Dynamic Guild Professions

[Sarge]

Each guild level should open its own new set of a skill tree and items it can produce and only once these levels are achieved. This creates long term game play, goals to achieve, and makes character development more an issue than rushing to just get a skill and it all be open to make. For example the steel making skill can only be unlocked once reaching Master level.

These level requirements should not be easy task to achieve. We know people will try and rush or force feed specialists to get there faster so the Developers must set the bar higher as each level goes. As it is a month in and you have high level items being produced. This needs to be curtailed else we only get the rage wars of conflict that taper down to huge player base drop out because they burned through it all so fast.

You clearly took quite a bit of time and and put in quite some effort with your suggestion and that is sweet considering the heaps of shit that normally gets pushed through C&I.

While some have already concluded that the level requirements will just increase the gap between hermit & village ; social player and no-lifer, I can actually not find in your post how you propose the level requirements to work. I suspect these guys are probably correct, but I would prefer not to assume anything.

So, how do you propose the level unlocking system functions?

[LadyV]

@Sarge

When i usually put forth a suggestion I tend to leave such things as specifics out. The reason being is players will not have all the information needed for balance and work from self interest most of the time. However I will put forth a suggestion.

I am not talking of the classic level system in most games where you get X amount of experience and you get this. I am talking of a loose set of prerequisites. Let's take my suggested name of Master. In order to fully craft say a soldiers breast plate you would need X amount of strength, X amount of Dex, X amount of Con and all the required skills. Also upon reaching this Master level you have a new set of skills opened up for you that you can now use your LP to learn.

My idea is not going for complexity. The intention is merely to set some sort of requirements to achieve goals, that should take time. Yes this may slow things down some but is that a bad thing? I don't think so. We lose to many after the first couple of months. Maybe if we slow the pace a bit and extend the time it takes to learn and master skills we can keep more interest. So many people like goals set for them in games. Its why developers add level rewards.

All I am suggesting is expanding the skill tree but setting requirements to achieve more difficult skills and works. I see no reason why it would expand any gaps between hermit and village. As it is now a village can feed specialists and you still could in my system. I don't see a reason to hamper group work. Will hermits have to specialize? Yes, but they already do. Can a hermit still do most things with one character as they do now? Yes, it just set requirements to get there first. The same requirements a villager will have to meet.

The suggestions should slow things down because you know have to have several requirements to get to advanced items and skills. One of the biggest things we all hear is the complaint they don't have time to develop. This would would benefit the slower developers somewhat. As my suggestion above if you can make brick walls or sledgehammers till you have achieved steel making which now has more things required it stops vaults, early pali bashing....

We are not going to be rid of village feeding specialists and if we do then we remove the value of team work. We will not remove botting that artifically boosts gains or learning without some drastic intervention by the Devs. What we can do is install steps to even things a bit.

I can think of many new skills we need to add to achieve some things. Some examples, forging, metal casting, folding.... Of all the things Haven needs is content, variety, and expanded skills.

As i have already said I am not going for complexity just requirements. Which I have yet to hear a single reason why this will hurt things.

[Sarge]

For starters, I completely agree with you that there is a problem with how short the timeline is from fresh toon to everything discovered and now just chasing numbers. The excitement for the non-PvP'ers gets stale very quickly once this point is reached and if it wasn't for the social aspect, that would happen even quicker. I completely get that your suggestion tries to stretch this timeline and I am all for that.

I actually thought you had a suggestion for how the tiers are unlocked and just didn't initially state it clearly, but that doesn't matter. The point is, mine at least, that I don't think there is anything wrong with your suggestion itself, in fact I quite like it. It is rather how it is specifically achieved that might skew balance even further in some areas. If however, there is a way to implement something like this where tier unlocking doesn't leave a hermit even further back in the dust of a village or doesn't make it even harder for a new player to join an established server, or even improve these odds then I am all for this. More depth, more immersion, why the hell not?

There is of course also room for the argument that maybe new ideas should not have to cater for the hermit and that always trying to accommodate the hermit and thereby 'disqualifying' great ideas for guild/village progression is bullshit. I am not sure where exactly I stand in that argument myself, truth be told, but when it comes to new players joining an established server I become far more empathetic, because it is a key area for growth of the player base.

And yes, fresh content, regular updates, of course that keeps things interesting, quite a few of us can vouch for that specifically regarding HnH. We used to live for weekend updates, it was the shit.