The Cancer of Guild Guards:

[Emdash]

A short essay by Emdash!

I have already spoken about how I believe resource generation that does not involve player work is bad for the game, but guild guards are further down the line, right before walls.

Watch this video, if you want. Approaching Jungle Camp, decided to shoot someone...

Now, if guards simply suppressed all pvp, it would still be kind of wack to have free placement guards in THE WILDERNESS, but it would be kind of fair. The fact that they will not attack allies and will attack war targets is like having turret support dmg in most spots, and it is completely ridiculous. It would make more sense to put elite guards in jungle camp, at least then it would be 'fair.'

Yeah, it costs money to have guards, but I felt this same way in the North when Overt had spammed many of them, except this is in the lawless zone.

Why should there be NPC mercs? They cost. They are not super strong, but it's still a bad mechanic.

Would love to hear a rebuttal.

 

[Beatel]

The largest problem with areas like this, especially this village in particular, is the incentive for the other large groups to destroy these buildings.
(Edit: I was also reminded how performance does not help the siege situation. Large fights just destroy the server performance)

My own in game political views aside, many guilds do not like Tribe and their allies, yet they do not knock all these structures down. There has been a problem with the gameplay balance of territory control and sieges for a long time, a point many have complained about for years. Some improvements have come, but the incentive to spend 10's of thousands of gold in order to clear any of this out is not there.

Some ideas I've heard proposed by the larger guilds and bounty hunters (who are usually solo):
1) Allow destroyed structures to be instantly lootable
2) Allow us the ability to break open doors from the inside and outside. Currently, the effort to open a door is still tied to a massive cost.

This needs to be balanced with small guilds and solo's in mind, as too much incentive would lead to large guilds gambling a siege on poor solo Bob's house, hoping he has valuable things squirreled away inside.

Another part of this problem is the upkeep on non-subbed accounts, creating an abundance of housing and TC on the map. This has been acknowledged by the staff, and it sounds like they might be reverting this finally; no confirmation of time-frame on that.

Guild guards serve their purpose, but they are also fairly easy to kill if you have a few people and take a decent amount of time to rewpawn. Removing guild guards won't solve the problems I've talked about that lead to these frustrations in the first place.

 

[Jackdstripper]

The largest problem with areas like this, especially this village in particular, is the incentive for the other large groups to destroy these buildings.
(Edit: I was also reminded how performance does not help the siege situation. Large fights just destroy the server performance)

My own in game political views aside, many guilds do not like Tribe and their allies, yet they do not knock all these structures down. There has been a problem with the gameplay balance of territory control and sieges for a long time, a point many have complained about for years. Some improvements have come, but the incentive to spend 10's of thousands of gold in order to clear any of this out is not there.

Some ideas I've heard proposed by the larger guilds and bounty hunters (who are usually solo):
1) Allow destroyed structures to be instantly lootable
2) Allow us the ability to break open doors from the inside and outside. Currently, the effort to open a door is still tied to a massive cost.

This needs to be balanced with small guilds and solo's in mind, as too much incentive would lead to large guilds gambling a siege on poor solo Bob's house, hoping he has valuable things squirreled away inside.

Another part of this problem is the upkeep on non-subbed accounts, creating an abundance of housing and TC on the map. This has been acknowledged by the staff, and it sounds like they might be reverting this finally; no confirmation of time-frame on that.

Guild guards serve their purpose, but they are also fairly easy to kill if you have a few people and take a decent amount of time to rewpawn. Removing guild guards won't solve the problems I've talked about that lead to these frustrations in the first place.

Agree with all of this. These are all bad design decisions by SV that have needed fixing for years now, but continuously get overlooked. Its like they purposely make shitty designs and rules and then are stubborn as hell about not changing, until they lose half the population and then they capitulate.
This has always been Henriks achilles heel. Bad decisions, and unwillingness to change that which nobody likes. Then he loses half the players, and all of a sudden things get changed. Always too little too late.

 

[Emdash]

Guild guards serve their purpose, but they are also fairly easy to kill if you have a few people and take a decent amount of time to rewpawn. Removing guild guards won't solve the problems I've talked about that lead to these frustrations in the first place.

I don't think they do serve a purpose, tbh. It takes like 5 min to respawn? If there are guild guards in multiple spots, they will be there, as I said, applying supplementary damage whenever you are doing something that is against the guild / alliance who controls. Sure, in a vacuum, they also help untagged blues v untagged greys, but the fact that they are loyal to alliances means that large amounts of players can be immune to them.

Those guards are shooting arrows haha. I think with TC. you should have to protect your own shit, just like you should have to gather your own shit. What influences your success is being able to work with people who will protect your shit or gather stuff for you. If you can just hold an outpost, get mats, and place a bunch of guard towers, you can go without interacting with anyone outside of your alliance, as JA does.

I am not mad at Tribe because they stay there and do work there. I am gonna fight Tribe, sure, but they live in that area and take it very seriously. That is sandbox gameplay. But having guild guards that you will have to kill every time (which also makes you susceptible to being attacked, as I assume they get some notice?) is not really fair.

I don't even think that guild scouts are really fair, tbh, but at least they aren't applying damage. They hit harder than outlaws, and while that isn't a bunch of dmg, it is enough to force you to consider it unless you are in good armor, and again, that defeats the purpose of trolling shitter zerglings if you are gonna feed them 100g of mats every time they finally kill you.

 

[Beatel]

I don't think they do serve a purpose, tbh.

The concept of building your own small village or outpost, by yourself or with a couple friends, is not a simple effort.

For example, if I wanted to setup a small fishing outpost with some vendors, stables, and a bank, I would also like to have a barracks and guards to support this small outpost. It is not cheap to build these structures, and the upkeep cost is quite a chore unless you're dedicated (or in a much larger group). This enables me to at least have some support to keep the area a bit more "grief" free from the smaller or naked attempts of chaos. If this didn't exist at all, those types would just camp these small player outposts endlessly.

If a small player outpost is farming "safe" it should be up to the players to say "I don't like this, let's stop it".

I do agree the balance of it all feels off once the scale of player groups goes up, but again I'd rather be motivated to help other groups just siege these problem areas, but as it stands that part of the game has many issues.

I can only imagine how many strongholds and houses currently belong to players who will actually never return to the game, inflating the amount of TC structures on the map. If large guilds want walls of houses and towers surrounding their villages it shouldn't be enabled by unsubscribed accounts, alts or otherwise.

 

[Emdash]

The concept of building your own small village or outpost, by yourself or with a couple friends, is not a simple effort.

For example, if I wanted to setup a small fishing outpost with some vendors, stables, and a bank, I would also like to have a barracks and guards to support this small outpost. It is not cheap to build these structures, and the upkeep cost is quite a chore unless you're dedicated (or in a much larger group). This enables me to at least have some support to keep the area a bit more "grief" free from the smaller or naked attempts of chaos. If this didn't exist at all, those types would just camp these small player outposts endlessly.

If a small player outpost is farming "safe" it should be up to the players to say "I don't like this, let's stop it".

I do agree the balance of it all feels off once the scale of player groups goes up, but again I'd rather be motivated to help other groups just siege these problem areas, but as it stands that part of the game has many issues.

I can only imagine how many strongholds and houses currently belong to players who will actually never return to the game, inflating the amount of TC structures on the map. If large guilds want walls of houses and towers surrounding their villages it shouldn't be enabled by unsubscribed accounts, alts or otherwise.

I definitely agree with most if not all of what you said in your post, but I just feel guild guards are not good. It sucks to be griefed at your small fishing village, but guess what? You have a small fishing village. You have a door you can peek out. It's a full loot mmo. You can give a MC if someone keeps griefing you, as the system intends. Will it deter everyone, no. If they are not a related guild (why would you build next to guilds that wanted to grief you, or why wouldn't you be ready to deal with it if so,) they should not be spawning so close to your village, either, so putting them down will be a deterrent.

Naked grief has been a thing since MO1. It sucks. Now we got some combat skills, at least.

The concept of saying, "I want to build my village and establish order there," is very sound. That is the ideal. But the damage that guards do to the game, in my opinion, is too high given what small benefit they may have to protect small scale guilds from naked grief.

The game has to grow. There has to be a reward for killing griefers and people who needlessly PK. That inspires people. You need to get actual shit like CLADE / GLORY for doing it so that people want to do it. Not some half-assed bounty system.

I built some stuff before, and I built some stuff this time, too. If someone was griefing my area and I couldn't stop them, I would just log off or port elsewhere, but they would have to come from kinda far away unless they were of a nearby guild, in which case, I could take that out on said guild from then on.

Yes, siege needs to be better. Yes, people who quit should not keep their TC, but battle npcs are historically imbalanced in MO. It doesn't make much sense if you think about it, and as I said, we're not talking about footies. Those dudes at JC are like archers from a tower or something. It makes little sense.

 

[Beatel]

I agree, but I also want to be clear I'm not advocating for a safe zone where I don't need to actively defend myself, I've dealt with both ends of this situation. This is more in regards to setting up an outpost for others to come and enjoy their time in another part of the world. The vast majority of people who play video games do not spend more than a few hours in a single play session; they don't mind dying and losing their things as long as their playtime is worthwhile. The current Jungle Camp situation is a perfect example of people who are able to spend countless hours in the game.

How do you balance gameplay for people that only have 1-3 hours to play in a session, versus those that have no problem spending 8-12 hour days everyday shutting down your entire gameplay session? Sure, move elsewhere, but then you're telling these people they can't experience more of the game, simply because they don't have enough time to deal with the problem.

I'll have to ask the same of you now, if you can't handle these guards, why not move on and play elsewhere? Unfortunately, guards are a solution, and a problem. The problem lies in players not removing Tribes guards, the intended game mechanic.

 

[Emdash]

I'll have to ask the same of you now, if you can't handle these guards, why not move on and play elsewhere? Unfortunately, guards are a solution, and a problem. The problem lies in players not removing Tribes guards, the intended game mechanic.

I mean, I'm gonna play around guards. I understand what their level of influence is. I am simply saying it's bad, and it doesn't address the problem you speak of.

Remember: Guards do not attack everyone. You could say, well, those people 'own' the area, so they should be able to have guards protecting them while they spawn camp JC, but... I dunno? You speak of balancing the game between players who play 12 hours a day and players who don't, well, that is 'sandbox theory.'

The ideal would be that said 8-12 people would influence the game on a more meta level, but there would be opportunities for short-time players within that and those opportunities would change based on what the others were doing. So, allowing them to 'hire' players to patrol their territory makes sense, or hire players to gather resources, and pay them in clade and gold, etc, but the reason 'society' in MO hasn't evolved is because there are mechanics to raw control areas, but there aren't many mechanics to develop areas.

I keep saying SV should consult with me. I don't have all the answers, but I don't know all the questions. I need to know what they can do and I can probably figure something out. I'm not 'just' trolling when I keep saying 'HIT ME UP SV.'

The idea is, again, no life players fight over territory and create a world that is going to be somewhat interesting for those who play much less. So, it's not about whether or not you can complete your gather quests, but it's about what is happening in the world and how you are able to insert yourself.

____

But the idea of guards is kind of outside of that. It is just another mechanic that allows people to not have to play the game, and I disagree with those. If you can put in 8-12 hours but you can't defend your own shit, that is problematic. Just like with outposts gaining materials. In MO autogen resources were bad and removed. I think they waffled between whether one should have npcs who attack people.

It 'seems cool' to have your own npc army, but it's awful for the game, and yea I've died to some crazy mercs in MO1, but I have yet to die to guild guards in this game. It's just about the fact that you have suppression dmg any time you are in the area, and people who are on the alliance side are immune. When you calculate it out, the cost is high but not if people are actually in your area. Plus, it allows them to make money in other areas without devoting as many resources to protecting their stuff. It keeps people in tighter loops and does nothing for the game, except, as you said, protect untagged blue vs untagged griefer. There aren't many of those still playing haha.