Difference between revisions of "Guilds"

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== Affiliations ==
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== See also ==
 
== See also ==

Revision as of 21:09, 12 May 2018

Guilds in Ashes of Creation are still pre-alpha design that will need testing and feedback from the community.[1]

Guild formation

Players may be able to form guilds in starting areas if minimum requirements are met.[2]

Guild membership

A character may only be a member of a single guild.[3]

  • Alts on the same account can join different guilds.
    • Intrigue, espionage and intelligence gathering is a legitimate aspect of the game.
  • A guild may only have a single guild leader.[4]
    • Transfer of guild leadership is possible, but mechanics on transferring leadership if a guild leader has abandoned the guild have not been finalized.[5]

Guild progression

Guild perks UI. Alpha-1 screenshot. Image credit: Guild:Overlord

As you're leveling up the guild and you're getting these points to either allocate towards expanding the guilds member count or allocate towards adding certain passive abilities that your guild members can gain by being guild members. You're also going to see as you're leveling up the guild through different type of quest-based, participation-based, node-based, organization-based systems and ways that those quests hook into the world. You're also going to see perhaps some augment abilities at the upper tiers of the guild levels become unlocked for certain members that have a classification of officer or knight, will have access to those different types of augment abilities that might get unlocked should you go down the non expansive member lane; and the idea there is to offer these benefits to smaller groups.[6]Steven Sharif

Guild progression occurs through participation in different systems.[6]

Guild progression grants skill points that the guild can allocate to unlock aspects of their skill tree, such as passive skills, augments and membership count.[6][8][9]

  • Passive abilities increase certain stats relating to a guild member's ability to perform in combat or in other aspects of the guild, such as the economy.[6]
  • Augments may apply at the upper tiers of guild progression.[6]
    • This applies to guilds that have opted for the non-expansive member route.[6]
    • It benefits guild members with a classification of officer or knight.[6]
  • Guild members do not need to be citizens of the same node in order to benefit from passive skills and augments.[10]
  • Guild size can be traded off for guild progression.[6][11]
    • The higher the guild's member cap, the fewer available skill options will be available to that guild.[12]
    • Guild alliances may be a key part in creating a larger "guild".[11]
  • Guild halls can be unlocked at a certain stage of guild advancement.[8]
  • Guilds cannot respec their skill points once allocated. This is subject to testing.[13]
It's not always going to be combat. You could have an economic focus guild. You could have a trade oriented guild; and there's all sorts of things that you can put together and give your guild its own identity.[6]Jeffrey Bard

Guild size

There are mechanics that are geared towards larger and smaller guilds.[1]

  • Larger guilds can siege fortresses.
    • Larger guilds won’t have access to power boosting guild ability slots.
  • Small groups can do some things better than larger groups.
    • Sieges will have things that smaller groups have an advantage in.

Guild size is currently 250-300 members.[14]

Guild alliances

Guild leaders can create an alliance at a later stage in guild progression by completing a quest.[15][16]

  • Once created, the leader can invite up to three other guilds to this alliance, but this is subject to change.[15][17][16]
  • A guild may only be a member of one alliance.[18]
  • There is no member cap in an alliance, only a maximum of four guilds.[16]
Will the largest guilds segment off into different chapters of their guild that are part of small guilds? Absolutely that will happen; and the way that we combat the efficacy of doing that always is through how we design our encounters and our events to incorporate the use-case of where smaller guilds and their passive abilities are necessary to overcome certain challenge ratings. Will it always be most beneficial for larger guilds to do that? No, not always. It depends on what they're encountering, but you absolutely will see some guilds leveraging that for sure.[15]Steven Sharif
You can only invite a number of guilds to the alliance before you must form a new alliance; and then those alliance can have a de facto friendship but they won't have any game component of connection. What the alliance system would allow is pooling of resources into by guild leaders into an alliance guild alliance bank. Will allow certain participation in different quest lines. It will allow common area chat for members and it will allow affiliations and gear that can be attained as well.[19]Steven Sharif
  • Guilds may enter into trade agreements.[20]
We have a specific system that relates to being able to invite another guild into an alliance that sets a flag on those characters with regards to being able to combat them, being able to share a chat system with them, being able to participate in specific types of quests and/or alliance warehouses and guild homes; with regards to the relationship of castle sieges and participating in node warfare and node activities. If you're not in an alliance with someone, you're in a neutral state so to speak. You can have trade agreements between different guilds and then you can also have Guild Wars which shows a state of war between you guys. I think that's the baseline of how we're going to develop interaction between guilds.[20]Steven Sharif
  • Due to the lack of fast travel, guilds will need to plan to have people in the right place at the right time. Alliances with other guilds will help enable that.[11]

Guild wars

Guild wars are objective-based PvP events between guilds.[21][22]

  • Guild wars are not permanent. Definitive victory/surrender conditions exist that are based on the level of the warring guilds and the assets that those guilds have.[25][27]
  • Guild wars are considered a core system of Alpha-2.[32]
Q: How do you plan on keeping wars fresh long term? Typically in other games wars become one dimensional in terms of strategy. Will intrepid be looking at map changes every few years, or will you give guilds / node mayors the ability to customize the layout or objectives of the battlefield?
A: Our guild wars have objective-based gameplay that spawn in the world based on several different factors and predicates that might exist. Some of those predicates might be where is your guild a patron guild of? Does your guild have a guild hall? What node is your guild leader and/or officers a citizen of? What was your last completed raid boss? All of those can serve as predicates to then spawn a certain objective within the world that players have to either engage with in a number of different manners. Either they can be kill objectives, they can be control objectives, they can be capture and move objectives. They could be a caravan caravan summons that need to take supplies from those objectives. The idea is to incorporate all of these other ancillary systems that exist within the game in some way shape or form- tie it into the guild war, because we've created those systems for a reason. We want players to engage with those systems, so why not hook those systems into the guild war format? And I think that that creates a very dynamic setting where it is not just about killing and logging out, but rather strategy in both your resource placement, how you respond, and when you respond, the composition of your raid/group teams. Those types of things play a role now in the outcome of those guild wars and I think they keep it fresh because it'll be different per war.[21]Steven Sharif
info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Guild benefits

Ideas that are being considered by the developers:[33]

Leadership tools

The developers are considering the following guild tools:[33][35]

  • Recruitment tools.
  • Management tools.
  • Delegation tools.
  • Motivational systems.
  • Communication tools.
  • Roster.

Guild emblems

The user interface will allow the creation of custom guild emblems.[36]

Crowdfunding guild rewards

Guild themed character cloaks were cosmetic rewards for backing at the Leader of Men level or higher in the Kickstarter and Summer crowdfunding campaigns.[37]

Guild cloaks will work the same way that accessory appearances from the cosmetic packs work, in that they are applied to the item and take over that appearance. They can not be applied over costumes. [38]Cody Peterson

Kickstarter/Summer crowdfunding guild rewards[39] are assigned to a guild by the owner of the reward.[40]

  • Once assigned, the reward becomes an asset of that guild.[40]
  • Guild members that leave the guild no longer have access to the unique items of that guild.[40]

Guild housing

The term "guild housing" refers to guild buildings and not guild owned player housing.[41]

Guild halls

Summer guildhall appearance cosmetic concept art.[42]

Guildhalls are the ultimate expression of a guild's power! In Ashes these structures will serve as focal points for a guild, offering any guilds who construct them a whole host of benefits as well as customization options.[39]

Guild halls serve as a focal point for a guild, offering a host of benefits and customization options.[39]

  • When a guild reaches a certain level, its guild master is granted a certificate to enable placement of a guild hall.[43]
  • Guild halls may be placed within Baronies within the ZOI of a node.[44]
    • A barony can only have a single guild hall.[44]
    • The number of baronies that can have an active guild hall is determined by the node's stage.[45][46]
Only a limited subset of the guild halls available around the node are available concurrently... So you might only have two that might be available at fifth level and then three at sixth level of a node; and the guilds have an opportunity to select from the six available which three are going to be active.[45]Steven Sharif
  • Patron guilds may also place their guild hall within (the footprint of) their patron node. These guild halls have different perks and benefits to halls placed within Baronies.[47][43][26][47]
    • Patron guild halls placed within Baronies may have the ability to confer benefits to surrounding estates within that node by speccing into passives in their guild skill tree and carrying out a lengthy quest line.[48]
  • The design of guild-halls is currently subject to active iteration by the developers.[49]
info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Benefits

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Guild halls unlock actions a guild can perform within a node.[52]

Guild castles

Guild castle Alpha-1 early preview.[53]

With five Castles in the world, and each having been owned by different civilizations from the far-flung past of Verra, you can expect that each Castle has its own character. Different terrains and different layouts will result in each Castle having its own advantages and disadvantages. Just because you have managed to take one Castle will not mean that your strategies will pan out in the next. Commanders will have to take into consideration the lay of the land, time of day, weather, and even seasons into account when forming their battle plans.[54]

Sword 01 - with logos.png

Five guild castles exist in Ashes of Creation.[55][54][56]

While the hard structural environment is static and not able to be- you're not building a castle if you own a castle, you're inheriting a historic ruined castle that is representative of the past because it has some tie-in to specific types of powers that we haven't gotten into from a lore perspective yet but we haven't expressed to the community. That's something that we're going to leave for the community to find out when they play. But when you place mercenaries and you place those blockades and you place those traps, that affects the level design of the castle according to the strategy you might use to defend it.[55]Steven Sharif
These Castles are occupied when players arrive on Verra, and their current inhabitants will have to be removed before any player can claim them. Castles will be dangerous and high-level raid zones until they can be cleared, and the first group of players to do so will gain the Castle as their reward.[54]

Benefits

Guild castle concept art.[54]

It's a reciprocal relationship between the castle and its nodes essentially. There are benefits granted to citizens of the castle; and the longer that the castle remains in the hands of its incumbent guild, the stronger the benefits become overall. But at the same time that represents a greater incentive to attack the castle because the rewards will get greater over time also.[53]Steven Sharif

Guild castles provide benefits and trophies for guilds that capture and control them.[53][70]

  • These benefits increase the longer a guild holds its castle.[53]

There are levers and dials that are present to both the owners of Castles as well as the elected officials of Nodes that during their administration they have the ability to impact and influence the region around them.[71]Steven Sharif

Guild castles exert a King or Queen's presence over nodes within their region.[53][71][72]

Guild fortresses

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Guild fortresses are siegable guild halls within Ashes of Creation. These are different from nodes and castles.[50]

  • Guild fortresses are objectives in guild wars.[22] These are contested on a regular basis.[43]
  • The developers will decide if guild fortresses will be implemented in the game or shelved.[43]
The fortress design is also something that might be on the shelf. We haven't decided yet. We're going to look into it, but the idea behind the fortress is that this is a competitive guild hall so to speak where you have to contend for it on a regular basis so to speak; or can be taken from you necessarily. Whereas the guild hall is a structure similar to freehold structure can only be taken through successful sieges against a node per-se are not taken but destroyed.[43]Steven Sharif

Zergs

For every play, there should be a counterplay. We often see Castle Sieges turn into zerg-fests, which really doesn’t capture the epic, back-and-forth battles we wish to see in Ashes of Creation. One of our key pillars is that Choice Matters[73], and that applies to tactics and strategy as well. A well-formulated battle plan should win out over stat sheets and bodies. Zergs will generally be difficult to pull off, and will be eminently counterable through siege weapons, traps, and other battlefield tricks.[54]

Zergs are empowered by fast-travel. Meaningful travel times are intended to prevent zerg play from being so much of an influence.[1]

Encounters are designed to have meaning in terms of how boss skills and abilities relate to group compositions, tactics and strategies. Zerging is not experiencing content.[74] There are different ways to make a fight more difficult for larger sized groups without relying solely on stat buffs or making the boss a "damage sponge".[75]

  • Raid and dungeon bosses have specific mechanics and abilities that players need to learn and react to.[75] Zergs that are not aware of these mechanics or react to them appropriately will be wiped.[74]
  • There may be environmental hazards and AoE effects that cause more damage based on the number of players present.[75]
  • There is a give-and-take for guilds that want to see a larger number of members as opposed to a more focused group that may be a part of an alliance.[76]

We're very cognizant of the fact that we don't want to see zerging be a mechanic that's utilized by guilds to accomplish content or just to steamroll over sieges... There are specific mechanics that we are working on that will be seen through the testing phases that relate to a degree of understanding of certain systems that can't just be overrun with numbers.[76]Steven Sharif

Mechanics that encourage political intrigue will play a role in destabilizing zergs.[77]

The best way that I found in games I played previously to take down a zerg is to cause drama from within... It's that conflict inside of the politicking that happens in that big organization. If we provide opportunities for division to occur then it also provides stability to keep a server healthy away from that zerg mentality also... If we approach the castle siege and we've destroyed the walls and we're in the throne room and we're about to cast on the penultimate thing and I at this time am just so excited from what's happening that I'm like "screw it I'm gonna go for it". It's gonna be mine. I'm gonna take the taxes for the next month. I'm gonna take all the gear from the castle. I'm gonna take everything... We want that political intrigue to be present in the game.[77]Steven Sharif

Objective-based game play helps to balance the zerg mentality.[78]

I always feel that if you balance based on groups that in your balance focus is to incorporate features that play well from a player versus player perspective as well as a player versus environment perspective: Having support classes, having DPS and tanks that can obstruct movement and/or create bottlenecks on the field and stuff like that. I think a well-rounded raid it will perform better against a non well-rounded raid, however then you incorporate the second aspect of numbers; and that's where again mobility, organization, leadership tactics. Having objectives in gameplay that make those important helps to balance the zerg mentality that a lot of guilds can tend to have.[78]Steven Sharif

Instancing doesn't play a major role in limiting zergs, due to 80% of content in Ashes of Creation being open-world.[79]

  • There may be instanced locations within castle and node sieges where specific groups can participate in certain objective-based waypoints.[79]

Zerging is always a problem in a lot of these MMORPGs where you really can't control the number of participants in certain open-world systems; and in that sense instancing is a great tool that designers can sometimes use to curate a particular number of participants that you want. But the predominant amount of content within Ashes of Creation, over 80% of which is is open-world content, so instancing is very limited.[79]Steven Sharif

Sharemarkets

Stock exchanges (also called Stock markets and Share markets) enable players to buy and sell shares in Nodes, Guilds and Social organizations.[80][81][82]

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.
  • There is no regulatory commission to restrict the purchase and sale of stocks.[83]

Affiliations

An affiliation tree determines which entities can participate in attacks against other entities within its hierarchy.[84][85]

There's node citizenship. There's guild. There's alliance. There's party. There's raid. There's family. All of these types of affiliations have a hierarchy. The highest of which is your node affiliation: So your citizenship is your greatest superceding relationship, which means if you were a part of a guild and the guild has multiple nodes in which its members are citizens of, if there was a war between two of those nodes, the members of those nodes would be first and foremost citizens who defend that node, even against their own guild members.[84]Steven Sharif

All of these things have some hierarchy; and within that hierarchy there's the ability to participate within certain systems. So for example, if you have a node that has fallen under your vassal state and you're a citizen of the parent node, then you could participate in a siege against the vassal node but if you're a citizen of the vassal node you could not participate as an attacker against the parent node; so there's a hierarchy, unless you were to renounce your citizenship.[85]Steven Sharif

See also

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Livestream, May 5, 2017 (23:26).
  2. Livestream, November 17, 2017 (40:56).
  3. Podcast interview, 5 May 2017 (47:20).
  4. Livestream, May 17, 2017 (58:18).
  5. Livestream, May 26, 2017 (47:35).
  6. 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 6.11 Livestream, September 27, 2018 (55:39).
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 Livestream, May 19, 2017 (22:10).
  8. 8.0 8.1 Interview, July 19, 2020 (36:07).
  9. guild size.jpg
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  12. Interview, August 8, 2018 (9:36).
  13. Livestream, October 30, 2020 (1:11:13).
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  42. Summer Leader of Men.png
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  46. steven-guild-hall-purchases.png
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  48. steven-guild-hall-barony.png
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  80. 80.0 80.1 steven-stock-markets.png
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