House Merging...

Macavity

This is where I disagree about the ability to have alts.  I truly feel that no one person should have alts in Aetolia, or at the very least HELP SECONDS should be amended in that no one person can ever raise two characters to take control of a House, Guild, City, or Order.  

Kiralla and Erzsebet are the same person and we have known this for years.  Both characters raise to the power to take over two Houses and thus begins working on improving them.  Since it is two Houses, this would be that both should have separate ideologies, but as it has been explained already in past posts the ideologies become the same over the years.  As it was shown here and admitted by Erzsebet, she has stopped putting as much time into Kiralla as she use to for what ever reason.  As a result to this and not having an active leader of a House, the House falls in activity, because as well all know when there is not an active strong leadership within a group the interest of the other members goes away and they begin looking for a more active group.

If HELP SECONDS included my suggestion, this would mean that two completely different people would be in charge of the two Houses and could have kept them from becoming low in population.  Also it is possible that the two Houses would have had two very different ideologies as well since it would have been coming from two different people and not the same person.  

Kiyotan

This is not a thread about alts or the validity thereof. Let's not derail the thread any further, thanks.

Mastema

I was wondering can the admin/gods force other houses to merge without asking the playerbase. As I would be a bit annoyed if they for example merge houses with two seperate ideals that  would conflict, just to reduce the number of houses.

Illikaal

If you can think it up, the administration could probably do it. In this case, the matter of whether they 'can' do it is a yes. The matter of whether they would is something else entirely. If they did, they'd have a damned good reason to do so, and or the decision made would probably be better for the playerbase as a whole. 

It'd be similar to class revamps, taking Shamans/Druids for example. Some people are still upset at the fact that Druids were wiped out entirely because they miss metamorphosis/groves. Other people (myself included) are quite happy that the revamps got done, because the old druid class was stagnant and boring. The decision was made against some people's wills, but it was a good decision overall. 

Villi

You know what we could do to avoid all of this weirdness with houses? We could remove them entirely, give them a guild, put on sunglasses, and tell them, "Deal with it." Just thought I would throw that one out there.

Macavity

Villi said:

You know what we could do to avoid all of this weirdness with houses? We could remove them entirely, give them a guild, put on sunglasses, and tell them, "Deal with it." Just thought I would throw that one out there.

HA!  That would be way too many big headed people within one guild.  You wanna talk about drama 24 hours 7 days a week!  that would be it!  haha 

Villi

See, that, to me, is exactly the point. By relegating vampires to a single guild, excess members would quickly get sick of the sheer numbers. The overflow of vampires fleeing this would spill over into underpopulated guilds. Vampire houses have the peculiar effect of trapping a lot of people within the whole vampire subgroup. The game would be much healthier if there were less of them and more of everything else. That is right. You heard me, vampires. *throws her arms out to either side* Come at me.

Sarita

I'm not sure that's exactly what would happen. From what I've seen a healthy amount of active, 25+ year-old vampires - maybe more than half - already are in guilds. That's the case in Bahir'an at least, and the majority of the Teradrim right now are vampires in Houses. (Not counting people who join for the Praenomen class, then wait a little while to decide if they want to multiclass or not.)

Rou

I'm kinda surprised there isn't a new thread about the changes made to Houses and the Imperium, but I suppose this is along those lines.

When growing a plant, you do not use a smaller pot. When fattening a pig you don't feed it less.

Being a 10 year vampire and, to put it bluntly, I think these changes are stupid, irrelevant, and will only hamper activity and new growth. I don't know what direction we're heading, but I'm not seeing a little green arrow pointing up.

Ilyon

It's called consolidation.

Orisae

Those analogies with plants and pigs don't really fit unless House players are capable of cloning themselves, Rou. People don't just appear out of nowhere to fill in the voids without steps being taken to consolidate. Closest thing I could see to that would be like pruning, cutting off the bad to encourage future growth of the plant.

Regardless, the changes were made with the mind of giving everything a purpose for the community as it stands. Better that than a few screws tinkering around in a big old bucket.

Azrael

I think the post was very interesting and have to admit, I absolutely LOVE the negative penalties for having living members and spirit classed members in a house and I do mean LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. I'm going to have to buy Raz a drink in Vegas for that decision getting put in.

Not so much surprised that the Imperium was destroyed, very curious to see what comes out of it.

Aldric

With all these house changes going on I'm going to throw out this request again:

Please make HWHO show up like GWHO. Highest rank at the top, down to lowest, with indicators that a person is a leader of the house. Please please please. 

Rou

I suppose what I meant is how does having fewer Houses benefit? I'm all fine and for no living/spirit alligned characters in a House though. But what difference does the size of the bucket mean if there's still only a few screws? Seems to me the screws would be attracted to a larger bucket. People aren't just going to appear out of nowhere because there's fewer choices now. The logic behind this consolidation is flawed.

Also, if we're going to monitor haven-idling for Houses it should be done for everything else too, esp vote strength.

Kiyotan

Maybe I am misunderstanding the change to Houses, but it doesn't look like any are getting deleted, so this argument of "fewer Houses" is null. Rather, the prestige and authority of Houses (read; Major, Minor, clan) are what's at stake. If you do things right as a House, like limiting your membership to undead folks, then you'll have no problems. Really, this should be generating more competition among Houses which, as anyone who's ever taken Business 101 knows, is the best way to increase productivity.

I agree with you on the vote strength thing, though. That's a good point.

Orisae

The vote strength is a good one, yeah. I think that should be something for all organizations, come to think of it.

Lin

Rou said:

I suppose what I meant is how does having fewer Houses benefit? I'm all fine and for no living/spirit alligned characters in a House though. But what difference does the size of the bucket mean if there's still only a few screws? Seems to me the screws would be attracted to a larger bucket. People aren't just going to appear out of nowhere because there's fewer choices now. The logic behind this consolidation is flawed. Also, if we're going to monitor haven-idling for Houses it should be done for everything else too, esp vote strength.

I can only speak for myself, but every once in a while I get the urge to play a vampire. I see that massive list of Houses and think "alright, which house fits me." Every single damn help file, without question, is the exact same document, colored in the House's unique language.

• We strive to be the House other Houses are measured by.
• We embrace both scholars and warriors.
• Rising through the ranks in this House is not an easy path.
• Unlike those other crappy Houses, ours is the most pure, and the most closely aligned with the Consanguinic culture.

Repeat seven times.

So on my vampire, I see seven identical Houses. I can join any one of these Houses and, except if they're Ve'kahi (which has always had okay numbers) or Lunare (which has decided to take on anyone and everyone), I'll get the same result: two or three people online, neither of which speak to you, and very little to do.

You think that having a buttload of Houses will make vampires seem popular and active, but that makes absolutely no sense. Look at when it was myself or Klonk running the Syssin and we had 10-13 people on at any given point. People saw that and just kept joining the guild!

I'd still be happy with just one big vampire House that is more or less a guild, but I'm crazy like that.

Ezrax

All this talk of consolidating our small playerbase, and meanwhile Achaea just opened a new freaking City. Those jerks.

Arbre

I think there needs to be more than on House, but MUCH fewer than we have now. 3-4, max.

Azrael

This is the house leaders of the other houses after Lunare kinda got spanked by Abhorash;

http://youtu.be/8vJiSSAMNWw

Fenrir

This is cool! Makes me want to be a Vampire again.

You know, I could potentially pick up a couple of professions... Praenomen among them.

/chin

Ezrax

Despite the haranguing Lunare received in the meeting, they still manage to hover around the top of TOPHOUSES despite representing everything Abhorash despises.

Lin

They're also goddamned massive, that shouldn't be too surprising.

Haven

So are all the Houses falling in line behind Abhorash? Or is there an underdog/rogue House that's planning on giving the big finger and becoming one of the last 4 vampire Houses despite the odds?

Fenrir

From the log I saw, it sounded like Abhorash was pretty clear that to make it through the elimination you HAD to cull the living from your ranks and such.

How would they give the finger, exactly?

Mastema

I know Lunare has a lot of people in its ranks. Still, I am astounded they have that many points as I too expected them to have less with the living. Perhaps the deduction thing is meh, or they converted in mass to the undead. Who can honestly say?

 

@Fenrir It is a bit out there, but I personally would make the living go undead under the promise of once I was one of the last four standing houses that they could get cured with our assistence. Then again I am grasping at straws here :P

Fenrir

That's a pretty gnarly idea and it is technically possible.

I think Abhorash would lose his mind though and go around exploding people.

Therefore, I think Lunare should do this.

Macavity

Just so its clear, at current Lunare has asked and kicked out all Living members that were within its ranks.  All that remain now are the Vampires and Undead.  this is why you see us with such high score.  The living is not counting against us.

Alistaire

Of course they kicked all the living people out. Abhorash came and told them, "Do this or you'll be destroyed" - why wouldn't they do it? They may be really weird and lacking in give a damn for the rest of vampire society, but they love themselves.

Ezrax

Well, that makes me actually gain some respect for Lunare. Instead of sulking about the changes (as I suspect everyone expected), they accepted the change and moved on with it maturely. Good work, guys.