I kinda forgot the original post because of all the suggestions XD
But yeah having guilds just function as a way of pooling resources/beacons is simple and could work. I would like to see beacons have a flat price/time to get, but also have an upkeep cost. This would be a soft cap on the amount of beacons a group could control at a time, rather than the hard(er) cap that exponential increases in price would be. Since you will get money for just doing stuff in the game (last time I checked) having an upkeep on beacons you own would be logical enough.
I would like to see beacons be a tradable/craftable resource and not just a magical ‘you got because you played x hours’ thing, as that would fit far better in what >B is trying to do.
Are you talking about guild beacons or normal beacons here? It seems to me like you’re talking about normal beacons. I think it’s important we keep these two discussions a bit more separated for clarity’s sake.
And it shouldnt be all too difficult that to see if you try to make one system able to do EVERYTHING and be useable by EVERYONE there will be tradeoffs which wouldnt work.
And again THAT SYSTEM ALSO MAKES IT UNABLE TO LEAVE GUILDS which people seem to keep skipping. Keep forgetting that was the original premise. But please. by all means. do explain to me how much management you can do of beacons when you can lose them at any time? when people can just take them back at any time? i dont see any. Honestly I just believe i see it different than i do. I see you guys say “i will work with my friends, and i will have fun little group projects where NOBODY would ever do anything bad” Its optimistic. I’m saying there WILL be cases where people will grief with it. there WILL be problems. there WILL be guilds which aren’t focused entirely around friends. there WILL be people in the game who are not as nice as you want to believe. and how do we make a system to avoid that.
Why would you? why not just go mining with your friends. any particular reason to make an entirely new guild for that?
or you place your own beacon. which would fundamentally be the same. since the current suggestion was “people donate their own beacons”[quote=“Clexarews, post:128, topic:4340”]
we want to pick up our loot, go sell it, and then go fight a titan, then there’s no beacon or player tokens involved and our guild can remain as one, with all perms and everything still set, without needing to form a new “taskforce”.
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all things you can do. without being in a guild.
Those suggestions. are not guild. they are groups. or contracts. and they do not. benefit rpg players. in any way. you gain nothing from joining one of these, you lose nothing from joining one of these, within these there are no rule, no authority, because the power is all in the hands of each individual player.
This has less to do with MMORPG guilds being sacred and more to do with the fact that every single one of those things are often things done in temporary groups. seperate to guilds. one of the arguments is “it should be used like this because we can join as many as we want” fine. i propose something. Lets make it so people can create their own “Task forces” or “Long term groups” with a name and a group token which makes it easier to put it into beacons. and then every player can join ONE guild of their choice which would be more of a long term investment and more focused on actually being a guild. That way the people who wants groups can do that (even though it is already covered IN the beacon system) and that way the devs are less restricted in the way they could potentially handle guilds.
It isnt. it isnt useful even in the slightest if we think big and good mmorpg style guilds because a part of the people in here wants them to be nothing but a simple builder group tool. Everything other than placing beacons with a single guild token could all be done in the traditional “mmorpg style guilds” Group together, work together. ETC. the only thing you couldnt achieve in a guild system driven on dedication and not just instant creation and instant destruction is the builder focused aspects of wanting to use them at simple build groups because people are too lazy to place beacons and tokens I honestly can’t understand why people cant see that. It is like it smacks me in the head everytime i look at the discussion. the fact that is already how it works. So either i am not phrasing myself correctly or you see something i dont? (I am not going to say “you just dont understand” because that is rude and obnoxious)
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Please explain what these are. In your more recent posts I’ve only seen you explaining that guild beacons and regular beacons both allow for collaborative building. I’ve yet to see something that doesn’t work with guilds serving as short-term groups, long-term groups, community building, etc.
Not skipping. Pretty sure there was a solid consensus from the community that we’re against this and I believe Ollie said they’re going to look into making it different. So it doesn’t seem worth beating a dead horse (in my mind).
I’m sorry. I was contemplating creating a new topic dealing exclusively with guilds vs. taskforces and leaving this one for guilds vs. beacons. The intention behind the post you were quoting was to deal only with the guild vs. guild + taskforce discussion. Apologies if I did not make that clear enough.
That’s the beauty of the guild system! 
You can create guilds that aren’t just with friends! You can create guilds to do almost any activity in the game together. You have your own name, your own glyph, can compete with other groups for bragging rights, and if we go with an achievement-based progression system, you can earn those too, as a group. Things you couldn’t do with just a shared beacon. Permissions and factions will allow you to provide more power to those you trust while giving newer members a chance to prove themselves. 
See above. Name, glyph, achieves. Things that promote cohesion and whatnot. We could just roam around without guild tools, but it makes it much easier if we have them. This hasn’t been announced as far as I know, but a shared chat will help vs only a local chat (in case someone finds a large cluster, finds a new wing of the cave system, needs more resources or is lost in darkness, to name only a small small subsection possible chat topics for this one activity in the game) 
.[quote=“Zouls, post:131, topic:4340”]
or you place your own beacon. which would fundamentally be the same. since the current suggestion was “people donate their own beacons”
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True. But you forgot to finish my quote! The point of this is to not have to deal with the hassle of player tokens. This saves on both time and resources. Perms are already set up in ranks for my friends to be able to build within the guild beacon. So it’s just a place, drop off our loot, and off we go! 
[quote=“Zouls, post:131, topic:4340”]
Those suggestions. are not guild. they are groups. or contracts. and they do not. benefit rpg players. in any way. you gain nothing from joining one of these, you lose nothing from joining one of these, within these there are no rule, no authority, because the power is all in the hands of each individual player.
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With groups, there’s still a leader.
So far I’ve been interpreting your argument about guilds vs. guilds and taskforces as being “Everything that doesn’t fit within Guild-type: X can be done using a different name and a pre-existing system. So let’s call everything that doesn’t belong to guild-type: X by a different name and use a pre-existing system for it”. And that seems really complex. And it sort of is my point too:
If people want to make an effort at a build project using beacons and player tokens, they can do that.
If people want to make a small group and have a guild glyph and have that kind of moderation, they can do that.
If people want to make guilds with members in the hundreds with several factions, they can do that.
The only person who doesn’t seem happy here is you 
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I’m not volunteering here but I would like someone to make another thread like Beacon Persistence - Pro-/Con-List and Polls to make things more digestable. I’m finding this hard to follow (and this will make our thoughts more orderly for the devs). Interesting discussion though. Keep it going! 
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I’m personally not sure how much of a need there is for another community poll since the devs will be issuing their own soon enough.
To sum up the thread: There are a few discussions going on within the same topic, which Discourse is bad at.
1.) The idea of guilds vs. guilds + another grouping mechanism
2.) The idea of joining/forming multiple guilds
3.) The idea of beacon donation/other methods of guild expansion.
4.) The idea of leaving guilds and how that affects the beacon totals of the players and the beacons owned by the guild.
Recently the discussion have been more focused on number 1. Numbers 3 and 4 are arguably the most complex.
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Any of the 4 other potential systems proposed for guilds. 1) Member based “But then we need members to build stuff!” 2) Money “But then we need money to build more things!” 3) Dedication “But then we need to do something else to build things!” 4) A mix “But then we need a mix to build things!”. That is the general opposition i have seen to any of the proposed system. the whole “im a builder and this doesnt cater exclusively to me!”. I have actually been trying to make a system which would cater to both builders and RPG players but i could easily start saying “Eh builders doesnt matter in the slightest”. Which i try to avoid.
I agree! That system sucked. But it was an intergral counter to the problems that the suggested system has. Let me use an analogy. Say you are building a house in the real world. You see how the house is going to be build and say “i dont like all of those supporting frames. remove them!” and then after removing something that will make sure it doesnt crash you say “But look that was the original house plan!”. I have mentioned time and time and time again that it most likely end up in massive anarchy and that guild building wouldn’t be stable due to people always being able to leave. and i havent seen any argument to this other than “But people probably wont do that too much so its not a problem” which is quite naive. Do you have an argument? Do you have a counter?
Superficially and guilds wont be its own system. what are the benefits of joining a guild? what are the benefits of growing a guild? What are the things which can ONLY be achieved with a guild. None. None at all. Which is my problem. People are always like “think of the solo players!” well they can play alone. but atleast make a few things which would encourage joining guilds.
other than the fact that “guilds” would be mainly be used by builders in the way it appears now.
Yeah i agree that should be considered a way to go. but as soon as i mentioned it we go back to the whole “Oh but then i need to do other things to progress! its not fair!”[quote=“Clexarews, post:132, topic:4340”]
This hasn’t been announced as far as I know, but a shared chat will help vs only a local chat
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Yeah the whole discussion on global chat… That has been taken many times so i wont repeat it here. but that is definitely one of the bigger points for joining a guild in other mmos.
My bad!
If you draw a diagram which i tried to do you would realize that there are the same amount if not more steps in making guilds for one thing. Which is what im disagreeing with. The whole “We just need to make guilds for this one build which is why we can join many guilds!” i just find the thought vile.
If you talk Guilds there is a leader who can lose his beacon progress at any time, meaning potentially alot of progress (imagine losing the beacons which covers your entire bank area. the horror!) and if you talk GROUPS as in parties then even though there is a leader every single person in a building project will have to donate an equal amount of beacons or the leader has to donate all, either giving dictator powers to the leader or having the leader how no power
without beacons they can do that indeed
Unless we talk from a beacon perspective then there will be none
Again with the constant fear of losing progress
i have never seen any game with a guild system where you forcible gets things back when you leave do you? Ever seen a game where you get all the gold back you have donated? where you got all the items back you have donated? No. And that is the tricky part. Because due to B< being a game where people can build i do realize that we need to take building into account. I am not against building. i am against the flimsiness that seems to be suggest with the current guild system. that a guild are created and destroyed instantly. that guild leaders can be held hostage by members. that no progress system of any kind could exist if it also wants to please the whole builder crowd.
You and I seem eye to eye in alot of things and i do believe what you suggest sounds wonderful. I think it would be wonderful to create a guild with a few friends and to go out and enjoy your time with them. I just don’t think it sounds wonderful for it to try and cater to those who wants to use it as a “task force/ contract” system since it would impose certain restrictions on how far they could explore guild possibilities.
I thank you for the well thought out post, was a joy to read. And i hope i am making myself clear enough in what my problem is with the current discussion and why i am displeased with where i see it potentially heading.
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Agh, I did it again! In my last post I apologized for not explicitly stating that another post I made was meant solely to debate the guild vs, guild + taskforce issue. But I didn’t explicitly state that my last post was meant to solely debate that issue! So now I’m stating that both that post and this one are solely meant to explore this guild vs. guild and taskforce issue. Beacons are another beast altogether I think and I’ve pretty much exhausted my thoughts on them. I would like it if the system for beacons/guild beacons/whatever works for all individuals playing Boundless and whichever way they want to play it (or else it’s not really a sandbox). So I’ve been excluding beacons from my thoughts on this issue. Basically I’m trying not to limit what guilds can be for. Building? Fine. RP? Fine. Logging on and standing still? Fine. Mining? Fine. And so on.
Neglecting beacons when talking about guilds is probably bad as they’re pretty closely tied. And I recognize that. But I think if we can simplify one, it’ll be easier to work on the other. That’s my hope anyway. Anyway, sorry for not explicitly mentioning that once again! (will I ever learn??? 
)
Wait. Sorry, I just need to clarify this. You’re for not being able to leave guilds? Because if people can leave guilds, they’ll do it all the time?
Every AAA MMORPG (despite this not being the same genre as Boundless, games from it are constantly compared to Boundless) out there gives the ability to leave guilds at any time to all players. And it’s not been an issue with those as far as I know. So yeah, you’re right, that’s basically my argument as to why being able to leave is not bad. There are MANY more arguments for why not being able to leave is not good at the beginning of this thread.
You didn’t finish quoting me again!
We know nothing about the world domination/bragging rights thing they have in mind. So it’s hard to dismiss it. I’m guessing in order for them to mention it and promote it, there has to be some sort of benefit. Just speculation though.
Yes, people will likely place guild beacons and guild chests for any activity. But that doesn’t mean all that’s going to happen in that beacon is building. That doesn’t mean that all that’s going to happen outside of that beacon is building. To use your example of a house, saying that guild beacons will only be used for building is like saying houses are only bought for sleeping in. Like, yes, that’s going to happen. But so much more is going to happen in there too…crafting, trading, farming (eventually), etc.
Seems like a hybrid system would be something to consider. I’m surprised no one else has mentioned that yet.
I try to avoid drawing diagrams. I find the visuals bias me. I’d rather think of the abstract concepts of things. Makes me focus more on the general idea and less on specifics, which I think helps with the hammering out of the concept. We can focus on details when there are details to be focused on.
So recap: guilds won’t only be for building projects. Guilds don’t have to be formed for building projects. But can be if people want.
I think you mean “with” beacons they can do that indeed.
Could you explain what there will be none of here when talking about about small groups forming guilds for increased moderation, a name, and guild glyphs? We have no knowledge yet of guild beacons lacking anything that beacons provide so I’m a bit confused about this beacon perspective that lacks something in a guild environment.
Again, dependent on the beacon/plot donating system implemented.
I have never seen a game where you only get a set limit of gold. Of items. That’s the real trick here. Players cannot have infinite beacons or some of them will actually lay claim to very solid chunks or worlds, interrupting the gameplay experience of other players. At the same time, they need to have a way that makes donating beacons to guilds not be something that feels like giving up an organ or something else that could be considered extremely valuable and rare. If you’re donating a beacon plot to a guild and end up leaving later and you don’t get that plot back, you’re going to be going without it for as long as you’re playing the game. Say you make a friend and start a guild with them and donate like 75% of your total claims to building an awesome base with them. But then you leave or something and you get removed (or you leave by choice, whichever). Your character now has 25% of it’s available plots. At that point, it may well be worth making a new character. Which I don’t think the devs want to have happen whenever a scenario such as that occurs.[quote=“Zouls, post:135, topic:4340”]
I just don’t think it sounds wonderful for it to try and cater to those who wants to use it as a “task force/ contract” system since it would impose certain restrictions on how far they could explore guild possibilities.
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I’m glad you didn’t use the word “force”. Because I think that’s crucial. The guild system isn’t being forced upon people doing smaller projects. It’s just there if they want it. And I would think going into a smaller project-based guild (for building, gathering, exploring, whatever) that players would understand that they can’t compete with massive guilds. But I can see how still trying to earn achievements for the sake of having fun could be a thing.
And as mentioned before, guilds are optional. They aren’t a requirement for smaller groups of players doing one thing that will only take an hour or whatever. There’s no need to create and destroy a guild for that, I agree.
I’m glad we can keep things civil, it has been quite fun having this discussion while at work. And I like what you’re suggesting. I’m very used to have Guilds and Parties. I’m just playing devil’s advocate and arguing for what I believe the devs were thinking of. They want to push and make their own sort of genre and that includes challenging things that have been around forever, such as a Guild and Party system. I find it interesting and arguing from what I interpret their perspective is allows me to understand such challenges better.
Looking forward to reading your (or other’s) response.
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Why are these posts so long I can’t possibly read this at work.
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We have a lot to say. 
In other news, I’m using that neutral face all the time now. I’ll let others guess what I’m trying to say with it hahahaha!
Alright i would love to cover your questions but i need to start with this since i think its crucial
i am 100% against people being unable to leave guilds. People should be allowed to leave and join freely. BUT i do see the reason for it.
I will try to use another analogy. Not trying to sound condescending but its the easiest way for me to explain. If you still find something unclear ask and i will try to explain that specifically.
So imagine that the guild system originally proposed with all of its part is a racecar. Like any race car there will eventually be problems but there is a team to help with those problems. The tires are flat? we change them. the windshield is damaged? we can fix it. Now imagine that the whole “if people leave they can hold guild master hostage” is the engine catching on fire. But on the side we have a guy with a fire extinguisher (Not allowing you to leave guilds) who will turn it out every time the engine catches on fire. The driver (Community) then complains that when the fire extinguisher is used it will cause problems for other part of the car so they agree to stop using the fire extinguisher. Now we removed the SOLUTION because it was affecting other parts too much but the original problem still stays. that the engine catches on fire. which is pretty damn bad. Now there it is a case of the driver just saying “Well lets hope it doesn’t catch too much on fire” where i’m on the side saying “Or. We could make it so the engine DOESNT catch on fire. which would us to change parts of the racecar”. which is where again i hear “But the original car wouldnt look like that” and i go “no. but that car catches on fire, you can’t really ignore that”. Is that more clear?
i want to get one more thing too
partial quote
Precisely. I believe. That the proposed system of Donating beacons will always be a lost cause for one of the sides. Either you can take them at any time because they belong to you which means the GM is screwed over. or you cant leave which means the players are screwed over.
Which is why i said earlier that they either need to make it so you cant leave (obviously not good) or you need to make a system of which beacons are acquired WITHIN the guild making it property of the guild. not the members. not the leader but of the actual guild OR you need for guilds to have absolutely nothing to do with beacons (Which i think is a losing game for builders)
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I understand and agree with everything you’ve written here.
Maybe an off-by-default, toggle-able mode in which a guild allows for donations would allow for those build projects like the tunnel to happen? With the knowledge that a player can remove their plots at any point being taken into account when flipping that switch. And then an achievement/progression based system when that flip is not switched?
Not a well thought out idea, but I think something along those lines seems like the best solution.
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Proposal at @Clexarews and @Zouls: i think i didn’t see in any thread 2 persons discussing that intense.
(some are similar, but not that extreme if you see last 20 posts).
I guess since your are just 2 people discussing, what makes the amount of opinions very little (what i think should drive this thread), would you like to settle this up on a private discussion and let us now your final arguments?
It’s really no offense. But when I see the idea of this thread… @olliepurkiss wanted several diverse opinions i guess… then a discussion of 2 people fail that wish. If I was ollie I’d probably not read through all of this since you are just 2 people discussing (and to be honest running a bit in cycles).
Do you know what I mean? you probably also somewhen want someone to support your strongest arguments for your ideas - or at least the dev’s to read and see pros and cons. I think like this, noone will ever read all of this.
I’m preparing a hopefully different approach, I just haven’t had the free time to lay it out coherently.
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you know what would be good, to not run in such a messy amount of posts?
Someone like @Heurazio did and @Combatman12 recommended, the idea-pro-con-thread.
Just with one difference to heurazios thread: there will be one post. people should just give their ideas to the post creator via pm. And the creator always edits his post. Because even @Heurazio s post got pretty large somewhen. And you always have to check, till what point the discussion was implemented.
Another advance would be, that people don’t discuss since they always just see the edited versions and not whatever people say before summarizing and implementing in the post. If someone have this time, would probably help…
on the other hand i hope that dev’s survey which comes soon will help us out.
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I think what most people who want the guild to be an all around system for socializing and grouping fail to see that we actually all ready have a group system, player tokens, I see them as what you’d call a party or team in other games, even though they can be used for permissions, but I see that only as an extension for temporary group management.
As for guilds, I think they will be used in a two ways mostly.
Firstly they would be “guilds” in classical RPG sense, where different people come together to work for mutual goals and benefits and/or to bond with friends.
Secondly, I see people making more permanent operations/corporations, these would be those secondary guilds people would be joining besides “main” guild, where people collaborate on more specialized tasks than on the main guilds(for example a mining operation or merchant guild and so on).
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At present though, there are only 8 slots (including your own) on a beacon control, so that kind of sucks if you have more than you and 7 other friends that want to play together 
That being said, I’m starting to look at the whole guilds/friends from a different perspective… a purely permissions perspective.
For example…
Adding friends to beacons is great for small collaborations (which may be all some people want to do), but when that same group of friends want to collaborate on more and more projects together (with separate beacons to the original collaboration)… you wouldn’t want to have add each an every friend token, every time, to each new beacon.
That for me is where guilds come in. You create a guild, add your friends to it, and then simply grant the guild permission to the beacon - single guild token, much easier! Additionally, if you don’t want certain friends/colleagues to have all permissions within a beacon, you move them to a sub-guild and give that sub-guild different permissions.
I would assume (I know it’s not good to assume anything, but I’ll do it anyway ) that this kind of thing will also have an impact on not just beacons, but also the proposed “locks” as well, and I’m guessing that these will be used to lock doors and containers etc.
If a guild vault is planned for the future, I think that being able to allocate different permissions to groups of people will also be an added benefit here too.
This ^ for me is the reasoning behind the way guilds / sub-guilds and friend tokens are planned. It’s effectively what is called an ACL (Application Control Layer), which is used to control … well basically, player permissions … and everything that can be locked or restricted (such as beacons) is classed as the application.
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I’d like to respectfully reject your proposal.
In-depth conversations between two people are useful as they can spark new ideas and be used to gauge community support for different opinions.
Instead of suggesting we not talk as much, I think we should be asking others to contribute more. This is clearly a very important discussion for the future of the game. Yes, it’s troublesome to catch up on a few posts. But making an effort to stay updated and to make contributions based on your own thoughts and experiences is basically the duty of all of us as backers of the game. If you don’t want to or don’t have time to, fine. But others do have time and the devs have told us they read everything. If I feel that I have something to contribute that I think may be worth mentioning, I’m going to mention it because I feel that it might be contributing to not only conversation but to the future of the game.
Hope that makes sense.
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I think option 1 or 3 would be the way to go. I see guilds in Boundless being vaguely similar to a factions plugin in Minecraft, where when you join a faction they get bonus availability to claim land, kind of like the whole beacon situation. however, if this land becomes automatically unclaimed by beacons it could completely screw over the guild. In Minecraft betrayal was not uncommon and generally the betrayal affected claimed land. with option 2 guild betrayal with no consequence could happen. that’s why I’d back option 1 with a notice/pop up that informs the player that once they give beacons to the faction they can never get them back. I’m not sure If this, or something similar has been suggested or if it completely misses the mark at this point in the conversation but just thought I’d try to provide some input.
You’d back option 1 so that betrayal couldn’t happen?
Some folks in this thread suggested option 2 but give a 7 day period where guilds can find other members/move resources around so that the loss of beacon space when a player leaves doesn’t absolutely cripple them. Likewise, players who leave do not have access to their beacons during this 7 day time.
What do you think about that?
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