Guild Locks, Maximum Membership, Neutral Guilds, and Team Registration

I'll try to keep this brief. In short, I see a few major issues that need to be brought to light and addressed as following:

Guild Locks:
Guilds like Golden Phoenix and Black Rose have swallowed up large portions of the memberbase here on FTRP, leaving other guilds to barely manage with 10 or less (in)active members. It is a widely known problem that guilds are too thinly spread out, some having chunks of members while other are barely holding on. This is why I suggest Guild Locks (or if they already exist, using them). Guild Locks would do just as said, lock guilds. By locking guilds, membership would be closed and denied to that particular guild after a guild has or exceeded a certain amount of members, giving other guilds the opportunity to absorb more members and "thicken the thinning of members." However, it is not forever. It would only last until staff determines that other guilds are ready to compete for members again or a certain amount of time has passed.

Maximum Membership:
An idea to further support thickening the thinning of members, guilds should have a set amount of members they can harbor at a single time. And as guilds reach their maximum memberships, they can either:

A: Purchase more membership slots with guild funds, similar to ace slots.

B: Remove inactive members. This will only make guilds more active.

Neutral Guilds:
The problem with neutral guilds that has had little light shed upon them is the fact that entire groups of members are excluded from positions like Wizard Saint or Rising Star because of their alignment. Staff and members has given me many justifications for this but most do not make sense.

Independent Guilds are defined as following: "Guilds that are not registered with the Magic Council, but are not "evil". While technically dark, Independent guilds are not hunted by the Magic Council for one reason or another." Although understandable, it does not make sense that Guildless (while Indi guilds are not registered with the MC but are not against them, Guildless aren't even registered with a guild/alignment and have more privilege in this situation) can apply for WS/RS but Indies can't. If the guild does not oppose the MC, or better yet, supports them, they should very well be eligible to apply.

Team Registration:
There's all sorts of wrongs with this so I'll put in my piece and everyone else can add theirs to make the puzzle a whole picture.

The restrictions and privileges other alignments get in this registration is bizarre. Very bizarre. Let me put this simply:

Legal + Legal = No team eligibility
Legal + Dark = No team eligibility
Dark + Dark = Team Eligibility! (????)
Dark + Guildless = Team Eligibility!
Neutral + Neutral = No team eligibility
Guildless + All Alignments = Team Eligibility

Correct me if my chart is incorrect but the gist of it is that almost all guilds are isolated to their own guild lest an alliance is formed. Which doesn't really make sense among most guilds, since Legals support the MC and therefore shouldn't really even need an alliance to form teams. Darkies can do the exact opposite for some strange reason. Point is, you should be able to team with anyone of any alignment.

i agree whole heartedly

I agree with parts of this but it boils down to the fact that it falls on the GM to make a guild active and gain members. If your guild is failing you need to see what you can do to change that and look at who is active in the bigger guilds. ST for instance has like 20 members in the skype chat but only about half of them are active. Limiting who can join what guild will only make players join guilds they don't want to, waiting until they can join the guild they want, or might even drive new players away completely. That is no good in any way.

Neutral guilds should be allowed to apply for any position since they should in theory be allowed to do any job.

The team thing is something that gets brought up all the time and it boils down to this... Staff is unwilling to change this and that is all there is to it so we should stop bringing it up since they don't listen anyway.

I have to say that I agree with everything stated. Except that Fairy Tail was once grabbing all the new members and we were literally locked away by the staff. Afterward I watched several members in the cbox have interest and not be able to join the Guild.

As Izayuki says. Actually like I said back then even.

You shouldn't be punished for doing a good job. For creating a fun and exciting guild. It's up to the GM to post a lot and to make threads topics and events that interest not only your current members but potential ones and new members as well. Otherwise I agree with everything especially the bit about teams. Takes away a lot of plot possibilities and fun story mode. For example a light teaming with a Dark would make for interesting threads and also people would read em just out of pure interest as too what the heck these two are up too.

I think this thread should be taken seriously as far as reorganizing the team rules for sure.

At first thought the idea of locking the most active guilds is appealing and is something that has been done before,  but looking at it from the perspective of a player,  it's pretty anti-fun.   It's not a great feeling wanting to join a guild but not being able to,  especially for the reason that they are active.

Perhaps there should be no penalty at all to active guilds,  but the underpopulated guilds receive some form of incentive for people to go there.

An XP boost to those guild members could go a long way;  since the downside to a less active guild is not being as able to team up or so on, or a slower rate of progression overall.   A direct XP boost could fix that and even make it a bit desirable.  Only the three least active guilds would benefit from it and when they are replaced by a different guild,  then they no longer qualify, as you might expect.

Alternatively they could receive WC Reduction to jobs they do, rather than a direct XP boost.  Word Count reduction is something I see on pretty much every RP site with job mechanics of some sort;  yet I don't believe I've seen it here despite this site having some of the largest requirements I've ever seen that could contend with National Writing Month.


More severely, rather than locking,  you could reduce Guild/Team bonuses for the most active guilds.

Eris wrote:At first thought the idea of locking the most active guilds is appealing and is something that has been done before,  but looking at it from the perspective of a player,  it's pretty anti-fun.   It's not a great feeling wanting to join a guild but not being able to,  especially for the reason that they are active.

Perhaps there should be no penalty at all to active guilds,  but the underpopulated guilds receive some form of incentive for people to go there.

An XP boost to those guild members could go a long way;  since the downside to a less active guild is not being as able to team up or so on, or a slower rate of progression overall.   A direct XP boost could fix that and even make it a bit desirable.  Only the three least active guilds would benefit from it and when they are replaced by a different guild,  then they no longer qualify, as you might expect.

Alternatively they could receive WC Reduction to jobs they do, rather than a direct XP boost.  Word Count reduction is something I see on pretty much every RP site with job mechanics of some sort;  yet I don't believe I've seen it here despite this site having some of the largest requirements I've ever seen that could contend with National Writing Month.


More severely, rather than locking,  you could reduce Guild/Team bonuses for the most active guilds.

I pretty much came here, to say this. Its true, that a guild should not be penalized with a lock. Simply for doing well, and being active. HOWEVER. Any guild doing poorly on the site, is not a reflection of the current GM, but all of us. Put it this way. How amazing truly is your guild? If you have 100 members, all Z rank, and all doing 1 million year missions. If your competition is 3 people reaching for B rank. Like the way i see it, you judge a man, based on his enemies. If Fairy Tail wins some Site event, with 50 people. Yet every other guild has 5. Then sorry, you ain't win shit. Like more competition, creates more enjoyment. If my guild is doing amazing. 15+ active members. Then you dont need to lock the guild, but extra time and energy shouldn't be spent solely on that guild. Even if your the GM. Like your good. Go help BP with its 1 member. They could use some help. Include them in things, help, something. I dont know.

Also the argument that keeps being tossed back. About if some one wants to join guild X, they should be allowed to. True. However 9.9/10 a new player who joins this site, is going to scroll to the bottom, or look at the guild section, and see who is most active. Their very first move, might to look at the lore of each guild. Sure. However once their like, "Wow LS sounds great....O wait, only 2 active members." OR "Last post in guild forum was 3 months ago" of course they arent going to join that guild. Not when you got BR popping bottles in Rose garden. Plus the incentive of Teams, regardless if its just to promote team play, and all that good stuff. At the end of the day, that shit helps. 10 A rank missions solo =12,500. But 10 of them bad boys with your friends, having fun? O that will net you a cool 18,750. Like its no real choice in the matter? What you all really think some one is going to go. "O im going to join BP, because i really love the idea. I'll just solo my life away, till some one else joins it." Come on. And yes i know, they could team with any one. However that would get mad depressing, everyone just zooming pass you, and you got to work twice as hard.

Thats why i think the incentive program is a good idea. And if not, cool. However its going to take ALLL OF US. To help make each guild last, and become better. Not just, "Sweet got another 10 people today. Haha look at BP." Like i should literally stop calling the guild BP, Im calling that shit Wolf. Because Natalia is the stand alone soldier of that bad boy.

*Salutes Natalia*