Guild Poll - Raising the limit on Guild member slots

Kilnerdyne

The current limit is 500 members and this Poll asks you whether you think the limit should be raised.

Possible Pros

1. Trading Guilds enjoy more Tax from their increased membership.
2. Social Guilds can expand to introduce more people into content.
3. Raiding Guilds can (still) run multiple teams; even more than before though!
4. All Guilds/Communities reaching their current limit could grow further.
5. LFG/LFM/WTB/WTS/WTT chat would increase.
6. More people getting into Group content is better for ZOS accounting department.

Possible Cons/Things to contemplate

1. Would this increase negatively (or positively) affect the guild trader/trading market.
2. Would 1000 member Guild Chat be unmanageable. Peak time restrictions might have to be enforced (cooldown on when you can talk again).
3. A third chat layer for Guilds might be required, similar to the current /g1 & /o1 chats /u1 (utility chat) would handle LFG/LFM/WTB/WTS/WTT leaving /g1 or /o1 open still for conversation.
4. How would this affect Guild Banks, Ranks, Notes & Permissions.
5. How would this affect 50 member social guilds.
6. What about Performance issues for both server and client side.

As an advocate for raising the limit I am of course biased towards my own opinion but would definitely like to hear what other people think about this; and if it is even possible.

VaranisArano

I'm in several trading guilds and 500 member slots has been sufficient for active members to make the sales/donation requirement (varying from 1k to 50K sales or 10k donation for my guilds, which I make easily) and the online requirements (active in a 7 to 14 day period), so that most of my guilds sit at 450+ members.

If we decide we really need more members, that's when one of my guilds goes through and cleans out the people who haven't logged on in 6 months, so its not entirely a pressing issue in my experience.

DoctorESO

I thought this said "guard poll, raise the number of guards in town."

But yes either way.

Kilnerdyne

For over 6 months now our community guild has had a queue of between 15-30 players waiting to join the guild at any given time, and that's with a 30 day offline policy which I think is quite reasonable in a social guild. 97.6% of the guild were online in the last 30days, 93.6% in the last 2 weeks, 89.6% in the last week, 81% were online in the last 24 hours. This is before the purge for the week which would remove 3 people.

I've been using 50 slots in my friends list to keep track of the users who have signed up for the guild on our website but apart from making another guild would an increase to the limit help to progress our guild further; I think it might definitely. Just wondering what the downsides would be for others and what their opinion on it is; or even if it is possible.

DoctorESO

But after we get to 1,000 will people demand 1,500, then 2,000, then 25,000?

Kilnerdyne

I'm just not sure what else apart from an increase to the limit could help with the growth once a community reaches a certain point they're going to need more space however well you micro-manage the existing space.

Edenprime

I'd like to see an increase in slots. I run a 100% Finnish speaking guild and it gets full about once a week. Our offline limit is approx 30 days. I can only imagine what English speaking social guilds are going through...

bitels

After thinking about it for some time I say- im perfectly fine with raising the limit.
I am in few guilds that have problems with lack of space to grow. They are constantly on 500/500. There are 2 ways some guilds usually deal with that problem, and tbh I don't like either of them. First is lowering offline limit for guild members, to 2 or even 1 week. Which I really don't like, because I believe, most of us was in situation where they had to drop off the game, without earlier notice, for some period of time. Second is starting twin-guild. And I believe that guild is not a name or tabard, but ppl in it, so for me, starting second guild with totally different people just dosnt make any sense.
Consider trading guilds and top trading spots- more members equal more income, so I believe that trading spots will go up, but that should even itself out after some time. Only early transition period could be a problem, but that should not take longer then couple of weeks.
Extra chat layer- with 1k player limit it would be necessary I think, and tbh- even now it would be nice addition. Why is that not a thing already?
With higher player cap it would be easier, especially for newer players, to join big guild that are constantly having max guild members in them. Right now some of those people are discourage by long time they have to wait until there will be free space for them to join. Increasing player limit should reduce that problem by A LOT.

As with every change there are pros and cons, but in that situation, in my opinion, pros just outweigh cons

Gythral

Trading Guilds need to have a max size of <server pop+1> imo, or should we just get an AH and solve that problem,
after that social guilds probably need a cap of 1000,
everything else is probably ok

Didnt vote as none of the options really matter...

Turelus

Kilnerdyne wrote: »

For over 6 months now our community guild has had a queue of between 15-30 players waiting to join the guild at any given time, and that's with a 30 day offline policy which I think is quite reasonable in a social guild. 97.6% of the guild were online in the last 30days, 93.6% in the last 2 weeks, 89.6% in the last week, 81% were online in the last 24 hours. This is before the purge for the week which would remove 3 people.

I've been using 50 slots in my friends list to keep track of the users who have signed up for the guild on our website but apart from making another guild would an increase to the limit help to progress our guild further; I think it might definitely. Just wondering what the downsides would be for others and what their opinion on it is; or even if it is possible.

Are all of those members actively being part of the guild though or just being online.

The problem with have with the multiple guild system is that you can have "activity timers" to check if people have been logging on but that's not to say they're actively invested in that guild. You can have members on every day but do nothing within the guilds they're part of because they have other guilds they play with.

I'm sure you could find slots for people who wanted to join if it was based around guild participation.

I do believe in the past others have said the 500 limit was performance based however, so it's unlikely to increase if that's true.

Gralor

It has almost as many upsides as downsides to increase the cap, as @Kilnerdyne had said himself, which is why it’s not easy to support a higher cap for all guilds in general.

That being said, I’m a member of OP’s Late Night Dungeoneers as well and I agree that in our case a cap increase to 750 or even 1.000 would lead to more good than bad. That's for sure.

In addition, Zenimax would have to improve the guild management system in several ways, so guild managers (esp. on consoles) would be able to handle the population increase much better.

Kilnerdyne

They are either actively taking part in the signup events on the website, joining for pledges/dungeons/farming/impromptu raids on different days depending on when their raiding/pvp guilds are organizing their own events. Depending on the night between 12-25 will signup for an event out of the 120-200 online so around 10%. We're a social community though with no requirements to join, only rule is the 30 day offline limit.

At the moment if we have 10 members who are over the 30 day social guild offline limi, 4 of them will be purged, 4 of them have notes explaining a long afk, and 2 of them are so old school you dont really want to kick them but will eventually. Then there are the 20-50 members between the 24hours-29days offline period. Also add the Guildmaster and 4-8 leaders. Now it's only 430 spaces. At peak times you can expect between 120-200 of these members online at any given point depending. But they're all in 5 Guilds so they Raid/PvP/Friend Groups on different days so getting enough of them to your social guilds raids still requires at least this amount depending on the day.

Raising the limit would allow community guilds to run larger events, multiple full raid groups for PvP or 2-3 Raid groups for PvE. It might even allow the kind of activity needed for 24-player or 32-player PvE content to be viable with community runs *nudge*. I'm sure some very active Guilds are already doing this however the limit raise might make this occur more often.

For players it's access to a wider playerbase for to be able to do more content that they might not have found a group, advice or support for otherwise. Perhaps more people would join Guilds in general if it were easier to get in, I'm sure the leaders are well versed at recruiting by now, which might help grow the wider community.

For Guildmasters, I think the type of people who run the larger guilds are usually pretty good at micro managing community rosters already to be able to handle (or delegate) the extra admin that would come with the increase to the member limit. It might even create less admin for some GMs who are struggling with the limit at the moment. Having the space to continue your community even further.

For ZOS, surely the more chance people are socializing, getting to know each other, making their own guilds, being able to better find groups & items and enjoying the game is better for them from a monetary perspective.

Princess_Ciri

Considering what an awesome guild LND is, I feel bad for the people who are stuck on a waiting list. Increasing the member limit would solve the issue so it seems fine to me.

Nobody is forcing any other guilds to have more members, but having the option to increase the member cap is a good idea, especially if ESO keeps getting new players. Otherwise you may end up in the future with situations where new players don't feel like they have access to any long time running guilds because of the 500 member cap.

themaddaedra

I have no feelings either way. For the social guilds i'm not noticing any negative affects (tho i'm not in one) but for trading guilds it's bit complicated. I'm in TTG now and we are always 500/500, and there always are loads of other people waiting for inactives to get kicked so they can join. But in the other hand increasing the limit could cause all the trading to get stuck in Craglorn. The taxes and fees are already more than what it takes to keep the slot, i'm positively sure limit increasing is not necessary on that wise.

There already is a huge cap between Craglorn traders and others, even so you can think the trading in Tamriel as "Craglorn and Others".

So there are + thingies and - thingies in my opinion.

SantieClaws

Khajiit she enquired about this issue some time ago and received an answer on the ESO that is sometimes live yes.

It was a no. A most certain no. A very solid no. A decisive no even.

As much of a no as this one ever marrying a grumpy elf.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Merlin13KAGL

That's what sister guilds and inter-guild cooperation is for.

500 characters allows for:

• 40 concurrent trials runs.
• 125 concurrent 4 man runs.
• 20 full 24-man PvP groups.
• 100 of each class.
• 33 of each role within each class.

500 member limit lets guilds have their primary focus, still allowing each to be just slightly different than the next.

Beyond that, there are server logistics issues that would arise:

• Guild bank size would be effectively smaller, or the size would have to be increased, increasing loading times.
• Guild store listings would also increase, increasing loading times.
• Smaller guilds would have even less chance of competing regarding guild trader locations. Currently large guilds would still get outmatched by the sheer numbers of 500+ guilds.

lardvader

Yes pls - still waiting for a free slot in LND and this would help @Kilnerdyne

Runschei

Before going as far as to doubling the amount of players allowed in one guild I would like to see the 750 version arrive first. Just to see how well the guild chat is holding up and how the guild in general manage. But other than that I would not mind a few extra in my guild to chat with

bitels

Turelus wrote: »

I do believe in the past others have said the 500 limit was performance based however, so it's unlikely to increase if that's true.

@Turelus
Do you have maybe some kind of source that confirm that?
Im just interested, because I just don't understand what is a difference between 5k players who are in 10 guild with 500 members limit, and same players being in 5 guilds with 1000 members limit.

Turelus

bitels wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

I do believe in the past others have said the 500 limit was performance based however, so it's unlikely to increase if that's true.

Turelus
Do you have maybe some kind of source that confirm that?
Im just interested, because I just don't understand what is a difference between 5k players who are in 10 guild with 500 members limit, and same players being in 5 guilds with 1000 members limit.

I don't off hand no, I can dig about when I get a moment and see if I can find something.
It was from what others (not ZOS) explained about the way data would be stored database wise and access or some such. There have been a lot of threads over the years with people asking for this and ZOS have never before caved on it. Considering Santie got a direct no on her request for information then I don't see it happening.

VaranisArano

bitels wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

I do believe in the past others have said the 500 limit was performance based however, so it's unlikely to increase if that's true.

Turelus
Do you have maybe some kind of source that confirm that?
Im just interested, because I just don't understand what is a difference between 5k players who are in 10 guild with 500 members limit, and same players being in 5 guilds with 1000 members limit.

The guild tabs do track Guild History, sales and banking, so I imagine that's where the biggest potential for issues lie in the interface. Also, 500 members all putting 30 items on a single guild trader is 15,000 items on the guild trader, so that's another potential place for issues if that gets increased.

idk

1.While it could flip which are the stronger guilds, the top trading guild will still have many of the same accounts. Top guilds want tap sales people.
2. Good social guilds do not need 500 to begin with. 500 active players in one guild will not know each other.
3. A good raiding guild can run multiple teams with a mere 200 members. A good raiding guild would not have 500 member to begin with as it becomes to much to manage. Quality over quantity.

The comments below that OP attributes to being benefits of raiding the guild membership cap occur very well with the 500 cap., If these are not happening in your current PvX guild there is something wrong with the guild and how it is managed..

All Guilds/Communities reaching their current limit could grow further.
LFG/LFM/WTB/WTS/WTT chat would increase.
More people getting into Group content is better for ZOS accounting department.

Of course, as it is now, many guilds are at or near the 500 cap. However, outside of actively managed trading guilds, much of those 500 members are not actually active and many more are not truly active with that guild.

So, no reason to raise the cap. At least none provided in this thread.

sub_l0gical

Voted for "raise to 1000" . Reason is - many people are willing to join certain social guilds but forced to wait for a long time before someone will leave or got kicked,also more people makes social part of game more fun,and easier to find people for particular activities.Thanks

Acrolas

In my experience, guilds are just a living experiment in proving that Dunbar's Number is probably far too generous.

ak_pvp

Turelus wrote: »

Kilnerdyne wrote: »

For over 6 months now our community guild has had a queue of between 15-30 players waiting to join the guild at any given time, and that's with a 30 day offline policy which I think is quite reasonable in a social guild. 97.6% of the guild were online in the last 30days, 93.6% in the last 2 weeks, 89.6% in the last week, 81% were online in the last 24 hours. This is before the purge for the week which would remove 3 people.

I've been using 50 slots in my friends list to keep track of the users who have signed up for the guild on our website but apart from making another guild would an increase to the limit help to progress our guild further; I think it might definitely. Just wondering what the downsides would be for others and what their opinion on it is; or even if it is possible.

Are all of those members actively being part of the guild though or just being online.

The problem with have with the multiple guild system is that you can have "activity timers" to check if people have been logging on but that's not to say they're actively invested in that guild. You can have members on every day but do nothing within the guilds they're part of because they have other guilds they play with.

I'm sure you could find slots for people who wanted to join if it was based around guild participation.

I do believe in the past others have said the 500 limit was performance based however, so it's unlikely to increase if that's true.

Its hard to track "active." I raid in LND as a pug, or a replacement for a sign up and do my dailies in it, but have pretty much never gone to sign up raid since it is commitment which isn't really possible depending on life. And it can't really be based of talking in chat, because not all do.

As for all technical issues, I only see an issue if people spam the chat and it gets delayed, which won't really happen. It shouldn't be more intensive than say opening two guilds, but it'd be more effective.

exiars10

There are currently almost 11k players logged via Steam. Add x2 for non-Steam players. So probably around ~33k on PC actively playing right now.

So you rise cap to 1k. Think about it.

NyassaV

I feel like 1k might be a bit much but I have no issue with 750

Ulfgarde

Tbh I think 500 is too much even, and that it should have been half of this amount to start with. However, I get where OP comes from since he is head of one of the most active PVE communities in the game right now. I feel as though the quantity of guilds (5) is a greater issue and prevents guild allegiances, but that is another issue to take up on.

I guess the biggest impact would be to trading guilds, since then they have to manage more sales and, thus, there will be even larger guilds than before in such a low-pop game. I just don't think it'll work out in this avenue. If they had separated established trading guilds from general guilds mechanically, this could proceed better.

I can't really say I'd be arsed if the change went through or not. I don't know how anyone could manage it though, but if the owner's up for it, they're up for it, and I can't short their judgement for that.

paulsgruff

I voted for raise to 1000 members for two reasons: The game has always felt most fun for me while within a large and thriving community guild of people that know each other, and that ZoS hasn't ever really given the larger more community based guilds any useful tools to manage their guilds effectively. If they aren't willing to invest in that, raising the roster cap is the simplest step in temporary improvement for guilds that regularly have to prune members due to demand. At least doing this would make the invite/kick-inactive process less of a problem in the short term.

Let's not forget that the trading guilds unlock a decent trading/fund raising functionality through member count, satisfying their purpose. The community guilds don't really get much functionality expansion at all for running or organising anything within their community as they grow. Larger guilds are forced to either really struggle with event organisation in game, or use a means outside of the game to do so (requiring others members to sign up to other services/websites etc - something which isn't always something they wish to do). Being forced to start a second guild just to keep up with demand should never be something you should have to even consider just to cope with this kind of issue in a multiplayer focussed game - as it essentially doubles the admin, members can't communicate cross-guild inside the game (kind of defeating the purpose of a community guild a little) and second guild can't be run from the same account anyway, causing leadership confusion.

Quick list of other obvious issues for this type of guild (from helping to run one and being in another of this type)
There's no in game guild event calendar function for organising events.
There's no way to advertise your guild in game other than word of mouth or in zone chat.
Guild rank options are extremely limited to make a useful progression system when you have so many members with various roles, duties and trust levels.
Places where useful information can be stored within the game - for example the message of the day and member notes - have very short character limits for a guild of this kind (there isn't even an 'edit your own note' exclusive option, it's either all or nothing).
A lack of a guild alliance functionality for multi-purposing/separating necessary things if basic functionality issues can not be improved easily.

Glaiceana

I think putting it up to 750 would be good.

The thing is, LND is a very good example of why. So many people are waiting to get into this guild, and its already over capacity. For a guild that's sole focus is helping people to group and progress, (and which is very successful in this I can say), to be forced to a point where the leaders' time is taken up constantly with managing and inviting and making sure there is room enough, is unfair and limiting. There are so many players who want to progress and improve in this game, but struggle to find the right guild to help them. And there's many players that want to be the ones helping!

Personally I do not see a downside to having it increased to 750. And as someone who runs a guild with smaller numbers than this, I don't think the increase would negatively affect my own smaller social guild.

Luciferazazell

I wish they would just raise the amounts of guilds you can join five isnt enough why not make it 8 or 10 i keep wanting to join more guilds and having to choose which one to leave not wanting to leave any maybe adsint it in the crown store extra guild slots. Some words of motivation and suggestion for zenimax people will pay