Guild System

[Waylander]

I've decided in my infinite wisdom that the guild system in PlaneShift is faulty.  It is based on the common MMORPG concept of people who you kill monsters with which works great in other games in which that is the main goal.  I hereby denounce it!  Guilds should not be player run, they should be run by NPCs and should actually by guilds (fighter's guild, adventurer's guild, miner's guild, and so on and so forth) and should just be groups of people who give you quests that concern a certain aspect of the game (be it fighting, adventuring, mining or what not).

Everything else should be an organization and characters should not be limited to one organization.  Making organizations more lenient would increase the flexibility.  There could still be guild-like organizations (Miner's Association of blah dee blahblahblah) but certain guilds (such as the Dark Empire or... basically any other guild) would actually be properly categorized (as they aren't actually guilds but organizations... or countries or what not).  It would also allow parent organizations and child organizations (so one could be part of say, the Imperial Trade and the same time as The Dark Empire).  All that would really have to change is some of the limitations and the chat system (as each organization would have it's own chat... thingy).  The system is also easily abused which I find funny.

Now, discuss my brilliant idea or just sit in awe of my burning intellect.

[LigH]

  You hate roleplayers! 

[ditiloff]

You want to segregate people into guilds based on their similarities rather than diversifying them. That pretty much takes the fun out of a guild. I do not see the guild system being abused at all. If members like to powerlevel, then let them, you can't control what they do. Plus guilds DO roleplay, which is the whole point of the game. 

[Socius Rockus]

I like the idea. Now, with your burning intellect, get your ass moving and give us an more detailed concept
 

[Waylander]

People have misread my overly brilliant post.  I shall resort to point form!

-Guilds should be city run organizations based on a trade.  They should give faction and quests to players who wish to practice their trade.

-The player guilds should be renamed to Organizations, to add flexibility.

-Players should be allowed in more than one Organization.  To add flexibility.

-Each Organization should have it's own chat (so as opposed to having the guild tab in your chat you'd have one for each organization you are in.)

-I have nothing against roleplayers, I'm just proposing a much more flexible system for roleplaying because the old system is based on MMORPGs in which all you really do is kill people.

LigH:  An example might help.  Let's say there's a organization of librarians, they want to change their guildhouse into basically a public library of player created stories and what not.  Joe Joeson, one of these librarians, does something great for the Royal House of Purrty and is offered a position in it's ranks.  In my system he can just join the RHoP and remain in the Librarian organization at the same time.

It also allows the creation of parent and child organizations.  So one could belong to the Imperial Trades at the same time as the Dark Empire.  savvy?

[Socius Rockus]

Possible Fail point:
    - Chat windows probably fails when one joins too many Organizations.
Solutions:
    - Remove that blasted chat window. (After all, all we need is main and npc!)
    - Make it option which Organzation chat windows are present, limited to (say) 5 at a time.

Questions:
About the parent/child Organizations, how do you see that with regards to the chat (One chat, seperate or both)?
With regard to how to make, become a child org and how to leave a parent?
With regard to buying Organizationhouses? parent buys house, child may come in? And how about child buys house, may parent come in or other childs?
With regard to being member of who? (member of child auto joins parent?)
With regard to ranking in both sort of orgs? (high rank parent has more powers then same level child? Or just a whole new sort of ranking system?)
 

[verden]

Players belonging to more than one "organization"... these are just evil ideas designed to crash Laanx.

[Waylander]

Possible Fail point:
    - Chat windows probably fails when one joins too many Organizations.
Solutions:
    - Remove that blasted chat window. (After all, all we need is main and npc!)
    - Make it option which Organzation chat windows are present, limited to (say) 5 at a time.

Yeah, I figure that'd about do it.

Questions:
About the parent/child Organizations, how do you see that with regards to the chat (One chat, seperate or both)?
With regard to how to make, become a child org and how to leave a parent?
With regard to buying Organizationhouses? parent buys house, child may come in? And how about child buys house, may parent come in or other childs?
With regard to being member of who? (member of child auto joins parent?)
With regard to ranking in both sort of orgs? (high rank parent has more powers then same level child? Or just a whole new sort of ranking system?)
 

Answers:
Each is it's own organization.  There wouldn't actually be a specific system for parent-child relations.  The parent and the child would be two separate organizations that players belong to.  In most cases the player would belong to both a parent and a child (say the main guild and the crafters section of the guild).

Parent and Child organizations would be completely roleplayed.  If a child org. wanted to leave it's parent it would just roleplay that.  No need to do anything.

Guildhouse entry would remain a key based system.

No auto join, they'd have to be invited.

Up to the individual organizations

The Parent-Child idea is just an example of what players could do with the more flexible organization system that I am proposing.  It would give organizations more ability to be individual.  An Alliance could be made of a bunch of Organizations by making another "Alliance" organization and inviting the leaders of all the orgs. into the Alliance org.

It's just a much more flexible system that restricts organizations (or guilds as they are known in game at the moment) less than the current one.

Players belonging to more than one "organization"... these are just evil ideas designed to crash Laanx.

I haven't looked at how guilds are coded but, I'm pretty sure our devs could make this work rather easily.  It would mean a small overhaul of the current code but probably wouldn't be all that much work.  Besides that the green 'guild' name above a player's head would be removed.  Because it's just silly.

[verden]

Just joking, this is all good as far as I am concerned. I prefer the concept of nested organizations, and understand the point about "guilds"... but I do think that attempting to rename them from guilds at this point in the history of the game and the gaming industry would be a tad unwieldy and confusing.

[Waylander]

I see your point.  But I think the NPC run guilds are the most important part of the change (though I suppose they could be called org. instead) as they would allow easy access to quests that have to do with and help the progress of certain trades.  That way people could specialize their characters more.  For instance something like orders for crafters where they are given all the resources they need and are asked to make something with it.  It would never be high quality resources but it would give a bit of tria and some much needed experience without having to level mining or what not.

[Zalera13]

I dont really like this idea, You would have to wait for an "organization" that you want your character to be in to be made. Where as now you can make one yourself.

[Duraza]

Now, discuss my brilliant idea or just sit in awe of my burning intellect.

I think I shall sit in awe. 

I dont really like this idea, You would have to wait for an "organization" that you want your character to be in to be made. Where as now you can make one yourself.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. From my understanding of what Waylander is proposing is to just have NPC run guilds, then player run organizations. You as a player can still make organizations for other players to join. The difference is there will also be NPC guilds that you as a player can belong to.

[Zalera13]

Im sorry i somewhat misunderstood. So all of the current guilds would be changed into "organistions"?

[Under the moon]

Nothing new to see here, folks, move along.

NPC owned official guilds have been talked about before many a time, and I have always supported the idea as long as it left players the opportunity to build True guilds as well, as outlined in this truly awe inspiring post I made a while back.

http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=30884.msg354622#msg354622

[Waylander]

Not exactly the same idea, Moon.  As your is convoluted and limiting and mine is simple and flexible ;P

You did have opinions on 'actual' guilds though that looked promising, I still prefer the NPC run ones, though I see no reason why players can't join after a certain amount of faction has been accrued.  Player run ones would be possible, I suppose but it's limits the guild in that devs would not have complete control over them and so would have to limit the power.  You see how limit keeps popping up

The separate ideas have been proposed before but I do believe this is the only post (I have found ) that brings them all together in what can only be called orgasmic elegance.