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we have MMR system in RTS, so we need MMR system for MMO servers. at the end of each season a certain % of top guilds move to a server with a higher mmr. for example, like starcraft 2 we have leagues - silver gold platinum etc. I would like to see a competition of guilds in the gradmaster league what do you think?
You know why it’s so social of an MMORPG making communities and feel that old school feel? First it’s PvP forcing you to seek some kind of protection. Secondly you can’t TP from place to place and must walk so friends and they help you do all the things required.. smaller guilds usually have more knowledge of each other and it is nice to know how your companions play.
Having a "guild skill tree" that sacrifices max members perk isnt going to fix zergs, leaders will just make 10 separate guilds and get the best guild perks on all of them and call it a day, people communicate in Discord anyways, no need for guild chat ingame. Slightly annoying for leaders but its been done on mmo's for over a decade. Zergs will zerg
Have an Alliance skill tree then, and limit the number of alliances guilds and incentivize wars against other large alliances and decentivize an alliance from fighting unaligned guilds. Even if they go all out and form multiple umbrella alliances they'd be competing with eachother
It’s still annoying for them though. When guild wars are declared it is only between guilds. So a small 50 man guild can war dec Actual Pirates and only the 50 members in Actual Pirates are flagged.
This is why in my opinion the "issue" of Guild Wars targeting players in town mentioned here is actually a good solution to combat this. You can't make 100 separate guilds with all the artisan perks and just camp those characters safely in town. This system means they can be picked off with no way to fight back. If the Zerg guilds are going to circumvent the guild size rules (by making multiple guilds), then them getting treated as not being in the same guild (i.e. not letting someone from Guild 14 fight in a war that Guild 21 is in) is perfectly fair. They want to have their cake and eat it to. All this system is doing is actually forcing their separate guilds to in fact be separate.
Actual Pirates is on my current server after wipe. Havent really had issues with them. My guild has PVPed them as well all in good fun. I do think its a bit stale seeing Actual Pirates XXIV or whatever number they are on but zergs will plague every game they are allowed to be in.
"Not everyone has character to be in small guild" - that's eufemism. I remember I played Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. On my Asian server it was slightly unbalanced at start on one side, that 2 biggest guilds rerolled to opposite faction and we had the best 6 months of PVP-ing, siegeing, raiding, ambushing, etc... then the game started to become unpopular, servers started to be merged with American ones... and then we experienced shock. On their servers 90% OF PEOPLE were rolling bigger faction! We were just flooded! We were running 2 warbands, they were running 10, lol... so they were sacking our capital every 2nd day, looting last tier gear, become even stronger, and stronger, and stronger... until most people on our side got bored and they killed last server and the game, lol :D
I don't think Feds make a distinction (nor should they) with the biggest faction on the server. Now Mr. Thor may try to play the victim but he had no problems with trying to obliterate a small guild for "stream sniping" and using their one bad apple as an excuse to be unreasonable. The other day I joined Feds in a 17 caravan convoy a lot of pirates showed up and proceeded to promptly get their cheeks clapped from Steelbloom all the way to Joeva. Sure 2 caravans were lost and a few others were having huge problems with bugs but all in all it was a successful run (and this was a Saturday peak time)... Now my views and opinions don't represent the leadership of feds so I am just speaking from my account and personal experience... but fighting pirates with feds have been a great experience and the toxicity level in it is non-existent.
The map size and lack of ability to show up to a fight quickly is the main deterrent as you point out. Now, what about Node sieges and other planned battles?
I also feel like Zerg guilds might not be as big of an issue when the FULL map is out. It would be way to difficult to coordinate taking over THAT much space. It's a bigger issue because we are crammed into just the riverlands, but even you mentioned how it was already difficult to react and coordinate in that "small" of a space.
@@supermercado6848 agreed. If it’s that tough to coordinate just with one or so biomes, then the full map will make response times insane. Especially once the next continent is added
Hey Nyce, thanks for the video and the interesting topic. I'm not sure if someone has mentioned it already, but the zerg issue has been mostly solved already by Albion Online. There is a "disarray" mechanic, where all groups participating in a fight will receive a debuff. The more people you have, the more stacks you have. If your group has higher stacks than the other group, your entire group will deal less damage to them as well as reduced CC durations. It's not perfect and there really isn't a perfect solution, but it works quite well. There are also "bomber" groups, who flank zergs and delete entire back lines through syngerizing abilities together. This mechanic has essentially incentivized big guilds to run smaller groups for ZvZ (zerg vs zerg) fights. Heck, even before the mechanic was implemented, one way we annoyed the crap out of zerg guilds was to camp the roads leading to the zone their fight was in and picking the stragglers off one by one. I think Intrepid could grab a lot of inspiration from Albion regarding this issue and it could save them from having to reinvent the wheel.
This actually explained the reason most are concerned. What this said broken down was, yes, a smaller guild can be the little hornets' nest you step within at times, but you will never be anything other than this in this game if you stay small and the game is a big as expected. So, in order to ever see the full game and what that can offer you... you either must join a zerg or be happy just being that little bee sting that get swatted down and never has the potential for anything bigger... Now we also understand that it is what it is in the world we live in now adays.
Isn't it possible for smaller guilds to ally against larger ones? In my opinion, in a social sandbox mmo like ashes, players are most limited by whether or not they are willing to work together. Plus I think some of the decisions Intrepid have made, like limiting fast travel, will help immensely. But I'm most interested in what you said about not being able to see the full game. What parts of the game would smaller guilds be barred from?
Great video Nyce! Yeah some systems still need more work and can be frustrating. But Suspect has been having fun with what we can. Thanks for the PvP around that carvan btw!
Really cool perspective on how the lack of fast travel presents a huge roadblock for massive guilds to really benefit from their numbers advantage. Sounds like that could create some interesting dynamics with how smaller groups engage with them.
Unfortunately, you wont get the chance to revel in their misery. If it doesn't get fixed, they just wont play. This isn't real life, you are not compelled to play a game that doesn't suit you.
Once more of the map is in play it will become even more of a reality. They either all hangout in a cluster of nodes stripping their land of resources or spread out across the world making them more vulnerable. People forget that if they are even 2-3 nodes separated thats at least a 30 min mount ride to reinforce a group being ambushed. Zerg guilds will have to be in the thousands to be game breaking and the alliance system only allows for a total of 1200 players in any given alliance with all the guilds putting their points into player cap increases
@@SuperBlackatude The in game systems don't matter when communities exist outside of the games. You don't need to be an official alliance to come to the aid of another guild. It will require more resources like making your own wardec, but it's possible.
@@TheToledoTrumpton they'll still play, game is still fun, and that's part of what makes it fun. Prooperly coordinated large guilds and groups are going to be able to compensate as necessary. Don't see any issue with this approach, and hope it stays. Underdogs actually have a chance, and guilds have to actually be led by competent strategists to succeed at scale, not just streaming buffoons.
sorry what? A large guild has more people and more territory. Having more people literally helps them in this situation because they havemore body's more eyes and ears in more places
On Lyneth and props to thor who has effectively ended toxic behavior like training in POI's. But also the war between federation and pirates is kind of crazy and i don't see an issue with the current system. If you split your guild apart that is on you. You can also respond by declaring war back on their crafting guilds which is what pirates strategy seems to be. It's a war of attrition. Which I'm not in either guild so just a bystander.
I mean… the Pirates seem to be complaining about war against their crafting guild, but also, I don’t see how anyone is supposed to see Actual Pirates XVIV and know what the purpose of that guild is. Sounds like a leadership problem to me.
Pirates words regarding small guilds still being able to have their fun looks good on paper but let's see what will ppl in small guilds think about it after 2-3 months of constantly being nuked.
Being on the opposite side of a zerg and not having numbers is a lot less fun than people make it out to be, it gets old very fast. Especially in a game where getting killed makes you lose experience.
True all the people d riding Thor don’t know how horrible it will be to deal with actual pirates in game. If you don’t play nice by their rules they will swarm you and have a horrible time. I plan on playing rogue and killing and trash talking this guild. Only way to play will be a stealth character or you will be kill on site with no way to fight back aside from opportunity but having a lot of experience in these games the Zerg assembles fast because the member never get to express skill so any win via Zerg is the best they can feel.
@@maxdrax9946 it’s all perspective honestly. Bad examples I know but if I’m struggling on a boss in Elden Ring that most beat solo and I call 3 friends to beat it, I don’t get that since if achievement . If I’m the animal husbandress for my guild to get mounts and there’s only maybe 2 of us I feel special. They know me by name. They help me in return. The benefit will NEVER be efficiency , the benefit is socially and in satisfaction
The only spawn camping I know of is when we are attacking a caravan and someone that marked themselves as an attacker looted our bodies. I only heard about this and was not part of the raid. But it will be on one of PirateSoftware’s VODs from last weekend.
If I had to fight a bigger group. I would go with traps or skills that are AOE like setting a tree on fire and roll it down the hill or soak the ground with a flammable liquid and light it when your opponent are in the center that way you can take out more of them. Traps that can be repeatly activated for a long time like if they step on a trap that activates while shooting out arrows from the wall. Then you have ones that you can control and activate at any time like an explosive that allows you to separate the opponent and allow you to attack from both sides.
FWIW the pirates/fed drama seems pretty one-sided. Federation explicitly has rules against exploits, bad acting, etc and bans for it (it's in their Discord), and actively tried to prevent drama from Thor by avoiding contesting some farm spots, etc early on in wipe during his streams. Thor started drama anyways. Liked Thor a lot more before started actually interacting with him and his leadership ingame in AoC, tbh. He has dozens of full guilds and, if organized well, could literally run the server - the fact that he doesn't and chooses to start drama or whine instead says a lot IMO. @nyce think you should reach out and get their side of the story, feel like there's more to it. haven't had nearly as many issues with fed people as i have with pirates
I don't like actual pirates but fed needs to crack down more on their members, yesterday I saw a bunch of federation people killing Tumok who was stuck and couldn't attack back, this type of behavior is prejudicial for AOC as a whole
@@samon101 Yeah, think that's fair. I think a lot of guilds need to do that, though - most guilds were mass recruiting after the wipe with the influx of new players, server swaps, etc and now have to refine their memberbase to better match what they're going for. Agree with you, but I guess I'm saying I'd expect that crackdown probably doesn't happen overnight; if we still see that kind of behavior in a few weeks then maybe that's a better indicator of the guild's perogative/viewpoint. There are some other guilds I ran into where I saw similar behavior (or other kinds of behavior that gets you on KoS lists, lol), and I know the leaders of those guilds don't go for that kinda stuff. I reported it, some of them were removed. Haven't seen that with FED, but haven't had any behavior that was report-worthy, IMO. If you're seeing that, maybe video and report? Their leadership seem pretty active.
@@samon101 FYI, as I was there. We (Fed) recorded the issue and turned it in as bug reports as well as other channels so that intrepid could fix t he issue of him being stuck at times. This is testing and The Federation will press the game to it's max and report all bugs like this. Ignoring Tumok doesn't do anything for anyone.
Something that also wasnt spoken about is that often times large guilds fracture for a lot of reasons. Bigger guilds are also a bigger target. Their caravans will have more lucrative loot and be more high rick with high reward kind of thing. Smaller guilds will want to constantly pick off those caravans. These are two of the things of thought of while watching this. Great video!
I'm playing on the Vyra server in Genesis and we have encountered the Guild War problem. Guilds like Barcode and Polar were waging wars on small guilds and crafting guilds (like my own) and there wasn't anything the main Genesis Guild could do about it. We've had to rely on other means to protect our crafters such as leaving Alt characters in the Guild and our mains Guildless to complete our crafting wants. I would think that an Alliance system would be put into place so that if a Guild does declare war on a smaller guild of a bigger guild that all Guilds within that alliance would also go to war. Or at the very least, declaring war on a small guild should render PvP combat outside of the town, this would prevent a lot of new players to a guild from getting killed as a result.
As much as people are excited for the mechanics of Ashes of creation, the actual vision for the "Game" built from those mechanics isn't very good. The concept of long grind PvE, with hardcore consequential PvP runs contrary to all game theory, because it provides zero security for investment in the game, very slow payoff, and a brutally penal steep negative spiral for losing/setbacks. In a game of leagues, short battles, or where you start fresh every game, it isn't a huge problem, in an MMO, if you rage-quit from the battle, you rage quit from the game forever. I think, at this stage, there is a lot they can do, but in general they need to somehow insure that ALL players total rewards and positive hits, massively exceed the total losses and negative hits (ideally there should be none!). Trying to do this with a "Player Driven Economy", particularly a meritocratic one, seems impossible. There must be many game designers laughing their heads off at Intrepid's amateurish ignorance. In any competitive game, the trick is keeping the losers playing, not keeping the winners playing. So like losing a battle in a battle game, you still earn XP, just not as much as if you had won. The idea that someone is going to be a citizen of a "Vassal Node" for any time at all, is laughable! Making a sim of real life isn't making a good game. As I say, the mechanics and world they have created for the game to exist in is magnificent, but their concept for the game itself, is worthy of ridicule. They need to get a professional game designer in ASAP, or Steven has to start learning and lose his ego, extremely quickly. My biggest hope is that all the stuff they have added, will go into UE6, and a game designer will pick it up and make a good game out of it.
@@TheToledoTrumpton weirdly enough I think that risk and consequence is what separates AOC in the mmo genre. We have so many MMOs that are more forgiving and while it may indeed be a niche, I feel a lot of gamers are waiting for something like this. However I agree it needs some tweaks especially to the leveling experience
@@Nyce-Gaming It may sound good, but an MMO needs the players that lose the game to keep playing. Let's take the Vassal Node idea. Sounds great if you are the Node doing the Vassaling. What about the 200 players in the node that just got vassalled. What is the route back from that? Do they keep playing, and put up with diminished game-play and opportunities for a month or 6, or are they supposed to go and spend 6 weeks to 6 months building another node for the semi-professionals to vassal? Or do 200 players just quit playing the game. Or more likely still, they don't play the game in the first place. Ashes is a hardcore game for a very small pool of hardcore MMO players. Right now I cant see people playing it, without a professional real money-making side to it. It is going to be hard work, not R&R.
@@jaygerlach6884 And to have a active population you have to make sure everybody who plays enjoys it, win or lose. If they want to make the game hardcore it cant be for everyone playing and not right from the start. I think they have to work far more on the actual game. The vision for the playing field is fantastic, they just need to sort out what game we are going to play on it.
Legit awesome video, really well balanced. Personally I think mega-guilds are bad for the game, it'll drive people off servers, there is a reason that Eve Online has about 4k people that play it and it never changes. It's odd that Thor doesn't seem to understand that the issues with the GW scrolls isn't just about big guilds, it's about all guilds really. Lets hope they figure it out, I think a restriction of the alliance system could end these problems before they begin. However, it's hard to get much done at all right now with all the exploiting on the servers :/
@@allthatishere all you gotta do is look at the steam charts dude. I did some additional research and I understand the launcher has a higher number. However, it seems to be pretty well understood that the actual human count is much, much lower.
I enjoy fighting the big guys, but I want to have a ghost of a chance in it. I'll even take partial wins. But if it's completely decided from the start, I don't really want to put my whole heart in it.
I feel like this is one of the foundations of the game where players will slowly start to say "I'm not sure this game is actually for me." PVP is a core mechanic, things like this will happen. There will be large guilds that control things, and there will be smaller guilds that either have to deal with it or politic with other guilds to make a change. I don't anticipate Steven (or Intrepid as a whole) changing anything in the game that would promote (or sway) a certain play style.
@@SinisterPlauges Why would it kill the game? Games like Albion Online and Eve have existed for literally decades and they're not your normal run of the mill MMO. Believe it or not you don't need millions of players to turn a profit in the MMO genre, you just need a dedicated fan base that believes in your vision and believes in you. That's what Intrepid Studios is fostering, they've stated CONSTANTLY that this game won't be for everyone and that's okay, but they aren't moving from their vision.
@@samscharenbroch9696 Albion has safe zones where you cannot be PVP'd in. Once they solve the issue of newbies and PvErs being killed in town I'll agree with you
Anyone want an object lesson of what pvp guilds do to a MMO just look at New World. They literally drive the playerbase away and AGS knows it's an issue, but refuses to do anything about it.
I'm hoping to join a guild when the game goes live, it's always hard for me to get into an Alpha/Beta hardcore knowing there is a wipe, even though I'm in the current alpha. Would follow you Nyce, your New World tank 1vX videos and Necro ESO videos are pure joy.
War declaration seems to be in a very scuffed state at the moment. There should be at least a small amount of time between war deck and actual war start, otherwise it's just a gankfest in town/lowbies to score easy points without any counterplay. Tbh, node town centers should be PVP-immune zones to prevent griefing anyway.
part of the problem with a zerg guild is yeah your elite guild can pick off a fw caravans but you are taking 3 or 4 of hundreds and not everyone is going to be skilled enough to take those caravans or want to go to the effort of fighting them, there is also going to be the siege system for nodes to take down the higher lvl node from the surrounding ones for something like that a very large portion of the zerg guild is going to show up and you would need a lot of players to take that even if they are elite players. also I don't see a real problem with the federation targeting crafters and the ability to go after specific pirates guilds in safe zones where their allis cant help is not a flaw in the system its to prevent the exact thing that is going on and there be 50 guilds in an alliance together and with the guild progression system being a choice of bigger guild or buffs I can see people just making a bunch of guilds be in an alliance and take buffs only instead of increasing guild size and being in one guild
Imagine asking an Eve online player if Zerg guilds are a problem =D, They can't see the forest for the Trees so you will never get the answer every one else can see except them.
Happy that you didn't jump on the dogpile with recent drama and just kept making normal videos. Good on you man. The pivot at the start of the video gave me a laugh. Large guilds like this have always been my biggest fear for the game and it sound like Steven and Thor are both echoing what is a pretty insignificant fix for the issue; just band up and beat them. Issue with this is it still doesn't alleviate the primary issue in that the larger guild will have control of the world for larger periods of time than an alliance due to obvious organization advantages that larger guilds have. I don't mind the best guild having control of the best node most of the time, but I do have issues with the best guild having control over a significant portion of the world. I also have issue with the best guild having control of the best nodes 90% of the time. The scenarios where the whole server bands up to take out the larger guilds DOES happen, but they are always very short lived and that control goes back to the zerg guild within a war or two and they maintain that 90% of time control. This isn't "competitive", it's just zerging. Every other decently popular modern multiplayer game has player caps on competitive PVP for a good reason, and that's to keep it competitive. Luckily Actual Pirates being in the game should help give feedback well before the game is launched, I just hope Steven responds to it since I know he likes organizing zerg guilds himself.
If Pirates is 3500 players strong, all that means is that they will dominate a server. That's 500 players in 7 different map locations. You're not going to compete with that. They will most likely control every metropolis and castle, which gives them access to all 10 flying mounts. So, what can AoC, Intrepid and Steven do to combat it? Probably nothing to be honest. Although, that server will probably lose the majority of it's opposition which will basically turn into a PvE server, lol.
Pirates are aware of their ability to dominate the server and choose to NOT do that and stay in their one node of Halcyon. They recognize that it would be unhealthy for the server if they did such a thing. Thor and Kronos have talked about such on their stream.
@@valfreyaaurora4922 LOL, if recent fights on the server (and the whining by Pirates from the fights and the drama), it's more likely the reality is they aren't organized enough to actually control the server. Attempting to do so would spread them thinner, and they're already crying/playing the victim if this drama is accurate.
@@valfreyaaurora4922 I was talking about official launch servers. I can see them being nice about it while in Alpha 2, but once the game launches, I'm almost certain the gloves will come off.
@@lemonpics24 That's probably true about the organization - its hard to keep that many people together in any kind of cohesion. I'm not on the alpha currently - you referring to the federation war decs mentioned here? or something else? If the war-decs, that mechanic may not be perfectly balanced but honestly makes sense as an anti-zerg mech, lol. I do think it's fair that the other pirate guilds can't assist and may require them to do some reconfiguring to protect their crafters and newbies. This type of mechanic existed in archeage too and it is a way to have diplomacy and war - and picking on people until they leave the guild was a strategy in AA as well. If pirates is too large and too segmented to defend from war-decs, it sounds like it's their problem to figure out.
@@valfreyaaurora4922 It seems like War Decs are the only real balance currently in Alpha that does a meaningful impact to a zerg guild like Actual Pirates, like @tylenolrx7699 commented above, if you're Pirates and you have 40 sub guilds, that means you have to find 40 guild leaders who will actually be actively playing so that they can click the button to surrender and end the War Declarations and prevent the death of their crafters in town. They don't have that and so as we see in Alpha, the war dec stays in place and the members in those guilds get killed in town. Over time multiple guilds could pick away at Actual Pirates like this and their members will leave. But War Decs alone aren't going to be enough, one solution a wealthy streamer like Thor could do for Actual Pirates is instead of having to find 40 real life daily active players to be one of his 40 sub-guild leaders, he could just buy 40 accounts and he could name each of his alt accounts the guild leader and then he'd be able to quickly log into any of them to end a war declaration. So at this point i'm nervous and eager to see what Ashes will come out with to further prevent 1000 man guilds from just setting up dozens of 50 man sub-guilds.
Spending any amount of resources on increasing guild size is utterly pointless when they can just make another guild. The size limit of 50 actually does nothing except vaguely limit how much any one small guild can really get. Anything like the size of Pirates or Federation will feel no drawbacks to the small size and will not care about wasting resources to get a larger size when every other bonus gives a numerical advantage over everyone else.
a way to combat guilds having lots of small ones with the power buffs instead of taking the size ones is with a PvP flaging system with each guild having its own flag if two alied guilds try and defend a caravan they end up accidentaly hitting one another with friendly fire this would force the use of guild size perks and engage with the aliance system, sure this would still be soemthign you can work around but then adimin issues get evern worse than they already are needing more resorces, and from the way the ashes team talk this sounds like thats how its going to be or soemthing similar
Battle of attrition. If you’re fighting a larger guild attacking the money and pve players forces the leadership to the table to end the war over time. Attacking individual guilds full of crafters and merchants is smart by the federation. Makes the Zerg guilds members vocal in the community and upset and in turn they’ll leave and find guilds with less of a target on their back.
The way I feel is that there is a guild cap for a reason... I think Steven should do something about these multi guilds if the guild cap being 50 is meaningless then why is it even there to begin with
Well one, is to help Balance the thing talked about in the video, guild wars, if it were meaningless and don't have the cap then the guild wars wouldn't be able to separated the larger guild into equal fights
Plenty of games have had PvP like this before, often with lower stakes involved. What happened to them? The zergs took over. But it's also a self-correcting problem: if the zergs impact the game too much then people that aren't part of the zerg will just stop playing, thus they won't care about that zerg anymore. Also, this is a discussion about people just playing the game normally. But we all know that games like this are gonna have lots of cheaters and exploiters on top of the zerg problem. I think putting so much emphasis on PvP is asking for suffering. It's cool at first, but then will get old over time.
its a good video, thank god Mr. clickbait is gone and real people are putting out real content. However, i have to disagree with you. I was on that server last phase as well and yes it was ok but Pirates was the problem we all loved to hate. its worse this phase. They take up 2/3 of the server and have the numbers to camp everything. want a T3 mount? too bad pirates has them all camped. go pvp and kill a couple that are camping doesnt matter there are 4 more there you didnt see just .25 clicks away at another spawn. The guild is literally like cancer and steven seems to tout them and reward them with special events. I would roll on any other server but the one pirates is on. for the phase of the game and the map size they are too big. and im sorry but sniping a few caravans in no way means anyone can compete with them. Fed kind of tried, and they are a large guild. didn't seem to make any difference.
It's a good thing. Zergs often create difficulty for other communities, who either bow down or they form coalitions against the zerg. This is a very positive thing. Conflict and Cooperation.
large mega guilds are always a problem; even player caps dont work because they just make secondary guilds and everybody has more incentive to join them than to join any other guild
They could have just surrendered during the guild deck. Must suck having 40+ guilds, imaging pinging for your offline guild leader to surrender the deck. Sounds like being bigger isnt always better..... We also did not camp anyone for materials, how do we know what guild is the "farming" guild? Huge reach from Thor.
If I remember correctly wasnt camping for materials it was camping the respawn. But I don't know either way, I wasnt there, But have seen a Fed Opal dude named OCEKING, attack pirates while they farmed, and they turned to fight, and he run away unflag and rinse and repeat this while talking nonsense, like "you guys suck" ass guild etc, and i was there Unguilded at the time
The sige wars wil be the real deal when it comes to numbers . If it wasant actual pirates then it would have been another big guild so... Have fun its just a game
I'm with you brother. A few friends of mine are going to be attempting the same thing as you. Small tight knit group or brotherhood for lack of better words. Militia tactics and death by 1000 cuts. Seiging will need some strategy and temporary alliances to form Tho. Perhaps a band of like minded guilds for these occasions. Call it the resistance! Lol Unfortunately to many people are sheep in todays society and just follow the crowd. We are a niche group inside of a niche game lol
Very nice pivot from the Narc controversy. I still believe that Bounty Hunters is a great balance to PVP grieving, ganking, and ZERGs. There ought to be a strict code of gaming behavior to Bounty Hunters. We'll see if Pirate's can break the Bounty Hunters. I paraphrase Asmongold - PVP are dependent on PVE: Uber Gear versus people that make the gear. Much love, Skaff.
I have zero qualms with a raid flagging in town and butchering folks that made the choice to create an entire guild of defenseless crafters. Perhaps give the raiders some loot then end the event after a shorter duration to avoid camping?
I dont have alpha acess but i follow the development as i can. This zerg stuff could be a potetntional problem. But i think the future gatekeeping too. The game is only in alpha and yetw too many ppl playing it, there are too meny early guides(FOR AN ALPHA GAME xD) etc. When the game will relse i think the gatekeeping lvl will be freaking HIGH. Simply if an alpha/beta veteran guild chose a server im 100% that they gonna dominate the whole ecosystem and the server itself. The devs still have time to make it right but if a couple big zerg guilds are able to dominate whole servers then the average players will suck hard.
"guilds will have to choose between being bigger or being stronger" is such a joke answer when, as nyce pointed out, guilds will just pick the bonuses for being small and they'll make 200 guilds
I would think that node wars is where this giant guild thing would be most immediately noticeable. If your federation of Pirate guilds has 3000 members and they're all citizens of Joeva, for instance, Joeva probably is going to be untouchable for the life of that server. I don't know how you'd ever unseat them. For guild wars and caravans, etc. I don't have anything to add to what you've said. I'd just like to see a cap on node population. Maybe that won't be viable until there are more nodes online, but if a conglomerate like Pirates wants 60 guilds, they should not all be able to become citizens of the same node.
@@bminturn great observation 🤔 so supposedly, in the future you’ll need housing in a node to be a citizen of a node unlike currently where you just sign up
@@Nyce-Gaming however it works out, they need to ensure that a server can't go stale because 1/3rd of players are buddies. You can have the same guild name if you want, and all of that, but they should cap those node populations once there are more online - or as a longer term solution. Then you can't just dominate as a mega guild + mega populated node. More parity = better gameplay for everyone. Including people who like giant guilds. They may not know it now, but it would be better long term.
The other counter to mass joining one node, is the later you join the node (number wise) the higher the taxes get, so eventually it wont be worth joining that node as the taxes are going to be awful
@@Sub-zp2gs that might be hard to implement and keep overhead at those nodes to a minimum. You'd also have guilds who'd just say "OK then. We will help you pay your taxes because dominating this server is that important to us." And this will happen unless it is cooked into the game that one guild cannot dominate from one node.
I agree that the guild progression will NOT change anything. Actual Pirates already has guilds setup for dedicated tasks / professions (PVPers, Gatherers, Refiners, Crafters) so they will NOT take the guild size increase but take the passive bonuses rendering the progression choice non-existant. Also note that Actual Pirates also has non-Actual Pirates guilds that engage in espionage and other devious tactics to undermine other guild groups on the server. Thor has already mentioned the existance of these "Minsitry of Truth" guilds.
@@masserphi2534 EVE became alot less interesting when you realize the game doesnt actually encourage these conflicts, its jsut the way these kinds of peple are...
@@kreenbopulusmichael7205 A recent all large group standing reset happened , should hopefully cause more conflict - I hunt Haulers and VIP's so , usually attack the supply lines and the VIPS of boths sides during any larger conflicts and its always interesting lol
I keep saying it, I actually was looking forward to being on a single server and being forced with Pirates when they said initially 1 server for NA. As a medium sized guild I prefer a mega guild who is controlled and with integrity to help keep larger less "honorable" guilds.
So Thor declared war on the Federation, and now complains about it. All the Actual Pirate guilds are numbered with roman numerals so there is absolutely no way of know which is for new members or crafters. That's the choice he and his leadership made. Kind of crazy saying "nobody can fight back" when it's a system that literally allows everyone in that guild TO fight back. They holler "PvP/PvX" until they're on the receiving end, and then it's not balanced or a bad system. As for the gloating and personal insults, I have never seen any. What I have seen are known Fed members defending themselves against the 3000+ members of Pirates (plus the Pirate sympathizers) who decide to talk down at Feds in global because of stuff like this that Thor says. Want to talk about toxic? Imagine talking to your entire viewership (15,000 concurrent, not individual viewers), like how he did in his comments here, about a guild that is a fraction of your size because you declared war (ALL of your guilds) on them and they're actually fighting you. That is straight up toxic.
It would be fun if it was gonna be just fun. But considering you can get "blacklisted" by 1/3 of the server for grinding levels at POIs. Pissing off the pirates can make finding a group alot more difficult.
I’m sorry but I WILL NOT play on a server with someone(s) who can decide I’m not allowed to play the game anymore. The response to Apex Order showed me exactly what Thor does when someone inconveniences him. I don’t want any of that.
This is all well and good when we are just hitting caravans and fighting over grind spots..but what about node wars? Zergs are undeniably going to simply decide on a whim which nodes get to exist in whatever state they decide it to exist in. As a member of a smaller guild I deff agree that I like the small guild feel but it seems to me that thus could become a hot bed for interesting politicking later when slightly smaller zergs recruit lots of smaller guilds to fight the big zergs..I think it could get quite interesting but people are kidding themselves if they think that long term this game is going to anything apart from zerg wars. I think there are niches for small guilds to fit into the machinations of the larger titans like Fed or AP, though AP is so damn large they probably won't need to even work with smaller guilds and instead deal with them as they see fit. A small guild is never going to really have that large an impact on thier own in the long term, but this is the nature of a medieval setting like this.
@@allbonksnobrakes9677 I get that for sure. For node wars we make sure to coordinate with the larger guilds of the node as the node war system provides mutual benefits for its citizens to help each other
I dont think large guilds are a problem in these type of games, its the alliances. And your definition of large. A guild of 200 is large. Like 200 people in an mmo in one spot working together is a lot, imagine managing that. But the problem is when you let multiple guilds ally, like in throne and liberty. Especially when the alliance goes further than just a verbal non aggression alliance. When it means you guys wont damage eachother in pvp, or you are basically one massive group. I think its terrible game design. im not sure how it works in ashes atm, but i hope they dont allow massive alliances. And hopefully the guild numbers are reasonable. But if what you say is true, and 60 guilds are allied in the same community, thats kind of wild.
i personally think zerg guilds will be the death of this game and there should be a rule against it. make an alliance system that you have to send tributes back and forth to maintain an alliance or something.
Join us on discord to discuss AOC and/or apply to Syndicate guild:
discord.gg/tNHaDmqgTz
Also feel free to signup to AOC with my referral code cause it somehow makes my opinion less compromised than that of a full time CC 😏
Ashes Of Creation Referral Link: ashesofcreation.com/sign-up/r/HI5ZG9WTR8FVCMYL
we have MMR system in RTS, so we need MMR system for MMO servers.
at the end of each season a certain % of top guilds move to a server with a higher mmr. for example, like starcraft 2 we have leagues - silver gold platinum etc. I would like to see a competition of guilds in the gradmaster league
what do you think?
If and when the world fully expands, it will be harder for guilds like that to control everything.
You know why it’s so social of an MMORPG making communities and feel that old school feel? First it’s PvP forcing you to seek some kind of protection. Secondly you can’t TP from place to place and must walk so friends and they help you do all the things required.. smaller guilds usually have more knowledge of each other and it is nice to know how your companions play.
Having a "guild skill tree" that sacrifices max members perk isnt going to fix zergs, leaders will just make 10 separate guilds and get the best guild perks on all of them and call it a day, people communicate in Discord anyways, no need for guild chat ingame. Slightly annoying for leaders but its been done on mmo's for over a decade. Zergs will zerg
Have an Alliance skill tree then, and limit the number of alliances guilds and incentivize wars against other large alliances and decentivize an alliance from fighting unaligned guilds. Even if they go all out and form multiple umbrella alliances they'd be competing with eachother
It’s still annoying for them though. When guild wars are declared it is only between guilds.
So a small 50 man guild can war dec Actual Pirates and only the 50 members in Actual Pirates are flagged.
This is why in my opinion the "issue" of Guild Wars targeting players in town mentioned here is actually a good solution to combat this. You can't make 100 separate guilds with all the artisan perks and just camp those characters safely in town. This system means they can be picked off with no way to fight back. If the Zerg guilds are going to circumvent the guild size rules (by making multiple guilds), then them getting treated as not being in the same guild (i.e. not letting someone from Guild 14 fight in a war that Guild 21 is in) is perfectly fair.
They want to have their cake and eat it to. All this system is doing is actually forcing their separate guilds to in fact be separate.
Actual Pirates is on my current server after wipe. Havent really had issues with them. My guild has PVPed them as well all in good fun. I do think its a bit stale seeing Actual Pirates XXIV or whatever number they are on but zergs will plague every game they are allowed to be in.
"Not everyone has character to be in small guild" - that's eufemism. I remember I played Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. On my Asian server it was slightly unbalanced at start on one side, that 2 biggest guilds rerolled to opposite faction and we had the best 6 months of PVP-ing, siegeing, raiding, ambushing, etc... then the game started to become unpopular, servers started to be merged with American ones... and then we experienced shock. On their servers 90% OF PEOPLE were rolling bigger faction! We were just flooded! We were running 2 warbands, they were running 10, lol... so they were sacking our capital every 2nd day, looting last tier gear, become even stronger, and stronger, and stronger... until most people on our side got bored and they killed last server and the game, lol :D
I don't think Feds make a distinction (nor should they) with the biggest faction on the server. Now Mr. Thor may try to play the victim but he had no problems with trying to obliterate a small guild for "stream sniping" and using their one bad apple as an excuse to be unreasonable. The other day I joined Feds in a 17 caravan convoy a lot of pirates showed up and proceeded to promptly get their cheeks clapped from Steelbloom all the way to Joeva. Sure 2 caravans were lost and a few others were having huge problems with bugs but all in all it was a successful run (and this was a Saturday peak time)... Now my views and opinions don't represent the leadership of feds so I am just speaking from my account and personal experience... but fighting pirates with feds have been a great experience and the toxicity level in it is non-existent.
As a pirate from the other side we had a great time with this fight as well. Finding spots to stall or just finding ways to pick players off was fun.
@karkic5556 it was great fun, brother... and I look forward for more run-ins with your crew
thank you for making actually relevent and interesting content and not hopping on the latest drama train.
The 300 won and all lived happily basking in the glory of their resounding victory. Yep, that's definitely what happened.
@@ferocious_pooh this is what I was hoping 🙏
@@Nyce-Gaming nope they all died in glory
The point that they can't tele into big fights really makes small merc guilds viable and fun tbh.
The map size and lack of ability to show up to a fight quickly is the main deterrent as you point out. Now, what about Node sieges and other planned battles?
@@GP-ur6if this is a big question if they truly become uncapped sieges 🤔
I also feel like Zerg guilds might not be as big of an issue when the FULL map is out. It would be way to difficult to coordinate taking over THAT much space. It's a bigger issue because we are crammed into just the riverlands, but even you mentioned how it was already difficult to react and coordinate in that "small" of a space.
@@supermercado6848 agreed. If it’s that tough to coordinate just with one or so biomes, then the full map will make response times insane. Especially once the next continent is added
lmfao wishful you are, stupid you may be.
Hey Nyce, thanks for the video and the interesting topic. I'm not sure if someone has mentioned it already, but the zerg issue has been mostly solved already by Albion Online. There is a "disarray" mechanic, where all groups participating in a fight will receive a debuff. The more people you have, the more stacks you have. If your group has higher stacks than the other group, your entire group will deal less damage to them as well as reduced CC durations. It's not perfect and there really isn't a perfect solution, but it works quite well. There are also "bomber" groups, who flank zergs and delete entire back lines through syngerizing abilities together. This mechanic has essentially incentivized big guilds to run smaller groups for ZvZ (zerg vs zerg) fights. Heck, even before the mechanic was implemented, one way we annoyed the crap out of zerg guilds was to camp the roads leading to the zone their fight was in and picking the stragglers off one by one. I think Intrepid could grab a lot of inspiration from Albion regarding this issue and it could save them from having to reinvent the wheel.
OOOOh this is an interesting play... hmm thank you. Im gonna look into this
This actually explained the reason most are concerned. What this said broken down was, yes, a smaller guild can be the little hornets' nest you step within at times, but you will never be anything other than this in this game if you stay small and the game is a big as expected. So, in order to ever see the full game and what that can offer you... you either must join a zerg or be happy just being that little bee sting that get swatted down and never has the potential for anything bigger... Now we also understand that it is what it is in the world we live in now adays.
Isn't it possible for smaller guilds to ally against larger ones? In my opinion, in a social sandbox mmo like ashes, players are most limited by whether or not they are willing to work together. Plus I think some of the decisions Intrepid have made, like limiting fast travel, will help immensely. But I'm most interested in what you said about not being able to see the full game. What parts of the game would smaller guilds be barred from?
Great video Nyce! Yeah some systems still need more work and can be frustrating. But Suspect has been having fun with what we can. Thanks for the PvP around that carvan btw!
Really cool perspective on how the lack of fast travel presents a huge roadblock for massive guilds to really benefit from their numbers advantage. Sounds like that could create some interesting dynamics with how smaller groups engage with them.
Unfortunately, you wont get the chance to revel in their misery. If it doesn't get fixed, they just wont play. This isn't real life, you are not compelled to play a game that doesn't suit you.
Once more of the map is in play it will become even more of a reality. They either all hangout in a cluster of nodes stripping their land of resources or spread out across the world making them more vulnerable. People forget that if they are even 2-3 nodes separated thats at least a 30 min mount ride to reinforce a group being ambushed. Zerg guilds will have to be in the thousands to be game breaking and the alliance system only allows for a total of 1200 players in any given alliance with all the guilds putting their points into player cap increases
@@SuperBlackatude The in game systems don't matter when communities exist outside of the games. You don't need to be an official alliance to come to the aid of another guild. It will require more resources like making your own wardec, but it's possible.
@@TheToledoTrumpton they'll still play, game is still fun, and that's part of what makes it fun. Prooperly coordinated large guilds and groups are going to be able to compensate as necessary. Don't see any issue with this approach, and hope it stays. Underdogs actually have a chance, and guilds have to actually be led by competent strategists to succeed at scale, not just streaming buffoons.
sorry what? A large guild has more people and more territory. Having more people literally helps them in this situation because they havemore body's more eyes and ears in more places
ahhhh finally, some actual Ashes of Creation content 👌
Why don't you just make one yourself? 4Head
its the only content AOC has
Nice vid. Probably the first vid yet that made me want to play this game.
@@Zaku14CK this genuinely means a lot. Kind words
On Lyneth and props to thor who has effectively ended toxic behavior like training in POI's.
But also the war between federation and pirates is kind of crazy and i don't see an issue with the current system. If you split your guild apart that is on you. You can also respond by declaring war back on their crafting guilds which is what pirates strategy seems to be. It's a war of attrition.
Which I'm not in either guild so just a bystander.
I mean… the Pirates seem to be complaining about war against their crafting guild, but also, I don’t see how anyone is supposed to see Actual Pirates XVIV and know what the purpose of that guild is. Sounds like a leadership problem to me.
@@brandondeavilla3298 Actual Pirates II and III are the crafting guilds
Pirates words regarding small guilds still being able to have their fun looks good on paper but let's see what will ppl in small guilds think about it after 2-3 months of constantly being nuked.
The stopgap answer is to find out what server they are on and play somewhere else. Just let them have it. Have fun guys!
A zerg guild in any game that dominates a server kills that server. You either join the zerg and be bored or change servers.
Being on the opposite side of a zerg and not having numbers is a lot less fun than people make it out to be, it gets old very fast. Especially in a game where getting killed makes you lose experience.
True all the people d riding Thor don’t know how horrible it will be to deal with actual pirates in game. If you don’t play nice by their rules they will swarm you and have a horrible time. I plan on playing rogue and killing and trash talking this guild. Only way to play will be a stealth character or you will be kill on site with no way to fight back aside from opportunity but having a lot of experience in these games the Zerg assembles fast because the member never get to express skill so any win via Zerg is the best they can feel.
@@kyleaday365 yup it’s definitely not for everyone and some don’t realize that until they are in that situation or join
+ where is the benifit of not achieving any goals as a member of small guild
@@maxdrax9946 it’s all perspective honestly. Bad examples I know but if I’m struggling on a boss in Elden Ring that most beat solo and I call 3 friends to beat it, I don’t get that since if achievement . If I’m the animal husbandress for my guild to get mounts and there’s only maybe 2 of us I feel special. They know me by name. They help me in return. The benefit will NEVER be efficiency , the benefit is socially and in satisfaction
The only spawn camping I know of is when we are attacking a caravan and someone that marked themselves as an attacker looted our bodies. I only heard about this and was not part of the raid. But it will be on one of PirateSoftware’s VODs from last weekend.
It sounds like the eve online corporate system
If I had to fight a bigger group. I would go with traps or skills that are AOE like setting a tree on fire and roll it down the hill or soak the ground with a flammable liquid and light it when your opponent are in the center that way you can take out more of them. Traps that can be repeatly activated for a long time like if they step on a trap that activates while shooting out arrows from the wall. Then you have ones that you can control and activate at any time like an explosive that allows you to separate the opponent and allow you to attack from both sides.
Great video, Nyce!
FWIW the pirates/fed drama seems pretty one-sided. Federation explicitly has rules against exploits, bad acting, etc and bans for it (it's in their Discord), and actively tried to prevent drama from Thor by avoiding contesting some farm spots, etc early on in wipe during his streams. Thor started drama anyways. Liked Thor a lot more before started actually interacting with him and his leadership ingame in AoC, tbh. He has dozens of full guilds and, if organized well, could literally run the server - the fact that he doesn't and chooses to start drama or whine instead says a lot IMO.
@nyce think you should reach out and get their side of the story, feel like there's more to it. haven't had nearly as many issues with fed people as i have with pirates
I don't like actual pirates but fed needs to crack down more on their members, yesterday I saw a bunch of federation people killing Tumok who was stuck and couldn't attack back, this type of behavior is prejudicial for AOC as a whole
@@samon101 Yeah, think that's fair. I think a lot of guilds need to do that, though - most guilds were mass recruiting after the wipe with the influx of new players, server swaps, etc and now have to refine their memberbase to better match what they're going for. Agree with you, but I guess I'm saying I'd expect that crackdown probably doesn't happen overnight; if we still see that kind of behavior in a few weeks then maybe that's a better indicator of the guild's perogative/viewpoint. There are some other guilds I ran into where I saw similar behavior (or other kinds of behavior that gets you on KoS lists, lol), and I know the leaders of those guilds don't go for that kinda stuff. I reported it, some of them were removed. Haven't seen that with FED, but haven't had any behavior that was report-worthy, IMO. If you're seeing that, maybe video and report? Their leadership seem pretty active.
@@samon101 FYI, as I was there. We (Fed) recorded the issue and turned it in as bug reports as well as other channels so that intrepid could fix t he issue of him being stuck at times. This is testing and The Federation will press the game to it's max and report all bugs like this. Ignoring Tumok doesn't do anything for anyone.
@@lemonpics24 chatting with Fed lead right now and will tell their side of story via a livestream interview or follow up video
@@samon101Every time this happens, Fed messages leadership and videos with timestamps to Intrepid, as well as any drop information.
As always, nyce video man!
Something that also wasnt spoken about is that often times large guilds fracture for a lot of reasons.
Bigger guilds are also a bigger target. Their caravans will have more lucrative loot and be more high rick with high reward kind of thing. Smaller guilds will want to constantly pick off those caravans.
These are two of the things of thought of while watching this. Great video!
I'm playing on the Vyra server in Genesis and we have encountered the Guild War problem. Guilds like Barcode and Polar were waging wars on small guilds and crafting guilds (like my own) and there wasn't anything the main Genesis Guild could do about it. We've had to rely on other means to protect our crafters such as leaving Alt characters in the Guild and our mains Guildless to complete our crafting wants. I would think that an Alliance system would be put into place so that if a Guild does declare war on a smaller guild of a bigger guild that all Guilds within that alliance would also go to war. Or at the very least, declaring war on a small guild should render PvP combat outside of the town, this would prevent a lot of new players to a guild from getting killed as a result.
The Fed v Pirate war was decided by looking in town determining what pirate guild had most in town. Just looking for numbers not to grief crafters.
yeap the first castle siege will/must be asmon vs pirate minions....intrepid cook for us....
Excellent coverage.
@@cdubyaxvi3614 appreciated
yall had me in the beginning there lolz 🍿
@@darknstormyknights lmao
As much as people are excited for the mechanics of Ashes of creation, the actual vision for the "Game" built from those mechanics isn't very good. The concept of long grind PvE, with hardcore consequential PvP runs contrary to all game theory, because it provides zero security for investment in the game, very slow payoff, and a brutally penal steep negative spiral for losing/setbacks.
In a game of leagues, short battles, or where you start fresh every game, it isn't a huge problem, in an MMO, if you rage-quit from the battle, you rage quit from the game forever.
I think, at this stage, there is a lot they can do, but in general they need to somehow insure that ALL players total rewards and positive hits, massively exceed the total losses and negative hits (ideally there should be none!). Trying to do this with a "Player Driven Economy", particularly a meritocratic one, seems impossible. There must be many game designers laughing their heads off at Intrepid's amateurish ignorance. In any competitive game, the trick is keeping the losers playing, not keeping the winners playing. So like losing a battle in a battle game, you still earn XP, just not as much as if you had won. The idea that someone is going to be a citizen of a "Vassal Node" for any time at all, is laughable! Making a sim of real life isn't making a good game.
As I say, the mechanics and world they have created for the game to exist in is magnificent, but their concept for the game itself, is worthy of ridicule. They need to get a professional game designer in ASAP, or Steven has to start learning and lose his ego, extremely quickly. My biggest hope is that all the stuff they have added, will go into UE6, and a game designer will pick it up and make a good game out of it.
@@TheToledoTrumpton weirdly enough I think that risk and consequence is what separates AOC in the mmo genre. We have so many MMOs that are more forgiving and while it may indeed be a niche, I feel a lot of gamers are waiting for something like this. However I agree it needs some tweaks especially to the leveling experience
@@Nyce-Gaming It may sound good, but an MMO needs the players that lose the game to keep playing.
Let's take the Vassal Node idea. Sounds great if you are the Node doing the Vassaling. What about the 200 players in the node that just got vassalled. What is the route back from that? Do they keep playing, and put up with diminished game-play and opportunities for a month or 6, or are they supposed to go and spend 6 weeks to 6 months building another node for the semi-professionals to vassal?
Or do 200 players just quit playing the game. Or more likely still, they don't play the game in the first place.
Ashes is a hardcore game for a very small pool of hardcore MMO players. Right now I cant see people playing it, without a professional real money-making side to it.
It is going to be hard work, not R&R.
not to mention, these kind of games require a significant active population to succeed.
@@jaygerlach6884 And to have a active population you have to make sure everybody who plays enjoys it, win or lose.
If they want to make the game hardcore it cant be for everyone playing and not right from the start.
I think they have to work far more on the actual game. The vision for the playing field is fantastic, they just need to sort out what game we are going to play on it.
Legit awesome video, really well balanced. Personally I think mega-guilds are bad for the game, it'll drive people off servers, there is a reason that Eve Online has about 4k people that play it and it never changes. It's odd that Thor doesn't seem to understand that the issues with the GW scrolls isn't just about big guilds, it's about all guilds really. Lets hope they figure it out, I think a restriction of the alliance system could end these problems before they begin. However, it's hard to get much done at all right now with all the exploiting on the servers :/
Only 4k people are playing Eve Online? Is that a factual statement? You think everyone is multiboxing 10 toons?
@ I just looked at the steam charts for the last year.
@@HT-jj5sx Please don't troll me, dude.
@@allthatishere all you gotta do is look at the steam charts dude. I did some additional research and I understand the launcher has a higher number. However, it seems to be pretty well understood that the actual human count is much, much lower.
@@HT-jj5sx Eve has separate launcher from steam, so steams numbers probably are not even close to 80% accurate
I enjoy fighting the big guys, but I want to have a ghost of a chance in it. I'll even take partial wins. But if it's completely decided from the start, I don't really want to put my whole heart in it.
Great video. You just gained a subscriber. .
@@coryoneil5064 thank you !
I feel like this is one of the foundations of the game where players will slowly start to say "I'm not sure this game is actually for me." PVP is a core mechanic, things like this will happen. There will be large guilds that control things, and there will be smaller guilds that either have to deal with it or politic with other guilds to make a change.
I don't anticipate Steven (or Intrepid as a whole) changing anything in the game that would promote (or sway) a certain play style.
and that will kill the game lol.
@@SinisterPlauges Why would it kill the game? Games like Albion Online and Eve have existed for literally decades and they're not your normal run of the mill MMO.
Believe it or not you don't need millions of players to turn a profit in the MMO genre, you just need a dedicated fan base that believes in your vision and believes in you.
That's what Intrepid Studios is fostering, they've stated CONSTANTLY that this game won't be for everyone and that's okay, but they aren't moving from their vision.
@@samscharenbroch9696 Albion has safe zones where you cannot be PVP'd in. Once they solve the issue of newbies and PvErs being killed in town I'll agree with you
Anyone want an object lesson of what pvp guilds do to a MMO just look at New World. They literally drive the playerbase away and AGS knows it's an issue, but refuses to do anything about it.
AGS drove players away before any large PvP guilds did, New World was bad from the beginning and I wasted 1500 hours on it lol,
when I walk around and see the "Actual Pirates LVI" guild tag 🤣🤣. Love the fact that you streamers are generating so much interest in this alpha.
Ark Mega Tribes all over again..
However I am interested in seeing how all this goes as I am used to fighting Mega Guilds.
I'm hoping to join a guild when the game goes live, it's always hard for me to get into an Alpha/Beta hardcore knowing there is a wipe, even though I'm in the current alpha. Would follow you Nyce, your New World tank 1vX videos and Necro ESO videos are pure joy.
@@moosegamer8189 this really means a lot Moose 🥹
War declaration seems to be in a very scuffed state at the moment. There should be at least a small amount of time between war deck and actual war start, otherwise it's just a gankfest in town/lowbies to score easy points without any counterplay. Tbh, node town centers should be PVP-immune zones to prevent griefing anyway.
Really good video and perspective.
@@Drunkninja101 thanks Ninja
Not what I expected when I clicked considering all the other drama lately so was a nice surprise of a video.
Fantastic video!
part of the problem with a zerg guild is yeah your elite guild can pick off a fw caravans but you are taking 3 or 4 of hundreds and not everyone is going to be skilled enough to take those caravans or want to go to the effort of fighting them, there is also going to be the siege system for nodes to take down the higher lvl node from the surrounding ones for something like that a very large portion of the zerg guild is going to show up and you would need a lot of players to take that even if they are elite players. also I don't see a real problem with the federation targeting crafters and the ability to go after specific pirates guilds in safe zones where their allis cant help is not a flaw in the system its to prevent the exact thing that is going on and there be 50 guilds in an alliance together and with the guild progression system being a choice of bigger guild or buffs I can see people just making a bunch of guilds be in an alliance and take buffs only instead of increasing guild size and being in one guild
Imagine asking an Eve online player if Zerg guilds are a problem =D, They can't see the forest for the Trees so you will never get the answer every one else can see except them.
sometimes in pvp, people may forget to actually have fun, and take things entirely too seriously.
Happy that you didn't jump on the dogpile with recent drama and just kept making normal videos. Good on you man. The pivot at the start of the video gave me a laugh.
Large guilds like this have always been my biggest fear for the game and it sound like Steven and Thor are both echoing what is a pretty insignificant fix for the issue; just band up and beat them. Issue with this is it still doesn't alleviate the primary issue in that the larger guild will have control of the world for larger periods of time than an alliance due to obvious organization advantages that larger guilds have. I don't mind the best guild having control of the best node most of the time, but I do have issues with the best guild having control over a significant portion of the world. I also have issue with the best guild having control of the best nodes 90% of the time. The scenarios where the whole server bands up to take out the larger guilds DOES happen, but they are always very short lived and that control goes back to the zerg guild within a war or two and they maintain that 90% of time control. This isn't "competitive", it's just zerging. Every other decently popular modern multiplayer game has player caps on competitive PVP for a good reason, and that's to keep it competitive. Luckily Actual Pirates being in the game should help give feedback well before the game is launched, I just hope Steven responds to it since I know he likes organizing zerg guilds himself.
Great video Nyce
thanks!!
My guild and I tried to avoid the pirates however we were forced back on to their server because of connection issues on Vyra at launch
If Pirates is 3500 players strong, all that means is that they will dominate a server. That's 500 players in 7 different map locations. You're not going to compete with that. They will most likely control every metropolis and castle, which gives them access to all 10 flying mounts. So, what can AoC, Intrepid and Steven do to combat it? Probably nothing to be honest. Although, that server will probably lose the majority of it's opposition which will basically turn into a PvE server, lol.
Pirates are aware of their ability to dominate the server and choose to NOT do that and stay in their one node of Halcyon. They recognize that it would be unhealthy for the server if they did such a thing. Thor and Kronos have talked about such on their stream.
@@valfreyaaurora4922 LOL, if recent fights on the server (and the whining by Pirates from the fights and the drama), it's more likely the reality is they aren't organized enough to actually control the server. Attempting to do so would spread them thinner, and they're already crying/playing the victim if this drama is accurate.
@@valfreyaaurora4922 I was talking about official launch servers. I can see them being nice about it while in Alpha 2, but once the game launches, I'm almost certain the gloves will come off.
@@lemonpics24 That's probably true about the organization - its hard to keep that many people together in any kind of cohesion. I'm not on the alpha currently - you referring to the federation war decs mentioned here? or something else? If the war-decs, that mechanic may not be perfectly balanced but honestly makes sense as an anti-zerg mech, lol. I do think it's fair that the other pirate guilds can't assist and may require them to do some reconfiguring to protect their crafters and newbies. This type of mechanic existed in archeage too and it is a way to have diplomacy and war - and picking on people until they leave the guild was a strategy in AA as well. If pirates is too large and too segmented to defend from war-decs, it sounds like it's their problem to figure out.
@@valfreyaaurora4922 It seems like War Decs are the only real balance currently in Alpha that does a meaningful impact to a zerg guild like Actual Pirates, like @tylenolrx7699 commented above, if you're Pirates and you have 40 sub guilds, that means you have to find 40 guild leaders who will actually be actively playing so that they can click the button to surrender and end the War Declarations and prevent the death of their crafters in town. They don't have that and so as we see in Alpha, the war dec stays in place and the members in those guilds get killed in town. Over time multiple guilds could pick away at Actual Pirates like this and their members will leave.
But War Decs alone aren't going to be enough, one solution a wealthy streamer like Thor could do for Actual Pirates is instead of having to find 40 real life daily active players to be one of his 40 sub-guild leaders, he could just buy 40 accounts and he could name each of his alt accounts the guild leader and then he'd be able to quickly log into any of them to end a war declaration. So at this point i'm nervous and eager to see what Ashes will come out with to further prevent 1000 man guilds from just setting up dozens of 50 man sub-guilds.
Spending any amount of resources on increasing guild size is utterly pointless when they can just make another guild. The size limit of 50 actually does nothing except vaguely limit how much any one small guild can really get. Anything like the size of Pirates or Federation will feel no drawbacks to the small size and will not care about wasting resources to get a larger size when every other bonus gives a numerical advantage over everyone else.
a way to combat guilds having lots of small ones with the power buffs instead of taking the size ones is with a PvP flaging system
with each guild having its own flag if two alied guilds try and defend a caravan they end up accidentaly hitting one another with friendly fire
this would force the use of guild size perks and engage with the aliance system, sure this would still be soemthign you can work around but then adimin issues get evern worse than they already are needing more resorces, and from the way the ashes team talk this sounds like thats how its going to be or soemthing similar
Battle of attrition. If you’re fighting a larger guild attacking the money and pve players forces the leadership to the table to end the war over time. Attacking individual guilds full of crafters and merchants is smart by the federation. Makes the Zerg guilds members vocal in the community and upset and in turn they’ll leave and find guilds with less of a target on their back.
Is the Alpha still purchasable?
@@3v3rb0t correct. See pinned comment, link in description, or ashes of creation website
Pretty sure phase 3 is. Won’t start for a few months but should still be available.
@@rogueofennui pretty sure you can still buy in to phase 2
The way I feel is that there is a guild cap for a reason... I think Steven should do something about these multi guilds if the guild cap being 50 is meaningless then why is it even there to begin with
Well one, is to help Balance the thing talked about in the video, guild wars, if it were meaningless and don't have the cap then the guild wars wouldn't be able to separated the larger guild into equal fights
Plenty of games have had PvP like this before, often with lower stakes involved. What happened to them? The zergs took over. But it's also a self-correcting problem: if the zergs impact the game too much then people that aren't part of the zerg will just stop playing, thus they won't care about that zerg anymore.
Also, this is a discussion about people just playing the game normally. But we all know that games like this are gonna have lots of cheaters and exploiters on top of the zerg problem. I think putting so much emphasis on PvP is asking for suffering. It's cool at first, but then will get old over time.
also check out this same issue on Throne and Liberty
its a good video, thank god Mr. clickbait is gone and real people are putting out real content. However, i have to disagree with you. I was on that server last phase as well and yes it was ok but Pirates was the problem we all loved to hate. its worse this phase. They take up 2/3 of the server and have the numbers to camp everything. want a T3 mount? too bad pirates has them all camped. go pvp and kill a couple that are camping doesnt matter there are 4 more there you didnt see just .25 clicks away at another spawn. The guild is literally like cancer and steven seems to tout them and reward them with special events. I would roll on any other server but the one pirates is on. for the phase of the game and the map size they are too big. and im sorry but sniping a few caravans in no way means anyone can compete with them. Fed kind of tried, and they are a large guild. didn't seem to make any difference.
It's a good thing. Zergs often create difficulty for other communities, who either bow down or they form coalitions against the zerg. This is a very positive thing. Conflict and Cooperation.
I'm not good at math but 3k people is more than 350
@@nerotvwow3733 very good math
large mega guilds are always a problem; even player caps dont work because they just make secondary guilds and everybody has more incentive to join them than to join any other guild
They could have just surrendered during the guild deck. Must suck having 40+ guilds, imaging pinging for your offline guild leader to surrender the deck. Sounds like being bigger isnt always better.....
We also did not camp anyone for materials, how do we know what guild is the "farming" guild?
Huge reach from Thor.
If I remember correctly wasnt camping for materials it was camping the respawn. But I don't know either way, I wasnt there, But have seen a Fed Opal dude named OCEKING, attack pirates while they farmed, and they turned to fight, and he run away unflag and rinse and repeat this while talking nonsense, like "you guys suck" ass guild etc, and i was there Unguilded at the time
@ I’ve never seen anyone named that in federation.
Maybe phase 1?
I am leadership
The sige wars wil be the real deal when it comes to numbers .
If it wasant actual pirates then it would have been another big guild so...
Have fun its just a game
I'm with you brother. A few friends of mine are going to be attempting the same thing as you. Small tight knit group or brotherhood for lack of better words. Militia tactics and death by 1000 cuts.
Seiging will need some strategy and temporary alliances to form Tho. Perhaps a band of like minded guilds for these occasions. Call it the resistance! Lol
Unfortunately to many people are sheep in todays society and just follow the crowd. We are a niche group inside of a niche game lol
@@Erik-bb3ci well said. Love this comment. FOR THE RESISTANCE!!!
Very nice pivot from the Narc controversy. I still believe that Bounty Hunters is a great balance to PVP grieving, ganking, and ZERGs. There ought to be a strict code of gaming behavior to Bounty Hunters. We'll see if Pirate's can break the Bounty Hunters. I paraphrase Asmongold - PVP are dependent on PVE: Uber Gear versus people that make the gear. Much love, Skaff.
Bounty hunters is great for the hunters but the initial victims are still s.o.l. The griefing is my issue.
Attrition was a good term to use. Zerg guilds will get tired of fighting on all fronts..
I have zero qualms with a raid flagging in town and butchering folks that made the choice to create an entire guild of defenseless crafters. Perhaps give the raiders some loot then end the event after a shorter duration to avoid camping?
Enjoy the content Nyce, but they spend plenty on marketing, definition of a showcase my man.
Syndicate gaming 😎
Interesting tho - isn't Lynnth less toxic than the others?
yep, in part because a large part of the server seems to be quiet....
@@valfreyaaurora4922 I’d say so
I dont have alpha acess but i follow the development as i can. This zerg stuff could be a potetntional problem. But i think the future gatekeeping too. The game is only in alpha and yetw too many ppl playing it, there are too meny early guides(FOR AN ALPHA GAME xD) etc. When the game will relse i think the gatekeeping lvl will be freaking HIGH. Simply if an alpha/beta veteran guild chose a server im 100% that they gonna dominate the whole ecosystem and the server itself. The devs still have time to make it right but if a couple big zerg guilds are able to dominate whole servers then the average players will suck hard.
I can't wait to start my bard this act I liked ranger but just want something new.
@@PureLanceTea 🎶 🎼
I really hope to play Aoc one day 😭 looks so promising!
@@TheMotitaNEWS the vision for this game is inspiring
Dope vid as always Nyce, great topic and analysis. I'm trying to create a similar guild than yours (quality over quantity).
@@sadjy this is the way. Good luck!!!
Hello Nyce, it's gamers, Narc told me this video doesn't exist, please, do confirm if it exists.
@@anaximanderification you’ve been deceived!
"guilds will have to choose between being bigger or being stronger" is such a joke answer when, as nyce pointed out, guilds will just pick the bonuses for being small and they'll make 200 guilds
Miss you guys on Lyneth.
I would think that node wars is where this giant guild thing would be most immediately noticeable. If your federation of Pirate guilds has 3000 members and they're all citizens of Joeva, for instance, Joeva probably is going to be untouchable for the life of that server. I don't know how you'd ever unseat them. For guild wars and caravans, etc. I don't have anything to add to what you've said. I'd just like to see a cap on node population. Maybe that won't be viable until there are more nodes online, but if a conglomerate like Pirates wants 60 guilds, they should not all be able to become citizens of the same node.
@@bminturn great observation 🤔 so supposedly, in the future you’ll need housing in a node to be a citizen of a node unlike currently where you just sign up
@@Nyce-Gaming however it works out, they need to ensure that a server can't go stale because 1/3rd of players are buddies. You can have the same guild name if you want, and all of that, but they should cap those node populations once there are more online - or as a longer term solution. Then you can't just dominate as a mega guild + mega populated node. More parity = better gameplay for everyone. Including people who like giant guilds. They may not know it now, but it would be better long term.
The other counter to mass joining one node, is the later you join the node (number wise) the higher the taxes get, so eventually it wont be worth joining that node as the taxes are going to be awful
@@Sub-zp2gs that might be hard to implement and keep overhead at those nodes to a minimum. You'd also have guilds who'd just say "OK then. We will help you pay your taxes because dominating this server is that important to us." And this will happen unless it is cooked into the game that one guild cannot dominate from one node.
I agree that the guild progression will NOT change anything. Actual Pirates already has guilds setup for dedicated tasks / professions (PVPers, Gatherers, Refiners, Crafters) so they will NOT take the guild size increase but take the passive bonuses rendering the progression choice non-existant. Also note that Actual Pirates also has non-Actual Pirates guilds that engage in espionage and other devious tactics to undermine other guild groups on the server. Thor has already mentioned the existance of these "Minsitry of Truth" guilds.
This aint Eve , stop playing pretend
@@masserphi2534 EVE became alot less interesting when you realize the game doesnt actually encourage these conflicts, its jsut the way these kinds of peple are...
@@kreenbopulusmichael7205 A recent all large group standing reset happened , should hopefully cause more conflict - I hunt Haulers and VIP's so , usually attack the supply lines and the VIPS of boths sides during any larger conflicts and its always interesting lol
I keep saying it, I actually was looking forward to being on a single server and being forced with Pirates when they said initially 1 server for NA. As a medium sized guild I prefer a mega guild who is controlled and with integrity to help keep larger less "honorable" guilds.
@@PawketsArt would’ve been epic
"Terrible system" he says, because it's a counter to having 60 guilds lmao
So Thor declared war on the Federation, and now complains about it. All the Actual Pirate guilds are numbered with roman numerals so there is absolutely no way of know which is for new members or crafters. That's the choice he and his leadership made. Kind of crazy saying "nobody can fight back" when it's a system that literally allows everyone in that guild TO fight back. They holler "PvP/PvX" until they're on the receiving end, and then it's not balanced or a bad system.
As for the gloating and personal insults, I have never seen any. What I have seen are known Fed members defending themselves against the 3000+ members of Pirates (plus the Pirate sympathizers) who decide to talk down at Feds in global because of stuff like this that Thor says. Want to talk about toxic? Imagine talking to your entire viewership (15,000 concurrent, not individual viewers), like how he did in his comments here, about a guild that is a fraction of your size because you declared war (ALL of your guilds) on them and they're actually fighting you. That is straight up toxic.
@@phalron_irl very interesting. Getting Fed’s side of things for a future video
Very good points
It would be fun if it was gonna be just fun. But considering you can get "blacklisted" by 1/3 of the server for grinding levels at POIs. Pissing off the pirates can make finding a group alot more difficult.
People who want to join a guild that large are sweaty and live in their moms basement for sure.
I’m sorry but I WILL NOT play on a server with someone(s) who can decide I’m not allowed to play the game anymore. The response to Apex Order showed me exactly what Thor does when someone inconveniences him. I don’t want any of that.
Guild sizes should be capped. If not the overall long-term server health will severely suffer.
But how combat multiple small guilds, that are technically a subpart of the same one.
Imo big mega guilds like this make a pvp server a pve server over time pretty quickly seen it done many times
Zerg is the sandbox way
This is all well and good when we are just hitting caravans and fighting over grind spots..but what about node wars? Zergs are undeniably going to simply decide on a whim which nodes get to exist in whatever state they decide it to exist in. As a member of a smaller guild I deff agree that I like the small guild feel but it seems to me that thus could become a hot bed for interesting politicking later when slightly smaller zergs recruit lots of smaller guilds to fight the big zergs..I think it could get quite interesting but people are kidding themselves if they think that long term this game is going to anything apart from zerg wars. I think there are niches for small guilds to fit into the machinations of the larger titans like Fed or AP, though AP is so damn large they probably won't need to even work with smaller guilds and instead deal with them as they see fit. A small guild is never going to really have that large an impact on thier own in the long term, but this is the nature of a medieval setting like this.
@@allbonksnobrakes9677 I get that for sure. For node wars we make sure to coordinate with the larger guilds of the node as the node war system provides mutual benefits for its citizens to help each other
FED OR DEAD BABY
I dont think large guilds are a problem in these type of games, its the alliances. And your definition of large. A guild of 200 is large. Like 200 people in an mmo in one spot working together is a lot, imagine managing that. But the problem is when you let multiple guilds ally, like in throne and liberty. Especially when the alliance goes further than just a verbal non aggression alliance. When it means you guys wont damage eachother in pvp, or you are basically one massive group. I think its terrible game design. im not sure how it works in ashes atm, but i hope they dont allow massive alliances. And hopefully the guild numbers are reasonable. But if what you say is true, and 60 guilds are allied in the same community, thats kind of wild.
i have not seen you in game yet!?
i personally think zerg guilds will be the death of this game and there should be a rule against it. make an alliance system that you have to send tributes back and forth to maintain an alliance or something.
Can't wait to hear your opinion on Narc after all the $hit that's came out..
People scream zerg anytime they lose or are out numbered.
So is Pirate Software going to be the Alcast of AOC? This reminds me of ESO Drama LOL!
ESO has drama ?
@@terminalvelocity4858 😆
@@kreenbopulusmichael7205 not any that people cares about really haha