Guilds Compensation For Pre-1.20 Guilds

I'm sure that by now everyone has seen the 1.20 changelog thread, which may or may not have been slightly rushed in posting. If you haven't seen it, you can read it here, I would definitely recommend reading through it.

For this thread, I would like to draw your attention to the Guild section of the post, specifically the conclusion paragraph.

As everyone who has used Guilds, or at least had a passing knowledge of them, before 1.20, they will know that emeralds are a fairly important part of Guilds-- they are used to defend territories (albeit generally with the cheapest defences possible), upgrade Guild banner stands, and probably more cosmetic usages that I am not fully versed in.

Guild members were able to contribute emeralds into their Guild bank, and these were the emeralds used to fund the aforementioned activities. Emeralds could not be withdrawn from the bank, and would remain there until used. Emeralds were also gained from warring, at a rate of one emerald per one mob killed.

This feature provided a fairly well-made money sink, removing millions of emeralds from the constantly expanding economy. For example, the Guild TNL (TheNoLifes), a well-established Guild that has been part of the community for a while spent approximately 300 stacks of LE in order to obtain the T8 Guild Banner, as seen in this thread. While I'm not here to discuss how worthwhile it was, it is fairly indisputable that this was a noteworthy investment- 300 stacks of LE equates to 78643200 emeralds, a majority of which were most likely contributed by players, directly from their own banks.

Now, with 1.20 looming, I think it's time to address emeralds and Guilds.

In this screenshot of a Discord message, Salted confirms that emeralds invested into Guilds will not be lost; instead, they will be added to your HQ territory.


All well and good, right? Everyone's happy? Not quite.

This means that losing your HQ could be disastrous for any wealthy guilds. The exact loss rates for losing HQ are unreleased, but it can be assumed that a large portion of these emeralds would be removed from the Guild's bank. This is obviously a problem, as Guilds do not have the option to place their emeralds in the HQ- they are automatically invested.

For Guilds with millions of emeralds in their bank, it is perfectly reasonable to be unhappy about this change, due to the risk to all of their hard-earned emeralds.

However, in 1.20, it seems that Guild emeralds will be much easier to obtain. In this pre-release screenshot from @oculism , we can see that Guilds produce a very large amount of emeralds per hour, even including costs (a feature of 1.20 Guilds)


Assuming that the hourly cost is subtracted from the hourly gains, there is still an hourly gain of 287150 emeralds. For just one guild. Also, note that we do not know the circumstances of this screenshot- it could be owning 20 territories, 1, 10, 15, 30, 50, any number, and it is very logical that Guilds on the main server will not be able to maintain this much land. However, it is still a notably faster gain of emeralds than previously, and at no cost to involved players, unlike the previous system.

I think we all see the problem, no? Everyone who contributed emeralds to Guilds previously pretty much had their achievements invalidated by the speed of emerald generation now. For our previous example, with TNL's 300 stack Guild Banner, let's find out how long it would take in 1.20.

78643200 emerald cost/287150 emeralds per hour (in 1.20)=~274 hours, or approximately 11.5 days.

11.5 days. In 1.20, 300 stacks of investment, enough emeralds to buy 19660800 Tier 1 Gathering Scythes or a ton of quality mythics. Previously, most of these emeralds were subtracted from player balances (some were wars, but there's definitely still a monstrous number of player contributed emeralds). The players actively chose to sacrifice their emeralds to the Guild, instead of the 19 million T1 Scythes. However, in 1.20, there is no decision on the player's part: the passive emeralds automatically go to the Guild. There is no loss to the player.

Once 1.20 drops, one of the biggest monetary Guild achievements could be invalidated in 11.5 consecutive days.

In most large Guilds as of now, I believe the Guild bank is around 10 million emeralds (I'm using ANO as a baseline here, as I was discussing this topic with @Pally of ANO and @Flora ).

The financial quantity of dominant Guilds were a product of hard work and investment, and were one of the largest advantages of the Guilds. However, with 1.20, any Guild with an HQ will likely be able to get millions of emeralds fairly easily, and legacy Guilds will lose one of their biggest assets.

*I think now is an apt time to say my stance on Guilds as a whole. I am not a Guild person. My last experience with mainstream Guilds was like 2 years ago. Personally, I am against Guild monopolies or mega-alliances or whatever you want to call them. I feel like they restrict Guild content to a select minority of the playerbase, and were frankly, very unfun. However, as much as I dislike them as a concept, ruining years of legacy, heredity, and accomplishments is honestly pretty scummy. The Guild HQ system seemed like a great way to integrate smaller Guilds in the scene, while allowing old Guilds to still have the innate benefits in the system. In my personal opinion, I think this is fine, as it allows anyone a chance, but those who have dedicated more time, effort, and financial investment into Guilds have a higher standing. It seems fair to me. But for 1.20, it seems like Wynncraft is trying to pull a full reset on the Guild community, one of the largest, long-standing, and influential groups in Wynn. I think @aFireBlaze said it best: "actually 0 iq move"*

All right, now that I've addressed context and the heart of the problem, it's time to discuss potential solutions.

Disclaimer: I'm definitely not the most qualified person to be suggesting this; however, I didn't see any other threads on this topic. If other people would like to provide input and balancing, I'd love to be able to add that to this post.

1) Guild Star for Guilds Reaching x Bank Before 1.20
Pretty self-explanatory. For Guilds that had a certain amount (this amount would likely be decided in Beta, based on emerald rates and other factors) of bank accumulated before 1.20, they would be awarded a star by their chat tag, similar to the star for combat 101 before changes or the proposed star for professions before gathering XP.

2) Guild Star for Guilds Reaching x Level Before 1.20
Same as above, except for Guild Level instead of bank. Makes sense because of the XP changes to Guilds in 1.20. I didn't mention this in the main post, but an addendum here might help. Guild XP leveling requirements are going to be reduced. I would assume (hopefully) that XP will be converted to additional levels, so as not to scam old Guilds. However, a star is still a nice way of honoring legacy Guilds.

3) Multiplier on Manually Inputted Emeralds
I'm not 100% sure if manually inputting emeralds is still a feature in 1.20, but if it is, I feel it would make sense for them to be multiplied, as it comes as an actual cost to the player. Not sure what a balanced multiplier would be, as we have no data on Guild production rates.

4) Manually Inputted Emeralds Give a Production Boost
The suggestions from here out will revolve around the idea of separation between auto-generated and manually-inputted emeralds. This includes any manually-inputted emeralds before 1.20. For this suggestion, manually-inputted emeralds will provide a boost to production of resources. Again, no way to know a balanced number.

5) Manually Inputted Emeralds for Cosmetics
Use auto-generated emeralds for actual Guild gameplay, such as war funding, taxes, and anything else. Manually inputted emeralds, retroactively counted, would be used to purchase cosmetics for Guilds, such as banner stands, banners (if those are changed in 1.20), and anything else not actively related to content.



All right. That's the rough draft of this thread. I fully expect to have to edit this based on feedback of those who are hopefully more knowledgeable about this subject. This thread kind of serves as a place to discuss solutions to the problems presented here, which can then be conglomerated into this post. If you have any suggestions or changes, please reply with them.

Thanks to @Pally @Lex! @Flora @WithTheFish @aFireBlaze for the discussion on this. Thanks to TNL for proving that emeralds are invested into Guilds.

 

that screenshot is from me having 90+ territories and an extremely sub-optimal economy at the same time. you most likely wont generate anywhere near as much if you're a guild with a more normal amount of territories

 

So then what's a reasonable income? Take a modern large guild's territory as an example.

 

Yes you could lose your HQ quickly but then you can just take someone else’s. Every guild gets put it the same situation so there’s no use complaining. In the end guilds are getting improved and that’s what matters.

 

from my perspective, it seems like guilds that had put time into guilds before 1.20 will lose much more at no gain.

like, super high risk no reward

compared to newer guilds, which had not invested as much, that have little to lose, but very much to gain

 

but guilds got big by investing time. Nothing is stopping them from doing that once again. If you want to stay at the top work for it, if you’ve got the members and the commitment you should still be fine, even if it means you’re put at a slight disadvantage.

 

i'm sorry if this comes off as rude
but have you read what you are saying?

you are literally saying that YEARS of hard work and effort should be erased, and this is justified by saying "if they already invested years and years, they can do it again, no problem"

 

yes some of it is being erased but not all of it. Yeah it’s a slight issue but make the most of it. The big guilds have many advantages that smaller guilds don’t have such as big alliances and more members. Besides we have the hero beta to figure out what’s going on first.

 

the same big alliances that salted said would become much more difficult and punishing to maintain? those?

the same higher member counts? the player counts... the ones that you won't need high guild levels to attain anymore?

 

dont worry, I'm really thrilled for the top 3 guild banks to have >30 million put into their HQ with no consent on their part and then if their HQ gets rushed immediately they lose all of it and are at a crisp 0 emeralds to work with

fair design I think

 

I never saw that discord post. I take back my entire argument that’s dumb and poorly designed

 

Pogging at the poll choices rn.

 

when i made the poll the only thought in my mind was terror at what saya would do if i put the slightest amount of flavor text

 

wtf