Guilds are an important part of any MMO. They bring players together, spark alliances and competitions, host events, support each other, and most importantly, save us from the Barrens Chat in LFG/Trade/Area.
But TERA's Guild system could use some work, and I think it is beginning to have a negative impact on a number of guilds right now.
Here are the problems that I am seeing with the guild system currently:
1. The Guild Leader cannot delegate enough power to the officers
Currently, the Guild Leader is the only one who can perform a number of guild-related actions including kicking members out of the guild, changing ranks, assigning member group permissions, managing guild level and icon, modifying the guild's default title, and more. On top of that, any and all Vanarch responsibilities also fall to the Guild Leader alone. Too much of the Guild's success rides on a single character.
This leaves the guild at a serious disadvantage if the guild leader is offline for any period of time or loses interest in the game. Guild Leaders should be able to delegate any and all of their powers out to other guild members. It's unfortunate that I cannot even give my own alts enough power to change the guild title or use /gkick.
2. Something needs to be done about alts and guilds; currently they don't mix
TERA encourages players to create alts, as characters cannot multi-spec. The problem is, players want to be part of their guild no matter what character they are playing, and the current system just doesn't allow for that unless your guild is quite small. 300 members might actually be 100 members with 2 alts each. Some guilds have even created a second guild just to house their alts, and this causes a divide in the community and makes communication with the guild very difficult for players on their alts.
Here are two possible solutions:
a) A guild alliance system with a persistent Allied Guilds chat channel. This would allow members to share their guild chat with any allied guilds, which could include the guilds created for their alts. This option would still be a problem for Vanarch guilds, where alts would not be able to benefit from the faster mount, and would be unable to help earn policy points for the Vanarch.
b) Adjust the member count so that each account can only fill one slot (out of 300), no matter how many alts they have in the guild. For example, let's say I want to join a guild that has 10 members. There will be 11 after I join. If I bring in my alt too, the count should remain at 11 rather than going up to 12. This would allow guilds to have up to 300 unique members, even if there are actually more like 1,000 characters on the roster. This way everyone could still participate in guild related activities, benefit from Vanarch perks, and easily communicate without feeling isolated in ghost-town alt guild.
3. Guild Ads, Guild Message of the Day, Applications, and GvG messages are all too short.
Not all guilds have a website, and not all guild members are going to check the website (if it exists) for guild news and updates. We need enough room to type more than just, "Remember to praise the guild every day!" in our GMOTD, to help cut down on the number of times news has to be repeated to guild members. There's no way to paste text in TERA either, so it has to be manually typed out every single time.
New applicants can hardly write "I like bacon and narwhals" before running out of space. I'd like to know a little more about the new applicants before I go and track them down in-game to meet them.
And while we're at it, if I want to declare war on someone and tell them my life's story in the declaration message, so be it! Why shouldn't I be able to?
4. The chat filter still applies in Guild Chat
As I understand it, the chat filter exists to prevent Real Money Trading, and people spamming malicious websites. It is not there for profanity, as this is an M rated game. In Guild Chat, however, RMT spamming is not an issue. Instead, the only time a message gets censored is when a new member asks for our website and we have to split it up over three lines because the filter won't let us type it. It also gets in the way of members trying to share stories, often censoring entire messages that took more than a full minute to type out.
While everyone should have the ability to turn off the filter if they want to, I understand that this filter is server-side so that's not exactly an option. At the very least, Guild Leaders should have the ability to turn the filter off in their guild's channel because there is absolutely no reason to have it there.
5. The Guild Bank permissions are too broad and lacking.
Right now everyone can see the entire bank, and anyone with GBank permissions can withdraw from the entire bank.
Instead I propose a system like this: Three permissions for each tab: View, Deposit, and Withdraw. Each rank can have a different combination of these permissions on each tab in the bank.
That way access to tabs could be limited to certain users. This would prevent issues like we have seen already where someone withdraws the entire gbank and quits. It would also make it easier for members to share items with each other without needing to travel or use the post.
6. There is no way for officers to communicate
An officer-chat channel would be fantastic. Right now it's difficult to coordinate with officers, as each one has to be contacted via /w or the post and have everything explained. Again, because we can't paste, everything has to be re-typed for each officer. It's time consuming and difficult. A persistent channel that the Guild Leader can assign to ranks in the guild would solve this problem.
6. GvG history is not kept forever
Why is GvG history deleted after so long? We should be able to go back right to day 1 and see our track record of wins, losses, and draws.
7. GvG needs to be adjusted for the West still
In Korea, 24 hours and 2,000 points works well enough. In NA, not so much. For us to hit a 2,000 point cap, we're going to need GvG wars that last a lot longer than 24 hours. In addition, there is no motivation to do them aside from infamy-free lowbie ganking and Nexus griefing. We don't even get to show off, as it falls off the GvG history page after a bit of time passes.
Possible solutions would be to have rewards for the victors, or to allow guilds to mutually bet items and gold on the outcome before the war begins.
Most of us would also like to see some stats. For example, who earned the most kills on each side? Who died the most? How many Guild Leader deaths were there? How many infamous kills were made? (5+ levels between the characters) This sort of information would be very interesting, especially in a week-long GvG.
Conclusion
Guilds are an essential part of any MMO, TERA included. For the longevity of the existing guilds, and the sanity of their leaders, some changes are necessary because the current system is lacking.
I'm sure some of you are shouting, "But you missed ____!" Feel free to add your own ideas in your comments, I'm sure there are some good ones that I didn't think of.
But TERA's Guild system could use some work, and I think it is beginning to have a negative impact on a number of guilds right now.
Here are the problems that I am seeing with the guild system currently:
1. The Guild Leader cannot delegate enough power to the officers
Currently, the Guild Leader is the only one who can perform a number of guild-related actions including kicking members out of the guild, changing ranks, assigning member group permissions, managing guild level and icon, modifying the guild's default title, and more. On top of that, any and all Vanarch responsibilities also fall to the Guild Leader alone. Too much of the Guild's success rides on a single character.
This leaves the guild at a serious disadvantage if the guild leader is offline for any period of time or loses interest in the game. Guild Leaders should be able to delegate any and all of their powers out to other guild members. It's unfortunate that I cannot even give my own alts enough power to change the guild title or use /gkick.
2. Something needs to be done about alts and guilds; currently they don't mix
TERA encourages players to create alts, as characters cannot multi-spec. The problem is, players want to be part of their guild no matter what character they are playing, and the current system just doesn't allow for that unless your guild is quite small. 300 members might actually be 100 members with 2 alts each. Some guilds have even created a second guild just to house their alts, and this causes a divide in the community and makes communication with the guild very difficult for players on their alts.
Here are two possible solutions:
a) A guild alliance system with a persistent Allied Guilds chat channel. This would allow members to share their guild chat with any allied guilds, which could include the guilds created for their alts. This option would still be a problem for Vanarch guilds, where alts would not be able to benefit from the faster mount, and would be unable to help earn policy points for the Vanarch.
b) Adjust the member count so that each account can only fill one slot (out of 300), no matter how many alts they have in the guild. For example, let's say I want to join a guild that has 10 members. There will be 11 after I join. If I bring in my alt too, the count should remain at 11 rather than going up to 12. This would allow guilds to have up to 300 unique members, even if there are actually more like 1,000 characters on the roster. This way everyone could still participate in guild related activities, benefit from Vanarch perks, and easily communicate without feeling isolated in ghost-town alt guild.
3. Guild Ads, Guild Message of the Day, Applications, and GvG messages are all too short.
Not all guilds have a website, and not all guild members are going to check the website (if it exists) for guild news and updates. We need enough room to type more than just, "Remember to praise the guild every day!" in our GMOTD, to help cut down on the number of times news has to be repeated to guild members. There's no way to paste text in TERA either, so it has to be manually typed out every single time.
New applicants can hardly write "I like bacon and narwhals" before running out of space. I'd like to know a little more about the new applicants before I go and track them down in-game to meet them.
And while we're at it, if I want to declare war on someone and tell them my life's story in the declaration message, so be it! Why shouldn't I be able to?
4. The chat filter still applies in Guild Chat
As I understand it, the chat filter exists to prevent Real Money Trading, and people spamming malicious websites. It is not there for profanity, as this is an M rated game. In Guild Chat, however, RMT spamming is not an issue. Instead, the only time a message gets censored is when a new member asks for our website and we have to split it up over three lines because the filter won't let us type it. It also gets in the way of members trying to share stories, often censoring entire messages that took more than a full minute to type out.
While everyone should have the ability to turn off the filter if they want to, I understand that this filter is server-side so that's not exactly an option. At the very least, Guild Leaders should have the ability to turn the filter off in their guild's channel because there is absolutely no reason to have it there.
5. The Guild Bank permissions are too broad and lacking.
Right now everyone can see the entire bank, and anyone with GBank permissions can withdraw from the entire bank.
Instead I propose a system like this: Three permissions for each tab: View, Deposit, and Withdraw. Each rank can have a different combination of these permissions on each tab in the bank.
That way access to tabs could be limited to certain users. This would prevent issues like we have seen already where someone withdraws the entire gbank and quits. It would also make it easier for members to share items with each other without needing to travel or use the post.
6. There is no way for officers to communicate
An officer-chat channel would be fantastic. Right now it's difficult to coordinate with officers, as each one has to be contacted via /w or the post and have everything explained. Again, because we can't paste, everything has to be re-typed for each officer. It's time consuming and difficult. A persistent channel that the Guild Leader can assign to ranks in the guild would solve this problem.
6. GvG history is not kept forever
Why is GvG history deleted after so long? We should be able to go back right to day 1 and see our track record of wins, losses, and draws.
7. GvG needs to be adjusted for the West still
In Korea, 24 hours and 2,000 points works well enough. In NA, not so much. For us to hit a 2,000 point cap, we're going to need GvG wars that last a lot longer than 24 hours. In addition, there is no motivation to do them aside from infamy-free lowbie ganking and Nexus griefing. We don't even get to show off, as it falls off the GvG history page after a bit of time passes.
Possible solutions would be to have rewards for the victors, or to allow guilds to mutually bet items and gold on the outcome before the war begins.
Most of us would also like to see some stats. For example, who earned the most kills on each side? Who died the most? How many Guild Leader deaths were there? How many infamous kills were made? (5+ levels between the characters) This sort of information would be very interesting, especially in a week-long GvG.
Conclusion
Guilds are an essential part of any MMO, TERA included. For the longevity of the existing guilds, and the sanity of their leaders, some changes are necessary because the current system is lacking.
I'm sure some of you are shouting, "But you missed ____!" Feel free to add your own ideas in your comments, I'm sure there are some good ones that I didn't think of.