The KGB Oracle Forums The KGB Great Hall of History (ARCHIVE) Darkfall Members Forum To big or not too big, that is the question?

I have been thinking about this for a while, and discussing it with some - but for DFO, we have a couple options available to us on how we want to approach the game.

As I am sure everyone is aware, there will be a lot of guilds playing that are far larger than we are currently, in terms of active membership.

This will leave us, with 3 basic options -

1) stay smallish, work with allies to have/maintain a stable home base.

2) stay smallish, try and keep under the radar/on the fringes ( hope this is possible.. may well be.. KGB Island perhaps? )

3) Recruit our asses off. Attempt to raise a force and compete with the big dawgs.


Of course, what actually happens will likely involve something of a mix of all three -

But if you have any thoughts on the subject , now is the time to air them.

I think we should start small. We shouldn't compromise the integrity of our membership for the sake of being a Zerg. Because of the AOE friendly-fire/opponent-healing Zerging is supposedly discouraged in DF anyway.

So yeah, at least as far as I'm concerned, we should start with our current membership, slowly recruit people we find to be quality candidates, and establish our track of territory. Find nearby guilds to ally with, or maybe arrange to build next to PRX/Tao/CotP or whoever we've been having strong ties with in Vanguard and AoC, and we all expand outwards in opposite directions. By doing this, our alliance can surely dominate a huge portion of the map if we play our cards right, but we'll make sure our guild will still be composed of high-quality members.

This is the first real conquest mmo I've played in probably 5 or 6 years, but back in Neocron what I described above was a valid strategy. Sure, the servers only had about 400 people online at any given time, so things were far smaller scale, but our guild had probably 5-20 online at any time, as did a lot of our allies (some smaller, some larger.) Through the alliance, we could always count on having a strong showing to the defense of one of our fortresses, or the attack of one of our enemies'. The only catch was that the alliance was treated very seriously. ANY time an ally was to attack or defend, we had to be there for them, just like they were there for us (Given that we were online of course.) Through this system, the guild Bishop and I were in once controlled probably 2/3 of the fortresses in the game (about 40 forts I believe.) And even when our guild waned in military prowess, our alliance (about 3 or 4 guilds) was still able to dominate about 50% of the map, maybe a little bit less.

So you are suggesting the alliance track?

You do have some good points, just one thing to remember is Neocron wasnt a total sandbox game like DFO. Losing a fort may have been a blow to guild pride, but losing your home is a different matter altogether.

When dealing in high stakes environments, if you depend on your allies , that inherently gives your allies a good deal
of leverage in your dealings - or in other words, sometimes they want to get their way with various things.

While natural, and there nothing being inherently wrong with that, often times within our own guild alot of people tend to chafe at this. "nutcupping" is a term some like to use, sometimes appropriatly, sometimes not IMO. The point is, its different when the stakes are a lot higher and all the guilds have their own wants and desires, fears and aspirations. Things can become alot more difficult.

Now, dont get me wrong - I am not saying I dislike the idea
of playing with allies by any stretch, I am just discussing various aspects that we need to keep in mind, and sounding out what people are thinking.

If alliance guilds are truly relying on each other to keep their homes & etc, occasionally compromises must be made that dont sit well with everyone, and I am wondering how well we will deal with that.

Yeah I guess my vote goes for the alliance track.

I see your point, and you're right, there is a lot more at stake in this case. Maybe because of this we can plan ahead of time to set up some sort of checks and balances to the alliance members' powers before we step into one. Something like for any guild to make a declaration of war, there must be a majority vote amongst the alliance leaders. And I guess in the case of defending, then there's really no other choice but to help the allies.

I don't know, the solo track seems fine with me as well. I'm just saying, I've seen an alliance well-done take place before, and it was a highly effective tool for establishing superiority in the game. You definitely have a point though, and in the past the KGB has had many gripes with alliance members. And I'm not necessarily pointing fingers, because in WoW I was one of the biggest opponents of the Damage Networks alliance the second we started getting pushed to a side in the raids. I guess that's the thing though, we have to make sure not to take shit from our allies. The whole point is to actually make compromises and have everyone putting in a little bit for the good of the whole, rather than one guild reaping benefits and the rest just sort of stepped down upon.

If there's any way possible, I lean towards option 2. Our experience in SB would tell us that, at best, it won't be easy, but it won't be any fun if it isn't a challenge. If it turns out that going it alone is completely out of the question for whatever reason, then I would prefer option 1 to option 3. Mass recruiting more or less keeps the overall power in the hands of our leadership but is not without serious drawbacks.

In my mind the thing to consider when making this decision is what do we stand to lose if things go sour. In an alliance, big or small, loose or tight, ties can be cut with minimal fuss. Sure, you may make a few more enemies in the worst cases, but the damage would be small and controllable. In a mass zerg that turns into something like the goonswarm, you make a LOT of enemies simply because if you are too successful the entire server will hate you, and if you fail miserably, then all the asshats that leave the guild will spread their discontent into scores of other guilds.

Again, thats dealing with worst case scenarios. In all likelihood neither would happen, but that kind of foresight is the thing leaders have to be burndened with.

Besides that, do we have a stated goal in DFO? Are we out to carve a niche or conquer a continent? Do we want to rub every PK guild the wrong way or just sorta fly low and police our own lands? I'm open to just about anything in this regard, so long as we don't overreach. If we can keep it in the family, so much the better, but if our goals are lofty then its almost a certainty that we either have to recruit or make alliances.

Well, as for goals.... the changing face of KGB over the past years and even months has forced me to re-evaluate my plans and take a hard look at what I think we can do with today's KGB. Lets face it, we might not have the numbers participating that we would have had 3 years ago.

The strategies and plans I would have liked to put into effect are no longer viable, and thus as a consequence either the goals have to change, or the methods need to be changed.

So, the bottom line is I have basically scrapped everything , and am trying to figure it all out again from scratch.

The goal initially, was to become/lead a tier1 political/military faction on the server with multiple cities, subguilds and basically create the most badass empire we could, if we could.

But that was 2 and 3 years ago, and though it would have been rough to do then - as things stand today I do not deem it wise to even attempt such a feat, without at least knowing and advising the membership ahead of time exactly what it would entail, and unless KGB participation and motivation far exceeds my current expectations , the reality is that we would have to make some possibly painfull adjustments... either in terms or recruiting speed, alliance ties, or both.

So while thinking through some scenarios, and chatting random with a few people - it became clear that there was a definate sentiment among people that maybe the majority of the players who are active now, might not want to pursue that path at all.

Instead of arbitrarily picking the new path, I decided that maybe a better policy would be to open it up for discussion and let people air their thoughts.

And that, is basically where we stand.

I think we need to recruit, but recruit wisely. There are going to be a lot of guilds playing this game from SB. WE made a lot of enemies, so i can almost guarantee that there is going to be targets on us. I think, recruiting smartly, getting in our traditional alliances, and go from there.

I know UDA wants to be with us, so we can go from there. Build, but build smartly

Well, let me say that I think the old, "If we build it, they will come" is relevant here. We just have never had a game that will have the appeal like this one. Look how many people we picked up in AOC.

We have got recruitment down to a science. Lets do all three of what Derid suggested. We can grow KGB into a monster if we have enough time.

I think Jet is right, we will start our guild, and things will start rolling, It is our destiny/fate !!

I would, however, enjoy a small core guild for fun, to hang out with some of the people from the good ole' days. Be an elite small group of pvp'ers.

Game mechanics are going to be important too, is the game geared for castle sieges which require a 40 man raid? Well then we would need to get 40 people... etc...

Just FYI, yes, sieging will require a LOT of people.. for the simple fact that there is no limit.

In DFO the devs swear that skill and etc will make a huge difference and that a smaller group can beat a larger group.

However, I tend to think they are talking about 20 people beating 40 people not 20 people beating 4000 people.