For the vast majority being in a guild is helpful
True, although less so than in the past. It
used to be absolutely essential to be in a big, active guild; now, not so much really! I was just musing the other day that a lot of the game changes in the last year have wiped out most of the reason for guilds, too.
Guilds (as well as other aspects) have been severely undermined by the dramatic changes of the game in 2023, here's my list:
- Motivate / Polish - this used to be essential to have 70-80 active aiding guild members, as well as your friends, but now that most people have way more buildings than their guilds or friends could possibly aid, this need has been replaced by nutcrackers and various trees and batsy's bar, etc. released in the last year which manufacture self-aid and mass self-aid kits. You can take care of aiding yourself, in fact, you must aid yourself!
- Free trades within the guild - this used to be a big deal, you didn't want to have to pay 1 FP for every trade with friends and neighbors, and getting free trades inside your guild was big help. It isn't any more and hasn't been for a while, it's too easy to get your hands on vast quantities of forge points. I deleted Cape Canaveral making 70 forge points per day and don't miss it, so I surely don't mind paying 1 FP for trades outside of a guild.
- Goods Trades - it used to be important to have others in your guild near your age who had different boosts in order to trade for the goods that you can't make as boosted. When's the last time you heard anyone ask, who can make gas, or tinplate, or has the boost for whatever? Maybe 5 years ago, because we are getting a plethora of goods of all the types from Event buildings and winning tons of them in GBG, GE and Events. It doesn't really matter which boosts you unlocked in each age, you end up with a fairly even split of all the goods from your age, and gone is another "you need other players" aspect of the game. The only trades I hear in my guild are people wanting higher age goods for some GB, that's all that's left.
- Active 1.9 and FP help from guild - again, related to the devaluing of forge points and how easy it is to get your hands on lots of them, and the fact almost everyone has a level 80 Arc and most likely level 100 or higher, it's not hard to find people who can contribute to your GBs. If you're making 2000 or more FP per day from your own city, maybe you don't even need contributions. Some of my Aegean Event buildings pay out 80-100 FPS per day and that's before I double them with Blue Galaxy.
- GvG ending - after that's gone there won't really be a need to have lots of bodies around to make troops of all ages, goods of all ages, or who can show up to do their part to fight for the guild. Sure, there is still GBG, but ummm, we all know the differences and shortcomings of that compared to the kind of self-determination and strategy of who, when and where to fight in GvG, that kept players both in the game, and in their guilds.
So yeah... why do we need guilds now? hmm. For extra FPS from town hall, army recruitment bonus, and building discounts? Uhh no one needs the extra FPS, recruitment bonus only applies to barracks in your town and Alcatraz, so not if you get your troops from Cider gardens, Winter pyramid, panda reserve, governors villa, sunflower oil press, donkey enclosure - shall I go on? lol. And the buildings discount wow, because what everyone needs is to save a few coins supplies costs building from the standard build menu, which they only do to place and immediately sell houses and production buildings for quests.
GE is practically a solo affair anyway, just with a group outcome at the end. By all accounts Quantum incursions will be about the same as GE plus a settlement attached. So that leaves GBG with all its flaws and problems... the bad leagues... the repetitive 24/7 nature of it... Joy.
I got nothing for why we still need guilds. Go ahead and disband them, you can market this as a solo phone game. Which is clearly what they'd prefer to do. And I'm saying all this as someone who has been the founder of a guild since 2014. Yippee! We still have fun in my guild, but it's in spite of the changes to the game, not because of it.