Guild/Alliance/Faction

Cthulhuvong

I had an idea that I thought I should share. I was reading my PC Gamer and thinking about City of Villians/City of Heroes when an idea hit me about guild systems. First off, what is a guild? its a group of people who are brought together out of common interest. Whether they be raiders, armorers, or a female association, PvP, Crafting, RP, or even OOC friends, all guilds have some reason they come together.

Now lets say you've been fighting in a certain area for a while and you want to join a city nearby, but the city makes everyone join its guild if they want to live there and you're already in a PvP guild with a bunch of friends. In most games you'd be stuck, out of luck and have to choose your friends over this nice city. However, if a game allowed you to join multiple guilds, then it would allow you to do much more.

Think about real life, what kind of organizations are you in? what sports, religious, neighborhood, and other organizations do you belong to? What if a game allowed you to be in 3 or more guilds? Say you were in a guild for your political party in a city, one for the town guard, and one for you and your friends scattered around the game. Doesn't it give you more freedom that way? Chatting between guilds would be easy too, as the old /guild can be changed to /guild <abreviation>, <message>. So you could go /guild SPECTRE, how are you all doing? and then go /guild CTG, nothing on patrol today.

Now if you're friends' guild goes to war with the town guard's guild (which both sides would have to agree to, like in SWG) you will be prompted with a message giving you an option to either join one side or the other. So if you join you're friends, you will temporarily be suspended from the guard guild while the two are at war. Once its over the guild will decide whether to bring you back to full status, keep you suspended for up to a week (after which you automatically come back), or kick you out (you did go to war with them).

Above the guilds will be the alliances (like coalitions in CoV/CoH I believe). Alliances are just basically groups of guilds working together. They could be RP communities, a city-wide alliance, PvP groups, whatever. Now these have no power over each other, though they can vote member guilds in or out (majority rules). Now you can be part of more than one alliance due to being in more than one guild, but you can only choose one with which to chat in (this is to cut out sneaky gits who join guilds just to spy). This is your main alliance and can be reached on /ally chat.

Now when guilds and alliances go to war, you have some choices to make. The first choice to make is which side to be on (if you're on both sides). A third option is to stay out of the conflict, at which point you will be suspended from both guilds for the duration, but will be automatically reinstated to normal status once the war is over. After that, you will get an option to be either a combatant or non-combatant. If you are a non-combatant, you stay in the guild but cannot attack or be attacked in the war but are otherwise at your normal standing in the guild. In alliance wars, you choose to be combat, non-combat, but you cannot get out of the conflict (its multiple guilds, so its a big war, hard to escape).

Now above alliances, are the ingame factions. Alliances can approach factions and ask to join. The factions have a member (aka a GM) check the alliance out and see if it fits with the ideology of the faction (and isn't filled with fucktards). After about a week they will send either an acceptance or denail (with reaons why).

sinoth

I personally love the politics of a complex organization system. EVE has a system similar to what you are talking about where a player can join a corporation, which can be part of an alliance. Corp vs Corp wars and Alliance vs Alliance wars are constantly making things interesting. The idea of multiple guilds makes sense but sits a little uneasy with me... perhaps it depends on how you define a "guild". To me, a guild is an organization you dedicate 100% of your loyalty and time to, so being in 2 guilds seems wrong. I think creating something lesser than a guild would make more sense, such as a gang. You could then be a part of:

(Multiple Gangs) -> (One Guild) -> (One Alliance) -> (One Faction)

A gang could be you and your local friends. A guild is a collection of people with a common goal in mind, and will be the people you answer to and work with most often. An alliance is simply a collection of guilds with certain laws binding them together. A faction is the highest order and represents long term, large scale goals. Pretty much the same as your idea Cthulhuvong, just one more level of abstraction.

Xilanxiv

I think those are great ideas, and I was also thinking off what Sinoth is saying, but I was thinking of a clan. Say have one clan, which is the highest association you can be in, and only players (not npcs) in it. You could give it more and different priviledges and options than just a guild. Next, have guilds, like crafters guild, city guild, furries guild ok maybe not that, but you get it. That might have npc trainers and venders etc in it. Next you'd have factions, which are much broader and general, like Travelers, Techs, Enforcers, Chota, etc. Each level of association would have greater or lesser and different priviledges depending on the nature of the association. That would be pretty cool.

GrimCreep

I wonder how this chota and any other caste idea is gonna work out. Ok the chota are supposed to be these crazy warrior I don't give a fudge about anything types right? So will we be seeing chota and lets say visitas  or enforcers working together? What will be the defining factor saying who hates who, and where the line is drawn in the sand that determines friend from foe?...............Im surprised we haven't covered this yet. Does this merret its own thread?

Perfectlotus

Well as long as the game bring us decent tools for managing guilds etc. Im sure the player base can form itself. Good example of a very nice tool to handle guilds is the EVE-Online one. Very impressive with massive options to handle a guild (called a corporation in EVE tho).

With Icarus apparent seriousness about bringing this game to the frontline of MMORPGs I would be somewhat dissapointed if such tools would be overlooked in the process. They seems to be very focused on details tho, so I dont think I need to worry.

Cthulhuvong

Very true Perfectlotus, they do have an eye for detail, so I think they will have a good amount of tools and other things for handling guilds. The thing behind my idea was that, (like in Eve and CoH/CoV) there are larger organizations above guilds. If you noticed, I just made 2 player organizations, Guilds which are wide ranging in their reasons for being together and Alliances which have a set goal for why their guilds are members.

Alliances can align with factions, start wars, and add/remove guilds and are mainly there to give players a wider feel, a feeling that they have people all over the place who are friendly to them in the harsh wastes. Guilds are your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors (whether IC or OOC). These are people you actually know and can count on.

I just wanted to put the idea out there, because alliances in Eve (and coalitions in CoV/CoH) are helpful when large groups are gathering or territory is being held. Guilds cannot do this, as with large guilds you start to see a loss of comradery and people care about each other less. With a system similar to this, guilds will be very personal, and alliances will work towards larger and greater goals.

Siccak

There can be the tree (aliance/guild/clan) what I want are wars, taking bases, cities. But then there should be some reason for that . I would like the player comunities to have some standing with the npc factions not be part of them (they can if they want but no need for that). They can be enemies to each another or to the npcs.  Even these can hire clans to fight for them against other faction or other clan. Lots of open possibilities here.

Mission like we (CHOTA) want ten of the *** clan down come back when you did it and you´ll get (don´t know) browning .50 to atach to your city defense walls

Know it looks a bit simple for story based clan mission just an idea. Just don´t think you have to be part of the faction if you don´t want to and that your clan can rebuild the FE to your own liking no matter what factions say. They are just giving some possible philosophies not saying there´s no other way.

Cthulhuvong

Oh I definately agree with you Siccak. Combat, wheter PvE or PvP should affect the world. The reason I think there should only be 2 types of player organizations (alliances and guilds) is because alliances would basically be player factions. I believe that they have said you don't have to join a faction, and that everyone starts neutral. So you only join a faction if you really want to. And factional control of cities and bases should be possible, as well as wars for territory.