Janos Valentine's page

I think one good idea is to make it so that a single person can't randomly decide to do that. I mean it may suck to have an annoying exploiter and troll who you can't get rid of by what amounts to admin status, but if it had councils and stuff even if there was a leader it could add some political intrigue to it.

Maybe have a grace period for the council to decide, where the player is warned it's being deliberated on, then after the grace period is up codify the decision they make?

:D That would also add an element of suspense and give the potentially banished player time to plead and persuade the Council to change votes or whatever.

I hope that there will be more organic guilds personally, less ranked hierarchical ladder systems and more branches methods of advancing and such.

Like in a democratic guild, where leaders are elected, well you could get politicians just like in real life, they promise you hope and change then sell your entire kingdom to corporations and guilds or something :)

And if there are direct democracies, if someone wants to infiltrate and stir up the masses that would be interesting, a tragedy of the commons would simply make the game more enjoyable and engaging.

I really like the idea of hostile takeovers and stuff, the closer the game can come to real world politics to be living systems and the further it gets from the boring old system the better IMO, it'd be best if there were options to suit different kinds of players and different kinds of guilds though.

I've never understood why this doesn't get more attention in other MMO's, it sounds like all this time I should have been playing Eve.

I look forward to it :)

I'm going to be a double agent, no no, a TRIPLE AGENT!

A long time ago I played a game called Shadowbane, and one event that stays with me is that my best friend in the Guild Kingdom I was in was actually a spy from a neighboring guild full of fliers.

He blew his cover one day trying to recruit me, I didn't even think much of it at the time, but when I mentioned it to my guild mates it led to him being KoS and our kingdom going to war. We probably could have won, but he wasn't the only spy, and before the siege our best tank, a buffer/healer, and one of our Templars betrayed us. Either they had been recruited or were working with the enemy all along, either way out little castle fell and our tree was destroyed.

That may sound like the sort of thing that really sucks, and it did at the time, we invested a lot into building up the castle and getting all the trainers and crafting/merchants ect, but I loved the game for allowing that to happen. For two months I had been grinding with this guy and ganking one of our more PvP oriented nieghbors, and he'd been plotting against us the whole time, and afterwards his guild had a reputation that made the kingdoms north of us less than friendly to them.

One thing's for sure, I played Shadowbane a lot longer than I ever would have because of that experience, I hope Pathfinder offers similar intrigue.

I think it would be neat to have a multi-tiered guild system too, like instead of a straight up ladder there could be multiple branches that are equal which members could join or be elected into/through. The whole hostile takeover concept could also be cool, if guilds could have their own internal revolutions.

Imagine the potential, it could open up whole new ways of playing the game. There could be an in game revolution spanning multiple guilds, it would introduce real subterfuge and conspiracy, it would make having stealthy spies handy a legit part of the gameplay.

And if there were different kinds of guilds, things could get really interesting in terms of guild politics.

For some reason, in most MMO's, the structure and politics of guilds get the least amount of attention and that's tragic because how the guild system works can have a huge impact on the game, after ask anyone playing an MMO the number one reason they stick around and usually their Guild is one of the first things they mention.

A typical problem with MMO's is the structure of Guild Politics. Creating Kingdoms is an amazing concept but when the leaders of a Guild go missing it causes the guild to slowly die. I saw this happen in ShadowBane and every other MMO, so I would like to ask, what will Pathfinder do differently?

I had a suggestion, if anyone working at Goblinworks is willing to take the feedback from someone who missed out on kick starter. What if guilds could be formed with different kinds of governments, ranging from direct democracies in which members voted on everything, to representative democracies where members elected leaders, to republics monarchies and caste systems.

The typical guild is a caste system, the guild leader(s) hold absolute power and each rank down is a rigid ladder caste under the leader(s), which causes all sorts of problems but would be interesting if it were only one of several ways a guild could be structured in the game. There could even be different flavors of guilds, such as hoards, tyrannies, theocracies, and kingdoms made up of multiple guilds which members could pay or earn their way into, with guild councils formed through natural rank progression as guilds became established.

A lot of ideas to throw out, to be sure, but if this game copies the same formula for guilds that has been in place since days of old, it will have the same problems that have killed all the best Kingdoms in similar games.