Raising the Limit on Free Company from 500 to 1000 (Guild Size Increase)

[Veritas-Ancora]

Since beta, our servers have substantially increased in size. A lot more players are here and far beyond Square-Enix's expectations. It should go without saying that the number of members expected in a Free Company has also changed.

My Free Company alone is already approaching the maximum limit. We're not a open-invite-anyone-join guild, either. We have a strict policy on registering on our own website, verifying characters through officers, ensuring only one player per member without any alts and continuing to go through this process. We're still overbooked.

Now we can't communicate with other Free Company groups, so it's ridiculous to even consider a second Free Company. Linkshells are one-fifth the size of the Free Company. Costs are extremely high and players won't see one another's housing. Plus our leadership can't moderate across two guilds simultaneously, and risks of our branding.

With server capacity so extensively increased, can we please raise our cap?

[FinagleABagel]

Simple question.

Why do you need more than 500 members? What content possibly exists that requires an in-game function to bring together more than 500 players?

I say, leave some room for the other FCs.

[Hobo]

You can have 500 people in one FC? 500 seems too high... they should have capped this out at about 250-300. 1000 in the same FC? that's like 1/4th of a whole server and seems pretty outrageous.

[Kantide]

Yea... How do you even know all those people?

[Orophin]

I can't fathom how someone could even oversee all that. Sounds like too much work.

[KyoKunChan]

No lol Thats way to much.

[IzumiRaito]

I guess op wants to make a copy of "The Army" guild from SAO.

[Makeda]

There is no content in the game that requires more than 24 people.

If anything the 500 limit is way too high. One of the better things City of Heroes did to promote stronger community was to limit the guilds there to about 75 members for the first 4 years of the game's life (changed to 150 in 2007). There, groups capped at 8. So you could field 9 missions simultaneously if you had full activity. The same logic would say 225 max here.

But nobody does 9 simultaneous 24-person raids.

The human brain, according to what I've read, can distinctively remember and get to know personally up to 150 others (your cat counts as 1). A Chimp or Gorilla caps out around 50 - this is one of the factors that makes us human, ability to socialize a larger group.

Not 500, but 150.

Community goes up the tighter you get... and community before 2007 was better than after in City of Heroes - though it remained strong on community for its entire lifecycle due to the right early dev choices.

There's no rational reason for needing more than about 30 to 40 people... 24 for a max-size "raid" and then some 'attendance padding'. Everything else is just impersonal - and is people who would do better splintering. If your core 40 don't log in enough... and you want to raid... replace them... or go casual.

The FC I'm in has 11 characters. 2 of them are alts. Everybody knows everybody. They are recruiting - but only in the sense of "if you find them, and they like you, and you ask, they will add you." I used to run a 350+ member guild in WoW back before Cata, back when 100 was big... I am very glad I don't run it anymore...

ABOVE SAID...

I think a lot of issues for larger guilds could be solved by tracking by account and not character. Let me join by my account - and any/all characters I have on that server get added as well, and it all shows up in the roster under one listing - the name of my highest level character (or first character added if my highest level is tied).

[Swishytail]

I'll never understand this. I have had 70 members in mine since opening weekend.

30 of them haven't logged on in 16-20 days.
I can't imagine a 500 person FC having 500/500 active.
Or even 250/500 for that matter.

[Aerlana]

Oh yeah... 1000 members limit, with 950 you dont know!

Guy... the biggest content will be 24-man. so... 40 people is enough (and more than enough). and 50 people just because they are good friends. One other char each (even if you can have all class/collect/craft on one char) and you hit 200 members! why 500 or more?

500 is enough i think... would like to know how many FC have 400+ members... and what those FC are...

If you dont have enough place because you have 400 inactiv characters... say them good bye!