A couple of suggestions

[Avion]

I have a couple of things I would like to do sooner than later- I would like some feed back before I do them however. Before send this to the mailing list (hello out there) I'll see what the rabble (myself included so don't take offense) think. I know I have a thousand things on the go but these are things I would like to work on (aside from graphics) at the moment. Here:

1. Change all the wasteland tiles on the Bigworld (check out Mids server fior bigworld preview) to unpassable mountains and unpassable snowy mountains (based on elevation of course). I think this will look nicer and will in the furute make it more interesting to mountain climb...

2. Extend the Great Highway from Santo Dominion to Darcap to close the circle.

3. Increase the price of guilds on the bigworld maps to 500 000 diamonds (less/more? I initially thought 1 million...) and move the Guildhouses Inc shop to Navar. Add a seperate key system and special rooms for the 3 guild founders as opposed to the general guild members and really increase the sizes of the guild houses to account for more members. I really want to do a bunch of stuff with guilds like have a Guild Contest where guilds can dump precious items (or work monster kills by guilld into the logger?) to have their banners highest on a wall in the Hall of Guilds or somehting...but this is a start.

4. Add a bank (modifying Joris' Code with outlets in Navar and Scorn) - I would like to charge a percent fee (perhaps a variable fee?) for banking and add two new coins called a Royal worth 20 platinum (actually 100 gold) and an Imperial worth 250 plat (1000 gold) and only available from the banks as well).

[Lauwenmark]

I have a couple of things I would like to do sooner than later <snip>

Ok, let's review that...

1. Change all the wasteland tiles on the Bigworld (check out Mids server fior bigworld preview) to unpassable mountains and unpassable snowy mountains (based on elevation of course). I think this will look nicer and will in the furute make it more interesting to mountain climb...

What about just changing the wasteland picture to something more beautiful ? This could spare you quite a lot of time...

2. Extend the Great Highway from Santo Dominion to Darcap to close the circle.

I think the Empire never built one because not a lot of people lived in the Northern Territories, and most of the trading traffic went either by boat or by the Imperial Highway (the 'central' road). After the collapse of the Empire, long-distance trade became difficult; so far, no new road has been built in the North. And today neither St Dominion nor Darcap are rich enough to afford such a road.

3. Increase the price of guilds on the bigworld maps to 500 000 diamonds (less/more? I initially thought 1 million...) and move the Guildhouses Inc shop to Navar.

I say no to that. 500.000 diamonds would reserve the guilds for very high level players only; a guild should also be open to medium-level players too IMHO. If I'm level 90, I don't really need a Guild anymore. We should promote the creation of Guilds, not discourage it.

Add a seperate key system and special rooms for the 3 guild founders as opposed to the general guild members and really increase the sizes of the guild houses to account for more members. I really want to do a bunch of stuff with guilds like have a Guild Contest where guilds can dump precious items (or work monster kills by guilld into the logger?) to have their banners highest on a wall in the Hall of Guilds or somehting...but this is a start.

I agree with the contest idea. I'm not sure Guild founders should get special rooms - and what if they want to have only one master, or four ?
Increasing the size of Guilds may be an interesting idea - but are there so many players now that Guild buildings cannot contain them ?

4. Add a bank (modifying Joris' Code with outlets in Navar and Scorn) - I would like to charge a percent fee (perhaps a variable fee?) for banking and add two new coins called a Royal worth 20 platinum (actually 100 gold) and an Imperial worth 250 plat (1000 gold) and only available from the banks as well).

I'd go further than that with money - create new coins that can be used only in some countries. For example, shops in the Dwarven city of Fargo would only accept Khanodis while the reclusive Elves of Sulon would refuse everything but Golden Sulars.

[Avion]

Ok, let's review that...

1.

What about just changing the wasteland picture to something more beautiful ? This could spare you quite a lot of time...

Nope, need actual different arches for this, no problems with effort I've already done a script for this.

2.

I think the Empire never built one because not a lot of people lived in the Northern Territories, and most of the trading traffic went either by boat or by the Imperial Highway (the 'central' road). After the collapse of the Empire, long-distance trade became difficult; so far, no new road has been built in the North. And today neither St Dominion nor Darcap are rich enough to afford such a road.

well now with all that boat tax money they can afford it...

3.

I say no to that. 500.000 diamonds would reserve the guilds for very high level players only; a guild should also be open to medium-level players too IMHO. If I'm level 90, I don't really need a Guild anymore. We should promote the creation of Guilds, not discourage it.

I think that players should join a guild not start them - Guilds are not apartments. High level players starting a guild make sense since it is something that should require time to manage and mentor players. I say 3 founders since that is the current requirement for a guild. Plus if you can't get a million diamonds should you be starting a guild or should you be adventuring. Having special areas for founders to do guild things makes sense and expanding the common member areas would respond to the fact that most lplayers join guiolds not start them. This is of course default - the old guilds can be saved in the distro for people to use on their servers if they want. This is why I posted this however - what do the other folk think?

[hoxu]

We should promote the creation of Guilds, not discourage it.

That's right! 500k diamonds is far too much. What about keeping the current guilds and adding bigger & expensive ones?

Personally I'd like to see bigger guildhouses.. and a shop inside guildhouse (not to mention identify tables, etc). Since we don't really have construction in, it'd be great to see more guildhouse-like construction. Just make it *bigger*!

And before you start working on anything, hear what everyone has to say

[mathwizard]

3. Increase the price of guilds on the bigworld maps to 500 000 diamonds (less/more? I initially thought 1 million...) and move the Guildhouses Inc shop to Navar. Add a seperate key system and special rooms for the 3 guild founders as opposed to the general guild members and really increase the sizes of the guild houses to account for more members. I really want to do a bunch of stuff with guilds like have a Guild Contest where guilds can dump precious items (or work monster kills by guilld into the logger?) to have their banners highest on a wall in the Hall of Guilds or somehting...but this is a start.

When I had my hero to lvl 110 I had not even 1 Million Platinum, which converts to 125k Diamonds. Therefore 500k Diamonds need 4 Million Platinum. IMHO this is far too much because three lvl 110 Players together should at least be able to form a guild because otherwise guilds couldn't get formed at all. Maybe increase the price if that seems neccessary, but keep it realistic. Guild formation is already limited by the amount of guildhouses, so most heroes would have to join a guild anyways.

[Avion]

When I had my hero to lvl 110 I had not even 1 Million Platinum, which converts to 125k Diamonds. Therefore 500k Diamonds need 4 Million Platinum. IMHO this is far too much because three lvl 110 Players together should at least be able to form a guild because otherwise guilds couldn't get formed at all. Maybe increase the price if that seems neccessary, but keep it realistic. Guild formation is already limited by the amount of guildhouses, so most heroes would have to join a guild anyways.

I have seen a 12th level players pull a million platinum out of their apartment to buy a powercrystal in a player held auction. From my experience I find it hard to believe you couldn't scrounge a million platinum at level 110. Come on, an apartment extention costs 10000 diamonds a guild should be more than double than... geez. When guilds came out I saw players buy them up in *minutes* - as in 'gee that looks neat lets grab one, just let me sell a couple items off here' . There *are* only a small number of guilds and there should be only three to five guilds per server active given the number of players usually seen. Plus the fact that you have to have three players to start a guild. Maybe 500000 diamonds is too much but it really is in the ball park folks...a couple million platinum at least - maybe a million platinum each - that's 375000 diamonds...

[hoxu]

I have seen a 12th level players pull a million platinum out of their apartment to buy a powercrystal in a player held auction.

How many years ago was that? I'm at level 108 on jyu and I have less than 300kpc. Perhaps it's just that I don't know the "tricks" to gain money easily. If that's the case, such change would limit guilds only for old players who know The Way.

[mathwizard]

Another idea: Don't raise prices to astronomical numbers of diamonds. If it seems advisable to raise guild-prices, which I might agree to, then do not just raise them, but make them more interesting. Why not demand a powerful item as price. Maybe a Power dragon mail, or even a Chaos Sword, whatever. This is more interesting than charging some 100k diamonds.

[Zortan]

It would be fun to have guild-wars.. Like certain area around a guild-house is a player-killing zone to those of a warring guild, but not the friendly guild, so you could actually kill things that go inside that area.. you could have guilds uniting to destroy another guild, and take over their guild-hall, and have the looser-guild pay a ransom for their guild-hall, or at least defeat the other guild?

Of course, penalties would require equality, so combined player levels from both guilds currently on-line need to be within +/- 10 levels to allow guild fights... and not in the arena..

..sorry just rambling on.. remember back in the days of MUD.. We could even have special random guild-dungeons for a little CTF... or capture the guild-weapon/token.. something like that..

[Avion]

Another idea: Don't raise prices just mindlessly to astronomical numbers of diamonds. If it seems advisable to raise guild-prices, which I might agree to, then do not just raise them, but make them more interesting. Why not demand a powerful item as price. Maybe a Power dragon mail, or even a Chaos Sword, whatever. This is more interesting than charging some 100k diamonds.

I really like the fact that you used the term mindlessly. When not inserting random changes to the game I also like to troll for abuse by posting ill considered proposals to the game forums. I am happy to post proposals here and get feedback but I am likely not able to please everyone.

You may be interested to know that others (highly respected individuals with a record of contributing to the game) have said that the higher price was a good idea.

Anyway,
I have decided not to do anything right now with the guilds until I have the housing code working (it's been forver since I started doing it - have to get back on track) since it seems to be such a contested topic. I will come up with a more through proposal for the guilds which I will post here later.

As for the other items:

1. Is a done deal - it is too simple really for there to be much argument. I can't imagine any considered opposition to this and the reponse is positive so far. Note this is only for the Bigworld world maps.

2. Alternate feedback has suggested maybe the highway shouldn't go although an less reputable road might be welcome. This illuminates another point - I have considered the 'yellow brick' road to be the Imperial highway while other roads were not (although they may be as maintained and as travelled. I will also defer this change and collect more feedback.

4. The Bank... I will come back to this one. The idea provincial economics is interesting even if it would be a pain to work out. I might have been clearer as well since this was to be a python plugin only addition and thus not an essential part of the game.

here is interesting comments form mailing list on this (Mark's comments : my replies):

> I personally don't see a problem with [...his other observations on banking...]. Note that I'd have to double check the code - I think if you sell something, you would still only get silver, gold, platinum.

If that is true it might be a plus actually. I would like to see these coins not available as currency so much as the standard coinage. As for copper - I wouldn't want to mess with the existing money. I was hoping to use artifical coins such as royals and Imperials which are more like diamonds than coinage

> (eg, that royal is made from platinum & diamond for example).

and not actually based on a metal standard. This would provide a way to have a common currency along side more local currencies perhaps. The Imperial might be worth crap (really high or non existant exchange rate) someplaces.