PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: bilbous on November 05, 2007, 06:47:23 pm
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I am wondering if anyone thinks a guild should have a minimum number of members in order to retain rights to a particular guild house. Is the minimum members for guild status enough or should it be larger? If it is deemed that a larger number should be required can provisions be made for guilds sharing their houses with other compatible guilds in order to meet this minimum?
What happens if there is a schism in the guild amongst the key holders (can the keys be duplicated or is there a set amount?) Are there other consequences of guild houses not immediately apparent?
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I think the normal number for starting and keeping a guild active should be kept. I'm thinking of starting one, and as I don't know of how popular/unpopular it could be, don't want to be left out in the cold. ;)
However, a guild house is more for the successful, rich guilds; status and what not. I'd be all for a larger minimum number of guild folk needed to maintain a guild house. I mean, why would a guild of 5 people need a house to do everything? All they'd need is a pow-wow in someone's house. Not to mention needing to keep it tidy and in relative order. Now, with 10 or more, they might need more structure, and thus, a larger more official place.
Edit:
It's the same idea for watching guild activity. Perusing the guild area yielded people saying which guilds had gone by the wayside, or things concerning having all those alts in a guild. With saying the 5/10 guildies needed, it's saying active players. Now, if someone wants to stock 20 alts and play every character regularly in order to maintain the activeness of the guild, that's fine (but somewhat impossible if someone actually wants to get somewhere character-wise), but I doubt that'll happen.
Remember, active members, not ones that hop on for 3 minutes a day to fake being active.
Besides, could make for interesting RP if people notice it.
'Wait, 20 people are in that guild... why does only one come out at a time?'
'They're witches! Burn them!'
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Well, you can buy a house as a single person. Just the name is "guildhouse". Even if you couldn't buy a house as a single person, you could simply fill a guild with ~20 alts. Who could tell the difference?
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Or you could have a legitimate organization like the Dark Empire split into lots of guilds and be left out because each one falls under the minimum. That wouldn't be nice.
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I don't think houses should be restricted to Guilds. Mostly because of the example Donari gave. I haven't seen any Guild supervision until now, besides in controlling guild names.
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Well there was this:
These are not 'home' houses. These are luxury Guildhouses. Think of them more like high rent office buildings, and you will be closer to the truth. No one actually lives in them, so farmers and homeowners are safe from the crazy costs.
There is only the guildhouse interior modeled right now, so there are no actual homes available yet. It is possible that homes may be sold at standard rates by NPCs, or available though a purchase in a quest. Don't quote me on that, as they may also be sold the exact same way guildhouses are.
but that is not official and may only represent UTMs thoughts but he appears to be running the Ojaveda auction so it might have merit.
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I think the more important question is how inactive should a guild be before the government seizes it for being an unused building.
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Ahh, never thought of that in all this excitement. Very important question.
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we paid 7 million for that house.... 1.3 million of my own money... i could care less if sometime in the future... its only 4 Warriors hanging out... we WILL be doing it in that house... no matter how many times Plank leaves us "your security has been compromised" note ;D
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What if by some freak accident all the players behind the Warriors die? Then we're left with a house that just goes to ruin. There are a finite number of houses.
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i want to thank you for reminding me that i dont go to DR when i die.... so i guess we'll have to will the house over.... anyone got a first born son they can donate.... i didnt craft one yet... i still have Halloween candy left if you'll take that in trade.... anyone??? how about a Mickey Mantle baseball card??? Honda Goldwing???
so now i guess the big question is... does virtual property have all the same rights as real property??? in the event i die tonight... does my char (its information) get passed on to my next of kin... and can i will my virtual property to someone??? does this guild key get the protection my estate does from being seized??? more importantly... can my lawyer stop the game from ever going down for good because the games end would destroy my virtual property???
what a sick twisted way to make sure the game never goes away.... hurry then... someone poison my La Fin Du Monde!!!!! long live PS!!!!
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Sorry for the extreme example but guilds do wither away to nothingness. I don't want to see Hydlaa being a huge sprawl with everything around the center in ruins.
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oh no... i'm ready to die for PS... just like i was ready to die to save Bambi.... *tear*... i'm still getting over that one
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Great. We'll have lots of ruins around.
Still, it might be cruel to snap 7 M from a guild that temporarily goes below a certain amount of players. Less fair if that guild refused to keep inactive members, and alts and loses to a guild that is composed of 20 alts and 1 active person.
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I am thinking a better way might just be to have many guilds share the same houses. This would mean that the keys would open a particular instance of the guild house with all keys for a particular guild opening their particular instance. Some people might complain about this overlapping being bad for RP but if we assume that there is more to the city than ever will be put into the game as I suggested elsewhere then you can work around the inconvenient truth.
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I don't like the idea of different people using the same door and ending up in different rooms. It is counterproductive for roleplaying.
As for vacant guild houses, I was under the assumption that in the near future owning property would come with taxes having to be paid? Well then it's rather simple, when a guild is no longer paying their taxes the house will be reclaimed by the government.
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Maybe instead of having specific houses to hold guildhalls the keys could act as portals which when activated send you into your guildhouse. The master guild key could be used to set a location where the portal opens and all the others in that set could only be activated at that location. This could simulate secret doors in otherwise mundane streets. It would likely be fairly difficult to code but it would get around having set buildings as being multi-guildhalls. It would still use the idea of instanced guild halls but it could mean that a thieves guild hides in a sewer, a herbalist guild in the forest and whatnot.
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I don't like the idea of different people using the same door and ending up in different rooms. It is counterproductive for roleplaying.
You role play it as an appartment building, a bording house, a gated community. That gives you a separte room/apparement/house all with the same entrance.
A bording house or apartment could be used to explain many people to one building if normal players get to buy a place. It seems that or later on more buildings.
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A guild is not likely to share an appartment building with other guilds, there is rivalry among many guilds and organisations for one. If we're talking about player housing, where the players only buy a single small appartment, yes then I can see the reasoning but not for guild houses. There it is all about stature and having something presentable .. this just wouldn't work well if we're all shacked up together.
Imagine the most ludicrous example you can think of ...
A Bounty Hunter just got a contract to hunt down some Outlaw. Finally his big chance to prove his worth so he straps on his equipment, checks his armor, weapons, food and drinks before starting his mission. With full determination he then steps outside of his guildhouse, in search of the ellusive criminal.
"Hi neighbour, how's it hanging?" says the Outlaw in question as he wanders into the very same building, off to his own guild's gathering spot.
The Bounty Hunter stands there for a few seconds, baffled ... until he finally remembers that the Outlaws are living across the hall from him. He rushes to his senses and inside the door, almost taking the door itself with him because he forgot to open it. Once inside he draws his weapons in an astonishing swiftness and hollers:
"Alright you criminal scum, surrender yourself or die today!"
Everything is quiet for a minute, then when the Bounty Hunter's adrenaline rush fades he sees a room full of people staring back at him. All his fellow Bounty Hunters are looking at their comrade with their mouths wide open, thinking one of them has gone insane.
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Zan, I whole heartedly agreed with you about having only one guild using a building at any one time... until you went out and made me realize how hilarious it could be, now I'm all for it. :P
On a serious note though, I do think that taxes will be enough to make sure any guild that owns a building is still active/large enough to warrant having their own guild-house. Though it does bring up the question about how long a guild would have to be delinquent in taxes before the building is seized and how a seized building would be put back on the market. With the way the IC laws are written right now it seems that it'd probably just be auctioned off again but, I can see that potentially becoming a bit of an annoyance for GMs that have to run the event.
I do like the idea of having individual apartment (single character/family) type complexes that share the same building though, it just seems to make sense to me from a realism standpoint. However, it also makes me curious whether those will be taxed/seized... and if so, how? Also, to keep the sharing the same building part realistic, maybe there should be limits on how many people can live in a certain building... that way there could be more "exclusive" areas to live in that has apartments that on the open market cost more since more people desire to live there.
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Dang, I knew me trying to be funny would end up badly :P
As for the tax thing, with banking coming into play as well I hope that guilds will be able to open accounts from which their taxes are automatically deducted ... as long as the funds are present. So basically when a guild becomes inactive, their bankaccount will no longer be filled up, eventually there won't be enough money in there to pay their taxes for a rl month or something? And the property of that bankrupt guild will be sold off again. Now for the rich guilds who may have deposited a fortune onto their bank accounts this could take a long time. So maybe the bank account itself could go inactive after no (player) transactions have been done on that account for a year?
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I am kind of sad that nobody considered my master key set location idea. I really think that most of the buildings in the game should be set aside for npcs to use. I do understand that having gotten to this point in guild hall development it is unlikely to be changed much now. One thing I wonder is how do the interior instances match up with the exteriors they connect to? It would seem the areas would necessarily be small to fit inside the exteriors but I have not been inside one as yet. If the insides are bigger than the exteriors would permit how is this justified in a role play context? Is it conveniently ignored by the purists or is it just not a factor? Will the door in the cavern in the BD region become one of the guild houses? or does it have another function contemplated? Many questions, any answers?
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Right now the interiors of guild housing leaves a whole lot to be desired. There is only one design, which resembles a courthouse and the size of the interior definitely doesn't always reflect that of the external house. I'm ignoring it mostly because I assume that in the future these issues will be removed by making more and different interior designs available.
I think there are some screenshots of inside guildhouses around by the way, too lazy to search for them myself. :P
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The Royal House of Purrty is a relatively small guild, with not even a dozen of member characters.
Is this guild not important enough due to this fact - regardless of their numerous relations with other guilds and characters?
Is it not worth of having a guild house due to this fact - regardless of their desire to use this guild house as a roleplaying element?
It is hard to make a criterion, especially if the decision does not obviously enforces one.
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I intend on having my nice small guild (actively small anyways, got over 30 members :innocent:) and the Crimson Order, my ally guild and just as small as, if not smaller than my guild, share a guild house out in the wilderness somewhere :) Soon (tm)
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Wouldn't it be nice if you could buy the guild master key as I suggested (<gratuitous self-promotion>) and put an entrance in a hillside, maybe at the base of a wall in the ruins....?
AS for the topic at hand, character activity could well be a significant factor. Someone who is propping up his guild with alts is unlikely to have the time to use them much. Perhaps some kind of time rate could be factored in. Something along the lines of having characters on 72 hours a week. I suspect this will not fly but that would work out to say 12 characters being on a hour a day 6 hours a week. If you had a spare computer and permanent internet connectivity you could just leave the game running and a character in the guild house though that might be too much like botting and be undesirable.
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I don't think that is fair at all, as Crimson Order and the Rangers are small guilds by nature not because of lack of members. Once the world grows my guild will too perhaps, but we have about 7 active members minus alts. 7 out of 35 mind you. And with such few members, we are prone to not log in for a week or so at a time sometimes. Yet does my guild, which makes so little money as it is, deserve to have that money wasted just because we weren't there? Now I agree, maybe city homes and guild houses might need these, but a nature guild like mine or the Crimson Order would have our home out in the middle of nowhere most likely, which would pose no problems to anyone.
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Well if my second suggestion was adopted (master key -- set location) the original idea would not be required as no specific buildings as such would be used up by occupation. All that would be used is any one particular instance and of course these could be generated at will. Just because there is one secret passage in the alley behind Friila's house doesn't mean there could not be two or more. If there is only one guild house in the woods and it belongs to a mostly inactive guild is that fair? Anyways my restrictive suggestion was more about process than about specifics. If the circumstances that lead to expropriation are seen to be too harsh they can be eased.
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Well I hope they will someday allow us to build our own houses and guild houses. Perhaps 'abandoned' ones could be demolished by players if enough agreed and the owner(s)/owning guild is inactive after a certain amount of time (say, a year would be reasonable, maybe half a year)
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That would not be fesable. Look how many guilds come and go. The place would be cluttered as hell.
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Well the building would require approval from the 'government' (aka GMs or devs) and then we have to buy supply packages from some vendor and hire workers from a contracter, and specify the spot that we were given permission to build on. The foundation would be shown for a few days to mark it off, and after a certain amount of time, depending on the size of the place and materials it needs, it would be finished, and you would go to some NPC to recieve your key, and could possibly make copies for a fee at a locksmith.
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I meant waiting a year of inactivity.
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yeah, a year is sorta long. maybe 4-6 months.
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One or two months of no in-game activity from any of the members would be enough if you ask me.
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I would agree but then it depends on how you define member. You would need to be able to assign more than one guild to a house. and what happens when more people elect to build in the wilderness than do in cities. There would need to taxes when cities would actually start appearing.
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True, multiguild organisations would have to have a way to own a guild house as well. As for the building where-ever we want idea, I don't like it much. Bilbous' portals sound a bit too magicey to me to be enjoyable. It's an easy way to fix certain problems, I agree but I'd rather see things fixed in a more tangible way.
I suggest that the Government will open certain areas of land up for construction and sell those plots as buildable land .. while other areas remain unpopulated , farmland or simply wilderness unsuited for building on. Houses built on unofficial property can be evicted and demolished without warning by the Octarchy. Also note that big buildings or even complete houses are priviledges for the fortunate or organisations. Most individuals can be glad if they have a single room to call their own, considering the timeframe.
It works for the real world, so why wouldn't it work for a game world? :P
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Building wherever we want? Didn't you read what I wrote o.O I said the area has to be approved. this means that it would be decided whether or not the location is suitable, and whether or not it should have a house so near to another.
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If you wish to consider my idea magicky, I suppose it may seem that way. I just think that the world that gets implemented is only a fraction of the world or characters would experience due to out of context issues such as bandwidth, development time and processing capacity. I would imagine that the population of the areas already present would be much greater than the 100-odd npcs and whatever pcs might be around. I do not know what the settings consider the population of yliakum to be but it would surprise me if it was less than 100,000. Similarly given a time compression ratio of (what?)10-1 it indicates to me that 1/10 of the land is all that will ever be developed. My idea just gives a nod to the 9/10 that lies within the compression zone.
Call me crazy.
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Don't feel attacked Farren, I wasn't targeting you or what you said :P Just commenting on the "Build where-ever you want" idea in general. In other words, no I haven't really read what you said in detail, just skimmed it.
Bilbous .. you lost me there. Sure the world is much much larger for our characters than the small part of Yliakum that is already developed so far but what has that to do with people being able to create 'portals' in random locations that represent housing? Since that is the part that I find too magical, I'd rather enjoy a realistic 'buy plot, draw plans, hire contractor, build house, inhabit house' or 'rent or buy existing house, renovate, decorate, inhabit house' course of action. Do note that this is personal taste :P
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Well it would be justified as being located in the unimplemented majority of the map. There would not be any actual indication the doorway was there, just if you had a key it could be activated in that location to open that door. It appears the guild houses are going to be impenetrable by non-key-holders anyway so why not abstract them completely.
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Why not do away with physical objects in the game altogether?
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It wouldn't look very nice. If you want though you could play with your monitor turned off.
It was only a suggestion, not something to knot yer knickers :)
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Not at all. I just think that while we are trying to make a physical representation of Yliakum doors might as well represent doors. :)
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It appears the guild houses are going to be impenetrable by non-key-holders anyway so why not abstract them completely.
It appeared to me that guild houses being locked by a 'simple lock' would be relatively easy to break into once we get skills like lockpicking .. of course I do hope it'll be possible to purchase more complicated locks before that time.
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As far as I know lock picking is functional but there are no locks to pick. When you try to unlock a guild house without a key you get a message to the effect that it cannot be opened with that skill. At least it did a week or so ago.
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It's functional mechanicswise but not functional for our characters since there are no lockpicking tools or trainer available. Most likely because the Devs know a skill like this needs to be balanced out before making it available ... else a huge number of people are going to complain.
I know our guild house is being used as storage space as well so someone breaking into that would be a disaster for the guild.
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I believe the actual system message when trying to unlock a guildhouse door without a key, is "This lock is impossible to open by lockpicking." This message shows when the item has the "UNPICKABLE" flag set in the database.
So don't worry about your guildhouse for the minute, even if there was a lockpicking trainer somewhere, the lock would have to be modified by an admin before someone could try break in ;)
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Funny, I am fully trained in level 0, just need somewhere to practice. Cannot remember where I got it or if it is still available but back a year or so ago when I went into hibernation I trained everything I could find whether it was usable or not.
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Jefecra Harcrit used to train it; doesn't look like he does anymore.