Why do we need a newbie-mega-guild?

Drawing from my ancient experience with MUDS, the most successful ones I knew had a very active newbie council dedicated to smooth the way for newcomers. It didn't matter how extensive or well built a tutorial was in place - people still needed help during the first crtical days.

My suggestion is to make the default outlander guild membership automatically expire after a certain level (presumably at the point where a player no longer needs it). Have a council of guilds be the "elders" to thus newbie guild. Of course , guilds who make helping people their primary mission will be the most involved and will attract the most followers even if no active recruitment is done.

People aren't idiots . They'll read all the guild litreature about "helping others" then look around as to who are consistently there to help them and then will come to their own conclusions. Just keep it an even playing field by letting any guild who wants to participate, participate.

Guilds though that put in zero investment assisting newbie avatars during that first critical month shouldn't be surprised when the time comes for that batch to choose theoir affiliation. You reap what you sow.

 

I feel like some quasi-social social engineering guinea pig. Instead of assuming people need help or want help give them the information ahead of time. I am repelled basically at being forced into a guild and especially global trade spam.

 

Dogs are loyal also if you feed them.

 

Yep, that'll be all the newbie mega guild is used for, as I suspect the only resistance to instead just opening up a newb-friendly chat channel is not wanting to moderate the chat channel.

So it follows that this unmoderated newbie mega guild chat will be full of trade spam and racism/sexism and other dumb ****.

Now if this newbie guild channel is going to be moderated, why not instead just make a moderated newbie chat channel where people can ask and answer questions, and never again speak of this multi-guilding idea.

 

it helps new players get information and makes the game feel way more alive. In my experience UO freeshards with a new player guild have done well population wise.

Is there really seven pages on this thread? lol..

 

On a side note: why is the hospitalers not just a regular royal warrant community guild? The royal warrant/onbe people are already recognized. Meaningful decisions should imply meaninful choices. Stay in the guild you are in or make a new guild and dedicate your life to servitude. Meaningful choices. Not "lets wear 100 hats" and be all do everything dudes.

 

This is where allied, not multiple, guilds would be great. Allying guilds together and possibly sharing resources of the guilds through permissions could be pretty neat.

I'll give a bit more insight into my own lack of "love" for the newbie guild idea, and I'll give fair warning that it's a personal thing so if you're not down with that, just skip my post.

I think the intentions of having a newbie guild are good, and it's really nice that the staff want to build a community (I didn't make that point in previous posts, and I apologize for that), but I am one of those cautiously social online gamers who is put off by "forced initial interaction". I can only take socializing in-game so much and it has to be on my terms until I'm really comfortable. Being placed in a guild without choice, even if able to quit, would be very uncomfortable, especially if I did decide to quit. I'm very loyal once I've made my choice, so leaving something doesn't suit me well, even if it's a guild I was automatically put into.

Then there's also the idea for me of being in a "newbie" guild. I'm not a newbie gamer--quite the opposite, in fact--and I'd rather just learn through experience and quest tutorials, or by reading a good tutorial online or via the in-game journal. I don't really want to be surrounded by new gamers, but at the same time, I don't want to start the game then have people see me suddenly quit a guild and form opinions about me.

Lastly, if the guild is run by staff, how active could they possibly be in-game and in-guild? I just don't see developers and staff having enough time to help out, moderate, maintain good chat and practices and build up the guild, or even watch designated volunteer moderators. Maybe I'm being a bit cynical from my stint as a volunteer moderator elsewhere with limited help from staff to pave the way for good community interactions, but I just don't see it being terribly feasible. If the newbie guild is a reality, then I hope enough resources are put into it to make it worthwhile, AND to explain right off the bat to new players what they're being put into, and what their options are for pursuing their own idea of starting out.

These are just my thoughts. It sounds like it will happen no matter what, so at the very least I hope it's explained very well in-game for the newbies and in the forums for the veterans, and that it is given the right resources and balance it needs to not take away from others' gaming experiences.

 

Be sure to read @dallas ' post on top of page 5. Great info. I was surprised by this, but happily so. I think this addressed most the concerns of the original topic

It saddens me that some think the Hospitallers are some sort of super secret squirrely extra creamy organization that has nefarious intent. A Hospitaller is a dev created concept for Shroud of the Avatar, a name for someone who helps another player, and this means ANYONE can and likely already has been a Hospitaller. The intent of the Hospitaller concept is to help new players. EVERY Hospitaller has a different take on how to accomplish this, and rightly so. The Hospitallers are not a specific team or group with a roster, it is a concept. It ebbs and flows as people participate more then less with supporting others. People interested in new player support perform their help in many ways. Some directly, in-game. Some through creation or management of support websites. Some look out for the interests of others on the forums--crying foul when things get out of control (great thread btw -- lots of great discussion in here). Some use the forums to provide their support content through informational forum threads. All of these are very worthy ways of helping, and I'm sure there are many other ways people help (video tutorials for instance).

We are Hospitallers if we help others--so say the devs of Shroud of the Avatar. If you have ideas for new player support concepts, do as you do now -- speak up! Join in! Rally to this endeavor! This thread post alone is proof that we all have a voice in the Hospitaller concept. We are united by our goals of supporting others, and yes, we will likely commonly disagree as to how we meet those goals. Sure, some will refuse to call themselves Hospitallers -- no worries! It's the concept that matters, not the title! I must say, that every Hospitaller meeting I go to, the room is full of people with VASTLY differing opinions. It's a decent sampling of the community, but certainly not the full spectrum. I implore that all interested to please get involved as best you can--lets help each other with our projects. Our efforts to help new players will make the success of this game more likely. Already, it has the strongest and most engaged community of any game I've played, and we haven't even launched yet. I hope we can keep up this enthusiasm.

Yes, with any community, the community of helpers is subject to nefarious people taking advantage of these resources provided by the devs and using them for nefarious means. Let's keep an eye out! Let's spot those folks and correct or even report them. Once there is a clearly defined code of conduct for this Outlander guild concept, we'll have more to go on--though I can already imagine what it might entail, and I hope its very strict I'd say the effort to moderate the tools they provide is well worth the benefits the tools will be providing us. I have high hopes And I praise the moderators of these forums as well as who they select for this, for they have their work cut out for them Guess we'll have to wait and see how this pans out.

 

No we don't have to wait and see, we give feedback now and let the devs react to our feedback.

I hope they read what we're saying.

 

Slaves revere the chains that bind them ~ Voltair

 

I suspect they are And yes -- that was in no way an attempt to quell the conversation. This thread has their attention, so I agree, speak up! Basically just stating there's very likely much more to come on this topic.

Sounds fancy! Not sure if that was a slight towards me or not, but thanks reading my post, Rav

 

~"The Fellowship"~

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ellowship-has-arrived-in-new-britannia.59144/
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...mic-balance-changes.61999/page-10#post-650910​

It became extremely apparent from the onset of "The Fellowship Project" that such a cause as this received stiff oppositions through literally 100's of PMs from the fear of us as being an element which was bent on the sapping off of members from other guilds, "which was and is totally false". Our outstretched arms to "The Hospitallers" is well known in this regard. I'm not going to point out any individual Fellowship Cult Members who are within our Hospitallers, yet I will say that Lord @Elgarion was one of our many kidnapping victims. Once we informed him of our intent and removed his gag, we knew he and his minions would carry through with our intent. We then released him before the hypnosis wore off, back into the general population of our New Britannia while keeping in contact with he and his worthy group through our extended Hospitaller Cult Members.

Fears from Privet Guild's arrogance, control, envy, greed, jealousy and power cannot stop any intent that is "Worthy" of coming into existence, "Trusted" to be what it is and "Unifying" though it's intent. The fact that such a plan in good intent needs to move forward without any delay or hindrance, precisely in the way that our Portalaium Agents have presented it is "self evident". It's self evidence stands clearly in the face of all the contention it has thus far received here in this thread, which is only a reflection of what went on within the 100's of PM messages when we first began our Fellowship project's influence. We of the fellowship apologize for any inconvenience our kidnappings may have caused our general population and to any distress our plans have caused to bring such fears to your hearts. Our Portalaium will continue to receive our support for the project because our fellowship seeds once planted only need to grow for the benefit of us all. Many of our Agents may not know, admit their involvement or completely deny any facts here stated, "But These Are Our Fellowship's Ways"

~A~
~Trust~
~"Unity"~
~"Worthiness"~
~We support you~
~"We are with you"~
~"We are among you"~
~We are The Fellowship~


We wish only success for our Portalarium and our Hospitallers with this most important project for us all!​

Kool-Aide Party Leader,
~Nystal TimeLord~

 

No slight meant. I think you do a great job at roleplay. What i meant as a suggestion was people can do and achieve more once the break free of group think. You are shunned if you are not with the hive mind. Ex Plato's alegory of the cave.

 

There would be no objection to a newb-friendly moderated chat channel. But an unmoderated newb guild with an unmoderated newb guild chat channel is not going to be something good for the game.

It has to be moderated or it'll just be tradespam and smacktalk.

As for muti-guilding, as stated by many in this thread that just causes disloyalty - and people end up ignoring or using their secondary guilds in some way. Also not good for the game.

 

Wait, is this why I have this really annoying twitch?!? Darn hypnosis! And why do I now always crave Bark Bread?
(Hahhaha, cool idea to bring this into RP--love it!)

 

This idea is already not allowed by EVL. If you have an alt account you are not allowed to have that alt in another guild but theirs. I think this is wrong, but I do understand their reasoning. An alt could be created to join an opposing guild to spy on them. This is a problem perhaps not considered?

 

A simple implementation would be to place new players in a new player chat channel until they hit a certain adventure level and then they are auto removed from the new player channel.
Hospitaliers could moderate the channel to help the new players. There is no need for a guild.

 

I would suggest 3 ''guilds'' one for each starting location
you leave the guild automatic once you earned X amount of adventure or crafting experience.

 

IMO this is the classic "let's drop a quick fix here now instead of preparing a good fix and implement it later" which usually ends in we keeping the flawed hotfix and making the real fix pointless. Instead of including (forcing) new players into a guild where they can ask (and get spammed and scammed and harrassed and W/E) why not put time into tutorials, information, and focus development into eliminating redundant mechanics or those that raises the learning curve without adding too much depth into the game, then giving the ones that are there to stay coherence and meaning.

I mean, that's one of the best ways to make a learning curve less steep, and is something that should be done eventually. Why the hurry? why including something that should be unnecessary in the (not so) long run?

Yeah, i see the point for it, but just as another bandage. Dont do that, it may get infected under it anyway. Just fix it properly when the time comes.

 

My answers are going to be all over the place, I can already tell. So my apologies in advanced.

The fact that it has been advertised forever by Port, and they even have Discord sections and groups just for Hospitallers, means that it was dev supported long before this thread.

Port even has community rules for Hospitallers. Sure sounds dev supported to me.

Completely agree with you. It is the concept, more than someone with a title. HOWEVER, I am glad that people have been willing to create these websites, log in and out to actively help people on those websites and on Discord, and all that. But, as an example, the only difference I see on Discord channels #general and #hospitallers is that on #hospitallers there is a higher chance of someone seeing your question, and you seeing the answer, than in #general. Anyone can still answer and ask any question in either channel.

So in my mind, and I agree that Hospitallers is more of a concept (anyone can help anyone) then why are we not also up in arms about guilds having houses and vendors in the newbie stating cities? Isn't that doing the exact same thing of sorts? Advertising your guild to every single new person that comes stumbling through? What difference is there of someone asking for a good guild in #general versus #hospitallers and someone responding with their guild, or the guild they are in, whether they are flagged as being a Hospitaller or not?

This reminds me of the Novice Network chat channel in Final Fantasy XIV. It has been fairly recently implemented (compared to when the game was released) and it sort of solves this new player thing. Now, I do not like the fact that new players are just blindly thrown into a guild, or a chat channel. It is way too easy to make it part of the quest line (especially FFXIV where you litterally can't progress much without doing the main story quests). Other than that I have some issues with how that channel has been implemented, and how the entire Novice system has been implemented. On my server there is no spam, as far as RMT. However, in the Novice Network, you know that channel to help our new players, Novices, there is a lot of spoilers and end game mechanics and such that has no use for new players. To me has no place, but Novice Network is of sorts that game's global chat so there you go. I see it being used very similarly the same, and worse (because my server has so few spammers to begin with, and a NEW SOTA game will end up having lots of it).

And then game EQ2, WOW, and all of those clones since 2005 (about) that did a lot of hand holding. And once we got familiar to one game's mechanics as far as mini maps, questing, talking to NPCs, etc., then there is no re-learning. Or very little. UO was very new at the time and we were all lost. And actually I still love the "no quests usage base skills gained" that is not found anywhere else. But far and wide new players, in today's social instant gratification world, this game will turn a lot of players away. Which is sort of good, because that is why most of us funded this game, it is not the same old game, it was going to be different.

Now, we all have differences on how well it has been implemented....


Since day 1 in an MMO, I have hated blind invites. Blind trade requests. Blind party invites. Blind guild requests. Blind duel requests. Thankfully some games enable options to turn off one or more of those types of things. Like I will always turn on auto-decline duel requests if that option is available.

But then FFXIV implemented their Novice Network and it forced new players to be in there, especially without telling them anything about it. I have seen a number new players in that channel say "What is this channel, why am I in it, how do I leave?" or when vets start bickering, giving spoilers, or only talking about end game crap new players will "This isn't helping how do I leave?"

And now in SOTA we have forced guild invites. Not a fan of that either I would prefer a chat channel. In FFXIV, a new player is no longer labelled as a Novice after they progress so far in the Main Story Quests and after so many hours played. When yo no longer flagged, you booted out of the channel. I love that. It is after all a NOVICE NETWORK, and not a global chat.

Not sure I really like the multiple guild thing either. Some games have done it (Guild Wars 2) but how is that going to work if guild PVP is enabled? Guild alliances? And you are now in 2 guilds that are either not part of the alliance, or at war with each other? How do you turn on and turn off each separate guild chat? How do you display a specific guild tag? If there are guild achievements, or some form of future guild experience or anything, how do you know which guild you are giving experience and achievements to?

One thing that I do think FFXIV has done well, is to have multiple chat channels. They call it Link Shards. Can have up to 8 I think. Think of it as being in multiple guilds without the guild tag. And frankly that is all this new SOTA guild is, a newbie chat channel with a forced guild tag.