Minimum Guild size for Retention of Guildhouse

[Zan]

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.

[bilbous]

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.

[Aiken]

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.

[Zan]

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.

[Marqsaynt]

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.

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.

[Zan]

Dang, I knew me trying to be funny would end up badly

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?

[bilbous]

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?

[Zan]

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.

[LigH]

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.

[Farren Kutter]

I intend on having my nice small guild (actively small anyways, got over 30 members  ) 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)

[bilbous]

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.

[Farren Kutter]

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.

[bilbous]

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.

[Farren Kutter]

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)

[Parallo]

That would not be fesable. Look how many guilds come and go. The place would be cluttered as hell.