (fighters, mages...)
Personally I am of two minds about this...

AngryNord wrote: »

Same thing with sending/receiving mail (would also mean you could mail stuff between your characters).

Hmmm... maybe so. On the other hand, account wide mailings do make it easier to buy stuff from guild vendors on your rich character, and take it on a poor alt without a step in between... but then, that is no biggie if other options exist, and it IS balanced by those annoying "congrats, you have reachet V6... again..." and so on. Which of course are also no biggie, since you can just delete them.
Personally... I'd like to see my -characters- recieve mail seperately, not in the least because it would make it easier to supple,ent roleplay with "IC-letters". But then any letters sent to an less used alt might lie for days until read...
No clear advantage to be seen in doing it either way.

AngryNord wrote: »

Banking would be a bit of both, you'd still have the current account-wide bank, but also a character-bound bank. Would reduce the need for both extra bank space, but would also make banking alts more versatile.

While I can appreciate the backgroundish reasons, account-wide banking is pretty nifty for people who craft on one character, gather on another. Or just wish to have their crafting stores available on all. Or want to have alts "inherit" bound gear. Or pool income for bigger purchases. And so on.
While a personal bank might see far less usefulness in my eyes. In fact, I could hardly see much advantage of a "personal bank" as compared to an "account bank" at all...

But most important, I kinda doubt they would want to vex people by "taking away" such account-wide features and restricting them to character-bound.
Though I'd be right there opposing all who are darn greedy and want -more- account wide stuff. ESO gives -more- account wide options then most other games I ever played.
Its enough. Not too little. Not too much. Enough.

Tandor

AngryNord wrote: »

This game would be a lot more alt friendly if guild memberships were bound to each character instead of to your account. Same thing with sending/receiving mail (would also mean you could mail stuff between your characters). Banking would be a bit of both, you'd still have the current account-wide bank, but also a character-bound bank. Would reduce the need for both extra bank space, but would also make banking alts more versatile.

I agree with all of that.

UrQuan

So you're suggesting making it so that if I'm on an alt I can't talk to any of my friends in /guild because that particular character isn't in the guild. How exactly is that more alt friendly?

AlnilamE

I think character-based guild membership has some logic for RP reasons, but it would be a PITA and not alt-friendly at all for me.

Right now, when someone in the guild needs help in another faction, I can hop on an alt and help them. Or if they need a tank for a dungeon I can hop on my tank and get an invite. Essentially, I would end up having all my characters join the same guilds they are in now. Some folks in my guild play SWOTR and the guilds there are character based, and it's a huge pain when we have a server move or something to make sure everybody's characters are invited to the guild on each side.

I don't see the advantage of a "character bank" over carrying stuff in inventory anyway? As TheShadowScout pointed out, passing on bound gear to a lower level alt is a thing. I have a set of level 17-20 Warlock gear that has been used by 3 characters so far. I would never be able to mail them to the other character because they are bound, but I can put them in the bank.

I have crafting alts, but all my toons gather mats along the way as they quest. That all goes into the bank for my crafters to deal with.

Same thing with mail. I grab everybody's hirelings and then the respective crafters pick the mail from the mail box when they are done. Or if I'm in PvP, the Rewards for the Worthy are taken and deconned by the crafters, not the toon that was in PvP.

I really don't think that having these things character bound would make the game more practical. Rather, it would be highly inconvenient and a huge time sink.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO

I'll say no to this. Bad idea.

Tandor

UrQuan wrote: »

So you're suggesting making it so that if I'm on an alt I can't talk to any of my friends in /guild because that particular character isn't in the guild. How exactly is that more alt friendly?

That would only be the case if you chose not to have that character in the guild. At the moment, that choice isn't open to you.

UrQuan

Tandor wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

So you're suggesting making it so that if I'm on an alt I can't talk to any of my friends in /guild because that particular character isn't in the guild. How exactly is that more alt friendly?

That would only be the case if you chose not to have that character in the guild. At the moment, that choice isn't open to you.

But if guilds were on a per-character basis you'd need a guild invite for each character.

And does that mean that the limit in the number of guild members gets increased to 4000 in order to accommodate all of the alts people might have, or does it mean that the number of actual real people in the guild becomes more limited because people want to be in the guild with their alts as well?

How are guild officers going to keep track of the people who are helpful and trustworthy and maybe due for a promotion when instead of seeing the player name on the roster they see several different character names, and don't know/can't keep track of which characters are the same actual person?

If I'm doing an event on one character one day, and afterward someone else who was in that event wants to mail me to thank me/ask a question/ask for help for another event/whatever then what happens if I spend the next week playing a different character, so I never get that mail until way after the fact, and the player who was trying to contact me has no idea that I've been online on a different character?

Would we have to change the number of guilds you can join now that it's on a per-character basis, or is it reasonable that people could be in 40 guilds? Do we recognize that being able to be in that many guilds is ridiculous and leads to never having any meaningful participation in any of them and reduce it to 1 guild per character? But if we do that, then we're back to the problem of not being able to have all of your alts in the same guild, unless you're OK with only being in a total of 1 guild.

If the goal is to put up barriers to social interaction, making these things character-bound instead of account-wide is the way to do it.

RAGUNAnoOne

The guild part is a bad idea 1. it makes it a lot easier to make personal guild bank 2. Trade guilds would be an issue with this there are only so many spaces per guild and they have the monopoly on trading 3. if someone robs a bank and is in it with two+ characters it will be that much easier for them to do it again

SnuggleMePlease

Yeah, I have to say that I disagree with the bit about making guilds character-wide. In other games where you're only allowed to be in a single guild, you can expect a lot more from your guild members.

In ESO, and this is from experience establishing and managing my own clan, I have seen that it is a lot harder because people tend to be members of multiple guilds. You have to be understanding about this sort of thing and work with your guild members.

If guilds were only character wide, then I feel that people would have trouble managing to be anything more than roster filler for a potential forty guilds.

Tandor

UrQuan wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

So you're suggesting making it so that if I'm on an alt I can't talk to any of my friends in /guild because that particular character isn't in the guild. How exactly is that more alt friendly?

That would only be the case if you chose not to have that character in the guild. At the moment, that choice isn't open to you.

But if guilds were on a per-character basis you'd need a guild invite for each character.

And does that mean that the limit in the number of guild members gets increased to 4000 in order to accommodate all of the alts people might have, or does it mean that the number of actual real people in the guild becomes more limited because people want to be in the guild with their alts as well?

How are guild officers going to keep track of the people who are helpful and trustworthy and maybe due for a promotion when instead of seeing the player name on the roster they see several different character names, and don't know/can't keep track of which characters are the same actual person?

If I'm doing an event on one character one day, and afterward someone else who was in that event wants to mail me to thank me/ask a question/ask for help for another event/whatever then what happens if I spend the next week playing a different character, so I never get that mail until way after the fact, and the player who was trying to contact me has no idea that I've been online on a different character?

Would we have to change the number of guilds you can join now that it's on a per-character basis, or is it reasonable that people could be in 40 guilds? Do we recognize that being able to be in that many guilds is ridiculous and leads to never having any meaningful participation in any of them and reduce it to 1 guild per character? But if we do that, then we're back to the problem of not being able to have all of your alts in the same guild, unless you're OK with only being in a total of 1 guild.

If the goal is to put up barriers to social interaction, making these things character-bound instead of account-wide is the way to do it.

I don't see why, other MMOs have had character-specific guild membership for years, and those MMOs have had much more socially active guilds than ESO with its multiple guild membership. The barrier in this game to social interaction is the ability to belong to 5 guilds (which in itself removes any real sense of guild community and loyalty) with many guild members disabling guild chat as they have no desire for social interaction and are only in the guild for trading purposes. Also, when the only choice open to you is between all your characters belonging to a guild or none of them doing so, some players will opt out altogether.

Tandor

SnuggleMePlease wrote: »

Yeah, I have to say that I disagree with the bit about making guilds character-wide. In other games where you're only allowed to be in a single guild, you can expect a lot more from your guild members.

In ESO, and this is from experience establishing and managing my own clan, I have seen that it is a lot harder because people tend to be members of multiple guilds. You have to be understanding about this sort of thing and work with your guild members.

If guilds were only character wide, then I feel that people would have trouble managing to be anything more than roster filler for a potential forty guilds.

Given that players can already be a member of 5 guilds even with account-wide membership, I doubt many would be interested in joining even more in total. However, some players might want differently envisaged characters to be in specific guilds only - say their sorcerer in a mage-oriented guild and their fighter in a warrior-oriented guild - while other players may prefer to have a character who is not in any guilds and which they can play when they feel in a particularly solitary mood.

UrQuan

Tandor wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

So you're suggesting making it so that if I'm on an alt I can't talk to any of my friends in /guild because that particular character isn't in the guild. How exactly is that more alt friendly?

That would only be the case if you chose not to have that character in the guild. At the moment, that choice isn't open to you.

But if guilds were on a per-character basis you'd need a guild invite for each character.

And does that mean that the limit in the number of guild members gets increased to 4000 in order to accommodate all of the alts people might have, or does it mean that the number of actual real people in the guild becomes more limited because people want to be in the guild with their alts as well?

How are guild officers going to keep track of the people who are helpful and trustworthy and maybe due for a promotion when instead of seeing the player name on the roster they see several different character names, and don't know/can't keep track of which characters are the same actual person?

If I'm doing an event on one character one day, and afterward someone else who was in that event wants to mail me to thank me/ask a question/ask for help for another event/whatever then what happens if I spend the next week playing a different character, so I never get that mail until way after the fact, and the player who was trying to contact me has no idea that I've been online on a different character?

Would we have to change the number of guilds you can join now that it's on a per-character basis, or is it reasonable that people could be in 40 guilds? Do we recognize that being able to be in that many guilds is ridiculous and leads to never having any meaningful participation in any of them and reduce it to 1 guild per character? But if we do that, then we're back to the problem of not being able to have all of your alts in the same guild, unless you're OK with only being in a total of 1 guild.

If the goal is to put up barriers to social interaction, making these things character-bound instead of account-wide is the way to do it.

I don't see why, other MMOs have had character-specific guild membership for years, and those MMOs have had much more socially active guilds than ESO with its multiple guild membership. The barrier in this game to social interaction is the ability to belong to 5 guilds (which in itself removes any real sense of guild community and loyalty) with many guild members disabling guild chat as they have no desire for social interaction and are only in the guild for trading purposes. Also, when the only choice open to you is between all your characters belonging to a guild or none of them doing so, some players will opt out altogether.

So you don't have any counter-argument to any of the specific problems I brought up that would be caused by this. Got it.

Korah_Eaglecry

The only thing I dont like is that all of the characters share the same bank account. I wouldnt mind an Account Bank for moving things between the characters. But it gets painful trying to keep up with all the crafting mats and items moving between characters through the normal bank. I have my crafting skills split between different characters and for the crafting skill lines that require you to research items. The headache of filling half your bank with those items that you need to research and trying to patiently wait to move through them.

Tandor

UrQuan wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

So you're suggesting making it so that if I'm on an alt I can't talk to any of my friends in /guild because that particular character isn't in the guild. How exactly is that more alt friendly?

That would only be the case if you chose not to have that character in the guild. At the moment, that choice isn't open to you.

But if guilds were on a per-character basis you'd need a guild invite for each character.

And does that mean that the limit in the number of guild members gets increased to 4000 in order to accommodate all of the alts people might have, or does it mean that the number of actual real people in the guild becomes more limited because people want to be in the guild with their alts as well?

How are guild officers going to keep track of the people who are helpful and trustworthy and maybe due for a promotion when instead of seeing the player name on the roster they see several different character names, and don't know/can't keep track of which characters are the same actual person?

If I'm doing an event on one character one day, and afterward someone else who was in that event wants to mail me to thank me/ask a question/ask for help for another event/whatever then what happens if I spend the next week playing a different character, so I never get that mail until way after the fact, and the player who was trying to contact me has no idea that I've been online on a different character?

Would we have to change the number of guilds you can join now that it's on a per-character basis, or is it reasonable that people could be in 40 guilds? Do we recognize that being able to be in that many guilds is ridiculous and leads to never having any meaningful participation in any of them and reduce it to 1 guild per character? But if we do that, then we're back to the problem of not being able to have all of your alts in the same guild, unless you're OK with only being in a total of 1 guild.

If the goal is to put up barriers to social interaction, making these things character-bound instead of account-wide is the way to do it.

I don't see why, other MMOs have had character-specific guild membership for years, and those MMOs have had much more socially active guilds than ESO with its multiple guild membership. The barrier in this game to social interaction is the ability to belong to 5 guilds (which in itself removes any real sense of guild community and loyalty) with many guild members disabling guild chat as they have no desire for social interaction and are only in the guild for trading purposes. Also, when the only choice open to you is between all your characters belonging to a guild or none of them doing so, some players will opt out altogether.

So you don't have any counter-argument to any of the specific problems I brought up that would be caused by this. Got it.

I was specifically addressing your final comment about barriers to social interaction by pointing out that other MMOs have character-specific guild membership with more successful social interaction. Your points aren't insuperable or they'd be a major issue in other MMOs. However, if you'd like a reply on each one then here goes:-

There are various ways in which the question of the maximum size of guilds could be handled, possibly keeping the present system in terms of the game recognising the account each character is on so that it continues to allow 500 accounts to join the guild but with the individual characters invited - or perhaps opting out - separately.

Guild officers probably already have a difficult job knowing which of their members are also active in other guilds and who therefore have divided loyalties. Neither the multiple guild system nor the trader system makes life easy for guild officers. I know the various officers including me never had a problem with the separate character approach in other games, however, and I'm sure this wouldn't be an impossible situation for them here. Guild officers would obviously aim to run their guild in a way that encouraged members to include all their characters in that guild. As happens in other games, some GMs may even require it as a condition of joining.

Players already log in multiple characters each day to do writs and trials etc so logging in a character to check mail occasionally isn't a massive problem, always assuming it wasn't delivered across the account anyway.

I think it's unlikely that multiple guilds increase social interaction because it's impossible to attain the same level of community and loyalty with many players disabling guild chat and really only in most of their guilds for trading purposes. I don't see that it would be necessary to change the maximum number of guilds that a character can join from the present limit, but with character-specific guild membership it might be worth considering imposing faction restrictions on guild membership as it is something that has been raised a lot in the past although it would obviously entail an even bigger revamp of the whole guild system.

See also my comments in the post above yours. I don't believe people would be joining 40 guilds ! Some players might have different characters in different guilds, but I suspect the main result of such a change would be that some players would leave one or more of their characters out of some of their guilds altogether. That's a choice that isn't open to them at present and, as usual in life, choice is generally a good thing.

In a game that deliberately encourages the whole concept of multiple guild membership it's difficult to see any over-riding reason in principle why all the characters on an account have to be in the same guilds. The practical issues arising from any change to that would be unlikely to be insuperable.

stevenbennett_ESO

Honestly, I'm quite happy that all of those things *are* account bound. I find all of those areas to be so much better here than on other MMOs I've played, because they're account based and not character based.

So no, I would very much NOT like to see this changed. If they want to add additional support for character specific storage, I can live with that, but leave the current setup unchanged.

AlnilamE

The thing is, if you have a faction restriction on guilds, then people who have characters in different factions wouldn't be able to put all their characters into the same guild. In our case, we would create a version of the guild for each faction, but that would seriously mess up our GM rotations and require us to get more officers than we have now.

Volkodav

AngryNord wrote: »

This game would be a lot more alt friendly if guild memberships were bound to each character instead of to your account. Same thing with sending/receiving mail (would also mean you could mail stuff between your characters). Banking would be a bit of both, you'd still have the current account-wide bank, but also a character-bound bank. Would reduce the need for both extra bank space, but would also make banking alts more versatile.

I like the idea of the bit of both banking.But how would it work?
Like this maybe::

Account Bank
Your bank
guild bank
Guild store

That might work.

AngryNord

Volkodav wrote: »

AngryNord wrote: »

This game would be a lot more alt friendly if guild memberships were bound to each character instead of to your account. Same thing with sending/receiving mail (would also mean you could mail stuff between your characters). Banking would be a bit of both, you'd still have the current account-wide bank, but also a character-bound bank. Would reduce the need for both extra bank space, but would also make banking alts more versatile.

I like the idea of the bit of both banking.But how would it work?
Like this maybe::

Account Bank
Your bank
guild bank
Guild store

That might work.

Yes, I'd imagine it would have to be something like that.

Flaminir

The other drawback is that most people would want all their characters in each guild....

So with the existing 500 limit that would reduce the number of individuals down to about 62... hardly ideal.

Also it would be a nightmare from the other extreme... all your characters being in different guilds.... potentially 40 guilds!!!! How could you make proper friends with that many guilds? Or keep on top of trader sales? Or have any idea what was going on in each guild.

If they do bring in the crafting material bags for subscribers that would help with banking / inventory.

I 100% agree on the mailing stuff to yourself thing though... that would be a great improvement.