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How do you see the "Guild" concept today?


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Hi everyone!

 

Last week, the "Massively Overpowered"  online press has written an interesting article about Player Guilds across MMOs. Many think that the "Guild" concept is dying. At least it is dying on the social aspect. What do you think of that? Do you agree? Have you any thought about what you would like to see as guild features who'd make your life easier, more interesting, more exciting in group than solo (without preventing to enjoy solo as well)?

 

Don't hesitate to give your feedback on this! :)

 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
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Hi everyone!

 

Last week, the "Massively Overpowered"  online press has written an interesting article about Player Guilds across MMOs. Many think that the "Guild" concept is dying. At least it is dying on the social aspect. What do you think of that? Do you agree? Have you any thought about what you would like to see as guild features who'd make your life easier, more interesting, more exciting in group than solo (without preventing to enjoy solo as well)?

 

Don't hesitate to give your feedback on this! :)

 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

 

 

I think that what we are seeing is an evolution of Guilds as society has changed.   There was a time when Guilds were basically there for people to get together and complete group content (like Raids) without having to deal with a PUG (Pick Up Group).  You would always be working with the same group of people, you could be assured of the correct group make-up--when the Trinity was everything--and there were rules for the distribution of goodies.

 

I think MMO communities have become more social, so the Guildspace has fragmented into Raid Guilds, Social Guilds, RP Guilds, Crafting Guilds, PvP Guilds, Enjoys YouTube Cat Guilds, and they all pretty much only deal with other like minded guilds.  A good part of this fragmentation I believe is due to the movement away from the Trinity (Tank, DPS, Healer) in many MMOs.  One anyone can tank, do dps, or heal a group, the specialization kind of went by the wayside in many games.

 

Where I think there should be a robust single player game (there are many, many, casual gamers out there) there should also be content for groups.  Things that are only going to be accomplished by a large group just from the sheer size.  Titans in EVE Online come to mind when they first came out, you needed material, you needed skills, you needed someone to pilot, it was a massive undertaking.  I think that guild content needs to expand beyond the 24 people to go spank <insert legendary monster of doom here>.  I also believe that the entire guild concept has been rather one-dimensional in the past and should gather some depth to really make people excited about it.  In DU, I would see the really large guilds as almost being governmental groups over an area, as they are in EVE.   Even that however is rather one-dimensional, however, in a sandbox environment people will take whatever is given to them and make what they want.

 

The secret is going to be to provide enough guild tools so people will be able to mesh together what they think will work best for them.  If it breaks, they grow from that and try something else.   I see it as DU putting the chess board down on the park bench with a box that contains chess pieces, checkers, marbles, Statego pieces, Lego blocks, and some wind up cars, and just says "Okay--have at it".    :D

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Guilds aren't dying MMO's have a disease. Theyre all trying to be the next 1,000,000 active subscription game but nobody can tell you what the masses of people wanna play pokemon? duke nuke em online, who knows?

 

A feature I like here in Dual Universe is the legate system, it makes shares of ownership of a guild available and if i understand correctly there will be "voting" on guilld policy.

All you need to do is give players the tools and freedom to shape the mold, give us the clay and well make our own pottery. dont give us bananas we cant make a nice vase out of that. 

The ability to have a direct democracy, a strict corporation, an elective monarchy. give us that ability to use voting and dictatorial method's.

 

the climate of games has changed greatly, theres many hundreds of thousands of more people willing to play MMO's now. They are catered to many varrying tastes people in general are more acclimated now to get instant results resulting in the game hopping and guild hopping phenom. Many guilds especially small ones are viscious and desperate to compete against the ever growing trend of mega guilds they lie in recruitments about membership and activity just to try and get people. Players join a guild and see 10 people of only 3 online and leave instantly.

Ive had small guilds with 15 players in and 15 players out per hour. if they stayed it'd been a mega guild in no time, but people make a decision in 5 seconds.

 

I know many people suffer from the plague that is games today, and make these brash statements like guilds arent what they used to be, people have no loyalty, and on and on the same line . It really stems from the games that are out today they aren't fun to begin with! 

    The example of ArcheAge ,right okay, archeage a game that seemed well designed to get people to play together. Except it didnt feel like you were playing with friends for common goals you were FORCED to play with other people if you wanted to or not FORCED to rely on other players for Gathering, Crafting, Turning in Trade Packs.

The game had a massive burnout factor largely because of the community, the leads of guilds in games like this, games that require tons of Micro Management, tons of attention, and Rule by an Iron Fist (Because there are no voting mechanics built in).

They are usually low income workers with lots of time on their hands. Its not an insult dont get me wrong but its Fast Food workers, High school kids, College Peoples, they have a good spirit and want to do something big in the game but the task of running a 300+ person guild knowing everyones name, sorting the drama, crushing internal rebellions, and promoting the guild as a good name ALL rests on ONE person who isnt accustomed to regulating such a bureaucratic system. At best they delegate some of this responsibility onto their Inner Circle and make their friends officer's. 

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Some specifics of things I have been wondering about to hear more, but in my previous post I proclaimed that you should let us shape the form of our guilds.

 

If I am a dictator of a corporate structure guild and this guild is also apart of an Alliance of guilds thanks to the legate tickets are those delegations Given to me the leader of the guild, or the guild itself. If it is the guild itself, then does the leader have to be the one online to make the votes to the alliance. would it be possible to shift the shares to other players in the dictators guild and create a diplomat that handles such things.

 

If they are asigned directly to players by the Leader of the Alliance then does that person have to micro manage every legate ticket assigned to guilds or other players?

 

 

If I want to have a Athenian Democracy and give every player that joins my guild a single legate is there a cap on how many can be generated, would there be a system in place that could automatically generate one for each member, or would the guild leader have to do it. if the guild leader does it then can they abuse it to coup'de'etat their own regime and become dictator instantly by generating so many shares to give to themself they gain 51% legate control.

 

If the guild has to vote each time to generate a new legate the bureaucracy will be too thick for direct democracy, maybe guilds could decide a ruleset ahead of time to decide what their rules are and to reinforce their governance style.

 

Auto generation and manual

tickets are destroyed upon member leaving the guild

one ticket per member, or x number of tickets allowed, % number of tickets allowed

number of tickets allowed to any legate, guild member or not

non guild members are allowed to hold tickets or not

legate tickets are transferable or not

 

 

If you give us the right options, and that list isnt all inclusive just what i could think up on the fly, but we players will make fun guilds AND mega guilds may not be as prominent. Especially if we can forge alliances, maybe that can tie into the voting system, i.e. alliance members can come and mine on our territory or build stations in our space or ect.

 

 

Personally I hope to run or help run a small guild of 10-100 people and join or form a coalition that will as one of its goals help new players acclimate to the game and join or form a guild that is apart of the coalition.

Thanks, and sorry for a back to back post they just had such different tones i didnt want to ramble it all together in one long one.

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Hi PetdCat and Kongou,
 
Thanks a lot for taking the time to give us your feedback on this matter!
 

The secret is going to be to provide enough guild tools so people will be able to mesh together what they think will work best for them.  If it breaks, they grow from that and try something else.   I see it as DU putting the chess board down on the park bench with a box that contains chess pieces, checkers, marbles, Stratego pieces, Lego blocks, and some wind up cars, and just says "Okay--have at it".     :D

 

This is indeed exactly our intention  :)

Providing tools to players to develop/shape their game experience how they see fit.
As there are many different ways to enjoy a game, this will ensure they will find what they're looking for (assuming they have taken the time to master the provided tools).

 

Now to answer to Kongou's questions:

 

- To put simply: only legates can participate to a vote. A legate can delegate his right to vote (without giving his shares in the organization) to another legate if he's absent for a vote. This delegation can be limited in time or for a specific type of vote. However, this delegation cannot be given to a member who is not a legate.

 

- If you want to create an organization where every member is a legate... so be it. It is not planned to limit the number of legates per organization. It will be up to the organization founder(s) to decide on this matter.

 

- If you estimate that electing each legate can be too much bureaucracy, nothing will prevent you to parameter the organization in a way that new legates are only elected by organization founder(s) and/or legates already in place. Again this will up to you to decide how you want to configure the political system in your organization. There will be generic templates to start with. But from there, most of the parameters will be customizable to enable players to have the ideal political structure they want.

 

Anyway, customizable admin rights in an organisation (which extend to territory rights, contruct and item use rights, or political rights) will be detailed a lot more in another blog post (not the one incoming for the end of the week, but the next after).
 
I hope this answers your questions.
If you have other questions, don't hesitate to ask! ;)
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Based on my own views and what others have said it's clear that guilds and groups are exactly as useful as your game makes them.

 

Personally I would be happy with a game I could never beat.

A game world that scaled in difficulty essentially up to "impossible" so that all anyone can ever do is gauge how far they get before they die.

Almost like an old arcade scoreboard, where the groups and heroes who get the furthest earn bragging rights.

In such a game having guilds and groups would be essential.

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I don't really have too much of offer in the way of guilds, except that in the past 6 years of wow, SWTOR, GW2 and even now in landmark, the only guilds I belonged to were my guild and most of the time it was just me, max of 3 to 5 people.

 

I like peace and immersion and what I really dislike about guilds is the incessant banter I always see in guild chat. Same reason I stay out of /general or /trade etc. 

 

I would almost like to see..tiers of guilds (I may not accurately describe what I see in my head here). 

 

What I mean by that is think of society. We belong to a country (large guild), a state or province (large, but smaller guild), a town (still large but much smaller), a family (3-5 person unit). 

 

I almost think to some degree your "guild" should happen automatically, for example what planet you take residence on and as it filters smaller and smaller becomes more of a choice. I guess in most MMO's this would be the faction you align with at the start of the game and then what guild you choose based on people you like playing with.

I also feel that guilds should be more organic in a way. For example. I make a pirate space ship and recruit 7 players. We would all be a "guild" for that ship or crew...almost like if you are not active within that organization, you are no longer part of it. What I fear is large guilds that really serve no purpose but to glorify the guild leaders or officers, unless that is what the player chooses to do...which could very well be the case in an RP sense.

 

I don't think I am conveying what I am thinking very well. ITs kinda hard to describe. I just don't like when I see a giant guild umbrella, with pockets of banded players inside of it. 

Also. I feel very very strongly about the RP aspect of guild names (and player names). In World of Warcraft I chose RP servers, not becaues I wanted to RP all day long or really had much interest in it, but because I could not stand names like "Lolkill", "Boogerbutt", "Strangedeath", "DaMan" etc etc. In Wow, you could report bad player names like that and force the player to rename to the RP naming conventions. I know this is labor for a customer service agent, but could be player controlled if flagged by other players with a message asking to please name accordingly. I know this might put some people off, but imo the people put off by not being able to use a stupid name are usually the ones causing trouble anyway. 

A world where corporations, fleets, armies, merchants, pirates etc have names that adhere to some form of RP element within that universe are generally far more immersive and simply "feel" better or feel more serious which to me has connotations of being legitimate. Crummy names for guilds or players often leaves me feeling like everything around me is a joke.

Anyway, kinda went off on a rant. But uhh...I might revisit my ideas here when I am better able to express them.

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@ spacelike:

 

"A game that could never really beat" sounds like a sandbox MMO ;)

The concept of going always farther without dying or beating a tremendous amount of (different) players or NPCs before being beaten ourselves could certainly be an interesting suggestion for creating some "player ranking", assuming this can be done with precise parameters. I will transmit the idea to the team.

 

@ Kiklix:

 

No problem, Kiklix. We perfectly understand how seeing unappropriate names can break immersion.

However, this is a difficult topic as deciding when a name is unappropriate (or not) is tied to subjectivity. It extremely difficulty to define precise rules about when a name is ok and others are not. Of course there are obvious names that can be considered unappropriate. But many name are also in the "grey" area, where opinions may be divided: being unappropriate for some players, but not really for others. Individual sensibility on this matter can vary a lot from one player to another.

 

The idea to allow character renaming controlled by players is interesting (by relieving customer support from extra work), but again, that doesn't really solve the problem. Anyway, there will probably be a more detailed discussion on this subject later.

 

 

Thanks to both of you for your feedback! :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Have a seperate server dedicated to a web page for users that accrue too many reports, send it to a voting system. Have 100 volunteers on the Justice tribunal vote if the name is too offensive, if 60/100 say yes force a name change. Could be abused to circumvent paying to change names, but what can you do - cant allow the offensives either.

 

Now to my main subject of guilds.

I'm imagining a procedurally generated universe

  • At first people will flock far and wide chaos and anarchy reign supreme
  • The first main guilds, chaotic institutions ruled by players with tons of time will begin to emerge
  • Many players have no reason to be apart of the organisation. Other than the fact that they were randomly invited, or they joined just because that was the first person to ask them to join.
  • a Land rush, so to say begins, the most valuable looking worlds and asteroid clusters are claimed in the name of LegolasxNaruto guilds.
  • Respectable guilds smaller in size have formed, possibly they end up forming coalitions against the mega guilds.
  • The insanity and dementia has been taking a toll on the Strong Fisted Iron men leading the mega guilds, the pressures of internal politics growing almost ready to burst.
  • A big war erupts in a last ditch effort to maintain their control and squash the pestering little guilds that mock them for being a blob fest.
  • In the end the mega guilds are left decimated having spent all their efforts in the battles, political and real ship fights.

(( This is the point that many players might leave the game)) but they could stay. If the game was fun, if they liked building ships, gathering metals, salvaging, even if the game is buggy as heck if its amusing and there are opportunities to talk to people, and see them moving around. They will stay and clamor far and wide across the internet for more people to come join, they will reminisce about the great war and outsiders will want to join and experience the same thing,

  • the reconstruction phase. the smaller guilds begin to grow in size, old coalitions fall apart because some one guild becomes excessively more powerful than all the others in that alliance.

the cycle will repeat many times. some alliances could be stronger than others if they uphold their individual constitutions or not.

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On the subject of guilds in general, I believe they will be built of of all the smaller intricate workings of the game.

 

I like to think of these little things being Immersion Hooks

the feel of being a captain, you talk with the other captains nearby and coordinate your efforts, a strategist chair really

a mad scientist engineer, you align the shield arrays run through the halls of the ship with exploding things behind you

a Gunner, you do the gunny things , blast em, wait no blast that one!

Nataurally spending alot of time looking at ships and blocks, components, and screens of all kinds.

 

For players something to keep in mind unless there are pre built stations, is that people will want to gather in halls and check out each others avatars, and talk before heading down the ramps to the docks to get blown to pieces.

 

Doing all of these cool things is great, people will come to love their ships, but they will not project their feelings onto them, they will project onto their avatars, and so finding ways to integrate avatars without making it feel very forced. Itll be difficult but worth it.

Running into people on the insides of space stations, jogging over to a manufactory on the other side of the station to find some people crafting Triangulating Trigagong's to build a Wango Dango Brango.

Undoubtedly there will become mega hubs, the best designed stations, in the best location of the day and age with people coming and going, people begging for you to join their guilds, politicians might be trying to convince you of something.

 

Maybe your friends ship blows up and you escape, now your stuck so you are waiting on a NPC shuttle to come pick you up and you bump into a rival or a long lost friend at the terminal.

 

What I'm trying to get at here is however tantalizing the actions in the game are will influence people to stay and join guilds.

 

I really liked what Kiklix had to say about the organic feel of guilds, join a guild, guild joins an alliance, alliance joins a nation, nation joins a coalition.

 regardless of how complex the guild workings become, factions will form and break, people will wrestle for resources, hopefully artistic individuals will forge amazing building on beautiful worlds. genius designers will make the next best fighter ship for mass production.

 

edit- I also do apologize, if anyone thinks I am spamming this topic. I feel everything i have said has some value here at least.

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Hi Saffi,

 

Hmmm... Justice Tribunal, like the system used for League of Legends then?

Well, that's an idea. I will forward it to the devs to see what they think of the idea (because this will mean some work on their side, if the concept is accepted ;))

 

We also try to find a way to give some advantages to smaller organizations to make them attractive compared to what is usually called "megaguilds". But so far nothing has been decided yet.

 

Speaking of organization management... A DevBlog Post is coming tomorrow on the RDMS (Right and Duty Management System)!

What is it exactly ? Well, you will be able to read a detailed explanation very soon ;)

 

About the "immersion hooks" you're talking about, it is planned to define the main player activities on the official wiki here (in the Quick Links section). Of course, with emergent gameplay, players may find completely new activities not yet listed.

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Ok, on the subject of guilds I think that it will work out great if there are larger and smaller guilds because of this, if one guild gets to big another guild will most likely become scared and shut them down, but if there are not other guilds that are larger than them I think that the smaller guilds will band together to defeat them. In addition to that though I want to see guilds become more of a community than what they usually are, a group of people who get together so they can destroy more/get a higher score. I want guilds to be warring factions but I also want them to be supportive communities.

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How would organizations be differentiated if only a basic general organizational structure were provided? What's to stop, say, a national military, from declaring war on perhaps an electronics or interior design company? It's a rather ridiculous situation in that case.

 

There probably should be some kind of mutual intergalactic laws established, a kind of on-your-honor thing created by the players and not officially implemented, so that although this situation most likely should not and would not occur, if some player/organization did decide to do such a thing, it would still be possible, because honestly, it does sound quite entertaining. This kind of thing did also happen in Star Wars between the TF and Naboo.

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Ok

 

I am going to come from 2 ends here, one end will be STO and the other will be SWTOR.

 

But first, I don't believe the concept of guilds, is dying. What I do believe is dying is the "will" to help make a guild "fun and social" In most cases, people just want to join X guild that is Y level so they can receive Z bonuses of the back, with out the effort of being social and/or engaging. I have personally come across this many times while working with my Fleet and Community over in STO...

 

Now, coming from the 2 ends I mentioned...

 

 

Dual Universe sets a good background for social(ism) - the sense of being social/engaging with other people, one must work together to thrive and succeed in the new world.

 

Now for the mechanics of how this is implemented and the overall resulting in the life of guilds/communities is very important.

 

From one end, limiting people on what they can do in a guild because the owner is F2P, really kills it. (in F2P models)

From the other end, allowing people to do what they want and receive bonuses can be better step, but again leads to the problem that I mentioned... Lack of engagements... and an easy way out.

 

If I read Astrophil idea correctly, an "Honor" system does work imo... I think... The more support you give to your guild, the more honor you get more benefits you get. As for solo players, having the same honor type system can be implemented in 2 ways. Via getting Honor from NPC (AI) or doing 'Jobs' for guilds/corps/organizations.

 

 

I don't know if I explained that correctly or if it makes sense. More thinking will need to be done, that's for sure... hehe :P  ;)  :D  But on the topic of is the guild concept dying... I say yes and no... It really all depends on how the guild concept is implemented.

 

If it's implemented correctly, it will lead to players interacting with on another, while not feeling left out if choosing the route to go solo. 

 

If implemented wrong, players will look for the quick access door. But then again, aint that real life, we all look for the quick access door, that leads to less work and more profit...

 

Just some quick thoughts on the topic and concept. :)

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In a single shard MMO I feel players have additional incentive to band together because their actions and achievements have wide-reaching and long-lasting effects. The idea of being able to shape the political, economic, or industrial landscape is a huge draw for me at least and that is far more easily done in a group. What a group can achieve depends on how large they are, how well organised they are, and how good and well-implemented their plans are.

 

I feel strongly that a well-organised, highly skilled (read: actual player skill not in-game stats skills), group of players should be able to defeat or outplay even a much larger, less prepared group. Pure numbers should not be the only, or most important aspect of what makes a gang successful. Having said that, I don't think smaller groups should be given artificial incentives or advantages, it should simply be a consideration throughout development: does this particular mechanic/map/landscape/item/etc give an unfair advantage to a blob? In other words always ensure that superior numbers is not an I-win card.

 

@astrophil I don't think a nation should be restricted in any way on who they can and can't declare war on. If a legate of a nation is a rival electronics company, why should they not expect their nation to drive off the opposition? This is player driven content generation! Consider this scenario. A "nation" XNation is made up of a military and multiple mining and manufacturing corporations. Up until now the military has claimed territory for the nation by crushing poorly defended mining corps and driving them away from where the best resources are. Electronica is a small company living not too far away and so far XNation has ignored them because they are not a threat and there is no overlap in interests. A group within XNation finds out that the electronics business is very lucrative and wants to give it a go. XNation declares war on Electronica to drive off the competition and increase profits. Electronica, being rich and well organised, have a base with a lot of defenses but they are hugely outnumbered and aren't really great combatants. They hire a mercenary gang to help. The mercenary gang are superior warriors because fighting is all they do, and despite being outnumbered they manage to continually rout XNation's military. Eventually a peace agreement is reached.

 

These kinds of interactions create "jobs" or "market niches" for other players and player organisations - such as mercenary, spy, arms manufacturers, hostile market traders, etc - and should not be restricted. Crucially, these emerging roles have the potential to give players/guilds a sense of real purpose within the game.

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I feel I need to re-examine my earlier statement.

I have felt kind of bad about saying bad guild leaders are low income workers. I was really thinking of myself the time I spent working at an Arby's and was trying to run a guild. I didn't have any managerial experience, It was a fun guild, but it became unstable after time. I didn't blame anyone but I also failed to realize I could have done better If I had tools or training.

 

What I really should have said Is people with BIG EGO and a lot of time usually form the first guilds in games, and because they have alot of time and will lie or say anything to prop their ego people follow them. The guilds are stable as long as the ego lasts, when the fresh flames of the game begin to settle down and turn to crackling embers the ego-maniacs lose interest and cause guilds to go bust. Thanks, and my apologies for the low-blow.

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  • 1 month later...

I feel the traditional / rigid concept of how guilds have been for some time, could be evolved somewhat. I think games like GW2 are pushing that forwards in terms of allowing people to join multiple guilds, however only one at any given time, it allows for more flexibility and choice for players. There are some down sides to this, in that it doesn't necessarily foster guild loyalty, but for me personally, the flexibility a multiple guild system allows, makes up for that. More incentive to stay loyal to a certain guild might help create stronger alliances between guilds and their members, but in general I prefer not to see content aimed solely at guilds, but plenty of things soloer's can partake in as well.

 

The beauty of a game like Landmark is that you can do what you like, without feeling obliged to join a guild. There are of course bonus's to being part of one in that game, but its not a requirement by any means, and if you join one its because you want to create something meaningful with other people, for help and support, or for joint projects. I'd like to see something like this in DU, a meaningful reason to be in a guild, but if you choose not to join one, you can still happily exist in DU without any pressures. However I appreciate there may be some things soloer's cannot do, and that's ok, just like in rl, there are things you can't do by yourself, and at some point you need to seek something from others, whether it be materials, or help to accomplish something.

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