Guilds and Beacons

Devlog
106

The current guild system allows for both your definitions of guild and taskforce. There aren’t many limits on the current system and I don’t think we should impose any. They allow for players who want to make/be in large guilds to do that. They allow for casual friends wanting to work on a small building like a tavern together to do that. [quote=“Smoothy, post:104, topic:4340”]
They may not grow as big as guilds and they should also not be a beacon low cost production machine.
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Basically I don’t think we should impose restrictions such as the above.

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107

#^This

The originally proposed guild system allows both, huge guilds, small guilds and what you´d call ‘taskforce’. I don´t see any need to separate the social groups of B< into tedious subsystem, especially with the mentioned “main-guild” feature in mind.

You don´t like the idea of joining 20 “taskforces”? Just don´t join any.
You want to join “the one and only” guild and seek for world dominition? Great I´m sure there will be a guild for you that offers exactly that.

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108

Hmm.

it also didn’t allow you to leave the guild.

No. That is kinda the problem. They are not mutually exclusive but there are definitely some differences. What about all discussing the whole bridge project? shows that systems which could work in bigger / longterm guilds wouldnt work for the small projects.

Interestingly enough i don’t see any reason to hijack a system to do something YOU CAN ALREADY DO.

The main argument i have seen is “we want to build together!”

Lets see what you asked for

-You have a limited amount of beacons
-You can work on projects with people
-You can freely choose when to get your own beacons back
-You should able to do it with a limiting amount of people
-You should be able to do it instantly

Now lets see what the beacon system already have planned.

-You have a limited amount
-You can put player tokens into beacons to allow them to build in them
-You can remove your own beacons again when you desire (Prob for some cost)
-You can decide how many tokens you want to put into the beacon
-You can place the beacons instantly.

what you want guilds to be are literally already things you can do with your own beacons.

You don’t like the idea of joining guilds that requires time/dedication? Just dont join any. You want to just build with a few other people? Great you can already do that with the current beacon system!

Like the planned system already does.

They remove certain aspects which could be part of guilds to cater to people who wants to work in smaller task forces. aka the whole “Its unfair i have to work to gain beacon space when i just want to build something!”

Do you guys not see? The thing you ask for IS ALREADY COMING! What is the point of Hijacking another system to do PRECISELY the same while limiting it to cater to the needs of small players which are already catered to in the main system?

But alright. You use the argument “You can be in many guilds” then i will use the counter argument "Why have they stated that they want guilds to be so big that you can get subgroups of guilds WITHIN the guilds? That really doesnt seem like a system made for “3 man builder teams”. Where does world domination come in? where does economy gain come in? What are the differences between the taskforce system you want and the beacon system already in place?

EDIT: You might be right. Maybe they are doing guilds as nothing but a hollow shell focused entirely around catering builders. But if that is the case. then its the second worst decision they have ever made (after the exclusive gameplaychanging race) and they WILL Alienate a part of Maybe the majority, maybe not. But it would be just another system catering to builders. and honestly? i think there are already waay too damn many of those in the game. And i will fight with my very soul against it. But we need official confirmation first. @olliepurkiss if you read this. Think about the question “If the system is nothing more than what vastar suggest, a puny builder contract. What difference would it make? After all it is still all achievable with what is already planned?” I dont believe it is just that. the devs are not stupid, nor are they new at making games. So i simply do not believe that they are proposing a system that is simply identical to an already planned one.

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109

…I’m pretty sure this was my point. Which means I probably missed the point of your post.

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110

To clarify

You: The guild system suggested by the devs is already fitting both sides

Me: The BEACON system which is entirely seperate from any potential guild system can already do the same.

Am i misunderstanding? In case im not. i’m not saying that “the guild system suggested is good enough”. I’m saying that if we WERE to scrap the entire guild system. poof. gone. never going to be ingame. Even with that you could still achieve the whole “build together” with the current beacon/token system. Which is why i find it redundant and more than anything rude to suggest that a potentially good guild system should cater entirely to the builders. even though the system is already in place (outside of guild systems)

Is that a bit clearer? Or am i misphrasing something? (i might be)

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111

If guilds were only going to be used for building projects, I’d say you’re right and that beacons would serve all purposes.

I’m doubting that’s the case though.

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112

So, let’s say we remove beacons from guilds. Now beacons and guilds are stand alone separate things. How would a guild leader manage the beacons under his guilds control? I’m assuming that the placer of a beacon has irrevocable rights to that beacon, thought they can share permissions within the area.

So, how does a guild leader manage projects inside of beacons they did not directly place? Does that not leave them entirely at the mercy of the owner? Is that really that great of a concern, or just a natural check and balance?

I get the feeling that this question may be similar to what lead to the original beacon/guild plan.

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113

Precisely. I am saying that is what @Vastar is arguing for with his “join 60 guilds” and the whole idea of guilds working like “a taskforce” thats why i say its utterly redundant to want guilds to work just like that. He did say he would have “3 main guilds” which i think should be the focus. the “main” guilds that you want. the guilds you join for the social activities or to have shared objectives/resources with. And the problem is that you can say it covers both. but if we use a diagram

Red is the “proper” guild which is the classic “We make a guild to play together and bond!” and the blue is the “Taskforce”. The green area is the overlap. That is where you said “Look at the overlap!” and i say “Yeah… But look at how much DOESNT overlap”. As greatly discussed above. Forexample a guild progression system requiring achies, guild currency whatever lies in the red circle. But that would be against the blue circle which focuses entirely on “instant create guilds for small projects”. At the same time if we talk about “Allow people to take their beacons with them” due to the sort of “quick demand” nature of the blue circle then the red circle is more focused on “As a guild we should expand together and we need the other”. And since there is another overlap that looks like this

Which has an overlap that makes them nearly identical. i say scrap the blue part of the original diagram because then we can focus purely on the sort of “main guild” which potentially removes quite a few barriers which had to be there so the blue circle could still exist before.

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114

My personal opinion is that its impossible. The only way to counter it is by not allowing people to leave and take their beacons with them. Not saying thats the “best system” but rather that its the ONLY system i could see working covering for the originally planned of “donate beacons”. Which is fundamentally flawed as can be seen when the only way to have a chance at it is to NOT allow people to leave.

EDIT: An example to those who can’t imagine being in the guild leaders position. Imagine you build a project as 3 people. you all put beacons together, gathered materials and started. once it was almost done one of the guys went “nah i dont feel like it” and just takes all of his beacons. leaving 1/3 of your build vulnerable (which he could very well take for himself). that would freaking SUCK. Now imagine this in a case of maybe 10 out of 100 beacons or 20 out of 100 beacons. Its quite a few materials and space even if its a smaller percentage.

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115

There’s really nothing to stop them taking all the blocks already, if they have the permission within the beacon to do so. Just wait for the other 2 players to go offline and start farming… I’m pretty sure they would voluntarily kick that player from the guild after that.

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116

Here in lies the reason for the originally proposed “sub-guild”. Put your trusted members in your main Guild where hopefully they won’t betray that trust, and sub-guild where the members only have limited (and likely temporary) permissions.

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117

I haven’t caught up on this thread for a while, but I just had a thought. Most serious guilds will probably decide to rent their own server (with potential to turn off regen), would this change the decisions in terms of beacon rules?

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118

Not to me. Regen is invaluable to me for resource regeneration. I would infact do much the opposite, restriction on the entire world with the exception of guild members. No beacons except for my own to be used solely for the HQ.

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119

Were I leading a guild, this is what I would do too. Regen is crucial. Don’t want miners and gatherers wasting valuable time travelling further and further away to find stuff.

120

Back when I played minecraft, my favorite town running program was towny. This was because:

  1. People can leave whenever they want
  • you can invite people or leave it open
  • you can give different permission levels to people
  • you can set per chunk permissions & ownership
  • the max # of chunks claimable was based on how many people you had
  • each chunk had an upkeep cost as well as a buying price

This is pretty much exactly how I want the >B guild/town/w.e system to work, with the main ones being 1, 2, 4, and 5
I do not see a problem with people claiming a lot of land if there is a large group with a lot of money (I’m leaning towards a flat beacon cost)

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121

Towny is pretty solid.

122

Question: How big were those servers? I don’t know which is why im asking. Are we talking 50? 500? 5000? Because you have to remember that B< is an MMO where everybody plays in the same universe (hence all the discussion on how to handle beacons).

There are also other MMORPG elements that needs to be taken care of. forexample economy and progression. In MC progression was pretty much just which blocks you picked up. and there were no economy. So if you talk a system where everybody can leave and take the things within the beacons for themselves even though they might not have been the ones to place it then in MC that would mean losing a few blocks that you can get back. In B< i assume that some of the blocks are alot harder to get and might have a certain value that people do not want to lose (maybe gemblocks or something).

Its another entirely builder focused system. Sounds like a cool thing to have, but hopefully not instead of guilds.

123

Towny was (is) a popular plug-in used by servers of all sizes. Much like RES, the plug-in of choice for my server, it basically served the same purposes and allowed for customizable parameters to tweak balances from server to server. Like RES I used, it was often used in conjunction with economy /guild plug-ins for buying /selling of plots to achieve however much MMORPG experience the server host desired. I think what is most worth looking at are the enumerated things it achieved.

Though vanilla mc truly lacked all of the features required of boundless, with the right set of plug-ins and pleanty of technical know how, one could have easily replicated most if not all core features required to run a boundless server. It is not a stretch to say there may have been hundreds of servers that function exactly how you may expect of boundless with varying degrees of success.

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124

Uhh. that sounds interesting. Were there any known implications that arrived at the more populated servers? Like would it reach a point where it would take up too much space or there would be too much battling and griefing? Again i do question the direct transfer of any system from minecraft mainly due to the point that it was split into servers of varying populations and not one universe. Especially [quote=“alexanderyou, post:120, topic:4340”]
the max # of chunks claimable was based on how many people you had
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While i do know that that was part of minecraft where beacons like B< were not present so it was less of a problem i worry about the use of the system in boundless? Considering the fact that beacons are already planned to work that way but with personal gainable beacons rather than member besed one. Was unsure if the suggestion was that there were personal beacons and then “guilds” which got free beacons from having members or if it was just a suggestion in terms of “An official contract system”

I must admit that time and time again i see these suggestions to add a system that caters to the builder as a “project system” i fail to see anything that beacons can’t already provide and fail to see the use. Maybe someone can provide some examples of what such a system would bring to the table which aren’t already achievable?

Build together = Add player tokens to beacons
Shared storage = Put a chest within the beacon with player token access
Freedom to leave when you desire = Players can remove their own beacons anyways
Give different permissions = Add player tokens for different permissions (already planned as far as im aware)
Invite people = Let people place their own beacons and add it to the project
Based on how many people you have = Based on how many beacons people are willing to give
Each chunk has an upkeep cost as well as a buying price = Beacons needs to be acquired through progress giving it “a cost”

I see none. I simply do not see anything it could possibly add other than either dictator powers to the leader (cant leave guilds/Taskforce) or complete anarchy within suggested systems (people can leave whenever)

125

I don’t think having a centrally managed town system would be “catering to builders”
There are NO towns or NPCs in boundless, apart from what people make, and if towns don’t have a person or group that can have control over who is in the town & where they can build, it is no better than a bunch of separate people who happen to be near each other. I don’t see a problem with a system that is designed to bring groups of people together in one place where they can build, trade, and have easy access to other players of different professions.

I don’t quite understand your post, do you not want a system for making towns, or do you want one where people in a town have to slowly gain experience in a town to get beacons?

1 Like