Guilds - A Discussion

[Chewett]

In this post, guilds refer to alliances with a specific purpose, ignoring whether that purpose is current or not. For reference I will note down my belief of each alliance and their purpose. If I am missing any give me a shout and I will add them is not obvious. Please note that there are three main differences in alliances, Role alliances, standard alliances, guilds. These terms have changed similarly over time, but are possibly important as we change what they mean.

Crafters - Alliance of those who had the ability to make items
Woodcutters, water dowsers, Fusioneers - Resource Gathering
Caretakers - Originally designed to handle the death system and plan how it all should work
Treasure Keepers - Designed to distribute and sponser quest rewards
Archivists - I would count them a guild, originally at least.

So one of the main questions was, how should these leaders be chosen, how should they be reformed if disbanded. Etc.

To focus on the resource guilds, my opinion was that really they were created before their time. I dont think you can have good resource based guilds without a use for the resources they protect and gather. So we need to first focus on how those resources are gathered and used in the MD. For those I will talk about their plan in another post.

For the other guilds, they should have specific aims. Im not convinced any of them do currently (apart from maybe TK) but we should probably focus in on them and see what we can do to make them useful.

Do you think we need guilds in MD to do specific tasks? Do you think the Caretakers should actively take charge of how death should be working?

What about the Archivists? What do you think their role should be?

All those involved in said alliances, or not, are welcome to give their views here. I want to see what the communtiy thinks so we can move it forward together.

[Aia del Mana]

I make note of the effort and time investment required to enter of a profession in the other-realm.

If a guild were based upon an action, then one thinkst there must be at least two purposes of this guild;

the first, to train of those to perform this action;

the second, to allow recognition of those with expertise in this action, that they may provide mentorship to those that train.

With these principles in mind, I should think that a professional woodcutter may fell several trees in quick succession, and have access to the high-quality axes (or chain-saws) exclusive to the guild, that do allow one's advancement more rapidly. One may join this guild (to the exclusion of all others) to gain of this access and devote of focused effort. Similar examples should follow for the other guilds with a defined role of resource-gathering, or crafting.

Of the Archivists - I am quite inclined to agree with Ailith on this matter, unless the Adventure Log should return.

Of the Caretakers - death must first be altered, as suggested in the other-thread by Chewett.

Edited March 24, 2019 by Aia del Mana

[Ledah]

Ever so slightly biased as a member of CT, but if you really want to give guilds meaning, you have to give them significant influence over their area of expertise. Whether that is giving them significant advantages in gathering a certain resource, or something a little more imaginative.

[Sunfire]

Yeah but the thing is in md you need to work to gain something. So provide the prepwork and you might get something.

[No one]

@Ledah: yeah, sure, I'd love to get some advantages.

SoS did lots of gathering & depleting & trading and is still quite capable and still received nothing.

SoS got involved in lots of things and still received nothing extra.

What I mean is : why not make the advantages available for all based on activity? Just make use of those extra/non-combat skills of each player?

Like :
- herbalism - allow increase / decrease of max herbs in a location (including planting)

- waterhandling - allow digging of a new water source / cleaning a water flow (increase the max amount) / clogging the water (decreasing / lowering max amount)

- Dowsing - converting water source to mineral water (like from max 10 water to 1 mineral water)

and the possibilities are endless.

 

As for Archivists / Crafters / TK ... those should be more like tags with earned points (points like herbalism). The more you have ... the more you are trusted in your area and more you have access.

Like : TK - a person gets some coins and a task to grant them to a certain person (the reward of a quest). When completed, he should receive a trust point . After a threshold, he should have access to rewards directly and assign them to other ppl for delivery ... and so on.

That way, anyone can have multiple roles in MD and be good at all and we'll never run out of archivists / TKs / Crafters nor they will ever lose their badge when leaving (willful or not) their guild.

 

As for current guilds... convert them to normal alliances.

 

 

[Ledah]

I agree that ideally, even though it may be painful, make a break with the past and give special advantages through hard work/dedication/grinding however you want to name it. Let people who are dedicated enough to gather flowers and make wreaths CT's if they wish, let Dowser's dowse, let people who have shown themselves honest enough to distribute things be TK's, despite the current alliance structures. I would support it for CT, may incentivise some people to help others revive.

[Miq]

Guilds are monopolies.

If we have a woodcutter guild then 90% of the tools needed for the job should be under their control (or the resources). Same with CT's. TK, and Crafterrs are like that already.

But also the guilds are local. MD as it is does not offer the manpower for any guilding really but there should be atleast 2-3 of the same kind of guilds under different dominions, be it Kings or Mur or council.

This of course does not work with any guild (archivists?)

[Lazarus]

49 minutes ago, Ailith said:

I retract this, there should always be at least one archivist to keep the tradition of the guild going.

I see Ivorak from time to time, I think he's the only active one left of the Archivists.

[Ivorak]

On 3/28/2019 at 4:21 PM, Imperius said:

I see Ivorak from time to time, I think he's the only active one left of the Archivists.

I'm very inactive (and even less so as an Archivist), but I suppose that still means I'm far more active than my fellow Archivists. That said, I'd like to see the Archivists live on in some form. If anyone would like to join the Archivists or has requests / suggestions for the work I should be doing, always feel free to send me a forum PM.

[Sushi]

On 3/25/2019 at 1:29 AM, Chewett said:

Crafters - make items
Caretakers - handle the death system
Treasure Keepers - distribute and sponser quest rewards...

Um... maybe the guilds should be divided into Land based(primary) & Job/Skill based(secondary)? Idk, I think sth like Caretakers, Crafters & Treasure Keepers etc should not bonded to one land only, it would be fun if player can have 2 types of guilds at the same time?

[Demonic God]

Just a few two cents but, as of now, resources is a mess most without any practical application, and guilds do not have any significant impact whatsoever. It'd be great for the guilds to have some impact, such as the ability to maintain and provide better tools, and a way to protect the resources. The fact that resources are scattered throughout the lands, naught of caretakers, and there's almost nothing someone could do to fix resource regeneration nor punish those who crippled the environment.

At the same time, the types of resources are too vastly different, yet governed under the same engine, essentially making them re-skin and re-name from one another (minerals regeneration? a lake having... 20 buckets of water in it?)

A quick fix won't last forever, and a full fix requires re-thinking on how resources should be implemented from the ground up, in my honest opinion. It seems that it's all tossed up together with no sense of direction of how they'd impact gameplay. Hard to play make-believe with things that have no intrinsic values, which can't even be split and used for proper trading.