1. 1. 1. PyrosGuildSuggestion - This is ratehr large but points of it are pertinent - we could make commands from the oposite side of the wheel harder to learn.

1. 1. 1. PyrosGuildSuggestion - This is rather large but points of it are pertinent - we could make commands from the oposite side of the wheel harder to learn.
         • Or even impossible to learn. Subguilds would move in between major guilds (example thief being in between fighter and rouge. Making it impossible to learn extreme fighter commands aswell as extreme rouge commands. But in turn have their own extreme command that neither a fighter/rouge only player can reach). Planning/scetching needed.
           
           

1. 1. 1. A combination of both the above.

1. 1. 1. A combination of both the above.
         
         

• • • I think that if we design the guild wheel in such a manner that pray will be moved slightly up in the priest guild only players that invest time and effort in that guild will learn the pray command.. And in that way make the gods happy. In an extreme scenario we can improve the pray command and move it up to a "master" position in the wheel and so only really dedicated followers is given the command. I don't see this is as a problem if the wheel is well designed and that there is major restrictions on how far a player can "walk" along the weel (A player should never learn all commands for an example). Making this "walk" movement propotional like the skill system it will be possible in theory to learn all commands and join all guilds. But it would require a level of like ten billion (which is pretty much impossible anyway).

• Regurarly check the thread and remove double statements and do general cleanups.

• Scetch out some kind of guild wheel with possible support for future guilds, their commands. If there is one, illustrate and post here. In the wheel, list commands which belongs to each guild. Certain level of commands (example: 1 guild level makes you reach commands one step away, lvl 2 two steps away etc. Each guild have their own "master" commands and extreme commands. Those commands can only be reached if the player invests in this guild only. A hardcore thief gets fewer range of commands, but much stronger theif related commands.)

Note - there is a large amount of cross over between this topic and that of the LearntCommands topic in the Design web. Please read that topic as well.

Note: See also: LearntCommands

• Current system

Current system

Complaints about the current system

1. Difficulty to code a new guilds
2. The code behind the different types of commands eveolved over time and is now different for each type of command
3. Possible that damage-based guild commands dont give exp
4. Lack of integration with the rest of the game, resulting in the long command code

Overview

• A player joins a guild and is automatically assigned a set of commands, they magically learn these just by pledging themselves to a guild.

Problems

1. Difficulty to code new guilds.
2. The code behind the different types of commands eveolved over time and is now different for each type of command.
3. Damage-based guild commands dont give exp.
4. Lack of integration with the rest of the game, resulting in the long command code.

Goals

Long term goals

Guilds

• • A guild command being seperate to the guild and thus available to all players whom can gather the required amount of skills and find somebody to teach them.

1. Gpose AA'ing a players guild points done away - replace chance to AA points via any regular command.

Player

1. Players themselves given ability to teach commands to other players.
   • Control of scope of guild commands can be done through the "teach" command. I'd anticipated that it would become possible to "teach to ". To be able to learn a command there are bonus requirements in the skills used by the command. To be able to teach a command there are (much higher) bonus requirements in the same skills. Some commands can also be completely unteachable - which effectively restricts them to players who can access the NPCs who can teach these commands.

Problems

1. Many dependant features.
2. Guilds become irrelevant if player X can learn all of guild Y's commands.
   • Players must gain all requisite skills to be elligable to teach another player, this isn't to say that all commands will be learnable by any player. NPC's may teach to only a single guild, commands may be "teach blocked" so that players cannot teach others.
3. Gp: display - This will show the GP for joined guild? a variety of sub guild's points may be learned, and maybe should be taken into account on the overall GP.
4. Class specific skills
   • Other classes could learn related class skills with greater affinity than those outside the guild. Perhaps certain classes would aa (auto-advance) certain skills at a faster rate. For instance: Thief and Assassin are both members of the "Rogue" guild. Thieves would aa easier stealing than stabbing, whereas it's the opposite with Assassins.
     • I think as a member of a guild you have greater access to teaching in a skill but your ability to learn through usage probably wouldn't vary greatly.

Design

-- FantoM - 13 Jan 2003

Why not being able to study your skills? The way guilds are now as how you put it, you train the required skills to 300 and then you can use the comand and it'll most likely work, and then all you get to do is aa them up for stronger commands. Why not have a system where the gcommands are hidden, you can't see a single thing, there could possibly be a help file which tells you the available commands for each guild, but not how to raise them, or what they do. As you advance your skills, and or study from books, or learn from NPCs. So you don't really know what you're going to get, unless you try for it. There should/could also be the possibility to not learning each gcommand, for example, there could be 15 gcommands(that's a lot) and your character can only learn 1 gcommand every what? 100 glvls, where you could then study them, or learn from the NPC, or possibly even players. there could be 3 different trees, or paths that a player could choose, each path resulting in each character being unique. Here's an idea for 3k, see how you like it, altar it a bit. Each player has a form you can choose in the necromancer guild, when you get a certain type of item you can create a scroll with a guild command on it to the scroll room that perhaps another guild member could use for a bit, or gain access completely, should require a very high stature. Except, I propose this however, have 4 different npcs, 1 for low lvl chars like lvl 1-20, 2nd rated chars, lvl 20-50, 3rd rated chars 50-100, 4th anything over lvl 100. when you reach the 4th npc he then teaches you that you can learn abilities from the other tress, or paths but requires great skill. After learning this, the npc could put you on a quest to do something to obtain the ability to learn another skill. Advancing through different npcs could require donations, and guild quests.

-- MarcMitchell - 15 Jan 2003

The LearntCommands topic is part of the replacement for guild commands, in it I imply that you dont get a command until you have the skills to support it, which in turn implies that you don't know all the commands when you join a guild and thus have to experiment and focus your training to get them.

I'm not particularly interested in placing restrictions on the number of commands you can know.

Keep in mind I also want you to be able to learn commands from other players which might have been taught to them by the NPCs of their guild.

-- FantoM - 15 Jan 2003

Learning gcommands will they be only based on guild, or could you learn ANY gcommands? for example, I join the Druid guild and I can learn stab, and majorheal, and summoncloud. Please tell me no cause that sounds very dumb.

-- MarcMitchell - 20 Jan 2003

In my current model, and this is not necessarily what the final product will look like, guild commands are just an instance of LearntCommands. They are a command which can be learnt if you have the necessary bonus levels in the requisite skills and can find a teacher to teach you. By joining a guild you are "getting in good" with the teachers of a set of commands. That is NOT to say that you can't find a means of learning commands which are offered by other guilds. The NPCs in other guilds won't teach you but you might find an NPC somewhere else in the game who will teach the command.

I also believe that as a player you should be able to teach commands to other players, as long as you have reached a high enough bonus in all the requisite skills. There may be specially marked commands which we determine as never teachable by players to retain some special only-one-guild commands.

I don't see that there is anything wrong with a druid learning how to use a dagger. Summon cloud - I'd probably prefer if this one remained storm-only.

-- FantoM - 20 Jan 2003

If you want my opinion, probably don't but who cares! I don't like it at all. I think it's...well stupid...I like druids to be druidic priests, storms to be master of elements, and thieves to be assassins, or rogues. Why instead of crossing guilds, just make more guilds, or brin more guilds into play instead of waiting for storms to become mages and branch off, etc, etc, etc.

-- MarcMitchell - 21 Jan 2003

I was under the impression that the whole point of this board was to extract input so your opinion might as well be here.

Code

1. Instead of guilds just being guilds, it should relate back to all forms of daily activity. CraftingSystem details some of my ideas for integrating all concepts of mud life to the general guild idea. What I mean is, as stated, a player starts off with the rudimentary commands. Then all through out the mud, there are npcs willing to teach new ones in exchange for money, quests, etc. As long as the player has the prerequired skills. I like this concept now because a player can make a truly unique character and take on a new role in the mud, eg become a black smith, wood worker, alchemist. The commands learnt don't all have to relate back to the concept of killing other things or combat. So somone who desires can log in, find a forester, do a quest to gain his trust, become an apprentice and learn the art of chopping wood. I would imagine it would take quite a while to learn a skill, and to make it usable. As I mentioned in PyrosGuildSuggestion a concept of efficiency can be utilized, where when a skill is learnt it starts at 0% and only increases with use, then decays without use.
2. The issue of balance is key, that is why I came up with the spectrum concept. That when a player starts, they initially choose 1 of 5 paths, magic, faith, combat, crafting, stealth. Each path as sub guilds in relation to it, or has commands which ultilize the skills under that tree. So when a player goes to learn a skill, if it is too distant from their original path it requires say 15% more skill to learn it, because they would have less practice and knowledge in that tree. For example, player x is focussed on combat, but finds an npc who wishes to teach him minorheal. Since it is a rudementary command, doesn't require much skill, maybe 25 faith.healing. But since his focuss is on combat, it would cost him 100 faith.healing to learn, as it is on the other side of the specturm in his case. So a player who is skilled enough to learn lightning, a higher end command, would require an immense amount to learn another higher end command of major heal. Then this all ties back to efficiency, as commands from the original path would be easier to use than commands from another path. So overall a player would not be restricted in what they can learn, but it becomes very hard when they don't focuss more on one way of life.
3. The vanishing of guild commands and replacement with commands which you learn and these commands may come to you via your guild or other routes. All combat related commands would work into the combat system regardless.

Ideas

1. Commands being learnt over time, via studying from books and (possibly many) lessons from the teachers of that command.
2. Restrictions upon amount/availability/frequency of learning commands.
   • I'm not particularly interested in placing restrictions on the number of commands you can know.
3. Advancing through different npcs could require donations, and guild quests.
4. No indication of available commands.
   • You dont get a command until you have the skills to support it, which in turn implies that you don't know all the commands when you join a guild and thus have to experiment and focus your training to get them.

Example

As for why cross guilds vs heaps of guilds:

1. I believe that there is a large demand amongst players to be able to build a unique character
2. Just because you are a thief who majors in sneaking and stealing, does this mean you should never be able to learn to disarm or fix a weapon or mix a potion? People already presume that weapon fixing and potion mixing are not guild bound and don't have a problem about them being so, so why the problem when I imply that non-thieves might want to learn to steal?
3. If you as a real life person concentrate on a particular set of skills you get good at it, but that does not stop you spending some time on other skills and obtaining a basic ability in those as well.

Bob the thief wants to learn some magic type skills, he would only have a selection of first tier magic commands, or those skills that someone adept in magic would get when they first started out. So if a storm starts out with flash, icestorm, and whatever, Bob could (once he reached an appropriate level, learn one of these commands. Bob will never be able to learn the higher tier magic skills like lightning shield or summoncloud.

Possible ideas for balancing this, and stopping everyone coming out identical with every command in the game:

Troubles

Clashes

1. Why cross guilds from what the members are supposed to be 'masters' of into learning another guild's trade?
   • I believe that there is a large demand amongst players to be able to build a unique character
   • Just because you are a thief who majors in sneaking and stealing, does this mean you should never be able to learn to disarm or fix a weapon or mix a potion? People already presume that weapon fixing and potion mixing are not guild bound and don't have a problem about them being so, so why the problem when I imply that non-thieves might want to learn to steal?
   • If you as a real life person concentrate on a particular set of skills you get good at it, but that does not stop you spending some time on other skills and obtaining a basic ability in those as well.
   • Possible ideas for balancing this, and stopping everyone coming out identical with every command in the game:

-- FantoM - 21 Jan 2003

Well, to be truthful. Would some gcommands have complete restrictions for othe rguilds? for example, would a storm be able to have 'majorheal'? a druid with 'lightning'? i don't like those type of things, i like potions, and being able to steal, but some gcommands should be only based on that guild, otherwise..what's the point in having guilds why not discard every guild and when you first start have a creation page where you impliment what skills YOu want where? and then fnding that npc and learn that skill that you chose from the beginning? I've played a couple of muds where u cross guilds, and i didn't like a single one. I don't see how I could ever like this idea.

Again, it's only my opinion not every players. So if there was a restriction for the guild base skills then i could live with that. Atleast, there'd be a point in joining a guild that way..I read your comment on summoncloud so i figured u were thinkin this from the start just was unclear in my behalf.

-- MarcMitchell - 21 Jan 2003

You should also take this topic into consideration, CharacterAdvancement, even if it was possible to cross-guild, you could not become powerful in each one, cause they use so diverse skills that you would not be able to train them all to a high level. This depends on the type of guild, an assassin and a thief guild would be quite close to eachother skillwise, while a warrior would not be close at all to a magician.

-- PumaN - 21 Jan 2003

The way I envision things sort of now in terms of guilds. Is a very simplistic system which ties in with the rest of the mud. Right now the guilds are sort of an add on entity of their own. I would much rather have it so it is integrated with combat and all other parts of the mud, eg the problem with the long commands.

Instead of guilds just being guilds, it should relate back to all forms of daily activity. CraftingSystem details some of my ideas for integrating all concepts of mud life to the general guild idea. What I mean is, as stated, a player starts off with the rudimentary commands. Then all through out the mud, there are npcs willing to teach new ones in exchange for money, quests, etc. As long as the player has the prerequired skills. I like this concept now because a player can make a truly unique character and take on a new role in the mud, eg become a black smith, wood worker, alchemist. The commands learnt don't all have to relate back to the concept of killing other things or combat. So somone who desires can log in, find a forester, do a quest to gain his trust, become an apprentice and learn the art of chopping wood. I would imagine it would take quite a while to learn a skill, and to make it usable. As I mentioned in PyrosGuildSuggestion a concept of efficiency can be utilized, where when a skill is learnt it starts at 0% and only increases with use, then decays without use.

Getting a bit off track here, but to address the problems behind this sort of system. The issue of balance is key, that is why I came up with the spectrum concept. That when a player starts, they initially choose 1 of 5 paths, magic, faith, combat, crafting, stealth. Each path as sub guilds in relation to it, or has commands which ultilize the skills under that tree. So when a player goes to learn a skill, if it is too distant from their original path it requires say 15% more skill to learn it, because they would have less practice and knowledge in that tree. For example, player x is focussed on combat, but finds an npc who wishes to teach him minorheal. Since it is a rudementary command, doesn't require much skill, maybe 25 faith.healing. But since his focuss is on combat, it would cost him 100 faith.healing to learn, as it is on the other side of the specturm in his case. So a player who is skilled enough to learn lightning, a higher end command, would require an immense amount to learn another higher end command of major heal. Then this all ties back to efficiency, as commands from the original path would be easier to use than commands from another path. So overall a player would not be restricted in what they can learn, but it becomes very hard when they don't focuss more on one way of life.

A lot of this stuff is covered in my proposal, its a bit out dated I may develop it more once more disucssion is placed here.

-- PyrO - 30 Jan 2003

From topic to topic, I think magic and guild skills should be separated. Not entirely, theoreticly speaking, magician and mage guilds would have the upper hand since they learn much more magic in their guilds. They would still have the set of gcommands that signifies their guild and even help them learn more magic. Best of two worlds as a matter of fact.

This works very well with the new combat system design coming up.

-- FreD - 05 Nov 2003 14:00

I suppose I've got round this problem ( of magic being available to all really ) by assuming that while magic might be performed by anyone (with possible benefits to certain types of magic based on race) that like the ability to wave a sword is available to anyone magic can only be effectively performed with training.

We extend this a bit by presuming that even tho the rudiments of sword handling are available to anyone who can get his hands on a sword the same is not the case for magic - you have to be taught how to do anything with it.

That said I think we should look at the different forms of magic.

Magicians probably should just get a "cast" command - they then need to learn spells.

Druids/Clerics are more communing types and as such commune with nature/god and ask for particular things. We could feasibly say that clerics "pray" and learn prayers similiar to the casting concept. I'm happy enough with druids retaining the variety of commands.

Stormlords wield weather magic - it's like being taught to use magic to control something (weather in this case) without really going into the full capacity that total understanding and control magic might provide. It's also simpler to learn and possible to concentrate on getting the exact results that one wants - essentially they are learning the "cast" command and certain spells and we roll "cast icestorm" into a single "icestorm" command for simplicity.

The question of whether or not we let people learn the "cast" command if they are not of the mages guild or not is a different question. There is nothing to say that we shouldn't - beyond perhaps balance. We could add further balance by restricting the extent of spells that a non-mage can learn (by making those spells only available by mage guild NPCs).

I think that if we have clerics with a pray command then that should not be teachable - gods only grant the wishes of their true and dedicated followers.

So addressing FreD's comment on the separation of guild commands and magic - I actually see the vanishing of guild commands and replacement with commands which you learn and these commands may come to you via your guild or other routes. All combat related commands would work into the combat system regardless.

-- FantoM - 06 Nov 2003

• FreD - Players get alot more control to customize their character as Fantom say. On the other hand guild just become a higher hiearchy of clans, which it is really, so why is this so bad? This should be mentioned in PyrosGuildSuggestion if I'm not mistaken. This will also increase the importance of outlaws and rangers, people who have been kicked out or left their guilds and clans for some reason. I'm totally for this.

Bob the thief wants to learn some magic type skills, he would only have a selection of first tier magic commands, or those skills that someone adept in magic would get when they first started out. So if a storm starts out with flash, icestorm, and whatever, Bob could (once he reached an appropriate level, learn one of these commands. Bob will never be able to learn the higher tier magic skills like lightning shield or summoncloud.

Another Point that really irk's me about our current system is lack of commands and lack of guilds or sub guilds. I think storms should be "mages" with a sub-guild/or class of storm I think thieves should be "rogues" with a sub-guild/or class of thief I think druids should be "clerics" with a sub-guild/or class of nature.

We could then make class specific skills. Other classes could learn related class skills with greater affinity than those outside the guild. Perhaps certain classes would aa (auto-advance) certain skills at a faster rate. For instance: Thief and Assassin are both members of the "Rogue" guild. Thieves would aa easier stealing than stabbing, whereas it's the opposite with Assassins.

I hope this makes sense... -- DonaldKincannon - 07 Nov 2003

I'd like to see sub guilds - yes.

I am also in complete agreement with DonaldKincannon, although I've held of mentioning it because noone else seemed to think it was a good idea, in that only a limited number of low level guild commands should be learnable by non-guild members. Create whatever excuse you want ( You focus most of your time on your main guild so you can never be as good as members of other guilds at their commands, etc ) but it if we get 100% sharing of commands then there is no point in guilds.

I'm against a "you can only learn 10 commands" system - in case anyone wants to propose such a thing.

• See CharacterAdvancement, the proposed ideas there could solve some of these problems. -- PumaN - 07 Nov 2003

I like Pyro's idea that it's harder to learn commands from guilds whose teachings go against those if your own. This is partially reflected through the druids using faith vs the storms using magic skills and the like.

I don't know that I like AA rates changing based on guild... I think as a member of a guild you have greater access to teaching in a skill but your ability to learn through usage probably wouldn't vary greatly?

Control of scope of guild commands can be done through the "teach" command. I'd anticipated that it would become possible to "teach to ". To be able to learn a command there are bonus requirements in the skills used by the command. To be able to teach a command there are (much higher) bonus requirements in the same skills. Some commands can also be completely unteachable - which effectively restricts them to players who can access the NPCs who can teach these commands.

-- FantoM - 07 Nov 2003

This is a little off topic but:

I think AA should be most effected by races. Races should also be a determining factor of learning certain skills and how well you learn them.

I'm also in favor of sub-guilds and a system which you can learn any number of skills.

-- EmbeR - 07 Nov 2003

Also speaking of AA's

When is Aa'ing GP: going to come with using regular commands? -- DonaldKincannon - 09 Nov 2003

• I have converted 2 commands ( quickheal and stab ) to the format needed to provide this ability. I am getting help converting other commands. It can't be turned on until at least an equivalent number of commands exists for all guilds, otherwise it unbalances things. I will probably wait until at least 2 commands from each guild have been converted. -- FantoM - 09 Nov 2003

My goodness, this topic is quite jumbled with various things (and dead.) I hope it gets organized and spread out better. I'm just going to comment on the last thing mentioned for now. Fantom, what were your reasons for choosing those two commands? I'm going to guess that those are the combat related commands for those guilds and tie in the most to usage of gp. And i'll now make suggestions about 2 for each guild since the topic is incomplete, and i think gpose is retarded.

• Thieves: stab, backstab
• Storms: icestorm, lightning
• Druids: quickheal, majordamage

• No need to choose those particular, I'm converting them all at once. About 1/4 of them all are finished, the rest are on hold while I code fishing (I do one or two when I have to wait for an ADMIN). -- FreD - 04 Mar 2004 11:08

-- LuCid - 04 Mar 2004

• • You should also take this topic into consideration, CharacterAdvancement, even if it was possible to cross-guild, you could not become powerful in each one, cause they use so diverse skills that you would not be able to train them all to a high level. This depends on the type of guild, an assassin and a thief guild would be quite close to eachother skillwise, while a warrior would not be close at all to a magician.

1. Balance.
   • The question of whether or not we let people learn types of magic commands if they are not of the mages guild or not is a different question. There is nothing to say that we shouldn't - beyond perhaps balance. We could add further balance by restricting the extent of spells that a non-mage can learn (by making those spells only available by mage guild NPCs).
2. Reality
   • I think that if we have clerics with a pray command then that should not be teachable - gods only grant the wishes of their true and dedicated followers.

Dependancies

1. Combat system
   • Many combat related commands, and certainly future ones, could use a more dynamic base combat system.

On a side note. I've decided I'm agains letting everyone learn any command.. Many commands needs to be flagged as "guild" only commands. And should only be used by people in that particular guild (doesn't go into any of the discussion of what a guild is). My point is, to sum up, I would rather see the players limited in some way or another so they need to help eachother out in order to be strong. A mage should be really lousy at combat and healing for example (using existing examples). I'd rather refine much sharper edges in the skills of a player rather than beeing able to choose some kind of average. A solo player will have a much tougher time than party that is.
Another thing with this is to limit the player even further is to stop them from using gear and items to make the lines even sharper.

Also we are moving towards another point with the commands I like. There needs to be many such skills that isn't guild flagged that can be taught to anyone who desires it.

Oh.. and someone should be assigned to clean this space up (integrating comments into useful information, and remove double information, not to say make it readable)

-- FreD 09 Oct 2004

Tasks

• Convert guild commands to new 'learnt' commands.
  • 

Sooo... Which way is all this heading? Nothing gets done because no task are given, no tasks are given because.. what? Been reading up on all this and.. to sum up, we have a bunch of guild systems that seem nice, all more or less revamps of current skill/command systems. Question, where do we start? main.FreD

On a side note. I've decided I'm agains letting everyone learn any command.. Many commands needs to be flagged as "guild" only commands. And should only be used by people in that particular guild (doesn't go into any of the discussion of what a guild is). My point is, to sum up, I would rather see the players limited in some way or another so they need to help eachother out in order to be strong. A mage should be really lousy at combat and healing for example (using existing examples). I'd rather refine much sharper edges in the skills of a player rather than beeing able to choose some kind of average. A solo player will have a much tougher time than party that is.
Another thing with this is to limit the player even further is to stop them from using gear and items to make the lines even sharper.

Also we are moving towards another point with the commands I like. There needs to be many such skills that isn't guild flagged that can be taught to anyone who desires it.

Oh.. and someone should be assigned to clean this space up (integrating comments into useful information, and remove double information, not to say make it readable)

-- FreD 09 Oct 2004

Sooo... Which way is all this heading? Nothing gets done because no task are given, no tasks are given because.. what? Been reading up on all this and.. to sum up, we have a bunch of guild systems that seem nice, all more or less revamps of current skill/command systems. Question, where do we start? main.FreD

• BeastGuild (access to main thank you..)

• BeastGuild (access to main thank you..)

• No need to choose those particular, I'm converting them all at once. About 1/4 of them all are finished, the rest are on hold while I code fishing (I do one or two when I have to wait for an ADMIN). -- FreD - 04 Mar 2004 11:08

My goodness, this topic is quite jumbled with various things (and dead.) I hope it gets organized and spread out better. I'm just going to comment on the last thing mentioned for now. Fantom, what were your reasons for choosing those two commands? I'm going to guess that those are the combat related commands for those guilds and tie in the most to usage of gp. And i'll now make suggestions about 2 for each guild since the topic is incomplete, and i think gpose is retarded.

• Thieves: stab, backstab
• Storms: icestorm, lightning
• Druids: quickheal, majordamage

• FreD - That would fade the image of guilds in general. I see it as an evolution in the right direction. Players get alot more control to customize their character. On the other hand guild become a higher hiearchy of clans, which it is. This should be mentioned in PyrosGuildSuggestion if I'm not mistaken. This will also increase the importance of outlaws and rangers, people who have been kicked out or left their guilds and clans for some reason.

• FreD - Players get alot more control to customize their character as Fantom say. On the other hand guild just become a higher hiearchy of clans, which it is really, so why is this so bad? This should be mentioned in PyrosGuildSuggestion if I'm not mistaken. This will also increase the importance of outlaws and rangers, people who have been kicked out or left their guilds and clans for some reason. I'm totally for this.

When is Aa'ing GP: going to come with using regular commands? -- DonaldKincannon - 09 Nov 2003

When is Aa'ing GP: going to come with using regular commands? -- DonaldKincannon - 09 Nov 2003

• I have converted 2 commands ( quickheal and stab ) to the format needed to provide this ability. I am getting help converting other commands. It can't be turned on until at least an equivalent number of commands exists for all guilds, otherwise it unbalances things. I will probably wait until at least 2 commands from each guild have been converted. -- FantoM - 09 Nov 2003

Also speaking of AA's

When is Aa'ing GP: going to come with using regular commands? -- DonaldKincannon - 09 Nov 2003

• See CharacterAdvancement, the proposed ideas there could solve some of these problems. -- PumaN - 07 Nov 2003

This is a little off topic but:

I think AA should be most effected by races. Races should also be a determining factor of learning certain skills and how well you learn them.

I'm also in favor of sub-guilds and a system which you can learn any number of skills.

-- EmbeR - 07 Nov 2003

I'd like to see sub guilds - yes.

I am also in complete agreement with DonaldKincannon, although I've held of mentioning it because noone else seemed to think it was a good idea, in that only a limited number of low level guild commands should be learnable by non-guild members. Create whatever excuse you want ( You focus most of your time on your main guild so you can never be as good as members of other guilds at their commands, etc ) but it if we get 100% sharing of commands then there is no point in guilds.

I'm against a "you can only learn 10 commands" system - in case anyone wants to propose such a thing.

I like Pyro's idea that it's harder to learn commands from guilds whose teachings go against those if your own. This is partially reflected through the druids using faith vs the storms using magic skills and the like.

I don't know that I like AA rates changing based on guild... I think as a member of a guild you have greater access to teaching in a skill but your ability to learn through usage probably wouldn't vary greatly?

Control of scope of guild commands can be done through the "teach" command. I'd anticipated that it would become possible to "teach to ". To be able to learn a command there are bonus requirements in the skills used by the command. To be able to teach a command there are (much higher) bonus requirements in the same skills. Some commands can also be completely unteachable - which effectively restricts them to players who can access the NPCs who can teach these commands.

-- FantoM - 07 Nov 2003

Bob the thief wants to learn some magic type skills, he would only have a selection of first tier magic commands, or those skills that someone adept in magic would get when they first started out. So if a storm starts out with flash, icestorm, and whatever, Bob could (once he reached an appropriate level, learn one of these commands. Bob will never be able to learn the higher tier magic skills like lightning shield or summoncloud.

Another Point that really irk's me about our current system is lack of commands and lack of guilds or sub guilds. I think storms should be "mages" with a sub-guild/or class of storm I think thieves should be "rogues" with a sub-guild/or class of thief I think druids should be "clerics" with a sub-guild/or class of nature.

We could then make class specific skills. Other classes could learn related class skills with greater affinity than those outside the guild. Perhaps certain classes would aa (auto-advance) certain skills at a faster rate. For instance: Thief and Assassin are both members of the "Rogue" guild. Thieves would aa easier stealing than stabbing, whereas it's the opposite with Assassins.

I hope this makes sense... -- DonaldKincannon - 07 Nov 2003

• FreD - That would fade the image of guilds in general. I see it as an evolution in the right direction. Players get alot more control to customize their character. On the other hand guild become a higher hiearchy of clans, which it is. This should be mentioned in PyrosGuildSuggestion if I'm not mistaken. This will also increase the importance of outlaws and rangers, people who have been kicked out or left their guilds and clans for some reason.

I suppose I've got round this problem ( of magic being available to all really ) by assuming that while magic might be performed by anyone (with possible benefits to certain types of magic based on race) that like the ability to wave a sword is available to anyone magic can only be effectively performed with training.

We extend this a bit by presuming that even tho the rudiments of sword handling are available to anyone who can get his hands on a sword the same is not the case for magic - you have to be taught how to do anything with it.

That said I think we should look at the different forms of magic.

Magicians probably should just get a "cast" command - they then need to learn spells.

Druids/Clerics are more communing types and as such commune with nature/god and ask for particular things. We could feasibly say that clerics "pray" and learn prayers similiar to the casting concept. I'm happy enough with druids retaining the variety of commands.

Stormlords wield weather magic - it's like being taught to use magic to control something (weather in this case) without really going into the full capacity that total understanding and control magic might provide. It's also simpler to learn and possible to concentrate on getting the exact results that one wants - essentially they are learning the "cast" command and certain spells and we roll "cast icestorm" into a single "icestorm" command for simplicity.

The question of whether or not we let people learn the "cast" command if they are not of the mages guild or not is a different question. There is nothing to say that we shouldn't - beyond perhaps balance. We could add further balance by restricting the extent of spells that a non-mage can learn (by making those spells only available by mage guild NPCs).

I think that if we have clerics with a pray command then that should not be teachable - gods only grant the wishes of their true and dedicated followers.

So addressing FreD's comment on the separation of guild commands and magic - I actually see the vanishing of guild commands and replacement with commands which you learn and these commands may come to you via your guild or other routes. All combat related commands would work into the combat system regardless.

-- FantoM - 06 Nov 2003

From topic to topic, I think magic and guild skills should be separated. Not entirely, theoreticly speaking, magician and mage guilds would have the upper hand since they learn much more magic in their guilds. They would still have the set of gcommands that signifies their guild and even help them learn more magic. Best of two worlds as a matter of fact.

This works very well with the new combat system design coming up.

-- FreD - 05 Nov 2003 14:00

The way I envision things sort of now in terms of guilds. Is a very simplistic system which ties in with the rest of the mud. Right now the guilds are sort of an add on entity of their own. I would much rather have it so it is integrated with combat and all other parts of the mud, eg the problem with the long commands.

Instead of guilds just being guilds, it should relate back to all forms of daily activity. CraftingSystem details some of my ideas for integrating all concepts of mud life to the general guild idea. What I mean is, as stated, a player starts off with the rudimentary commands. Then all through out the mud, there are npcs willing to teach new ones in exchange for money, quests, etc. As long as the player has the prerequired skills. I like this concept now because a player can make a truly unique character and take on a new role in the mud, eg become a black smith, wood worker, alchemist. The commands learnt don't all have to relate back to the concept of killing other things or combat. So somone who desires can log in, find a forester, do a quest to gain his trust, become an apprentice and learn the art of chopping wood. I would imagine it would take quite a while to learn a skill, and to make it usable. As I mentioned in PyrosGuildSuggestion a concept of efficiency can be utilized, where when a skill is learnt it starts at 0% and only increases with use, then decays without use.

Getting a bit off track here, but to address the problems behind this sort of system. The issue of balance is key, that is why I came up with the spectrum concept. That when a player starts, they initially choose 1 of 5 paths, magic, faith, combat, crafting, stealth. Each path as sub guilds in relation to it, or has commands which ultilize the skills under that tree. So when a player goes to learn a skill, if it is too distant from their original path it requires say 15% more skill to learn it, because they would have less practice and knowledge in that tree. For example, player x is focussed on combat, but finds an npc who wishes to teach him minorheal. Since it is a rudementary command, doesn't require much skill, maybe 25 faith.healing. But since his focuss is on combat, it would cost him 100 faith.healing to learn, as it is on the other side of the specturm in his case. So a player who is skilled enough to learn lightning, a higher end command, would require an immense amount to learn another higher end command of major heal. Then this all ties back to efficiency, as commands from the original path would be easier to use than commands from another path. So overall a player would not be restricted in what they can learn, but it becomes very hard when they don't focuss more on one way of life.

A lot of this stuff is covered in my proposal, its a bit out dated I may develop it more once more disucssion is placed here.

-- PyrO - 30 Jan 2003

You should also take this topic into consideration, CharacterAdvancement, even if it was possible to cross-guild, you could not become powerful in each one, cause they use so diverse skills that you would not be able to train them all to a high level. This depends on the type of guild, an assassin and a thief guild would be quite close to eachother skillwise, while a warrior would not be close at all to a magician.

-- PumaN - 21 Jan 2003

Well, to be truthful. Would some gcommands have complete restrictions for othe rguilds? for example, would a storm be able to have 'majorheal'? a druid with 'lightning'? i don't like those type of things, i like potions, and being able to steal, but some gcommands should be only based on that guild, otherwise..what's the point in having guilds why not discard every guild and when you first start have a creation page where you impliment what skills YOu want where? and then fnding that npc and learn that skill that you chose from the beginning? I've played a couple of muds where u cross guilds, and i didn't like a single one. I don't see how I could ever like this idea.

Again, it's only my opinion not every players. So if there was a restriction for the guild base skills then i could live with that. Atleast, there'd be a point in joining a guild that way..I read your comment on summoncloud so i figured u were thinkin this from the start just was unclear in my behalf.

-- MarcMitchell - 21 Jan 2003

I was under the impression that the whole point of this board was to extract input so your opinion might as well be here.

As for why cross guilds vs heaps of guilds:

1. I believe that there is a large demand amongst players to be able to build a unique character
2. Just because you are a thief who majors in sneaking and stealing, does this mean you should never be able to learn to disarm or fix a weapon or mix a potion? People already presume that weapon fixing and potion mixing are not guild bound and don't have a problem about them being so, so why the problem when I imply that non-thieves might want to learn to steal?
3. If you as a real life person concentrate on a particular set of skills you get good at it, but that does not stop you spending some time on other skills and obtaining a basic ability in those as well.

Possible ideas for balancing this, and stopping everyone coming out identical with every command in the game:

1. PyrosGuildSuggestion - This is ratehr large but points of it are pertinent - we could make commands from the oposite side of the wheel harder to learn.
2. Increasing the base level skills requirement for subsequent commands, thus making each subsequent command harder to learn.
3. A combination of both the above.

-- FantoM - 21 Jan 2003

If you want my opinion, probably don't but who cares! I don't like it at all. I think it's...well stupid...I like druids to be druidic priests, storms to be master of elements, and thieves to be assassins, or rogues. Why instead of crossing guilds, just make more guilds, or brin more guilds into play instead of waiting for storms to become mages and branch off, etc, etc, etc.

-- MarcMitchell - 21 Jan 2003

Note - there is a large amount of cross over between this topic and that of the LearntCommands topic in the Design web. Please read that topic as well.

In my current model, and this is not necessarily what the final product will look like, guild commands are just an instance of LearntCommands. They are a command which can be learnt if you have the necessary bonus levels in the requisite skills and can find a teacher to teach you. By joining a guild you are "getting in good" with the teachers of a set of commands. That is NOT to say that you can't find a means of learning commands which are offered by other guilds. The NPCs in other guilds won't teach you but you might find an NPC somewhere else in the game who will teach the command.

I also believe that as a player you should be able to teach commands to other players, as long as you have reached a high enough bonus in all the requisite skills. There may be specially marked commands which we determine as never teachable by players to retain some special only-one-guild commands.

I don't see that there is anything wrong with a druid learning how to use a dagger. Summon cloud - I'd probably prefer if this one remained storm-only.

-- FantoM - 20 Jan 2003

Learning gcommands will they be only based on guild, or could you learn ANY gcommands? for example, I join the Druid guild and I can learn stab, and majorheal, and summoncloud. Please tell me no cause that sounds very dumb.

-- MarcMitchell - 20 Jan 2003

The LearntCommands topic is part of the replacement for guild commands, in it I imply that you dont get a command until you have the skills to support it, which in turn implies that you don't know all the commands when you join a guild and thus have to experiment and focus your training to get them.

I'm not particularly interested in placing restrictions on the number of commands you can know.

Keep in mind I also want you to be able to learn commands from other players which might have been taught to them by the NPCs of their guild.

-- FantoM - 15 Jan 2003

Why not being able to study your skills? The way guilds are now as how you put it, you train the required skills to 300 and then you can use the comand and it'll most likely work, and then all you get to do is aa them up for stronger commands. Why not have a system where the gcommands are hidden, you can't see a single thing, there could possibly be a help file which tells you the available commands for each guild, but not how to raise them, or what they do. As you advance your skills, and or study from books, or learn from NPCs. So you don't really know what you're going to get, unless you try for it. There should/could also be the possibility to not learning each gcommand, for example, there could be 15 gcommands(that's a lot) and your character can only learn 1 gcommand every what? 100 glvls, where you could then study them, or learn from the NPC, or possibly even players. there could be 3 different trees, or paths that a player could choose, each path resulting in each character being unique. Here's an idea for 3k, see how you like it, altar it a bit. Each player has a form you can choose in the necromancer guild, when you get a certain type of item you can create a scroll with a guild command on it to the scroll room that perhaps another guild member could use for a bit, or gain access completely, should require a very high stature. Except, I propose this however, have 4 different npcs, 1 for low lvl chars like lvl 1-20, 2nd rated chars, lvl 20-50, 3rd rated chars 50-100, 4th anything over lvl 100. when you reach the 4th npc he then teaches you that you can learn abilities from the other tress, or paths but requires great skill. After learning this, the npc could put you on a quest to do something to obtain the ability to learn another skill. Advancing through different npcs could require donations, and guild quests.

-- MarcMitchell - 15 Jan 2003

%META:TOPICINFO{author="FantoM" date="1042423200" format="1.0" version="1.1"}% %META:TOPICPARENT{name="WebHome"}% The current guild system is totally separate to the rest of the player code - it's tacked on top.

Guilds currently have a set of commands which they own and bestow upon their members.

Complaints about the current system

1. Difficulty to code a new guilds
2. The code behind the different types of commands eveolved over time and is now different for each type of command
3. Possible that damage-based guild commands dont give exp
4. Lack of integration with the rest of the game, resulting in the long command code
5. People learn all commands upon joinnig a guild rather than getting them taught to them as they learn the necessary skills.

Long term goals

1. Guilds and commands get separated
2. Guilds become a place where there are NPCs who are willing to teach commands to members, if the members have a sufficient bonus in the necessary skills

-- FantoM - 13 Jan 2003