Guilds - any further details yet?

I'm not sure how you got what I said as there being an issue with small guilds. I said to let people create guilds as they see fit. That includes making small guilds.

 

Yes, I wanted to draw attention to the fact that nothing much has been said about how guilds in general might work in the game, and that according to the schedule we should start seeing some guild functionality in just a few weeks' time.

We can discuss the merits of whatever systems are proposed after the devs have proposed them... but until they do, we're left in the dark. I'd like someone at Portalarium to light a torch and let us see what their current thoughts are.

 

If all guilds regardless of members or anything else, have an up-front cost and a weekly fee. With each added guild feature having an added up-front cost and weekly fee.
If the fee is not paid the guild goes in escrow for 1month, costing a hefty fee to revive, after which the guild is deleted.

Then the problems mentioned above will go away over time.

 

ok, really what is the problem with small guilds? There is no global chat spamming for guild invites. you can ignore people who constantly message you if you want to join. People should be able to make guilds if they want to... period. How does this harm anyone. You can say, omg there are so many guilds, but really, how does this affect you? In my opinion, besides guild wars and guild tabords and other trivial things, guilds should not get any bonus that any one player can get. Your "bonus" will be having a group of people that you can do events with, socialize with, and role play with. There should be no guild perks per say in my opinion unless they are offered by the gm at the guilds own expense.

 

I think of a guild as a team. You can have a guild or team with 2 or more people, but not really with 1. Just in common parlance.

 

I would be quite ok with 1 member guilds (especially if people can see whether you are in guild or not). It stops some people from attacking, because they focus on solo players rather than guilds. It stops many others from bothering you with invites. If there is any special content for guilds it should not be denied to lone-wolves, especially if they opt-out to cooperate, even if it is ad hoc cooperation. And lastly guild is not just a team, but a business, and you can own business alone and be only person there. Besides it is easier to recruit people if you can already establish your guild. And lastly people can always buy alt account to be able to create guild, though I think it is rather expensive and pointless...

 

My biggest question is, what defines a guild? In WOW a guild had only one purpose: playing together for raids. In SotA a guild can have different purposes which you want support, be it a being a leading member of a town, being a member in an organisation like 4B or just a pvp guild. So which benifits do we gain being in a guild? In WOW it was a additional bank acc so I made a one person guild to have more storage.
I want to stay part of 4B with possibilities to organize things ingame and I also want to be part of town, then there is a chaos organisation and perhaps a fourth guild for adventures. I'm not sure if I can handle that all but at least I want to be able to try it out. When there is a guild which says you can only be member of us and no other guilds, than it is so but I can't join. That shouldn't bother me and they should not bother that I'm active in more guilds/organisations.

I only can support the OP that we need more informations to give feedback and discuss our needs.

 

That reason alone validates 1 person guilds for me.

 

I don't think people are really getting were I'm coming from and are turning this into an issue of trying to eliminate what other people want to do. It's precisely the opposite - it's about creating better mechanics that REALLY support what people want.

My question to this would be, are we sure that the friend system doesn't provide enough support for this? As we see in other apps, you can even have different circles. Why do we need something called a "guild" to establish a group of people that we can do events with, socialize with, and role play with? If there is no benefit to having a guild then what is the purpose for someone to create one? And that's an important question. I know this is an old school idea of a guild, but is that all we want to import into this game which is trying to be innovative in the way you decide how to play with others?

Licemeat's case is a good example. If I create a guild to prevent invites, that's a use of the mechanic for which it's not intended. Why not have a flag for those not in guilds saying open or not open if they don't want invites. It's also better for those looking for guild members. That's a better mechanic and a cleaner design.

If people are worried about 1 person guilds being necessary for start-up there's other ways to handle this as well to do what people WANT to do rather than just jerry rigging the mechanics to get where you want to go.

As Sindariya pointed out - guilds had a unique purpose in WoW: to go on raids. What's the purpose of a guild here? Shouldn't we really think through this before we just import some simple tired ideas of guild mechanics from other games?

Remember people, this is actually about SUPPORTING the way people want to play BETTER than other games. I don't like the discussion being painted into an argument about limiting people's play styles and their seemingly inalienable right to have a one person guild. It must be the part of the Constitution I never memorized.

Can we start to think more deeply about this and maybe offer some real suggestions to the devs as they design the friend system, guild system, selective multiplayer system, etc? Suggestions that really have a purpose as to what guilds should be in SotA and the mechanics that can support them?

 

A friend system would include friends. A guild system would include others that have a common goal. I've been in guilds before in which I didn't know or care to know half the people. I don't know what kind of perks a guild should have but they should all be internal. ie. crafters giving discounts to other guild members. A guild is just a guild. If it needs to be something more then it should be managed correctly and the greatness will come naturally. It doesn't matter if it is intended for raids or to corner the market in cotton.

Yes. That needs to be addressed. Perhaps a ignore invite flag.

lol.

 

These are the questions to consider. A friend system might be a better system, however, if all you wanted to do is to quest with others. Since the friend system will be tied into who you will see and instancing, that to me seems like a more logical choice than a guild. Plus, if you could have "circles", even better. Friends could offer crafting discounts or whatever to each other. Plus in our day, a friend can be anything from a mere acquaintance to a true best friend. Therefore, you don't really have to know someone well to "friend" them.

A guild to me would be some association that has a deliberate in-game, world-related purpose. Crafting/Role Play/Professions/Exploring/Pk anti-pk, the roles are endless. I think the beauty of the friend system is it takes the pressure off guilds so that they can be something better, not just the base mechanic for people connecting with each other. To me this would make guilds much more like PoT's: less common, but very tied into the world in some unique way. If people worry about losing some aspect of functionality that guilds offer in an old-school idea of a guild, then enhance the friend system or something else. If people have the freedom to associate with the friend system, and then have guilds on top of that representing a more significant level of tie in to the world, much like guilds used to be in real, then I think we'd have a win-win.

 

List of features in a so called 'guild' system (this is off the top of my head - if you'd give me enough time I could list a hundred more , please note that I know that most of these are unrealistic for E1 etc):

• Income
• Fee to join
• Membership fee per time unit ( gold per day/week/month/year)
• Tax on gold loot
• Tax on vendor sales
• Ingame 'physical' Gift box for donations to guild
• Membership
• Join
• Leave
• Kick
• Expire (no activity within X days)
• Exclude (not paid membership fees)
• Levels and Ranks
• Give the Levels and Ranks custom titles
• Give feature access to Levels and Ranks (see below)
• Set specifc positions as time limimited (ie position opens up every 6 weeks)
• Set lot/house/room permissions for guild members
• tie permissions to Levels and Rank (ie AssinineAssassins>BlackBelts)
• Owning common property
• Having different levels of rights towards said property (Levels and Ranks)
• Having common consumables (tied to Levels and Ranks)
• Opening a Guild bank account (for a big gold cost)
• set levels of rights towards bank account (Levels and Ranks)
• Voting process
• Being able to vote for specific positions (Levels and Ranks)
• Being able to vote between custom choices (just plain text)
• Being able to have a "vote of no confidence" stripping someone of position & privilege but retains membership
• Points, with custom name
• customizable points system
• Points levels custom names
• Members recieve a point to hand out per time unit
• Specific Ranks can hand out points
• >points tied to Levels and Ranks
• Top lists
• Net worth
• Kills
• Specific kills by creature type
• Deaths
• Player kills
• Duels won
• Duels lost
• Rewards
• Wanted posters
• kill player id# get x gold
• Skill lists, auto-updating
• search on crafting skill within guild
• search on magic skill within guild
• search on combat skill within guild
• Event calendar
• Add event
• Edit event
• Delete event
• Global time zones
• Donations for specific cause
• Add cause
• Delete cause
• Cause reached
• Crafting
• change maker id to guild instead of individual
• guild badge (wearable item to see membership)
• guild uniform (tied to design below)
• Designs
• crest/sigil/logo
• pattern for textiles
• guild clothes
• Guild magic (cost gold from individual who uses it)
• find member
• find guild property

I better stop now, no one is going to read all of that.

 

Oh, cr*p the formatting disappeared - I have to fix that later (can't with the device I'm using right now)

 

I suppose it depends on what benefits a Guild can have, but for many it may be part of their identity. Take the Bear Tavern, for example; they are running a business (and now a town, but thats above and beyond). As a guild, they take on the identity of that tavern.

By the same token, I might start a guild with only myself in it, so I can run my shop. I can have the benefits of being in a guild, but I have to pay all of the out of pocket expenses. Why can't I do that? And if I grow enough to hire on more workers, its easy to add them to the guild and everything just works.

Are guilds always going to identify as a business; no, of course not. But they are an organization that gains certain benefits at certain costs; they may not sell a product or service, but otherwise I don't see a distinction.

tldr; Solo guilds as an LLC

 

That's exactly what I'm getting at, establishing the purposes that people attach to the world "guild" and figuring out the best mechanic to accomplish it. There is no clue as to what the benefits of being in a guild are so it's hard to discuss how people would use guilds to achieve certain benefits. The idea of creating businesses is a good one. But I would argue that maybe there's a better way for a person who wants to start a business to have a business and not pin that functionality onto a concept of a "guild". If we pin all sorts of different purposes onto the concept of a guild you're going to end up with a kludge of a mechanic.

 

You had me at hello

 

Possibly, but it still boils down to what the benefit of the *guild* structure is and what the benefit of a *business* is. If its advantageous to have both, then it likely business owners will do both; if they can just use the guild structure to do everything that a business can do, then why separate them? I just can't see a mechanic for creating a business that will not overlap (partially or in full) with a guild, or will not still provide benefits for those that choose to be both.

 

Yes, but you my dear Duke are easy...

 

This is exactly the type of discussion I think needs to be had: What are the benefits of a guild? What is the reason someone might want to set up a business? What would the benefits of having a business be? What business concepts should be part of SotA? Certainly things like limited liability don't need to be applied as there is no debt (unless people role-play it), but that would be a decision that would have to be made if we want to understand that people will create "businesses" in SotA.

Overlap is certainly possible but that does not mean it has to be one monolithic mechanic - maybe there could even be types of "guilds". Certainly things may be limited by scope toward being simplistic, but it doesn't mean that as analysis of the purposes of all the ways people might want to use guilds shouldn't be done.

 

There definitely needs to be an option you can check to 'automatically ignore guild invites'. If you want to join someone's guild after talking with them about it then you can uncheck the box, but otherwise it prevents those annoying pop-ups from rude people who can't be bothered to say a word before inviting strangers. ("Adolff has invited you to join his guild 'The Third Reich' - accept/decline?" No, random ArcheAge guy, you can **** off and stop bothering people who are just standing around minding their own business!)

Exactly, and that's why we need to know what the devs are thinking about with regard to how they see guilds working in this game. Depending on what the benefits are (if any), then it may or may not be feasible to consider one-person 'guilds' as a Thing. Other options might also be considered. After all, as Vyrin pointed out, we should try not to get stuck on the idea that what constitutes 'a guild' in other games is what has to constitute 'a guild' in this game. There's no reason SotA can't redefine the concept of guilds and put a new spin on it.

Spoon has mentioned many good ideas in this thread, but I particularly like this one:

I think the idea of having different types of organisation, perhaps with varying levels of benefits that may or may not need to be purchased, is something that is definitely worthy of more consideration and I hope the devs take that one on board and give it some thought!