Player Associations Archive
Thread: PA Philosophy, Achievement or Entitlement?
I would like to get everyone's opinion on this.
In past MMORPGs (EQ and DAoC are my two experiences) having a guild was an entitlement. This meant that so long as you had enough friends in one place at one time, you were guaranteed to be able to form a guild and have all of the tools (chat, war, alliances) that come with being a guild. I have approved of this philosophy, because I don't think game mechanics should ever stand in the way of people who want to form communities.
SWG has taken an entirely different perspective. In SWG, having a PA is an achievement. You have to purchase or craft a PA Hall, as well as maintain it. Having a PA is tied in very tightly to character advancement. Every time a new server opens, swarms of people try to master Architect before anything else because of the need for a PA Hall in order to have a guild. You can't have a guild until someone is a Master Architect.
There are plusses and minuses to both. Making PAs an achivement somewhat narrows the number of less than serious PAs. However, it also has an impact on the economy and the landscape.
Do you feel PAs should be an achievement or an entitlement? I want to be able to represent all of us as well as possible and I think hearing your opinions on this will help.
In my opinion, I don't think you can single it out to an either or. I think guilds are a combonation of both. Each person should have the right to try to create a guild if they so choose, assuming that you have the supplies and people to do so.
However, just because you have a group of people who can form one, does not mean it will be a successful guild. The true Achievement of a guild comes when that group of people are true friends. A community of people who will help each other out whenever possible, who puts others needs above their own to support them. It's when it almost moves past friends and almost become family. Thats when I think an achievement is really made and you've created a true successful guild.
Most guilds are about aquiring wealth, power gaming, seeing who can be the most uber leet fighters, etc.. etc.. While many people may like this aspect and you may have 500 members, how well does each person know every other person? You may be able to take down any creature or destroy every other guild on the net, but the thing that makes a guild truly desirable in my view is the people around you.
Whether you have to have a PA hall or simply 10 people and a GM to create the Guild, it's what happens after its formation that really matters. How you define yourself as a community. In my guild, we're like family. We're not 500 members strong, but we have enough to where we're satisfied, and we all know each and every other person and would go out of our way to help and protect them. That's my PA Philosophy.
Hope that helps Jas. 
Achievement, after playing UO (which required a house and a guild stone). and AO (group of people in one place) i see that this method is by far the best, heres the benifits i see:
Pros
- Meeting Place - with the PA hall you also get a meeting place for your guild
- Limited - Everyman and his dog can't start a guild, this stops almost everyone being in a guild.
- More Organised - What guilds do exist are organised as there paying for the privellege, say in AO you could form a guild with 5 people, but most of them were just dead entities and a waste of time.
Cons
- Limited - Yes its a pro and a con, like for example my guild, me and my friends have had to wait until we could afford a PA hall, even now we struggle to make the upkeep payments.
- Blighted Landscape - Hundreds of PA halls sprawlled across the land is not a nice sight...
- Lots - In the end someone has to take ownership of the building, at a whopping 9 slots its a bit of a burden (its been discussed elsewhere about storage to lot ratio).
Out of the MMORPGs ive seen, this system WORKS. There is alot of downsides to it but it keeps the guild system ticking over nicely. There are some improvments that need to be made before it can be considered perfect, but i hope SOE can pickup the calls of the community to improve the PA system.
Over and out
Komarosu wrote:
Pros
- Meeting Place - with the PA hall you also get a meeting place for your guild
- Limited - Everyman and his dog can't start a guild, this stops almost everyone being in a guild.
- More Organised - What guilds do exist are organised as there paying for the privellege, say in AO you could form a guild with 5 people, but most of them were just dead entities and a waste of time.
Cons
While ture PA halls can blight the landscape, the same is basically true for all structures.
- Limited - Yes its a pro and a con, like for example my guild, me and my friends have had to wait until we could afford a PA hall, even now we struggle to make the upkeep payments.
- Lots - In the end someone has to take ownership of the building, at a whopping 9 slots its a bit of a burden (its been discussed elsewhere about storage to lot ratio).
I couldn't have said it better myself...so I won't. That is basically how I feel towards the system. Everyone should be entitled to have a guild however it should take a little bit more effort then knowing 5 people in order to get and maintain one.
Good question Jas.
I prefer Achievement. With benefits come investment. If a group of people simply want to get together (Entitlement) then what are they really looking for? A chat group. This is a free service which can be made by anyone/anywhere. However, if the group wants to further define themselves with a gathering place and an official name, they must invest resources and time into the group by forming a PA and building a PA Hall.
A similar mentality exists with player cities. At first, I was bitter against the higher population requirements to gain a cloning center and shuttle. My city is growing, but is still small. But over time I realized that these great benefits are not to be taken lightly. They are reserved for those communities that successfully pull together a large, unified team of people; and if you cannot maintain these high standards, the benefits are taken away.
I don't think that PA Halls blighting the landscape is an issue. Normal player housing far exceeds the number of PA Halls. I am grateful that there is not a PA for every Tom, **edit**, and Harry who wants to make one. It frees up names and space for the serious PAs. Just glance at DAOC's Herald and look at all the dead guilds... all those wasted names and guild symbols that no one can use afterward.
Rothin wrote:
In my opinion, I don't think you can single it out to an either or. I think guilds are a combonation of both. Each person should have the right to try to create a guild if they so choose, assuming that you have the supplies and people to do so.
However, just because you have a group of people who can form one, does not mean it will be a successful guild. The true Achievement of a guild comes when that group of people are true friends. A community of people who will help each other out whenever possible, who puts others needs above their own to support them. It's when it almost moves past friends and almost become family. Thats when I think an achievement is really made and you've created a true successful guild.
Most guilds are about aquiring wealth, power gaming, seeing who can be the most uber leet fighters, etc.. etc.. While many people may like this aspect and you may have 500 members, how well does each person know every other person? You may be able to take down any creature or destroy every other guild on the net, but the thing that makes a guild truly desirable in my view is the people around you.
Whether you have to have a PA hall or simply 10 people and a GM to create the Guild, it's what happens after its formation that really matters. How you define yourself as a community. In my guild, we're like family. We're not 500 members strong, but we have enough to where we're satisfied, and we all know each and every other person and would go out of our way to help and protect them. That's my PA Philosophy.
Hope that helps Jas.
I personally could not agree more.
However, I think that using the acheivement system probably makes the most sense, because a lot of players will try their hands at being a PA Leader with only a couple of people (even recreating the guild after it auto-disbands) who would not normally take the time and effort to get a group of friends together at first and meet a minimum requirement. Of these most will fail, but there will be a few who never really knew that they would be interested in running a guild, and actually make good leaders.
All in all, the system now seems to work fairly well (aside from some added perks/easier management tools and storage to lot ratios and other such issues) and I think it makes sense to maintain a system that allows everyone to try. After all, only those who are truly grouped in a PA for teh benefit of the PA will ultimately survive.
I have experienced all three, EQ, DAoC, and SWG's guild systems...
EQ's system is purely entitilement. All you need is to have a charter and after it's approved, voila, you have a guild.
DAoC's system had a decent balance since you had to have1 gold(?) in addition to the required amount of players to start the guild. Then you needed 100 gold in order to get an emblem. And now with housing, maintenance comes into play.
SWG's system deals heavily into Achievement. Just to get the guild created, you need level up an architect to make the hallor save up money to buy one. Either optiontakes a whole lot of time and resources. However, the whole ordeal is quite rewarding having everyone pull together and work towards an achievable goal.
Having gone through all those... I tend to lean towards achievement. Having a guild tag beside your name needs to mean something other than just having been able to slap a bunch of guys and gals together and make a guild.
However, they need to tone down the maintenance costs, OR have the benefits equal or exceed such costs. Best example is the guild hall, using up to 9 lots on certain planets, but the benefits other than being a white elephant is equal to having a large house which costs less to maintain.
Basically I'm asking for unique tools that only guilds have access to. Aside from having the guild tag above our name, all the other "perks" that come with being in a guildare easily duplicated:
- guild chat - this is a fiasco, sometimes the custom chat groups hold up better to this, yes it's permanent, but a custom chat group can be easily made too
- guild-wide email - easily done with the friends' list - I know it's a lot simpler in the guild system, but it can be duplicated
- guild hall - anyone can own one, maybe have something similar to city stuctures which are tied to the guild
- guild war - join opposite factions and declare, voila, you have a guild war
That's my 2credits for today... *smile*
My worry is, seeing as Im starting a new PA in an environment hwere there are already other esttablished PAs with cash and members galore, in addition to the fact that I have uniform requirements for all members(Im forming an Imperial army PA, I think if you fight in the GCW you should look the part), I dont know if Ill be able to tempt anyone into joining.
Yes, I am looking forward to the challenge, and Im going to give it a sodding good try, but if your trying to start a new PA on an established server, the SWG system hurts more than helps.