Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Guild to Factions - As possible way to influence the world
Eronakis
Member UncommonPosts: 2,248
One element that I feel like the mmorpg genre could start to focus on is how to have players, more so a group of players to influence the world around them. Guilds are popping up left and right in any mmorpg you play and they really have no impact on the game world. They're merely a means to group players together in a chat and tag them in order to play together. I think guilds need to evolve in a way for players to have some form of influence in the game world.
My proposal is that I think it would be very interesting if guilds can become a faction over a long period of time. The purpose of this is to potentially allow a guild or guilds to open up a dialog to NPC's and players of how certain story elements could progress or change. The benefit of this would have a say in what could be influenced in the world, ultimately giving a faction of the power to the players of that guild that became a faction. Another benefit would be that the guild to faction would be burned into the lore of the world. I can see this becoming a roleplayers dream.
Another interesting mechanic that could potentially make this work is that Guilds have different ranks. Perhaps a guild could have a dedicated team of Ambassadors that specialize in diplomacy with other NPC's and/or NPC factions.
Of course there are other design elements of the game that may need to be fleshed out but let's just focus on, if a guild can become a faction.
Here are some conditions I think would be suitable for a guild to potentially to become a faction.
- Guild must have a realistic name or faction-esq name. Nothing like a screen name or childish name.
- Guild must complete a vast array of achievements in the world.
- Guild Ambassadors must excel an exalted rank with 25 NPC factions
- Guild must have a certain amount of active players. (the average amount of active players on a monthly scale)
- Guild must submit to the Table of Petitions to the GM's and pitch why their guild should become a faction and how their faction will interact with the world.
These are just some ideas I have. I feel like this could be an interesting concept and could bring some re-play value to the game. As well as community building.
What are some other conditions or ideas do you think this could work? Why do you think it can't work? Would a guild to become a faction would be something you'd be interested in? Let me know your ideas!
My proposal is that I think it would be very interesting if guilds can become a faction over a long period of time. The purpose of this is to potentially allow a guild or guilds to open up a dialog to NPC's and players of how certain story elements could progress or change. The benefit of this would have a say in what could be influenced in the world, ultimately giving a faction of the power to the players of that guild that became a faction. Another benefit would be that the guild to faction would be burned into the lore of the world. I can see this becoming a roleplayers dream.
Another interesting mechanic that could potentially make this work is that Guilds have different ranks. Perhaps a guild could have a dedicated team of Ambassadors that specialize in diplomacy with other NPC's and/or NPC factions.
Of course there are other design elements of the game that may need to be fleshed out but let's just focus on, if a guild can become a faction.
Here are some conditions I think would be suitable for a guild to potentially to become a faction.
- Guild must have a realistic name or faction-esq name. Nothing like a screen name or childish name.
- Guild must complete a vast array of achievements in the world.
- Guild Ambassadors must excel an exalted rank with 25 NPC factions
- Guild must have a certain amount of active players. (the average amount of active players on a monthly scale)
- Guild must submit to the Table of Petitions to the GM's and pitch why their guild should become a faction and how their faction will interact with the world.
These are just some ideas I have. I feel like this could be an interesting concept and could bring some re-play value to the game. As well as community building.
What are some other conditions or ideas do you think this could work? Why do you think it can't work? Would a guild to become a faction would be something you'd be interested in? Let me know your ideas!
Comments
The terminology doesn't really matter to me, its all about the functionality that a guild has. At the moment, like you say, guilds mostly just give you an extra chat channel, maybe access to a guild hall / ship, plus some guild storage. That tends to be it.
I'd rather take SWGs player cities and expand upon that notion. When SWG was still active, player cities were pretty cool, though a bit generic. The more members, the more houses you got. As your city mayor leveled up, you got to add more stuff (cantina, quest terminels, transport) and you could eventually add faction-specific pvp bases.
The bigger cities / guilds became known on the server. You'd travel to a specific player city because it housed a load of top rate crafters, or you'd travel to an opposing factions city because their pvp base became active.
It was a pretty good start but I'd love to see it taken further. More interesting city planning / layouts and more pvp options for the city. Being able to offer out housing / apartments to rent to non-guild members (with obvious safeguards in place). Being able to create your own missions to add onto local mission terminel / quest giver (e.g. kill 10 opposing factor players within city limits = 1000g). Building local crafting stations and auction houses / localised vendors. Building social areas, like small amphitheatres or pubs.
In this way, guilds can still gain server-wide recognition. They could offer more to the community than just another place to live. The biggest and best do become engrained in that servers' story, even if it's not official lore. Beyond that, just being able to build cities in the open world where pvp can take place would be great, assuming the players have the tools to build interesting cities.
Have your own world that can change based on your actions, and you can invite others to help you. And oh .. to make it a MMORPG ... just put in a 3D lobby public zone that is static, but every player can has his/her own version of a changing world.
Great idea in theory... But they are rivaling WS in length of Development.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Worse case F2P games are actually pretty good about this. They just force guild masters to be a paying player either directly or indirectly. Which does a pretty good job of minimizing the number of vanity guilds.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
People here complains about open world questing anyway .. and this is a way to get rid of that too. One stone .. two birds.
The cornerstone ability of the guild is the ability for them to define their own membership. Guilds reserve for themselves the right to admit the players they want, and dismiss players for whatever reason they choose. If you take away all guild abilities, but leave this one, it's still a functional guild. But if you take this power away, no other power or ability is going to make a guild a guild.
Factions have open membership. Anyone can join a faction, or work towards the requirements to join. The requirements to join a faction are always in the context of game mechanics (earning some points of some sort, performing a quest, clicking a dialogue sequence and so on). This makes it different from a guild, where the requirements to join are often based on metagaming mechanics (TS/Vent use, registration on third party websites, the adoption of some code of conduct, having to be "liked" by important people, etc.).
So I guess my question would be this:
If a guild becomes a faction, does that mean that the guild gets turned into an open membership institution, where anyone can join and nobody can be dismissed? Or will the guild maintain its prerogative to accept who they want?
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
To extend on this idea:
A player would maybe start with 5 factions and progress to more once they have gain favor with a faction. Also when choosing factions some may not be available because some may not coincide. Factions could extend to all attributes of the world, to Noble Houses, Knight Orders, Races, Classes, ect.
A way to incorporate guilds with this idea is that a guild may chose to represent a faction or factions and reap benefits that way.
The benefits for representing and/or joining a faction wouldn't be limited to buffs but it could extend to other interesting things. Such as, special crafting recipes, weapon and armor sets, secret lore, special items, an extended currency reward, increase vendor value when items are sold to vendors, give titles and other things.
@Rhoklaw I think you're on to something! Better than what I have proposed in my OP.
It is easy to change the world. Just let everyone has a personal world that can change based on their actions, and let them invite others into their world for co-op player. That is .. make instances personal, and dynamic.
That is 10x easier trying to manage factions that are made up of random people on the internet.