Making guilds more relevant

[Mordag]

In my experience nothing keeps players in a game more than making friends. As of now, guilds give advice and some help a bit new players financially, but once a player becomes established guilds lose most of the relevance. Nation bonuses are great, but maybe we need to keep in mind that there are a lot more nations than ports. I think that making guilds more relevant could make it more fun for all and help the game as well. Some ideas:

Guild Wars: War between 2 guilds declared officially should be treated differently than plunder. Maybe only a set amount per guild as loss/win instead of individual wins/losses, keeping in mind the guild strength. For example: a guild with 20 small players should make more money if they win against a guild that is stronger. Strength could depend on type of ships, number of fleets, fame/influence. Player activity should have the stronger impact on the war, so maybe require less turns per attack during a war?

Guild Inventory: Members would be responsible of building common inventory. Something like a fix number of ships at the time that can be gifted to members, voodoo cards, gold, materials, or all of the above. Obviously the milking rule should be in effect - what I have in mind is help for the newer member, or an older member in big need, not 20 members building inventory for 1 player. If common inventory is hard to implement, maybe the ability to send voodoo cards or ships/more cash to guildmates, although I think common inventory is better. Ships could be on "loan only" with guild being able to recall the ships at any time - or fleets instead of ships. Guild creator should have the option to allow members different levels of power (like we have now): receive for all, then loan only, send loan, buy from market, sell. For gold or voodoo cards should be send instead of loan.

Guild members activity: A daily bonus for the guild based on number of members that logged in that day and hours played - it doesn't have to be big, just something else to give a guild common purpose.

Guild Port: Something like nation port, influence requirement and some kind of bonus.


Hopefully other players have more/better ideas how to make the guilds more relevant, but I do believe an increase in relevance would be better for all long time.

[Captain Blue]

I like your guild war suggestions it will certainly make things here more civilized specially during wars.

As for loaning a ship, i guess that would be a problem since this game pretty much revolves around voodoo. Therefore i suggest a voodoo card that will Loan a ship to another player. It works similarly to commandeer where the ship has to be not in a fleet as well as being Rare. A player would cast this Loan Ship voodoo on someone taking which ever ship the other player is willing to loan. The duration is a week long, then it will automatically be sent back to its original owner or the ship can be taken back by pressing cancel in the active voodoo page allowing the original owner to receive his/her ship back.

Instead of Guild Inventory have a Guild Bank. Where different members of the guild as well as take out gold. Similar to Burying a Treasure where you can hide money as well as recover the money. This time all the members in a guild has access to it. Others can cast Booty Master or maybe a new voodoo to steal some gold. It can either be protected by new voodoo's or by casting mindbar over the guildbank. I'm Sure you guys can name and think of new voodoo to suggest here.

Port can be taken control of by a guild as well as by a nation. The nation control is still the same stating that this port is under blah blah blah and it will also say that this port is under the influence of of such guild. To control a port you either sacrifice gold or influences or maybe missions that a whole guild has to complete. (if you have inactive, well sorry you haha). then each guild member that controls that port will earn more fame or cheaper buying price and more profit whenever they buy and sell at that port.

[MAjesty]

a loan voodoo card shud do the Loaning not the taking of a loan... that just makes sense..

[Mordag]

A voodoo sending the loan would work better if the scope is to help the newer members - new players don't have voodoo cards either.

I like the Guild Bank idea very much, but there is a problem. If all members can take money out, guilds will never let new players in for obvious reasons. I think we need to be able to give different levels of access and let only trusted members do the banking. Of course, by doing this we might have another problem - players creating a guild with the sole purpose of stealing gold from newbies. So maybe it would work better if the guild bank creates capital from donations only, and only certain members can gift/loan gold. Once you donate to the guild, you understand that there won't be a refund. Then the bankers can judge who deserves a loan or not. In best case scenario transactions would be flagged if going to same player always, we need more newbies, not less.

[Captain dungeness]

The devs already have plans to implement player-owned banks that can loan gold and store gold in a safe way. A "Guild Bank" sounds just like a guildmaster who owns a bank and loans to his or her members. The bank can give gold to players by approving a loan and then forgiving the debt. A bank can receive donations by the player releasing the bank from the obligation to give back the deposited gold.

When we have banks and gold loans we won't need a voodoo card to loan out a ship- just give them a loan equal to the ship cost and they can build it (later they will pay you back). If you really want a specific ship then use Commandeer.

Bank Thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=215

The devs also have plans for "Pirate's Code" Wars that is very similar to this Guild Wars suggestion.
Thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=209

-Captain D

[Mordag]

Ultimately a guild bank will work on an honor-based system, but I think it should be set up differently than a player bank. I am absolutely OK with making gold donations to the guild to benefit smaller players, but if Da Vinci asks me to make the same donations to him personally he might not like my answer. I have no intention on building a bank for another player, only help to benefit many.

I didn't see the Pirate Code post until now, thank you for the link. War among guilds with a different set up than plunder would be good anyway, but I think a system that benefits the guild with a higher members activity during the war would work much better. It would have to have a balance between number of members and activity, but it would prevent a situation in which only a handful of players can play war if only strength is rewarded. No matter how the game is set up, ultimately there will always be a few players way ahead of anyone else. However, if the rest can fun as well regardless of how small they are, at the end we all benefit. Not sure if previous understanding only wars are a good idea, maybe an auto generated war booty would be a better way, maybe based on the gold the guild keeps in the guild owned bank If we can surprise another guild with a declaration of war, maybe there is a way to let some guilds register as training guilds and make them immune to attacks - this should protect very new players.Maybe I am wrong, but I think the game should encourage the creation of smaller guilds, otherwise wars would be fought mostly in forums instead of being consider fun. How many times/how often can the same guild go to war before its members stop having fun?

That being said, my suggestion was meant with the scope of making guilds more relevant - Pirate Code alone will not solve the problem entirely in my opinion, and neither would any other suggestion made by itself, only a combination of different things. And let's not forget that some players will never like war, they should still be interested in being part of guild.

I am one of those people who love brainstorming. I hope nobody assumes that my comments are made to offend anyone or to discount another idea, I happen to believe that even great ideas can be improved when more brains work on it

[Roileon]

Well in today's age of spies and such making the bank based on an honor system wouldn't work because A)even with set limits of what u could take out and on another game what items ur rank is allowed to take there is nothing that stops a spy from going into the guild, and bankrupting it or withdrawing all the money and depositing it into their pockets. You would creat the new issue of bank robbery. And any bank system in the game would create the issue of bank robberies on guild levels no matter what security efforts are in place unless u want only the wealthy and experienced players in ur guild using the bank denying the purpose of the bank in the first place. Ur welcome because this is me sharing with u the tactics I would use in purpose of war if the system is implemented against my consent.
-RoiLeon


Even worse, the is no legitimate or effective way to counter it to the wills of an espionage unit.

[Mordag]

I think you misunderstood me - yes, only trusted/experienced players could access the guild bank, but they will send gold to newbies, not themselves. Obviously this is a rule only the guild creator could enforce. I personally think guild banks should be immune to voodoo, maybe take a percentage out automatically only as war booty. If someone gives access to the wrong member, yes, the bank would be robbed, but this is the guild creator problem. We need something to do on our own too, I don't think it's the devs' problem to whom the guild leader gives access to a common inventory/bank. And let's remember donations are always voluntary, only taxes are mandatory - no guild would be forced to have a bank if they don't want one.

[Roileon]

It is too easy to corrupt another bank at the same time though