Testing 210: Guilds and Messaging++!

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154

Typically I don’t do responding to community posts, but yours is surprisingly considered, and I have had additional thoughts after more testing.

You say that guild skills will make for a good resource drain. I’d agree that if the footfall alterations work as hoped, we’ll need a good coin-sink other than shop tax. But then why limit it to people in guilds? It would be better to make coin sinks that affect the entire player-base irrespective of play-style.

You say that the buffs are minor, but that’s exactly the excuse that lets big divides happen. Buffing one play-style over another because ‘it’s only a small buff and won’t really make much difference’ repeatedly soon builds up to be a big difference. Unless they’re planning on adding buffs you can ‘only’ get if you’re not in a guild…

Ok, but… why? Just because that’s the way other games work, it doesn’t mean that Boundless has to. If the multiplayer aspect of a game isn’t good enough that people WANT to engage in it without further encouragement, surely that’s an area that needs improvement, not just adding incentives.

And because every good post tries to offer solutions to presented problems: a personal observation / potential for improvement. As far as I could tell on testing (because I had nobody nearby to test with), guild skills have a flat costs. A much better idea would be to have the those cost based on the number of members, and then if you really want to keep '‘community incentives’, then fractionally reduce the cost-per-person based on the total number of members (capped, so it never becomes free). So, using example figures: Base Buff costs 200 per person. Guild X has 1 member, Guild Y has 5 members, and guild Z has 50 members.

The maths would be something like:

(base_cost * ((100 - max(number_of_members, 50)) / 100)) * number_of_members.

Guild X pays 198 (198 per person)
Guild Y pays 950 (190 per person)
Guild X pays 5000 (100 per person)

That would enable much fairer access to game features without forcing a play-style. And yes, I do understand there would be things to work out, like (Why wouldn’t everyone leave the guild, trigger the buff and then join again), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t solutions.

3 Likes
155

Um i am a little be not sure how come it will affect solo playing style.
Join a guild doesn’t mean you have to interact with others.
I believe a lot of guild will use the guild buff to attract new members to join.
And you can still play solo mostly, and maybe just say hi to some of them when you see them.

Even now, i believe most large guild leader or manage team they don’t know everyone in their guild discord.
So i feel you can find a guild which already has buff to join, and keep playing as same style as before.
(If i understand ur concern correctly)

156

I don’t know if this is counter-intuitive to this whole update… but as a shopper, that popup of the city/guild info is really annoying when looking at shop baskets… can we have a flag to remove it?

3 Likes
157

Was so much worse in ea though…would go make a cuppa while it caught up with all the portals had gone through.
would still be nice to have that pop up info completely seperate though

2 Likes
158

Can any of the testers list the mats need to build guild machines please?

I’d do it myself, but no test available for PS4 :frowning_face:

159

Maybe if I/we weren’t crashing every time. :slight_smile:

Edit: Also might be useful on testing to be able to make the client request a character wipe before loading; I would personally suggest this to be in a config file to not become an annoying “everytime” prompt on initial load of the test client. This doesn’t resolve the base issue of crashing but does allow us to get around it and maybe avoid it during the rest of testing. :slight_smile:

160

Hmm, maybe we won’t be getting guilds soon after all then!

How about Devs helping out then?

In-between trying to fix the test crashes that is.

161

It’s not so much a concern, more an observation that I think the system could be better.

If things stay as they are on the test server, I will do what you are suggesting. I’ll find a guild that is set up purely for the purposes of getting the buff, then proceed to participate to the minimum level required not to get kicked.

My observation is that this process doesn’t benefit me or enhance my game experience, and it doesn’t benefit whatever guild I join. It’s just an arbitrary hoop to jump through that really doesn’t need to be there, especially if I’ve given a suggestion about how it could work a lot better, for a wider range of play-styles and still encompass the apparent desire (however much I disagree with it) to make it artificially ‘better’ to do things in a group.

162

For all the people saying they dont want to be in a guild and feel that people who do want to be in a guild will receive an unfair advantage…i’ve seen a few people say they plan to make a guild just for you. No obligations, no expectations from you, but you still receive guild rewards. I’d suggest you look into those.

163

For this part i have slightly different opinion.
Firstly, i am one of the guild management team in our guild.
As our guild’s style, we never ask our member do anything they don’t want including any type of help or asking them to settle as our town …etc. What we want for our members is the environment happy to play and for someone who loves play with group can join us. We always have a project if any of our member would love to involve. Also this why i always tell our new player members don’t rush to involve to the guild things, just finish their personal things first. (level, building, machines…etc) This is the way how we manage the guild.

In ur case, i believe there are some guild has similar setup as us. We won’t ask you to help us to do anything (since we can get all the guild needs done by our manage team)
Just have fun and play the game, and more active members are already big help to us due to current population. I believe a lot of guild’s discord have a lot of name now always black (offline) and maybe won’t come back in future. So this kind of seup is already benefit both from your side and guild’s side.

But i won’t tell you that every guild running the same seup like us. But if you wish to spend some time to ask on forum, i believe you will find one fit your requirement.

164

Putting recipes in spoiler tags in case ppl don’t want to see them.

Grabbed these from the data file.

Guild base control (outputs 1/20/100)
any stones 1/16/72
any base alloy 3/48/216
ancient tech fragment 2/32/144
ancient tech component 6/96/432

Guild buff death insurance (outputs 5/20/100)
any stones 10/32/144
refined titanium 3/10/44
refined amethyst 16/52/231
ancient tech device 20/64/288
reactive lamella 40/128/576
spark 2000/8000/40000
3000 power

Guild buff builders buff (outputs 5/20/100)
any stones 10/32/144
refined iron 16/52/231
ancient tech fragment 20/64/288
milk gland 12/39/173
spark 1000/4000/20000

Guild buff grapple and run (outputs 5/20/100)
any stones 10/32/144
refined gold 16/52/231
ancient tech component 20/64/288
hopper eye 16/52/231
spark 1600/6400/32000
2000 power

Guild buff lava protection (outputs 5/20/100)
any stones 10/32/144
refined iron 16/52/231
ancient tech fragment 20/64/288
volatile blood 16/52/231
spark 1000/4000/20000

8 Likes
165

Thank you very much.

166

… ./sigh.

And this is why I don’t tend to engage with the community much. In my last post I literally said that understand how it works and if things stay as they are, I will find a guild with the least social / effort requirements and abuse the system that way to get the buffs if I want them. That means no discord if I can help it, and no community interaction if I can help it.

All I’m saying is that I prefer my socialising to be done when it suits me. The system currently under testing seems like a great first step towards people management, but also pushes players to join guild they didn’t want to have to, and then proceed to ignore all the work that’s gone into guild development and use them just to get the buffs. When there are ways to make a system that doesn’t have that flaw, I’m going to point them out.

Still, that concludes my presence in this thread. If that still doesn’t adequately deliver my point of view, I don’t have the patience for any more attempts.

167

Hey, i got some questions about this whole thing :slight_smile:
since i cant get it from the text i would like to ask, maybe some ppl figured this out.

what happens when i algin a beacon to a guild, can then the guildmaster if he got a bad day take all my stuff? =D
can i also decide wich permissions i give to the guild?

would it be possible to be in a guild, have a guild settlement, have a private home that is aligned to the guild settlement but not give any permissions to the guild or guild leader?

if this is not possible (align home to guild, but dont give rights) than it will be very hard to put a bigger town togheter when the ppl dont want to align theyr beacons to guild because they maybe dont thrust the ppl in the guild so much…

4 Likes
168

How I understood these beacon options when checking it on test server there were two options on owned beacon

  1. You align your beacon to guild but keep managing rights
  2. You give full control of beacon to guild, permissions are related by guild settings.
3 Likes
169

you are just who we are looking for! =D

170

cool thnakies
that helps =)

171

Sound conflicting tho, can a builder from the guild build on your guild alligned plot (without permission from you)?

172

Yes, because when you give full permissions to guild you lose use of beacon permission list. I see it as donating plotted area for guild.
But keeping personal beacons on aligned state is enough to keep it counting prestige to guild on same settlement. (You keep managing permissions list yourself)
This is how I understood system so if I misunderstood current system please someone correct me :slight_smile:

4 Likes
173

You got it, perfect :+1:

3 Likes