Non-consensual PVP Now Possible

From the release 25 notes:

To declare war on another guild you must be leader of your guild. Right click on the Avatar or nameplate of the leader of the guild you wish to declare war on and select the “Challenge to a Guild War” option from the dropdown menu.

A Guild War Challenge menu will appear, allowing you to set the duration of the war, from one to ten days (earth time). After you hit the Challenge button the other guild leader will receive a notification and the option to accept or decline.

Once two guilds enter a state of war, all members of both guilds will be set to open PvP for the duration of the war.

This is clearly a bug, because it allows a guild member to be flagged PVP by another person without consent.
It will cause many guilds with PVE-only members to avoid Guild war.

However, this situation can easily be corrected by only flagging for PVP those members who have opted in to guild war participation.

Current work-around for PVE-only players: temporarily leave your guild. It's the only way to be sure.

 

I read that a few days ago and assumed it was not really meant to sound like you made yourself open to pvp by anyone and everyone. But then I remembered that they started that goofy pvp system where people that are not flagged for pvp can just decide to gank someone that is flagged on a whim.

So yeah, this would be a continuation of that horrible design decision. However, it's not really non-consensual because the guild leader is clicking to accept the state of war. So if you don't like it you can leave the guild and not play in those reindeer games.

 

That assumes that guild resignation is not blocked for the duration of conflict in a misguided attempt to thwart "exploits".
Best to resign preemptively. Like I have. Because the guild system is now broken.

 

True.

It will be interesting to hear what the reasoning behind this design is. Some other people have brought this same thing up in multiple threads and share your concerns.

 

@Womby @Baron Drocis Fondorlatos By design. This has become a feedback thread so I shall move it to the appropriate forum so it doesn't languish in bugs.

 

I am not really interested in open PvP (although i have an open PvP PoT), but i think this is the correct design.
The leaders of both guilds decide if their guilds are going to war.
Hey, they are the leaders!
When you dont trust your leader with his decisions than you are clearly in the wrong guild.

 

Cultural difference? Where I come from we don't blindly follow our leaders. In fact we have a history of deposing them if they don't shape up. We question everything. Your mileage may differ.

 

speaking of which, we should really depose what we have now.

 

That would be a pretty sad guild war if the "leader" declares war but then no one wants to flag themselves.

I quit a guild in Meridian 59 way back when because they went to war and I wanted nothing to do with it.

 

Nobody forces you to be in a guild. You choose your guild.
For our guild i will held a vote if and how long we declaire a guild war.
The details of the vote will be defined in the guild charter.
Guild wars are pointless if everyone can decide for themselves whether he participates or not.

 

I would have preferred that we finally get some politics going... sadly the war system is disappointing and the game begins to stall again for a part of the community.
IMHO they shouldn't have made it like that: Every guild can declare war on every guild they want, but there needs to be a high cost for it. If the other guild leader doesnt want to fight, they need to pay a tribute and a truce is being set after the war.

The current system just creates boredom, once the few guilds willing to fight are gone. Sota will become Trammel 2.0, with exploiting, blue pk etc.as only form of player interaction, besides grouping up for pve content.
There is no real incentive for guild politics except if you roleplay it and imagine all the stuff happening, rather than have it right here in a virtual world.
I appreciate roleplaying, but it becomes a joke with systems like that.

 

I can imagine how crafters and supporters of a guild could be attacked by members of the enemy guild as part of the warfare. Then make the guild duty to protect them. Every player can decide if they flag themselves as Open PVP, and it seems logical that the Guild as a whole should decide if they engage in Open PVP. Flagging only the warriors seems too convenient.

What i find more intriguing (and more dangerous) is that, as i understand "all members of both guilds will be flagged as open PVP" means that being at war with other guild make me vulnerable to the rest of the world :? What's the difference between just flagging ourselves and flag via this method? A ranking or something like that? Meh.

Guild wars should allow rival guilds to fight against each other, not to make them vulnerable against everybody else (even more if we take in consideration that anyone can attack an open pvp flagged player now). Could crafters flee or defend themselves in the event of an enemy guild raiding the town? Sounds like a commitment. Expose themselves to be killed by every single one of their customers? Lol nope.

 

agreed

 

I agree also.

 

It makes sense. For this to work, guild masters will have to be straight forward with their members that it is a PvP-oriented guild and war against another guild is a realistic option.
That way there will be PvP-guilds full of members who like that and will have lots of fun doing it - whereas people like me who do not like that will stick to PvE-oriented guilds and watch the show whenever we happen to come across a battlefield.
The guild master of a PvE-oriented guild can of course also accept war, but they will loose their members faster than they can say "Whopps!".

To avoid PvE-guilds being spammed by declarations of war, maybe a cooldown of that declaration might be useful? Or a setting for the PvE-guildmaster to auto-decline such declarations? On a third thought: Maybe the guild master should be able to flag their guild as "PvP" or "PvE" (or another label that fits better into the lore), making it impossible for a PvE-guild to accept declarations of war? Another thought: As many wars in the history were more or less officially declared but never officially accepted, maybe there might be a "Hardcore PvP" label for a guild that makes it impossible for them to not accept a declaration?
That way everyone could flock to the guild that is labelled right for their own playstyle. We'd all have fun playing the game as we see fit, leaving the others to their own interpretation.

Just my 6 cents.

Yours,
Gridian

 

I will watch developments and folks' opinions concerning Guild Warfare closely, even though I hope never to participate in a Guild War. I am thrilled with the new dyes. Dyes interest me and Guild Warfare does not. But IMHO the current rules for Guild Warfare need much more work. I don't care what other development features need to be put on hold to solve this. The point that worries me is that PvP should be consensual for the individual person. Period.

Portalarium needs to start Guild Warfare mechanics correctly from the get-go and a guild leader being able to flag another person's characters as Open-PvP is not correct. This could be an image-breaker for newly interested players and alienate existing players. A well-implemented Guild Warfare possibility would add to the appeal of SotA and help keep New Britannia populated, which I, as a multiplayer, really desire.

 

Well there is another option: gather enough resources to form your own guild and make yourself the leader of it. Not bothering with guilds at all seems to be the more sensible option at this point though.

I don't think there should be a fee for not wanting to participate in PvP.

 

SPO, here i be SPO for me

 

I suspect if this isn't resolved we may start to see guild members who are not recognised as guild members by the game, but who are guild members outside the game - having private guild forum access and guild TeamSpeak access, but being excluded from guild chat in game. The result could be a gradual move away from guild chat towards an out of game alternative, and the emergence of out of game guilds that bypass the game's guild system entirely.

Still, that's a long term worst case scenario, and I don't think Portalarium wants that.

 

Honestly, I don't see this as a problem. Although, if it is not in the game (I haven't tested this feature at all), it would be good if the first time you logged in after your guild declared war on someone else, a pop-up would tell you that you are now flagged for PvP and who you are at war with.

Bottom line, though, I know that my guild leader would never make that kind of decision without consulting all of us first. If I had any concerns about the leadership of a guild I was in, well.. I wouldn't be in that guild anymore.