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Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Guild quests
Bliss wrote me with an interesting idea on a possible social engineering feature for World of Warcraft guilds: Guild quests
A recent post you made regarding WoW's future made me wonder if you had any thoughts or suggestions as to what could be done, within the current construct of the game, to increase social engineering. Guild housing, I'm sure, has its own series of difficulties and obstacles for being realized, and although it would be fun to see and have a common "room" to hearth back to with my fellow guildmates after a raid, it doesn't strike me as something that would truly foster a sense of connectedness with them. It would just be a common place that I might run into them from time-to-time rather than outside of Karazhan for instance.Interesting idea in principle, but the devil as always is in the details: World of Warcraft doesn't have a mechanism to count the actual *gathering* of Felweed as a quest item, it can only see that you received it. Thus if there is a quest that gives lets say 5 gold for delivering 10 Felweed to the guild bank, there isn't anything that would prevent all guild members to take the quest, take the 10 Felweed out of the guild bank, hand in the quest, thereby putting the same 10 Felweed back into the guild bank and getting their 5 gold reward. So a quest like that would just hand out free gold to all guild members. To work at all, the quest would need to actually destroy the Felweed, which not only is against the idea of gathering something for the guild, but also then results in people just looking whether 10 Felweed are better sold at the AH or better handed in as quest item.
I thought recently that a Guild Master might be able to specify a daily quest for items that the guild bank was needing - similar to the gathering of materials for the opening of the AQ gates. He/She might have an interface that allows choosing of various materials and a guild "butler" NPC might have the quest for the day. The Guild Master says, "Hey - we could really use some Felweed for potions/elixirs/flasks," so they can set a daily quest for collecting these materials...perhaps no more than 2-3 per day so as to not exploit easy questing. Gold payout would be less than a standard daily quest, but would still count towards the limit that a character could do in a particular day. I know that lower level characters don't have access to standard daily quests until max level, but this could be allowed giving lower levels the ability to contribute if they have the gold even; I don't know, just thinking out loud here. :P
So let's try to design a better form of guild quest for better guild social engineering. First of all we need a common project in which the guild as a whole would be interested. That could be enlarging or decorating the guild hall, or it could be something more useful. As we started with a proposal to collect herbs, lets stick to that general theme: Lets design a guild quest that adds a temporary potion dispenser to the guild hall. The potion dispenser would hand out a limited number of flasks of various levels, from low- to mid-level flasks useful for soloing, to high-level flasks useful for raiding. Once it is operational, every guild member could use it to get 1 flask of his choice, which would be soulbound. After 3 days the dispenser would disappear, and the quest could be restarted to build the next one. To build the potion dispenser would require a large number of special herbs. These herbs would be quest items, that is soulbound, and could only be found by herbalists as an added "loot" item when "opening" a herb resource node. And, now comes the tricky part, the quest herbs can only be found in herbs in zones that correspond roughly to the level of the character gathering them. That is a level 5 guild member herbalist would be able to find such quest herbs while gathering Peacebloom in Elwynn Forest, but a level 70 guild member wouldn't find any quest herbs in the same Peaceblooms, he would need to gather Felweed in Outland to find them. Thus every herbalist in the guild could participate equally by doing something appropriate for his character level, and have a positive contribution to something that helps the whole guild. Of course that is just one example, you'd need to have other guild quests for the other gathering professions, and something involving killing mobs for the non-gatherers. But the principle should be similar: you only get quest items by killing mobs that are at least green to you, but a low-level guild member can get the same quest item from a low-level mob that the high-level guild member can get from the high-level mob. The reward is some added feature to the common guild hall which also helps all guild members equally regardless of level.
The general idea behind features like this is that guilds should have a common purpose. Right now that isn't the case in World of Warcraft, where the only common purpose appears to be guild chat and raiding, with everybody below the level cap and a certain gear level unable to participate. I would so love to take all the World of Warcraft developers, lock them in a room, and force them to play A Tale in the Desert for a month. They could learn a lot about social engineering from that game, even if it probable has less players than a single WoW server.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:32 AM Permanent Link
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So let's try to design a better form of guild quest for better guild social engineering. First of all we need a common project in which the guild as a whole would be interested.
Well raiding serves this particular purpose and it would still work as a goal, if it would penalize less and if the progression would be more streamlined. Gathering materials as a guild is only superior to raiding, in that everyone is served equal, everyone can contribute the same value, no one is more demanded than others. Before we introduce suspense gathering quests, let's focus onto make raiding more accessible.
Introduce "welfare" Black Temple, strip out the whole loot. Let bosses drop only heroic tokens, decrease the gear requirements, lower the fixed boss values. People playing a simplified version of your content are way better than people ignoring your content. I would guess there are more players interested in finishing the content they paid for - lorewise killing the boss of this expansion - than gathering ressouces to pimp their non existing guild houses. It's just a guess though.
Well raiding serves this particular purpose and it would still work as a goal, if it would penalize less and if the progression would be more streamlined. Gathering materials as a guild is only superior to raiding, in that everyone is served equal, everyone can contribute the same value, no one is more demanded than others. Before we introduce suspense gathering quests, let's focus onto make raiding more accessible.
Introduce "welfare" Black Temple, strip out the whole loot. Let bosses drop only heroic tokens, decrease the gear requirements, lower the fixed boss values. People playing a simplified version of your content are way better than people ignoring your content. I would guess there are more players interested in finishing the content they paid for - lorewise killing the boss of this expansion - than gathering ressouces to pimp their non existing guild houses. It's just a guess though.
# posted by 
: 12/12/07 12:05
: 12/12/07 12:05
Presuming what Blizzard can and can't do with their code is somewhat silly. EQ2 has quests like the original commenter described, so I'm sure that if Blizzard wanted to implement something like that, they would.
Blizzard doesn't really have the same kind of guild focused rewards system that EQ2 has, and there are some really good ideas that could be gleaned from looking there. You can get custom titles with a certain "guild level" for instance, which, although fluff, is the kind of thing many people are looking for.
Blizzard doesn't really have the same kind of guild focused rewards system that EQ2 has, and there are some really good ideas that could be gleaned from looking there. You can get custom titles with a certain "guild level" for instance, which, although fluff, is the kind of thing many people are looking for.
It would be nice if a guild could designate certain people as "master gatherer" of each gathering profession for their guild.
And then when that person gathers (herbs, ore, etc), a duplicate of everything they gather appears in a special place in the guild bank. These resources "created in the guild bank" (and items created from those special resources) wouldn't be able to be put on the AH. Meanwhile the person gathering gets to keep what they gathered and those gathered items are treated like normal.
In this way, guilds can accumulate resources for the guildmates to use from the guild bank without "putting someone out" or making someone feel jaded because they may be contributing more to the bank than someone else, but not getting any reward for it.
This could be tweaked to make it so that only a duplicate of every other resource gathered is created in the guild bank, to control flow, (though just the amount of space in a guild bank would be a limiting factor), etc.
And then when that person gathers (herbs, ore, etc), a duplicate of everything they gather appears in a special place in the guild bank. These resources "created in the guild bank" (and items created from those special resources) wouldn't be able to be put on the AH. Meanwhile the person gathering gets to keep what they gathered and those gathered items are treated like normal.
In this way, guilds can accumulate resources for the guildmates to use from the guild bank without "putting someone out" or making someone feel jaded because they may be contributing more to the bank than someone else, but not getting any reward for it.
This could be tweaked to make it so that only a duplicate of every other resource gathered is created in the guild bank, to control flow, (though just the amount of space in a guild bank would be a limiting factor), etc.
# posted by : 12/12/07 15:13
: 12/12/07 15:13
I disagree Chrismue. Raiding by itself doesn't really work that well as simple rewards.
Give guilds special goals that allow them to have guild ranks and titles, special patterns, pets etc.
The main thing is they need to be able to help the guild level up its guild faction or complete these quests so that they get a visible reward. I think you'd find that a large portion of people that get frustrated and quit because they feel left out or are just frustrated with those advancement roadblocks would not just Gquit if they had some special guild title or someother visible badge of honor.
I know this is foriegn to most hardcore raiders,And I've done the hardcore raiding scene, but most people are more excited about little things like titles, special pets, etc than they are about the big stuff.
The last big raiding guild I was in had a huge number of non raiders that were just excited to be in our guild and have our name tag. They donated huge amounts of stuff ot the guild bank and basically funded a huge chunk of our potions and other expenses.
I made the suggestion that we start rewarding these generous players and was instantly flamed by my fellow raiders because those people weren't doing anything special. The sad thing is they really never got the message when a few months later those people all started drifting away when our advancement stalled and us raiders got so busy raiding we quit running the 5 mans with them. They had only been there for friends who were now too busy for them and to be in a fast advancing guild with an awesome rep.
And no matter how good your guild is you are going to have those roadblocks. And in the current state of wow people are considered stupid if they hang around and are loyal to a guild that is hung in progression.
I attribute this to blizzards stance that old content isn't even worth looking at. It drives home the solo to level cap and then play the real game mentality.
Give guilds special goals that allow them to have guild ranks and titles, special patterns, pets etc.
The main thing is they need to be able to help the guild level up its guild faction or complete these quests so that they get a visible reward. I think you'd find that a large portion of people that get frustrated and quit because they feel left out or are just frustrated with those advancement roadblocks would not just Gquit if they had some special guild title or someother visible badge of honor.
I know this is foriegn to most hardcore raiders,And I've done the hardcore raiding scene, but most people are more excited about little things like titles, special pets, etc than they are about the big stuff.
The last big raiding guild I was in had a huge number of non raiders that were just excited to be in our guild and have our name tag. They donated huge amounts of stuff ot the guild bank and basically funded a huge chunk of our potions and other expenses.
I made the suggestion that we start rewarding these generous players and was instantly flamed by my fellow raiders because those people weren't doing anything special. The sad thing is they really never got the message when a few months later those people all started drifting away when our advancement stalled and us raiders got so busy raiding we quit running the 5 mans with them. They had only been there for friends who were now too busy for them and to be in a fast advancing guild with an awesome rep.
And no matter how good your guild is you are going to have those roadblocks. And in the current state of wow people are considered stupid if they hang around and are loyal to a guild that is hung in progression.
I attribute this to blizzards stance that old content isn't even worth looking at. It drives home the solo to level cap and then play the real game mentality.
As for the guild quest rewards: it only works if the guild officers put money in the coffers to be distributed to the people who complete the quests.
No. The quests should be rewarding the players and thier guild for doing them. The quests that are finished could be joint faction. No reason that if they are turn in quests there couldn't be a monetary or consumable reward. A one use trinket a Mana or healing potion or some such thing. The guild shouldn't be rewarding the players for the quests.
I would assume such quests would work in a similar fasion as normal quests just as the milestones are reached then the entire guild would reap the benefits. Access to special vendors, titles, more bank space, special pets or mounts. All kinds of creative ways to reward the members of the guild for completing thier goals.
I would assume such quests would work in a similar fasion as normal quests just as the milestones are reached then the entire guild would reap the benefits. Access to special vendors, titles, more bank space, special pets or mounts. All kinds of creative ways to reward the members of the guild for completing thier goals.
"Thus if there is a quest that gives lets say 5 gold for delivering 10 Felweed to the guild bank, there isn't anything that would prevent all guild members to take the quest, take the 10 Felweed out of the guild bank, hand in the quest, thereby putting the same 10 Felweed back into the guild bank and getting their 5 gold reward."
No, that's not how a guild bank can be set up. You can have "deposit only" areas that allow you to put items into it but not take them out (unless you're given access to it).
No, that's not how a guild bank can be set up. You can have "deposit only" areas that allow you to put items into it but not take them out (unless you're given access to it).
# posted by : 12/12/07 21:29
: 12/12/07 21:29
If you drill the detail level down a bit more on the 'herb gather' guild quest you can stop it from being exploitable. Instead of the guild master deciding 'we need more felweed' he/she would decide 'we need more super healing pots'. The guild master could then check the 'guild quest' menu for quests that reward super healing potion equivalents.
The guild master brings up the quest, sees that the 'gather 10 felweed' quest rewards '2 guild healing potions' with the same effect as super healing pots, but only usable by members of the guild that created them.
Guild members then gather 10 felweed and turn them into the guild quest npc. The guild quest npc rewards them with some gold, destroys the felweed, and deposits 2 guild healing potions into the guild vault. The quest is a daily so potions can only be built up over time.
Perhaps the guild quests available would be limited by factors such as classes, gathering skills, and profession masteries of the members. The 'gather 10 felweed' quest might only be available if the guild has a master alchemist who COULD make the potions, though he won't have to.
The guild master brings up the quest, sees that the 'gather 10 felweed' quest rewards '2 guild healing potions' with the same effect as super healing pots, but only usable by members of the guild that created them.
Guild members then gather 10 felweed and turn them into the guild quest npc. The guild quest npc rewards them with some gold, destroys the felweed, and deposits 2 guild healing potions into the guild vault. The quest is a daily so potions can only be built up over time.
Perhaps the guild quests available would be limited by factors such as classes, gathering skills, and profession masteries of the members. The 'gather 10 felweed' quest might only be available if the guild has a master alchemist who COULD make the potions, though he won't have to.
# posted by : 12/12/07 21:38
: 12/12/07 21:38
Ahhh. I was confused. I was talking about guild quests for guild rep, access to vendors for guildmembers, special titles etc. Things that the guild could do collectively to "build" up thier guild and share in its advancement. Not quests set up by guildmasters. I don't really think that is a good idea. Too much potential for exploitation there. Imagine it. Bring in new people to your guild tell them its what everyone else does and profit from thier ignorance. rinse repeat.
How bout guild rep? Grinding reputation with certain factions as a guild instead of solo? Might be kinda cool.
# posted by : 12/12/07 22:37
: 12/12/07 22:37
Sam: "No. The quests should be rewarding the players and thier guild for doing them."
If you don't understand how that is exploitable and/or undesirable, then you really shouldn't be talking about this sort of thing.
If you don't understand how that is exploitable and/or undesirable, then you really shouldn't be talking about this sort of thing.
If you don't understand how that is exploitable and/or undesirable, then you really shouldn't be talking about this sort of thing.
Actually I found sam's point better argued than yours, blachawk. "You don't understand this, you shouldn't be talking about this" is the argument of those who don't have an argument.
What is exploitable depends very much on how you set up the system. The example I gave of "take item out of guild bank, hand into guild bank for quest reward" is obviously exploitable. But there sure are ways to create guild quests that reward both the players and their guilds without that being more exploitable than lets say the current daily quests. You can't just dismiss the whole guild quest concept because some version of it could potentially be bad.
Actually I found sam's point better argued than yours, blachawk. "You don't understand this, you shouldn't be talking about this" is the argument of those who don't have an argument.
What is exploitable depends very much on how you set up the system. The example I gave of "take item out of guild bank, hand into guild bank for quest reward" is obviously exploitable. But there sure are ways to create guild quests that reward both the players and their guilds without that being more exploitable than lets say the current daily quests. You can't just dismiss the whole guild quest concept because some version of it could potentially be bad.
blackhawk the issue with exploitablity is entirely who controls the quests. If the guild leadership controls them the exploitation is quite easy. Of course that kind of exploitation goes on anyway. People create guilds encourage people to donate to the bank and 3 or 4 months later disband the guild and move to another server or just change thier name.
IMHO the quests should be quest lines set up by the devs. Then if any exploitation occurs they can fix it.
My reasoning is this. Regardless of who does the exploiting it damages the social aspect and turns people off of the idea of guilds. I've listened to many many arguments about why this is the players fault and problem and not the devs. But the fact is the devs are the defacto government and they need to get better at social engineering. Here in the US people get tax breaks for donating to charities. The government doesn't do that out of kindness or goodwill. It does it because those charities provide far more help to people than it could for the amount of tax revenue they lose. Its to thier benefit to do so.
I think if the devs could get themselves into that kind of thinking, and maybe even hire a socioligist or two they could completely energize thier game socially.
But so far they seem to be stuck in an us vs them mentality and just blame the players for not thinking they way they were expected too.
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IMHO the quests should be quest lines set up by the devs. Then if any exploitation occurs they can fix it.
My reasoning is this. Regardless of who does the exploiting it damages the social aspect and turns people off of the idea of guilds. I've listened to many many arguments about why this is the players fault and problem and not the devs. But the fact is the devs are the defacto government and they need to get better at social engineering. Here in the US people get tax breaks for donating to charities. The government doesn't do that out of kindness or goodwill. It does it because those charities provide far more help to people than it could for the amount of tax revenue they lose. Its to thier benefit to do so.
I think if the devs could get themselves into that kind of thinking, and maybe even hire a socioligist or two they could completely energize thier game socially.
But so far they seem to be stuck in an us vs them mentality and just blame the players for not thinking they way they were expected too.
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