Ember Online

We could forgo this whole area capture and do a Shrine situation. Guilds buy guild houses and then buy a Shrine for one of their rooms.
A.) This helps with players using gold.
B.) Doesn't have to apply to areas.
C.) Doesn't make guilds want to beat newbs up just for trying to lvl.

From there:
Every mob in the world has a % of a chance to drop a shard. There could be ..5 different types of shards.
A Broken Shard is here with you. [+1%]
A Cracked Shard is here with you. [+2%]
A Shard is here with you. [+3%]
A Glowing Shard is here with you. [+4%]
A Radiant Shard is here with you. [+5%]
Obviously the % to drop them is lower as their value increases. But should a mob randomly drop them, you should pick it up.
From there, you should bring that shard to your guild shrine and present it as an offering, increasing your guild's Blessing.

So we implement a "Blessing" system. Guilds don't necessarily have to fight each other and run newbs off their turf. Your guild would be blessed because your members are actively collecting shards to increase their Blessings.

Blessing lvl 10% = +1% Drop rate, +1% EXP Rate, +1% Gold.
Blessing lvl 20% =
Blessing lvl 30% =
Blessing lvl 40% =
Blessing lvl 50% =
Blessing lvl 60% =
Blessing lvl 70% =
Blessing lvl 80% =
Blessing lvl 90% =
Blessing lvl 100% = +10% Drop Rate, +10% Exp Rate, +10% Gold

Obviously make the drop rate for the shards rare, even for the lowest shard, but this keeps all clans happy and not looking for a reason to completely ruin other players gameplay by attacking smaller clans just for being in their area.

However, Blessings will be reduced by 1% every hour of server time...And say.. -10% at server reset?

**EDIT:
I would say that having starting cities for players and only allowing them certain gods per city would make this more lore friendly. As I've put it now.. we'll just call it blessings.. But if you created 3-4 STARTING CITYS.. we'd have a lot to work with.

We could then entertain the idea that some guilds only recruit people from a certain city, blah, blah, etc. Then transcending past guilds, but also allegiances unto one's city. You must then,
A.) Be loyal to your city
B.) Loyal to your guild
C.) Could help with roleplay aspects of the game.

Being a dick could then have you removed from your city. And if your guild requires you to be a citizen of your city, you could also be removed from that. Ex-communicated from everyone, accepting responsibility for your own actions.

This could open up CITY RAIDS. And also more roleplay diplomatic situations between players, guilds, citys.

Being an enemy of the state could mean that upon entry unto said city-state, you will be attacked by it's gate Guards. All of the cities in the game we have now could technically be.."Neutral" cities. We could just make 3 new starter cities for players right now. Each gets to pick 2 Gods/Divinities.

Starter city guards would be lvl 25 with OAD equipment. You'd need a force to get past them. At which point, if you did, you could wreck the city. Destroying it's town shops, etc. Leaving them to respawn at server reset time.

IF WE MAKE STARTER CITIES:
A.) Make a City chat channel.
B.) Ignore everything I said about guilds being able to get their own shards, and make it city wide, not guild wide. (Which would improve guild relationships inside their own cities)

**EDIT2**
Gator - Today at 8:09 PM
Add it to your post. Get the think tank snowballing it. It could be something that happens.
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We could have a Guild War every 2 days. Using the same equation as above. Just so guilds within cities/or whatever, could still participate versus each other.
#1 Ranking Guild = 1%
#10 Ranking Guild = 10%

I quite like this idea. The first bit about shards I mean. It encourages people to do stuff and with the decay it's not just a permanent buff. It would feel rewarding when you get a shard and turn it in, like you're doing your part to help your guild.

Obviously it benefits larger guilds more though, that's the main issue. Could perhaps try and devise a system where it takes more shards the larger your guild is?


edit: I don't think this needs to take the place of anything, it can be its own thing.

If it's possible to determine the number of accounts in the guild, we could then use this to make the decay faster based on that number. If not, then the more people you have online in the guild, the faster the decay. This will prevent people from afker so often too.

Ohko wrote:If it's possible to determine the number of accounts in the guild, we could then use this to make the decay faster based on that number. If not, then the more people you have online in the guild, the faster the decay. This will prevent people from afker so often too.

Aye good idea. I think it'd work best if it was based on the amount of account holders online. I think that would be the fairest, I don't know about other guilds, but we have a lot of clannies who only twitch once in a while (hardly on in game).
Give shards a "HP" value. Each account member online drains a HP per tick or something.
Then its "wounds" level would affect its bonus.
New shards heal it?

Oooo me likes this!

The first though is that we can actually take our time to develop this - it sits nicely after NH has finished Guild houses and guild wars.
The concepts.. nothing comes to my mind that makes me defensive on this, barring the usual balancing issues of big vs small guilds.

On this, I guess we can tinker with %s and clan sizes (my suggestion instead of number of accounts, is average number of logged in people in a given period).

I like ideas like this which promote active play (rather than idlers). I also like the follow up suggestions re making the rewards somehow scale to advantage smaller guilds rather than bigger ones. Such concepts are beneficial to bettering the depth and playability of the game. Keep em coming.

This actually encourages helping newbs, etc, as well. As more mobs killed = more shards found. Even after you're lvl 25.. You still have a daily task to work towards.

I thought my idea about giving shards HP would make it better for smaller clans (more online players means the shard is drained quicker), but then I realised it just made small and large clans equal (more online players means more chances to find more shards to top up the health of the shards).
If it was to be done this way and small clans were to be favoured then the drain could be exponential (but only by a small grade) instead of linear.

This is pretty similar to guild wars. Just to throw it out there and explain how GW works. You'd have a vault, and mobs would have a chance to drop global shards that grant special bonuses around the world. Very low chance, and there would be a cap. I call them GLOBAL SHARDS to start, as a lame name.

They would grant bonuses and benefits. You'd probably have a maximum of X global shards you can hold. they would have expires as well.

A guild house would have two levels, the main housing area (aka the portion most guild members spend their time in, tav, healing rooms, etc) and then the dungeon area. You design it how you think is best, but the dungeon area would lead to the VAULT system. Guild members can venture in it freely, but others would have to explore and get to the end. There would be doors to bust down, NPCs, traps, etc all things that are upkeep costs and have an initial cost too. The goal would be to get in the vault and steal the global shards. I'm not sure about other things yet in terms of 'stealing' but certain shards are going to be too great to pass up. I don't think they can steal gold or items cause then players wouldn't use the guild houses, they would simply store gold/items on local accounts. So global shards are the way to go probably. This would be a huge cost sink though. It won't be cheap to make a good dungeon.

Obviously players cannot just raid whenever they want. Guilds would have set times they would be vulnerable. The bigger the guild, the more vulnerable time they have to deal with. The only thing the guild can do is set when these times occur spread out in 30 minute intervals (though you continue an interval to make longer ones.). So each VULNERABILITY POINT is 30 minutes. For example:
-GUILD A with 5 members has 1 vulnerability point. They set it at 8PM on Friday. So they are vulnerable from 8 to 8:30 on Friday.
-GUILD B with 10 members has 2 vulnerability points. They set one point at 3PM on Monday, and 6PM on Thursday, as that is when they probably will have the most people. So they are vulnerable 3-3:30 on Monday and 6-6:30 on Thursday.
-GUILD C with 15 members has 3 vulnerability points. They set all three points on Tuesday, one at 3, one at 3:30, and one at 4. This means they are vulnerable from 3-4:30 on Tuesday, all in one go.

Obviously you cannot just change your times on a whim, it would cost gold to do and it wouldn't take into effect that month for example. The amount of invul points is up in the air though, was just an example.

As for how global shards work, I am unsure yet. It could be that more guild members lessen the effects of the shards up to a certain amount (lets say minimum 50% or 70% or something) but each person in the guild is -1% effect on the shard up to that amount. This is not a set on stone thing though but might promote mid sized or smaller guilds from starting up as this plus the invul timer would be an effect. So someone with 5 members would have an effect of 95%. Someone with 10 members would have 90%. Someone with 20 members would have 80%. Someone with 100 members (no such thing but yeah) hits the minimum of 50%. The amount loss per member is debatable if we go this route.

Also, I keep saying player when we talk about negative effects, but I am referring to an account itself. So one player = his whole account.

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Generally that's the idea of the guild war system. It's similar to your shrine system except that shrines probably can't be raided and their effects would probably be short term rather then long term. There is a possibility of both systems working together (Short term shrines and long term vaults) though. Not sure yet on that.

The issue however that falls flat with your shrine system vs the area capture system is you don't promote people PVPing for areas, so I don't see the removal of the area capture system. However, if we change how all the systems work for what bonuses they give they could work in harmony.

Area Capture System. Whoever owns the area gets a tax of 2% of any gold killed in that area. Each guild can hold lets say 3 max.
Shrine System. Short term boosts for XP, drop rate, gold. These shards drop more often than not and I'd propose only one item drop, not several different. The more that you throw into your shrine, the better bonuses you gain. So let's say each shrine shard you drop gives you 1% XP/1%Gold/0.5% drop rate. Something like that. Up to a max. Not raidable.
Guild Wars System. Long term boosts for pretty much many things. Raidable.


Though the shrine/guild war system is pretty similar, not sure if it would be too much. I wouldn't mind calling the guild wars global shard vault a 'Shrine' though. Thus they'd raid and attempt to capture global shards from the shrine instead. Reason being is it might be too much to have two similar systems in effect. But again I can see both systems working.


I don't really like the starter cities thing and I think it makes alot of confusion, specially with how the world scales now. It would have to be far larger to support and you need to move things to ensure players level in proper areas. I don't think we have the numbers to warrant it right now and what you are doing are splitting up newbies into different areas which hurts interaction. This would literally kill new player experience IMO if they don't see anyone. It's bad nuff as it is atm.

Some ideas:
Combine the global shard idea with this one:
Different kinds of shards give different kind of bonuses.
I think fairest way is to give the shards HP (as I have already said below) amount of guild members online drains the HP of the shard.
Rarer shards have more HP (and/or better bonuses).
You can use a shard to top up the HP of the shard you have in place in your guild house or to replace the bonus of the shard that is in the Guild House (HP of shard changes to the mean of the two shards involved in this case).
Shard HP wound level dictates bonus.

Gold:
Clan gold can get sacked (# * number of enemy that make it through, maybe a percentage - but to a maximum number). This could be affected by Guild Size (smaller clans lose less money).
How to avoid exploitation of this (as in guild just moving their gold away into accounts)?
Make guild money only usable for guild items. You cannot withdraw the gold (you can still put in gold as normal).
Make the cost of stuff"rent" come of daily (at reset).
Can rooms be damaged (cost gold to repair)?
If guild bank gold goes into negative (because of the "rent") the clan loses all benefits and rooms are destroyed to cover the cost - full value of room is not recovered; as in only 50%? of the room cost is used to cover the debt, the rest disappears) until the clan gold is put into a positive value.

Meh, just ideas.