Why do we need a newbie-mega-guild?

Problem, if your in a small guild your incentiveized to quit your guild. Much easier to trade form groups in a bigger player pool. Small guilds will have to compete with the outlander guild chat. Its a bad idea but I do see the need for a better global chat.

2nd id suggest a diablo 3/clash of clans approach to general chat if 600 players causes crashes. Multiple general chats that hold 100 or so players.

I like the alliance guild concept.

 

So we aren't allowed to give our negative opinion anymore and we a relegated to questions?

 

Just because we don't agree with this awful path doesn't make us negative. It's not stirring the pot it's giving feedback. But it doesn't surprise me you use these tactics on the forums on a daily basis. If we don't agree we are troublemakers and we are "dealt with"

 

I agree with @Pikegirl in that the most important metric is whether this idea does work in bringing new people into the game. Adjustments with regards to impact on guilds can be done while fine tuning of the Outlander setup is going on.

I'm saying this because to me it's obvious that this whole thing is pushing through regardless. If one wants to keep an eye on things then imho it's best to be part of the effort while keeping an eye on things.

I might just do this myself and join up with whatever group or guild is involved with the Outlander project. My personal concern is how this will impact the experience of new players who will remain guildless for the rest of their stay in SOTA. A default megaguild is something I believe must be avoided for the good of the game.

 

sesms like a good idea that can be abused. But if it helps new players learn the game and stay in the game then I am all for it. I just hope they monitor and punish any abuse that may come up. But sounds like that has been thought about.

Without a player base all this underhanded shady stuff everyone is screaming about can't happen. Because there are no players to recruit, or sell too, or even play with.

what other things can we do as a community to get new players up and running and hooked? Are there events for this I am missing, or a place where they normally go seeking help? I wouldn't mind helping where I can.

 

There was a lot of events for new players in earlier releases, Kazyns Academie,welcomequest or crafting ones by BMC... just to name a few ... good to learn and meet other players, I'm sure there will be things like that again

 

Portalarium needs to abide heavily and stop over-controlling this

 

From a practical perspective,
I'm still confused as to who gets to be 'in' the mega-guild.
I get that it will put newly created characters in there but who else gets to be in it?
On one hand, it would be nice if anyone could join to help folks out, but on the other hand, some would just join it to spam trade wares or use it as a recruiting tool.
Who decides this? Will it be free for all or will we rely on a group of officers who have to moderate not only the chat but also membership?

With multiple memberships allowed I can see loads of people trying to jump in to what is essentially a global chat channel workaround....

I dunno. It just seems like a kind of a big change to the game with a lot of potential for mis-use.
New players all get funneled into Soltown eventually which makes it the natural place for helpful folks to hang out to intercept them.
Usually I wait until our guild leader has scooped a few up and brought them up to town and then I get to dress them up and take them places.
I'm assuming there's a lot of helpful folks who do the same or similar.

Are we saying the current system is broken?
Are there new players wandering the game for days with no clue what to do, nobody talks to them, and then they quit?

 

Will use my break later to update the first post with the Information we got so far.

 

My gut feel is yes. Most of us are too busy playing in solo online mode to maximize our resource gathering and skill building. And it doesn't mean that because one doesn't receive messages asking for help nobody needs any. It took me all of half an hour to figure out how to get
to global chat and find the channel to use in my first MMO. And SOTA doesn't even have any of those.

If it was possible I'd plunk down an NPC town that all new players would have to pass through. It would have all the basic quest/merchant/crafting tutorials that - if you pass them - would give the new player with a nice set of beginning armor and weapons plus some extra cash. This way more veteran players who want to help could hang out at this spot. The friends list would do the rest

 

I suppose its a matter of timing, but even pre-persistence when I started playing there were loads of folks hanging around just waiting to answer all my questions, help with starting gear, etc.
Maybe I just got really lucky.
I like your npc idea, or even if there was a new players bulletin board that gave a few gather-this-quests for basic gear pieces or even allowed players to 'register' themselves as mentors and have their names on there to be contacted for questions, that could be a potential solution.
Or even have it have a chatbox, but you have to be stood at that spot, talking to the 'bulletin board' to see the chat, rather than it being a global always/on channel.
I personally don't like the idea of being throttled into a starter guild, I've seen it in other games and one of the first things I do is /leave the spam infested waters and try to find my own way

 

Main Post Update.
Feel free to add or correct me.

 

For what i understand it is Portalarium response to ease the helping hardships of the Hospitallers. I'd say nobody requested it; it's just portalarium lending an unrequested hand to the helping folks in the community (we'll see where that ends )

 

Edited.

 

The whole nubi guild thing still feels too much like a mechanism for company sponsored rejection. If your face doesn't fit (a bit like the forums) there is no doubt you will get booted.......that's a new player who has just purchased the game being rejected at the earliest stage by no other than the company itself or indeed a non-employee representing the company. Why? because their values don't match a handful of individuals.......not so much they get banned......but just rejected.

Then there is still the whole idea of what kind of guild would have an alliance with a nubi guild, access to world chat, motives, impact on PvP etc etc

Sorry guys the idea still stinks, you will experience game breaking problems that will require time, resource and diplomacy to fix..........at which point the damage will be done.

 

I think so too, and exposed my reasons as well. Don't see how to avoid the problems you (or me, or many other members of the community) pointed out but it's happening.

Now we can only hope to be wrong... And if all ends in the worst outcome, we can always have an "I Told You So" dance party

 

I've always been a multi-guild supporter. Most of the objections come from PvP guilds that don't actually have guild wars anyway. I just think it's old UO thinking not to have them/alliances or something like that.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ets-talk-about-stones-and-being-stoned.10388/ (Time Lord April 2014)

Outlander Guild;
Whatever Portalarium comes up with, with or without outside guild help, I'm agreeing with it. I just think it needs to be kept simple... "it's a guild" that needs an exit strategy.

Or ...
It could provide the exact conduit for players just like yourselves, to be custom delivered to your doorsteps...

~"and that's something to think about"~ !'
~Time Lord~

 

First impressions are important. It is more likely they would end up just not playing the game and those who did would have a very poor view of Portalarium and those players/guilds who are closely affiliated with them.

 

Now who in the world would say such a thing about you E n v y? ...
Certainly not me...
We have to look at this from the other angle, or we aren't using both our eyes. I'm serious about this. The one single important ingredient that causes PvP to become more interesting, is to have more PvP players coming together. You, me and everyone have seen it happening for years on our forums, where our PvP numbers are very small and what small numbers there are, can't seem to all come together about anything. Portalarium has given PvP few mechanics to make it work, but more people added to anything can cause that to work and work well.

How many Disciples of Damnation do you have now? If the right players come together to aide such a program, then it would be able to help you throw some gasoline on that PvP fire for us all to enjoy.
I'm looking for some good Bar-BQ our of this Brother Envy and if allot of PvP all come together to cook it, that could sure smell better than we're use to around here.

We will soon be finding out whether or not we're invited ...

~Time Lord~...

 

Angles are overrated. Nothing like a 360º view AKA the bigger picture.

When i try to look at this that way (i always try to look at things with the wider perspective i can, doesn't mean i always succeed) this is a system that will be supposedly implemented to make the game less of a learning-cliff-in-face for players, making them feel welcomed and all that. But that's only achieved over an step that's not mentioned; the Outlander guild gears flawlessly working, and as much as people may be collaborating that's not guaranteed.

Since those gears are not guaranteed to be flawlessly truning, the solutions that's supposed to bring are not guaranteed either. And with every guild there's the risk of bringing in some other problems. So we're getting a feature without a 100% chance of improvement and without a 0% chance of making things worse. I'll save my own estimate of the chances, suffice to say the values aren't 100% for working solutions neither 0% for further problems.

Of course if everything works out nice the game will win, and with it every playstyle. The problem is that its not guaranteed to work out nice, and we're talking about human beings... we have a talent to mess things up, and more when we're online. If it doesn't works out nice and it ends up having issues of trolling/scamming/deceiving/manipulating/and some other present participles that appear too much in online games, it will soil the game image and Portalarium image (since it's the community manager here handling the guild).

Allow me to go deeper... What if Portalarium detects these and expel people from the Outlander guild so they can no longer pose a threat? nothing new, nothing that we haven't seen already. They won't be virtuous and recognize their fault; they'll protest and leave and say that he was treated unfairly while he was a customer like everybody else. And once again it will rest over Portalarium shoulders because the guild is managed by the community manager. Of course he could not take any action against toxic players because they're entitled to get help like everybody else... but then the Outlander guild, the first thing that new players will see, will cause a bad impression just upon joining in. In all this other cases, the game loses, and every single player and investor with it. We'll have the ITYS party to drown our sorrows away

I personally think that dealing with people in MMO you simply cannot keep everybody happy, and that's why i tend to believe the problems will outweight the solution. I just know if it were me, i didn't take the chances.

Sorry for the Doom and Gloom (awesome name for a guild now that i think about it), and i really hope everything works out for everybody.