Splinter Topic: Slowing Down Different Types Of Guilds (Econ/Leveling)

Otr

Spif wrote: »

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the "selfish" sweaty groups. Do they all flock to the first L4 node? The congestion/contention for mobs to kill could be fierce. Another slowdown for the leaders.

Luckily they cannot siege their parent nodes.

PavlovDead

I feel that trying to curtail the progression of large groups through environmental, node based, or otherwise "PvE" style sinks is probably a fools game in the end. Large organized groups are always going to excel at a given task compared to small groups or individuals. You can only really stop that by keeping people from grouping up, or keeping them from organizing well, neither of which seems very palatable for a game like this.

A better way to provide a resource sink for these kinds of groups is to have them become sinks for each other. Castles have been brought up before, in that the most successful of these groups are likely to spend a lot of resources trying to one-up each other to claim them. There are only 5 castles in the game though, and that will only occupy a handful of guilds. Other objectives, like mayoral positions, freehold plots, town patron guild slots, non-instanced town housing, etc. provide other means that successful groups can attempt to out-compete each other and hopefully spend a lot of resources in the process.

In economics these things are called "positional goods". They are things for which there are only a certain amount, which are valuable primarily because they are in short supply and can be shown off as status symbols. Leaderboards and rankings are also positional goods, as are difficult-to-acquire pieces of gear or cosmetic items. Providing a large array of positional goods, each of varying levels of rarity, effort, and prestige required is a good way not only to tie up large guilds, but to provide engagement for players in general.

Apok

as long as a game is structured properly it shouldn't be an issue, an issue with strong guilds that does pop up is usually in pvp systems where they can take over an entire server. this was an issue in new world when it came out cause fast traveling was super expensive if you didn't have control of certain areas but also dirt cheap for those who do. guilds who also controlled areas would also get paid based on the taxes they bring in.

what this ended up doing was the top players would flock to create a mega guild so they didn't have competition and basically take over the server. top players could min/max their gear while everyone else struggled to barely get around.

AoC is kinda like this but their benefits aren't tied to the guild hall but the city itself which everyone will benefit from. what I'm worried about is the caravan system and top guilds from both sides working together to target any and all caravans that aren't part of their click. add in the fact that ESP hacks are being sold as a sub and constantly updated to bypass anti cheats. you're top players could easily be cheating (and in a lot of games there a lot of cheaters so it's gonna happen)

Azherae

Apok wrote: »

AoC is kinda like this but their benefits aren't tied to the guild hall but the city itself which everyone will benefit from. what I'm worried about is the caravan system and top guilds from both sides working together to target any and all caravans that aren't part of their click. add in the fact that ESP hacks are being sold as a sub and constantly updated to bypass anti cheats. you're top players could easily be cheating (and in a lot of games there a lot of cheaters so it's gonna happen)

I asked about this recently, and apparently their RMT policy covers things like 'paying people irl to defend or attack caravans'.

Intrepid expects to be able to detect and stop most ESP style hacks (and they don't tend to work as well in MMOs to begin with).

I'm curious about the first part though, I don't think we are sure about that?

Do you mean this?

Another thing we were talking about I remember early on with regards to guilds is not just that but also having a reputation score; and being able to allocate points to increase that reputation perhaps with a specific node that you may have your guild hall in; and that reputation will interact with the way that NPCs interact with you. It might interact with the way that quests are given in that particular node or merchant services that are present.[15] – Steven Sharif

Cause I don't perceive that as an indicator of the city itself getting the benefit from the megaguild, it's more of a relationship where the City 'ends up making things easier for the Guild that has the Guild Hall', which is basically the opposite, to me, in the context of this discussion.