Guild System Plans

[jake13jake]

People haven't really been understanding the concept of a guild area, because the concept of the guild area isn't complete yet, and I've been slowly progressing with plans, so here goes.

Guild Areas:

Guild Areas will be accessible only one way. I am also going to make it so that guild members don't block each other in their own guild area (so you could have people blocking the entrance while unlocking the gate).

All guild areas will be added to the warp ring (warp loc at the gate), but only accessible to a member in the guild. People who die in a guild area will be warped to the same location.

Guild areas will be capturable.

At public forts, a gelat prize will be given to the winner of a round. Winning 10 consecutive rounds will reward -a- superbomb. The superbomb won't explode unless exploded (by any bomb), and will only be carryable by a member of that guild unless it is in it's own guild's area, in which case another guild may raid your arsenal. We may also approve inside levels in the guild area to be used as arsenals, but none of them may be private. The bomb will disappear if left unattended outside a guild area. (In essence, guild areas will keep arsenals). This bomb will destroy a guild's gate, until all intruders are outside of the guild area (not necessarily the guild house). They will also be sold at the Destiny Black Market to anyone, but only for an absurd amount.

Each guild will have its own flag. Any member of that guild will be able to walk up to their flag and be the flag-bearer, or remove their flag bearer status. There may only be one flag bearer at a time. When attacking another guild area, it will be the flag bearers responsibility to destroy the other guild's flag and replace it with their own. If a flag bearer dies, the flag must be picked up by another guild member or destroyed by the defending guild (as the attacking guild would destroy their flag). If an attacking guild successfully plants their flag and destroys the enemies flag, then they will control the gate. To regain their flag, the defending guild must eradicate all occupying forces (whether they can pull it off by number of remaining forces, or have to get another superbomb in which case the war can continue at a public fort).

For guilds that don't have their own guild areas, we will probably make a public flag location for flag bearers. However, it's a disadvantage not to keep an arsenal. It's also a disadvantage if all guild members are in the same time zone.

Public forts will not be capturable if the player count becomes less than 25 (so we don't cause players to be losing sleep trying to boost their guild's arsenal). This can be modified if opinions differ after the release of the system.

Any opinions or further ideas?

7/24/06:
-Rufus suggests locking a guild's gate when their are 3 or less guild members on for that guild. I could try this, but it wouldn't be the first thing to get scripted.

[Tyhm]

I'd take it one step further than locking the gate:
When the playercount dips below a certain number, the flags of all but the majority guilds go down. That means if there's only 30 players online, there's only 2 guilds that could Lead a CTF - the others can certainly ally up, but if US has 7 members on and Ventrue has 5, and everyone else has 1 or 2, it's hardly fair to expect the Miscellaneous Guilds to weigh in as healthily. Never less than 2 guilds flagging, never more than 1 flag per 10 players maybe as a rule of thumb (that's 5 people who could be on either side).

[jake13jake]

Originally Posted by Tyhm

I'd take it one step further than locking the gate:
When the playercount dips below a certain number, the flags of all but the majority guilds go down. That means if there's only 30 players online, there's only 2 guilds that could Lead a CTF - the others can certainly ally up, but if US has 7 members on and Ventrue has 5, and everyone else has 1 or 2, it's hardly fair to expect the Miscellaneous Guilds to weigh in as healthily. Never less than 2 guilds flagging, never more than 1 flag per 10 players maybe as a rule of thumb (that's 5 people who could be on either side).

Yea, but I don't believe it should be excessively overprotective, since that generally leads to increasing disinterest. I would rather have a waning effect than a lockout.

Also, most miscellaneous guilds probably wouldn't have guild areas to defend, and thus wouldn't have an arsenal unless they hugged a single superbomb for a while.

A goal of this project is to promote the maintenance and expansion of legit guilds, in which pretty much everyone agrees that it's extremely lacking. Most people create a guild, have their friends join, and then there are a million tags per player. In this system, guild leaders will have reason to maintain loyalty, etc.

(yea, since I put the system in, there have been 292 guilds to come on Classic as of 7/25/06 9:17 PM EST, and no, this isn't good news at all.)

[jacob_bald6225]

I don't like the idea of protected bases, or the capturing of flags... and super bomb business

[Tyhm]

At least now the guild members can be tracked when they're off-tag. It offers unique possibilities.
Still not totally in favor of the guildhouses themselves being the prize - it's good, mind, but it's a bit specific, doncha think? I mean, if Ventrue loses interest in Graal, it'll always be, I dunno, Jedi Knights in charge of Voluran's Mausoleum, and yet all the signs will clearly mark it as captured Ventrue territory. I figure if ownership is variable, so too ought be the markings. But that's just me, and certainly lower priority than balancing the number of guilds in CTF vs. the playercount.

292 guilds is problematic, but not itself a problem. If every group of 4 or so players is a Guild, it just becomes a question of which 5 or 6 Guilds owns a Base. Then enforcing that the guilds that own a Base can't switch tags as far as the NPC Server's concerned - if you're a Ventrue, and Ventrue owns a base, but you're also US, you can't just go US, turn traitor and surrender the flag to your Other Guild - you can do a poor job of defending your headquarters, you can even change your tag perhaps, but the NPCs will still see a member of Ventrue trying to burn his own flag and ignore him. It can be scripted, it is possible.

[jake13jake]

Originally Posted by Tyhm

At least now the guild members can be tracked when they're off-tag. It offers unique possibilities.
Still not totally in favor of the guildhouses themselves being the prize - it's good, mind, but it's a bit specific, doncha think? I mean, if Ventrue loses interest in Graal, it'll always be, I dunno, Jedi Knights in charge of Voluran's Mausoleum, and yet all the signs will clearly mark it as captured Ventrue territory. I figure if ownership is variable, so too ought be the markings. But that's just me, and certainly lower priority than balancing the number of guilds in CTF vs. the playercount.

Well, if Ventrue loses interest in Graal, then Jedi Knights can consider themselves the conquerors of the Ventrue territory.

[Tyhm]

Well right, but will it still say Ventrue Headquarters on the signs? Will they be Quite Obviously Squatters, or will it be generally assumed the new Ventrue guild is Jedi Knights by right of ownership?

It's really semantics though - the important bit is that we don't have every single guild on Graal fighting at once so much as a few big guild-alliances fighting over hotly-contested territory.

[Terazel Tenjin]

I, for one, have no particular motivation nor interest in where this is going. There seems to lack cohesion and incentive in my opinion. It's basically stacking onto the fort system set forth back in the day, and they provide more of a distracting minigame than an actual exciting "war" (though that is essentially the building blocks of a great warfare).

The flag system sounds like a step in the right direction, but I fear it will turn into a rather uninteresting game of CTF after the first week.

I don't think we should do this by the guilds. You've already stated the obvious problems already. The whole "guild system" thing is already starting to lose its flavor, and the guilds headquarters idea thus far seems to be like an unfinished level. I haven't seen ANYONE even attempt to siege the LOA fort at ALL; everybody tries to go inside Ventrue one simply because it's easily visible and obviously in a BAD STRATEGIC POSITION. To us it's basically an inside joke. I've heard something about the Ventrues trying to place their HQ in Destiny, which in my opinion is a great idea, but we didn't see the fruits of that labor (at least not yet).

The big guilds will be the big guilds, and the small ones will be small. The Alliance system would propose a further cohesion beyond the cohesion of individual guilds and in a sense provide a sense of an ARMY or a LEGION. Maybe you should ask around to see how we all feel about it.

[jake13jake]

I'd still consider Classic under heavy reconstruction, and I'm not surprised that you look at the guild system as an unfinished level (because pretty much it's an unfinished script). I'm just trying to get more players on the server, because right now Classic is pretty much PK, chat, and GC with like one quest. The players want quests, but making anything takes time. Through the guild system, I'm trying to give players something that they can continue participating in for a while, unlike a quest where they're once through and done. Also, doing this for the summer can get us more players than if we did it any other time of the year, because the kids like to sit at the computer all summer.