Why do we need a newbie-mega-guild?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Earl Atogrim von Draken, Oct 2, 2016.

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  1. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    :cool:~Our Publicly Shared Fears and the Cthulhu~:confused:!'
    This is an average comment, so I'm not just pointing our @NullnVoid out here, because this comment best describes what we are encountering here, which is the feeling of disempowerment, which is far from what the Outlander Guild truly is. And, before I go any further, I'd like to say that the Outlander Guild cost almost zero $ to create, yet does have our Portalarium talking with each other, which is a common thing they do most every day about anything and everything that deals with our game.

    There's no way to dispel a fear of this kind, other than to face it in some imagined way, until we can face it's actual product once it's been produced and have actually seen it's resulting entertainment value as that product comes out the other side. Was it crap or was it a valued experience then becomes something that we can truly judge. We can take all the ingredients home with us to make a great meal, but who is going to cook it, becomes it's actual value not becoming lost.

    Now lets look at an unknown disempowerment which is at the heart of what we're talking about here when it comes to fears of any loss of control within our SOTA guild making platform. Watch this and then read further which may change our outlook on all of this...



    We can all have fears of disempowerment when we think that a company is taking over a or creating a single guild and over shadowing to the point of preempting our own ability to instantly guild any player, which most "flash guilds" do and how they become so large. Yet by our Portalarium creating such a guild, they have actually added a value for the new player of our game to have made a better and much wider selection of choice other than just jumping in or being pulled into some guild of unknown quality. Large guilds become large by a pyramid scheme of escalating numbers in players and we all know that. Yet what our Portalaium has done in this regard, is to have empowered those guilds which can offer and do offer them the most wonderful gaming experience that they can bring to the table, which also includes the start-up guildmaster and those of smaller guilds. This is all because the table here, is the Outlander Guild. "We kiss their member's tails with lures of our gaming fun". This may seem like a daunting task for the individual start-up guild leader, yet that's what leadership is all about, it's about leading and developing the talent necessary to lead a successful guild. Our success should be in our gaming value of fun and not in the amount of players we can gather all in one place. To some players who are wishing to become a leader within a large guild can be a very challenging task to achieve, while if they enter into a small guild, then their own leadership talents and quest for officer leadership skill testing can help them more easily realize their dreams of achievements.

    We need to see this for what it is and not from any preconception of disempowerment from our beginning, because it simply is not true. Our Portalarium's Outlander Guild more empowers us all both large and small to achieve all our recruiting leadership goals, while empowering the new player to be able to have a greater selection which may better fit into their own goals.

    If this doesn't sound empowering to you, tell us why and it could most likely to be from an imagined Cthulhu of our own making, which doesn't exist until we can actually touch it and see it for what it actually is.
    It's just the monster in the closet until we open it, yet to open it, means we've empowered ourselves to have become involved with it in a very physical way.
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2016
  2. Ravicus Domdred

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    I wonder how this would work for warring guilds if they are aligned with each other. On another note i wonder how the outlander guild will work for new players when they are constantly put in seperate instances. I imagine at launch there will be every guild recruiting in the starting zone, all ng with hospitallers and every nrw player. How is this going to work with scene limits?
     
  3. majoria70

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    A couple of comments from reading this thread. Just a couple ;)

    Ok so as always I am leery of starting up a new system to fix something that imo is very broken at this point in development. Fix the problem, don't add a possible new problem that needs fix after fix to get it working or trashed if it is trash. We should give the start up experience a big overhaul to include tutorial systems as mentioned by some.

    Creating a mega guild system is starting up a whole new can of worms and we already have too many worms as it is. Again trying to gloss over something that is broken will not fix it. It will then just be shinier. ;)

    The problem imo is the starter area for new people, it needs fixed.

    It needs to give examples of the game, it needs to give opportunity to the new players to have fun to and to test out the game. It needs to give them workable tools to survive through examples. It also needs to give them some rewards to go forward. And most importantly it needs to give them how to play the game info, that is simplified, vendors that say gather resources, here's how, craft a piece of armor here is how, do some combat here is how, etc. They just need to be given info, lots of info in as fun and interesting way as possible, for example little side quests that refer to the main story perhaps.

    This game has a big learning curve and people perhaps will leave more out of frustration when they may just love it if handled correctly, but duh if they only knew what to love.:)


    The new player needs to be in charge of how much they learn or don't learn as well, give them lots of opt outs, and allow them to say I opt out and continue to the story portion.

    So fix it. IMO don't cause more havoc , just fix it. Make it pretty, start the beginning with the booming story voice telling of story such as......... and here it begins one day we appear in the land of SOTA (not those words tho ;) )..............and then give the new person or any person new or otherwise an option to continue to story or go to game tutorial area, but let them have a second chance to go back to tutorial or 3rd or whatever, just make it available.

    edited edited edited ;)
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2016
  4. Time Lord

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    ~Money and Time~
    $ and Development time become the solutions with these types of things, yet in the mean time, human resources can help fill the gap and our cheapest and most quality human resources are our players themselves.
    It's a waiting game, yet while we wait for gaming mechanics to catch up to fill those needed demands we as players need to fill the gap in the mean time.
    Yet also, when we look at our Outlander Guild which cost zero $0.00 to be created, then we can see a way we as players can fill the gap :) without needed extra money.
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
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  5. DepGames

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    BAD BAD BAD idea.

    Never rely on a third-party service as a building block for an important feature in your own product.

    Scenario: Discord makes changes to their service or API that breaks the chat feature in SotA. How long before Port can work with the Discord folks to get back online? What happens if they can't?

    Discord isn't an established company. They are a small startup with an unknown future. Startups fail all the time.
     
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  6. Tahru

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    Lol, I completely disagree. A good developer will plan it out so that it can be swapped out at any time. A brilliant developer always designs thing to make the most advantage of all available tools. Obviously if they did that, they would make a contract with Discord. Innovation always involves risk. I expected they would keep the internal chat and have Discord as an option.
     
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  7. Koldar

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    Thanks for posting the candid feedback on this topic. I think a little R&D into the chat technology should be seriously considered if that is all that is hindering implementation of a global help channel. I remember "back in the day" playing EQ (circa 1999)...we could chat with hundreds/thousands of people. I'm sure newer chat technology exists that is at least as efficient as that technology was/is.

    It would just be nice to see something as simple as an optional global help channel instead of a guild where you have to manage membership.
     
  8. Time Lord

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    :eek:~Battling the Monster of the Great Over Tech~:confused:!'
    I think we've "over tech'd" our system in many ways which require the player to interact with outside entities, player instruction clouds of data and chat channels.

    I think it all leads away from any more immersive quality the player must encounter. This is one of the reasons we have Hositallers, because of all the clouds of text and add distractive chats needing to be done in order just to play a game. If the player had just been able to read and comprehend the instruction page, then we wouldn't have any need for the Hospitallers or Outlander Guild at all.

    Yet the player wishes to learn in the game without taking their eye's away from the game and certainly becomes very distracted and disturbed from their gaming in order to do so. This is why the common Guild tab channel within the friends list is my communication and information channel of choice.

    The finest learning is also not from any text, it's through the application of necessity and hands on doing it within the game that is our finest way of learning. It's learning all the buttons that makes a simple game of swinging a sward extremely complicated when all we wanted to do was swing the sward and kill the monster.
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
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  9. DepGames

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    So you want them to develop two chat systems instead of using resources to fix, for example, that abomination called combat? I'd hardly call that innovative.

    "Hey look, we're innovative!!! Nothing works, but the ideas are innovative!!!

    Sounds like the kind of brilliant plan a "brilliant" developer would come up with. :rolleyes:

    That's why most software development companies have Product Managers. To save developers from themselves.
     
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  10. Tibs

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    And analysts.

    The tech is available, but is it (really, can it be) within scope for the foreseeable future when already there are coding jobs open and unfilled?

    IF there is an identified problem which can be solved with a variant of something needed anyway, a social network or guild, then an outlander guild makes best sense.

    IMO such should be focused in its design to acclimatize the new player to community in Novia, to cooperative play, and to hopefully productive competition, THEN identify and decide what features it must offer, and when finished let the new outlanders know that the guild's advantages are openly and unmistakably finite. If they like community, they must recognize the Weaning.

    Let us not get into who might be the weanor and who the weanee.

    So identify the advantages and features to be provided by all guilds, build and implement the required guild system for existing players first to test, and then place new players in a finite version of the social solution. I think the new outlanders will become quickly active and nimble to learn IF the guild mechanism is useful. They will be eager to join a guild or create one anew. Unless they are mad hermits, like some present are.

    VoIP is a handsome thought, granted. Personally, I've always thought it would be magnificent to have the ability to speak in the game and be heard, to a reasonably realistic range, but not beyond that. Sounds and noises should be locatable, radially directional in the virtual environment. A taproom should be loud. A glade quiet.

    But isn't that just a bit ambitious to tack onto the project already in progress when a system solution must already be in the works? We have to have player organizations and guilds. Use the tools we will have.

    This is a proposed sketch of a way forward. Waste not, want not.
     
  11. Toadster

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    Reading this gave me flash backs of trying to have a rational conversation with my two year old about why he can't have a candy bar before dinner.

    Sorry this is off topic.... But just wow.
     
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  12. Mykll

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    Does that mean if he only eats breakfast and lunch from now on he can have candy bars? Oh the loopholes!
     
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  13. Time Lord

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    Entitlement 2, subsection 2 of the Grandparent Entitlement Code;
    It clearly states that if the Grandparent of said 2 years old who's the Parent of said Grandchild, entitles the Grandparent to insert one of the above said "candy bar" directly into the mouth of the child upon entering said Grandparent's domain. Any violators of the Grandparent Entitlement Code shall suffer a major monetary Grandparent's Will penalty for having grown up to be exactly the same grumpy parent as they once were. The Grandparent Code supersedes every know Law of the universe and will be maintained in force throughout all eternity.

    Violators of the above mentioned Code have often attempted to overwrite such Laws, yet are always found guilty of being deficient within their abilities to lighten up and just have fun in playing any game.
    :eek: ~"Guilty"~ :confused:
    This advise has been provided to you by;
    [​IMG]
    "The Magistrate 1st Circuit Court of Appeals of Universal Time Judge",
    :rolleyes:~Time Lord~;)
     
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