Guild Halls aka Fleet Starbase?

[Aslan_chShran]

Are we going to have a "home base" so to speak or will we be wandering endlessly with only NPC stations like DS9 to visit?

One major complaint I'm hearing about Champions is a lack of any Guild Hall (Super Group hang out?) and I'm worried that STO will also ship without any place for the Fleet to call home. Can anyone comment on this - will there or won't there be a Guild Hall (Starbase) of sorts?

[Jaxston]

Well at the begining it was announced there would be guild starbases, shipyards and sych but since then there has been no mention of these types of things....thye might have figured it would be too hardcore...lol.

:rolleyes:

[akameriadoc]

Hopefully there will be some type of guild Starbase or guild only meeting area.

[Tanktreads]

I believe this is still in the realm of PvP and the economy, they have plans that they haven't worked on yet and are getting around to.

[Jaxston]

I believe this is still in the realm of PvP and the economy, they have plans that they haven't worked on yet and are getting around to.

I hope you are right....would make me extremely happy.

:)

[Silverspar]

Well at the begining it was announced there would be guild starbases, shipyards and sych but since then there has been no mention of these types of things....thye might have figured it would be too hardcore...lol.

:rolleyes:

Actually, they made it quite clear we wouldn't have our own starbase. They said we would need to use fleet resources to build the top tier ships, but that starting to look like that idea was kicked in the head.

[Arokh72]

I think things like player housing/guild halls or even just guild starbases would be brought out at a similar time as ship interiors, meaning in a future expansion.

We'll see how we go, but I've never actually played a game with guild halls or even player housing, WoW don't have them and LoTRO didn't when I played and neither did WAR in Beta. I'd like to know why people would like these and what they offer in other games.

[Tain]

Yeah, I seem to remember them stating no fleet starbases as well. No fleet anything, from what I gather so far.

[Siphaed]

I'm wondering if it's going to be anything like bases in City of Heroes, or if we we get a mix of that and the EVE stations, or one at all? The EVE stations had upgradeable outside and were useful in the sort, but no inside or interaction with inside (other than individual docking bays). But, if it was mixed, we could dock with the station and our avatars could interact with other guildies within the station itself, however on the outside it's a station that's vulnerable to attack by the other faction (after all, it is a Faction controlled station).

That would be awsome and I have very high hopes that they do something like this. And, for the love of all that is holy within the Star Trek universe, please do NOT pull the bait and switch like Age of Conan did with their player bases in that they took forever to even add them into the game even though they said they were "in game already" when they really weren't. And, to that, please make sure they're not bugged to heck like theirs were, because you need to actually TEST that content part of the game; Age of Conan never had that player tested, so when it first came out there were a ton of bugs and player found exploits (like going through certain walls and jumping off certain cliffs to get inside without breaking down a door, ect.).

[mrwalsh]

I think things like player housing/guild halls or even just guild starbases would be brought out at a similar time as ship interiors, meaning in a future expansion.

We'll see how we go, but I've never actually played a game with guild halls or even player housing, WoW don't have them and LoTRO didn't when I played and neither did WAR in Beta. I'd like to know why people would like these and what they offer in other games.

heh AO had player housing and even Guild cities, but they were mostly ghost towns by the time I started playing the game. Same with Shadowbane. Capture territory, build up your cities defenses (to resist invasion), etc. All they were to me though were structures that shot at me while I was running around. Never stayed in those games long enough to get into guilds. Was in SB long enough to get killed by a guild raiding an area I was in (they looted my corpse and told me to pay attention to server raid times... real nice of them).

Guild halls in GW can be upgraded with merchants, so you can warp back to your player home for trade instead of whatever town, and make for great meeting places for the guild members to get organized. They also served as the maps for GvG matches, so you chose whichever layout looked coolest and you were ready to defend. Game gets interesting when you're invading another groups hall or defending your own from invasion, the environment holds personal meaning. You really feel like you're fighting for something.

In other games I've played, like VCO, there wasn't much to it. That was pretty much just a guy who could take donations to add to the guild bank and raise reputation with whatever city you were based in. I didn't stick with that long enough to see where it went, but the game was pretty sparse overall so I didn't expect much.

It can be a really cool game mechanic if employed properly, but it can also be nothing more than an annoyance.

[Summit]

I hope they add them in, I see alot of potential that they could add to the game, especially at endgame

[Griffin]

Dev chats and stuff have claimed that Fleet/Guild owned Starbases and structures probably won't make it into the game at launch. Should they make it into the game at a later date, I strongly believe they will be of no practical value to the Fleet. Zinc confirmed awhile ago that Starbases would be RP areas and that is how I forsee Guild Starbases in STO.

The heavy instancing in this game more or less removes the possibility of having guild owned structures based in areas of the game that are persistant and dynamic, because there probably won't be any persistant or dynamic areas. Guild structures will most likely occupy an instance of their own, allowing members of the fleet to access it.

This game will be a single server MMO, but not in the same way as EvE Online. EvE Online has a persistant universe, STO, much like CO, will have multiple copies of the same universe, hosted on a single server. This means there won't be any meaningful territorial/structural exchanges between hostile fleets as in EvE.

[Jaxston]

Dev chats and stuff have claimed that Fleet/Guild owned Starbases and structures probably won't make it into the game at launch. Should they make it into the game at a later date, I strongly believe they will be of no practical value to the Fleet. Zinc confirmed awhile ago that Starbases would be RP areas and that is how I forsee Guild Starbases in STO.

The heavy instancing in this game more or less removes the possibility of having guild owned structures based in areas of the game that are persistant and dynamic, because there probably won't be any persistant or dynamic areas. Guild structures will most likely occupy an instance of their own, allowing members of the fleet to access it.

This game will be a single server MMO, but not in the same way as EvE Online. EvE Online has a persistant universe, STO, much like CO, will have multiple copies of the same universe, hosted on a single server. This means there won't be any meaningful territorial/structural exchanges between hostile fleets as in EvE.

I have come to realize that the part of multiple instances is definitely a problem with what alot of people would like to see as far as bases and such. I also think it sucks and that they should fix their technology to be more like CCP's.

:)

[mrwalsh]

I have come to realize that the part of multiple instances is definitely a problem with what alot of people would like to see as far as bases and such. I also think it sucks and that they should fix their technology to be more like CCP's.

:)

I like the limited persistent areas with more instances for individual gameplay. It's easier on the servers and lets them do a _lot_ more with any particular instance. Of course, as everyone by now knows :o (due to me posting about it in like every other game mechanic comparison-think I'm the only guy on here not using EVE, WoW, or CO as a basis of comparison...), I'm coming from a game built entirely around instancing. I guess I've just grown to love the mechanic. Ghost towns that shoot at you for wandering around in an area that has absolutely no reward for wandering around... that gets a little old very fast. Every area being unique, rewarding, and having an insane level of detail and creativity in the design, that doesn't get old. It might get lonely, but you can always ask people to go with you.

To each his own though. :)

[Azurian]

Yeah, I seem to remember them stating no fleet starbases as well. No fleet anything, from what I gather so far.

They did say that they wanted to have Fleets having their own Starbases, and build Stardocks to construct High-End ships like the Sovereign. But a few months later, Cryptic took this off the "to do list", and said they would work on it after launch.

[Jaxston]

I like the limited persistent areas with more instances for individual gameplay. It's easier on the servers and lets them do a _lot_ more with any particular instance. Of course, as everyone by now knows :o (due to me posting about it in like every other game mechanic comparison-think I'm the only guy on here not using EVE, WoW, or CO as a basis of comparison...), I'm coming from a game built entirely around instancing. I guess I've just grown to love the mechanic. Ghost towns that shoot at you for wandering around in an area that has absolutely no reward for wandering around... that gets a little old very fast. Every area being unique, rewarding, and having an insane level of detail and creativity in the design, that doesn't get old. It might get lonely, but you can always ask people to go with you.

To each his own though. :)

I see your point and I do agree that instancing has it's place but when you look at games such as AoC it shows that too much instancing (among other things) can ruin your game. These games we love are mmo's and the purpose of that is to share a gaming experience with other people.

;)

[mrwalsh]

I see your point and I do agree that instancing has it's place but when you look at games such as AoC it shows that too much instancing (among other things) can ruin your game. These games we love are mmo's and the purpose of that is to share a gaming experience with other people.

;)

Yeah it's a trade off; dynamic exchange and artistry for massive inter-player relation. That's why they had to redefine the world system with GW2, to add more persistent areas for player interaction (PvP zones, PvE areas attached to multiple instances, etc.) and still include the high level of dynamic interaction in any given area that they want for their game. It actually sounds similar to what they're proposing with STO, which is very, very exciting to me (both STO and GW2).

I never played AoC, but all I hear are gripes. It's one of the very few games I applied for beta and didn't get accepted. I'd say they had it coming to them. :D :p Not to say every MMO I've tested for turned out well... for example, I made it into Tabula Rasa, MxO, DDO, and Wish. The latter never even made it past the beta stage. It would've been awesome though, their issues weren't in design but in funding. A good example of why you want a real publisher and not a group of private investors (without much game design knowledge or experience) backing your game.

[chaoticone]

i think guild halls worked in eq2. but see these instead of being your own floating star base in a remote section could be a part of a exsisting star system or base maybe your own quarks. but you can only get into your own meeting hall in an exsisting base by invite or being a member. Basically it would be its own instence inside an area.

[Aslan_chShran]

SWG had guild halls and you could even build entire cities. A lot of RPers I know want something similar to that or at the very LEAST Guild Halls. I know I would like them as well, and I think they are very important features to the RP experience. I mean, I love Champions but where do I log out? Right in the middle of the street because I have no Guild Hall to go visit. No place to go chat/fight/relax with my Super Group. Eh, the game is going to rock regardless but I think Guild Starbases would bring in a lot of people who are worried that STO will "feel" like Champions, a single player MMORPG.

[Rapsynrev]

My number one annoyance with WoW was that they didn't have any "real estate" that you could "own". That was one thing that I was really excited about when I heard the announcement of starbases. It would be more of a "fleet home" than a personal one, but when you add ship interiors to that, I thought it sounded awesome. I'm really disappointed that it sounds like they won't be included, at least at launch. Anybody have a source on that or are we assuming it fell off the radar since it hasn't been mentioned in months? (I've seen references for the ship interiors, but not for the starbases)

[Silverspar]

Well I think there is a good possibility, in teh future, that fleets can own real estate, in essence. After all, with factiosn and more to be added, with out the ability of fleets to control in-game real estate there really isn't much ened for the factions.

[Nararut]

If you guys watch the vids for this game the Dev's state that there will be only 1 instance of STO not multiple copies. That means that every player is going to be able to run into every other player. So they are makeing it like EVE is as a dynamic and evolving universe.

[Zandtar]

One thing I'd love to see is a method to allow fleets to coordinate between each other (or even PuG) for scheduled events. I've seen it done in other games when a number of small-ish guilds would coordinate externally, and pool their resources (so to speak) for filling in spots where a single guild might not have.

Of course, such a thing would take a bit of work to get right. But could be worth it, if done correctly.

[Zepath]

Player housing and Guild Housing (in our case, Fleet Starbases) can add tremendously to a game, or they can destroy it.

I can't count the number of games where Guild Housing added a sense of belonging and purpose to guilds ... but I can't count the number of games where it totally destroyed the community aspect of the game as well.

Guild housing has to have a purpose and attraction that extends the game, while not supplanting the need for players to visit the social hubs and interact with other players.

If the guild housing doesn't have a purpose, its a waste of effort, a waste of assets, and huge disappointment to the players. Yet in almost every game where housing pulled people out of the social hubs, you could almost see a direct correlation to the decline of the game's popularity and subscriptions. And I believe that is why you've seen Developers move away from Guild Housing unless its in the social hubs themselves.

[FerrumGuy]

I hope there will be guild stations, sadly I'm guessing its going to be similar to the great WoW promise of customizable dances that where slated for every update since WOTLK released.

[bkm250]

Player housing and Guild Housing (in our case, Fleet Starbases) can add tremendously to a game, or they can destroy it.

I can't count the number of games where Guild Housing added a sense of belonging and purpose to guilds ... but I can't count the number of games where it totally destroyed the community aspect of the game as well.

Guild housing has to have a purpose and attraction that extends the game, while not supplanting the need for players to visit the social hubs and interact with other players.

If the guild housing doesn't have a purpose, its a waste of effort, a waste of assets, and huge disappointment to the players. Yet in almost every game where housing pulled people out of the social hubs, you could almost see a direct correlation to the decline of the game's popularity and subscriptions. And I believe that is why you've seen Developers move away from Guild Housing unless its in the social hubs themselves.

I believe the player housing in STO will eventually be our own ships when interiors are finally launched. Agreed though...we need public places for folks to congregate and socialize as well as guild/fleet owned starbases. I mean come on, it just adds so much for us rp/social types.