More or less, these changes will punish the guilds that actively seek members. Or you get punished for becoming a kami.
Not exactly. Or rather, you do see the immediate effect correctly, but not the long-term effect. Think of it like Robin Hood: is it the same robbing a landlord, or a peasant?
Most economic systems where competition is scarce tend to evolve toward a monopoly. The dominant party not only squashes competition, but it can also afford to buy out fledgling businesses that pose a threat. It goes as far as to create a feedback loop, if a tipping point is reached. This is the exact mechanism we have seen in Ryzom for the past 5 years at least (or more, if you count pre-merger where kara was a dominant party, through exactly the same mechanics).
The issue with OPs as they stand now, is that resource allocation favors a big, monolithic side badly. At supernodes a small and dedicated team may do a suicide mission and still dig some materials; I've witnessed a party of 10 marauders outsmarting a group at least twice its size, and not only once. At OPs, this is literally impossible, even if a group somehow wins phase 1: they get wiped in phase 2.
The way I see this change, it would encourage pruning away the deadwood from all parties in the game. Of course the larger faction is bound to have more rot (e.g. dead guilds owning OPs, or 1-man guilds owning q250 ones); therefore the change will be perceived to affect them more "unjustly". But overall, and once the dust settles, I believe the real effect is an invigoration of a system where people actually have to fight for the things they own.
Consider that kami started its winning wave on the back of the Asylum guild, starting the feedback loop. Consider that the monopoly of kamis was almost broken through the efforts of a small but very resolute guild, Syndicate (except they kept losing phase 2, and they got burned out after a while)
Even with the new system, it will be always possible to build a good guild and sweep through Atys in the blink of an eye. A faction is always going to be useful, to have your back. What changes is that, at the first sign of weakness, the Robin Hoods of the world will attack and win back some of your resources.
As it should be.
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My home is always sweet Yrkanis..