Guilds

[BluePriest]

Spoiler for person I got the idea of guilds by:

Original idea by Kev

I'm of the opinion the mini-event idea would need some sort of reward to attract players.  Either a small in-game reward (1k electrum for first, maybe we could shave these off the tourney winnings?) or a forum award icon.  Since we don't want 100 additional forum award icons given every year, maybe one that shows the number of wins would suffice.  Something like this only with artistic talent:

   


If the forum reached a point where it did one day generate excess ad revenues, one alternative to marketing would be to give it back to the players as a prize.  Even a cash prize as small as $100 for an Elements The Game World Championship would create a crazy amount of buzz.


Other games have found success retaining players by using guilds to create a greater sense of community.  Maybe we're not big enough yet, but I could definitely see an advantage of something like this.  Off the top of my head I could see choosing from one of 3-4 guilds before or shortly after registering to the forum.  3-4 Masters could head each guild.  It might increase willingness to help tutor new players, etc., and War/Brawl/etc could be rebuilt based on feeding rivalries.


I'm impressed with participants of this thread keeping the onus on the community, rather than zanz, to expand.  There's been some out-of-the-box ideas, too.  Keep 'em coming.    Some of the proposed ideas are logistical nightmares, but that's what we have a Council for. 8)

Guilds are found in not just MMOs, but FPS, Strategy games, and almost all genres of games that have some type of pvp in them. Elements has an active community and even huge pvp events. What it doesnt have? Guilds.

Original Thoughts on Guilds

Spoiler for Original Post:

What kind of guilds can we have?

1) 12 different guilds. 1 for each element.
Pros
Organization for wars
Already have 12 masters
Set number of guilds
Easy to make private subsection for each guild

Cons
Set number of guilds reduces creativity of guilds
Feels like guilds are being dictated and reduces the feel of freedom which is an appealing aspect of guilds

2)4 Official forum guilds
Pros
Organization of the guilds will allow for them to accomplish more things
Easy to make private subsection
Low numbers allow for larger guilds

Cons
Small number of guilds may end up reducing the appeal
Feels like guilds are being dictated and reduces the feel of freedom

3)Guilds can be made by anyone
Pros
Greatest freedom to the players
Large number of guilds

Cons
Little chance of organization within the guild
Prerequisites would need to be made for a guild to become official
Private subsections would become almost impossible.
_______________________________________________


I personally like the 3rd and 1st option the most. The first option keeps with the theme of elements and could be very benificial for war. I also believe this would be the easiest to set up. The 3rd option I think would be most liked by the magority since anyone and thier mother could become  a guild leader and have thier own guild as long a they fulfilled some requirements. I also think it would be the hardest to implement though, as there would need to be guild applications and any guilds that get approved would have to have a private forum subsection (lets be honest, without a private place, the guilds wouldnt seem... well right...)

What Guilds Would Do

Spoiler for Current Idea:

Some things for Guilds. IF we do the 4 guilds thing

War
Guilds should have nothing to do with war if there is not 1 per element.

Tags
If we have 4 guilds, each can have a tag (if tags are impossible, then a picture to indicate the guild would work as well) This creates name recognition to other guild members and will make people curious about it.

Guild Dominance
Any time a guild member wins a pvp event, they give thier guild +1 win. This can define the dominance of the guilds. More pvp wins = higher ranked guild.

Guild PvP events
These would be nothing like war. They would be a pvp event that is around a certain element. For example, use only fire cards. If you win this, you would get a partial control of dominance of the fire realm. If theres 10 pvp events based around fire, and you control 4, then your guild has a 40% dominance over fire.  They will be simple. 4 guilds, 2 people from each. 8 person tourny. These could be held as often as we have the membership.willingness. If 1 guild is able to participate a lot less, then it will just be considered an auto loss if they miss one.

Guild Influence
Guilds will think of specific things dealing with the community. This could be a card that they come up with, a way to improve a specific part of the forum, or to attract new visitors. The community would vote on which one of these they like the most and the guild that wins would recieve an influence point.

Note these are all rough ideas. Im acting like they are well thoguht out, but Im just lieing to myself lol.

How Guilds Could Be Seperated

Spoiler for ARTHANASIOS idea:

Since everyone has different oppinions, why don't we have three Guild types; Major Guilds, Medium Guilds and Lesser Guilds?

Major Guilds:

1) Material Guild ( )
 "The Elementals following this Guild have an opinion about the world similar to Empedocles' one. They believe that the core elements of the universe are Air ( ), Earth ( ), Fire ( ) and Water ( ); the rest elements are just variations and mixtures of these."

2) Spiritual Guild ( )
 "These Elementals admire spirit above body, since they believe that matter can't really move or act without a spirit to command it. They are usually very religious and they either worship the Light Gods ( ) and Mother Nature ( ) or the Dark Gods ( ) and Thanatos himself ( )."

3) Cosmic Guild ( )
 "The most scientific of the Elementals belong in this Guild. They are the least religious of the Guilds, since they either believe in scientific progress instead of a god ( , ) or view themselves as gods, like Immortals or Pharaohs often do ( , )."

4) Outlanders Guild {optional} ( )
 "No one knows from where these Elementals came and no one really cares. The thing which really intrigues the other 3 Major Guilds is not the origins of these Elementals, but their point of view; these Elementals think that all the twelve elements are equal and just a tool to do your job. In other words, they don't admire any of the elements, but they use every one of them at their advantage..."


Medium Guilds:

"These Guilds worship one element as the only true element above all the others."

01) Aether Guild
02) Air Guild
03) Darkness Guild
04) Death Guild
05) Earth Guild
06) Entropy Guild
07) Fire Guild
08) Gravity Guild
09) Life Guild
10) Light Guild
11) Time Guild
12) Water Guild

Lesser Guilds:


"These Guilds worship a duo (or even a trio) of elements."

Examples:  ,  ,  ,  ,  etc.

[ZephyrPhantom]

How about a mix of the 1st and 3rd options?

12 main guilds. 1 for each element.
Players can also make 'subguilds' that allow others with common interests to join (for example, a player makes a "Pestal Guild" for / players).

Main guilds have private sections.
Subguilds do not have private sections but can set up alternatives like sync.in.

Pros
Main 12 Guilds help determine elemental stance for events.
Subguilds allow all pros of option 3 and removes the feeling guilds are being dictated.
'Core' guilds will always remain in place regardless of subguilds.

Cons
Quality of subguilds might decrease.
Subguilds may be redundant if clear purpose isn't given.
Being part of too many guilds may cause some subguilds to become inactive.

[Zaealix]

I can't help but wonder if there's enough players that even the highly restrictive 12 elemental guilds system would be filled...At least, filled in the sense of 'everyone's in an element they like', at most, filled in the sense of 'all guilds are full, even if most people would rather be in another element', but that's just me.

[regen2k9]

Rotmg has #3.  While some great, active guilds arose from this setup, there are 10x more "noob guilds" that are basically purposeless.

I vote for option one, if a guild program is created.

That being said, I don't really see the purpose, since aside from war and other pvp/forum events, elements isn't really a cooperative game.

If it attacts people to the forums though, I'm for it, purposeful or not.

[BluePriest]

I can't help but wonder if there's enough players that even the highly restrictive 12 elemental guilds system would be filled...At least, filled in the sense of 'everyone's in an element they like', at most, filled in the sense of 'all guilds are full, even if most people would rather be in another element', but that's just me.

WE are ble to get about 6 people from each element to commit to war which is a several month long pvp event that requires constant action from the players. Getting 12 guilds filled should be no problem at all.

[Shantu]

I like the second option the best. I feel that 12 different guilds would be too much for the current community size and there are some people who doesn't like to dedicate themselves to one element. I also think keeping elemental affiliation and guilds somewhat separate wouldn't hurt, since we already kind of have the water-heads, the gravy fans etc etc. The community would become way too fragmented with one guild for each element. I believe 3-4 éarge guilds (as written in the original guilds post if I recall correctly) would be ideal. Either based on elemental alliances or something completely different that I can't think of at the moment. Fewer amount of guilds also - hopefully - ensures that the activity level stays at an acceptable level.

To keep interest in it, it needs to be hyped a lot and various regular events hosted based on the conflict of the guilds. Friendly smack talk and the like should be obligatory. I can easily imagine the guilds and Csabi's small pvp events idea combined: every few days pvp skirmishes could be held between the guilds in league style; free fighting (or hunt-and-challenge, if that is easier to understand) under certain restrictions that change frequently.

I kind of have a vision in my mind but I don't want to force it on you all.

[pervepic]

Even the old idea good vs bad elements seems applicable (with some subgroups, if wanted and needed), because good elements are not so weak anymore because of the lack of permanent control (Shards!).

[Kamietsu]

I don't really like the idea of private guilds. Not initially at least. I was thinking more along the lines of 12 open guild halls(guild sections for each element) that coudl act as a main hub of conversation and talk about specifically that element and things related to it. Then during War, those sections would fall into being private and the guilds could go to war with each other officially and unofficially. Such as, have the main war event, but also give some fun for those who are memebers of the guild but not participating in the main war event.

[kev]

Just a couple notes:

- I appreciate the footnote BP but this idea isn't mine.  Guilds and clans have been mentioned a bunch of times on the forum.  I really brought it up again in the other thread as I was brainstorming ways to increase forum membership and it feels like it might be time to try out a bigger idea.
- It's not super clear from the stats page how many players log in daily; all that's clear is the number decreased after the transition and it hasn't rebounded like we'd hoped yet?  Thus my suggestion to start with 3-4 guilds.  We could always add more later.  Food for thought.

Looking forward to seeing where this heads.  I hope we can brainstorm something implementable to benefit membership.

[Kamietsu]

We could start witht he three guild groups of how Zanz originally had the elements paired in groups of 4, if anyone still remembers that or has his chart around somewhere.

[ARTHANASIOS]

Just a couple notes:

- I appreciate the footnote BP but this idea isn't mine.  Guilds and clans have been mentioned a bunch of times on the forum.  I really brought it up again in the other thread as I was brainstorming ways to increase forum membership and it feels like it might be time to try out a bigger idea.
- It's not super clear from the stats page how many players log in daily; all that's clear is the number decreased after the transition and it hasn't rebounded like we'd hoped yet?  Thus my suggestion to start with 3-4 guilds.  We could always add more later.  Food for thought.

Looking forward to seeing where this heads.  I hope we can brainstorm something implementable to benefit membership.

We could start witht he three guild groups of how Zanz originally had the elements paired in groups of 4, if anyone still remembers that or has his chart around somewhere.

Then my opinion is this; 4 Guilds!

Guild #1: Material Guild ( )

Guild#2: Spiritual Guild ( )

Guild#3: Cosmic Guild ( )

Guild#4: Outlander Guild ( ) [or something like that]

[plastiqe]

Combine the crappy elements that nobody really likes into guilds of 3-4 elements, but the Fire Guild will have more than enough awesome members, because fire rules!