Guilds Redux

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Ivor
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby Ivor » Sun Sep 16, 2018 5:10 am

You know what id do? Make those big oads non pvp areas. Drop goes to the inventory of the person dealt the most damage. Similar way, make a couple of world bosses, once a week, killabe within 10-15 mins (assuming the 90% player base hitting them) with prices to the top 3 - top 5 damage dealers, and a little something for the lucky killshot.
I mean, if we want fairness , justice and equal opportinities for all, thats a way to start.
As for pvp , there are so many ways possible , to organise a solid competition that will also benefit guild dedication. Class moshes, race moshes,3v3 - 5v5 clan event, a great colliseum tournament perhaps? with record keeping , scoreboards, weekly/monthy competitions etc. I ve seen other modern muds doin this kind of system and they are succesfull. Having a system like this, we wont have to close the guilds, as numbers will not lead to overpower, still , guild competition will be there - on scoreboards with transparency, equal chances and ..some luck. Just a thought, cheers
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Terron
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby Terron » Sun Sep 16, 2018 4:54 pm

that sounds like minstrel/ saurian zerk partnerships until the end of days
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box"

this game is like sim ant
zerg the red ants with more black ants

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Kruell
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby Kruell » Sun Sep 16, 2018 8:55 pm

Terron wrote:as far as i see it, keys favor big guilds. death sickness favors big guilds. healing and potion decay favors big guilds.


I never understood why the logoff timer after death. Glad that's gone now. That was a mechanic that incentivized big guilds in indirect ways since it penalized small groups or solo players. Healing and Potion decay also incentivizes big guilds in PVP since bigger groups can distribute the burden. Lowering healing potion amounts incentivizes people to join a guild in the first place since many monsters do more damage per round while leveling than pots can recoup.

I'm all for justice and equality of opportunity, but we don't want to make things equally crappy. Making the item go to those who get kill shot is an idea, but not for everything. In fact, this would make people refuse to take healing or support classes to OaDs. I don't think we need more issues with that. Transparency is a great thing though. Leader-boards might solve a bunch of issues. One of the things we have now is people trolling others by making false claims which ends up causing unrelated issues because people cry foul. Right now we have a few players who act in ways that bring the whole game down. Remove guilds from the game and you will still have these players causing issues. We need to fix it so bad actors and adult children can't ruin the game for everyone.

Seta keys are a prime example of big guild friendly design considering it is unlimited people for each key and the room is kill to pass so people can't drop steal if they leave one alligator alive. Refinery and Dreadlands are guild friendly but can be disrupted by a coordinated effort (steal just one component of the key). Shiv key is a free for all considering one smart person can take the key from an overwhelming force (drop stealing is bad, mkay). The Dragons though surprisingly aren't so much guild friendly. Even a small number of determined adversaries can stymie a guild from getting scales. Admittedly, stopping others isn't as satisfying as completing yourself... but still it is a good mechanic.

These places came about due to an overriding philosophy of X+Y=Z for an area. We need more F=Q and A+C-7=D areas and monsters. Roamers are great. I love roamers as long as they aren't too powerful. Roamers shouldn't drop stuff equal to top OaDs though unless it is a HUGELY LONG span between spawns. NH has put some great tools for builders in play though so hopefully some new type stuff will be hitting the game.

To me, the guild problems we have now are a symptom and not an actual illness. I think Discord is more corrosive to this game than guild structure at the moment. Still, the all powerful creator will need to decide the direction he needs to go. Maybe a few "ever changing mazes of mystery" that don't require a key but do require the running of a changing gauntlet will shake things up.
If you look like prey you will be eaten

Terron
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby Terron » Sun Sep 16, 2018 9:54 pm

i mean those were needed additions for fair fights, but like 1/75 fights was ever fair to begin with.

what the game needs is incentives for smaller guilds and a pve way to eliminate guilds from oad races. this is so it cant be a cluster of 18v5v3

oad spawns at 7. 4 key (1) bosses spawn all over the realm. guilds fight npcs for 4 keys some pvp action heavily big guilded, but unlikely to have 4 branches of 1 guild win 4 keys.

Key (1)s open the oad so u can bring in 5 people and rush your self to one of the two key(2) bosses. thus eliminating 2 guilds from contention with either fair fights or no fighting whatsoever.

lastly, the remaining 2 teams head to the final key(3) boss making 1 team the victor. that team wins key (3) and gets to go to the real oad.

edit it would be possible to code a guild soulbind so keys could be dropstolen or so guilds with more than 1 key couldnt likely ambush you twice
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box"

this game is like sim ant
zerg the red ants with more black ants

Aftershock
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby Aftershock » Mon Sep 17, 2018 12:11 pm

If the shoe was on the other foot and Silhouette was back on their A-Game, Empire would be the ones calling for change. Again.

I see alot of selfish posting about how it's not the larger Guilds problem, it IS the bigger guilds problem for not coming up with a system together to help everyone and not just themselves. Sure keep it how it is for those Empire who still need gear for all their 50 25ers.

For the game as a whole, changes need to be made. As an Empire game as a whole, keep it how it is until Silhouette take back charge for 6 months and then revert back when Empire regain strength.

My opinion is just do something that YOU feel would benefit the game, too many bias opinions come from debates and it' a joke. If Ember was to just go offline they would be PMing you daily to just delete Guilds lol.

I gave up on this game for some mass irl issues i have to deal with but before i left and for some time i have said delete Guilds. Make people work together rather than against. This doesn't mean you can't PK. This means you can freely get a team or teams together and take out keys/OADS TOGETHER for a change instead of one Guild dominating for a period of time the switching to ther other big Guild once burnt out.

Sure you guys might like the power switch but the smaller Guilds have never gained ground or even been able to get OAD gear. Those guys have to grind it out for Gold and hope something pops up on AH. That's not fair at all.

(You is referring to NiteHawk)
Aftershock

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Kruell
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby Kruell » Mon Sep 17, 2018 3:59 pm

What is the current player base? I've heard different numbers. I'm not talking about most online at one time, I mean how many people regularly play this game at least once a week. I've seen some pretty ridiculous numbers thrown up to explain why X guild is bad. Most of the time the numbers aren't even close to reality. If we have 50 people playing the game, then a guild of 25+ would be a horrible thing. If we have 100+ playing then a guild of 25+ isn't much. Barring social issues such as personal dislike and hatred, people will gravitate towards "poles" in the community. If Guilds are removed, then the entire mechanics for facilitating/controlling player interaction moves to Discord and a large part of game play leaves the control of game staff. Relinquishing the social aspect of a game into the control of another entity makes the game not only dependent upon that entity, but also makes it likley that the social aspect will surplant the game itself. In short, if you log on to spend time with people why bother to log into the game if you can do the same from Discord?

Limiting the size of guilds is a viable, and possibly necessary, step for the game. It should be based though on what is best for code balance and structure than any social engineering or enablement. Using a binary theory, we can assume there will always be two large guilds as humans tend to group together against a common enemy. We can assume there will always be a few small guilds on the periphery as well as people who keep certain characters guildless. This is where being old and having studied psychology comes in handy.

I seem to remember that World of Warcraft used to have a server capacity of 2500 people. Their guilds were capped at 999 people. If everyone in game joined a "mega-guild" then there would be 2 major and one minor guild. The reality was different with WoW because it combined all aspects of game play allowing for smaller guilds to complete raids as well as mechanics for solo players to enjoy the content. What ended up happening is each server had a "mega" guild and dozens of smaller guilds. For WoW, it wasn't about forcing people into smaller guilds that created the diversity, it was a diverity of content that allowed for the growth of individuals and specialty guilds.

If Ember used the same formula that would be a maximum of roughly 40% of the population in one guild. We aren't talking about everyone being online at the same time, this would be the number of people who play the game total. Some can only play for a few hours a week. Others can play for 8+ hours a day. What would end up happening is the major guilds would have dominant "timezones" and there would be times when smaller guilds could either compete against or frustrate the larger guilds. It's entirely plausible that 3 different "mega" guilds appear to cover the time the server is up while smaller guilds stay spread out.

I agree that ultimately it is up to NiteHawk since he is the creator and the person with the clearest vision of what he wants to accomplish. Maybe the game isn't what it was intended to be. Maybe major changes need to be made to the core game structure to get it there. I tend to think in the terms of what is missing. I prefer to take a scalpal to a problem and not a chainsaw. I've been part of games where the chainsaw method was chosen and ultimately the game suffered due to it. I don't want to see those mistakes repeated here.

The easiest thing to do is to listen to those who complain the longest or loudest and do what they say. You often see people threaten to leave a game if X isn't changed. I tend to ultimately ignore those people. To me, those who don't talk much but quietly go about playing the game are the ones who need to be kept happy. Unfortunately, as life has shown us, those people do not often speak out. It is very hard to find out what these people like or dislike unless you actually play the game with them and draw them into discussions.
If you look like prey you will be eaten

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NiteHawk
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby NiteHawk » Tue Sep 18, 2018 6:23 am

Pots being overly high caused solo fights to be a problem. It's still a problem, just 'less of a problem'.. Monster damage does need to be adjusted though to be lower in leveling areas I'd say. Potion/Heal decay can be tweaked and it's mostly a test, but IMO endless fights are also really annoying. You shouldn't have to mash your keyboard for 10-15 minutes and you can't really 'up damage' without causing problems elsewhere. It's a tough balance to do. We can make the pot decay alot slower, heal decay slower, remove it from one, etc. But there needs to be an ends to all fights rather then a stalemate in group fights, and its hard to both balance it for solo/group because of it. Yeah, 12vs3 means that the players are outnumbered will have a tougher time, I understand where people are coming from with that with the potion/heal decay/etc, but IMO the problem isn't that to me, the problem is why those numbers swelled up on one side to begin with. GRANTED, it will happen sometimes, but we've have full guilds leave because of it (Most of Tormented for example left due to being overrun by the big boys that was the dominate power), so I assume when the 'numbers matter' this is often the problem.

Again we can tweak the decays though as we want it, we'll see how it goes. Pots/MP were split and if we don't have a decay, I don't see why pots should be split again either, as no decay generally means no losing mana as one mana pot is pretty much going to heal any MP decay you get in combat. AKA why even have MP if MP doesn't matter. (and the gold issue, I mean, use drinks and food. If you wanna save some time vs gold, that's on you.)

The logoff timer after death was to prevent people from logging in another toon right after dying 3 times. So X with 20 level 25'ers could cycle through 20 toons which was pretty much just like zombing. Though it's more resolved by using account sickness anyways.Death sickness is here to stay. Zombing is a dumb mechanic of the game and I don't care for it.

--------

I do agree with more incentives to being a small guild, we'll see about that too if we go that route. It's tough to say the current player base. It varies alot, last week we had 28-30 online and that was uncommon for awhile, then other times its around 20. I would say theres probably 50-65 actually active players, and alot of dead accounts. Though maybe it's alittle more then that.

Anyways, I'm still listening mostly right now. Just throwing some facts about some things. Again things can be balanced as I agree with some but some things are in to help.

Kruell wrote:The easiest thing to do is to listen to those who complain the longest or loudest and do what they say. You often see people threaten to leave a game if X isn't changed. I tend to ultimately ignore those people. To me, those who don't talk much but quietly go about playing the game are the ones who need to be kept happy. Unfortunately, as life has shown us, those people do not often speak out. It is very hard to find out what these people like or dislike unless you actually play the game with them and draw them into discussions.


Yeah that is byfar a huge issue IMO. I really hope more people get into this, as it's needed.



edit it would be possible to code a guild soulbind so keys could be dropstolen or so guilds with more than 1 key couldnt likely ambush you twice


Yeah there is an issue with this too. Dropstolen/attacking guilds several times. Maybe should be a limit/etc. There are also some issues with certain keys that need to be fixed too. I never was a fan of being able to ambush someone mid OAD. I think it's lame, I tell that to the builders all the time. The fight if anything should occur near the start of the OAD, not when someone has prepared a party, pots, and been in 40 minutes of an OAD only to have their hard work stripped in two seconds because of a large guild. Though yeah, there are issues obviously that 'keys' are a problem too. Though maybe things like having more keys spawn at the same time will make it so at least certain guilds will at least get 'something'. It's tough to say. Instances are another thing but it might make PVP 'too' boring, aka no pvp at all.

I think the PVP is good but maybe it needs to be more fair, stupid things that come into mind would be limiting the amount of per guild players in a room etc. I don't think that would really resolve it 100% though would 'help'.

Terron
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby Terron » Tue Sep 18, 2018 8:11 am

death sickness is a shit mechanic to combat zombying. since it affects more. shaky connections, classes dont all suck while sick etc. you want no zombies just lock accounts out of oad areas for 1 hr after 3 deaths. ive already seen death sickness fail because clerics run back and back and back and back and just shoot 1 heal on themselves to survive the npcs enroute and 3 on a friend mid battle over and over 20x while chain dying. its, 1, 2, 3 strikes you're out in the old ball game....(cntrol crystals already do this, it isnt a new thing)

also tormented quit? what...they all left and started empire and took all the members. thats like sayin defiance quit. same players for the most part, just moved on and renamed. look every side has had people quit. silh had 80 people on discord lol they all gone man, be it trolls, pkers, boredom, content whatever. they just stopped playin. some leave the channel now and then, others found home with our meme channels etc. but doesnt matter they dont play ember.

took too long really. there will just be discords with 10 allied guilds(as stated to me). will deteriorate over a long period of time, when the leadership stops playing and the playerpool sees newer "actives" and we get alot more players. problem is thats gunna be awhile.

edit: chris there isnt even many oads that take over 10 minutes. of the few that allow ambushing mid oad, you have to realise the ambushing guild "wasted" an oad from a previous day. ambushing is probably the funnest part of the game. i agree its like a guild lost an oad then ambushes another guild to change it to a loss for someone else, but it is the funnest parts of the game for most of the people playing. ambushing also results in both guilds failing the oad anyway. +1 for server longevity. it does suck that 1 side has to be griefed to accomplish it, however, if oads worked the way they are supposed to the guilds would fail the bosses 50%.
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box"

this game is like sim ant
zerg the red ants with more black ants

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Kruell
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby Kruell » Tue Sep 18, 2018 5:02 pm

I had a wall of text typed out with examples. Then I remembered most people don't read that much. I'll just say this. It's not guilds, it's toxic players. We need to learn not to keep preaching hatred and drama. Other guilds aren't evil cheaters. Discord is of the Devil.... nuf said
If you look like prey you will be eaten

Terron
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Re: Guilds Redux

Postby Terron » Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:53 pm

some of the players arent as toxic as they are perceived. some of the shit-talking is their way of relaxing.(this is pretty much the same as a drunken fool in a bar) shit talking has been the legacy of the mud world since the mid 90s when the 2nd generation of cpu mudders took over. now people do go too far with it sometimes, like the #silhcodes ruse or the staffcheat crap, but all in all i think its not even the trolling that does the most damage. its the whining. ive done it so as everyone else. people have off days.
guy trolls and 15-20 people have to troll staff to "punish" 1 troll. when all thats done is actually punishing the staff by having to hear you rant at them for days on end sometimes. mystery auction prime example.

as much as id love to see no guilds or smaller guild i just dont see it as a way to retain players atm and itll just make every casual player on both sides play even less. i think we need to diversify oads, make them harder, make people need equipment to take the tougher oads. divinity guilds are an option to merge the split playerbase, divinity events also. maybe even have a super continent where 25ers can go to a world thats 2x as hard and 1 less party member but with 2x hum rate (for the oads) would we risk it? yep
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box"

this game is like sim ant
zerg the red ants with more black ants


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