Silhouette is my carpenter, much loved. She’s also my coercer, level 77. I love the class. I love everything about this character. I’ve decided to actually devote some time into her – I typically play EQ2 this way: Person says “Oh, we could really use such and such class” – and I run out and make it if I don’t already have it. I rarely ever play what I enjoy, because I enjoy whatever is needed and wanted. If it’s not needed or wanted, chances are I’ll bore of it. I know that’s a horrible way to play a game, but that’s been my ‘tactic’ so to speak for a little while now. It doesn’t work out. The coercer is one of those classes I play for myself. I just simply love it. I can accomplish so much while I’m alone that it doesn’t feel dreary. Its also complicated enough to keep me interested. Anyhow, I digress.
One conversation me and a good friend were having, was the state of guilds, specifically guild status, and how SOE sort of made a bad move.
Currently, this is how status items work. They’re the little documents and relics that drop from mobs. Right now, they are level restricted. If a guild is level 50 they can only contribute status via items that are also level 50 and up. What this means, is that lower level players, can not contribute their items towards guild status. It leaves them out of the loop. Yes, I understand that there are also writs in order to get status, but why should they be forced into a particular method of leveling the guild that they are just as much a part of as anyone else.
I understand (or think I do) why SOE implemented this method a few years back. I also think there was a better way, though. They obviously wanted to cut down the number of people who would easily farm lower tier items and turn them in by the mountains. Now if you’re a level 75+ guild, you need level 75+ items to turn in. Because I feel that this excludes newer / smaller leveled characters, what I thought about was simple:
Why not just make the items NOT drop from gray mobs.
That way, at least SOME effort was put into obtaining the relics. You know they were not just easily spam harvested, and if they were, at least someone was mentored / benifiting aside from just simply harvesting these tokens. The poor new level 20 can turn in his items finally. Even if he’s buying them from the broker, how is that any different then purchasing the level 75+ ones in order to level your guild. The lower level items give less status as it is, there’s nothing else that needs to be changed.
Small guilds have been at a severe disadvantage ever since the revamps. You used to get more status (when the guild level cap was 50) for having less people in your guild, then you would for having a full guild. That actually made sense to me, you have less people working towards the goal of leveling your guild then you would a raid guild, for example. However, it could be abused. Kick everyone out, level it with two people in the guild, etc. Small guilds were out leveling the larger raid guilds, and of course oh no we couldn’t have that now could we.
Another solution? I think we should be able to flag our guilds for certain rewards. Let me explain.
Be able to flag your guild as a crafting guild. For all of the crafting writs you do, you earn x2 the normal experience of a writ. Your guild also unlocks specific crafting items, perhaps house items that give buffs, or a set of gear that can improve your crafting, maybe some special recipes.
Then you have a guild flagged as a raid guild. For each raid zone they clear, they earn x2 the total amount of status for that raid zone. They unlock trinkets specific to raiding that will AID them but are NOT essential to a raid. It shouldn’t make or break a raid, it should just give them incentive to raid and work that status.
You could have a guild flagged as a questing guild. The EQ2players site keeps track of the average number of quests your guild has completed per person. There’s so much potential with the information that’s kept online, it can be taken any number of ways. Once a week perhaps, take the number of quests completed, and add a small amount of status per quest turn in. Or something along those lines. Again, have them able to unlock rewards that would base around questing.
If you want to flag your guild as a different sort, have them drop 20 levels, and have to re-earn their guild status, and unlock the new ‘type’ of guild rewards.
Maybe add tabards, so that we have a better way of displaying guild heraldry that doesn’t require covering up the very pretty cloaks they keep releasing. I never display mine, I’d rather wear the crafting ones. The guild cloak designs leave a lot to be desired. Why not allow people to create guild banners for their homes, or allow them to put the guild symbol on a shield.
There’s so much untapped potential out there with these things. I understand it takes time, and money, and well, a desire, to get this stuff anywhere. They’re just a few ideas I had though.
Speaking of all these new ideas. I also feel that EverQuest2 has really missed the boat on “busy work” for people to do once they’ve hit level 80. EQ2 lacks two very significant things EQ1 has. One, is proper aa. I’m not talking about the ones we have now, but the meaningless busywork ones that we should be able to get. For example, aa that let you choose a second crafting class. An aa perhaps that extends your food and drink. Another for enduring breath. Perhaps run speed (unbuffed). You know the stuff. That we all KNOW is busywork, but keeps us interested anyhow. Take a look at EQ1 and see just how many aa are out there. A lot of them are things that don’t affect you as a raider or adventurer, but are just other means of character progress. As it is now, people can reach level 80, finish their aa’s, and basically be “done” with the game. There needs to be more meaningless busywork. Even if we KNOW it is meaningless, it’s still SOMETHING to do.
Alongside of that busywork, would be LDoN (Lost Dungeons of Norrath). You remember the adventures EQ1 has, that lets you travel in a dungeon with 3+ people and caters to how many are in your group. You can select normal or difficult, and there are goals like killing X number of mobs, or rescuing an npc, etc. You earn points, for these missions, which unlock gear, augments, spells, and any number of other “things” that people deem fit to have (and plenty that are just garbage too). There are leadership boards, and you can check your status for successful runs vs. failed. It’s also experience for people, and when they’ve hit end game and don’t quite have all the points they need to purchase that thing on the LDoN vendor, they keep doing them.
Right now, the only thing EQ2 has to keep end game folks around – is alts. That’s all they have. Once you have your level 80/80 with complete aa’s, and your mythical – what exactly is keeping you playing? You’re not supposed to be able to “beat” an mmo. It’s supposed to be an ever going game. Right now people are playing on raid nights only because there’s simply nothing else to do. SOE needs to give them something else to do that is NOT just another raid or instance. It’s natural for folks to want to see progress on their characters. They want to constantly feel that they are moving forward. This stagnant feeling that’s going through the ranks is something that has to be quelled, and again not with some new raid zone or instance, but with actual personal character progress.
I’m glad you brought up the status items. When I started playing again I joined a mid-level guild. I was somewhat disappointed when I found out that my status items did not effect the guild’s status. It was also basically impossible to have the status items ever count because the guild was leveling as I leveled. I did do quests to earn guild status but I did have a lot of personal status from the items. I wonder if it is possible for status items to scale like your experience does. Maybe the percentage of status that the guild receives depends on the level of the guild and the item. It would make it so an level 1 item wouldn’t give the same status as a level 70 item but at least it would give something.
I think perhaps your idea of small, and mine, are different. My idea of small is 10-30. A large guild, would be 70-400 (which a lot of guilds here on Najena are). There’s a disadvantage as it sits now for a guild of 10, vs. a guild of 400. Not that there shouldn’t be, but I liked the old method. A guild of 6 people were level 50 at the same rate as a guild with 70. They each put in their own work and efforts.
A level 10 (or 20 or whatever) character shouldn’t have to buy status items to contribute because their own status items that they earn themselves are too low for their guild to use.
Another note. You mention that small guilds are at a severe disadvantage in levelling now that the status changes have gone into effect.
The old post-patron system adjusted the amount of status members of a guild actually contributed based on a sliding scale of 6 to 24. Having a guild of two members would not actually be a positive boost for you since the divisor was still 1/6 (16.7%). At the other end of the scale, guilds which had 24 more members only contributed 4.3% of status per member. The system was changed prior to Echoes of Faydwer to allow a flat 10% contribution rate. Every member of every guild now contributes an amount equal to 10% of their personal status gain toward guild level. This means that whether your guild has 6 members or 600, every member now contributes at the same rate.
The only guilds which saw a decrease in status gain at all were the guilds which had less than 10 members – and at most, it was simply a reduction from 16.7% to 10%. Consider that there’s no possible way to lose status anymore (originally, members who left a guild would drop a guild’s total status – potentially delevelling the guild) and there’s no need to track patrons anymore (originally, the system required you to be assigned as a guild “patron” to even be allowed to contribute status at all) and suddenly the system doesn’t seem all that unfair.
Even those low level 20’s can go to the broker and buy the higher level status items. All they need is the ability to earn coin – and anyone with access to the broker can do that (I’ve run experiments on different servers to see how many platinum pieces I could make by the time I was level 10).
I’ll grant you that the system does encourage guilds to grow to at least 10 members. However, is that really a bad thing?
THANK YOU. I always ask people when I join a game or guild “What class do you guys need?” and the answer always is “play what you enjoy”. Like you, I enjoy being useful. And if I am useful I will have fun and play more. I do not like being just another paladin, or cleric. TELL me if the guild has no shamans or needs a healer and buffer and I will be ectstatic to play it (even though I love playing paladins).
People can *still* buy them though. They just buy the higher level / more expensive ones. There’s no solving that. The lower level ones already barely move your guild status based on the sheer number you need. If there are 3 million level 25 status items out there, they’re going to cost more then the T7 ones status wise when you add it all up. Having them make it so you need level 75 items hasn’t solved purchasing them at all, so why is there a need for it. The status item change came before RoK went live. There’s still no need to punish those lowbies who want to contribute by telling them their status items are worthless to the guild. Make them no trade, and drop from green in that case, if they’re so concerned about people purchasing them.
It also took weeks before anyone hit 80 because of the AMOUNT of status you need to reach it. It changed drastically. You need significantly less status to get from 1-70 then you do from 71-80. At level 29, 10,000 guild status doesn’t even get you 1% of a guild level.
They also didn’t add any heritage quests in RoK, where as they did every other expansion. Means even less ways to get that guild status, as most people (aside from new alts) would have already completed them.
People weren’t farming the status items by the mountains – they were buying them by the boatload. I personally “bought” over 3 million status in lower tier items leading up to the Echoes of Faydwer launch. In addition, my guild opened our treasury up and hit the broker for months leading up to the new expansion (knowing full well that guild cloaks were attached to level 60) and bought up thousands of status items. We had entire characters created whose entire purpose was just to hold on to status items.
We never needed to farm any of it. We outright avoided the relevant tier 7 status items because they were overpriced. Pound for pound, the lower tier status items were the ones we went for. So many lower level players would put them on the broker without realizing the true value of the items, which we happily bought up for well below the price we were willing to pay. We weren’t the only guild doing this, either…and in fact, we weren’t even close to the most successful guilds doing it. I know guilds who spent hundreds of platinum on status items, who’d collected tens of thousands of the items in advance. I know of players who spent the first several hours of a new expansion doing nothing but turning in status items….stack after stack after stack.
When Kingdom of Sky went live, it took 12 hours for the first capped guild to show up. When Echoes of Faydwer went live, it took 8 hours. It took weeks for the first level 80 guilds to finally show up after the status item change was enacted.