Variable Access to Guild DB
 

Okay, it's easy to build a database with Graal, but not without some kind of control.

Okay, I started out making a Spar and PK Rank database for Classic. It had over 600 accounts stored in only a week (it will be getting reset once a month). It isn't extremely controlled, it just loads the player into the database if they come online and aren't there. It isn't too bad though, if you wanted to let all players be included in this, which I want them to be.

I also would like to make a guild ranks database to complement this system. However, I would want it to influence guilds to stay in order (penalties for multiguilding, incentives for guild warring, activity). A problem comes, however, when you can't really tell if a player stored in a self-building guild database is still in the guild. I would like to allow all guilds to participate without any preconditions, but have no means of doing so. I mean, I wouldn't mind if I had to add extra features for guilds through special registration, but making it so guilds would have to register all their players wouldn't make sense and would lack the power needed for a better influence.

I think it would be a good idea if servers had scripting ability to access the guild DB. I know that it has all sorts of variables on the website, but it's not necessary to give access to all of them in this sense (though it may be a good idea if the intent of the new guilds database was to give special priveleges to guilds based on the information in the database)

All I would really need to make an addictive guild interaction system:
1. an account list of players in a specified guild
2. the account of the leader of a specified guild

I could use:
3. a player's rank in the guild

The leader's account specifically for enabling other guild members to perform certain tasks. Perhaps enabling a certain rank to perform a specific task (idea triggered #3).

Ex. ***(implementation #1) Letting guilds have a guild bank account. The leader assigns a certain rank the ability to withdraw and deposit into the bank, -or- the leader can be a miser. Winning a guild war could deposit a certain amount of money into the guild's bank account. Perhaps guilds are ranked by the size of their bank account?

(implementation #2) A Guild Leader would like to register their guild as a family guild or a normal guild. Perhaps the server could script the player so that they could have a family guild tag and fighting guild tag at the same time.

(implementation #3) A Guild Leader would like to apply his/her guild into an alliance. Once they put on their guild tag, a guild member can't hurt allies that are also wearing their guild tag.

(implementation #4) Perhaps enabling a player to set their nick to something else when on tag than what is in the official guild database.

It would be interesting to add some functionality to access the guild database yes.
Currently the only thing that is possible is checking if someone is the in guild (not sure if all npcservers are allowed to use it though):
sendtext("lister","checkinguild",{account,guild})
Result (onReceiveText) is "inguild",account,guild,nick

That's probably all you really need to make a database NPC for ranking guilds, but it wouldn't be easy to manipulate how global guilds can interact on a server without access to the ranks. I don't think I can popularize guilding on Classic again without it. Ranks I know would help, but not forever. I say that pretty much on the basis of when I redid MoD Fort the first time. Guilds would just stay up all night trying to get the high score for the first few nights until the high score became unattainable without having a huge amount of members or boring yourself to death. I rescripted it to have shorter, faster paced games, but nobody's really been using that system since there is no incentive to use it. No high score left or anything. It's a lot funner to play with the faster paced game, but there's no reason for them to play. So, yea, it would help glue the guild community back together with the ability to give incentives. The PK Rank is working out very well on Classic (as I expected). The spar rank is too, but not quite as much (I'd probably have to collaborate with the GCs to help the spar ranks a little bit).

Actually, I've changed my mind. All I would really need a function for to implement a system like this would be the rank of the player, although the name of the rank of the player would also be quite useful. (ex. you could make a rank called Treasurer at any rank #.)