Goblin Squad Member
|
I would like to Request the ability to designate missions to be only available to in-association members...and preferably even the power to designate subgroups within that association. Here is why and maybe someone can suggest a more elegant request to GoblinWorks.
This is an idea I experienced in my first guild, in my first MMO...a sandbox called Saga of Ryzom, and I have tweaked it and made it part of every guild I have been part of since. The guild had a ranking system that was based upon a player run missions system. The missions were all oriented toward helping the guild, some of them were to donate resources (this helped the crafters advance...and the crafters made us all gear), other missions were to kill known enemies (this is logical if we have to keep our hex clear of mobs), and even some missions that just tested our ability to survive a trip overland (this was how they tied the mission completion to certain levels and skills), finally...there were missions requiring the players to setup and run player events.
The ranking system was entirely voluntary, but it was also tied to player access to guild resources resources. No one had to do the ranking system if they did not wish to, but they would never get access to the guild materials stores if they did not.[...]
I would like to see a ranking system like this for our guild. In fact, this game being a sandbox....I think it is absolutely necessary to have this internal missions system for slow days; days when other player content is dead...and our themepark elements are done.
Some ideas for types of missions:
- Guarding (kill x invaders/settlers in our hex)
- Scouting (run from location x to y, solo)
- Devotion (Donate x of mat y to the guild)
- Tithe (Donate x money to the guild)
- Evangelism (Recruit)
- Scribe (Contribute a "How to manual" for some aspect of the game you are good at)
- Hunting (Donate all loot from x mobs y)
Of course, in previous guilds, I was forced to do this all manually, using spreadsheets and actually administering tests. This made it difficult when we did not have enough officers online. So, what I am requesting, is a way for associations (logically this should work for charters, towns and kingdoms) to set up missions for their members and be able to pull up a report of those who have fulfilled the missions. As previously mentioned, I would even prefer the ability to make arbitrary groups within associations (ranks) and assign certain missions to different groups.
This has many applications outside easing my guild management which is why I am proposing it. Kingdoms could expect their member towns to contribute to a goal setting up missions for them, the town in turn could pass the missions to their chartered members, who in turn pass them to their players. But at no point should these missions be available or even visible to other association, the mission after all might include or be espionage or combat orders...and being able to assigning mission to subgroups allows kingdoms to assign certain missions to certain town...and so on down the progression.
From my previous experience, what makes a good sandbox is how much content a player/character can find. The more tools available to create content, the more content will be created...and the more entertained the players will remain (boredom = bad).
Any other ideas about how this could be accomplished in game? Maybe a simpler, more elegant mechanic?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Additionally, the request above is top-down, it has application bottom-up too. I understand being able to give missions to the general public is cool, but if possible, as a player I would prefer to have guildies earn my gold.
If I were a crafter who needed mats...and I create a mission to have someone retrieve them for me, I would love the option of making it only available to my associations (charter, town, and/or kingdom).
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Additionally, I understand being able to give missions to the general public is cool, but if possible, as a player I would prefer to have guildies earn my gold.
If I were a crafter who needed mats...and I create a mission to have someone retrieve them for me, I would love the option of making it only available to my associations (charter, town, and/or kingdom).
I second that, If player missions could be set up, it would be kind of cool if at the bulletin board they worked the way bounties are described, you could set them to public for anyone who finds them, or if you want to limit it to chosen guilds/players etc... that makes sense to have both options. Possibly even have separate reward tables for the same job
(IE 100gold/lb of mithril for guildies, 80G/lb outsiders).
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It think this could be handled with mission 'tagging'. And is also a system for any other association restricted mechanics.
Everthing that defines your association would get a 'tag'. and when you create a mission, or anything that would have association restrictions you would fill in a text field with these tags.
Something like:
& = Company Charter
$ = Settlement Charter
% = Kingdom
# = Player Housing Location (non-charter residents should have access to community building activities)
@ = Allignment
|| = or (for things that cover many associations)
* = No access (for when you just exclude 1 group)
So say I have a mission I want available to Lawful and Neutral players that have a house in the settlement "Awesometown", are also part of that Settlement Charter, and are in the Company Charter "Awesomeness", I would put in:
@Lawful||Neutral (could also be entered as *@Evil)
#Awesometown
$Awesometown
&Awesomeness
Or if I want to make a mission available to everyone in the Kingdom of "Awesome" I would put in:
%Awesome
This same system could work in building access restrictions. If I want a filter on my town that keep out evil players and players from other charters(keep the charter from becoming evil, and make the town private) I would put in:
*@Evil
$Awesometown
I'm fine with text entry stuff, but this system would be more user friendly if it was a series of field entries and check boxes.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The speculation here kind of reminds me of the contract system in EVE, only more advanced, and more flexible.
Valkenr's tagging system sounds like it would be implementable and user friendly.
You could set up a job/mission with particular parameters, put money/resources as a payment deposit, and as soon as it's completed and turned in, the money/resources are given to the person turning it in.
You know, this doesn't sound that much different than the proposed Bounty system.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
|
I like the idea of particular buy or sell orders being limited as to who can see or participate. The more powerful the system, the better, provided that there is adequate explanation as to how to use it; Valkenr's suggestion is a good system, but not an adequate explanation of how to implement it.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Valkenr, nice job expanding the idea to include limitations on alignments and factions.
If it gets too difficult to do this, maybe they could allow mission boards to be placed inside player-controlled buildings, where we can effectively get the same results by limiting who has access to the buildings with the boards.
Although being able to limit publicly available missions (buy orders, if you will) to specific alignments, factions, companies, etc. would be really cool, and allow even small guilds to track participation in a very effective way.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I like the idea of particular buy or sell orders being limited as to who can see or participate. The more powerful the system, the better, provided that there is adequate explanation as to how to use it; Valkenr's suggestion is a good system, but not an adequate explanation of how to implement it.
I'll try and expand on it a little more. I'm going to keep to the tagging idea, but this can easily be expanded into a better GUI that allows you to fill in a field or check a box for each tag.
Every player would have a series of tags:
! = Name(added this)
& = Company Charter
$ = Settlement Charter
% = Kingdom
# = Player Housing Location
@ = Alignment
Every time a player accesses and accessible object there would be checks made against them, one for each of the tags.
The game would check each value against the player, and if all are valid it will grant entry.
You can add as many parameters you want, you can even make the company/settlement/kingdom require a certain number of "charter points" if you want to limit access to players who have gave more to the charter(assuming you award 'charter points' as mission payment).
If you want to have missions on a public board, the game would run a check for each mission as it pops up. Or use a system very similar to your common auction house filters.
Not sure how much of an implementation explanation you want, GW will pay software engineers, whose entire job is to take an idea and turn it into a program. Anything is possible, especially in a video game.
System resources should not be exclusive when everyone pays the same fee. Plus, players should not be in charge of things that can directly benefit them. It's far too easily abused. And if the developers have to pay someone to keep policing them, that means less resources devoted to bug squashing, balancing, and new content.
Guilds are player organizations and should remain player policed and controlled. If players wish to contribute, let them do so directly to other players, not some faceless code which has zero player interaction. The game code should be about the game, not a guild that is essentially a metagame component. Now if P/GW wants to code in some guild specific adventures that only players in guilds can partake of, that's fine with me, as all players who are in guilds are using the same features. But I will never trust players not to try and game the system (munchkin, min/max, whatever).
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I am not sure of the relevance of your post Probitas. My suggestion was generic one that has much more application than that which I suggested...what I requested was only a tool. The application I gave as an example was only that...and example used to illustrate. It is what I would do with such a tool.
You saying that they should not add it because I already have a specific use in mind for this tool is exactly the same as you suggesting new races should not be added to the game...because someone already plans/hopes to use them.
But, maybe I misunderstood your point...what exactly are we asking for that would be exclusive? And, how are the tools we are requesting violating the belief that player organizations should remain player policed and controlled?
|
Goblinworks Executive Founder
|
I like the idea of particular buy or sell orders being limited as to who can see or participate. The more powerful the system, the better, provided that there is adequate explanation as to how to use it; Valkenr's suggestion is a good system, but not an adequate explanation of how to implement it.I'll try and expand on it a little more. I'm going to keep to the tagging idea, but this can easily be expanded into a better GUI that allows you to fill in a field or check a box for each tag.
Every player would have a series of tags:
! = Name(added this)
& = Company Charter
$ = Settlement Charter
% = Kingdom
# = Player Housing Location
@ = AlignmentEvery time a player accesses and accessible object there would be checks made against them, one for each of the tags.
The game would check each value against the player, and if all are valid it will grant entry.
You can add as many parameters you want, you can even make the company/settlement/kingdom require a certain number of "charter points" if you want to limit access to players who have gave more to the charter(assuming you award 'charter points' as mission payment).
If you want to have missions on a public board, the game would run a check for each mission as it pops up. Or use a system very similar to your common auction house filters.
Not sure how much of an implementation explanation you want, GW will pay software engineers, whose entire job is to take an idea and turn it into a program. Anything is possible, especially in a video game.
I understood your concept, but explaining how regexes and logical statements work is a rather complicated set of fiddly bits of information; what about the edge cases where the specific character you named as allowed is a member of a prohibited alignment but an allowed settlement but a prohibited company? (If prohibitions are absolute, then @Good||@NeutralGE is a different expression than *@Evil; if evaluated logically, *@Evil||$Settlement would permit evil members of that settlement as well as all nonevil characters.) With powerful tools comes the ability to cut your fingers off accidentally.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Good||@Neutral is equivilant to *@Evil, assuming each category gets a isolated argument, as i was. So: '*@Evil||$Settlement' would not be valid in my examples.
If you change the analysis to line by line, instead of tag by tag, as I was, a new line is equivalent to an 'and' operation and you can do anything, as your example does. It now falls on the user to think their logic through before the implement it.
It would be much better as a GUI with a text entry box for player name, house location and charter names, and a 3/3 check box pattern for alignment. There should also be an 'advanced' button that translates whatever is currently selected into a large single text box logic argument. From there players can do things like Decius' example.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I like the system; I think it would be cool to set up not only in-guild quests, but quests for anyone to do if they meet your requirements. Player-generated quests are cool, and a system like this would allow for a player to be very selective about applicants, which I view as a good thing. It would also allow a player to ensure he is advancing the needs of his own factions when he creates these quests, instead of handing valuables to opponent factions.
Not sure where you're coming from, Probitas; I don't understand how quests which players set up for other players involves zero player interaction. I'm thinking you would prefer face-to-face settlements, rather than having a quest board-type deal?
|
Goblinworks Executive Founder
|
I also want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing:
An offer of "I will trade X for someone (qualifying) who brings me Y"- is this what you are thinking of for a quest, with 'Y' the quest item?
Because that is exactly what I think of when I use the term 'Buy Order" or "Sell Order" (The difference being whether X or Y is cash - IDEA: Barter order: 'I will trade X lumber for Y ore', permitted for any arbitrary item- if ore and tools are both scarce, smiths will not want to sell swords without getting ore, and miners might not want to try to guess what tool prices will be when selling ore)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Sure, but these missions are only one type...initially I suggested
- Guarding (kill x invaders/settlers in our hex)
- Scouting (run from location x to y, solo)
- Devotion (Donate x of mat y to the guild)
- Tithe (Donate x money to the guild)
- Evangelism (Recruit x people to the guild)
- Scribe (Contribute a "How to manual" for some aspect of the game you are good at)
- Hunting (Donate all loot from x mobs y)
As examples of different types of missions, but I bet people more creative than I could come up with many more (or I bet even I could if I sat for a day and thought about it).
I would like the tool set to be as generic as possible, to allow for as many of these (and more) as possible.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
KitNyx's general idea is very much what I had in mind when I started the thread on Guilds and Guild Money.
Decius mentions Buy Orders & Sell Orders, depending on which way the cash is going, and then immediately realizes there can be Barter Orders where neither side is cash. Ultimately, though, they're all Barter Orders and cash is one of the things that can be bartered. If Guild Money (or Guild Points) is also one of the things that can be bartered, then this system goes a long way to letting guild leadership track member participation.
The Guild Money (or Guild Points) would have to be under complete control of the guild, though. It should be possible for a guild to ensure that no one but their guild leadership can create any Orders at all that have their Guild Money on either side of the trade.