Maybe the game would be better with smaller guilds of say 30-40 instead of 50. The current large guilds make it harder to build up a guild and even in the bigger guild a much lower number are active. In the absence of guild wars, I'm not clear on what benefit there is from a large guild with lots of inactive players others than getting a high rank on the leader boards.
No one says you must have a larger guild of 50. You can have any size guild you like. I actually prefer smaller guild size, but for reasons that are probably different than most. As for activity, that varies from guild to guild. Guild size does not determine activity, the captain and guild members do. Not sure what you define as 'inactive'. For me, inactive means players that are not playing daily. Some people define inactive as not chatty. There are guilds of every size and activity level out there, just find one that fits you.
Will have to agree with Spongee, as far as I'm aware you can have an active guild with only 4 members, but each guild is only limited to a max. of 50 or by the Captain of that guild. Again, there is no point in having 50 members if only 4 are active (either in donating, pushing and/or chat) so it all comes back to the strength of the Guild Captain (and/or their First Mates) to manage, guild and promote activity within the guild. With relation to guild rank, I think it's only the top 30 that actually affect the ranking (happy to be corrected if wrong)..
Here is a thread about it. It has the formula. http://www.midoki.com/forum/index.php?threads/guild-rank-calculation.4977/
Thanks fpr the feedback, I should be more clear. When new members are invited to join guilds there is only minimal information such as size and rank. This will lead to most people joining the larger guilds where the implication is that there are more likely to be more active members donating to guild perks or chat. The was the case when I joined and it took a while to realise I was im a guild of around 45 where only 4-5 people were giving troops, donating to guild perks. I found when I tried chat that only one other person responded and so we quit to set up a new guild. However now it is extremely difficult (namely almost impossible) to attract new members. due to the current process for selecting guilds there is a low probability that our guild will be show and a guild of less than 10 will seem naturally worse than a guild of more than 40. Hence my suggestion that a guild limit would be helpful as this would help smaller guilds to grow.
The best way to recruit is on the forums. There is a nice recruiting section, and lots of people read the forums that Never post.
@ Winter. Guild recruitment is extremely challenging at best. Hate to say it, but recruiting on this forum is probably a complete waste of time for a smaller guild. The smaller guilds with well known captains or large established guilds have success using the forum, the smaller unknown guys are just wasting their breath for the most part. Sorry to be negative about it. There is a great deal of validity to the points you are making. The big single guilds might not see it, but those with multiple guilds do. Members become inactive quickly, especially when talking about 50 players. The guild chat limitations only worsen the problem. I know many have disagreed with me on this issue in the past, but there needs to be personal messaging in this game. That will give captains more control over their guilds. If the PM is allowed between members of different guilds (even a more thorny issue with some people here), at least you can communicate with captains of other smaller guilds and discuss mergers and such. Many here probably fear if PM is allowed between all players, that they will lose members to other guilds. Reality is, if a member is happy they will stay. If not happy, they will leave eventually anyways. Back to topic of thread. I agree, wish there was a way for the game to be more accepting and supportive to the smaller guilds. As I said before, I prefer smaller guilds. For me, the ideal guild size would probably be around 25-30. If the design of the game did not handicap smaller guilds, I would probably run with a 25 person crew. All our guilds are full for the most part. If you want to send me a private message, I could suggest a great captain with a small guild that would be perfect for your active members to join. Not posting the guild name here as I don't want to change this into a recruitment thread. Good luck.
Hi Spongee, thanks for the detailed feedback. All of what you wrote makes sense and it is a shame that an otherwise great feature is being underutilised. My suggestion on the smaller size was one idea on encouraging the growth of smaller guilds - without this the game will not get right level of momentum. The guild equivalent in games like COC, is one of the most interesting parts of the experience and should be nurtured and encouraged here. Building a guild can be a rewarding experience in itself (i presume as the one i'm in still hasn't taken off) and if that experience is denied then the game will less appealing to some. I'm sure that the developers will appreciate that not everyone is comfortable in joining a larger guild where they may be more anonymous or have a lower impact. Maybe an alternative is for a different set of league tables for smaller sized guilds.
Good suggestion about different set of leader board lists for smaller guilds. That would probably instantly remedy the challenge. Anyone second the suggestion? Should it be added to the master list?
It is extremely challenging getting members into a new guild. But I have seen lots of larger inactive guilds too which are a complete waste of time. When players hit "join a guild" they should be given a default list of guilds of all sizes with the captain most recently online. Currently it's just a random list and almost every one, regardless of size, had a dead captain. New players aren't savvy enough to check out the profiles of guild members before joining generally. I have gotten a couple people via this forum but the rest took a lot of hard work visiting many guilds with long inactive captains and inviting anyone active to my guild. Then of those, many turn out to be inactive and need kicked. The larger guilds of active players aren't taking away from our ability to find players - the game just isn't currently designed to facilitate matching active captains to guild seekers in any way. Note there are many guild alliances which are effectively several-hundred-player guilds that span multiple guilds. Pirates United is the one most well-known on this forum but I have come across others just as large in the game. There are millions of players though!
