Designing a Real Guild Bank... - Page 2

Tenskatawa · 09/23/06, 1:08 AM

Heh, I brought this up on the R&D forums and General and got a general response of 'lol alts work just fine noob.' Our guild bank got cleaned out by an unknown party a while ago and Blizzard wouldn't help because we were account sharing in order to manage the damn thing. I'm not at all confident that Blizzard cares a whit about this, even though they really should.

• frmorrison · 09/23/06, 1:12 AM

Originally Posted by Tenskatawa

Heh, I brought this up on the R&D forums and General and got a general response of 'lol alts work just fine noob.'

Did you expected an intelligent respose from that place?

It would be nice to have guild bank tools, but I don't see it happening in the near future.

• frmorrison · 09/23/06, 1:14 AM

Originally Posted by james

Maybe Blizzard should actually define a policy on guild bank distribution. If a guild folds, perhaps all items should automatically be transferred (after 48 hours) to the Auction House with the proceeds distributed to the member accounts?

I don't see that ever happening. Gold isn't hard to get, although it does get tedious collecting it.

Eej · 09/23/06, 4:03 AM

Originally Posted by james

A lack of a proper gbank system has always annoyed me when guilds have disbanded and certain gleaders have taken it as the green light to take the cash. I mean, does anyone else get REALLY annoyed that there are people on your server with 10s of 1000s of gold because they were the GM of some MC/ZG guild that disbanded (and they kept the guild bank?). 40-100+ people worked hard to get the items in question but because some guy managed to convince some people to click accept, when a guild goes under, he gets a big pay day.

The current system of "I'll make a bag alt and just mail me it" relies too much on trust and the reliability of one person - surely in a game like this, there should be some support for a guild bank structure. Transactions should be transparent (log of who and what has received each deposit/withdrawal) and "loot -> guild bank" should be an option for a master looter. Hell, there should even be support for a guild democracy structure to allow you to re-assess the leadership every 30 days or so.

Maybe Blizzard should actually define a policy on guild bank distribution. If a guild folds, perhaps all items should automatically be transferred (after 48 hours) to the Auction House with the proceeds distributed to the member accounts?

Or you can boot all the scrubs from the guild first, then split the loot, then disband the guild.

See, I found a clever method around your overly controlling scheme!

james · 09/23/06, 4:28 AM

Originally Posted by Eej

See, I found a clever method around your overly controlling scheme!

Or Blizzard could define a policy about such behaviour.

Daboran · 09/23/06, 8:37 AM

Originally Posted by Malan

Heck, make it a real time transfer - if an officer is on that has sufficient rights to authorize withdrawls, he gets a pop up approval window allowing him to allow, or deny with a short comment explaining why. If allowed the item is immediately given to the player in question.

They wouldnt do this, it would break the limitation on potions/buffs. Theres a reason pots only stack in 5's.

Grillkohle · 09/23/06, 8:48 AM

Originally Posted by Daboran

Originally Posted by Malan

Heck, make it a real time transfer - if an officer is on that has sufficient rights to authorize withdrawls, he gets a pop up approval window allowing him to allow, or deny with a short comment explaining why. If allowed the item is immediately given to the player in question.

They wouldnt do this, it would break the limitation on potions/buffs. Theres a reason pots only stack in 5's.

I don't see how it would break the limitations on how many buffs one can have. What it would actually do is work around inventory space, as you could use the guild bank as a general extension of people's inventory.

Therefore, if people request stuff from the guild bank, it shouldn't just pop up in their inventory, but be automatically mailed to them, with the usual restrictions that apply to mails that are sent with items attached.

R4zza · 09/23/06, 8:55 AM

There would have to be some limit on what guilds could open a 'Guild Vault', a certain size of guild for example. Otherwise you could simple make your own guild, get some level 1's to sign your charter, and hey presto, you have a massive amount more bank space than was intended for the average player. Ofcourse putting a huge gold price on such a Vault would be one way of checking it, but seeing as gold can be farmed or bought by one person, some sort of size limit would be more effective.

♦ Praetorian · 09/23/06, 10:07 AM

It's fun to design on the level of complexity here, but if Blizzard ever does implement something like this, I can guarantee it'd be on a simple level -- straightforward and easy to use. All I'd like to see is the following:
1) Create a communal guild bank. Allow gold to be deposited as well as items.
2) Start with 100 slots, and allow the GM to upgrade the guild bank by purchasing additional blocks of 40 or so.
3) When the GM is setting rank permissions, alongside the ability to invite or to see/use Officer chat, he would be able to specify Deposit, View, and Withdraw permissions for each of the ranks.
4) For added security, the way you have to type "DELETE" to junk a blue or better, let the guildmaster set a password that has to be typed in order to access the guild bank, once per access session. (If you really want security here, make it a virtual keypad that pops up.) Now the guild is only vulnerable to betrayal from within, rather than one random officer getting keylogged.

That's it. All the other features are nice, but the above is all we need. #1-#3 are really just the essentials, and #4 obviously has significant practical advantages.

Khalikryst · 09/23/06, 12:49 PM

I agree with Gurg that they'll keep it fairly simple.

I know others have suggested immediate access but Blizzard seems to kind of hate expanding (and I assume, adding new) realtime storage like banks and bags but doesn't seem to mind us floating loads of junk around between our mules via the mail system (raise your hand if you have 50+ items floating between 2-3 mules at any given time *raises hand*). I'm guessing this has to do with their database setup. So I wouldn't be at all surprised that any guild bank system they put in would work somewhat off of the mail system so it can operate at a lower priority than individual banks and bags.

And I think that would be ok. Afterall, most transactions to/from current guild alts are through the mail system anyway.

One additional requirement I'd like to see though would be transaction reports. Not only would that help with accountability issues, it would probably give guilds a method to script up DKP credit for bank contributions and such.

Eej · 09/23/06, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by james

Originally Posted by Eej

See, I found a clever method around your overly controlling scheme!

Or Blizzard could define a policy about such behaviour.

Wait, you want it such that you're not allowed to boot bad people from your guild? Why should Blizzard (or anyone for that matter) interfere with a guild officer's right to boot people who they believe don't make the cut?

Dakous · 09/23/06, 1:25 PM

Relatively easy and imo fairly necessary feature (especially from a "Please, save the CSRs!" perspective -

Auditing transactions.

Malan · 09/23/06, 1:57 PM

Originally Posted by Daboran

Originally Posted by Malan

Heck, make it a real time transfer - if an officer is on that has sufficient rights to authorize withdrawls, he gets a pop up approval window allowing him to allow, or deny with a short comment explaining why. If allowed the item is immediately given to the player in question.

They wouldnt do this, it would break the limitation on potions/buffs. Theres a reason pots only stack in 5's.

I have no idea how what I said relates in any way, shape or form to potions/buffs stacking.

Whitemane · 09/23/06, 5:09 PM

Originally Posted by Hexel

Actually I'm pretty sure this is something Blizzard indeed has thought of, and thought better of.

Now, I'm going to set myself in the role as a game designer who's just been given the task to evaluate the feasibility of implementing a fully functional guild bank / vault system in a game like this.

Obviously your first thought is "it's a great idea, encourages guilds to cooperate, no reason not to implement it!". But as you keep pondering a few points start making themselves apparent. First and foremost, of course, in huge online games like this - everything that can be exploited in any way will be, of that you can rest assured. Since a guild bank system is no different from a real bank in the fact that someone else is effectively handling and keepsaking your resources, the system has to be foolproof.

Now, the first step towards foolproofness would of course be to handle a lot of it, if not all, serverside. This is going to add to total server load. Even so, what could you come up with that makes sure a corrupted guild leader / officer does not just empty a guild bank and take off with 25k gold? Do you make all the movements dependant on more than one person acknowledging? It's still only people, basically this might lower the possibility but it's still going to happen. Are you ready to handle the extra log requirements as a result of this, and the extra load on game support to restore stolen items?

Basically I can see why you wouldn't implement such a system just based on the possible exploitations it brings with it. Of course, this is bad news for those of us who are actually thrustworthy and would benefit from the simplicity of having a built-in system to help in our daily guild-resources-handling routines, but still the possibility to set up a working bank / vault system is in the game as it is.

So as a game designer I would say; do not make an explicit system for this, instead make sure it's feasible that players who wish to create one can do so.

All the things you have just mentioned there Blizzard has already covered by saying that they basically don't give a shit if it happens to you.

Copernicus · 09/25/06, 2:19 AM

If any guild bank features ever get implemented, I'd love to have a "Guild Repair Bot" that uses the guild's gold to repair. Would have to require a minimum guild rank to use etc to prevent abuse etc.