Why the guild war system is Wrong for Role Play

It is an amazing and creative process. I could see the NBTT getting involved with this as it is basically acting, but its impromptu. The scene is set, but the story is yet to be written. I miss it so much

 

What I fear is something we are not seeing yet. I think that the rewards from the pvp/guild war leaderboards are what Chris thinks will be exploited. I hate leaderboards with a passion personally and think they have no place in a story based game, but thats just my opinion. Maybe he could make a separate guild flag for RP that does not give out the rewards.

 

Aye. I agree. To me, guild warfare can feel like I'm watching the Society for Creative Anacronism duking it out in my local park. Its cool and all. But its also somewhat combat for just combat's sake. No other strategic purpose. In SOTA episode one, its looking like we will lack some hard coded factional or similar driven strategic reason for PVP. Which means that it will be up to guilds to create and role play this somehow for themselves. It will be interesting to see how guilds make PVP guild warfare more interesting than a PVP flag.

 

My fear is that they won't. I know a few of the guilds will never flag because they have people who don't want to PvP and out of respect they will not force them into Open PvP against their will. That is something that an idea like this could alleviate.

 

Excellent!

So I believe I understand now. I've heard complaints about the guild warfare system and also hope that due to its early iterations and that it will be adjusted and improved--but you're absolutely right. If all the guild warfare system is... and even intends to be... is a way to tag your entire guild for open-world pvp as opposed to declaring war/joining a war vs a particular other guild, then yes, I agree, this would end up being a really bad system. It wouldn't be a guild warfare system; it would be a mass open pvp flagging system.

I'm thinking it should logically be something like this.

Still utilize the existing boolean (pvp flagged, not flagged) as the person's desire to participate in open pvp and leave that concept unchanged.

Make a new database object called "War" or something like that, which tracks particular guild wars. It would have fields such as War# (unique), War Name (if we wanna get fancy and allow people who declare wars to name the war, such as "The War of BrightBone Pass"), perhaps even a paragraph field called "War Description" which allows for warmongers to identify key aspects of the war such as locations, participants, rules of engagement etc etc. Also, another field via drop-down which allows multi-selection of what guilds you would like to declare war upon. Another dropdown is present for guilds you wish to rally to your side of the fight.

When the GM's of those guilds login, a window pops up "Guild A is attempting to declare war upon you (or requests your aid) in the "War of Brightbone Pass". Do you also wish to declare war? If so, you will be rallying support alongside all other guilds which have accepted to be an opponent. Also, GMs who login who were asked to fight along side the original warmonger would receive a similar message just worded differently to reflect they would fight alongside that original warmonger with all other guilds that accepted to be an ally of that original warmonger. There are no actual sides however... controlled by any mechanic, see below.

Each guild is then assigned that particular war#. Likely you would not be able to allow for a guild to be in multiple war#'s simultaneously since this could add unexpected combatants to your foray.

As players near each other, if their guild.war#= their guild.war#, they can also engage in combat.

You might notice this doesn't have a "side of the war" concept as described. I feel that if you're in the same war, regardless of your side, you should be subject to friendly fire, betrayal as well as the concept of a 3 army war. A more organized army will have less friendly fire. Decisions could be made to sacrifice some of your members when casting skills with blast radiuses etc for the sake of the war. All of which would be important to RP and if you're worried about abuse, you do not declare war with folks that do not abide by honorable warfare (though I think betrayal would be key to a lot of future fun and RP).

So... then it begs the question, how does this effect openworld pvp? How would it mix with this? I suspect there would be some major abuse or balancing concerns. Let's say you're in a guild war and hacking away but half your army is also flagged for open world... that means half your army is at risk of being attacked by people outside of the war. And to fend them off? You yourself would have to engage in open-world to fend them off and likely were already flagged by being grouped and supporting them (if tagging works like it does in other games).

One solution, is that when your guild declares war upon another guild or accepts entry into a war, your open world pvp flag begins to time out and cannot be regained until your guild war is over or perhaps your guild leader calls an armistice for the night (and can opt to "resume war / cancel war" at a later time.)

Alrighty -- not sure how I'm grasping all these concepts, but perhaps this idea would work, or they might need a lot of tweaking or perhaps they're not doable at all. I feel perhaps they do not want to abandon the simplicity of a simple boolean for flagged/not flagged and are trying their best to make it work for guild warfare. Hrrrmmmm, if so? Likely, it will be a difficult system to enjoy.

Other factors to consider, allowing duration selection or objective selections for the war which will cause an automatic ceasefire once completed.

Another factor could be each warring party could ante up a prize in a trade window type concept. The items or gold disappear until the end of the war. The winning party then receives the loot of the opposing side.

 

While my coffee is still being brewed, I am only able to skim over this with one eye open. Give me some time to digest what you have written here

 

Ok, *sips coffee*, this looks very well thought out. I can agree with much of what you have said here. I do not have the time right now to delve to deeply into it but I am sure some other people in this thread will find it worthy of discussion. Take care, I got to go to work for now.

 

A most interesting alternative to the current implementation of the guild war system. I can see how this would benefit the NBTT with regard to our plays. I have had to cut out a lot of the fight scenes from our in-game plays because of actors being attacked by PvPers crashing the event

 

It would be nice to have an alternative for RP battles only. Forcing all members to flag is somewhat unnecessary when you're only trying to hold a one-off event.

Though in UO Fel, ROE was still used and the RPers weren't trolled. They usually won the battles. There's one thing that is completely forgotten in all the arguments. If someone comes to troll RPers, the battle stops and it's RPers vs Trolls. RPers always have more numbers in these battles and usually win 95% of the time. Even with ROE and restrictions. Why? Teamwork.



For example, I wouldn't attack Shadowclan even I had equal numbers and were a pro-pvper. Don't let the gear and RP fool you, they're better trained. That was part of their RP experience as well as many other RP guilds. Being a finely tuned and prepared unit. Each person worked together and they had a common goal. They lived in Fel for their entire existence. People tried to troll them but it never worked out.

Hope to see them come back actually, they were a key group of individuals and a driving force for quality RP on Catskills.

 

This is a very interesting thread because the topic is a lot important. Since RolePlaying is essential here. No, it's THE game. At least for myself, in UO I started this way, and I continued this way. So I presume it's how I want to play in SotA.

RP PvP is fundamental. There must be specific rules and procedures that must protect this system and make it 100% working. I don't want trolls there, I don't want thiefs and I don't want "smart guys". I want real RP.

And I know this can be done, because it's in the soul of SotA to be this way. So, let's wait the mechanics are polished.