Features of Legacy Squads

The Legacy squad system introduces new ways for community members at large to interact with each other in a way that is creative, personally-driven, competitive, and team-building.

All regular chapter members are organized into squads. Organization is based loosely on interests, but not on commitment level or time zones. Squads are administrative and not necessarily the units that raid leaders will utilize in game for raids, warplots, or leveling groups.

In 2019 during Atlas, many changes were made to how Squads would operate, especially with the additional risk factors added to the chapter in the form of full-loot PvP, something not really factored into logistics in prior chapters such as Black Desert Online or Archeage prior. Adaptations had to be made for risk-assessment and proper allocation of resources on a wider spectrum.

In summary, instead of a squad simply being its own entity completely entwined into the overall logistics of the chapter, we created a new alternate type of squad that defined differently how loot, resources, and overall goals would be treated. The result is now Legacy has two types of Squads – “integrated” and “independent”. 

Integrated Squads

Integrated Squads are treated as the core of Legacy chapters. To start, their logistics are tied into the overall logistics of the chapter. This means that per normal structure, every individual squad has a logistics-type officer that manages things like the bank, crafting, and similar for the squad, and also reports to and integrates with the main logistics officer for the entire guild. As the squad needs or lacks certain requirements, it is the job of the main officers of the guild to see that needs are met to keep efficiency up for all squads. This ebb and flow ranges from the squad always needing support of various types to maintain a battlefront, to a squad who provides a net positive to the guild’s main coffers for resources. Integrated squads maintain their own logistics, but with a key note being that their logistics are considered to be also the property of the guild as needed. Guild Officers may shift resources around integrated squads at will to ensure wars are won and territories are held.

Integrated Squads are considered core members of Legacy, and are expected to be effectively the vanguard in PvP. Because of this, it’s not uncommon they hold a lot more pride and mental investment in completing goals and objectives. Integrated squads are “assigned” weekly goals and objectives, in contrast to independent squads who are not. Due to this, integrated squads are almost always given more priority in logistics, especially with new boss weapon drops and similar examples of progression. The trade off of a socialist approach to logistics is the advantage of being the spotlight of Legacy’s prowess in the current game.

Independent Squads

As Atlas saw Legacy go from a meager 50-60 active members to absorbing over 20 clans by the end of Season 1, we saw the need to allow clans and groups of players to form their own squads. The first main issue was that many of these mergers were considered temporary as these new additions would not be staying in Legacy post-chapter, so the idea of being fully integrated into logistics and rank structure did not appeal to them. The second issue was that in many scenarios, the clans/guilds in question had numerous assets with ties to the core membership of the merging group. To simply “give it all” to the new Legacy leadership did not sit well with many. Our solution was to compromise in created the independent squad system.

Independent Squads are in most cases mergers of existing guilds or clans that wish to maintain the majority of their autonomy, but fully immerse themselves into the campaigns of Legacy, especially in larger-scale PvP. Independent squads are different than integrated squads in that they are completely isolated in logistics. This means independent squads must complete their own cycle of crafting systems, PvE progression if needed, and similar. They are not given access to the Legacy chapter’s main guild banks/storages, and must provide for their own members in the way they did prior to joining Legacy. While Legacy still requires a singular overall leader of the squad, many independent squads retain a form of their former leadership/rank structure even as they merge into Legacy as a squad. Lastly, independent squads often use their own voice communications often separate from Legacy main comms. 

For many independent squads, the status is temporary as they slowly integrate their economies, logistics and structure into Legacy’s overall image. We have had many squads (former guilds) join us as independent squads over the years and today call themselves simply part of the core family.