Building a Guild or just belittling the World?

[Ambiguous-Existence]

i believe i might have a solution to lazy guilds who dont bother using proper naming conventions. Very simple really and also makes lazy guilds like that fade away and contributs to the economy of the region.

firs when you create a guild you have to assign it for a specific purpose, these can be of from the following that i have so far come up with. This adds to the RP factor and gives the guild a purpose and reason for existing in the world and being created upon excalation of events.

Military
Merchants
Thiefs
Local Police
Protection or body gaurds
Mercenary(requires obtaining contract for killing target and needs to be displayed to loca authority)

All these guilds and its members get paid automatically based upon fufilling their purpose and get paid less when not fufilling their purpose. They also have to pay tax of a certain ammount depending how many members they have, if they have more then they will pay more tax. If teh guild does not do their assigned duties based upon teh purpose of the creation of the guild then slowly they will be paying more tax then income they are recieving, also members would leave since they will not be getting much income, eventually the guild will go into debt and have a certain period of time to pay it if they have not been able to pay thier taxes which of course would lead to automatic deletion of the guild if debts are not resolved in time.

This would already put of people creating guilds with inconventional names since ti woudl take more work and commitment to create the guild and also give it more purpose so names would be considered more.

[Vengeance]

I disagree completely with many of the premises of the people posting here.  Here is a short list of what I disagree with:

• PlaneShift is *only* for RPers.
• You can engender creativity through regulation.
• Increased eavesdropping and monitoring of "private" player interactions would be a good thing.
• Increased eavesdropping and monitoring by GMs is possible.
• There is such a thing as "too many guilds".
• Newbies and clueless people should not be allowed to have guilds.
• Guilds without a valid AND unique purpose, and perhaps a website, should not be allowed to exist.

I could go on.

As I read this thread, my initial thought was "omg if these people take over I quit!"  :-)  But then cooler heads seemed to prevail and better ideas started to come forth.

We will get much better results with less effort and less restrictions on freedom if we simply reward the behaviors we like.  The color coding of guild names, or even having named levels of guilds like the forum rankings, would go a long way toward achieving the real goals the posters in this thread have, in my opinion, and I would not only support the idea of doing them, but I would be happy to code such features myself.  There are only a few options for how to implement such a feature:

1. Manual - GMs must monitor everything and award points or similar for what they want to reward.  We would have to create rules for GM awards and cases and dispute resolution processes for times when the guilds disagree with the awarding GM about how many points they should get, etc.  Also GMs could find this very onerous.  So I don't think this is going to happen.

2. Automated - Any automated system can be gamed.  The design issue is how to make a system that is hard enough to game or that is gamed in ways that we want (or at least don't care about).  The two ways I can think of for this are:

a. Guild Points awarded for behaviors we like.  This is almost like Exp for players, but for guild-level things.  Examples might be selling X amount in Y time, or giving away X value of stuff to less fortunate people, completing certain quests, or just gathering X number of guild members into a single group online at one time.  Awarding for "good RP" would be impossible without hand monitoring, but GMs could award points manually in addition to the automated ones.

b. Guild Points awarded for amount of time online by its players.  Thus guild levels become a measure of the seniority and longevity of its members more than the levels or riches of those members.  More or less impossible to game this system, but also rewards might not be as meaningful.  An endurance award.

In EQ2 they have this concept of guild points and it works amazingly well.  Their added twist is that the guild points are tracked per member, and if a member leaves the guild loses his/her points, which can knock them down levels.  I like this aspect too because we all know loyal guild members who had a fight and got kicked out with nothing even when they were longstanding members.  Losing that member's points makes there be a cost to losing people, and more cost to losing more loyal people.  I think we want to reward that loyalty in PS also.

Thanks,
Vengeance

[zhai]

i totally agree. encouraging instead of controlling works far better.

[Lolitra, Celorrim Purrty Twins]

see, we knew our post would evoke a greatness of ideas that would lead to common sense and excellent Ideas - Encourage the populous to populate with guilds that grow towards Role Play that is the aim of the core team of this wonderful world of PlaneShift.

We applaud the growing sense of unity and maturity of encouragement and leadership that is shining here in this very thread... 

It is so true that oppression causes revoltion... but there must be some base starting line.. a standard... one that we all accept should not be allowed to slip below.  No silly Names and Only Guilds that have sound PlaneShift setting reasons, from there we can either grow towards a better role play, or just grow in levels... which ever we feel happy playing.

Thank you all for participating with this debate.

[Zan]

*bows*

t was truly a pleasure to take part in such a mature discussion.

[Ambiguous-Existence]

dam i actually thought my idea was pretty good as i based it on how the real world works. ah well, i should have gone into more detail. though i dont think that whole rewards and point idea and guild ranking will work as they have done the same thing with world of warcraft and pretty much stupid names exist and are above every other guild in the role playing servers.

only thing that solves and that i believe solves silly names is requiring more effort in to keeping a guild alive.

and yeah this si a RP game thats ist intension so anyone who doesnt RP shouldnt be playinbg this game and should go buy world of warcraft and see how fun it is to do pointless objectives and play in a world that revolves around famring for items, doing instances for items and guilds being created to do raids for more higher lvl items and in the end using that to make money rather than the professions you choose in it.

[Noobis]

  HII Lolitra, im sorry if this isnt the place for me to be posting but its me Evangan, if you remember that is, I have been away, I just wanted to say HI!!!

Now your creating a guild? Cool, I don't play yet, but I do miss you people bye!

[Ambiguous-Existence]

I disagree completely with many of the premises of the people posting here.  Here is a short list of what I disagree with:

• PlaneShift is *only* for RPers.
• You can engender creativity through regulation.
• Increased eavesdropping and monitoring of "private" player interactions would be a good thing.
• Increased eavesdropping and monitoring by GMs is possible.
• There is such a thing as "too many guilds".
• Newbies and clueless people should not be allowed to have guilds.
• Guilds without a valid AND unique purpose, and perhaps a website, should not be allowed to exist.

I could go on.

As I read this thread, my initial thought was "omg if these people take over I quit!"  :-)  But then cooler heads seemed to prevail and better ideas started to come forth.

We will get much better results with less effort and less restrictions on freedom if we simply reward the behaviors we like.  The color coding of guild names, or even having named levels of guilds like the forum rankings, would go a long way toward achieving the real goals the posters in this thread have, in my opinion, and I would not only support the idea of doing them, but I would be happy to code such features myself.  There are only a few options for how to implement such a feature:

1. Manual - GMs must monitor everything and award points or similar for what they want to reward.  We would have to create rules for GM awards and cases and dispute resolution processes for times when the guilds disagree with the awarding GM about how many points they should get, etc.  Also GMs could find this very onerous.  So I don't think this is going to happen.

2. Automated - Any automated system can be gamed.  The design issue is how to make a system that is hard enough to game or that is gamed in ways that we want (or at least don't care about).  The two ways I can think of for this are:

a. Guild Points awarded for behaviors we like.  This is almost like Exp for players, but for guild-level things.  Examples might be selling X amount in Y time, or giving away X value of stuff to less fortunate people, completing certain quests, or just gathering X number of guild members into a single group online at one time.  Awarding for "good RP" would be impossible without hand monitoring, but GMs could award points manually in addition to the automated ones.

b. Guild Points awarded for amount of time online by its players.  Thus guild levels become a measure of the seniority and longevity of its members more than the levels or riches of those members.  More or less impossible to game this system, but also rewards might not be as meaningful.  An endurance award.

In EQ2 they have this concept of guild points and it works amazingly well.  Their added twist is that the guild points are tracked per member, and if a member leaves the guild loses his/her points, which can knock them down levels.  I like this aspect too because we all know loyal guild members who had a fight and got kicked out with nothing even when they were longstanding members.  Losing that member's points makes there be a cost to losing people, and more cost to losing more loyal people.  I think we want to reward that loyalty in PS also.

Thanks,
Vengeance

This game EQ2 that you speak of, did it have silly guild names or tasks that were silly or like 90% of guilds whos purpose was just to farm.

And sorry this game is for roleplaying players it states this somewhere i beleive or i heard it from another player. All i know is that roleplayers shoudl be playing this game bcause i do not wnt it to become another world of warcraft which of course if it does turn into that then i woudl just go back to world of warcraft. i dont care if this game is free, i liek the ideas, teh complexity and also the people who mainly play it to roleplay. You might as well caqll it a hack n slash game if it is not a rolplaying game.

I just think everything should have a purpose and teh creation of guilds liek anything in life is due to events that arise and must be dealth with hence this gives it a purpose and creates enemy guilds and ally guild relationships. Maybe that point system would work a bit but i doubt it would solve many problems that comes with guild creation being so easy and teh world being populated by silly names tasks and lack of purpose for its existence.

[Karyuu]

Vengeance is one of the top PlaneShift developers. He knows precisely what game PlaneShift is and for whom

[Verrliit]

Vengeance is one of the top PlaneShift developers. He knows precisely what game PlaneShift is and for whom

And unless he is feeling particularly cranky, he tends to make sense, too.

Verrliit bows to Vengance in respect.

[Vengeance]

Thanks for the compliments. :-)

I want to say this again, and I'm going to keep saying it because no one else apparently is.  This game is for all players.  We don't limit it to adults, nor to children.  We don't require everyone to speak English or to have a certain kind of computer.  We don't require everyone to like being furry or to like being a rock.  Short, tall, male, female, fighter, wizard, merchant, crafter.  Play how you want and have fun any way you can which does not involve cheating or griefing.

RPers should view PS as a place they can RP without being looked down on by the community (as in many games), but OOCers and Power gamers should view PS as a fun place to run around telling jokes and leveling up as fast as they can.  Crafters who like smithing are free to ignore the RPers and the PGers alike, and just compete with each other on who makes the best shields.  No one should view their freedom as a license to be offended by the players of other focus though.  Crafters are not to be offended by RPers and RPers are not to be offended by PGers, and so on.  Can't we all just get along?  :-)

- Vengeance

[Under the moon]

Venge, I have read all of your posts here, and hold you in the highest respect for your work and dedication to this project. I also like you as a person. But I have one thing to say here.

When you try to make a cake to please everyone, and mix in everyone's favorite ingredients, you get one thing. Bad cake.

Some things have to be left out, and to my utter dismay, it is RP that always gets the ax.

I would post my suggestions that could work for both sides, but I tire of blowing smoke in the wind.

[greymist]

This may be a little presumptuous as I have yet to play Planeshift.  However, I just couldn't resist posting my opinion on this topic.

When I join a guild it is usually because I want to get to know people that I can group with on a (semi)regular basis.

My experience in other games (EQ & EQ2) is that the best groups are quite diverse.  Groups composed of similar characters (eg everyone is a Xacha healer) just don't tend to work out too well

For this reason, I would be looking for a guild that has a diversity of characters and would avoid any that, for instance, are for healers only.

Greymist

[Ambiguous-Existence]

if you give people to much freedom then they tend to mess around in the game and ruin it for everyone. when i say freedom i mean in its purest sense which is no consiquences for your actions. If you restrict them then they will find a way to mess around and mess things up.

The way i see it is that freedom of your actions must come at a price which is why there is laws and consequences in life to all your actions.

If anyone has played "The elders scrolls:Morrowind" then you will know what i mean and what makes a game have great playability due to characters enviroment being simulated to real life.

in my opinion i dont like people who do not RP or kids or adults with kids minds sinse i had to put up with a lot of them and there idiotic ways of amusment in World of warcraft and also there kind moving into RPservers on world of warcraft and making there own rules and playing on there own terms and ruining the experience for many other players. I dont really care if these people leave the game as it can be seen as a good thing and make the game more immersive fro many players.

ive been playing games for a very long time and i have lost my patience for many immature players so to me it wouldnt be much of a loss if they leave because the game becomes more RP orientated or based more on real world freedoms.

thats my 2 cents worth. Hate me if you wish for my comments but ive seen it happen to many times and speak the truth and am very sceptical when it comes to people an their maturity.