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I was thinking about things earlier today while playing SW:TOR and... wait, stop looking so surprised, I can multi-think...

Anyway, we know, cause BioWare said so, that Guild Banks are coming soon. We also know, that Capital Ships for the Guilds are coming as well, though the word soon has not been attached to them. We also know that BioWare and TOR have several large money sinks in them. BioWare is a big fan of charging credits for things. So I think it is safe to assume that banks will have a charge for say, extra tabs at a minimum. Once Capital ships come in, I would expect that those would cost a chunk of change not to be thought about and probably a regular 'maintenance fee' as well. Levels of customization and various other niceties will probably be in play along with that. All of which will cost credits.

Now, I'm not asking to implement this system now, but rather to think about how we might want to do things once these 'guild fees' kick into gear.

I'd like to propose, for discussion purposes only at this point, the idea of the tithe. Some of you will know that a tithe is a, usually, yearly donation of 10% of income. This is not exactly what I am proposing. Rather, I'd like to propose a weekly tithe of 10% of the amount of credits you have on hand on a given day at a given time.

For example, Friday night at 8pm (whatever your local time zone is) you simply open your inventory window and look at the amount of credits listed there, then donate 10% of that into the guild bank. So, if you open it and see you have only 100 credits, you donate 10 of those to the guild. On the other hand if you look at it and see that you have, I dunno, 58,345 credits, then you donate 10% of that which would be 5,834 (yes, round down for heavens sake) credits to the guild bank.

Now, a couple points of explanation based on feedback I got in guild chat today when I mentioned this:

For those who are afraid that some form of bookkeeping needs to occur, no, it doesn't. I'm not asking you to keep track of your total credit gain throughout the week and then donate based on that. Dear god, can you imagine what that would be like? All I'm asking is that on Friday, whatever amount, no matter how big or small, no matter how much you made during the week, that is listed there on your inventory tab at the appointed time be looked at and 10% of it donated.

For those of you who have trouble deciding what 10% actually is, it is as simple as moving the decimal place one space left, rounding down and donating that amount.

No, this does not need to start occurring right now. Where would you send it at this point? There is no bank at this time, and you certainly aren't going to send it to me unless you all really want to see me running around with a full set of orange gear, because there won't be anything else for me to do with it at this time. This is planning ahead for WHEN the guild bank and guild fees are in place.

No, guild ranks and promotions won't be based on who donates how much. I detest this sort of thing, where influence and rank can be 'bought' or special favors are shown towards those who do contribute a lot versus those who donate a little.

Yes, this would be a requirement for everyone in the guild. Even us officers. We'd like the guild to be able to have nice things. I don't think 10% is asking too much of anyone at any character level. You are only giving 10% of what you have on one day each week at a specific time on that day. Everything else you make that day and that week is yours to keep.

Yes, you can donate more than the tithe amount, of course. This is just the minimum amount. Again, it will have no effect on your rank in the guild or special treatment of any sort.

Yes, this would be on a per character basis. All your guild characters would make use of whatever is available, so it seems reasonable to me to have them all contribute.

--- This Ends the Proposal, Below is Context, you can skip it if you like --------

What I want to avoid is this: I played EQII for several months back at the end of last year and the beginning of this. I did this for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to get into a large guild and see how it was managed and run. Those of you who know EQII know what sorts of social features and amenities they make available to the players and guilds. You can stuff a house full of furniture and decorations and guild housing was..well.. fairly incredible honestly. Three tiers of houses, the last of which was a massive set of castles with moats and 30 or 40 rooms each and multiple floors and.. well, lets just say it was almost an entire decorate your own castle game in itself with hours of potential fun.

You could have vendors actually in your guild housing for most everything, travel hubs of various types were available as well, the auction house could be accessed from inside the guild, crafting stations could be placed inside the house. In short, a well financed guild had no reason for it's members to ever go to a public vendor, station or other in game resource for anything. Ever.

Now, this guild was very large. Tipping in at 300+ characters and, at a guess, well over 100 individual players. All these amenities cost money. And not just a one time fee, they had ongoing expenses as a sort of lease on these amenities as well as a massive amount of rent on the guild house itself. In total, something like 3000 platinum a week just for maintenance and upkeep, never mind adding something new.

Now, guess who paid all that? Every week?

3 people. The guild master and the next two down the chain of command.

Sure, the guild had nice stuff and people loved using it and having it available to them. It appeared that the three people didn't mind doing this for the guild and no one made any effort to contribute beyond that because these people just seemed so darned pleased with the way things were that they never said anything. This was not a new guild either, they'd been in the game for years.

I started asking questions about how things were run and where the money came from. You know what the answer was? These three people had to constantly raid throughout the week in order to afford the costs of the guild. They couldn't afford to do anything less lucrative like questing or crafting or what have you, even though they enjoyed those things. Essentially what it came down to was them grinding raids every moment of every day to finance it all. they didn't even get to enjoy the guild hall because they were never in it except for brief moments to travel to the next raid or repair gear. They were, once you stopped and talked to them, at the end of their rope and been at it so long that they didn't feel as though they could ask anyone to contribute this late into the game.

So, in the four months or so I was in that guild, I was terribly fascinated by how things would turn out. By the end of week three the first of the officers left, completely burned out on raids and the game. Said nothing publicly, just resigned from the guild and quit the game. Week 6, the Guild Owner did exactly the same thing and didn't even bother to promote anyone. Two days later the last of the financiers left in the same way. So then we had an essentially leaderless guild that was bleeding money out of every hole.

Valiant attempts were made to save things, mostly by one guy who really shouldn't have had things dumped in his lap like that. I tried to help where I could, but, not being in the game very long, it didn't work out very well.

When the guild had sold off all it's amenities and moved to a smaller guild hall and the guy who was trying to lead things had to take time off from the game due to stress about the game, I said my good byes. Other than myself and one or two others no one was even then contributing anything at all.

Once in a while I get an email from the poor guy. He never went back.

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Okay, so this is the only part I have a bit of an issue with. Not because I wouldn't be willing to do so. I would. But I think this is, for one, going to be an extremely unpopular idea, and two, impossible to enforce.

What happens when we have someone not paying? Do we implement tax collectors to bug them about it? What if a friendly reminder doesn't work? Kicked from the guild?

You say that you don't like a system where you can "buy" privileges. This is, essentially, the same to me as "buying" the privilege of being in the guild. It doesn't affect your rank at all, but you're still paying to get into the club, even if said payments won't get you into the VIP room.

Guild taxes are not an altogether bad idea, but in a game where it can't simply be implemented automatically, I'm not sure it's wise to make it mandatory.

I don't think it would be altogether necessary, either. For one, none of the MMOs I have played have ever required a recurring fee for guild amenities. And for another, even were such a thing to happen, I think we could put together enough voluntary donations from this amazing and positive community that no one would have to work to the point of no longer enjoying the game to do so.

So go my two creds.

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Jedi Master Tir-Jin Meteos, The Order of 66
PC GAMER - T.J. Hafer

Another fun way of getting the same result if your into PvP or even if your not. get a bunch of guildies together a full team and play a couple of PvP matches maybe 30minutes out of your gaming and donate the creds generated to the guild.

Taking a pause to consider this, its not really asking much, is it? For implementation, I'd imagine we'd rely heavily on the honour system - unless we are going to have a Guild Financial Officer or somesuch (maybe not a bad idea, but I already do that in real life ). It would need to be monitored, surely, but I would expect we'd just have a friendly chat with the prospective individual who didn't get around to paying into the guild fund. I'm personally rather happy to pay into something that makes us more badass.

I also really like the idea of doing content runs (raids, PvP, etc) to generate money for the guild when the time comes around. When this rolls around I'd happily convert profit from crafting/questing into guild donations.

You're really helping yourself in the long run, especially once the Guild Bank is on the go. If we're doing it as a take an item, leave an item honour system (monitored by that aforemented Fin O, perhaps?) that takes a lot of stress off you when you just so happened to not have lucked out to get that piece of loot you need to carry on.

I'm kind of rambling since I was GOING to stay up and play, but totally forgot about the maintenance this morning, and decided to play some AC1 instead of sleeping. But the gist of what I'm saying is that, while there are going to be freeloaders, steps can be taken to make this something people are going to want to voluntarily do.

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Order of Sixtysix Officer - The Old Republic - Master of Life
Casual Play and Quality of Life
Have Your say about Your Guild - PM me with Feedback/Concerns or in game as Markess

It's an interesting idea, though I'm wondering how necessary it will be.

Perhaps it would make sense to wait and see just what kind of expenses the guild has before deciding whether or not to implement any sort of fee, or how to go about doing so.

What if we get our guild ship, and there are no customization options? No upkeep costs? What will all that money in the guild bank go towards?

If I may propose another option, as opposed to the weekly tithe, perhaps a more feasible notion would be pledge drives?

Hypothetically speaking, let's say there are some upkeep costs to the guild, or there is something awesome that upper managment decides the guild needs, the Master of Credits or whatever you want to call the person in charge of the bank can figure out a reasonable amount of time in which to collect that figure, and you could announce on the Holocron that we're having a pledge drive for this specific reason.

Something like, "Arlight, gang, we've decided that as a guild, there's no reason the Order of Sixty-Six should not have the Super-Groovy Class Star Frigate. We need this much credits, and we think we should be able to reach that goal by [insert date]. So, if when you go to log out, you see you have some extra pocket change, maybe toss it in the bank, and it will go towards the guild getting a really nice toy."

Then you change the daily message that people see when they log in to say,

Goal: Super-Groovy Class Star Frigate
Funds Needed: [however much]
Funds Raised: [however much]
Days Left: [however many]

Something along those lines. Obviously it would need to be updated at least once every other day, though I think the more fequent the better.

Sure, some people will donate signficantly more than others. Some people probably won't contribute at all. But you're giving them the option as opposed to enforcing it, and providing a goal for people to work towards as a group, with a visable reminder of what sort of progress has been made. If there's some way of keeping track of who's donated what, you could the Top 5 contributers, or everyone who contributed over a certain amount a shout-out in podcast after the goal is reached.

Overall, I think people would be happier about contributing under those circumstances than they would otherwise. Especially those of us who've taken Slicing as a crew skill, and are sitting on our own private hordes while we see everyone else crying poverty in the guild chat.

Listen to me, I might be one of the biggest hippies on these boards in reality, but the notion of my Smuggler being expected to contibute his make believe monies to some sort of damn commune has me wanting to watch stormtroopers pepper-spray Jedi in the face.

Anyways! Just some thoughts.

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Kyle Reads Alpha Flight - A distinctly Canadian look at comics' premiere team of Canadian superheroes. Also: swearing and dick jokes.

Personally, I don't feel like I know enough to form an opinion right now. I want to see what the costs are for guild amenities before deciding whether or not guild fees of any sort are necessary.

In my previous guild experience, guild members donated to the guild bank as they deemed fit. I'm inclined toward that sort of honor system, and I think it's more in keeping with our casual style. "Once we have X credits in the guild bank, we can afford our capital ship."

But again, I'm reserving judgment for when I know more.

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A couple of thoughts:

First off, let me toss out a cheer to Fiddleback for referring to EQ2 when it comes to Guilds, since EQ2 had the *best* Guild system I have ever seen in a MMO. From Guild ranking, world and server firsts, housing, and guild locked cloaks….so many good things for folks in guilds to do and strive for.

That said, on to the meat of the post.

Since we really have no idea which route Bioware is going to take regarding guilds, (my personal opinion is that they are going to go with WoW +1 like they did with toon creation) and what perks guilds will have.

We will assume that they will copy the EQ/EQ2 Guild Bank model of buying extra tabs (“Holds”) and that these will not be cheap, one great reason for tithing. With that assumption, we will also assume that they will copy the EQ/EQ2 model of Guild bank activity (Deposits and Withdrawals) which will provide a quick way for officers to gauge member activity and if said members have contributed.

With those assumptions in place, my thoughts based on playing in a Big EQ2 guild. Tithing was not as much “forced” but expected from the membership. Also set goals were laid out for that month (“we need X for the next level of Cloak design”) and once that goal was achieved any extra was set aside for the next months goal. Also, Tithing was not limited to money, but also for items deposited in the Guild bank for the purpose of being sold by the guild master, the main reason for this was since EQ2 had an amazing crafting system (best I have seen so far, IMHO) we had people that were Master Crafters and the things that they made were worth far more than they could give in cash.

So, I would like to see this as an option as well for Tithing, as well as set goals post as to what our Tithing is going for.

be handy if Bioware made a system like EVE: Online where the guild can set a tax rate so that every time you pick up credits from looting a % goes to the guild, it nice because you don't even notice it.

But as far as voluntary donations go I know from experience that this often takes care of itself depending on what the game offers in term of guild built stuff. In the case of EVE 30 Billion to build your own space station was no small number at the time but I personally remember chipping in over 3 billion voluntarily after a bit of oneupmanship caught hold and we all started to outbid each other to be the highest contributor hehehe

I agree that this is an interesting discussion topic at this time, and will likely be a source of speculation for months to come.

I'm tentatively on-board for the "tithe" thing, let's face it, these things will cost money. CoX had a "rent" system for it's bases based on the Super-Bases' floorplan size, and not anything else in it. Hopefully, this game will do the same.

Eager to see where this all ends up.

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Current Co-Host of All Wings Report In, the Official Podcast of the Rebel Legion SW costuming club
Order 66 Contributor: Fragments From the Rim - BLOG UPDATED EVERY THURSDAY

I like the sound of the "tithe" concept, but it will only work if its enforced, such as the automated % taken within the game mechanism.

I can see donations being requested by the Guild officers now and again, and mission/runs as groups as someone mentions into PVP/PVE to "gather" credits and items to finance these potential extras.

How amount an auction to start with, sell off the name of the vessel for the highest bidder...think of it "Perrians Pride", etc.

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Another option is for the ultra high end game items.

say you need 20+ people to beat something major in the game and it drops one uber item. you then auction that item to the entire guild and all the money raised go to the guild cap ship fund for example.

It's a pretty reasonable idea to have a tithe-type system, though I think you would need to consider whether players are saving for something. For instance, if I was about to hit a big personal money sink like a speeder level, or a sprint level or something, I might have considerably more cash than I would otherwise have, and while it isn't a huge deal, it would kind of suck.

And as a few people have said before, without any way of enforcing, it might be better to just have a donation drive system. So when we need a big chunk of money just post up how much is needed and what for and people will donate. Since that's what they would be doing anyway with an unofficial tithe (since there's no punishment for not paying and no reward for paying), just keep it all informal and voluntary enough people in the guild will pull together to pay for stuff, I'm sure.

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Captain J'aan Erron out.

I think it might be simpler and easier on folks if we do a few things:
1) Wait to see what the charges are going to be for guild housing, upkeep, etc...

2) Just look at our membership numbers and come up with a flat fee based on that

That way there are no percentage systems and you know how much is coming in every week or month or however you plan to do it.

Hey gang,

Finally had a chance to spend some time posting (rather than playing.)

I think that until we know what type of expenses we have we need to stay "free to play". Once we know the costs, I like the idea of a pledge drive, with rewards for the highest donors. I think that most of us are generous enough that we will keep the guild well funded.

If there are monthly upkeep fees (as previously discussed) then I would be cool with a tax system where people need to pay a set amount. If the game has a tax rate the guild can charge I would support that. Otherwise, I think we would need to look at options.

I know that in STO EC were not a very important currency, but we had little problem getting over 20 million in the guild bank with voluntary donations. I would expect the same from the O of 66.

Thanks,
Duncan

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