1,200 member Guild Alliances and Server Control

A dominant guild ceases to be dominant when it fractures internally. Basically, 'when the guild chooses to no longer be dominant'.

Players outside the guild barely affect this. This is my definition of dominance. Where your actions have no real effect on a group, but they can easily affect yours.

This happens because of the Thousand Spears, relative to smaller guilds.

A dictator has an army of 1000 spearmen. 20% are loyal, the others are less so. But they all appear to be loyal, and don't communicate as much openly (this is what smaller guilds are like, almost by definition, if not, they're a Federation).

The first man to say 'down with the Emperor' finds themselves facing at least 900 spears.

Until the Emperor falls, no one says 'down with the Emperor' because it's pointless. Those who are not yet ready to say that, kill them.

Small guilds don't rise up against big guilds because they would have to successfully perfectly organize a single justified uprising, or they get stomped into nothingness by the big guild and the neutrals.

I have not seen a single game mechanic on the entire Wiki that will prevent the above. I concede that we have completely different ideas of human nature, so I welcome any discussion on the above, but if 'no, that doesn't happen', is your response to the Thousand Spears, or 'eventually there are no loyalists left', then I'll accept that we can't agree.

Also, so that we don't end up going in circles with no productive discussion, I offer this.

The method for controlling large groups in games (to an extent anyway) is known and studied. Scope Limited Benefit and Scope Limited Pain (where 'pain' refers to the consequences of defeat and loss).

It is easier to cause large groups to fracture, or in fact, not even form, if the benefit of forming that group, e.g. access to Guild Reliquaries, stat boosts, other bonuses, are limited to a small group of people and then have to be handed out to others at the discretion of the small group.

It's easier to cause 'conflict and drama' when the loss is also limited to a small group, mainly because those people often resent losing and blame other people who were supposed to help them (from outside the group) for not trying hard enough. See example: Any coordinated Team Game.

So far, I see no signs of this in Ashes. 300 people getting a Reliquary bonus, the whole alliance having access to the same market and crafters easily, the whole node and surrounding nodes having a direct benefit from the stability of the node, with few direct limits on this...

I'm not saying Ashes can't implement the answer. I'm saying we don't have any real indication that they have plans to do it. If all I have to do to stop someone who complains 'you are monopolizing this gathering spot and I want to use it, I'll rise up against you' is to go 'oh well if you don't rise up against me, I'll let you use it sometimes as long as you don't sell the materials' (giving an example from my own gaming in this situation type), then I have at least needed to trade.

But if 'Our dominance on this Metropolis causes a Dungeon to spawn that has good drops and exp and most people can benefit without any effort on our part', I don't see a reason for this large group to fall.

Finally, I am surprised by one other thing...

We expect the highly organized big guild with a common goal, external resources, and probably an entire well-understood ranking hierarchy, to eventually fracture due to drama...

But not the ragtag bunch of motley adventurers making up 'The Resistance'? Is that a point I should just accept, or is there another explanation?

We have not received permission from Taiphee to share the quoted post.

Ok, I think I understand where we diverge. We don't agree on the effect of world size, and your perspective is that if a group can achieve it, it is a testament to their skill.

Whereas I am hoping that the skill ceiling to successfully do it, is raised more than the game implies. I agree that I will need to see the difference in ability between small and large guilds in terms of their guild augments, but I also feel that I personally don't want to play a game where 'by having a 30 person guild rather than a 300 person guild', I can consistently squash members of that 300 person guild in PvP or logistics.

So it's again, a matter of my tunnel vision. I agree that what you perceive is a way to solve the problem, I just don't want to play a game that solves the problem in that way, and that's no good reason to claim that your points are wrong, so, consider my position conceded.

We have not received permission from mcstackerson to share the quoted post.

That video is not in any way an indication of the thing you claimed it was an indication of. I thought you had played EVE? Am I misremembering?

We have not received permission from mcstackerson to share the quoted post.

It is an indicator of the fact that the largest guilds eventually 'chose to stop being dominant' (i.e. fractured).

Being dominant is not about 'preventing anyone else from doing anything', only 'being a powerful enough force that no one could reasonably oppose your goals without paying a heavy, sometimes crippling price, to their own'. If it wasn't clear that I was making the argument from this stance, I apologize.

Anyone can aim for pyrrhic victory, but most gamers won't, because they play games for fun, not 'to punish or hurt their oppressors'.

It's precisely because it's a game that I expect Thousand Spears to work more effectively, because it always has in any situation I encountered. In short, the little guy realizes that they have no power unless they go along with the big guild anyway, do nothing or help to squash anyone who does try, and wait until the big guild 'decides' not to be a superpower anymore.

EDIT: I just realized that you didn't actually clarify if you played EVE or not. A lot of the groups in that heatmap in the video are allied.

We have not received permission from mcstackerson to share the quoted post.

I'm honestly willing to give full examples (two, actually) but both are long, and I'd like to clear up one prerequisite first.

You say that Ashes' mechanics encourage you to fight. This is the part I'm not confident in/willing to support. I don't doubt that if Ashes has enough psychological triggers to actually encourage people to fight even when their chances of winning are less than say, 15% (arbitrary number, for some interactions it might as well be 0, but claiming that is hyperbole), then it will play out the other way.

My point is that I don't see those as existing in a way that will topple any large powerful guild , unless the benefits for being in smaller guilds will be massively more powerful than whatever benefits one obtains from Reliquaries, etc.

But I've already conceded that point to @Taiphee . So if I give an example of a game where 'the size of your large guild did not give you a relative weakness', it is useless if the perception is 'Ashes has strong bonuses for small guilds', because the scenario wouldn't match.

I'd be giving those examples as examples of 'the fact that people who are going to lose and then suffer, chose not to fight, and instead just went along with the powerful'. That's what the Thousand Spears is about, at its core.

Lots of games encourage you to fight, many of them don't even penalize you for losing, and people still get demoralized simply from 'losing too much' and quit those games (an equivalent action in Ashes could be to give up and join the winning side). As I always say, MMOs don't even get matchmaking.

So just so I don't waste your time and mine, what exactly do you think Ashes does that encourages a meaningfully disadvantaged group, to engage in a fight where they can lose something? Let's for example say that the 'Rulers' of the Metropolis respond to any aggression (in the form of sabotage or just Guild Wars with the rulers) from a Vassal node by initiating a siege to destroy that Vassal node. The Guild in the Vassal Node can lose their node, the Metropolis can't be attacked by their Vassals anyway. If this is a useless scenario to your point, feel free to ignore it.

We have not received permission from tautau to share the quoted post.

Thanks though, you're right, I should specify that by 'fight' I mean 'make an organized effort to affect the other party', not just 'defend yourself against aggression', if that was unclear to anyone reading.