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What are interesting types of immersive guild themes you can think of?

ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
edited September 2018 in Ashes of Creation Design
The point to a Sandbox is creativity. I feel the devs are pretty well in tune that immersion and connection to the world is important for staying power. I imagine that's why there's an early book planned, right?

@Simurgh 's most recent ashes cast, they discussed solo vs community play and touched on guilds with a focus. The types were referenced were Mercenary guilds, ones where people band together to do the bare minimum to gain group, guild or alliance based benefits and one mentioned naval based combat guild (Maybe a Pirate guild?).

In the effort to stir creativity of design, what cool features could the guild system implement to benefit parts of the sandbox which most wouldn't readily think will make a niche? What are game mechanics people will form a guild around, or a concept or theme.

The more I thought on it the more I realized I've seen some common types of guilds over, and over and over.

While I do encourage roleplay to the max, I'm not making it exclusive to roleplay. I've known an entire guild in WoW who formed only to entertain one another while doing that silly farming minigame from Mists.

Chill production guilds. Usually in Sandbox games Farmer and Production guilds definitely form. That's the one I feel like the devs are most aware of in the effort to move forward with the whole... Play how you want sandbox their going for. Which I love, don't get me wrong! But why stop at simple at this point.

Hunting Guilds. With how they've discussed their hopes for wildlife to kinda do their own thing. Could hunting creatures for rare hides be a thing? Guilds who are... Monster hunters, for lack of a better word. Sure, that's the overarching class fantasy, but the guild would be specific to rare materials only a leatherwork could harvest. Stuff like that.

Guards, Knights or Law based guilds. With these types of games, when PvP is pushed there's usually at least one guild on every server who tries to be the white knight to stop griefers. Perhaps give benefits of a very narrow way to specialize your guild to maximize gains for defeating corrupted players. That way, mechanically speaking, you are literally saving average players from disruptive players and reward them for specializing in this way. By one simple trait line to the guild system.

Labor Guilds. I won't really go into detail, there could be a guild for every profession, every resource, and every crafting type. If you're hard into mining, you could have a guild form around a specific mine to have safety while harvesting that resource. Maybe let guilds choose very fine control over major benefits. Instead of giving "Your guild gains 10% more resources" split it. "You gain 15% more resource from iron deposits." Perhaps letting their upgrades take the singular focus further. Nevermind the safety in numbers effect that will form from the open PvP. Perhaps though, you could go the opposite as well, and allow say... 5 points to spend in production materials, but you can rank one material multiple times. So you have 3 Iron, 2 Copper, 1 Silver ... Because you have an Alchemist that loves silver, or something. Or your guild could earn enough points to have 1 rank in each base level if they really strive to be a open ended gathering guild.

What other themes, activities or ideas would do you recognize most common? Are there some we could try to tune a trait to help prevent if they are negative in gameplay? The goal is to facilitate community. Giving granular control over guild design would allow for simple changes to achieve a much needed variety in the guild space.

Comments

  • Corruption/Outlaw guild. Kinda the bad guys of the MMO genre, who's always up to no good.
  • Hey! Checking out the post you mentioned to me! 

    I like the subject! I think there are a lot of typical guild's we will see but to find a guild of "cultists" around religious nodes would be pretty interesting. Anything game immersive and relative to the Ashes universe would be pretty interesting.
  • I totally agree, it would be great if we couldn't only join a guild, but also somehow have unique profits out of it, like unique guild/order-based skills, passives, while of course gaining ranks, badgets and their respective armor, weapon pieces, which might be just cosmetic or not.

    Here are my thoughts and ideas:
    I am actually fine with everything, as long as they make sense, therefore regardless what they're called, they should be religion-/culture-/god or goddess-based, that are either evil (as said by Simurgh before: "Cultism"), good, neutral, mysterious, secret etc. So by that we kinda already have a guild for each race, with hopefully sub-guilds (rebels, activists etc.) and class-guilds (Mage-, Mercenary-, Treehugger Bards etc. lol)

    But to be honest, I would also enjoy more "common" guilds, focusing on the social, economical aspects of the game, like Blacksmithing, Hunting, Farming, Cooking, Medic, Caravan guards, Trade etc. which you shouldn't merge with the profession systems, but maybe just enhance it (unique profits as I said earlier). Like, you might be able to learn all life skills, but through this, you can become an "expert" of one of those, which would greatly improve the individualistic ideas, therefore also the immersive power.

    All in all, I also think, they should be very strict with it, so you can only choose one guild or 1 Main guild (race, religion, class,...) and 1 Sub guild (profession, miscellaneous).

    With only basics like that, we can start to name it ♪♫


  • Symphonia said:


    All in all, I also think, they should be very strict with it, so you can only choose one guild or 1 Main guild (race, religion, class,...) and 1 Sub guild (profession, miscellaneous).


    You touch on a great point here. Just reading up on the Wiki ( https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Guilds ), it seems there will be a 1 Guild limit. Which I'm okay with.

    I like the idea of subguilds, but multi-guild chats became such a mess in the games they were in. I didn't like feeling forced to join multiple types of guilds just to accomplish some tasks, like using an Auction House in ESO. I'll give you that it added some life having guilds be able to own auctioneers, and made for interesting economy, but it felt mandatory that everyone have a Auctioneer guild to sell their things. Though I don't think that will be a concern here with how they've talked about keeping trading to be with player interaction rather than just post a thing an walk off (Unless you're in a Merchantile city).

    Simurgh said:
    Hey! Checking out the post you mentioned to me! 

    I like the subject! I think there are a lot of typical guild's we will see but to find a guild of "cultists" around religious nodes would be pretty interesting. Anything game immersive and relative to the Ashes universe would be pretty interesting.
    Cultists would be very interesting!
    Symphonia said:

    Here are my thoughts and ideas:
    I am actually fine with everything, as long as they make sense, therefore regardless what they're called, they should be religion-/culture-/god or goddess-based, that are either evil (as said by Simurgh before: "Cultism"), good, neutral, mysterious, secret etc. So by that we kinda already have a guild for each race, with hopefully sub-guilds (rebels, activists etc.) and class-guilds (Mage-, Mercenary-, Treehugger Bards etc. lol)


    That would be very cool if a Religious city could choose dark themes. I imagine this will be related to how they approach religions, I noticed the Wiki mentioned Religions will have their own ranks. So I imagine Cultists forming under dark, neutral, or unlawful gods which would reflect in their temples, and city aesthetic. But I might be too ambitious.

    Perhaps Cultist guilds get the opposite of what I listed above. They're rewarded for... Maybe more subtle methods of gaining rewards. Maybe instead of passive rewards they have more active ones "Defeat players worshiping X god to feed the essence of your god. Guild buff to production!" Making the Node system play into how and where your guild was founded.

    I'm sure as many other guilds are plan, many people are going to band together to form an idea to use their following to control a node, city, region, ect and the integration of successful control mechanics are what I'm really interested in.

    I've seen some crazy RP guilds come together and make some wild seemingly meaningless ideas becoming meaningful to reward gameplay.
  • Undead guild. that is all


  • nagash said:
    Undead guild. that is all


    Sign up now, entry cost is your soul and ETERNAL SERVITUDE....sorry not buying
  • nagash said:
    Undead guild. that is all


    Sign up now, entry cost is your soul and ETERNAL SERVITUDE....sorry not buying
    But I have ghosts. wowowow 
  • nagash said:
    nagash said:
    Undead guild. that is all


    Sign up now, entry cost is your soul and ETERNAL SERVITUDE....sorry not buying
    But I have ghosts. wowowow 

    Smells very... Orzhov from Magic the Gathering.  I really do hope to see more neutral or grey area type concepts within the guild system. Maybe not encourage villains since the story is the repopulation of heroes, but I love the idea of very rigid, strict guilds with internal taxing, blood prices/assassination lists, or maybe some off theme ideas like maybe your guild gets a boon for having no member become corrupt for X period of time. Small things which could add flavor and choice.
  • I guess you could call our way a kind of guild concept.

    We plan to  create our own nation-type of guild.
    For a nation to thrieve we need things, so we want to have farmers and gatheres of all kinds, and processors and crafters to make things others want and trade for.
    A nation needs to be secure, so we want to have our own force to keep the peace in our chosen area where we settle down as well as our trade goods wandering from city to city.
    A nation needs life, so we want to just be a social bunch of misfits having fun in game activities as well as offside activities, like running a tavern to enjoy parlor games in a laidback evening for a change. Just talking and theorycrafting around ingame as well as off topic things.
    Just being adventures, going exploring together and hunting.

    I duno if it would count as a guild concept, since it's a jamble of several things into one. <shrug> It's just what I started with and it's taking on form somehow.
  • Grisu said:
    I guess you could call our way a kind of guild concept.

    We plan to  create our own nation-type of guild.
    For a nation to thrieve we need things, so we want to have farmers and gatheres of all kinds, and processors and crafters to make things others want and trade for.
    A nation needs to be secure, so we want to have our own force to keep the peace in our chosen area where we settle down as well as our trade goods wandering from city to city.
    A nation needs life, so we want to just be a social bunch of misfits having fun in game activities as well as offside activities, like running a tavern to enjoy parlor games in a laidback evening for a change. Just talking and theorycrafting around ingame as well as off topic things.
    Just being adventures, going exploring together and hunting.

    I duno if it would count as a guild concept, since it's a jamble of several things into one. <shrug> It's just what I started with and it's taking on form somehow.

    As much as I enjoy crafting I've never seen the benefit aside from altruism to simply give your guild things. Maybe it helps with raid progression, but I can't say any other reason has made me craft outside of my own profit.

    What kind of concepts would help a guild "spec" into some of the crafting system. I'm sure trade guild will be a thing since there's no global AH. I can't really think of much outside "Increase X resource gain" or "Reduced cost to craft Y" type stuff that would really help a guild self-invest. I suppose that might be up to the guild itself to run say... Raffles (Really popular in ESO trade guilds) or other things to invest back into the guild.
  • If they do go with the idea of sub-guilds, there could be groups of like minded person who do things like, keep on the move so they can not be tracked and or not pay a kingdom's or node's taxes, supply illeagal/blackmarket items just for a start.
  • If they do go with the idea of sub-guilds, there could be groups of like minded person who do things like, keep on the move so they can not be tracked and or not pay a kingdom's or node's taxes, supply illeagal/blackmarket items just for a start.
    I hadn't thought of that. It sounds silly, but tax evasion could be a real guild driving concept - especially if those players mostly stay in a high tax region.
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