I was thinking the same thing; because of past experience (BDO looking at you). You pretty much need the same amount of officers for each guild as you do one, and trying to get enough volunteers to fill all officer positions for one guild is difficult enough. Only reason why it worked in BDO is because with 400 people playing the admins were able to find enough people silly enough to volunteer, and even then the guilds tend to run more short staffed than not.
Honestly I can’t think of any perks that isn’t short of game breaking to justify the logistical nightmare that having many small guilds would end up entailing.
At the moment we’re somewhat stuck on this topic. Parts 1 and 2 describing and defining the Node system have been released but we’re still waiting for Part 3 that gives details on buffs and bonuses for types. It’s all too vague at the moment but there’s Pros and Cons to each type.
Example: I wouldn’t want to live in a Military Zone, but I’d want one to be not too far away to go do Bounty Quests sometimes.
First impression is that we’d want our town in a Commercial Zone so we have an Auction House there. Nothing worse than having to travel to reach an AH for stuff (as a crafter) IMHO.
It sounds like we will get a good solid look at the Node system during Alpha 1 Phase 2. This is planned to be the “beginning of the second quarter of 2019” - Nodes will be fully functional and progress to level 3.
At this stage access will only be granted to Alpha One Backers.
My personal preference is a non-Military node as I’m much more interested in crafting and exploration in Ashes… and I’m pretty rubbish at PvP…
I’m not going to speculate on our ability to have a node, or even really be the “lead” guild of a node. That said, I think having a solid reputation as players and as an overall community will give us the ability to “live” in a node type and location of our choosing as the world develops.
One thing that continues to catch my attention with this game is it can have a lot more politics involved, possibly even progressing to the level of EVE Online. I specifically bring up politics because I think it is going to be a much more serious component than most of our games, and that includes taking a lot more time from leadership to handle it.
However, that can actually be in our benefit. If larger guilds full of people who play 16 hours a day want to take on the larger burdens of world politics and node development, it could let us be a combination of both more laid back and more specialized in having fun. With the normal reputation OTG has there will be a lot of larger guilds desiring our presence in their node. We could provide benefits from crafting to bounty collection to protecting caravans and such (a means to go get some PvP on), without being the ones actually responsible for organizing and leading everything a node requires.
I am by no means proposing we don’t try and build our own node. All I’m suggesting is that the game world will develop fairly rapidly with large guilds leading that charge. I expect at some point we will have to make a decision to settle for a node that will never be a great one (out of the way, can’t max, not useful enough to be a target for conquering); be part of a multi-guild ran node (Waterdeep, council of merchants, etc.); or live in a top node ran by some larger guild that wants us in their territory. In all these cases (not be attacked, valued as a partner, trusted) our reputation will be our most valuable asset to bring to the negotiating table.
AoC is giving me so many EVE Online flashbacks in anticipation for what I see coming. Definitely fun times ahead!
I’ve seen a lot about this game, and I’m interested… but the whole node/pvp situation gives me nightmares. The idea of building something wonderful and then seeing it destroyed by others… so much inspiration, coupled with so much dread. I just don’t know what to think about it.
Also the Idea of Politics? I can’t see OTG being involved in any type of node wide or inter-node politics. We’d have to throw our “No Drama” status out the window. I could definitely see us as a small part of a multi-guild alliance in a node somewhere. I agree that would probably be the best for us. We could definitely capitalize on a “Friendly, Trustworthy folks” type of situation that OTG likes to foster. We can try to group some housing together in the outer areas where you can build different crafting and professional stuff on your plot of land. Like an OTG Village outside of the eventual metropolis. (This would still allow some of us to be ambitious and grab a few of the early plots to sell later on for cash )
I definitely don’t want to see chapter leaders in a position where it feels more like a job than a game. I actually ran into that a little bit on SIMS Online. You had to be logged in and watching over your house if you wanted to be a well known place where people come and work on raising skills. It could get exhausting for some of our folks, not good in a game at all.
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