Guild Sabotage - Spies, Moles, and Saboteurs

There have been conversations across many guilds of insider sabotage, and some would like the free-range of destroying a guild from the inside. I, for one, do not agree with this perspective and wish it to be against the code of conduct of the game to be a saboteur. However, with the game being so far away this is a 'less than trivial' subject. Although, the topic needs to be expressed nonetheless.

What do the developers, and SotA participants, think of insider guild sabotage? In regards to it being allowed or disallowed, punishable or unpunishable.

 

I think that OOC intent to sabotage a guild is a poor thing indeed.

On the other hand, I think having In character, role play agreements between two guilds to enjoy in some fake actions of this nature is good.

I definitely seeing my guild having a.. Shadow branch (lack of a better term at the moment (I haven't decided on the full terms yet, etc.. waiting to see if I get someone that would like to run it and whom I like their ideas, etc, before I make the decisions)). Might be called something else, etc. I do plan on being a "virtuous" guild, but definitely more of a mid-evil virtue and not modern day. Robbing from the rich and giving to the poor may be ok. Using an assassin to take out an evil doer, is probably ok.. Using torture against an evil villain to save the lives of hundreds or thousands.. ok.. So very mid-evil virtues. A knightly code of conduct overall, but there's a secret branch that gets their hands dirty. Even the guild members wont know who they are! only myself, and certain guild leaders would know who those people are, as this would be done for RP fun.

I could easily see if I have an agreement with guild X, that we are at "war" with each other in game (but really we are an alliance, that are two guilds acting together to bring more fun to each other), of me saying.. hey, I have a spy I want to insert into your guild. Its a member of mine that wants to RP this type of role, and im looking for a good guild to put them into. What do you think? what do we want to accomplish with it, etc??? The idea is for fun opportunities, definitely not to REALLY cause any problems for said guild. A clear set of agreements for all involved would be defined a had of time as far as "don't cross this line" but some things would also be left open and undecided as you don't ant to write it all out ahead of time or why bother doing it?

I only mention this as when talking guild spys that there are two separate kinds of spys and so its important to make a clear distinction. Theres the kind of person that wants to really do actual and true harm to a guild.... My opinion on those sort of people is they should not be allowed to join guilds. Which will happen.. on almost every MMO with guilds, there is a forum somewhere in which guild leaders put up warnings to other guild leaders to black list players. I only pay attention to such things if a good history of reasons is given as there's always two sides to everything.. but if you see 4 or 5 reputable guild masters saying "avoid this person"... that person will probably find it difficult to join a guild except guilds formed by black listed players.

Which leads to my opinion on involving Portalarium in it.. no need really. I think this is something that the community and guild leaders will be able to handle and police themselves.

Im definitely not worried about spys wanting to do my guild harm, as my recruitment process will be such that you wont be able to do us harm easily. Joining wont be automatic, you need to spend time with us and hang out with us.. knowing someone in the guild helps. participating in conversations and evetns helps.. And gaining rank and privileges in the guild have to be earned. Either from contribution or from being a member for a long period of time. Either or, because some people may just want to show up to things and go along and not offer much contribution other then their presence. this is ok, and they shouldn't be penalized for it.. but they may progress a bit more slowly as their ranking would be membership length based where as someone that's churning out and running events, moderating forums, etc.. is going to get a faster rank boost from helping out. This has actually been all mapped out already in our guild structure (A big thanks to Hew whom did the bulk of the work in this area).

For someone to get into a position where they are going to be able to do a guild structure like this any real damage would take a really long time and a ton of effort, and over that period of time they'd probably have to do me more good along the way, then they would be able to do harm before I kicked them one true intentions became obvious.

Don't get me wrong, im not against Portalarium having a system in place to deal with people who behave in this sort of way! However I also think that its something guilds and players already have existing tools to police and handle on their own if Portalarium feels they want to stay out of it.

From the RP aspect, I used to do a lot with this type of stuff in UO and other guilds. We often had prisoners from each other locked up in houses, spying taking place... My favorite was I had this member that was a 7x build, including with stealth and hide. One time an opposing PvP guild was having a meeting in their tower and he stealthed in.. took out the guld leader, and hid... after a bit of searching they thought he left (no cheating to find him.. had to use in game skills only), but he hadn't.. he took two more down and got away with barely a scratch and some fun meeting notes. None of it had been planned but we had a very open relationship with that guild for this sort of thing. The guild involved gave me a lot of prop's for how skillfully such a mission had been pulled off and I had a lot of guilds trying to recruit my member after that as word got around.. it was some of the most skillful PvP assassin work I had ever seen and he was doing it against top notch PvP's, solo, among a group of 20+. That's why I want to have a shadow division in my guild.. I don't want to miss out on these aspects of the game, although I wish to have a "knightly" guild oim building a guild structure that allows for both.. Cake and eat it!

 

In a two (or three) faction game, spies are assumed for the most part. You don't tell everyone everything. For the most part, fake attacks need to be plausible. Only leaders and top guilds know where the bulk of the force is really hitting and they will still change their minds quickly.

It's a lot more interesting when there's some leeway to have guilds float across factions or to have temporary truces. We played a lot of "the enemy of my enemy" in lineage2. Temporary alliances and backstabbing were part of the fun. But due to this, we'd have spies hacking forums or lurking in ventrillo channels or trying to get alts in guilds, etc. because there was so much at stake. Everything from strategy for a siege day, plans for contested raiding, and tactics for the arena minigame (Olympiad) were very closely guarded. Even knowing where an every day XP groups was at a certain time mean you know what to bring to fight them.

It would be interesting to have a formal spying system in the game. e.g. perhaps to defend (or assault) a city, there were build tasks for siege equipment that went on all week. So someone could get into rival city x and note that a lot of trees were getting made into catapults (or whatever). And of course, they could be a fake or used a week later.

I'm sure a game like Eve has taken all of this to a much deeper level than we did in l2.

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So I think spies could have a role in a strategic conquest type game. But I have no idea how much of that type of element will make it into SotA, if any. If someone's just a cancerous personality and thinks it's fun to wreck a guild for no reason, then I have little tolerance for that sort of thing. Like someone who'dloot a guild warehouse or whatever.

 

easy answer - only tell the important stuff to the officers (people you trust) and kick anyone who is caught trying to sabotage your guild

there doesn't need to be any measures taken by the devs to punish guild sabotours, if the guild who succumbs to a sabotage is sloppy in its guild management then it its the fault of the guild leader and officers and it would definitely not be a guild I would want any part of. Strong structure of a guild prevents sabotage and as for spies well again the easy answer solves this aswell. If people in your guild threaten to leave if they arnt told everything then let them leave as people need to know that a guild thrives with ranks and each rank is only privy to a certain amount of information.

 

I'd have to go with Stile on this one. If there is OOC ill intent that's kinda hard to deal with. It usually doesn't appear the same as the usual griefing and it's something guilds really need to police themselves. You could report them but will logs show obvious activity that can be acted on?

Back in the UO days KoB almost always seem to have someone trying to infiltrate the guild.. one kid in particular held a grudge for years (probably still does for all I know) because he was denied membership prior to launch where he claims he was kicked out for no reason. (can't be kicked out if you were never in to begin with). Anyway this kid tried to sneak in.. steal and PK anyone in the guild at one time or other.

I've found that people with ill intent OOC usually can't behave themselves and ended being ousted due to improper behavior unfitting of the guild. No real harm was ever done because we watched how our members behaved and remained a fairly tight knit guild. A tradition I fully intend to continue with KoNB.

I guess the point is that it's something we have to manage ourselves and we should be given all the tools necessary to do so... but you know it's also not easy to bring a guild down if they have a good foundation in their membership. If the leadership is strong and doesn't give up.. the guild will likely survive anything that's thrown at them in-game.

I don't really expect anything special for dealing with matters like this.. perhaps an official policy of being able to report said offenders where this style of PvP is unwelcome but it really doesn't fall under traditional PvP rules.

In the case where guilds agree to this type of PvP hey sounds like fun.

For clarification.. as an RPer from an RP oriented NWN server.. PvP was used to describe any interaction between players that could potentially result in conflict.. verbal or physical.