Wow, this discussion just goes everywhere! Superguilds? 80 people showing up to fight -- every 4 hours? In my dreams! Sorry but it is what it is -- Guild Battlegrounds. Just when do all 70 or 80 members of a guild actually show up at the same time? (Diamond league player since it began) - yes, many people in the guild do show up -- as others have already pointed out -- for opening, but all of them? Hardly.
It does take a lot of strategy and planning to find a measure of what the individuals of a guild are able and willing to give towards the collective effort. This isn't news but like so many have said before, why punish a few who are honest and do not cheat? My head is reeling over hearing of people who are angry for not hitting 5K plus in ... fights? Seriously? I don't know the #'s but I'd hazard a guess that hitting more -- the super-Guilds super-fighters -- probably number fewer than 5% of the total number of players not just in the game but yes, in Diamond/Platinum League. How do I come to that number? Three years in Diamond on my main + 3 years in either Gold or Silver on my 3 other cities (mostly alone or with one friend) and seeing how the #'s line up -- each and every season from top to bottom of the guild roster. Yep. About 5% of the guild are miles and miles ahead of the next group (usually about 2x the # of fights) and that group -- about 12-16% of the guild membership have about 3/4 of the # of fights and so on down to .... about 1/3 of the guild who are sometimes barely making the guilds' minimum number of advances -- varies but quite often between 250-500 fights/150-250 negotiations.
What I notice more than the super-fighters is just how often that 'bottom of the barrel' # will adjust -- downwards -- as the guild minimum requirement goes down. Do I get mad? Sure. Do I leave? Probably not. Why? Because they are still performing pretty much as best as is possible -- probably due to their RL schedules. The part that makes me mad has everything to do with them feeling like that minimum is all they should do not what they could do.
Sounds to me like the naysayers aren't necessarily the ones who are giving it all but more often those in the lower echelon of the senior guilds of the leagues they are in. In my personal experience, those top-tier fighters are ones who will simply shrug off the loss of the race-for-the-center and work with other guilds in a collaborative swap rather than just stay beached to gain fewer overall points (personal) in the season. Me? I often wonder what it would be like to be in something like the scrappier, hard-core-fight-for-10-solid guild that I was in for the first year of the feature on my 'not main' world -- they have heart! No collaborations. They fight to stay in and they fight for 1st even when it's not really attainable. Sometimes you have to choose: fight all 10 days 'round the clock or fight periodically during the day and stay in the fight for all 10 days. What you decide is best for you is how you determine what guild you choose to be in. Those 'super guilds' with 70-80 people aren't the 'scrappy' ones -- those are the guilds with the 30-50 people who show up -- all of the time! (Just my experience in doing it or hearing about others doing it). So i ask--why punish those you 'perceive' to be the super-guilds by taking away their ability to facilitate more advances for all of their guild that includes so many members who are not able to run to races at the drop of the hat? You shouldn't. They sure ain't playing secretary for the fun of it.
Maybe the way to address this perceived 'inequity' would be to have something I've seen recommended before but with a twist: A Battelground Championship but not with the whole guild participating -- take to top-tier individual fighters and match them against each other in something like an Olympics of the Battlegrounds. Use the pure 'essence' of the fighting force to fight against each other to take home the 'glory' (and rewards) -- maybe even some to their home guild. The individuals could compete with other individuals by Guild League, diamond against diamond, platinum against platinum, etc. No, I don't mean PvP -- I mean a "pure guild." Top ten or fifteen fighters of each Guild League in a X-day battle against the top 10 of another guild. Do it like they do something like the playoffs in National Basketball (yeah, I'm a basketball fan) - Conference Finals seeded until there is a final battle: East meets West. Why not? Would be fun. (And who knows, such a feature might include the next set of 10 in the guild v the other guilds next set, and so on and so forth until you have the lowest Championship for those who's performance has mostly been hindered by lack of participation). The objective would be to match up X number of players per guild/per league against those who have a similar number of fights/negotiations in X number of Seasons. (How would this actually help? I think it would be more than just fun -- it might just make what's happening to a "type" of player if they're actually matched up against the same "type" of player without the benefit of having to 'carry the weight' or be 'carried by' other 'types' of players. Like I said, it would be fun). ;p
