Guild Control

weretiger5411 wrote:So with the sister guild idea is it like a branch system? Like how it is with churches that carry the same idea? If so I can see that working, then if they have plot specific events or jobs then both can be in it. They would also share the same funds and guild vault, perhaps have it so that if a guild enters a sister guild relationship then the leadership is divided up by the number of GM's?(EX. ST and IH enter this relationship and then decisions are decided by the two GM's).

Guild descriptions:

Data From Spreadsheet:

Speed Demon Zack wrote:Is there any issue? WEll, I can see one and only one and that's guild spells. However, so few seem to use these at any point I don't see it being a big deal.

i also don't feel we should 'close guilds' or at least not forcibly. If for example, Heero as the GM of fairy Tail wanted to stop taking in members due to lack of funds or space or something then I don't see any issue with that.

Mashyuu wrote:Hi everyone! It's Mash of Sabertooth. Lately there has been a lot of talk about what to do with the guilds here on site. Some of them have a ton of members while many more have so few it's like they aren't even there. Still there are other guilds popping up left and right. So what do we do about this?

Do we restrict how many members can be in a guild? Do we say a guild has to have X amount of active members to remain a guild? It's really not for one person to say. So lets have here a friendly talk about what to do. I'd like this to remain as civil as possible. No mud slinging or trash talking. Remember this is an issue for the entire site so we should work as a community to solve the issue.

My suggestion is to compare the guilds ideals. Take guilds with less than ten members and see if we can get them to combine with other guilds. Like a sister guild or a secondary guild. Say a smaller guild joining Blue Pegasus. We can let them keep their name and location but the jobs they do count towards the Blue Pegasus total, thus both guilds are now helping each other. This both gets smaller guilds eliminated and adds to other guilds without taking anything away from the smaller guilds. I'm very much against this idea. Essentially, it's the larger guild taking over the smaller guild, warping that guild to be SOMEWHAT that guild, but not really. You get to keep your name, but everything you do, every GOOD THING that should go to your guild, is given to someone else. It's like that jerky supervisor who's always shadowing you, and when you FINALLY come up with an idea for a board meeting that's useful; he/she takes the credit for it.

Eris wrote:It's just what happens when you have so many guilds.  Every day it feels like you hear somebody saying they could, would, should, intends to, or might make a guild.     

I wouldn't have made Grim Heresy if it wasn't important to my character and I felt like I could make something others might enjoy as well.   I made it because waiting around while other similar guilds popped up would have just been detrimental overall and my concepts would never see the light of day.   

I did and do still think there are more Guilds than the site population can sustain while maintaining activity among them all.  

I don't think people should be limited from joining a guild that fits a character they wish to make,  I think we need to double check guild activity.   Lamia Scale,  Laughing Coffin and so on. Lamia Scale's major issue is that our GM (the only one who can edit guild stuff on our sub-forum) is recovering from surgery, and before that had little time. Even further before that; Linxwire LET THE GUILD DIE, and Kihia had to force himself to leave at risk of losing himself in the site (which I commend him for). We also suffer from low numbers, NOT BEING NAMED FAIRY TAIL, and not having a very large presence due to only I think 4 or 5 of us being active on site.

Laughing Coffin suffers from:
- Almost no GM activity whatsoever (just like LS)
- That ridiculous name
- That ridiculous guild logo (that was ripped right out of the same source as the name)
- Very low player population 


It might also be extreme,  but implementing Guild Wars in some form would ensure fragile guilds don't survive long if they aren't active enough to make connections to stronger guilds or ARE a stronger guild. I'm against guild wars... mostly because that's PvP, and this site's PvP system is garbage tier. You have people who will godmod till it makes others sick, and then those people will leave that thread because "Johnny Butthead over there was godmodding" AND THEN staff gets involved and has to do something because godmodding is against CoC, AND THEN it get's complicated because it's gonna be a bunch of people PO'd about someone being banned(possibly) for RP'ing that he/she grabbed a player, and threw them across a football field into a mine field that contained a nuclear mine (instead of leaving the action open ended to imply that it was possible to not get nuked.)

I know that's a bit heavy for an example but it is possible and I have seen a player do something similar in an event thread already.... 

Nao wrote:Warning: This could be an unpopular opinion.

So when you say "less than 10 members" do you mean in general or active? Because when it comes to active members the numbers are actually a lot smaller and closer together. Sure there are some anomalies, but that could be for many reasons.

Reason 1) Many of the guilds have similar goals.

For example: This is Niyol's post in an introduction topic I stumbled upon. It's missing one or two guilds, but have a look

Guild descriptions:

From the looks of this, Blue Pegasus, Sabertooth and Infinity Hydra have very similar goals. Black Rose and Laughing Coffin have sort of similar goals (Bounty hunting, mercenary work), and Basilisk Fang and Savage Skull have the same end goal (cause bad things, age of anarchy). There isn't a huge amount of difference, and there can be a lot more larger goals for these guilds. But because they're so close and lumped together, the ones that have more members WILL be the ones that get the people because-

Reason 2) Activity brings more activity.
The guilds that have the most people are also the guilds that will get more people because they are more active. There are more people actively trying to get more people to join, and because there are more people. They also have GMs that appear in the chatbox, talk to people. A lot of the GMs aren't actively trying to get new people to join their guild, or trying to keep people by helping or offering socials. This is where we begin to see in increase of guild changes, or people just going inactive because the activity in that guild just isn't there.

Below is a list of users I drew up from the list of people on the site in the last 99 hours. It has a list of mages that are not set to hidden that have been logged on. I took the list, put their guilds on the list and checked to see if they were an alt.

Data From Spreadsheet:

Of course, this doesn't count for people who are hidden. If you or you know someone who is set to hidden then you could add to the list. But for most it would only really add up to 3 max.

A few observations:
1. Despite FT being the largest guild, it's not as much as maybe some people assume: 8 more than Black Rose, and 10 more than Sabertooth means it's not a huge difference. And Sabertooth even has the largest active guild without any alts at all in their list.

2. Independents are the smallest group: You'd think being free of Magic Council and getting to do all the jobs would make them tempting, but since guildless get to also do that without any repercussions (becoming a coming storm isn't going to doom your guild for all eternity). Without Black Rose being in the group then they're swamped by both Light and Dark Guilds.

3. Smallest guilds. Dark- TT (Seems to kind of fit the goal of the guild being secret, but makes them a real target for being removed).
Light: BP (Losing Zack brought it down to 5).
Indie: LC.

Of course there are people who are hidden that would change this (Kolt and Eris making GH on equal to BP in terms of numbers).


So what needs to be done?
Firstly the guildmasters needs to start being more active and encouraging people to join their guilds. Some just sit there at the top and it makes it difficult for anything to be done.

Secondly if you are going to consolidate guilds then it needs to not look like a hostile take over. You may have to create an entirely new guild name out of the two guilds.

Thirdly shutting down entry to some guilds will just make people bitter. Fairy Tail would be an obvious target but the problem with that is that they're the main guild from the show/manga. Blocking them from receiving more members is really counter-productive on gaining new members to the site. Instead the guildmasters need to be more active in getting people to join.

Anastasia Isayev wrote:

Personally, closing down guilds really isn't the answer to solving issues.  Nao has stated that GMs need to be more active and get their guilds in action.  It is mainly the GMs that do a lot of the recruiting and it is up to the GMs to ensure their guilds stay active, otherwise, you'll have members in a guild leaving for other guilds or going guildless because they don't feel engaged with the guild they are currently in.  To be honest, GMs should be held to a much higher standard than most players as they are responsible for their guilds and the guild's health.  If a Guild Master can't/won't make guilds better, then they ought to be replaced.

Anastasia Isayev wrote:A couple things:

One way to ensure guilds have enough room for members is to have them start off with an X number of players able to inhabit the guild.  Guild Expansions could be bought to also increase the number of active members in the guild (if they want).  This can be explained as "Mage Barracks" where only an X number of members can remain in a guild due to resources, etc etc.

Having a member listing in the guilds (and maintaining it) would ensure that the guild:
1)  Pays attention to their members
2)  Recognizes member accomplishments with things like ranking up
3)  Maintains who is active or not depending on when their last IC post was to make sure the guild is actually active. This top part I'm not so sure about, my mind's not working properly so I can't really get a grasp on it.

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Personally, closing down guilds really isn't the answer to solving issues.  Nao has stated that GMs need to be more active and get their guilds in action.  It is mainly the GMs that do a lot of the recruiting and it is up to the GMs to ensure their guilds stay active, otherwise, you'll have members in a guild leaving for other guilds or going guildless because they don't feel engaged with the guild they are currently in.  To be honest, GMs should be held to a much higher standard than most players as they are responsible for their guilds and the guild's health.  If a Guild Master can't/won't make guilds better, then they ought to be replaced.

This I agree with 100%