Book of Heroes - RPG

Feature: Guild Loyalty

What is it? As you raid for your guild, you gain guild loyalty! You will gain points of guild loyalty which will advance your loyalty level (to a current maximum of 5) as you fight waves of incoming monsters during each phase of a raid. If you join another guild, your loyalty will reset to 0 and you will have to regain loyalty with your new guild (because... well... you simply weren’t very loyal, were you?!). If you leave your guild but do not join another guild, when you re-join your previous guild, you will retain your loyalty. Choose wisely!

Getting to a certain level of loyalty will have benefits that go along with it that will make staying loyal to your guild worthwhile. What benefits you ask? Take a look at the screen capture to get a better idea.

Your loyalty progress will also be visible on the main guild page. In addition, your guild mates will have their guild loyalty listed in the guild roster.

Why did we add it? We currently felt that there was little incentive to stay in your guild and keep your teammates within your guild. Guilds tended to just be social hubs, but not much else except raid “hosts”. We want to foster a sense of banding together with your friends and taking out your foes. We also wanted to reintroduce that feeling of light competitiveness between guilds that has been somewhat lost since 1.4.

It should be noted that the valor bonus for guild loyalty will only apply for raids hosted by your own guild.

But wait! What happens to mercing? And what the heck do I mean by “will only apply for raids hosted by your own guild”? What other raids would you possibly be taking part in if the penalty for joining a new guild is to start again at 0 loyalty? Well... you’ll just have to stay tuned for part 2 where I reveal our next major feature in 1.6!

Raid Finder / Mercenaries

What is it? Simply put, we built “mercing” into the game system itself. For the uninitiated, “mercing” or using raid mercenaries is a practice of joining a guild simply for the benefit of helping the guild succeed in their raid or because the raid is convenient to you as the player. Once the raid is complete, mercenaries generally leave the guild hosting the raid to return to an unguilded status or their “home” guild. We wanted to streamline this process.

As a prospective mercenary, you will be able to find raids in progress by using the “Find raid” button that appears on every raid on the world map. You are allowed to join any open raid as a mercenary (even if you are not in the guild that is hosting the raid or if you are unguilded) as long as you meet the normal requirements such as the minimum might.

As a prospective guild who wants to host a raid, you have a full range of control over when and how many mercenaries can join. You can start the raid with a certain number of mercenary slots open or they can be opened at a later point in time as the raid is already in progress. You also have the option of password protecting your raid so only those who know the raid password can join as a mercenary. Take note, there is a cap to the number of mercenaries you can incorporate into your guild’s raid (this varies between the different raids). As some people might have noted from part 1 of the preview, guilds now have a cap of 100 members. To go hand in hand with all our changes, each raid will now have a maximum number of participants.

While you are a mercenary in another guilds raid, you will also have temporary access to that guild’s chat channel (on a separate tab) until that raid concludes.

We still want to reward guilds that complete their raid with no mercenaries or keep their raid fully “in house”. There will be a 10% bonus to power, prestige, and guild XP if no mercenaries are used. In addition, each mercenary used will have an impact on the power, prestige, and guild XP gained for completing a raid. RPP contributed by mercenaries will provide power, prestige, and guild XP at a rate of 50% of a normal guilded member.

Why did we add it?

Throughout the development of Book of Heroes, we’ve found that the game has grown in ways we didn’t expect. The concept of “mercing” by the community is something we didn’t expect but we are happy to accommodate it. We want to embrace community driven activities and make them easier. This was one such way we could change the game and build an activity that already happens frequently into the game design itself.

Ultimately we wanted to build a game system that was a great balance between strengthening guilds and promoting mercenaries.

This concludes part 2 of our preview for 1.6. As always, I’m going to end with a hint for the next preview segment... an old friend needs to regain his magical staff, and might need a little help retrieving it! Stay tuned for part 3!