Guilds and Cross-Faction Play

[RuQu]

The Guild Summit made it clear they expect people to play both factions on the same server. Race unlocks require that you have a level 50 of that race. They teased some new content that would require a character of both factions to complete.

 

One speaker got up, quite upset, and asked the obvious question (paraphrased only slightly because Im typing from memory plus he had a heavy German accent): "What the hell are you thinking? This will kill many guilds."

 

He has a very good point. Guilds make up a major part of most player's experience.

 

Now you put in systems to strongly encourage people to play in a context where they cannot play with their guildmates. This causes them to, at best, drift apart, and, at worst, join another guild on the opposite faction so they have people to play with.

 

Simply creating an opposing faction guild is not a viable option. Many guilds are small, a core group of friends who run Operations together. There may be less than 10 people on at a time unless its a raid night. Now you split them in half and you have two very, very small guilds.

 

You also run into a problem of class preference. If someone currently plays as a Sentinel and rolls a Sniper so they can level up a Chiss for unlocking that race, what happens if they prefer the Sniper? It's a DPS class. If it had been a Gunslinger, they could simply swap out characters for their main in Operations, but they can't, its opposite faction. So now they know they want to play character B, but they have to play character A. They also can't just roll a Gunslinger...there are only 8 character slots. They either have to delete the lvl 50 Imperial (which they may need for the aforementioned teased content), or use the slot that would allow them to have another of the AC mirrors, meaning they can't have an alt of each type on that server. Or...they may just decide to keep the Sniper they enjoy so much and have to leave their old guild.

 

I understand that only doing one faction means you only see half the content, and you want to encourage doing that, but this is not the way to do so.

 

Constructive criticism should always include suggestions, so here are a couple off the top of my head:

 

• Cross-faction guild chat: You can't group up, you can't run things together, but you can maintain your social ties. And, since most people will end up with characters of both factions you can always say "Imperial HM group forming, anyone want to go?" and anyone in the guild who is on their Republic characters can log off and swap. Solves the social and guild based concerns, doesn't solve class preference.
   
  
• Defection: At level 50 a player can run Operations with the other faction. Unlocked via Legacy, and possibly a permanent or semi-permanent choice. Solves class preference, does not solve social/guild concern, but can be combined with Cross-faction guild chat.
  

[Sunsoar]

Well said OP. I agree with your post.

[RuQu]

The guy at the summit who brought it up was clearly very upset by the idea, and he barely got a response.

 

I'm hoping the brush-off was them saying "oh crap, we screwed up big-time" and tomorrow will involve a meeting to address this.