Guilds - any further details yet?

Help me understand why a small group of friends should be excluded from forming a guild?

 

No need to assume it's about exclusion. It's not about exclusion. It's about creating mechanics that support what people are trying to do. My question is why wouldn't the friend mechanic support what you are trying to do? Why would you need a guild in addition if all you're trying to do is connect with one another to play together? Maybe a group of people who want to play together want to not just connect but establish themselves for a purpose in things that only guilds can do, then they go on to creating a guild.

I think the question has to be asked what is the purpose of a guild? People have a lot of different reasons for creating a guild. Sometimes guilds are not the best way for people to do what they want to do but they're used as a default because that's the standard way to group. This is precisely what I hope they think about as they finish the design.

 

The answer is really simple. It is because as a player 'I decide' that I want a guild, it shouldn't matter if it has 3 or 300 members.

In terms of the purpose of the guild, once again that is up to a player and those who join. Game mechanics shouldn't be put in place to prevent a small number of players forming whatever they want to form. If you did have a minimum, what happens if the players numbers drop below that....the guild disbands?

Some of the best and most efficient PvP/PK guilds on UO were only made up of a handful of players, as a guild they would war other guilds (some much much larger). Why should a small group of players be excluded from mechanics such as wars with other guilds?

There is absolutely no reason why there needs to be a minimum number of players to form a guild, if you want to go down that road why not go so far to say that a guild isn't even flagged as a guild until there are enough players logged on to call it such. In other words if the minimum to form a guild is 5 and you have 50 members with only 4 logged on....then your not a guild at that moment in time.

Once again there is absolutely no reason to take a decision of guild forming out of players hands by imposing a minimum number.

 

As I stated upthread I think there should be a difference to guilds.
I also think that the features of a guild should cost ingame gold.
Think of it as guild levels. A basic one would only cost gold to start but only a small fee to run. While a very complex one with lots of features would cost plenty of gold just to keep going.
That way when @Vyrin is looking through the list he can filter it to only top tier. While the small group of friends who want to have a "guild" could.

Then different types of guilds could be set up with a set of features and a cost, this so that there will be a difference between
Adventuring party
Trades guild
Town guild
social clubs
Charters
Companies
etc

Everyone happy?

 

I think it would be a mistake to not enable multi-guilding.

I appreciate the sentiment that goes "one guild, my guild." I used to think that way.

However, after 20 years of online gaming, I think that is starting to become an older school idea. Online gaming is as much social medium as it is gaming essence. A guild is not merely an adventuring band. It is a social group. In life, we belong to multiple groups like fraternities, a gaming squad, a social club, a church, a work place, a community, a family, and more. Do we want to pick just one of those? No. That makes no sense. So why do that online?

This leads one to ask, what is the truly compelling reason that we force everyone to play in a single guild now? I think that reason largely has been that is how games have been designed. . But a guild leader also fears that allowing guild members to multi-guild would lead them to not participate in his or her guild, causing it to lack members, threatening the group's critical mass, energy, and ability to have fun. But we may have that latter piece backwards. Why not enable a system that allows one to be part of a player crafting town in one guild, an adventuring band in another, part of a sect of virtue worshippers in another, and pub crawlers in another? Could that enable better social interaction, guild participation, and gaming fun online by better allowing everyone to find and engage in niche interests and participating in them as a full community, vs. as individual little guilds trying to be the end-all be-all for a small group of members.

SOTA is shaping up to be the perfect MMO to enable different types of social interaction (player towns, adventuring, crafting, shop running, gaming, and more.). Multi-guilding may be a key tool to enabling interaction in those in a way that promotes true community-wide interaction, not just interaction within a single guild.

 

I am impressed at the good discussion that this thread has generated. I have my opinions on how I would like things to work, but I'm not sure if I could state it better than Spoon and Lord Beaumaris already have.

I like how this could play out. I like the idea of guilds purchasing functionality. Crafting guilds don't have to buy into PvP challenge options. RP guild set up their own internal dynamics and don't need game mechanic enforced guild taxes. Whatever.

Well, Lord Beaumaris has stated it perfectly for me. I have no problem with our members being in multiple guilds. I would hope they call us their main guild, home guild, whatever you will, but I also understand that we cannot provide all things to all people at all times. There are fabulous RP guilds out there, but what about those who like to RP "sometimes". There is an awesome tavern guild out there who will undoubtedly be a blast to hang out with on a slow evening, but not everyone wants to be a bartender. And the same goes for crafting, fighting, mercenary, PvP, PK or any other guild style. I understand why a small dedicated group would want to stay exclusive. Great. I fully support that and would think it absolutely idiotic to demand that every player join multiple guilds. But, I also understand that multi-guilding offers more choices and more freedom.

I expect Dragon's Flame will have a core group that doesn't ever go elsewhere for their in-game guild needs. We also already have fantastic members who will be involved with other guilds to various degrees, but consider our little family home. We have friends who are members of other guilds who are interested in some of the things we have to offer and hope to join us as secondary members, or whatever term gets finalized. And finally I would hope that we will eventually get some tertiary members who consider themselves to be part of our guild for special occasions. Far from detracting from the purity of our group, this has added depth, realism and flavor.

But, to get back to Karrolanth's OP, I for one am anxious to hear more information on what the guild mechanics will be like in game. I hope what has been said in this thread can be implemented to some extent. Surely the sooner we have "official" word, the sooner we can support or argue the merits of the system. In any event I look forward to seeing what the future holds.

 

Guilds would be a great topic for a deep-dive or a dev Hangout...

 

One problem I'd like to bring up that I saw when there was a minimum of people needed to start a guild in WoW. I would see people standing in the middle of town offering others gold to sign their guild charter. People would create and delete characters just to sign it for the gold. Once the guild was created everyone would just get kicked. It was an ugly process that could have just been avoided by letting people create guilds as they see fit. Maybe the limiting factor could just be gold. Make it cost so that the price would be steep for one person but pretty cheap if 10 people kicked in.

 

Why is there an issue with small guilds anyway?

 

Guild should be as small as 2 people, if players want guilds that small. Why does anyone else even care, really?

 

Agree 100%

EDIT:

You can even argue that a guild can be as small as 1 person. If that is what they want, where is the problem.

 

To play devil's advocate then this is saying that guilds really have no purpose. What is the purpose of having a one person guild? If things have no real game play purpose then they're just going to clutter things up or take needless dev time. Common sense has to play a role at some point. This is a game not a forum for civil liberty.

 

I kind of work of the basis that it becomes straight forward if 1 person can create a guild (ie they become the GM) and other then join it if they choose to. In a sense it would be a little like me deciding to start a new political party, I can create it, register it.....if people join then it is up to them. Once again, where is it anyone's place to judge whether someone who has a guild of say 4 people has a purpose in the game or not.

 

Until we know what the mechanics are for guild, there's really nothing definitive as to say what should be the case. I think we just have to table it to see what the in-game (and not role play) benefits are for forming a guild. That will drive a lot of it.

 

I don't really call a small group of people acting under a guild name as 'clutter'. In addition, one thing that would take 'needless dev time', is creating 'needless' rules of who can and cant form a guild and game mechanics to only allow the creation of guilds under certain conditions.

 

Ummm what is the purpose of the devs time? To satisfy there customers desires, which is the purpose of all companies even if some seem to forget that. If that's the way people want to play then that's what will make the devs money by selling there product and considering Duke Invidia (Envy) is a Duke and has therefore paid a significant amount of money upfront if that's the way s/he wants to play then its in the devs best interests to provide that especially as it requires no extra effort to expand the system. In fact it would actually take more effort to limit the system by coding in limits

 

Rules are generally pretty darn simple to code. What's harder to manage are issues of spam and wanton creation and neglect of various in-game items whether they be houses, or dropped things, or guilds or such. That takes a lot of time to think through. Another flaw in a one-person guild is that they should just bake the attractive functionality of a one-player guild into a character. There's no point in that case of having a "character" and a "guild". It's just not common sense. Let's table this until we see what the functionality of a guild actually is. It may be so marginal that I wouldn't care about a passionate civil liberty freedom for all campaign for one person guilds...

 

Yes, but not in an absolute sense. When has a game satisfied all customer desires? They have to manage satisfying enough people with enough of their wants to have a going venture. Their time is a limited quantity, and people's desires are endless.

 

What is this supposed to mean? I made no investment in the game? I have a competing interest that I don't want guild spam and I want mechanics to have a real gameplay purpose.

At this point, the OP was asking for further details and I think that's where it has to be left. I will bow out for now, enjoy!

 

what it means is it costs you nothing for others to play how they want but again (the same as the PVP must be mandatory crowd) your asking to destroy someone else's playstyle