Guild rank incentive idea

falkenblackhand

Just looking for some feedback on an idea I had. So I know that the lead designer mentioned wanting to make player housing a possibility one day and I really hope this becomes reality. My idea centered around that. The easy way to accomplish that would be to simply place a door to a separate private instance in one location in the stronghold and make all instances identical just like each and every stronghold is as it lvls. However I have more faith in our design team than that and hope they don't take that easy road. Instead this is where my idea comes into play. Why not make the players housing location be determined by their rank in Thier current guild. Example.. lvl 1 would find housing in the town area of the stronghold. Lvl 2 might be a bigger house in said area. And so on up to guild leaders having a private room within the top of the stronghold itself. Customisation of the housing could be achieved through drops or trophies in dungeons and or bought with Zen or guild marks. Now this sounds like a Quality of life fix at first but if you think about it... It would benefit so many areas of the game. People would have a reason to want to earn ranks in guilds and donate more. Also it might get people redoing old content looking for more decorations for Thier own personal spaces. I for one think it would increase the emmersion of the game and help bring in a new element for exploration. Please let me know what you think!

Edit: upon further reflection of my own idea and the points presented in replies to my post. I have to admit the idea for making it guild rank related was majorly flawed. Guild related at all would not be fair to independent people who wish to remain guildless. Perhaps a suggestion from one of my guild mates would be better. Perhaps make different tiers of housing available and purchased by either guild marks or maybe even gold. In fact... That might actually make gold useful in the game again. Who knows.

beckylunatic

Customizable player housing may be developed at some point and has been hinted that it could open off the guild stronghold hall (doors in the gallery).

With regard to member rank within a guild being a way of earning housing, thus incentivizing more participation, this first assumes that every guild promotes members based on how much they donate, and apparently also that every guild should ultimately be promoting its entire roster to as high a rank as possible to reward them with a fancy home.

If guilds want to take a carrot and stick approach to encourage member donations, that's fine. I support implementation of management tools to make it easier for leaders to track donations. But I think it should be up to guild leaders to provide the incentives, running their own raffles and whatnot. Guild structure being very freeform and member ranks being able to conform to whatever roles their guild leaders feel is appropriate is a good thing. If Cryptic puts more hardcoded structure into the game for how guilds are required to operate, we'll have less freedom to operate them as we see fit.

omegarealities

If they make player housing available, they need to make it available regardless of guild membership. There millions of players who simply don't want to be part of a guild or who don't have the time to put in to meet the requirements of some guilds to remain members. This could also allow some guild to coerce members to donate more or lose their house. A player shouldn't lose their house simply because they get kicked from a guild.

Simply when you reach a certain level have a quest line pop up "Housing Available". You could buy a house with one of the game currencies and buy things to decorate it.

armadeonx

Yeah, houses should be independent of guilds, otherwise if I get kicked out of my guild, I'm also made homeless lol.

I'd like to see a 'trophy cabinet' with player achievements, a chest with extra storage, perhaps paintings reflecting your 'origin story' and be customisable the same way guild halls are.

mordekai

Guild rank can be fairly fluid, with promotions and demotions. I like the idea of having several instances for accommodation with different portals. But I think maybe having a basic level available to everyone, whether that be a bed and chest in a barrack room, or a hovel in the stronghold, and then use guild marks to upgrade your options. Such as a private chamber, or house, then up to Lord's/Ladies chamber or a small manor.
Each option could offer increased storage for gear/fashion, and they might open up campaign based trophies to mount on your own walls. So, for instance, "Baphomet's Horn" could be a reward you could buy with campaign currency upon completing Maze Engine, and that could be hung above your fireplace.

Limiting to guild ranks might put peoples' noses out of joint, as the rank and file feel like another "them and us" has come into play.

What it would do for guild leaders is help them identify players who are guild focused, and encourage them to consider those players for promotion.

Some guilds promote anyone without much thought and that's fine, while others use the rank as a careful reward structure.

As a guild leader, I know I'd feel a bit awkward over limiting another player's access to content they want to explore. And I would not want to feel pressured into promoting them just so they could access that content.

omegarealities

armadeonx said:

Yeah, houses should be independent of guilds, otherwise if I get kicked out of my guild, I'm also made homeless lol.

I'd like to see a 'trophy cabinet' with player achievements, a chest with extra storage, perhaps paintings reflecting your 'origin story' and be customisable the same way guild halls are.

Yep. Miss a guild donation because of a real life situation, come back and you are homeless in Neverwinter. All my belongings dumped into my overflow bag. Can't play until I sell of a bunch of things.

Would love to have a wardrobe to stick all of my event outfits in.

ecrana

I'm in agreement that Player Housing should have nothing to do with Guild membership. It should be it's own separate thing.

People go back and forth between guilds, some guilds are petty and kick people for no reason, some guild determine ranks by donations, some by friendships, etc. The list is endless as to why attaching housing to guilds is a bad idea.

telprydain

It won't happen because if/when player housing becomes a thing Arc will want to sell it to you, not have it dictated by other players.

yubit

Housing is one of my favorite things in RPGs, the best imo from recent memory is the housing in ESO, pretty robust system (of course it has its flaws but what in the world doesn't).

In ESO you start with a square 2x2' Inn room, small, kinda useless but completely free, from there you move up in the world, there's a lot of houses from humble ones to actual mansions (with guest house, stables, 10 rooms and a big garden), you can buy Homes with either Premium currency or F2P currency, but if you get it with F2P currency is WAY more expensive of course.

The customization is everywhere, recipes for crafting, in-game vendors, Premium Store and even as drops, and the placement of the stuff is the thing that surprised me the most, you can rotate any furniture in any axis you want, there are some interactive stuff like lamps that you can turn on/off too. I think ESO has a rly good example of housing and a solid way of revenue because ESO doesn't take into account the F2P players much.

Personally I like the OP's idea in general, the only thing that wouldn't work is the need for a guild, Housing and Guilds are 2 very different monsters, BUT it would be cool if you could invite your Guild to your Mansion!

PD. An actual visible stable for mounts would be awesome!!