Assassin's Guild? Cool Possibility?

Bardtic

I know this is kind of taking from Skyrim, but an Assassins guild would be a super cool idea. I know they don't want to encourage griefing, but a guild that gives high rewards for killing super high end targets would be amazing. Imagine being given a reward for tracking down and assassinating the mayor of some Metro.

It would have to be structured in a way where you are penalized for killing PCs other than the target and maybe another penalty if you don't make it back alive. It would also probably take some kind of dedicated team on the backend to determine the targets. It would put a disadvantage to being the mayor of something. You get a lot of advantages, including a flying mount with destructive abilities, but have to ride with a guard or risk being hunted down by assassins.

Kilroko

It could be a counter-effort system to combat bounty hunters that are targeting corrupted players.

This could potentially provide a dichotomy between the "good vs evil" mindset of players, so being corrupted isn't just something that entirely outcasts you, but could be something that draws you to other players of a more devious mindset, to band together and seek the heads of those that would oppose your sins.
This would potentially require a heavier penalty though for being corrupted, so that people who grief just to grief would have a very difficult life in-game.

An alternate idea to support an assassin system would be for players to target NPCs for assassination. If spotted by another NPC, they could flee to alert the authorities, causing an assassination to quickly get out of hand and notoriety/NPC controlled bounties to be applied to the assassin. You could generate NPCs specifically for assassination missions that will occasionally do something that puts them in a secluded area, prime for assassination, with multiple chance occurrences during this vulnerability period that could make things go wrong if not reacted to accordingly.

This could also tie into the bounty hunter system and give them an alternate/more frequent path of progression outside of waiting for corrupted players to be near them.

ariatras

Honestly, I love having guilds in games. NPC run ones. Like a Thieves Guild, Fighter's Guild, Assassin as you said.

I especially like not being able to join all of them.

Noaani

I could see a group of bounty hunter bounty hunters being interesting.

If it were done, it would have to be written in a way where the organization is having an identity crisis - the very thing that it is doing is forcing it to become the thing that it is fighting.

I could see some opportunities for comedic gold with that.