Troubles with the guild

[Frost]

Still, I'd rather avoid drastically bumping up memory requirements further if we can at all help it.

Darned users! They're always causing trouble on perfectly good computers.

[o11c]

More important is what DarkWater wrote in another thread:

Ok, want to be 100% clear here. To say that material to a minor is a federal felony in the United States of America. It is typically punishable by 22 years in prison, and having to be registrar as a sex offender. It is considered child sexual psychosocial abuse.

o11c answer was: „I have to agree with DarkWater in this case.“ Having authoritative server logs will have consequenses in real life. It is slightly worrying seeing the Source Lead advocating to provide the tools to jail players for 22 years just for saying some words.

I reaffirm this: when people commit a crime, whether in game or elsewhere in life, they should be punished according to the law.

To say "just saying some words" implies that words are harmless. They are not.

[Nard]

[Sure.]

(No idea why 4144 thought the reasons were unknown, given that this happened in his thread.)

The problem is that we don't understand the reasons that were given, and that they may differ with the person who answers:

New guild creation has been limited for technical reasons. With 100 player slots per guild, and anyone being able to create a guild, memory usage on the server would shoot up much too high. The larger the guild limit, the less of them we can have - so there needs to be some way to control guild creation.

The idea (as jak1 said) is to have a guild npc that handles guild creation, levels, etc. This will limit the resource usage, and help us implement a proper guild system. Also the official client lacks guild support.

Until this is all taken care of, we can't really have a proper guild system. If it's going to be done, it should be done properly or it will end up half-assed like so many other things in this game.

Existing guilds have been allowed to stay, no sense ruining your fun, and you *are* testing the code for bugs and working on client support after all.

Actually, the guild system does not allow a character or maybe an account to belong to several guilds. Then, in the worst case, the max number of chars in a new guild of is the number of registered chars on server minus the number of chars in other guilds (minus the chars which does not have the party or guild skill because there could exist guild skills.) I can't see why this could cause a problem with memory much more than the party system does. Maybe because there are "hidden bugs" as a friend said to me. I wish I can test so that you are able to solve the issues. We can do it now that we have a test server .: Just put all testers GMs, and admins in a big guild and watch carefully what happens, then we could have 2....
Maybe it is the time now to think about what kind of guild system we would like to have before developing and correcting the actual system.

[Freeyorp101]

Actually, the guild system does not allow a character or maybe an account to belong to several guilds.

We're well aware of that.

Then, in the worst case, the max number of chars in a new guild of is the number of registered chars on server minus the number of chars in other guilds (minus the chars which does not have the party or guild skill because there could exist guild skills.) I can't see why this could cause a problem with memory much more than the party system does.

The party system has some issues, as it too stores NoMember entries, but the information needed for a party entry is far smaller than the information needed for a guild entry.
I covered this previously:

I wish it worked so nicely. But it stores everything up to the current maximum number of members, regardless of how many actual members there are. This is one of the reasons that I opposed replacing the system that made it grow as a guild progressed with a system that set a static cap of 100. Funnily enough, despite that it actually stores 120 in memory for whatever reason.

So, the worst case is not in having fewer large guilds, but in having a large number of small guilds. The worst case is a guild for every character, where the guild database would have entires two orders of magnitude greater than the character database.
Please note that the character database is huge, and we can't afford to have anything else close to that size as it is now. It's already at the point where (as you are all likely painfully aware) if the servers are interrupted, there is a very high chance that they will have been interrupted in the middle of a write. The char-server already takes up a full core on its own during writes, and before it forked to write (which causes issues of its own) it could take a few minutes for actions requiring the char-server (character selection, party chat etc) to complete.

The problem is exactly as MadCamel stated in the post I linked to.
A guild with one character in it does not take up one character's worth. It takes up the current character limit in that guild's worth (ie. 100 ever since it was changed from 16+current guild expansion skill to a static 100.)

Maybe because there are "hidden bugs" as a friend said to me. I wish I can test so that you are able to solve the issues. We can do it now that we have a test server .: Just put all testers GMs, and admins in a big guild and watch carefully what happens, then we could have 2.

Again, the issue is not large guilds. A few number of large guilds would be the best case, and would work fine. Presence of hidden bugs are doubtful. I understand the guild system works well on smaller servers where resource consumption isn't a concern.

I outlined possible solutions earlier:

It could be resolved as soon as either guilds are made to store or scale nicely, or a guild creation procedure is made that prohibits an explosion of throwaway guilds.

There are a number of ways this could be done.
Here are a few that have been brought up in the past, listed in ascending order of effort required:

• Having the cost of forming a guild increase exponentially with the number of guilds.
• Having a small base limit again that grows with guild experience via the guild extension skill. iRO has a limit of 16 that expands up to 56.
• A new rewritten guild system.

I'm partial to the former independent of any other solutions that might also be pursued.

---Freeyorp

[Nard]

Thanks for the clear answer

To limit the guild number, I would suggest one or several guild skills which could not be available before a certain level. Perhaps the guild registration with a subsequent fee could be necessary in some guild house. In any case the way memory is allocated to guilds should be modified in a more dynamic way even if it is evident that the the required space has a minimum size ( guild storage ...). The system you describe is obviously not satisfying.

[Derpella]

No one answered a pretty vital question: is spying on parties currently possible?

[Big Crunch]

No one answered a pretty vital question: is spying on parties currently possible?

I don't know, but I can assure you that a GM has no reason to use that command. In fact if they did, I'd want their ass on a platter. Metaphorically.

[Derpella]

AFAIK not all GM commands are logged. Is party spy one of them?

[o11c]

All GM commands are logged, except level 0 commands such as @wgm and @servertime. (One interesting side effect of this is that it is impossible to make @log or @tee a level 0 command)

In the current configuration, @partyspy is at level 99 - as are many other "disabled" commands - which is technically available to admins, but not GMs.