The Death of Small Guilds

[Darev]

6 minutes ago, Ominovin said:

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...

Well, yeah, if people were doing that, then the 30 day thing makes sense.  They're going to want to make it difficult to break the rules that they're implementing.

The 30 day thing is annoying, and it slowed down guilds from getting bonuses by opening rooms on SV when it launched...but that first month was also about saving credits as well, so honestly, I didn't see it as that big of a deal.

Aside from the "skirting the new rules" aspect.

[DawnAskham]

1 hour ago, Darev said:

Well, yeah, if people were doing that, then the 30 day thing makes sense.  They're going to want to make it difficult to break the rules that they're implementing.

The 30 day thing is annoying, and it slowed down guilds from getting bonuses by opening rooms on SV when it launched...but that first month was also about saving credits as well, so honestly, I didn't see it as that big of a deal.

Aside from the "skirting the new rules" aspect.

The whole fees on player to player trades is infuriating, as is the idiotic 30 day restriction on guild bank access.

This game only implemented fees because they drove the economy into the ground for years with their neglect, and because they were so clueless and shortsighted they couldn't come up with and test other ideas instead of jumping to heavy handed solutions that were cheap and easy for themselves.

Just like a lot of things these days, the devs and management screw something up - usually over years and usually from neglect, then attempt to 'fix' it with solutions that put the burdens of their solutions onto the players.

Edited April 2 by DawnAskham

[Ominovin]

5 hours ago, DawnAskham said:

The whole fees on player to player trades is infuriating, as is the idiotic 30 day restriction on guild bank access.

This game only implemented fees because they drove the economy into the ground for years with their neglect, and because they were so clueless and shortsighted they couldn't come up with and test other ideas instead of jumping to heavy handed solutions that were cheap and easy for themselves.

Just like a lot of things these days, the devs and management screw something up - usually over years and usually from neglect, then attempt to 'fix' it with solutions that put the burdens of their solutions onto the players.

When the problem is 'we let the players have too much currency', there literally isn't a viable solution that doesn't involve the players being 'hurt' somehow...

[Rohndogg]

On 4/2/2024 at 7:29 AM, lingburger said:

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.

Except if the two people are coordinating there would be an EXTREMELY small window that someone could snipe the item(s) and would have to be ready for it and in the guild bank at the time to even know the opportunity was there. They aren't leaving it in there for more than a few seconds. That makes this entire portion of your argument completely irrelevant.

And as others have mentioned you're assuming this is being done in random large guilds. These are primarily people that would have a guild specifically for these purposes. Just because you don't see yourself doing something doesn't mean there aren't people and there that would do or actually do some pretty wild stuff.

I understand you're disappointed, but how often are you changing/joining guilds that this is really an issue? That's what I'm curious about. Like it sucks, but for 30 days. I guess if you change guilds every 2-3 months it could start getting annoying, but then why even bother with the guild bank, you're barely there so why get invested?

I'm legitimately curious how it got to the point that this conversation even started, it feels like such a non-issue to what I see as the average player, so I need more perspective.

[SteveTheCynic]

On 4/2/2024 at 1:29 PM, lingburger said:

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.

If the guild wanted to facilitate transfers among new members (and that was possible), the GM could designate one vault in the bank for access by everyone, and call it "Item Trading Area" or similar.

[Ominovin]

I don't think they (EA/Bioware/Broadsword) really care about trades within a 'normal' guild, or at least can't come up with a 'solution' that won't kill guilds entirely.

The '30 day' access restriction just makes specialized 'Duty Free' guilds far less feasible (Not impossible, mind you).

[SteveTheCynic]

33 minutes ago, Ominovin said:

I don't think they (EA/Bioware/Broadsword) really care about trades within a 'normal' guild

They don't, as such, care about the *trades* themselves.  The 30-day thing is about the trade-tax avoidance (evasion?)(1) aspect rather than the trading aspect.

But as I've said many times already, 30 days is way more than is really necessary for this.  Seven days, or maybe even as little as two or three, would be enough.

(1) Tax avoidance = using actual legal methods to pay less (or even no) tax.  Tax evasion = using *illegal* methods to pay less (or, more often, no) tax.