Guild Hideouts, "guilders", and item shop...or, in other words, "what to do with guilds"

  • Tybald
    Marauder
    Insider

    I believe guilds have a flaw to them, which is....they sort of lack any real point. I understand that what we have is foundational and has room to be built upon, but right now, it seems to be just another rep grind with no true purpose. I want to give a small purpose to it. Though, I'll be frank (you can be Shirley, just be serious), the idea isn't exactly new, a search brings up numerous threads on it.

    Guild Hideouts.

    Guild hideouts are a social spot for guild members to hangout. In essence they are the guild version of the Pirate Legends Tavern, only customizable. In addition, you join the hideout without a crew (unless you dive to the hideout from the high seas). So, it also serves as a lobby, allowing you to form up with your guildies, and choose your ship.

    What use is there?

    The guild hideout serves a multi-purpose role.

    • The first is a way to get your guild members together. It can hold all 24 players at once, so you can use it as a gathering spot, discussion spot, etc.
    • The second is to give goals to the guild. Beyond the ledger, and general rank, the guild hideout is customizable. Customizations for the guild are purchased using a unique currency called "Guilders". Guilders are earned by running as a guild emissary.
    • The third is 'training'. Inside the guild is a spot to organize into "crews". Once organized into crews, you can practices TDM and Sea Fights, and can load a guild ship up into the docks. Want to get out and practice boarding? Organize into crews and go out into the local sea of your hideout and try. The local sea is roughly the size of an HG circle.

    Customization/Guilders

    First, I want to address Guilders. Guilders are a separate currency for an important reason. They are there to protect the guild and players from bad behavior. This game is great at ratcheting up, and never down in terms of accomplishments. I don't want personal gold to go towards the guild, as there's great potential for someone's gold pile to get used up, and then them being booted from the guild. That's a No-go for me. So, a separate currency means that they may sacrifice playtime to help advance the guild, they are in no way sacrificing anything they earn. Guilders are earned by the guild doing guild emissary runs, and stay with the guild. Nobody is going to get scammed out of their gold this way.

    Customization. There is alot of room for customization of a guild hideout/hq/hall. First, there's basic decorations, similar to trinkets for ships. Then, there's guild-hall themes. Do you want a cave, tavern, reapers volcano? Possible. Do you want to add in a fighting ring? More Docks for your ships? Photo Booth/Background? Add in shops, increase shop inventory, all of those can be added as you increase your guild level and your purchase the upgrades with guilders.

    Practice
    I mentioned earlier that you can practice your skills in the hideout. There's a number of ways to do that.

    First, you can load in ships in the docks to practice fighting on.
    Second, you might purchase a cannon target range for the guild.
    Third, each hideout has a local area of sea that is around the size of an HG ring. This allows multiple crews to get out there and practice maneuvering.

    It goes without saying that you can't earn coin/rep/commendations for activities inside the guild hideout.

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  • Tybald
    Marauder
    Insider

    Also,
    For the record, the guild hideout would not have anything in it that directly affects the game. You can't use it to load up on supplies, get special weapons, cannonballs, etc.

    I can see the guild shops including special cosmetics and ship sets, trinkets, etc.

    The most impactful on the game level stuff having a guild hideout would do would be to allow you to practice combat and other things (depending on what devs put in). But, that still leaves you on a "level" playing field with others.

  • TheBlackBellamy
    Champion
    Insider

    I would like to see Guild Hideouts/Forts introduced a little differently.

    I like the idea of customizing them, and this could lead to pretty decent gold sinks. But the customizations could stick with the individual, rather than the guild. This prevents the abuse you're worried about, as someone who gets kicked takes their trinkets and everything else with them.

    I wouldn't like it to be a safe place to stock fresh supplies, but I would like to use it to transfer supplies between guild ships. There should be an option to "dive to guild hideout" where the ship loses emi value, treasure and HG streak, but keeps resource crates.

    Players can then transfer supplies to another ship, and set sail on a larger or smaller ship into a different server than they were on before.

    Of course, both ships would need active players in order to transfer the supplies. Once a ship loses all crewmates, it loses all supplies. This would prevent stockpiling and hoarding supplies between multiple sessions.

    I like the idea of a training space for TDM. Could be a purchaseable extension for the guild hideout. We could have all kinds of extensions - themed showrooms, upgradeable taverns & a vault that grows with guild rank.

  • Tybald
    Marauder
    Insider

    @theblackbellamy

    I kept it at "guilders" instead of gold because there's only so much stuff that you can possibly "take with you." Spending hypothetically, 10 million gold to unlock the TDM practice area, leaves you 10 million gold short. You can't really take that type of customization with you. And if you could? That creates another weird issue where nobody wants to spend money on the upgrade because only ONE PERSON needs to spend the money for the guild....and 'why should I do it'. Or, joining a guild where they already have TDM unlocked, means your purchase might still 'technically' be with you, but it's pointless.

    Having a guild specific currency that buys guild specific stuff, that unlocks for the guild solves that situation.

    Having said that. We can blur that line a bit. One thing you CAN do is unlock inventory with guilders for new trinkets, outfits, ship cosmetics, etc. Those new inventory items CAN be purchased with gold and stay with the pirate. So, you work hard to get "clothes level 5" and buy that sparkly new golden merchant outfit, but haven't yet bought the unlocked Golden Reaper outfit. The guild kicks you out over some petty squabble. You join a new guild that only has "clothes level 3". You still have your shiny golden merchant outfit, but the new guild doesn't yet have the golden reaper outfit for sale yet....start grinding those guilders to upgrade.

  • Reaper3016
    Castaway

    Maybe what they could do is dedicate a bunch of servers to guild. What i mean is, that way, guild members would be able to log into the same servers and we could now have fleet battles. The hideout would be perfect for those servers too. Just imagine how cool it would be to be able to roam the seas with 2 or 3 ships at a time with a bunch of your friends. :D

  • lamington llama
    Sailor

    That actually sounds like a really cool idea. I like the thought about an area for a TDM as i'm sure there would be lots of new players getting destroyed in pvp and would be a good help for them to practice without needing to activate the hourglass all the time. Would be cool to see just seems like a lot of work to implement so if this were to happen I wouldn't expect it anytime soon.

  • Tybald
    Marauder
    Insider

    @reaper3016
    I fear that would be an issue.

  • Tybald
    Marauder
    Insider

    @lamington-llama

    I believe you are right. This seems like it would be the focus of an entire season, and would definitely be the "key feature". We know they have the next couple of seasons fully planned, and the general theme of season 14 being brain-stormed. So this, at a minimum would be 2025 at this point if it were to get put in.

  • Shroom Mage
    Seafarer

    I love the idea of a Guild Hall/Guild Island, and "Guild Hideout" seems like a great name for a pirate base. I want to throw a few ideas I've had in the barrel.

    Once your guild meets the requirements for a hideout (probably a high enough guild reputation), you could choose an island from a selection of simple, new, outpost-sized islands. They could come styled to Shores of Plenty, Ancient Isles, and so on, whichever you want, and the island would start totally bare. No barrels, no dock, no buildings. Those could all be upgrades you can buy.

    Other than from the main menu, diving to and from the hideout makes the most sense and feels very immersive, and it reinforces the idea that you're in a separate instance where you can't bring treasure. Obviously you can't sell or make any milestone progress there. It should be a glorified lobby, not an alternate to safer seas, although I'm inclined to say it would be nice to allow fishing there.

    I'm actually not sure about a guild-specific currency. Instead, there could be a guild bank so that people can all pitch in together, and all guild upgrades and trinkets would be bought from the guild bank. Once input, gold couldn't be removed from the bank, so clearly labeling it as a "donation" would be important. Guild upgrades and trinkets could end up being an excellent gold-sink after all.

  • Tybald
    Marauder
    Insider

    @shroom-mage
    I'm fairly adamant about the guild currency over gold. The biggest reason is fraud protection. No getting someone to donate lots of $$ only for them to be booted. It's just bad juju.

    In addition making a new currency also means everyone starts out fresh here. You can't end up day 1 with a maxed out base because everyone already has too much gold. You have to build it up like everyone else. Keeps content fresh longer.

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