The Death of Small Guilds

[lingburger]

Some of you may not know, but the personal conquest requirement used to be 50k.

Those were great days for small guilds.

Providing that the small number of members each handed in their Flagship Plans it was possible to get the FS unlocked in a timeframes that was less than a year instead of several years.

I was personally able to easily get between 20 to 30 characters over the mark each week. We ended up getting our Essence Guild FS on SS fully perked up.

Then I started on our Dark Essence FS.

BULLET NUMBER 1

Unfortunately around the same time they moved the personal CQ requirement up to 100k.

I was devastated!!

Based on the time it took to get our Pub FS perked, it was going to take at least double (about 2 years) - if not more due to the fact that many members simply didn't play enough to get to 100k.

As it was many drooped off and didn't play and the number of active players dwindled.

It was a big hit for all small guilds..

BULLET NUMBER 2

Now, they have messed with the only way we could have static characters that we could get over the mark easily each week.

2 times reputation and 1 times companion influence - that was just enough to get 100k (with the bonuses unlocked)

Now, its a hopeless case.

Small guilds will NEVER be able to acquire enough Flagship plans to unlock anything.

Remember - it takes 250 plans just to unlock the foyer to the command  rooms. The another 200 each room. Do the math.

And with the restriction on credits for transfers to SV there's certainly is no hope to buy them.

Is EABS going to pay for all the funerals?

[casirabit]

I am going to have to disagree with you on never unlocking the rooms on the ship.   We are a very small guild but we do have a few individuals that log on each week, but none of them have 20-30 characters and while it has taken us some time, we are now on the last section (the Crew Quarters).    The rest are unlocked, so it may take some time.    I am not a fan of the way they did the conquest but it is still doable for us, but as I stated none of us have that many characters, and that is why it may work for us as I also play FFX 

[ytrenor]

Less encryption plans = rarity = higher prices on the GTN.

Devs creating inflation, again. They'll have to punish the players for this and add some new taxes elsewhere (won't take the blame themselves).

[jyork]

unlocking the flagship should be something the guild works on as a whole.  Not one person with 30 characters.   There are also ways to get frameworks from world drops cutting the time considerably.   a level 80 character with a 50 companion can solo some of the commanders who possibly drop these.   

[casirabit]

2 hours ago, ytrenor said:

Less encryption plans = rarity = higher prices on the GTN.

Devs creating inflation, again. They'll have to punish the players for this and add some new taxes elsewhere (won't take the blame themselves).

I think we may have brought 2 encryptions in total.   We were never in a hurry to unlock the ship as we knew it would take time and considering I was elected to decorate lol it good that we took our time,

[jaingskiratanuul]

2 hours ago, ytrenor said:

Less encryption plans = rarity = higher prices on the GTN.

Devs creating inflation, again. They'll have to punish the players for this and add some new taxes elsewhere (won't take the blame themselves).

Let's be very clear here- higher prices do not mean inflation. Inflation means excessive amounts of money going into the economy with no corresponding sink. This leads to higher prices on everything. increasing the rarity of an item does increase prices, but it does not increase available credits. The essential difference is that increased rarity screws over the people trying to buy it, where inflation screws over everyone trying to buy ANYTHING. This will NOT cause increased taxes, it will NOT cause other prices to increase, and you're fearmongering over something that in fact DECREASES the amount of credits coming into the economy from conquest rewards. You hate this change? Fine. But don't act like this specific part of the change will screw over everyone, because it won't.

Edited March 25 by jaingskiratanuul

[Traceguy]

1 hour ago, jyork said:

unlocking the flagship should be something the guild works on as a whole.  Not one person with 30 characters.   There are also ways to get frameworks from world drops cutting the time considerably.   a level 80 character with a 50 companion can solo some of the commanders who possibly drop these.   

If one person wants to dedicate the time to put in the work of 30 people, then I said they've earned it.

[jaingskiratanuul]

11 minutes ago, Traceguy said:

If one person wants to dedicate the time to put in the work of 30 people, then I said they've earned it.

This is fair, but the conversion is not 1-to-1. a given person in this game, especially one who cares about conquest, is not playing only one character. Also, at least where this topic is concerned, they weren't putting in the work of 30 people. They were putting in the work to do X flashpoints, then buying the low-rep tokens for 1 currency per then just popping those tokens on 3 characters a week, once a day, to get 3 easy conquests. The work to farm that currency was miniscule

[ytrenor]

22 minutes ago, jaingskiratanuul said:

Let's be very clear here- higher prices do not mean inflation. Inflation means excessive amounts of money going into the economy with no corresponding sink

Totally wrong. Inflation absolutely requires demands for service or good that are higher than supplies, people being ready to pay more to acess what is available for the goods and services, and suppliers being willing to increase their prices as much as the buyers are willing to pay. 

Increasing the total quantity of money into the environement "can be" a cause for some entity to go on a spending spree causing general inflation (like what many of our governements did in the past few years, with spending programs to affect a large spectrum of goods and services), but it is "not absolutely required" for inflation to occur. For example, even without the spending spree of some of our governments during covid, a major factor for some of the inflation back then was the broken supply chain (too much demand for what the world could produce and deliver then), and the extra costs for sanity measures required by covid.

In the end, it is always demand being stronger than offer. Money supply is only a contributing factor.

Encryption plans may stay at same price or even go down in short-mid-long term, if players start not giving a F about acquiring them from the market.

[Rohndogg]

Our guild has like 6 active members. We're almost done with both republic and empire flagships. It's really not that bad and frankly personal conquest goals being 100k is not what killed small guilds. Conquest in general hurt. But at this point it's just the nature of the game. There's little incentive to be in a small guild

[jaingskiratanuul]

3 hours ago, ytrenor said:

Totally wrong. Inflation absolutely requires demands for service or good that are higher than supplies, people being ready to pay more to acess what is available for the goods and services, and suppliers being willing to increase their prices as much as the buyers are willing to pay. 

Increasing the total quantity of money into the environement "can be" a cause for some entity to go on a spending spree causing general inflation (like what many of our governements did in the past few years, with spending programs to affect a large spectrum of goods and services), but it is "not absolutely required" for inflation to occur. For example, even without the spending spree of some of our governments during covid, a major factor for some of the inflation back then was the broken supply chain (too much demand for what the world could produce and deliver then), and the extra costs for sanity measures required by covid.

In the end, it is always demand being stronger than offer. Money supply is only a contributing factor.

Encryption plans may stay at same price or even go down in short-mid-long term, if players start not giving a F about acquiring them from the market.

inflation

in·fla·tion

a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.
 

GENERAL. ALL ITEMS. NOT ONE.

either way it doesn't matter what the definition is. this specific issue will not hurt the entire GTN market. it's a niche issue and while it does indeed make fully unlocking a flagship harder, it's supposed to be slow.

[ytrenor]

39 minutes ago, jaingskiratanuul said:

either way it doesn't matter what the definition is. this specific issue will not hurt the entire GTN market. it's a niche issue and while it does indeed make fully unlocking a flagship harder, it's supposed to be slow.

Then you are wasting your time and my time. The topic, since the beginning, is one item. No one talked about the whole market before you came in.

[Strathkin]

I also disagree, a guild should not be a 1 man Army, and as at least 2-3 others have said, they also have about 5 active member's with most Rooms unlocked which isn't terrible, it just takes time.  If you treat your people well and offering them some rewards, you got to also realize (despite what a limited few think) they aren't required to donate Flagship Plans to you as a condition of membership, as many love the crafting materials bags as well.  What they choose is up to them, and most will leave if you are too demanding, especially if they aren't even getting, or using your Guild Repair Funds!  Players mostly help you earn Guild Conquests which help Rank the Guild (mostly) and allow you to obtain Small, Medium, or Larger Planets goals while helping maintain your Ranking, or improve it.  *sigh*

A Guilds Leader's role is to encourage players join in, by scheduling a regular reoccuring time to run World Boss Defeat's each week, or Defeating 25 and then 50 Enemy every Day on each Planet.  Sometimes you see several World Bosses offering almost 39,015 conquest (with the 150% stronghold bonus) and some weeks you see several; smaller guilds can also find others to join them for World Boss challenges in General Chat at Fleet.  Then once you done, refocus on earning several Planets 25 & 50 NPC Defeats, as your earn 4,455 conquests for defeating 25 NPC on each Planet, or 9,045 for defeating 50 more; both add up to 13,500 for every group member.  Some guilds run several planets every day...  ...there's 25 or more planets to earn those every day, depending on the Conquest objectives that change each week!  Google Planetary raid's locations.  

Yet you require to plan out planets your raiding, your group works together to defeat them collectively; by summoning your group there, so less time organizing... 

 or 

Lowering conquest point's goal's means people can too easily earn Tech Frag's on far too many toons, even recently (somebody) claimed in forums they regularly earned about 25 conquest completions each week--though an extreme case, yet their point was still made.  So that is not an encouraging sign, that Broadsword likely lower back to 50k, we'd be lucky if they considered 75k given the Reputation nerf...  ...or offered a Companion Influencer II with a 25% bonus over I.

Edited March 26 by Strathkin
Grammar

[jaingskiratanuul]

4 hours ago, ytrenor said:

Then you are wasting your time and my time. The topic, since the beginning, is one item. No one talked about the whole market before you came in.

Oh?

11 hours ago, ytrenor said:

They'll have to punish the players for this and add some new taxes elsewhere

This you?

Look go off, but don't make things up and for god's sake don't lie that you didn't. I'm going to ignore this thread now, which I should have done the first time you responded. I wouldn't entirely mind if this got reverted so I'm not offering much to this conversation but seriously, sometimes I have to push back when people say stupid things.

[ytrenor]

8 hours ago, jaingskiratanuul said:

12 hours ago, ytrenor said:

No one talked about the whole market before you came in.

Oh?

19 hours ago, ytrenor said:

They'll have to punish the players for this and add some new taxes elsewhere

This you?

False equivocation. "whole market" is not stricly "taxes elsewhere".

Plus see my PM to help you with my sarcasm directed to the devs in that second statement you quoted. I'll also leave this thread.

Farewell

[lingburger]

Its seems to me that nearly everyone that has read the opening post has missed the point.

I NEVER said I was a 1 man army. We did have some other players contributing Plans - and its mostly because I offered a reward for handing them in.

We (my wife and I) would often play 4 accounts. At time I played 3 at once to get the extra CQ on other toons - I did this on selected content where I could effectively use the Follow Command on mu (our) group.

The most important point was the RECENT change where they drastically lowered the CQ awarded for Reputation increase.

I was able to have some static characters that I didn't waste a lot of time grinding - I would just use m2x rep and 1x companion influence to get the 100k. And my static I mean they where basically parked at the FS.

 

Now, here is a point I didn't make in the opening post:

When I started to play on SV I joined some existing Guilds. This was the 1ST time that I had seen the stupid 28 day lockout on the GB.

I even pinged the GM about it and he/she eventually replied and said the GM had no control over the lockout - yet he/she was sending out daily request for members to make contributions...  and suggested just to send him/her my donation. 

HOLD THE PHONE SHERLOCK!

The IMPORTANT points here are these:

1) A new  guild regardless of its financial situation or size cannot function correctly and 'as expected' and 'as designed' with that lockout in place.

2) Access control for the GB should never have been taken away from the GM. EABS have no logical reason the dictate GB access - except for one minuscule reason - they were trying to block people from 'trading' via the GB

   MOST guilds have a restriction that applies to new members that prevents them from withdrawing anything while on the entry rank..

   This kind of pitiful effort to make a small dent in controlling the 'economy' is completely pointless and shows how easily Devs make changes without considering the wider impact.

   Any GM that does not know how to lockdown the GB or to set reasonable limits according to ranks - they would have been better off providing a 'getting started' guide for GM's...

3) The GB system is designed for Full-Disclosure. Its that simple.

   Now, there is some ridiculous expectation that new Guild members can 'mail' there donations - yeh right - pay the fee and there is NO RECORD of there contribution.

4) The GB lockout is not so much a pain for small guilds - its a pain for anyone that has played for 12 years - been in a started quite a few Guilds.

5) EABS could have achieved their trade restriction with a simple 1 day lockout. That would be believable...

 

Edited March 29 by lingburger

[SteveTheCynic]

22 minutes ago, lingburger said:

5) EABS could have achieved their trade restriction with a simple 1 day lockout. That would be believable...

I would recommend something longer than just a day, perhaps 2-3 days or a week, but yes.  (Oh, and the current lockout is 30 days, not 28.)

[Rohndogg]

On 3/29/2024 at 9:01 AM, lingburger said:

Its seems to me that nearly everyone that has read the opening post has missed the point.

I NEVER said I was a 1 man army. We did have some other players contributing Plans - and its mostly because I offered a reward for handing them in.

We (my wife and I) would often play 4 accounts. At time I played 3 at once to get the extra CQ on other toons - I did this on selected content where I could effectively use the Follow Command on mu (our) group.

The most important point was the RECENT change where they drastically lowered the CQ awarded for Reputation increase.

I was able to have some static characters that I didn't waste a lot of time grinding - I would just use m2x rep and 1x companion influence to get the 100k. And my static I mean they where basically parked at the FS.

 

Now, here is a point I didn't make in the opening post:

When I started to play on SV I joined some existing Guilds. This was the 1ST time that I had seen the stupid 28 day lockout on the GB.

I even pinged the GM about it and he/she eventually replied and said the GM had no control over the lockout - yet he/she was sending out daily request for members to make contributions...  and suggested just to send him/her my donation. 

HOLD THE PHONE SHERLOCK!

The IMPORTANT points here are these:

1) A new  guild regardless of its financial situation or size cannot function correctly and 'as expected' and 'as designed' with that lockout in place.

2) Access control for the GB should never have been taken away from the GM. EABS have no logical reason the dictate GB access - except for one minuscule reason - they were trying to block people from 'trading' via the GB

   MOST guilds have a restriction that applies to new members that prevents them from withdrawing anything while on the entry rank..

   This kind of pitiful effort to make a small dent in controlling the 'economy' is completely pointless and shows how easily Devs make changes without considering the wider impact.

   Any GM that does not know how to lockdown the GB or to set reasonable limits according to ranks - they would have been better off providing a 'getting started' guide for GM's...

3) The GB system is designed for Full-Disclosure. Its that simple.

   Now, there is some ridiculous expectation that new Guild members can 'mail' there donations - yeh right - pay the fee and there is NO RECORD of there contribution.

4) The GB lockout is not so much a pain for small guilds - its a pain for anyone that has played for 12 years - been in a started quite a few Guilds.

5) EABS could have achieved their trade restriction with a simple 1 day lockout. That would be believable...

 

But again, the lockout isn't there to keep other people from using the guild bank. It's to keep the GM from using the guild bank to circumvent fees and restrictions they have in place elsewhere. It needs to exist in at least some form. Idk if 30 days is too much or not, but I think a week at least. Maybe somewhere in the middle.

It needs to be long enough that the wait makes the method not worth using.

[SteveTheCynic]

1 hour ago, Rohndogg said:

But again, the lockout isn't there to keep other people from using the guild bank. It's to keep the GM from using the guild bank to circumvent fees and restrictions they have in place elsewhere

Not just the GM, but any pair of members, including if one or both of them just joined for the purposes of using the bank for fee-free exchanges.

[Ominovin]

On 3/29/2024 at 8:01 AM, lingburger said:

...

The most important point was the RECENT change where they drastically lowered the CQ awarded for Reputation increase.

I was able to have some static characters that I didn't waste a lot of time grinding - I would just use m2x rep and 1x companion influence to get the 100k. And my static I mean they where basically parked at the FS.

...

So, it's reasonably fair to say you are upset that you actually have to play the game to hit conquest now???

 

Don't get me wrong, I farmed conquest on two basically inactive characters each Galactic Season by buying and consuming the GS Rep tokens on them, but getting roughly the same conquest point reward for 'one click' as you would from an entire weekly planetary mission series' typical four objectives (complete 2 missions, kill 25 mobs, kill 50 more mobs, and complete the weekly mission) was always more than a little ridiculous.  Considering how many '1 point' rep tokens you could* buy during GS to just farm conquest points, I'm not exactly shocked they nerfed this reward to a more reasonable amount.

 

*Personally, I always finished the rep track on the last week of each Galactic Season, but I imagine some players who didn't care about the GS rep achievement just stacked up the cheapest rep tokens and used them to farm conquest points for months after the season ended.

[lingburger]

On 3/31/2024 at 1:48 AM, SteveTheCynic said:

Not just the GM, but any pair of members, including if one or both of them just joined for the purposes of using the bank for fee-free exchanges.

Not too sure about anyone that thinks this is the case. So far every guild I have ever joined does not allow GB access for withdrawals to new members.

Even if its a badly setup permission system (in which case the GM needs educating) the most important point to realize here - a Guild TAB is not just open to the people involved. Anyone could remove the 'said' item before the intended target does - its not exactly a private area.

What really lame about this, 30 day old guild members are going to use this exact mechanism anyway.

Most guild have properly setup permission.

Further, as noted by another responder, if this is done to stop the GM (1 person) from being able to exploit the 'fee free exchange' I'd say its a very very lame thing to do.

It does a lot more damage to the integrity of the 'intended purpose' of the GB system on a whole..

It reminds me of the way they (DEVS) stopped the Bots from raiding the Loot bins - just remove the loot.

Punish everyone to stop the few!!!

I loved farming credits on Rishi - those were the days..

[lingburger]

On 3/31/2024 at 3:39 AM, Ominovin said:

So, it's reasonably fair to say you are upset that you actually have to play the game to hit conquest now???

Absolutely not..

When your collecting Plans you play your posterior off..

With all SH rooms unlocked the Rep unlock was  the last nice quick &  easy hit of CQ points..

I beside myself because (as noted in my post and a recent DEV post)  I have a lot of 'short session' characters all over LVL 50 that I was using to get EXTRA plans.

Now they are DUST...

[Ominovin]

4 hours ago, lingburger said:

Absolutely not..

When your collecting Plans you play your posterior off..

With all SH rooms unlocked the Rep unlock was  the last nice quick &  easy hit of CQ points..

I beside myself because (as noted in my post and a recent DEV post)  I have a lot of 'short session' characters all over LVL 50 that I was using to get EXTRA plans.

Now they are DUST...

If this was meant as an April Fools joke, you're a day late...

 

If not, you really need to look at the math a little closer:

1. Get your first GS Currency token somehow
2. Complete the following loop each day (starting with day #2 if you hit the daily GS objective on day #1):
   1. Purchase the ''1 point' Rep Token
   2. Consume the rep token and get up to 45k conquest points.
   3. You just completed the 'Daily' GS 'earn 25k conquest' objective, which conveniently rewards a GS Currency token.
3. By day 5 of the week, you should have also completed both the weekly 'earn 200k conquest' GS objective and the subscriber bonus for logging on four days in the week.

So, for doing as close to 'nothing' as physically possible (log in, talk to a vendor, use the rep token, log off), you could farm conquest points from GS rep for at least 460 days...

 

If you 'play your posterior off' during GS, it's not for the rep token conquest points (or you really want to milk them for years)...

 

NOTE:  I think the number of days for rep farming should actually be 340 days, as I believe the 'log in on four days' didn't actually reward the currency and the weekly objective rewarded 10 currency instead of the 8 I used in my initial math.  It's still a long time for doing nearly nothing...

Edited April 2 by Ominovin

[Darev]

On 3/30/2024 at 2:48 PM, SteveTheCynic said:

Not just the GM, but any pair of members, including if one or both of them just joined for the purposes of using the bank for fee-free exchanges.

Is this even a thing?

I thought that change was to prevent people from joining to steal from "unsecured" guild banks.

Don't most guilds, by now, have a "free trade" or "free for all" tab anyway, where players can dump stuff for other people to use/sell on the GTN?

I did that 3-4 years ago in my private guilds when I would occasionally invite other people in.   Usually it was me putting stuff in there, and them taking it out...but if it's stuff I can't be bothered to even list on the GTN, what do I even care what they do with it?

[Ominovin]

24 minutes ago, Darev said:

Is this even a thing?

I thought that change was to prevent people from joining to steal from "unsecured" guild banks.

Don't most guilds, by now, have a "free trade" or "free for all" tab anyway, where players can dump stuff for other people to use/sell on the GTN?

I did that 3-4 years ago in my private guilds when I would occasionally invite other people in.   Usually it was me putting stuff in there, and them taking it out...but if it's stuff I can't be bothered to even list on the GTN, what do I even care what they do with it?

You are confusing 'most guilds' with 'solo guild set up specifically to allow the owner to invite someone into guild temporarily and use the guild vault to exchange a valuable item for a massive deposit to / withdrawal from the guild funds, all without incurring any fees or taxes...'

It's not 'a thing' because the 30 day delay on guild vault access was implemented at the same time as the developers starting ramping up the trading fees to pull some credits out of the economy...