11 Nov, 2007, Vladaar wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Greetings…..

I am currently debating with my Staff the idea of autosetting players when they turn level 10, into either a clan or guild depending if they are deadly or peaceful.

With of course the option for the player to resign if they choose to do so.

It is my belief that clan and guild activity for a mud is a major factor in your player base. I have always had the problem where I give a clan to a player, they make their alts, and maybe one player a member, and then they disappear… Thus, I have never seen to be able to get clan/guild leaders to actively recruit, and make their clan/guild better. I want to have our code set an auto temporary leader if the clan/guild leader fails to log in for 1 week. Thus the clan never dies, and then STAFF can make that temp leader a permenant when they determine the old one isn't returning. I want to kick start into action, autosetting until activity picks up, and then turning off autosetting.

What are your guys thoughts on this. I know clans/guilds are in every major mud out there, but those that don't have them, usually have some other major thing players can be involved in that takes it's place.

Vladaar
11 Nov, 2007, Hades_Kane wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Some thoughts…

Rather than autosetting them, why not have some easy to get to location that they can sign up, which that would at least give the guild/clan a bit more sensibility in how the player got there, and it wouldn't entail the (possible) inconvenience of having to resign from it if they didn't want to be in it to begin with.

Also, if you are concerned about having a leader for each clan, if you are having mostly two factions (which is the impression I got) then what if you had some NPC personalities running them, and the "recruiting" is basically done by the members by trying to get people to sign up at the location suggested above. Also, perhaps the general outcome and direction of the guild/clan can be decided by the group en masse, rather than needing the leader at all.

I do agree that if you are going to have guilds or clans and wish to see it play any real role in the game at all, pushing them heavily is the way to go. In my experience, I think having too many can definitely hurt, so what we've decided to do is have three major ones starting out, and not accept any new ones until those fill out.

Either way, good luck :)
11 Nov, 2007, Vladaar wrote in the 3rd comment:
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That's a splendid idea, thanks Hades_Kane, we may use something like that.

Vladaar
11 Nov, 2007, Kayle wrote in the 4th comment:
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I'm with Hades_Kane, forcing players into guilds/clans is something that's always bothered me, If I'm going to actively participate in a mud, I will, if I'm just in it for the hack and slash of leveling, I don't want to be forced into the politics of it. Having the choice is what's important. A lot of my time playing is spent on muds with a lot of "You can do this.", and less, "You have to do this."
11 Nov, 2007, Hades_Kane wrote in the 5th comment:
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Glad I could be of some help :)
11 Nov, 2007, Conner wrote in the 6th comment:
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Hmm, that actually might help me too. On my mud I've got a guild for each class (as per the normal smaug setup) and a couple each of clans and orders for players to choose from, but my organizational leaders for these don't log on often so I frequently get players asking how to become a member and find myself having trouble giving them an answer as the standard "leave the leaders of that <clan/order/guild> a mudmail or note posted to the guild board requesting your quests to join" doesn't really do much good unless those leaders happen to log on and get that message in a timely fashion. If I made it so clans/orders/guilds could be self-joined they might actually "take off" a bit better for me. As for the leadership, in Smaug's stock setup, the leaders get to decide the organization's general direction and so forth (though since that's not really a code issue, they can opt to let it be democratic if they choose to), but mainly they are there to induct/outcast members, invoke copies of the organization's handbook, act as liasons for the rest of the group to the imms, and ..that's pretty much it. So making organizations leaderless would involve a fair bit of code changes but wouldn't actually have that heavy an impact of the organizations themselves code or play wise, it'd just mean establishing NPCs or rooms to serve those functions (like inducting/outcasting/invoking) via progs instead…
11 Nov, 2007, Noplex wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
When I was running CB we were toying with the idea of having to do quests in order to gain reputation inside of the Guild. Because, technically, you were inside the guild as long as you did some quests for the guild to prove your worthiness. Because we were essentially (at the core) a class-less game, the only thing that determined what class you were was your skill-set. You could do generic auto-quests with the guild to build up reputation and be able to go into certain areas inside of the guild-areas (as well as special training zones in other towns). Once and awhile there would be quests organized by higher ups that Guilds would need to go on in order to gain honor (and change rankings).

We had Orders as well, which were basically immortal-aided player organizations (Newbie Council, etc). Then there were clans which were player-run but had an immortal overseer.
11 Nov, 2007, Conner wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Interesting concept, Noplex. In Smaug, as you probably already know, the distinctions between organizations isn't quite that set-up. Guilds are organizations based on class for peacefuls, clans are organizations for deadlies, orders are organizations for peacefuls that choose to not group by class, and councils are primarily immortal organizations, but your concept there has some very nice potential for a smaug based mud, especially if clan/order/guild leadership is removed and induction/outcasting were made self handled by players through automation…
12 Nov, 2007, Vladaar wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Conner said:
Hmm, that actually might help me too. my organizational leaders for these don't log on often so I frequently get players asking how to become a member and find myself having trouble giving them an answer as the standard "leave the leaders of that <clan/order/guild> a mudmail or note posted to the guild board requesting your quests to join" doesn't really do much good unless those leaders happen to log on and get that message in a timely fashion. So making organizations leaderless would involve a fair bit of code changes but wouldn't actually have that heavy an impact of the organizations themselves code or play wise, it'd just mean establishing NPCs or rooms to serve those functions (like inducting/outcasting/invoking) via progs instead…


Exactly Conner, it's a brilliant idea. I always hated, giving a clan to someone, and finding out they stopped logging so there was no leadership in the clan anymore. Codewise it will be dead simple. Just change induct, outcast, and make to mpinduct, mpoutcast, and mpmake. Remove the Leader flag checks from who, because you don't need them anymore.

Vladaar
12 Nov, 2007, Kayle wrote in the 10th comment:
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I think you might find it a bit more challenging than that.
12 Nov, 2007, Vladaar wrote in the 11th comment:
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Not code-wise, unless you think I was talking about simply changing the names of the commands, of course you have to put all that into mud_comm.c, and a few other places, however, building wise, it's going to be some work for me.

Vladaar
12 Nov, 2007, Kayle wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm pretty sure there will be more to it than just moving/changing a few commands. If I'm not mistaken, a lot of the clan structure is based around the way it's currently set up, but it's been so long since I screwed with clans, I could be wrong.
12 Nov, 2007, Conner wrote in the 13th comment:
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Well, you will find checks all over the place for clan leadership and such, and you'd still want do_who to acknowledge can members even if it no longer is meaningful to single out the leaders, but overall, it really shouldn't be that hard to change in code, and for the builder aspects, it really just means creating one new mob per clan/oder/guild to handle induction/outcasting and to give new members the special clan items (like the handbook), and making sure that there are appropriate progs on those mobs and that they're in places that are accessible to non-members.. now, if you're going to have arbitrary membership quests you'll have a few extra steps too, but yeah, basically it shouldn't be that hard to do.
12 Nov, 2007, Noplex wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
I wrote this for Realms of Despair (not sure if they used my version or wrote their own). Here's something we whipped out from our Nations system in a few hours (it was a little more massive than this, but you get the idea :-)

http://www.smaugmuds.org/index.php?a=fil...

We ripped it out of our system to get it packaged for RoD use. There's a second src folder that has the fealty command which allows anyone to claim themselves part of a nation. The Nations organizations themselves were grassroots and merely for role-playing (they had not benefit on the game).

Maybe when I get time this winter I'll write a new clan module for Smaug implementing the stuff that I had running on CB. I really wish I didn't lose the code. I swear, one day I am going to find a disk or CD somewhere that still has all my code on it. I had a lot of neat stuff on there. A full account system, beginnings of fully class-less game and a nice questing system. None of which was too hard in and of itself to write, but its the fact of the matter. Ah well. Gives me a reason to dive back into the code.
12 Nov, 2007, Conner wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Very cool, thanks Noplex!
The funny things is, that's one of the many snippets that I'd downloaded awhile back and have sitting on my hard drive in the folder for stuff I hadn't yet decided whether or not to install. :lol:
13 Nov, 2007, Noplex wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Conner said:
Very cool, thanks Noplex!
The funny things is, that's one of the many snippets that I'd downloaded awhile back and have sitting on my hard drive in the folder for stuff I hadn't yet decided whether or not to install. :lol:

Honestly, I haven't looked at that code in awhile. My Nations and Hometown module were a single entity but ripped apart and split due to Realms wanting a specific type of module. There were a few other thing that we omitted due to the nature of them (buggy, unfinished functionality, etc).
16 Nov, 2009, Greggles wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
In my experience with forced "clanning" it was more decision based. At creation you start as an "Observer" a nonpk "clan" and once you reach I believe it was 40 or 50 you had to make a decision to become a Peace Keeper (nonpk) or Outsider (pk). Peace Keepers could join the nonpk clans if they were accepted or they could go Outsider or join a pk clan, however they could never go back from pk to nonpk. I think that giving you half way to hero level to decide if you wanted to remain nonpk or go pk is a good idea. Sure being a Peace Keeper or Outsider gives you none of the benefits of being in a real clan like a hall or access to clantalk channels but it did even the field against actual clans.
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