Guild/Group Quests & Rewards

Imagine, if you will… if groups and individuals could accumulate special abilities through quests.

Wait! Yes I readily acknowledge that game balance is always a major concern. I would never suggest anything be done in a way that throws balance out the proverbial window. So please keep that in mind. J

So once again someone’s interesting idea has inspired my thinking in a new direction. This line of thinking started when redfish brought up the idea of leadership skills and guilds in one of his threads. (in dev+)

I began to think it would be interesting if guilds had special “cards” for use in the skill/combat deck system that they could distribute among guild members. The simplest example would be a small morale boost from a guild officer to other guild members.

Then I began to think that rather than simply giving this ability to guilds, what if they could earn them through meeting certain criteria? The thinking then extended from potential cards to access to potential items and then also to non-guild groups.

So now imagine special group quests and guild quests. A special quest that must be completed by a group of at least X number of people such as clearing a control point or a dungeon.

Now of course individual players and non-questing groups can accomplish these things but if a group undertakes the take “officially” there would be an interesting bonus prize.. such as the guild gaining access to a ‘card’ or special guild item that provides a small defensive bonus when defending a castle during a guild war or something of that nature.

It occurred to me that with some creative thinking, guilds could express themselves through specializing in certain abilities granted through completing guild quests.

Let’s say we have a crafting guild. They find and complete projects for local towns like.. supply the town guard of Owl’s Head with 20 bardiches and 20 suits of armor. At least 4 guild members have to make 4 each. Upon completion Owl’s Head awards them with a crafting station one level higher than what you can purchase or maybe a contract where guild members buy materials from the town at a discount for a week.

An adventuring guild gets a quest to clear out a dungeon. If a group with at least 5 guild members completes all stages of the quest together then a special decorative item spawns in the dungeon that only they can pick up.. or perhaps they get a ‘leadership/morale boost’ card that can be assigned to a guild member to use in group combat. Maybe they all get an XP bonus for the quest.

Guilds specializing in certain ideas this way would maybe get decorative items related to the specialization (ie combat would get tapestries with images of battle, statues of warriors). “Cards / abilities” could be related to many play styles but should be orientated for groups (though it would be interesting if individual cards could be awarded for quests as well) and be things you otherwise wouldn’t get through skills.

I think you get the general idea. My examples are just off the top of my head. Among other things I think this kind of idea really promotes group play. Where it’s not necessarily punishing to go solo as most or all of the rewards could either also be earned solo or simply has no value to the solo player.

 

This is one of the reasons why I've fought the skill cap thing in favor of throttles on your build / deck.

So you can say have <x> number of passives. I really don't care whether you get those passives from a guild or crafting or some weird quest, or whatever. You can learn lots, but only equip <x>.

While I don't love the cards, any system like this builds in a throttle as well. You can only really do one skill at a time, there are some ways to have some kind of cooldowns. Again, as long as more skills is more choice and not more win, it works.

I'm OK with a stacking bonus, if it's very temporary. e.g. currently holding castle <y> gives access and / or bonus to some dungeon or battle in the nearby hex. This gets rivals to want to take and hold the castle.

 

Two things that rushed in my mind when I read your post -

1. Quest where a guild provides services for a city/town and are rewarded with a bonus for crafting stations within their city walls would be a great motivator to join a guild

2. This reminds me of Civ 5 - when a neutral territory - asks for help ... this could lead to a city adopting it's guild as the "official crafting association" or "official Mercenary Militia" of a town or city - benefits would include lower vender prices, lower home taxes etc ..

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Guilds would have to defend their right to retain the privilege of being a town "protectorate" or remain as the "town crafting guild"

- Mercenary guilds would settle their challenges through conflict
- Crafting guilds would settle their challenges through - ? gathering expeditions in areas of conflict - and the winner retains ( a large portion of the resource, hands over some to town venders for sell)

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The benefit of handing over some of the resources is that it would encourage strangers to travel to your town/city for resources and increase the flow of customers

 

Ohhh interesting thoughts. I hadn't considered the potential for competition here. Different guilds could compete in different ways for status or access to resources.

 

As for guild skill cards - they can come as the city reward as you mention: possibly each city has their own unique card?

Even without the competitive aspect - each city/town/village could have rotating demands that reward unique cards (limited use?)

 

Yeah, I very much thought of this. You could have some kind of Lord / vassal relationship. Swear some kind of oath to a principal guild which holds the castle, etc. But numerous other guilds hold key positions, possibly playing defined roles. It could start out a simple system and grow over the releases. And I was thinking very much like Civ where the towns could grow threw multiple dimensions and specialization. I was bucket it into PvP/Conquest, PvE/Questing (resource gathering), Crafting/RP (this would be like citizens in civ, making production, culture, and technology).

 

*is amused at the mention of Civ as he happens to be playing Civ IV*

I suddenly find myself thinking about player towns and past discussions of self governance and more recently of the new features they put in as shown in Braemar. RG was talking about how a player town (and it sounds like they plan on doing quite a few of these) would start off as just a forest area with lots filled with trees. There would be like 40 lots but you could only fill up 20 or so so that each town would be unique depending on the lots chosen.

So then if players in some form or other were to be given some measure of control. Would they then be able to offer quests from a list of options? I'm sure there will be plenty of guilds that will want to take advantage of said towns.

Slightly off topic but it kind of relates if we're talking about towns offering quests and such.

 

Aren't you giving an advantage to those in a guild though? What about those who want to be wandering nomads or simply cannot find a guild that suits their tastes? Having some type of combat advantage does not seem viable unless it's only active against those with a counter card themselves.

 

In terms of combat advantages I was thinking in terms of larger scale group battles. Such as a guild is defending a keep against a large force but I was more focused on the general concept. Quest rewards for groups don't necessarily need to be combat related..