Guilds allow for 24 people to progress a single goal, however most people seek to progress their own guild rather than put time into playing someone elses. This is for many reasons:
- The only requirement to create your own Guild is to own a ship, which itself is at minimum 250k and does not require any sort of level. This can be achieved in like 4 world events meaning you could become a Guild Leader a couple hours into buying the game. This means pretty much everyone has their own Guild.
- Being the Leader allows you to customise the guild and fashion it exactly as you wish, rather than just going along with what someone else designed.
- You may only Pledge a given Ship to a single Guild. People often tend to have a 'main' Ship for each ship type, or at least a main Sloop. This again will likely go into their own Guild and as such the idea of playing on their non-main ship, or even not their ship at all (which then means you won't be earning Ship Milestones for yourself but for someone else) is not really appealing as there's no incentive to do so.
- Guild Cosmetics earned through levelling are stripped from you if you are removed or leave a Guild. This means if you put a lot of effort into levelling someone else's guild to reach the 20/40/60/80 Outfits, you don't even get to own them. I did that for someone else's guild, didn't play for a week, and got removed for inactivity and by the time I came back they had filled the slot. The only things you actually earn for yourself are the Ledger items. The only way to actually own the Outfits is for it to be your own Guild as you can be sure you won't lose them anymore.
- Similarly to the Cosmetics, progressing Guild Commendations require you to then use those Cosmetics you don't actually own, but also be a part of a Guild of 1-10 Distinction and perform certain actions. So if you want to actually get those you need to either again commit to someone else's Guild and potentially get removed meaning those commendations are fully out of reach, or progress your own Guild to guarantee all progress you make is permanent towards getting those Distinction based commendations.
All of these Issues create a Guild Mentality of optimisation, where because there's a lot of incentive to not progress other peoples guilds, Guild Leaders will regularly rotate the people within their Guild as soon as they take a break from hard grinding their Guild. This directly goes against the Idea they wanted with the 24 player limit, the idea of a relatively small community based Guild that allows you to get to know the people within it. You can't really get to know them when they get cycled so often.
The Levelling of Guilds is scaled as if you had 24 people, as such smaller Guilds or those with even just a Single person or Single crew (2-4 people) are far less likely going to care about the Guild system as the high levels seem so far out of reach, and even if they just invite randoms, the randoms will not progress their Guild.
The Fix
I think multiple things could be done to allow for the Guild System to be more inviting to individuals or those who only play with a small Friend group.
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Change the requirement to unlock the 20/40/60/80 Outfits to both require that level as well as personal commitment, and then award these items permanently. What I mean by this is something like: Constant Navigator Outfit ''Contribute a Total of 2,000,000 Gold towards a Guild that is level 20 or Higher.'' This means that you cannot just join a Guild that is above 20, immediately permanently unlock the outfit and then leave, you still need to put personal effort into that specific Guild to unlock that Clothing for keeps. This would then incentivise direct grinding for a specific Guild and aid to their levelling. This would then also mean that people would be more inclined to put effort into Guilds that are not their own, as regardless of if they stay in it forever, the Rewards are permanent.
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Reward 20% Value of Actions aboard a Captained Ship performed by a Guildmate, regardless of if the Ship is pledged to you or not. Lets Say I pledge a Ship to my Guild, but I am in 2 other Guilds. I then earn 1,000,000 aboard my Ship pledged to my Guild. My Guild would get a full 1,000,000 Golds worth of Guild Value, but my other 2 guilds still gain 200,000. This means that all Players within your Guild would be contributing towards your Guild while still letting them play for other Guilds at the same time. This would then incentivise a player to invite more people into their Guild as they will for sure gain progress regardless, and hopefully lead to fuller Guilds of Higher Level and increased possibility of achieving that Community idea Guilds Strives to achieve.
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Give significant Gold/Guild Rep rewards for the Guild Ledger. With only 1 new Set of rewards per Season (usually 3 months) there is less incentive to progress a Guild when all Items are Unlocked. Giving Gold and Guild Rep as rewards for still achieving high Ledger status will encourage people to still strive towards a High ledger position outside of the reward periods. This should extend to more than just Guild ledger and just work for all Ledgers, but I think this specifically could be greatly beneficial to Guilds.
