Guilds

Guilds in Ashes of Creation are still pre-alpha design that will need testing and feedback from the community.

Guild formation

Players may be able to form guilds in starting areas if minimum requirements are met.

Guild membership

A character may only be a member of a single guild.

• Alts on the same account can join different guilds.
  • Intrigue, espionage and intelligence gathering is a legitimate aspect of the game.
• A guild may only have a single guild leader.
  • Transfer of guild leadership is possible, but mechanics on transferring leadership if a guild leader has abandoned the guild have not been finalized.

Guild progression

Guild perks UI. Alpha-1 screenshot. Image credit: Guild:Overlord

As you're leveling up the guild and you're getting these points to either allocate towards expanding the guilds member count or allocate towards adding certain passive abilities that your guild members can gain by being guild members. You're also going to see as you're leveling up the guild through different type of quest-based, participation-based, node-based, organization-based systems and ways that those quests hook into the world. You're also going to see perhaps some augment abilities at the upper tiers of the guild levels become unlocked for certain members that have a classification of officer or knight, will have access to those different types of augment abilities that might get unlocked should you go down the non expansive member lane; and the idea there is to offer these benefits to smaller groups. – Steven Sharif

Guild progression occurs through participation in different systems.

• Quests.
• Nodes.
• Social organizations.
• Crafting certain items.
• Events.

Guild progression grants skill points that the guild can allocate to unlock aspects of their skill tree, such as passive skills, augments and membership count.

• Passive abilities increase certain stats relating to a guild member's ability to perform in combat or in other aspects of the guild, such as the economy.
• Augments may apply at the upper tiers of guild progression.
  • This applies to guilds that have opted for the non-expansive member route.
  • It benefits guild members with a classification of officer or knight.
• Guild members do not need to be citizens of the same node in order to benefit from passive skills and augments.
• Guild size can be traded off for guild progression.
  • The higher the guild's member cap, the fewer available skill options will be available to that guild.
  • Guild alliances may be a key part in creating a larger "guild".
• Guild halls can be unlocked at a certain stage of guild advancement.
• Guilds cannot respec their skill points once allocated. This is subject to testing.

It's not always going to be combat. You could have an economic focus guild. You could have a trade oriented guild; and there's all sorts of things that you can put together and give your guild its own identity. – Jeffrey Bard

Guild size

There are mechanics that are geared towards larger and smaller guilds.

• Larger guilds can siege fortresses.
  • Larger guilds won’t have access to power boosting guild ability slots.
• Small groups can do some things better than larger groups.
  • Sieges will have things that smaller groups have an advantage in.

Guild size is currently 250-300 members.

Guild alliances

• Due to the lack of fast-travel, guilds will need have to plan to have people in the right place at the right time. Alliances with other guilds will help enable that.

Guild wars

Guild wars are objective-based PvP events between guilds.

• Guild wars can be declared at any time, but the objectives will only spawn during server prime-time.
  • Players can kill each other at any time during the war (not only during server prime-time).

• Guild war objectives are intended to dynamically spawn based on various conditions that exist within each guild.

• Guild wars are not permanent. Definitive victory/surrender conditions exist that are based on the level of the warring guilds and the assets that those guilds have.

• Guild wars operate outside the PvP flagging system.
  • Death penalties (mostly) do not apply to objective-based events, such as guild wars.

• Guild wars are considered a core system of Alpha-2.

Q: How do you plan on keeping wars fresh long term? Typically in other games wars become one dimensional in terms of strategy. Will intrepid be looking at map changes every few years, or will you give guilds / node mayors the ability to customize the layout or objectives of the battlefield?

A: Our guild wars have objective-based gameplay that spawn in the world based on several different factors and predicates that might exist. Some of those predicates might be where is your guild a patron guild of? Does your guild have a guild hall? What node is your guild leader and/or officers a citizen of? What was your last completed raid boss? All of those can serve as predicates to then spawn a certain objective within the world that players have to either engage with in a number of different manners. Either they can be kill objectives, they can be control objectives, they can be capture and move objectives. They could be a caravan caravan summons that need to take supplies from those objectives. The idea is to incorporate all of these other ancillary systems that exist within the game in some way shape or form- tie it into the guild war, because we've created those systems for a reason. We want players to engage with those systems, so why not hook those systems into the guild war format? And I think that that creates a very dynamic setting where it is not just about killing and logging out, but rather strategy in both your resource placement, how you respond, and when you respond, the composition of your raid/group teams. Those types of things play a role now in the outcome of those guild wars and I think they keep it fresh because it'll be different per war. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Guilds may war multiple guilds/alliances at a time.

Zergs

For every play, there should be a counterplay. We often see Castle Sieges turn into zerg-fests, which really doesn’t capture the epic, back-and-forth battles we wish to see in Ashes of Creation. One of our key pillars is that Choice Matters, and that applies to tactics and strategy as well. A well-formulated battle plan should win out over stat sheets and bodies. Zergs will generally be difficult to pull off, and will be eminently counterable through siege weapons, traps, and other battlefield tricks.

Zergs are empowered by fast-travel. Meaningful travel times are intended to prevent zerg play from being so much of an influence.

Encounters are designed to have meaning in terms of how boss skills and abilities relate to group compositions, tactics and strategies. Zerging is not experiencing content. There are different ways to make a fight more difficult for larger sized groups without relying solely on stat buffs or making the boss a "damage sponge".

• Raid and dungeon bosses have specific mechanics and abilities that players need to learn and react to. Zergs that are not aware of these mechanics or react to them appropriately will be wiped.
• There may be environmental hazards and AoE effects that cause more damage based on the number of players present.
• There is a give-and-take for guilds that want to see a larger number of members as opposed to a more focused group that may be a part of an alliance.

We're very cognizant of the fact that we don't want to see zerging be a mechanic that's utilized by guilds to accomplish content or just to steamroll over sieges... There are specific mechanics that we are working on that will be seen through the testing phases that relate to a degree of understanding of certain systems that can't just be overrun with numbers. – Steven Sharif

Mechanics that encourage political intrigue will play a role in destabilizing zergs.

The best way that I found in games I played previously to take down a zerg is to cause drama from within... It's that conflict inside of the politicking that happens in that big organization. If we provide opportunities for division to occur then it also provides stability to keep a server healthy away from that zerg mentality also... If we approach the castle siege and we've destroyed the walls and we're in the throne room and we're about to cast on the penultimate thing and I at this time am just so excited from what's happening that I'm like "screw it I'm gonna go for it". It's gonna be mine. I'm gonna take the taxes for the next month. I'm gonna take all the gear from the castle. I'm gonna take everything... We want that political intrigue to be present in the game. – Steven Sharif

Objective-based game play helps to balance the zerg mentality.

I always feel that if you balance based on groups that in your balance focus is to incorporate features that play well from a player versus player perspective as well as a player versus environment perspective: Having support classes, having DPS and tanks that can obstruct movement and/or create bottlenecks on the field and stuff like that. I think a well-rounded raid it will perform better against a non well-rounded raid, however then you incorporate the second aspect of numbers; and that's where again mobility, organization, leadership tactics. Having objectives in gameplay that make those important helps to balance the zerg mentality that a lot of guilds can tend to have. – Steven Sharif

Instancing doesn't play a major role in limiting zergs, due to 80% of content in Ashes of Creation being open-world.

• There may be instanced locations within castle and node sieges where specific groups can participate in certain objective-based waypoints.

Zerging is always a problem in a lot of these MMORPGs where you really can't control the number of participants in certain open-world systems; and in that sense instancing is a great tool that designers can sometimes use to curate a particular number of participants that you want. But the predominant amount of content within Ashes of Creation, over 80% of which is is open-world content, so instancing is very limited. – Steven Sharif

Guild benefits

Ideas that are being considered by the developers:

• Guild activities
• Passives
• Questlines
• Guild halls
• Guild castles

Leadership tools

The developers are considering the following tools:

• Recruitment tools.
• Management tools.
• Delegation tools.
• Motivational systems.
• Communication tools.
  • Guild alerts.
  • Board messages.
  • In game chat.
  • Calendar.
• Roster.

Guild emblems

The user interface will allow the creation of custom guild emblems.

Crowdfunding guild rewards

Guild themed character cloaks were cosmetic rewards for backing at the Leader of Men level or higher in the Kickstarter and Summer crowdfunding campaigns.

• Guild cloaks can not be applied over costumes.

Guild cloaks will work the same way that accessory appearances from the cosmetic packs work, in that they are applied to the item and take over that appearance. They can not be applied over costumes. – Cody Peterson

Kickstarter/Summer crowdfunding guild rewards are assigned to a guild by the owner of the reward.

• Once assigned, the reward becomes an asset of that guild.
• Guild members that leave the guild no longer have access to the unique items of that guild.

Sharemarkets

Stock exchanges (also called Stock markets and Share markets) enable players to buy and sell shares in Nodes, Guilds and Social organizations.

• Stock exchanges were a Kickstarter stretch goal unlocked for reaching the $3 million dollar mark.
• This is a planned feature for the launch of Ashes of Creation.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• The value of stocks is influenced by world events and the performance of nodes, Social organizations or guilds.
  • Hard metrics, such as quest lines, nearby resources, citizen progression, and purchases of local real estate, will determine the value of purchasable shares.

• Sieges will halt trading of shares in a node. This opens up potential for economic sabotage.

• There is no regulatory commission to restrict the purchase and sale of stocks.

See also

• Social organizations