Guild v City

Toz

Maybe here's not quite the right place for it - though it DOES contain an idea of mine.

Currently, city/guild dynamics are hilariously one-sided. If a city and a guild don't get along, the guild can do a grand total of nothing except complain and try to replace city leadership, while the city has a whole host of powers available to them (enemy status/take away the guildhall, break treaties/jack up comm prices, remove members from the city (thus taking away their access to ylem stuff)). So, my idea'd be this: some minor ylem boosts for GUILDS (let them have their own pylons/maybe allow their pylons to interact?) This'd let people in guilds and not a city have some perks too, while also giving maybe a small bargaining chip for the guilds to use against the city. Also, each guild has a guard type associated with it - in an EXTREME case, have some way to 'disable' that guard type. GUILD PROTEST could be used to neutralize the guards belonging to whatever guild they're a part of - city relations with a guild are now important, TREATIES MATTER and can actually be somewhat enforced, and there's actually room for negotiating. I don't tend to like one-sided power dynamics, and I'm curious what else people can come up with.

Macavity

I like the idea of giving Guilds more power, however if the Guild does have issues with a city they do have means to take care of that and force the city to stop any dumb things they are doing to the Guild.  The Admin and Gods in our game do very well in doing the right thing for the guilds when the city goes WTF off the wall against a guild just because they do not agree with the guild.   

Granted they do not fix everything, but such things like closing a guild off from their Guild Hall, is one that comes to mind.

Honestly I think a total revamp of the Guild and House system is in order.  We are already anchored to the cities as is, so why not complete that transition and give guilds and houses further power to choose to help or not help the city.

oh and switch Sciomancers for Carnifex as far as being tied to Bloodloch vs Spinesreach!

Moirean

I'd love to see more ways for guilds and cities to interact - it'd give cities more accountability and encourage stronger relations between them, while also giving guilds a bit more power. 

Some random ideas:

• In Spinesreach, I have 'guild representatives' in our leadership clan, but it'd be nice if there actually was a formal role like that for each guild. It'd give a cool role for people to serve in, and it'd give guilds a voice in the government. Maybe let the guild reps, as a group, count as a vote for CL or something as well.
  
• Maybe have some sort of income or resources or whatever be tied to the guilds (maybe the daily comm allocation), so cities are encouraged to have strong ties to the guilds. Guilds could then block that distribution if the cities mess with them.
• Maybe if you wanted to get really checks-and-balances, give the guilds a way to impeach a CL or council member. Would require every guild leader in the city to vote yes. I imagine that would just open the floodgates to drama, though.

Ezalor

Yeah I sure would love to give the Carnifex, who are an entirely Spirean guild at this point and encourage their newbies to leave Bloodloch, power to hold sway over Bloodloch. What could go wrong?

Daskalos

Loch has Carnifex. Spinesreach has Sciomancers. Enorian has Ascendril. Duiran has Sentaari. All these guilds, I believe, have the bulk of their membership in cities OTHER than where the guilds resign. Surely nothing could go wrong! 

Neithan

I've always kind of wondered why the admins don't just let the Carnifex, two Magi guilds and Monks just trade cities. It'd be sensible, no?

Periluna

I think it's more a matter of keeping the cities balanced guild-wise. Daru and Sentaari in the same city wouldn't make much sense. And even though the skillsets aren't similar at all, I think the same has been said about Bloodborn and Sciomancers, being as the Bloodborn are blood mages.

Moirean

Ezalor said:

Yeah I sure would love to give the Carnifex, who are an entirely Spirean guild at this point and encourage their newbies to leave Bloodloch, power to hold sway over Bloodloch. What could go wrong?

What? We don't encourage newbies to leave BL. I've been actively trying to help us integrate BETTER with BL, such as that meeting with Damon discussing what sort of events we could hold or things we could do to make us mesh better. We're a BL guild. Our newbies enter BL through the mechanics of the game. We will have courses at the BL Academy, and Carnifex newbs don't get gear/guild courses if they attend the Spirean Academy. It's entirely in our interest to get along with BL, and I'm actively trying to work with the city - which, as the CL, I assume you are aware of.

I have no idea why this random snarkiness came up, on a post from weeks ago. 

Toz

Nah don't worry, they know more about the Carnifex than we do.

Also we get loads of benefit from BL, like our great treaties and comm deals like other guilds get with their orgs.

Ezalor

@Neithan I believe it is to prevent player-induced swings from significantly altering the mechanics of the game. The intros and Academies are specifically written for certain cities and they'd have to redo them completely because of player decisions.

Angwe

But being able to affect major change in the world through my actions as a player is why I play MUDs. Makes the world less static.

Xenia

In regards to Carnifex and BL, it troubles me. The past few noobs I've seen come through weren't sure about the whole undead process. I bring in people to talk to them about Undead who quite honestly make a great argument for it, and if I had heard the same things at the start, before going through and becoming integrated into Spinesreach, may have changed my choice in remaining living. 

The point is that the majority of the time, my process goes something like this: 

-Have you thought about if you want to be living or embrace undeath? 

-No: I bring in a vampire to talk about Undeath, since I assume they already know what living is like.

-When asked if it matters, I say that as far as the Carnifex are concerned, they will accept living or undead. However, they're citizens of Bloodloch, which is an undead/vampire city, if they wish to remain there, they need to embrace undeath. 

-typically this leads to the noob going, well I still don't know if I want to be undead. my

   response is to tell them they don't have to decide right then and there, if asked where I live, I tell them about Spinesreach, otherwise, I leave info as is and proceed with trying to hook them up with leadership in Bloodloch so they can make their choice and move forward with their noob experience. 

Unfortunately, because most of the kids don't want to take time to figure out that decision, and have their citizenship be up in the air, they leave to Spines to take time to figure out whether they wish to embrace undeath or not, and in the mean time, get caught up in the Spirean culture. 

It's not an effort from the Carnifex to try and sway new members from Bloodloch. Also, there is an ongoing conflict between the two houses and the guild, in regards to titles not being held while undergoing the apprenticeship process. I still think that a compromise should and could be met, but unfortunately, nothing has been done about it from either side. 

TLDR: Carnifex aren't trying to prevent their members from BL. 

 

Angwe

DISCLAIMER: This post has been made while under the influence of PBR and caffine.

Sure, OFFICIALLY the Carnifex are a Bloodlochian guild. But I think we all know where the guild really belongs.

The Sentaari are a little more arguable, but not much. So what if there would be two guilds that practice Tekura and Telepathy in Enorian? There used to be two guilds in Duiran that practiced Metamorphosis and Concoctions, whoopty-frickin'-doo.

It's just plain silly that control of Organizational control is taken from the players in such a manner. I think the idea that we have such control over the game world is why most of us play MUDs instead of playing WoW on an RP server, right?

Xavin

The thing is that we don't have all -that- much control over where organizations are tied. That's pretty much all up to the admin. For example, when the Ascendril were looking to move into a city, we talked in character about possibly moving to duiran. But I had been told point blank by an admin that a move to duiran for the ascendril would never happen. Our choice was to be outside a city or move into enorian.

The guilds pretty much are where they're going to be, unless the admin change their policy.

Angwe

The admin should change their policy. It's a bad policy. So what if two guilds swap orgs? What's hurt? Nothing. What's gained? Depth.

Daskalos

Skillwise, though, the Ascendril (Spirit Plane\shared with Luminaries and Templars) make sense in Enorian

Iosyne

There are innumerable ways for characters to impact their organizations in a way that is meaningful without causing guilds to sporadically change wherever their allegiances lie. One of those things permits a dynamic and fluid experience for the game as a whole; the other is bad game design.

Five years ago, the majority of Sentinel players were citizens of Enorian, because of how bad of an experience it was to be a member of Duiran. Is that the case today? No. There are numerous links, flavor and mechanic-wise, between each guild and each city (some of which are upcoming changes you'll just have to be patient for). To permit "cult of personality" type influences to cause what ultimately ends up being temporary fads is detrimental to game vision and development from an administrative perspective.

Toz

Hence suggesting some ways for an organization to impact the world without just swapping cities - as it stands, because we're perceived as a 'Spinesreach' guild over a BL guild, granted this is some mild speculation on my part, we don't really get treaties with BL or BL guilds. As a political entity, short of having a voting block, guilds are currently pretty lackluster. If that's by design, fine - but it doesn't seem like it's supposed to be that way.

Haven

Just with how things are set up and seem, I always thought by design that you use your guild to take control of your city. Then when the city was under your guild's control, you pushed your guild's agenda/view on the world. Rogues and what have you would be the  wild card to any organization. It works really well that way up until you realize that whoever controls the city could bone you really well without any real threat of retaliation if you deviate too far from how they want things. So we have a coup or go home environment.

[spoiler]

For instance - Daru (By any means necessary, no mercy, no compromise or whatever their motto is) go on to take over Enorian (light central) and then use city mechanics (war) to spread the message. They'll slaughter entire villages, burn vast regions, whatever it takes if it meant keeping it out of enemy hands or even rooting out the enemy. Kill an innocent baby and save hundreds kind of folk. They're basically the ones that have stared into the abyss a bit too long as far as morality goes.

Then there's the Paladin or Templar who'd fit what is more traditionally known as the "good guy" who shows compassion but knows how to throw a punch and what have you. Has a strict code of honor that they'll refuse to cross no matter what. Probably will play fair, even towards their enemies because live by example or something.

Then city politics circled around who had the most influence at the time so they could carry their version of what they believe is the right version of the city's theme to the world.

And yeah, yeah. I know there's different shades in each org to lend to the complexity and that they aren't cut and dry. Just an example.

[/spoiler]

I don't think the core design needs much changing if any at all. Just give guilds/houses the ability to seriously bargain with the city and retaliate if necessary beyond couping. This could be anything from guilds supplying a certain guard type or vital resource to utility perks (like Ascendril/Sciomancers/Syssin/Shaman offering cities they're aligned to access to portals that connect to various parts of the world or Luminaries/Indorani/Cabalists/Sentaari giving city free rebirth defense, etc). Something like this would make politics even more satisfying for both parties AND it would give treaties a more meaningful purpose. Granted, some abilities and artifacts would need changing and or removal unless brand new utilities were thought up or something but you get the idea.

Veovis

I don't know if this is really considered thread necromancy, but I can't say how much I agree with @Haven.

Since returning, I've definitely struggled with where to find meaningful conflict for my character to engage in. It has been difficult. Sure, there's group PK at lessers, or taunting @Daskalos in a public post, but beyond that?

With the change from life versus undeath it seems like a lot of conflict disappeared. 

Where did the conflict go?

We need more sources for conflict in Aetolia in general.

Teani

On conflict:

In general, I think we need for people to take things less serious and allow themselves to lose once in a while with good humor. That's how you keep a personal conflict going. When it comes to these personal conflicts I think it's very important for other people around to make sure their involvement is alright or not. Barging in has a tendency to blow things out of proportion far too easily, because both sides will bring in more and more people to handle the conflict and in the end no one will actually know why they're fighting.

IMHO "My friend died! I'm on a rescue mission!"  should be more about finding said friend to RP about what happened than to go bash in the brains of the person who killed them. Not only would this allow the friend to get revenge on their own if this is what they need, but it will open up for more communication and character development.

Personally, I'm plotting and planning for a way for my character to end up in a conflict with some of the big players. No doubt she'll die numerous times trying to fight them, but I don't care!

Haven

They're working on a faction system iirc. Not sure if that'll be the new central conflict system or what but there's that.

In the mean time, I'd suggest coming up with your own plots with other orgs/players and hope they run with it.