Requirements to get class

Ishin

Toz said:

I'd actually kinda like some admin clarification on that too. If someone goes and joins class via Certimene, and they're a certifiable PITA, can we GR03 then boot? What is the line for booting people out, anyway?

I've clear booted people seconds after they've joined via Certimene, I'm not going to lie. If they've come to me, been told no because they're absolute jackass problem causers, then they go and do it mechanically...bye bye, sayonara, etc.

To be quite frank, you could lower class-getting to being GR2, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me. To me, when people join the guild, it's not about class. I'd even be okay with people getting auto-classed once they join the guild, to be honest. Progression, to me, is about proving that you want to be part of the guild and proving that you have -something- to offer.

I mean, if I was in any other guild, it probably wouldn't be anywhere near the uh...'problem' I guess you would call it right now. It's just that like...in a guild where everyone's supposed to be James Bond-esque, you -want- James Bonds, M's, Q's, etc etc. Having a US Marine in a place like that just doesn't make too much sense, you know?

Yarel

@Rashar to be inducted by Certimene, you must have never been in the guild, and you cannot hold any class.

Rashar said:

Maybe I'm not tracking, but I don't understand why GR3 has anything to do with anything other than an arbitrary rank that the game requires in order for you to quit and retain class.

All too often it comes down to a simple fact... Once a person reaches GR3, you lose control over them and you can no longer take anything away from them. Before that, if you throw them from the guild, you cause them to lose the guild skills and thus anything they may have invested in artifacts, etc. In other words, if you let them get GR3 then you lose the ability to act like a cunt and hurt someone for not meeting your approval.

Aishia

It's also when you can vote in elections @Rashar

Aryanne

@aishia Is that not something you can asign via privs? I thought that was something that the GM could set at whatever GR they wanted?

Ishin

Nah, @Aryanne, that's something that is admin-set. It got set back in the day 'cause people would put a stranglehold from hell on guilds and instead of Admin stepping in and smacking those people in the private parts, they instituted a mechanical thing in order to prevent -anyone- from doing it similarly in the future.

Aryanne

Ahhh, okay fair enough, yeah. I can see how people would use that pretty unfairly.

Elie

So it seems like a lot of people would be happy with moving all the social/secretive/ritualistic/et cetera aspects of guild membership - the point at which you become a "true (shaman/knight/syssin/monk)" as it were - to GR 4 and then taking the really heavy requirements off of GR 3. That seems incredibly appropriate, and would give people a reason to strive for higher ranks, and most importantly doesn't require any admin intervention - just enact the change in your own guilds. Simple to do, even - tweak a few GR names, edit the numbers in a few help files and there you are. And as soon as you're not gating off class, i.e. mechanically affecting others' play experience, the admin could give less than one unicorn about how many hoops you make people jump through. Sounds like a better plan all around!

Moirean

I think election privs shouldn't be tied into the same rank as class, as I've heard some horror stories about alt armies couping, but there should also be some admin oversight as to where those privs go or else you end up with guilds not promoting people at all to maintain a bad regime.

Catherine

Jensen said:

The third option, and the one I've been promoting is parole. Let them in, let them up to gr2, but let them wait 1 or 2 years, 2 being the max. Everyone gets to meet them, experience them, and see how they currently play their character. By then the guildmates should have an idea if the player either benefits the guild (good), is a neutral element (still fine by me), or is harmful (bad).

Stuff like that makes me not join guilds, because I can 100% guarantee that by the time two weeks is up, I will not give any cheesecakes whatsoever about your guild. If I join a guild, any guild, and they expect that of me, what that says to me is 'screw you, we don't actually want you here, but this time will give me a good excuse to get rid of you without trying', just because one person with a few friends trash talked me after I left a guild once.

Also, if you think about it, GTS is GR5 (I believe that's standard). That's a bit of a secret club that people always forget about - one that you can easily make clear that others are missing out on. I understand the elections thing, worrying about GR3 = voting, but how many people do you think are actually going to bumrush a guild and mass-join, actually get GR3 and overtake a guild for OOC reasons without the admin noting and causing trouble? I'm not saying it hasn't and can't, I'm saying - how many people do you think can actually get away with that that you have to so majorly concerned over it?

Class shouldn't even be an issue. You used to get it just for being let out of novicehood. Who cares? What are they gonna do with your class if they joined just for it and left? Is your class seriously SO SPECIAL to you that you can't bear to share it with someone who -doesn't- want to be in your guild, -won't- represent your guild, and -won't- stick around long either of their own volition or because they were dumb enough to get themselves kicked. There's just no reason to care.

Ishin

@Catherine - The join x guild rush leadership thing has happened more than a handful of times in the past. It's not something I myself have ever worried about, but I think it would be good to move contest/vote to GR4 or GR5 in order to give some kind of mechanical incentive to progressing past GR3.

Edit: Which GR contest/vote goes to isn't really a big deal to me. At GR5 you get access to gts, so it would make sense that at 4 you get contest/vote, as class comes at 3. So it'd be kinda like slowly continuing the climb up the corporate ladder, as it were.

I've been GR18/19 for forevers. Only reason I'm not still 19 is because Ish gets in trouble and gets GDF'd more than he gets praised and GF'd >.>

Jensen

Repeating again, my argument has nothing to do with class and everything to do with voting, contesting, and being a fully vested member of the guild that I'm supposed to be able to rely on and trust. If you think 1 weeks play time to get to know your guildmates is too long, then don't join the Syssin. I'd take my current group of rockstar players over a massive guild of strangers any day of the week.

Solaria

Jensen said:

Repeating again, my argument has nothing to do with class and everything to do with voting, contesting, and being a fully vested member of the guild that I'm supposed to be able to rely on and trust. If you think 1 weeks play time to get to know your guildmates is too long, then don't join the Syssin. I'd take my current group of rockstar players over a massive guild of strangers any day of the week.

You know what you could do, if you really have questionable people that you would rather probate? Just don't inguild them. Instead, have a clan where they can get to know the guild members of note and arrange RP times for them to come get to know others. You don't -have- to bring someone in the guild. If you want to give them a chance but not let them read the news/etc, find alternatives. There are better outlets than what you are looking at.

Yes, it prevents them from getting access to skills - which is still a pain, but you'd at least be interacting with the person and offering RP other than using a punishment mechanic. Could even be more interesting, when you consider the Syssin. They wouldn't have access to any ghelps/etc, so your secret society could just put what you want them to know within the clan and that's it. All probation does is make it so they can't read the news - they can still get guildfavors, learn the guild skills, and hand out class. It really is meant to be a punishment, not a protection.

Jensen

I specifically said I didn't want to do that because leaving someone orgless or in limbo for x amount of time is really unfair.

Solaria

Jensen said:

I specifically said I didn't want to do that because leaving someone orgless or in limbo for x amount of time is really unfair.

Sorry, missed that, but it's not much different. Think about it. Most people, if they apply to what you're looking to do, will likely still have either another org or have other skills. So what's the probation good for? Not having access to news? That's it. That's all they miss out on mechanically. You guys can't find any alternative?

Moirean

I think moving some stuff up the ladder would be fine, and it would help give more motivation to progress. Maybe put voting at gr 4, contesting at gr 5 and ensure each guild has a feasible (harder, but possible) path up to gr 5 so one group can't keep power by keeping people at low ranks.

WHILE WE ARE ON THE TOPIC...More guild privs?

Jensen

Solaria said:

Jensen said:

I specifically said I didn't want to do that because leaving someone orgless or in limbo for x amount of time is really unfair.

Sorry, missed that, but it's not much different. Think about it. Most people, if they apply to what you're looking to do, will likely still have either another org or have other skills. So what's the probation good for? Not having access to news? That's it. That's all they miss out on mechanically. You guys can't find any alternative?

Read back and see the backlash to me wanting people to wait a week at GR 2. They have the skills, are in the club, and have access to everything but voting and contesting, yet people are viewing this as a person fuck you. Now imagine me trying to ask them to wait a week without the skills, access to help files, inclusion in guild events or lore, and really any hope of being able to join. I'm never asking anyone to do it, that is more of an insult.

To bring up a recent event that happened, we had Trager join our guild. It wasn't intended for him to join, but he wanted to rp as an understudy to Jensen and got cast out of Enorian for it. Being now guildless and cityless, he asked to join but very few of the Syssin wanted him in. I fought for him to join and under a probationary status he was allowed in. I can promise you that without being able to do that then he would have been refused. You're denying me a means of giving people a chance and then making me out to be a heartless monster for wanting to give people that chance; I really don't get it.

Areka

You can have a probationary status (not mechanical probation but RP probation) without dangling mechanical protection of skills in front of an individual like a feather and a cat. I've definitely had a probationary status with some questionable people - a couple of years of "we'll be watching, you have X and Y things additional to do to get from gr3-gr4, don't even think about Knighthood until we're sure of you (gr5).

The problem again is that your bar is set at gr3.

Moirean

Since we're talking about guild stuff, here's an example of some changes. Remove secretaries and instead let each guild create sub-roles.

GUILD ROLE (name)
GUILD APPOINT (name) TO (role)
GUILD INVEST (role) WITH (priv)

Then, give some more privs, on top of the existing secretary and rank ones.

- Shop (access/set prices in a shop)
- Quartermaster (give guilds a new room type that works like a city comm shop)
- Low_withdraw (withdraw up to 10-25k a day)
- Sparwatch (watch someone's commands in a sparring room, for combat training)
- Projects (for some reason there are no guild privs relating to project reading/creation aside from secs)
- Access (lets them access certain rooms without a key)
- Lockwork (AFAIK only GMs can do this)
- Strongfavor (favor is 2x as strong or can give 2 favors a day)
- Highfavor (favor is 3x as strong or can give 3 favors a day)
- Promote (promote someone to a new rank)
- Chest (access to your guild's newbie chest)
- Bounty (set bounties only guildies can claim)
- Etc

Then just let GMs play. We could make cool custom roles to get more people engaged and motivated (and help us delegate way more effectively). Being able to have even more special stuff would also make higher ranks and roles more appealing - let's be honest, most guilds have so little to do and progression tends to be not super exciting. When people DO want to get involved, it tends to be either you make them a secretary or you scramble to find ways to get them a unique role, which feels so cobbled together and can be tiring. The end result is people who aren't secretaries rarely have cool roles and privs in a guild, which means less investment and engagement. Implementing a more custom priv structure would get a lot of bang for your coding buck, as far as sustainable, player-created content and activity goes.

Alternative ideas are just adding in a few more cool roles:

- Elders (can't be outguilded, vote counts extra in elections, favor is worth as much as GM's)
- Champions (gives some PKish perk)
- Scribes (lets them have access to all the paperwork stuff (log, ghelp, projects, library))
- Etc

Solaria

Nah, totally not trying to make you out as a monster, trust me. And I saw the backlash, people are giving backlash to a lot of things. I think this happens because of the different sets of mindsets people in this game have right now. There can be some really toxic things that happen, and not specifically what all you've been going over. I was just trying to offer some sort of alternative ideas with how things work right now.

If probation was the terms they agreed to, maybe the guild as a whole needs to review why they don't want these people. You are just denying them access to the news, which 9/10 doesn't even have anything remotely interesting in it. I get people think it is a RP means to bring people in on limitations, and I get that some people don't mind it, but it is a toxic way to start out a player switching orgs.

Edit-- removing a little bit of what I had put here, not needed. I like what Areka said while I was posting. That's more what I'm trying to get across. Do something RP-wise, the mechanic serves positive thing at all.

Jensen

At any rank you can see the members roster. Not a big deal for most people, but Syssin get blanket enemied by orgs. I did the second day after joining. We have to be touchy about who gets to join. I suppose it doesn't matter anyway because I'm positive the new characters off the islands are just joining to check our roster. Mechanically you get access to just about everything save for GTS at GR3, I don't know why I have to keep repeating that I don't care about class it just happens to be at that rank as well.

So keep repeating the same stuff and I'll keep repeating it back to you.

edit: I'm not necessarily fighting to use the mechanic of probation, but fighting to set a time table for promoting.

Solaria

Jensen said:

Stuffs

I didn't say anything about class, personally. But that's not really a good reason to use probation either, the roster viewing prevention. Also, a lot of orgs get blanket enemied - not just Syssin. Eno enemies most anyone from Spinesreach or BL. So, I don't think it's specifically a Syssin thing. And people can find out what guild you are pretty easily, or what city you are a part of.

Edit--I do get what you're saying, man, especially on the time table thing. Just work with above gr3, like Areka said. Above gr3 it's totally cool from what I understand.

Jensen

That was at Areka, couple posts happened while I wrote

Solaria

Jensen said:

That was at Areka, couple posts happened while I wrote

My b, baby.

Moirean

If people are making alts to read GMEMBERS and then enemying based off that...we call that metagaming.

Moirean

Totally unrelated, but just tangentially, all this talk buzzing around about rank and req and stuff has inspired some changes in Carnis. I'm excited to mildly revamp things, so thanks for kicking me into more activity.

Ishin

Didn't you know, @Moirean? Metagaming isn't against the rules, according to Admin.

Areka

If people are metagaming, issue for metagaming. Issue yourself for suspected metagaming.

Again, you guys have the bar set really low and don't seem to be exploring other options for dealing with it. Yes, you should feel confident and sure in your full members, but YOU decide where full membership is. Everyone else is just a trainee that needs to earn their stripes and can be treated as such. YOU are making those choices.

The concerns seem mostly external as to what other people are doing and less focused on what you've got going on inside. The energy and attention proportions seem misplaced.

None of the arguments (on either side I suppose) seem to be sticking to the other, so maybe it's just moot, ya'll will keep on doing what you do.

Jensen

Voting and the ability to run for leadership to me means you're a full member. You might not be able to see GTS, but that really doesn't bother me if you can or cannot. Class just also happens to be at that rank, so I'm forced to set that rank as the important one. We can set any GR >3 as the important one, but you're already at the point where damage can be done.

Yes that is metagaming, but how do you prove it's happening?

Areka

You aren't forced to set that rank as the important one. You are choosing to by placing your priorities there. If there is a constant threat that those avenues are going to be abused, there are deeper concerns about the organization that need to be addressed.

You can set up your own laws about who can contest for leadership and be socially acceptable - Must be reasonable gr (for us it's Knighthood/gr5). That is part of the organization's culture. That is something -we- determined was appropriate.

What is going on that there's this constant fear of damage? Are things really that fragile/in turmoil?

Jensen

I'm addressing things I could forsee as problems since the requirements have just changed. I'd rather address concerns now when changes are happening than later when things are problems. I'm also bringing it up because we do induct members who might otherwise not have been granted admittance, seen with Trager.