Guild Ranks and Guild Favours
I am considering having one of our coders make a couple changes here.
- Guild rank can be set by the GM and secretaries instead of being based on guild favours.
- Guild favours would do something else. I want to keep them because they are a good way to reward and give praise to players for helping a guild. But what can we do to give them a bit more feeling?
- I am also semi considering removing the GNT channels in order to keep things more simple for newbies. If you can set rank, then leadership can talk on GTS easier.
Any thoughts on this? Or any other ideas that revolve around this?
7
Comments
1. I see a few flaws in this. I think that it takes away from the hard work that many have already put into their guilds. Let's take the Trollkin for example. Lionas has tryharded through 19 ranks of guildfavours to sit comfortably at the top. Aleutia becomes guildmaster. She hates Lionas and his unwarranted distaste for the oxford comma. She sets him back to GR2 out of pure, unmitigated spite. This discredits all of the hard work that he put into the guild and strips him of rank. You could say that she could just as easily disfavour him down to GR2 anways, but really? Effort.
It would also lend the same sense of unease every time a new guildmaster arose. It's easy to guildfavour someone up. It -should be- hard to take their hard-earned work away.
I have included proof below:
(4:58:06 PM) Aleutia: also I love the oxford comma, Lionas is the heathen who says it isn't necessary >:(
(4:58:10 PM) Kanthari: Ahahaha
(4:58:14 PM) Kanthari: I WILL EDIT
(4:58:15 PM) Aleutia: GR1 FOR HIM >:(
^ All the spite
2. As an alternative, what if we kept the current brand of guildfavours and simply added other types to it as well? One kind of guildfavour could raise your rank, the others could do some other things? This would lend more interesting aspects to what guilds could do to reward their players, without instituting a system that has more potential to punish them, and also doesn't require the complete reformatting of what is already set in place.
3. I like this.
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
1. As a counterpoint. Remove guildrank as a thing entirely. You would have member, secretary, guildmaster.
a.) Voting rights would be based on a time online/level requirement like mentoring. Not to the same extreme, but maybe half the online time and level 50?
b) Guilds would need step up their game and potentially become more engaging to keep members.
2. Not sure what to do with guildfavours if ranks were removed as a thing. What if favours accrued as a thing like some nebulous currency and you could do stuff like cash in that in to do things. So I accumulate 30 favour weight worth of currency. I can trade that in for 2 hour crit boost while bashing. Or the ability to change my own title (this would be recorded in the guild's plog for a person maybe?). Or maybe a discount from npc shops. Oh and maybe for X amount of favour power you can buy class permanacy regardless of skillranks, just like it is now.
All that sort of stuff would need to be pretty expensive, but surely there is a middle ground where favours are cool to get.
3. Yah, remove gnt. Maybe also remove help guildnovices X. I can't remember if we have it now, but when a novice joins a guild maybe make the tutor say a message and perhaps make that customizable by the gm. For example:
(Noctusari): Father Berodach says, "Avast ye scurvy dogs, the Noctusari are the best pirates of the 3 Aetherian seas. If'n ye' want to get yer' start in yer' piratin' career then you should look at GHELP NOVICES or prepare walk the plank."
I do think it would be a great idea to add some other types of favours in.
Players should be able to feel accomplishment that they have earned a certain guildrank. It's a good feeling to log in and see that you're GR17 because, hey, you earned it 20 IG years and 5 GMs ago. It's a better feeling not to have to worry about losing it just because a new GM was appointed.
I know that some players wouldn't abuse the ability to promote/derank others, and I would like to think this is the majority. Some would. If a new GM starts demoting people, they could still easily remain in power. I'm not saying that the current system is perfect, but I don't think that a change to this aspect of it is going to be an improvement in the long run.
Why not make it so that if someone is appointed a secretary, it auto-promotes them to GR10 so their favours matter and they have guild privileges, and then add some flavour guildfavours that award things other than rank.
Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but right now it just seems like changing this up would be a lot of hassle for minimal improvement. Guildfavours are an incentive to do something to rise up in guildrank. Without that or something similar that reaps a tangible benefit, I have more guildmembers sitting around on their hands.
My current questions regarding a shift to the system would be:
- What would we actually pose to gain by making favours not award rank?
- What do playes get out of guild prestige?
- Is it just a popularity vote?
- Do you get guild privs?
- How does this effect the guild health system?
- How does this effect voting?
- Can a GM demote you to GR1 and remove your ability to vote?
- Can a GM advance players who join to GR2 during an election to get more votes?
- What are the limitations on appointments to guild ranks?
- Is this on a time limit?
- Can you just appoint everyone however you want?
- Can you remove/add guild rank while someone is inactive?
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Personally, GM's should be able to promote/ demote ranks based on contributions of a person over the lifetime.
Guild favors - maybe tied to the guild credits(assuming we go that direction - whereby, all guild credits a GM earns is stored separately). Guild favors could then be given out to give out these credits as seen fit. Favors themselves could be highfavors or simply favors (5 credits/ 1 credit)
OT: I think guild RP as such has died in the last couple of years (at least in my current guild) - we should do away with guilds all together IMHO
I am cool with appointment by rank - perhaps we could just use the 'position' system structure and modify it some?
I don't really care if we keep guildfavours, they're largely extraneous anyways. Guild rank does not and never really has never mattered beyond archaic chains of command in the Lorekeepers, etc.
Edit: I'm pretty much fine with guildfavours/guildranks the way they are now. Basically a prestige system for those that feel like putting in some extra work to get recognized. Maybe what you want to implement(alternative rewards within guilds) could be implemented while keeping the current guildfavour/guildrank system? Something like a new way to distribute guild credits would be cool.
For instance, we could allow guildmasters to put credits into a guild account, and have an automated system where members could purchase those credits from the guild with gold. The guildmaster would be able to set a separate price for different prestige levels.
If you want guildfavours to do something, maybe make them a GM only function that provides a mechanical, non-combat benefit for X hours and has a long cooldown. Sort of a reward for good service like a divine favour.
Lusternia has a special GM function that lets you bestow a qhonors on a member for exemplary service. Each qhonors is tailored to the guild in question. GMs can revoke them nowadays, but it makes for good RP sometimes.
EDIT: Also, on an aside, I am always mystified by people who want storage for city and guild credits. They are, as far I know, a 'paycheck' for running a healthy org. Leaders are by no means obligated to share them and only do by arbitrary tradition.
Most of the other games have a system to store guild and city credits aside. I believe the credit system is not a 'paycheck' but a way for cities and guilds to sustain themselves. Most of these positions are voluntary and any entitlement of receiving payment is completely against the spirit of the game.
Just because you are popular (which is known to be gamed on occasion) doesn't mean you are entitled to receive credits. If that were the case, every holder of any position should have the same entitlement rather than restrict it to just the GM or city-head.
After thinking about this for a while, I really think that guilds as-is are rather obsolete. The entire setup just feels like a relic of the times when professions were gated by guilds and your guild was chosen based around "what skills do I want?" rather than "what type of character do I want to play?"
None of these suggested changes would do anything about that. They would change some administrative things about the guilds. They would change a few things for officers and leaders of guilds. But they won't really make any fundamental difference to the rank and file of the guild without some kind of drastic change of guildfavours leaning to a meaningful guild privilege system. And that system would be a nightmare.
You wouldn't want the bonuses to be combat relevant, which restricts design space a great deal, and you wouldn't want them to be too good, lest they become a hefty balance factor. With favours currently doing nothing but granting meaningless ranks, there's already a substantial amount of drama that can occur around them based on who gave them to who and so forth and why they did it and blah. Adding decent benefits to these will exacerbate that further, as well as contributing to a "got to favour somebody today or I waste this buff" mentality that turns it into just a buff rotation. That or they're so meaningless that nobody cares and nothing changes. I do not see a future in which this kind of system makes any meaningful improvement to the game.
Ideally, I would see the guild structure change entirely. Remove their affiliation with professions entirely and make them into organizations that are focused entirely around RP. Provide perks for guilds that encourage players to be a member of one, but not of any particular one; a druid whose primary concern is defending Kinsarmar should be able to join the Vindicators straight away.
As it is now, it is entirely possible for a newbie to join any given guild and find themselves dealing with secretaries who are using a completely unrelated profession and who have no real experience with the guild's base professions, so the idea that guilds provide a useful resource for new players as to how their class plays is a ship that sailed long ago, alongside the ship carrying any kind of true useful function for the guilds.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Trez: "When are you going to sell guild credits?"
Khizan: "Sometime after I get Focus."
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
This.
The credits were intended as a small payment back for running a successful organization - you run a good organization, more people will be inclined to buy credits, and you will receive more 5% cuts because of it. The tradition of selling them back is just that - an ancient Achaean tradition and nothing more. It began because some guildmaster felt benevolent enough to help a few members out here or there, and that is it. It is not an entitlement issue, but a basic fact. That the credits go to your pockets is only proof of this. I don't see this as a breech of the spirit of the game - a guild is a community, but it is not a commune. There is no obligation or rule that says I must share credits gained by being a guildmaster - it is just that most people are too 'young' to recall that it is simply a tradition and it thus became a 'common practice'.
The only game I know of that has a 'storage system' for guild credits is Lusternia, and that is only because people were using them to fund alts. This is also why organization credits now go to a player bound - because people were making alts in the popular cities to buy city credits to fund their mains.
I generally agree with this, besides the last line - I believe that while some secretaries will be veteran players, you will find that there are other members who ARE of the guild's appointed classes that can give at least mediocre advice until the newbie can get ahold of somebody with a clue. A newbie needs to know very basic things, like 'what do I hit things with?' - a common guild member of the class can answer these questions.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
And that's four sentences I can muster to defend guilds. Outside of that they're really havens for cliques, political meta-gaming, and catering to people who believe they deserve the title and the 20 credits a month while they power bomb their guild into the dirt. I've seen more in-fighting and circle destroying drama come from guilds than every global event combined. It's pretty terrible. Some people will tell you it's 'cool' but it's really not. It shafts the circle and makes it miserable to be around when two downy titans are slinging mud at each other in every form of communication that exists in this day and age. I don't think we need to build in more rewards for such an unremarkable leadership position. You should be rewarded for having a GOOD guild, not be rewarded for occupying a spot because no one else can oust you in your 5 man guild.
Guilds are obsolete and meaningless and there's no real need to keep them around.
They'll never get rid of them, though, because too many people with Special Snowflake Syndrome will get upset when their worthless org is destroyed. This is why we still have Ithaqua and Khandava around, after all.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Go grab your hemorrhoid doughnut and forfeit the pulpit to people with productive criticism.