As much as this affects my guild in a negative way, I can't believe that this is accurate. Just thought I would pass it along in case it's not an isolated incident.
Congrats to all the guilds that placed this month, and to those that strove to place. Prizes should be distributed now. Good luck all in PLARCH!
I am a bit worried by yet another merger hurting the pluralism of guilds on the playingfield. People dont do it for the pizza, granted, but those who get plenty tend to think that. A code here and there, its just a goodie on the side. But there are are enough rewards floating around to encourage the clustering of those players in two guilds that can savely claim and hand out 11 codes among them. Just get rid of that weird 3rd to 2nd place increase and grant 5 codes as ultimate reward for the season champion. Thats already a reasonable step to discourage half a dozen top players from nestling together like hens in a henhouse.
I don't think modifying the prize structure is going to change the amalgamation of guilds, or players apparently creating alternate accounts to maintain leadership of a guild, and then joining a top guild with their main account (not sure how that is even legal, or why either guild would want a player like that). Since, as you mentioned, not many are worried about the pizza. To that effect, I think the best way to revitalize the guild structure would be to vary the conditions for being in line for pizza: prizes for best gelo, most wins, best win %, wins/members, win%/members....the options are many here. Maybe perhaps also a bounty system of sorts on players or win conditions, or something. Some variance might be nice, especially for guilds that cannot compete with the top 4/5 guilds. It's hard for any of those guilds to gain any traction, it seems. Giving them something else to fight for might create a larger sense of competitiveness and reason for the guild. Just my thoughts.
I never thought that fixing the pizza output alone will bring forth immediate change, it just adjusts the frame for future developements, individual decisions. The situation is that a partnership of convenience is hogging the top spot and the remaining opposition feels the only way to crack it is to team up into another uber-guild. We all got caught up in that vicious cycle. I dont know if changing the playingfield so that less effective guilds can suceed at something without facing the personell issues is the way. My angle was to somehow create incentives for more evenly spread 'talent'. If that can be achieved with other tasks instead of competing in the season, i would welcome it. Tournaments? Organized PvE runs?
The Walking Carpets have now won 6 seasons in a row. That's half a year of Cardhuntria submitting itself to some stupid animated rugs. Are you all okay with this? Oh, and I just distributed the guild prizes for Plarch. Good luck in Playpril!
Parity is an issue in every major sport. Top teams will always attract top talent. If you really want parity, the best example in America is the NFL. It has the most parity because it has the least number of games and because the turnover of talent is high (because of the salary cap / injuries). If you wanted more parity in Cardhunter... what might work... a) Limit the number of players in a guild -- this would force talent to spread out more and cause turnover due to inactivity. Maybe even as small as 6-8? Of course, adjust the pizza prizes. Can change the coupon sizes accordingly. b) Make "divisions" a la European football, there will be a top division which gets the most lucrative prizes but there are still lower divisions which can compete for pizza in their division. c) Make the seasons shorter. Or make each week a "cycle". Top guilds in each cycle get points and then the cycles are cumulatively added up... not sure how but this can be differentiated from the current month schedule. d) Change the maps every 2 weeks instead of every 4. The beginning of each season is the most chaotic... the longer the season goes, the more talent level forces its hand. This would also encourage more play... This is all for making the guild competition more competitive. If you want guilds for a different reason (social, friends), that is a different conversation.
Personally i only want a Championship, if room9 and nictus still around we could take it alredy. But they arent, so i join with PoF, looking that i could join carpets if i wanted, but that would be quitting all the fun. And what sirsirly say its true. After take a Championship i would seek a new goal. I learn most people of guilds are nice, we may disagree but that dosent mean i dont respect them.
I don't mean for this to turn into another advertisement for Ironwood, but some interesting things about last month that I've noticed. There's three definite ratings brackets I've been seeing, which I find interesting. 4 of the 5 top guilds are guilds that are primarily for ratings purposes, with one "social" guild among them. The low guilds are all noncompetitive, due to either not playing enough games, needing to git gud, or a combination of both. The three middle guilds are an interesting subsection to me, mainly consisting of the guilds that weren't good enough, but played enough games to separate from the pack. This annoys me to no end, it's too stressful to have to play games against good people AND have huge amounts of points on the line if I lose. Come join Ironwood instead, so I can lose to you in peace.
I like that you placed us in the "top 5" when we placed sixth. That's some positive thinking right there.
So Magic, of the top five guilds listed $}^ J who are you calling the non-competitive guild? Oh and yeah, on an incidental note, do you have anymore dry palm fronds I can use to fan some flames?
Hmm. HMM. I admit I've been thinking about this a bit myself lately. It's really good to see some discussion here covering new angles of the same ground. Here's an idea: Split the seasons into two divisions Guilds with <= 6 members throughout the season go into the Pizza division Guilds with > 6 members at any point in the season go into the Social division Pizza division plays for glory and prizes, social division plays for fun. And maybe some chests? I dunno. The magic number doesn't have to be 6, and I'd be happy to hear arguments for other values. The point of this is to retain our social guilds but also limit clustering for guilds that want to go "pro". Thoughts? EDIT: I wish I'd thought of a cooler name for the pizza division before calling it the pizza division. How about "Diamond" or "Pro" or something? Happy to hear suggestions about this too.
More thoughts: I reckon instead of using member count to determine the division, I'd instead set up a second guild founding ceremony that founds a Diamond Division guild. A guild's division would be locked at founding and membership limits would only apply to Diamonds. This way guild principals wouldn't have to worry about accidentally slipping over the membership limits, since diamond guilds would not permit over-recruitment.
People buy lottery tickets hoping they will win, even if they never do. The social guilds hope to win. If you create two divisions you take this hope away from them. I am not sure a member limit will stop the top guilds from being the top guilds. Most seasons the contribution comes from <= 6 active players anyway. This will just create additional membership management work for the principals. Sorry I just have opinions, I don't have any answers.
Their total membership is around that high, but their active membership is only ~10, so 6 would cause some redistribution and formation of new guilds (which is the point) but it shouldn't be a total disaster. I'd expect a lot of not-really-competitive guilds to form in the Diamond division to have a crack at it anyway, so there's nothing stopping people from having a go. The reason to keep unlimited social guilds around is for groups like Sorcererers who are like clubs, more interested in building membership than winning seasons. I think the additional management work - recruiting, firing, negotiating etc to collect the most promising team, is most of the fun of running a guild, so hopefully this'd make it more interesting. Opinions are great! More opinions please!
