I was just taking a look into the different fan-sites and here and there people talk about guilds or clans.
Based on what we know about Stonehearth, I am just asking myself if it makes sense to think about guilds in a city-building game. As long as there will be no real multiplayer-feature implemented, like 2 vs 2, why should people even think about guilds? If you want to play with friends, facilitating Steam seams to be a straight-forward approach.
“Yes, I’m not going to say yes yes, but it’s pretty core to connected worlds to have the ability to band together a bunch of players in a guild and say our cities combined and connected are an empire.”
Maybe I am missing enough imagination to work this out for myself. The only reason I could think of is not as a traditional guild or clan to play Stonehearth, but a group of modders who could colaborate in designing a joint mod.
well, with the co-op stretch goal, perhaps folks are thinking about guilds from that perspective?
Co-op Multiplayer: Share a living world with your friends and family! Build sprawling empires of towns, cities and castles, and unite in mutual defense against the towering threat of ancient titans.
So once we have the persistent world I am with you… however, this stretched goal was not reached and it was mentioned that the implementation will depend on the financial success of Stonehearth, if I remember right.
Probably I am only on the same page as you @PDanford, like people trying to create right now something which might make sense in a year or so…
When we understand the mechanics of multiplayer this will be a lot easier to talk about … but if we’re just spitballing here … if we go down the road where you’re all responsible for one settlement, then being in a “guild” could make it easier to assign certain roles?
So for example, player Y could be given charge of the wood production storage and transportation. Player Y on the mining operations, Player Z on the building. Player A on designing interiors, player B on guard routes, player C is head of the military, with D and E being in command of a few groups of soldiers?
Stuff like that perhaps? Splitting a settlement up into smaller manageable areas for each different person in a guild?
@SteveAdamo Co-op for me (different understandings of terms might be the key here) is teaming up with another player and play together against someone else (or just together). I see this more a multiplayer-functionality than a “guild”. If I like to play together with the same people a friend-list might do the job. Just do not see where the “guild”-feature comes in.
A persistent world on the other side could allow “alliances” on a broader range and therefore motivate people to team up in a “guild” or something similar.
@Geoffers747 That might be… but how increadible big such a city has to be that everyone would have enough to do?
Exploiting the plane system could be effective, people once they reach a certain level of tech are able to build planar gates capable of linking worlds or servers together, that way they could play with the server using their village but still be able to go back to single player at will and just have them split off into separate worlds or something. That kind of thing though would likely require some pretty hefty network stuff to be able to link across worlds with the ability to take control of your villagers in linked worlds while they’re linked. Could be really awesome though, the kind of thing that persistent worlds could strive towards.
Even just doing it between local saves could be cool, maybe even at a particularly simple level being able to form an embarking party to create a new city with from your current cities resources and population. Although that’s essentially just a New Game Plus. But the ability to trade with your old cities or use planar gates to visit them would certainly be an interesting one. I’m also not sure how feasible it would be as it’s likely that planes would require a bunch of engine stuff (or nerfing the idea I suppose) to be able to support them without breaking your computer, just to support them at all probably as it sounds like essentially a part of the map that can’t be accessed without portals for whatever reason. Although if so you could probably use it for some fairly nifty stuff with more rpg-ish modules for things like separate dungeons and things.
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