Guild Rivalries and Gearscore: How they can work together to provide a better experience.

Gearscore being a measure of how powerful your items are would make the most sense for matching guilds in a competition revolving around your gear!!

A player with a max epic blast can finish a blast or cannon quest much faster and easier than a player with an unleveled rare.

The system as it is now encourages guilds to have all players of the same level. The problem with this is that the higher your level the more likely you are already in a guild. This makes recruiting rather difficult which in turn effects your questing ability.
Another side effect is the loss of the training/teaching aspect of being in a guild.

Having guilds that are more diverse in player level would allow the seasoned veterans to provide their wisdom to newer players who join their mini community. This would help improve the overall skill of new players which would result in an increased number of long term players.

Anyway, back to the point.
I suggest that every player be given a total gearscore value based on all the items in their inventory in addition to the loadout specific gearscore. This new gearscore would be used to measure a captains overall power level and would show other players (specifically guild leaders) their potential to contribute to quests.

From here we take the combined total gearscore of a guild and use that in addition to the existing parameters of rivalry matchmaking to create a better competition.

How it works: A high gearscore guild with players who log on once a week would be matched with other guilds with a similar gearscore who may or may not be more active. Whichever guild has the most active players would complete the most quests and would receive the rewards they deserve for their effort.

This would eliminate the problem of having low activity guilds with better equipment winning Rivalries with much less effort than a guild who plays every day to complete the same amount of quests.

With the guild raffle being the best means for progression I think it needs some work to be a little more fair for all players. Players who grind day in and day out deserve to progress faster. This is one idea that could help.

I know it's a little long winded and I thank you for hearing me out.
If you have any other ideas to improve the guild system or notice any flaws in this idea feel free to comment.

 

I agree with some of what you are saying; however I do see one problem.

If a player's gear score is based on current inventory this would include duplicate items.

This would be further compounded by perks that are on these duplicates increasing GS.

I Don't think it would be any better for those of us with full inventories and no Cells for evolution.

I have always said that being pitted against top guilds who can compete damage quests faster because of T5 weapons is wrong.

 

I did think of duplicate items but didn't want to get into it for my original post.
There are players who will run unleveled duplicates to add more damage to their overall contribution and in this case it should count. On the other hand players who's item progress is hindered by lack of resources that are in short supply (namely powercells) should not be penalized.

If they could manage to devise a system for tracking duplicates then the first dulipcate could count but not any subsequent ones. Or even count them at a lower value i.e. 1st duplicate 100% Gearscore added to total, 2nd = 75%, 3rd = 50% and so on.
That could be a decent middle ground.

On a similar note, perks that aren't applied to an item should not count either. This could be manipulated but only at the cost of tons of pearls.

 

So f2p guilds should face a guaranteed loss against VIP guilds who use non stop boosts every single rivalry?
Awesome idea.

 

I'm not sure how either VIP or boosts would effect Rivalries any differently if they were changed to factor in Gearscore.
Can you please elaborate?

 

At the moment rivalries are matched based on how many quests a guild can complete in a rivalry (2 week average) which is as perfect a metric as we can realistically hope for I think.

If gear score was used instead (or as well) that would mean that f2p guilds would be consistently matched against booster/vip guilds at their own power level, putting them at a massive disadvantage.
While in the early-midgame it might be plausible (still unlikely) to occasionally get a fair competition, chances are that you would always be matched against paying guilds, and 5x boosts (and 3 quests at a time instead of 2) are an unwinnable challenge for us peasants.

Fast forward to the end game, where the only free players with max epic loadouts have been playing since beta, about 3 years now, and there aren't that many of us left.
Most of us are in guilds together, and seldom complete more than 48 quests a week, yet in your suggested system we would be guaranteed by gear score to be matched against the biggest spenders in the game, punished by loyalty and longevity to compete with guilds who slaughter quests by hundreds.

I just think that there are too many legends of the bay quitting as it is, and the intangible new ships/items are already making it difficult to see my own way clear to stay playing.

Rivalries actually used to be based on guild infamy in the beginning, before a very welcome change to the current system. It was awful.
Bringing gear score into it would really just be a step back to the bad old days and none but the already advantaged would benefit.