So with us now into the game with 5 guilds, I figured it could be really nice to have a chat based on what everyone's favourite guild is, what you see as the most fun guild, what you see as the most productive guild (not always the same as most fun 😉 ) and any thoughts or changes you would make! I am looking forward to more of the guilds coming, and how they may bring more fun to some of my Orna activities!
#Guilds! Thoughts and discussion
silent walrus
I'll share my thoughts here first:
Travellers Guild - 3/5
Honestly I love the travellers guild, but I am hoping some tweaks may be made to it. I gave 3/5 because it actually gets me out, and gets me walking! So I super appreciate this guild, it makes walks pretty fun! Downsides to me is it can be hard to grab the travellers intuition (unsure how to change that) and I wish more costs would be in proofs of trials as opposed to distance, where I need distance to use for the trials. Would also be nice to have another material slot or two.
Looked at the pets, and didn't seem too exciting to me, where all the fun VD and whatnot are hidden behind bestial bonds, so non-beo's don't get as much of the fun.
Circle of Anguish - 5/5
Some wil disagree with my 5/5 but to be honest, without doing any cheesing or whatnot, I am enjoying the heck outta this. Only anguish 25 myself, but the concept of upping difficulty, pushing yourself, getting rewards etc, bring a new way to play that you can toggle on or off. Love it! I think the economy is great, though i recognize some players can crazy farm the proofs more than others, but that doesn't bother me, nor affect my rating.
Pet: I am bad at pet evaluation. May be powerful on the offensive side, but as a Gilga I prefer utlity in my pets
Fishing Guild - 2/5
I think this is the biggest one that NFS may want to look at and tweak. The coral to cost of materials and items is pretty crazy, and what you do in an hour+ fishing you get in 15 minutes with some of the other guilds. When fishing, a loooot of items come up, and battle offer a paltry 2-6 coral (so need to fight about 120 monters before a summoning scroll, let alone the time it takes interrupting your lovely day at the pond!) I know some people don't like the fishing mini-game but I don't mind it personally. I think if some economy was tweaked, maybe some way other than just the hat to get better fishing luck and improve fishing ability, then maybe do the same as other guilds and throw in a pet or something unique, it could be great! Hoping for a look into this in the future
Titanfelled Guild - 5/5
My rating here is a bit conditional because NFS has alreayd at time of writing gotten thoughts/ideas/suggestions to improve the pets, which I think is most peoples major beef right now.
I absolutely love this, and this is an example of a 5/5 guild in my books. It makes an activitiy that is meant to be profitable, even better and makes it feel more fun to do. I went from towers being 'meh' to being excited to get through and clearing towers, saving up shards so I can drop them on mats I need, etc. It takes an activity already being done, and adds value to it. And also an example of how NFS is listening and actively tweaking to met the communities (now pretty high) expectations.
Blades of Finesse - 2/5
I don't mind live PvP... but there are definitely a few issues currently with this one. I know NFS is working and evaluating for balance, so I won't touch that aspect of it, and just move on to the economy of it:
Even with all issues fixed, the current value of a sparring proof is fairly low. I don't mind the classes being so high, but a lot of materials and items are equivalent to an anguish proof, which I just don't see the two having the same value given that it's longer, harder, and more painful for every sparring proof you have.
This is one that adding in rewards for particupation (first 10 fights, bonus proof win or lose) or giving incentive to check into the guild daily and have a few matches would help keep it healthy and going. adding a better economy would also help keep players engaged. I have hopes for this guild, and tweaks in the future, but right now it's just a painful slog to that specialization.
tepid sigil
I would like to see that the guild level actually do something else, in the traveler guild it let us open new aspects but nothing else, it should like unlock new features while walking: exclusive monsters, bosses, material equal to the guild lvl (maybe this is too much to ask), scrolls, etc.
solar ferry
Favorite guild: Titanfelled
Most fun guild: Anguish
Most productive: Titanfelled
imo, nothing comes close in terms of production. Towers are insane for mats on the end of each floor, and you can shop for more mats in the shop (or better yet, shop for mnemonics and turn those into yet more orns/mats). Once you really get into the groove of towers you can challenge your own times and get faster and faster at them, and at the very high end can even consider working in anguish levels.
Past that, anguish has been amazing for creating a new style of play. The builds that clear high anguish are very different from low/no anguish (i.e. what people have been running for years). It's pretty good production for stuff like raid mats, and imo the orns boost is too much but it is what it is.
Trav's I don't care for, BoF is fun but not really my thing, and Fishing is just a little too thin in terms of stuff to do.
The most immediate change I would make to guilds is to standardize, standardize, standardize. Every guild has their level and their shop in a different location! Every guild should have: {tab1 name and guild level}, {tab2 guild shop that costs proofs of X}, {tab3+ other stuff}.
Ideally the bottom-right button in the world map should be tied to a guild of the player's choice instead of being fixed into Traveler's Guild which isn't universally interesting. It's weird to put a finger on the scales in this way, making Traveler's Guild "more important" than the others.
The biggest change I would make overall is per-guild guild level leaderboards! I think it would absolutely drive and inspire people to push harder on the guild(s) of their choice seeing what other players are able to accomplish.
And the three teased upcoming guilds (conqueror's, something about territory; something about exotic item collection; something about amities) all seem very exciting.
silent walrus
Favorite guild: Titanfelled
Most fun guild: Anguish
Most productive: Titanfelled...
Great reply and thoughts! and funny that we typed ours separately and very similar elements there.
I agree on Titanfelled, and the fun Anguish brings. The suggestion of standardization is also fantastic! Now you are referring I think mainly to the UI, but I would go a step further and say that each guild will always offer a selection of 'x' mats. Some of what makes anguish so good is it's huge offering of the mats. Would be nice to see the same amount appear in fishing, traveling, Blades, Titanfelled, etc
Leaderboards would be super cool! Also love that suggestion!
Thanks for adding to the conversation, and I too am super pumped for the new guilds coming out 🙂
solar ferry
Oh yeah -- and angler's needs HoC in the shop. It's the only guild without it. If someone has the sheer willpower to fish up a HoC then more power to them. 😆
silent walrus
I would honestly love to see a mini-makeover in the Fishing Hut. Some suggestions that goes through my mind is
More complex implementations (maybe):
-Change some rates of monster/item spawns
-add items (consumable, gear, etc) that helps "improve" your fishing
-add extra items/pets that make sense with a potentially re-worked economy
Simple implementations:
Either reduce coral cost of materials & items/Improve coral gain from fish, and greatly increase the coral from monsters (Monsters are a double whammy, becuase they interrupt the fishing, take away fishing time, then drop a measly 2-6 coral. If it was 20-60, aka more like a low end fish, it would not bother the players nearly as much)
hollow tusk
I don't see much benefit to fishing. Not even for the materials. It is just too slow. Once I get the sprite pack, I probably won't fish anymore.
Guild level 38, btw.
Don't get me wrong. I'd like to see more benefits to fishing.
obtuse prawn
Isn't it hard to say what we can feel about Anguish guild ? Some say the stuff from the raid isn't working properly 🤔
silent walrus
Isn't it hard to say what we can feel about Anguish guild ? Some say the stuff f...
Yeah, I haven't tried out the raid stuff, and would be cool it it did work properly. But for everything else I still love it, raid aside. The new style of gameplay, being able to use that to feed into mats for AL's, etc. All that is what went into my thoughts/rating above.
I entirely agree about the sentiment for the Raid stuff, would be cool to see both the world anguish level and the gear working, and see how that pans out
silent walrus
So spent a bit of time thinking about things over the weekend, and got some ideas that would appreciate commentary/ammendments/discussion on:
When it comes to guilds, there is almost two types. The "active" type where you are actively playing the game on content you would, and it helps encourage that (Towers, Anguish, etc) then there is the "separate" one, where the activity isn't really tied to anyting that is progressing the game in any way (fishing, PvP, etc) So when it comes to this, I think the value of the guild economy should take that into consideration. But in addition:
Have the "separate" guilds offer through them the potential for Orns/XP/main activity boosters. For instance the Fishing guild could offer either a new unique item that gives a 10-15% orns boost (or if NFS doesn't want another stackable, make vulcans brew available) Similarly for Blades of Finesse offer a +XP item, and travellers guild a +luck item. This is one option to help balance out the difference
more options is to have "drops" in each of those a bit more valuable. i.e. offer 2-5 of a random mat per PvP fight, or when you fish up a material, make it a stack of 10 as opposed to 1. This would make those feel much more rewarding and engaging.
Any additional thoughts or ideas on that?
worn ermine
I think that another way to make the other guilds more engaging is to intertwine their activities a bit more. There could for example be fishable aquatic aspects, or humanoid aspects from the PvP guild. In order to connect those guilds with the travel guild.
Besides that I think that mini additions to these features in events could make things more fun. Maybe add a skeleton fish to the fishing minigame during October. Or temporary rule sets in PvP under a seperate tab (think of only a certain tier of gear for example)
tepid sigil
Unlock new content as you level up the guild, new fishes, new enemies at towers that drop more fragments, and so on, guild level does nothing now:/
thorny latch
My thoughts on guilds:
Overall - Really like the idea and experience. It is nice to play the game the way you want to and not feel like youre missing out on something.
Economy- Generally, I think token economy seems fair, with the exception of the Blades of Finesse. It seems like BoF generally takes longer to generate tokens than almost any other guild and yet these tokens are 4:1 vs anguish tokens. Also, I think it would be nice to have a tokens to orns exchange option, even if it is not always available. Currently you still have to play endless or horde boss in farm gear to farm orns effectively.
Anguish Guild - This guild surpassed my expectations. I really enjoy being able to play using my 'max gear' instead of always running dungeons in orn gear. It made me have to rethink strategies about farming dungeons to ensure I was hitting a high enough level. Criticism: I was honestly suprised at how quickly some classes were able to hit Anguish 50 and consistently perform at it. I'd hope that someday we would get additional anguish levels. I'd also like more flexibility in changing the anguish level, 0 or max buttons were very helpful but would be nice to just type in a number to set.
Travellers Guild - Initially this was my favorite guild. Recent changes to the trials cooled me off on it somewhat. I really only see it worth it to use proofs of distance on trials, and trials are not as fun. I think the original trials were good, where they were difficult but offers PoD alongside trials proofs. I think having trials difficulty scale with your own monsters is a strange feeling. It makes it feel as though I do not want to level up my own manifests. Trials should either be made more difficult, but not scale with manifest level, or be made much more rewarding when running harder manifests. I also think Wolpertinger should have some additional use. Its basically only used as a memory hunting pet, and you have to switch to beo to get the benefits.
BoF- This guild is very fun, but as mentioned above the economy feels off. As someone not interested in the spec, it does not feel worth it to play this guild, when you consider the time it takes to find a match, the fact that matches take at least two turns, and you dont get a token on loss. By the time I would earn the equivalent of one anguish token, I could have run 1-2 anguish dungeons and have made around 20. Theres a number of solutions that could work, fixing material exchange rate, winstreak rewards, extra tokens when fighting multiple opponents, adding a consolation token on loss. I also think alt party/multiplayer to fight NPC cheese should be looked at. Perhaps just have the game look for real opponents longer when its multiplayer.
Titanfelled Guild- This really revived towers for me. Even though I did not have BIS augments yet, was straying from towers unless I needed rare materials. The additional uses for tower shards make this one of the most lucrative guilds, but is limited by finding towers and building yours higher. I think the pets are a cool idea and looking forward to the rework.
I don't use fishing guild because I dont enjoy the content, but I am very much looking forward to Conqueror's guild, as area control is some of my favorite content.