Are the guilds down?

Kronos_Deftone had a question about the current state of KT guilds.

Kronos_Deftone wrote:

You mentioned something about the guilds in the last post- I had heard that the guilds were "down". What's the deal?

-t.

-WR69

Crimson Order is working fine. The other guilds are temporarily down. The plan is for four guilds:

Green Mages
Knight Templars
Crimson Order
Janitors Guild

Each of the above will have advantages added to the scripting, but I haven't exactly decided how I want to implement them.

Do you have plans on making each guilds advantages public? Or will it be more of a "once you join" type of setup?

If you're interested that's something we can post here or on the website.
-WR69

I try to keep some things secret, because I think players should experience and learn for themselves. That's part of keeping it interesting. I don't mind discussing an item, for example, but I wouldn't want to tell you about an NPC that might be able to alter the item to make it more powerful. That's up to players to discover.

Guilds are written into many KT scripts. They have a lot of obvious and not so obvious effects. I'd rather people join a guild for the purpose behind it rather than a calculated move to make the most powerful character.

For example, the Knight Templars are supposed to be enforcers. They are supposed to protect the innocent and defeat evil. If that means they get certain bonuses to help them do so, that's fine. Unfortunately, too many players see the guild as a way to get powerful WITHOUT having to actually act like a proper Knight Templar. That is why there's an XP penalty applied to all Knight Templars whenever a crime is committed anywhere in the module. They are supposed to deal with it. The powers they gain are supposed to be used for good, not their own glory. Know what I mean?

I really don't want Knight Templars joining the guild just to farm the dungeons for items. That's not what the Knights are about. Now, here's my difficulty. How do I program the game so that Knights act as they should? With the Crimson Order, the solution was easy. Perhaps I will end up doing something similar for the Knights.

I agree with Sarah about the penalties for Knights who don't act very knightly. Some suggestions to make the class more about the Role and less about the "crunch":

-Have the Knights tithe..when they find loot, 10% goes to the church
-Have their level be somewhat dependant upon if they have attempted to bring justice to those committing crimes (tho I know some players would just have their friends log on with evil folks and commit crimes so they can get points in the templers, so dunno about this one)
-As Sarah suggested..make em like the Crimson Order, they get a weapon, shield, armor, boots and ammy and thats it..I'd suggest you let them keep earning loot, just have to tithe it as I suggested above, would also be nice if they could somehow still be able to purchase and use heal potions/restoration potions only...
-Is there a way you can see Knights when you are on Sarah? Observe them and see just how knightly they act...Enforce role playing for them and possibly reward those who play their role, even when they dont know they are being observed!

Just a few ideas.

Nuli

I have to be very careful about giving the knights bonuses for killing evil folk. Exploiters would do exactly as Nuli stated. What I did was cause the person killed to lose far more XP than the knight gains, so you could have a friend log evil characters, but the evil ones would quickly be depleted of XP (and loot). It's a tough situation. Perhaps I could simply convert everything a knight gets into gold and automatically delete the 10%. Then I could make a knight guild merchant where they could buy almost anything (except set items). Of course, they would then simply use their knight to buy stuff to hand out to their evil characters. The best bet might be to make them very similar to the Crimson Monks. IDK.

The xp loss of the evil character can easily be worked around in the pre-40 levels, just by having the knight kill them just after level up, then they only lose the xp gained since the last level up. For example a level 40 toon with 780001 xp would only lose 1xp

Maybe, as suggested the knights lose xp when a crime is commited, and whichever knight brings the perp to justice gains back the lost xp plus a bonus, maybe have all knights gain back some of the penalty too, sort of like a team effort thing...

Hows this for a plan...

When a crime is committed and the perp is still online or a character with a record logs in then all the knights start losing xp, something minimal like 10xp per round. This stops when justice is served.

The knight who administered justice also gets an xp bonus

Would it would need is the name of the perp and their location to come up, just to ensure that the chase is on straight away.

I can see that there may be problems with wrong doers hanging around in non-pvp areas laughing as all knights are slowly losing xp, maybe the xp loss would only happen when the criminal is in pvp...

Not sure how easy this would be to implement as my knowledge of scripting is similar to Wesley Snipes' knowledge of tax law, but i think its an interesting idea.

Any thoughts?

(PS, if you look at the time stamps between my last 2 posts, bearing in mind I'm on UK time, you will see I have spend most of my day at work coming up with this plan, real life is sooo boring.)

Clive,
Glad to hear you're working hard, and you don't have your internet access blocked at the office. I think all the ideas in this topic are great, but currently KT has only 1 DM who does ALL the work on the server. I'd love to see some custom good Vs evil stuff, but it's got to be tons of work (what you last posted) to accomplish something like that.

If KT had 2 full time DM's it might be a reality, but Sarah the DM has a huge "to do" list as it is. Hopefully this topic gets added to the list, but even if it does, it will be quite some time till we see it implemented.

Keep the good ideas coming,
-WR69

Knight Templar guild is back up. It's bugged, of course, but I'll be working to smooth those out soon enough. If you want to join it, you'll need a level 40 fighter, paladin, or cleric. You can mix those classes, but you cannot have any other classes. That includes COT which is told "you have chosen another path."

The Knight Templars are supposed to be enforcers, not out for their own benefit like in the past. In other words, you aren't supposed to join in order to get loot. I'm tweaking the scripting for that, but I think you'll be giving up a very large chunk of loot. It won't be everything like the Crimson Order.

As to why someone would join? It has many benefits, most of which I won't reveal here. Let just say the knights will have great power, but great responsibility comes with it. Like the Crimson Monks, you shouldn't join unless you want to play the part properly.

BTW, neither knights or crimson monks may now party with evil players. No more knights running around helping to make evil players more powerful! Technically, you can join, but it will shift your alignment and eventually get you banished.

Found a glitch with the Templars (at least I hope its a glitch, if so do I get a prize??)

When a Knight dies and respawns, they are transported to the Pit of Death (place deleted toons go) Although they retain all there inventory, gold, xp etc... but OSHA charms don't work to port out.

Hopefully that's fixed now. I haven't worked with my custom respawn script in some time, so I hard trouble setting up the new respawn location (Hall of Virtue) properly.

Warning: Knights won't find nearly as much loot as other players, and they donate 50% of gold that's found. In other words, it's not going to be a very good character for looting dungeons (nor should it be). Plus, you have all the restrictions on PvP (cannot attack someone unless they are wanted for crimes). Please don't join unless you truly want to bring justice to the server in PvP battles versus thieves and murderers.

As it's so easy for a thief/murderer to hide on the server, should knights be given an upgraded Rod of Detection, such that badies can be found more easily and analysed a little more thoroughly?

LOL. Every time someone commits a crime, the Templars are notified. They are told where the crime occurred and who did it. I think that's plenty of power to track down the perps.

At the risk of making me want to kick myself later, you might want to check the donation level, my Knight does donate loot, but nowhere near 50%. I haven't been online in about 12 hours so if you have changed this since then, ignore this post.

Also, Would it be worthwhile starting a new thread for glitches? (Not that I don't have every faith in your scripting abilities Sarah.... )

Sure, we could have a forum called, "Bug Reports."

I believe the loot donation is fixed. Be aware there is also always more going on behind the scenes (script-wise) than is seen. What I mean is, the guilds are always heavily scripted, so they have various benefits and limits not immediately apparent. The key limitations (the ones that will cause you to lose your knighthood if you break them) are given up front. Everything else is buried in scripting.

Great. But where are we with the prize for spotting a glitch??

The prize for finding and reporting a glitch is the satisfaction that you are making the game better for yourself and everyone else.

Huh.... I was kinda hoping for a pally set item, but what they hey....

I've been playing KT since maybe a month before the last reset of all the items. Sarah good job it's a fun server. I've just releveled a few chars to go pure class and to allow one to try the Knights guild as I've never done that and want to give it a try. It sounds like a fun concept trying to bring the nasty's to justice.

One question, if you get notified someone just commited a crime and go off to find them I would think as soon as you do find them you want to attack right away as any delay could be fatal. DO you also get a notice once the criminal has been brought to justice. I would hate to make a mistake and be the second knight to find him and kill him after he has already been killed. I know I can use th erd of detection but he could port out or attack you while you are trying to get the rod and click on the other char. Too many actions in a split second environment.

Also it would be a good idea to update either the journal or th einfo table in the start hall with the web site address to get more ppl using the forum for question/answer stuff.

Fun server.