Yes, this has been the problem with Funcom’s follower cap formula right from the start, and many of us pointed it out on the Great Feedback Thread back then.
There are several very valid rebuttals, or at least mitigating arguments:
- This disincentive for clans will only affect newcomers. People who are already in clan are very unlikely to go through the whole mess of splitting up. It will happen in some clans, but more people will talk about it than actually go through with it.
- Having no clanmates has some very real problems. For one thing, it complicates going on vacation. It’s an important incentive to clan up despite the follower cap.
- The follower cap is meant to reduce the server performance impact that comes from excessive followers. Even if a clan with N members and M followers ends splitting up, the follower cap is doing it’s work if M > N * 50. This is much more common than people suspect: I’ve personally seen clans with more than 500 followers and fewer than 10 members.
Personally, I support the follower cap wholeheartedly, but I don’t like Funcom’s proposed formula. They’re still tweaking the numbers, but the formula is a simple linear function with a free constant: L(n) = Mn + C, where n is the number of clan members, C is the “base cap” for the clan (50 in the original formula), M is the “per member” increase (5 in the original formula), and L is the limit for the clan.
I think they should get rid of C and just make the limit be L(n) = Mn. That way every player always gets the same allotment of followers and there are no disincentives to forming (or joining) a clan.