Roc wrote:JadeFalcon wrote:I disagree with most (all?) of you.
One of the big aspects of this game is the social component - getting to talk with other people, and do stuff with them.
That is hard because there are so few of us, even in Silo at times.
It would be extra harder if people where spread out in more clans. This means in my opinion that we should be clustered together in one or two clans, not have our player base spread out like little butter on too much bread.
PS: Jake, ginvite the people i want damnit!
Clustered into one clan? You might as well as not have clans. The reasons for having guilds are to group together as individuals to achieve a common goal, yet remain separate as a player base to generate long-term competition. Agreed that guilds being too numerous and small presents its own challenges - mainly the inability to coordinate successful runs, and an over-abundance of PvP. With that however, I think we are far from having the player base for that being a probable issue.
As far as the inability to communicate and interact with others, I definitely think that the culture in this game over-emphasizes the need to do everything with a guild-mate. The current guild/PvP system definitely promotes that to a point. Regardless, there should be a means to talk to everyone in-game beyond simply paging. I agree with Eld - shit-talk would occur; some might see that as toxic. But given the number of active players, I think that it's almost needed. An easy means of combating overbearing negativity from being repeatedly broadcast is giving staff the ability to temporarily mute people after an infraction.
I agree with JF that the social aspect is a big part of the game. But what I think new players will find difficult is the inactivity of players... They may be able to join a big guild (numerically) but the members in that guild may already have enough 25ers and no longer levelling new ones... They may be idling 85% of the time and only chatting but not playing... Or showing up only when events are run... For whatever reason they may lack motivation to be active... And this will leave a bad taste in the mouth of the new player who we want to interact with a motivated community and keep playing (cos who wants to invest lots of time in progressing in a game where the end game players look demotivated?)
An incentive system like the one I proposed is to stimulate guild activity cos u only get points for doing active stuff (not idling)... My assumption is that it's much more enjoyable and better motivation to continue as a new player if you are in a smaller guild with 5 motivated/active players who are online doing stuff than in a bigger guild with most idling. I believe spreading out the active players could help foster that more active type environment across the whole game, which acts as a platform to promote this active/motivated culture (rather than idle/dead culture) to new players when they join.
And like Roc/Eld I do be live some way of worldchatting would be good for achieving that too ... But I also don't have any ideas as to how to prevent abuse of that (without adding to staff workload) at this stage.
Edit - btw I'm not really talking about adding new endgame stuff to keep existing players more active cos that usually is something the new players can't really participate in anyway... Getting ppl to keep motivated levelling new characters, farming keys and minor OADs that new players can participate with older players in is the crucial point of activity imho
