Guilds and Beacons

Devlog
1

I’m moving this to a new topic, because it’s a bit odd to be at the end of the Beacons Survey Results.

For anyone new to the thread I replied to this question:

with this answer:

and I got some concerned replies.

What I’ll do here is try and highlight some of the thinking behind this design so we can continue the discussion.

When thinking about the ownership of beacons and Guilds we considered three options, and settled on what we thought was the fairest overall. There three options were:

  1. The donation of beacons to a Guild are permanent.
  2. The donation of beacons to a Guild are temporary and the player can leave and reclaim them at any time.
  3. The donation of beacons to a Guild are temporary but it is up to the guild to choose when / whether to remove a player and give them back.

Option 1 has the advantage of being simple to understand by everyone, but means that the Guild has ultimate power. It becomes too much in the interest of a Guild to get players to sign up, donate their beacons, and then kick them out. This seems like a problem that we cannot fairly get around.
Option 2 means that the player is in complete control, but it has two issues. The first is what happens when a player leaves and the Guild and the Guild doesn’t have enough beacons left. @Vastar has suggested a solution to this, but it’s fiddly. The second issue is that it makes it possible for players to hold the Guild to random by threatening to leave, and reduces the level of ownership that a Guild has over its space and possessions.
Option 3 puts more power in the hands of the Guild, but not all the power. The Guild cannot get people to donate their beacons and then kick them out (because if they do that then beacons go back to the player), but players cannot leave the Guild and take their beacons back.

I think that Option 1 would not work, Option 2 could work, but Option 3 is be best balance. With option 3 the outstanding question is what happens if / when someone chooses to leave a Guild – the two options are that they forfeit their beacons, or that they cannot leave the Guild. There is no advantage to the player in leaving the Guild and forfeiting their beacons, so it seems like something that they would only do without fully realising the consequences, so wouldn’t it be better to prevent them from doing it in the first place?

The one thing this doesn’t cover is the desire to no longer be associated with a Guild because you don’t like what they stand for or what they’re doing, and I don’t know the answer to that, although I wonder that if it gets to that they will want to kick you out anyway as what guild would want a person who thinks that included anyway.

As I said initially this is a tricky one, and I can’t see a neat solution to it.
Further thoughts and comments are most welcome.

10 Likes
2

My concern with options 1 and 3 is that guilds can effectively hold players hostage.

People will abuse it. For example: inviting unsuspecting newbies to a guild and convincing them to donate their beacons.

I suspect that either of those approaches will be a nightmare for GMs.

Here’s an idea for making option 2 (players take their beacons back when leaving) more palatable:

When a player leaves a guild, they receive their beacons back after a delay (day? week?). This gives guilds warning to adjust their beacons or have more beacons donated. If they don’t in time, beacons are somehow (randomly?) chosen, removed, and given back to the player.

Also: any unused beacons could return immediately to leaving players.

9 Likes
3

(Saved for later)

So what would people think about adding another pro/con list like the one @Heurazio did? Cause in that case I could turn my post into a wiki post.

This seem like a topic that could easily grow to the size of the beacon decay topic

1 Like
5

Japp, that is aso what I would prefer … If you leave a guild you get your plots back, but not earlier then a week or even a month. So the guild has enough time to react and “fill the hole”. If they don’t do that the last X Plots which were created by the guild are taken away and the player get’s his beacon plots back (where X is the amount of plots donated). If the guild gets plots donated in the time they are taken first to “fill the hole”.

This is the fairest version, cuz not to be able to leave a guild (withoud being kicked) is quite the opposide.

So for me option 2 is the only realy fitting one

In addition I would say that kicking someone will reduce the time til the player gets his plots back. Sound’s fair too :wink:

2 Likes
6

I would actually say kicking somone should emediatly give them their plots back, the guild could just take as waiting a week for getting all your plots back after getting kicked doesn’t really seem fun, 24 hours should really be the max delay if there is any after a kick.

2 Likes
7

I think there´s one important information missing that would really help to discuss this topic.
How are we going to get additional beacon plots and is there going to be a hardcap on them?

[Link to the mentioned suggestion]

Only if the majority of the guild treatens to leave simultaniously, and if a guild leader manages to upset ~80% of his guild he probably deserves the consequences.
Additionally:

There might be a misunderstanding here.
The guildleader would still have full control over all placed plots.
If a player decides to leave the guildleader has several options to make up for the loss without loosing any control/protection over his project.

  • Ask other members to donate a few additional beacons to make up for the loss / donate a few of his own plots
  • Remove a few unnecessary plots to pay the depts to the player that has left
  • If it´s just a few leaving players (a few % of the total plots) he could just hold the expansion of his project until the donations of new members have made up for the loss

(My suggestion sure isn´t perfect but I think it´s a reasonably good approach to the issue)

This might be a suitable solution if there is no hardcap on your beacon pool.
But it could also be pretty discouraging for players to join a project/guild.

Not being able to leave a guild at any time is a no-go in an MMORPG. At least in my opinion

6 Likes
8

I think a weeks “cooling off period” is a reasonable time for a guild to either refactor it’s buildings to keep them functional after the loss of a player, or to get more beacons donated to the guild, before they are paid back to a player.

It’s kind of like working a notice period at a job - you signify your intention to leave a guild, if they have your beacons spare to give to you, you can leave right away, if not they are granted a small amount of time to get them to you (one way or another).

You could still keep option 3 as it is then.

7 Likes
9

I agree that a week seems reasonable. People in this thread who were previously arguing for the “life happens” argument in the beacon persistence thread now wanting 24 hours seems like too short of a time and would punish guilds whose leadership is away from the game. A week seems like a fair amount of time for officers to take over and get things situated if the guild master is away.

Besides that, I think @Vastar’s suggestion is really the best option (including allowing players to leave guilds). I agree with @nevir that if a guild recruits new players and encourages beacon donation, they really have no reason to kick people and give back the beacons so 1 and 3 don’t seem to be the best courses. And 2 could cause large sections of previously controlled land to be suddenly unprotected if there’s no debt/delay system in place. But if there is a debt/delay system (I’m learning more towards delay since with a debt system there’s still no guarantee of getting your beacons back) then it seems pretty reasonable.

3 Likes
10

I think the only person mentioning 24 hours was me and that was in case the guild was the ones who kicked someone. As you should reasonably expect that people able to kick other players out should be able to restructure beacons. It doesn’t really seem a problem.

4 Likes
11

Yep, in that case it doesn’t.

But if the player is the one who leaves, it would need to be longer than 24h at least.

3 Likes
12

If the player is the one leaving a week should be a reasonable timespan.

3 Likes
13

Is this operating under the assumption that players can only make a certain amount of beacons?

I think changing the limit from “making a certain number of beacons” > “being able to have a certain number of beacons placed” would fix all of this, as the guild would have a # of beacons they can place, and players still have a # of beacons they can place too. The guild’s # of placeable beacons could be related to either the # of members or a ‘guild beacon’ that can be upgraded.

1 Like
14

Why did you not consider 4:
Every player has it’s own pool of plots by it’s progression.
A guild has an amount of plots based on it’s members.
A player can join a guild by allowance of the guild.
But he can leave whenever he wants.

You now of course have kind of ongoing change up and down in a certain amount of beacons by players who leave and enter.
But you could handle this, if you does not spend all your beacons, to have a “buffer”. This is work of the guild leaders.

It’s the first proposal from you dev’s, that I personally think is horrible.
First forcing a player donating his progress to a guild. That makes a decision super hard to join any and donate… I can’t imagine right now, what would lead me to join a guild unter this circumstances.
Second making a player unable to leave… various reasons @Vastar posted.I personally would completely rampage if guild leaders would not leave me out of strange projects I cannot identify myself with.

If you really implement this into the game, it will have horrible consequences for guilds. I bet …
And really, think about consequences if players quit and lose their plots because of inactivity (that’s just my smaller concern)…

6 Likes
15

TLDR out of kindness:

Make a separate type of beacon for guilds that only guild members of required rank can place. increase the crafting cost (and size) on those beacons. Players who want to contribute can then simply donate blocks to players making the guild beacons. Players who donate lose their resources. No beacon ownership rights to worry about, as its guild property from day one. Players should also be able to leave/join guilds as they see fit (with a reasonable cooldown between joins). Binding people together isnt a good idea. Afterall this is boundLESS.

Guild beacons and shared resources seems like a total nightmare. SERIOUSLY.

I run an alliance in the game Warframe. At one point we had 52 clans as part of this alliance. Alliances are an in game clan of clans with chat tab and relevant activities.

The way I see it, Players Should be able to join/leave guilds as often as they like. A reasonable cooldown time isnt out of the picture (for rejoining or starting your own). But, after having such a large group of players under my wing ive learned one thing to be absolute: Things Change. Sometimes people flip their lid and go postal, attacking players in game verbally or the group as a whole because certain ideals arent met. Sometimes players have IRL friends join or make better acquaintances in game and decide to do the whole ‘lets do our own thing from scratch.’

Clans have dojos, which are ‘constructable’ ‘homes’ for you ‘clan’ where the architects choose which room / hallways to put where and members donate a required amount of resources to that project. After enough resources are donated you wait a crafting period then boom your dojo has a room.

There are several types of rooms.

There are barracks that increase the clan size thus increasing the amount of resources needed for any one project ten fold (generally). There are also LABS which have ‘research’ projects clans can start. Basically, a clan builds a lab, then once inside they can start ONE research project at a time. The research project requires a certain amount of resources, then once its donated by clan members you wait the 3d crafting time and after that period anyone in your clan can come an replicate (purchase with in game basic currency) the blueprint, head back to their player ship, and start building that item in their foundry (assuming they have all the required resources).

As of right now, there is a limited amount of alliance wide research. Clan leaders within an alliance have the ability to start this alliance research. The alliance research projects are items that anyone in a clan within the alliance with the required LABs built may access and donate to this research. The bad thing is that the research costs dont scale for alliances. So, two clans or fifty everything requires the same amount of donation… anyhow…

Heres an idea.

Give ranks to players within the clans. The FOUNDER of the clan… i mean guild… would have the ability to assign ranks to players and also determine what players can and cant do within that guild based on their rank.

example.

In warframe i have my clan ranks set up as (in ascending order) vacation, dobutsu, yakuza, samurai, sohei, ninja, tengu, and kami. I can open up a menu for each rank that allows me to set or deny permissions. Some of the permissions are : start research, host a dojo session, architect (place/remove rooms/decor) and the list goes on.

SO, here is my suggestion based on my 2.5 Years experience leading a group in a game where players in groups, or in groups of groups can participate together on projects

Make a separate type of BEACON for guilds. Allow the FOUNDER or top rank of the guild (or rank with the permission) to set / remove GuildBeacons. Players should then be able to donate resources to the beacon. Once you donate resources to the beacon thats it, your resources are gone forever. If you leave the guild you leave behind your donated resources. I know it is probably MORE UI work. An maybe much more than that since the crafting at this point is per person.

OR

What might be simpler… Is this.

Make guild beacons separate. Make guild beacons require a specific number of control beacons. Those guild control beacons have a higher crafting cost than regular control points etc. Guild leaders (or top rankin) would be the only ones to place/destroy these beacons and/or control points. Players that want to contribute to them can just toss their blocks on the ground and the player in charge of the beacon construction can pick them up. In this way you can keep your personal beacons. You can help the clan with beacons still. And the clan/player isnt bound together permanently for better or worse.

Seriously. Consider this. the ideas im seeing above are poor decisions, no offence. Theyre just gonna lead to issues. Lots and lots of issues.

9 Likes
16

^Post moved due to the conversation moving here^

1 Like
17

Please correct in: If they wish to join, clan leaders can decide to take them. Just joining does not seem good either. See my post before yours. Or do you mean it?

18

not sure if something is lost in translation

but of course a player would need an invite. thats how guilds work in every game. you dont just force yourself into someone guild, likewise you dont just walk into random strangers home irl.

3 Likes
19

Thanks for the post.

Are you suggesting that Guild beacons are created using resources, and don’t use up players’ beacon plots? If so how is that better than option 1 in the original post (all donated beacons are permanent)? Either way the players are permanently donating something, why is it better to donate resources than beacons?

1 Like
20

I think this is under the assumption that we’ll only have a finite amount of beacons and when one is lost then it’s lost.
Where as resources are infinite. And you’d have no problem donating them.
It makes it also easier for people do donate very little and still help out.

In short, we just don’t know enough about aquiring beacons/plots and the cap if there is one.

9 Likes
21

This is essentially it in a nut shell. One is infinite and acquiring more is just a function of time, the other being finite isn’t something a player should ever be able to lose permanently because it leaves them forever more worse off… at a certain point the thought “well I can’t do anything on this character… nevermind this game” starts to surface and away goes the player.

You might think that’s an extreme conclusion but it really isn’t. People won’t be bothered if they’re capacity to claim territory is permanently hamstrung in some way, they may also be less likely to ever join a guild because why would any sane person take that risk with that kind of consequence, the investment just doesn’t make sense.

3 Likes