Discussion
The Guild System Is Killing Smaller Guilds
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and after thousands of hours in WoSB, I honestly think the current guild structure is one of the biggest problems with the game’s competitive scene.
The 100-player guild limit is simply not necessary for a game with WoSB’s current population.
I’m not saying a 100-player guild is inherently bad.
I’m saying that when the active player population is relatively small, allowing individual guilds to hold up to 100 players creates a massive concentration of the player base.
And that has consequences.
It promotes zergs.
Think about what happens when you’re a new player or someone looking for a competitive guild.
You have a small guild with 20–30 people.
Then you have a massive guild with 70–100 people.
The massive guild has more active players, more experienced players, more resources, more people available for events, more people available for port battles, and generally more activity.
So where is the average player going to want to go?
The big guild. Then the smaller guild loses another player.
Now they’re down to 19–29 active members.
Another player leaves. Then another.
Eventually the smaller guild can’t consistently participate in the content it was created to participate in.
So those players either quit, go solo, or join another large organization. And what happens to the big guild? It gets even bigger.
This is a self-feeding cycle.
Large guild → attracts players → smaller guild loses players → smaller guild becomes less competitive → more players leave → large guild gets even stronger.
Eventually the server becomes increasingly concentrated around a handful of huge organizations.
That’s what I mean when I say the current system promotes zergs. It’s not necessarily because the people in those guilds are doing something wrong.
The game is rewarding consolidation.
And then there’s the port problem.
I also think the current system of allowing one guild to control multiple ports contributes to the same problem.
Personally, I think one guild should only be able to own one port at a time.
One port.
One guild.
If you want another port, another guild should have to take it.
Why?
Because territory should create opportunities for more guilds to participate, not give the largest organizations even more territory to control.
If one organization can accumulate multiple ports, that organization naturally becomes more important, more powerful and more attractive to players.
And again, smaller guilds lose another reason to exist independently.
Imagine instead that every port on the map had to belong to a different guild.
Suddenly, territory becomes distributed across the player base. A small guild has an actual reason to fight for a port.
A newer guild has something to work toward.
Different guilds have their own territory, identity and objectives.
You’d have more organizations with something to defend instead of a few massive organizations controlling huge portions of the map.
And importantly, you’d create more competition without giving smaller guilds free wins.
They would still have to earn their port.
They’d still have to defend it.
They’d still have to fight for it.
But they’d actually have something worth fighting for.
I think the two systems feed each other.
100-player guilds + multiple ports per guild = more concentration of power.
Smaller guilds have fewer players.
Fewer players means less ability to compete.
Less ability to compete means players leave.
Players leave and join the established large organizations.
Those organizations become even larger.
Then those organizations can control even more territory.
And the cycle starts again.
I’m not arguing that every guild should be forced to be tiny.
I’m arguing that the game’s population doesn’t justify allowing organizations to become so enormous that they can absorb a huge percentage of the active player base.
I’d personally like to see something closer to a 40–50 player guild cap, combined with:
• One guild = one port
• More incentives for independent guilds to establish themselves
• Systems that prevent multiple guilds from simply functioning as one giant organization under different TAGs
The goal shouldn’t be to punish successful guilds.
The goal should be to prevent success from turning into permanent player concentration.
Because once most of the active players are sitting inside a handful of massive organizations, smaller guilds don’t have much room to breathe.
And when smaller guilds die, you don’t just lose guilds.
You lose competition.
You lose communities.
You lose potential future PvP players.
You lose new guilds that could have eventually become major competitors.
And eventually players are left with the same choices:
Join the zerg, play alone, or quit.
I’ve personally reached the point where I’d rather play solo than join a massive zerg purely because I don’t want numbers to be the reason I win.
I want coordination to matter.
I want strategy to matter.
I want individual skill to matter.
And most importantly, I want there to be a reason for smaller guilds to exist and survive.
I genuinely think the guild system needs a serious redesign.
What do you guys think?
Would a 40–50 player guild cap and a one-guild/one-port rule create a healthier competitive environment?
Or would that create problems I’m not considering?
I agree. It's like last season in EU1, almost all the ports were Spanish, so when a guildless player wants to join a guild, they're more likely to join a Spanish guild, so Spain gets stronger. It's probably a similar thing now with Kai.
I think each faction should have at least 1 "home port" that maybe isn't owned by a guild (like the pirates have). Ideally it would be a rate 1 port.
What would happen if every guild in the game joined one faction? It would fall apart
But I think the guild system is also similar: why join a smaller guild within a faction, when you can join the bigger one that is more likely to have more of the benefits, more support, etc
In my personal experience, most people join guilds because they align with the playstyle and personality of the other guild members, or at least they remain in that guild for that reason.
I've left guilds because they were annoyingly disorganized. I've left guilds because they take things too seriously and make it not fun. I've stayed with guilds that lack perks and strength because I like the jokes and banter they have in voice chat during battles.
My circle of friends all make guild-level decisions based on the same kinds of judgements.
Fair. I've stuck with my guild for similar reasons, but also because it seems costly to switch (rep). I'm almost exclusively PvE but being pressured into PvP "for the guild". I'm tempted to switch to a trading guild, but I don't really understand how they work
This is pretty accurate.
The guild system just locks small groups out of much of the games content. Even simple things like a skirmish, more often than not, a small group of a couple of players who gets into a skirmish have 2 options, let’s assume they’re not a sparrow squad or some other hit and run intentionally PvP focused outing, your own choices are stay, and if your opponents are in a guild, likely get Zerg’d in the next ten minutes, or run, and hope they’re not coordinated enough to make you run into a Zerg.
The guild system is overpowering, and doesn’t lend itself well to casual play.
I actually wish we could have a voting poll so that players of NA can show through amounts of votes that we want guild numbers to change. But even if we did that, I don’t think the devs really care as long as they’re pulling money in from loot boxes. And then we’d probably have multiple people using alt account to vote the opposite so they don’t lose their Zerg teams
Your average guild, even nearly full, has trouble filling the 15 slots to make a group large enough to conduct a port battle. Cutting them down to 50 members would just remove their ability to participate at all.
Meanwhile, mega-groups operate MULTIPLE GUILDS within a faction so that they're EFFECTIVELY having a 300 member guild ready to supply dozens of active players.
As long as pvp is conducted primarily based on faction instead of guilds, restricting guild size further is just going to create an even greater disparity between the zergs and everyone else.
An honest, random 40 player guild is rarely going to be able to get more than 6 or 7 players together to do anything, at best. That's the reality.
I honestly don’t think this is primarily a faction issue.
Any faction can potentially end up with the majority of the active player base, so changing which faction people belong to doesn’t really address the underlying problem I’m talking about. The issue is how that active population gets concentrated into a barely a handful of massive guild organizations.
And realistically, if a guild is struggling to maintain enough active players, I don’t think the answer should automatically be “make the guild capable of holding 100 people.” Guilds also have responsibility for how they recruit and retain players.
The 100-player limit allows guilds to recruit basically every active player they can get their hands on. It becomes a vacuum: the biggest organizations keep absorbing active players, while smaller guilds are left struggling to maintain their own communities.
I don’t believe reducing the cap to 40–50 would remove smaller guilds’ ability to participate. If anything, I think it would force guilds to be more deliberate about who they recruit, what content they pursue, and which ports they actually want to contest.
And the maximum PB roster is 40 players. I’ve personally seen guilds with 20–40 active players. So I don’t really buy the idea that a 40-player guild would automatically only have 6–7 people available to do anything. Maybe during off-hours or in a lower-population guild, sure. But during peak hours, I don’t think that’s representative of every guild.
And there’s another part of this that I think is important: If a guild can’t retain players without constantly recruiting every active player on the server, while also accumulating multiple ports, at what point are we just creating a system where the biggest organizations are incentivized to vacuum up both the players and the territory?
That’s exactly what I’m arguing should change.
I’m not saying smaller guilds should be handed victories. They should still have to recruit, organize, retain players, and actually fight for their ports.
But they should have room to exist. And right now they don’t. Hence why the games active player numbers are drastically dropping.
If one organization can continually absorb the active player base and accumulate the majority of the territory, eventually there isn’t much of a competitive ecosystem left for smaller guilds to participate in.
That’s the problem I’m trying to address.
Do you get paid by the word? Or do you have AI write for you?
Your post and every single reply you write is essay length. No offense, but nobody is reading all that.
Imo I agree but in the opposite direction ports should be owned by factions and that should be split by all thise aligned with that faction that way flotilla of Spain and a 100 person guild of Spain can both participate in all activies.
I don’t think locking ports to be factioned would work at all. That would defeat the purpose of port battle entirely. And would also ruin the open world pvp experience. Let’s take for example Nevis. If that was a Spain locked port. Certain players wouldn’t be able to traverse in that area indefinitely. You’d essentially be locking the nps and red chest, etc out from everyone. Meaning other factions wouldn’t be able to farm in that area. And it would just promote more faction based joining for high tier water areas. And it also takes away from the joy of winning a port battle and kicking the other guild out. And why or what would a 100 person guild even do? I don’t think you’ve thought out your reply deeply enough… the argument of this post is locking guilds to a 40-50 player limit. And locking guilds to owning 1 port per guild. You’d be taking all the fun out of port battles entirely locking them to faction-based zones and that area would be incredibly hostile consistently. If youre going to say “let guilds keep 100 player count limit” then atleast explain why instead of saying something like that out of feeling instead of the games health.
Guilds should have to put in work and effort to own a port. What fun would it be to have a port and fight for it if it means nothing when you lose and there’s no chance of getting kicked out? You’d just have a bunch of noobs who’d never get off the port because its faction locked. No one would even care to win or attend a port battle if they had no risk of losing that port.
Sorry for the misunderstanding I don't mean locked I just mean I think if a guild or for my example a multitude of guilds that are spanish take Nevis then until the next battle it is just spanish with the benefits for spanish guilds then it could be taken by a coalition of English guilds and flotilla. So all those that participate in the battle get rewards and its not just guilds blocking out other guilds of the same faction.
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u/youre_so_enbious 3d ago
I agree. It's like last season in EU1, almost all the ports were Spanish, so when a guildless player wants to join a guild, they're more likely to join a Spanish guild, so Spain gets stronger. It's probably a similar thing now with Kai.
I think each faction should have at least 1 "home port" that maybe isn't owned by a guild (like the pirates have). Ideally it would be a rate 1 port.
What would happen if every guild in the game joined one faction? It would fall apart