Guild and city unification

Xenia

It's been two years since guild citizenship was restricted to cities. I've been curious to hear from admin if this change has provided the desire effect. For my part, I don't feel I have enough of a broad knowledge to really form an opinion. Selfishly I'd love to be both Spirean and Carnifex, but it doesn't make or break my experience and there have been work arounds in the form of clans and player supported RP.

My question is primarily to the admin and hoping to hear about their thoughts on the effect of the changes.

Mjoll

IT MAKES ME MAD THAT I CAN'T HAVE ALL THE GOOD PLAYERS IN MY GUILD THAT WANT TO BE IN IT.
It makes me sad that some players are chased away because they have to be Bloodloch and they don't want to be.
I just wanna make friends and play Carnifex with them ;-;

Corlin

Speaking entirely as an oldish player returning to a rather different game -

I don't see a point.

Tether restrictions should be enough for balance, right?

So citizen restrictions are what... role play restrictions? As stated, I've been gone a good while, so maybe there's mechanical implications I straight up don't know, but I struggle to see them - letting me move to a city still tied to my tether means that I'm not taking my skills to the other side, so it just feels like restriction to restrict. I'd love to know if I'm missing the big picture, though!

Edit - This is purely for my own information. I have no desire to move Corlin, I just don't quite understand why I can't. As someone who personally enjoyed self sufficient play with a focus on PvE, basically every change that took place while I was gone from Aetolia has damaged or at least made more difficult my preferred play style. So while I can understand tethers for balancing reasons, and the decision to strongly suggest that players work together because the community needs togetherness to thrive, I'm curious for the reasoning behind locking guilds into citizenship, unless it was entirely because some people didn't wanna be part of the city or atmosphere generally 'tied' to the guild and the lower numbers were deemed 'unfair' - in which case, I still question the mechanical 'fix' rather than seeking to take organizational rp in a more appealing direction.

Xenia

Hey as a reminder I don't want to start a debate here, I sincerely want to hear how the change has effected things from an admin point of view.

@Corlin, I personally don't know all the reasons, but were I to wager a guess, there were issues where some city populations were no longer benefitting from the natural population growth that a guild was supposed to bring. Certain guilds (Carnifex) had even RP'd they had 0 loyalty to any city and were just technically housed in one. As I understand it, dynamics like these long term started to take their effect in that many of those guild members were leaving the 'home' city of their guild. This problem coupled with internal struggles was causing some serious population drops and it was getting to a drastic point. As I understand it, this move was intended to rebuild city populations and unification rather than place restrictions on the players.

Rhyot

While I understand that you primarily want an admin point of view. If you would humble me, Id like to cast my own as well. 

Quite honestly, I think we need less organizations within the game. We no longer have the playerbase to maintain 4 cities, 11 guilds, 12 orders, 4 houses, 1 dominion, and whatever other orgs I might be forgetting. On a good day, we'll have a playerbase that reaches a peak of maybe 110 players. This in no means, shows a good capability of being able to maintain the plethora of orgs we have, especially the city separations. Now, I understand that every city has its own lore, but at the same time, I think we need to look at the longevity of the game and keeping a mass separation of the cities like this with as few players as have is not conducive to the health of the game.

That said, I think the linking of guilds to cities was an attempt at a solution to the above mentioned issue. However, I think something far more drastic is necessary. I think we need to combine the cities from 2 spirit/2 shadow into 1 spirit/1 shadow, bring the guilds into the one created city that way the players only have to worry about their guild.... instead of forcing them to choose between city or guild. Not only that, but it would also bring about far more player interaction than what we have now among the cities.

I know my drastic idea is probably vastly disagreed with by the mass populace, but I don't think it would be a bad idea either.

Aloli

Rhyot said:

I think we need to combine the cities from 2 spirit/2 shadow into 1 spirit/1 shadow, bring the guilds into the one created city that way the players only have to worry about their guild.... instead of forcing them to choose between city or guild. Not only that, but it would also bring about far more player interaction than what we have now among the cities.

I know my drastic idea is probably vastly disagreed with by the mass populace, but I don't think it would be a bad idea either.

I'm glad you think your idea would probably be disagreed with. I can see the merits of such a combination but I can also see far greater strife accompanying it. Imagine at the moment, one person being cast out of one guild for misconduct, they have quite a few options available to them as far as where to go next. However, if we only had one city, -everyone- on that tether would be forced to deal with this individual and the ramifications that trickle from that would be on a grander scale. You might also get people entirely disengaged from the city and its community for such reason or another.

Another reason is with the spread of many organizations, a lot of players have a fighting chance at a political career whereas with fewer organizations that become entirely too difficult on and on a much grander scale of toxicity.

Rijetta

I can see the population argument. Almost every Carnifex in the game would hop ship to Spinesreach if they could.

But, I think it's a trade: it sacrifices some guild health for city population. I don't think it really improves the health of the cities, though, just the number of people in them and upset about being in them.

Meanwhile, more than one guild misses out on certain members due to the city lock. 

So, I guess it comes down to which is a higher priority.

Iazamat

Since no top-down analysis seems forthcoming, I'll toss in my perspective.

Tether-locking guilds to cities (and the intial tether-lock, in all honesty) was, ultimately, another bandaid to an aging and ailing system. That's been a shortcoming of Aetolia for many years, though I'm only now realizing it in hindsight: instead of creating systems for player engagement from the ground up, they're built (and "improved") on the backs of systems already in place, systems built for a playerbase and mindsets that have moved on or no longer exist. Very little feels tailor-made to today's Aetolia.

You can see examples of this simply by the divide in player perspective. For instance, Rhyot's opinion is one I agree with and have had myself in the past. We simply don't have the population, not consistently enough, to man the number of orgs the game currently supports. The problem in trying to trim the fat, however, comes down to instances like the shapeshifters and wayfarers, which are, in my opinion, lesser-used classes simply because of their lack of org and direction.

Furthermore, we see Aloli's counterargument of player disengagement, further having to deal with perceived troublemakers, and lack of political advancement. But these are problems that we're already facing. Bloodloch and some of the orgs under its umbrella, as an example, have a number of entrenched players with mindsets and motivations that make it difficult to unseat them or progress the city forward in any meaningful way. This is also the exact reason Duiran's political system was changed in the first place. The ramification of an individual's actions being dealt with on a greater scale would be better for the game's overall story and intra-personal conflict - something the game sorely lacks right now. People, myself included, have retreated to their bubbles until an admin event occurs, because there's very little to drive them out of it currently - the potential disengagement that Aloli is concerned about is already commonplace.

Tying guilds to cities in the first place was an attempt to shore up population numbers, standardize guildhall placement, and give cities and guilds symbiotic RP. The problem was that it was, like a great many other things in Aetolia, extremely half-assed. I'm not trying to incense anyone with that statement, but it's a fact that we have to face in order to make the game healthier as a whole, from the top down.

Tether-locking classes to a specific side was, from my perspective, an attempt to appease a vocal minority that refused for myriad reasons to progress, bend, or reshape their RP and motivations. For it, the game has suffered. Further locking guilds to specific cities was another attempt to shore up populations that certain orgs have then gone to pay the price for (and, again, the game as a whole, our population has severely diminished). And again, the failure to further implement meaningful RP or mechanical systems to facilitate and ease the change has undermined it and created resentment.

As Rijetta has pointed out, there are a number of people that love their guild and hate their city and would make a change in a heartbeat if allowed to. As is, those people's talents are wasted on a city that either neglects them or doesn't want to make room for them. Alternatively, they never find a guild to belong to and their talents are simply wasted. That leads to demotivation, resentment, fewer logged hours, and an eventual moving on from Aetolia/IRE altogether. I don't think I have to tell anyone that's bad. We may see spikes during large events, but our day to day will absolutely suffer unless something changes about or incentivizes the current structure.

While I think things have settled into a "comfortable" status quo, they could be so much better for everyone involved and really drive player engagement if even given a proper thought.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Oonagh

Honestly I have been around here for ....years.

I thought the tether system was a bandaid when it was created and ultimately was going to drive some players to push RP a little harder for their convictions, rather than just lock them into position. Unfortunately, that didnt happen and it has only got a bit more hardlined since then now with the guild/city requirements. I have lost people in the Ascendril who didnt want to be in Enorian and do the "GOOD/LIGHT" RP, and really the Ascendril as a whole seek to question alot of the morality given by the word of the Gods just by their very nature. Not that it isn't subject to interpretations, I mean Oonagh acts as Cardinal and speaks on behalf of all gods, Shadow/Spirit to the Beacon as a whole on a regular basis, demonstrating respects to both sides of the coin as per his post, but ultimately preaching of the driving force of the Light and the Natural Cycle and its importance, especially against Shadow.

Do I require others to see the way I see, or behave how I behave no....this is not some formatted table we use to roll dice and take cookie cutter RP to approach our development. We in effect -live- a characters life in a fantasy world, and I feel loosening up things a bit and allowing things to be a bit more free form would be beneficial to our organizations. I hate losing people to Duiran as a Guildmaster, and I think it is ultimately unfair that is a required hardline, when theres so much opportunity and roleplay that I cant explain because a mechanic forbids them. I have no in character reason to say so in my guild.

I think what they did with the Indorani ....is a GOOD start. Maybe make guilds factions. Allow classes to be based around RP of those factions.
Let the story be driven by character choices and repercussions equivalently handled in the same manner.

I agree with Rhyot...I agree with the others voicing their opinions here similarly.

Vyxsis

Oonagh said:

I think what they did with the Indorani ....is a GOOD start. Maybe make guilds factions. Allow classes to be based around RP of those factions.
Let the story be driven by character choices and repercussions equivalently handled in the same manner.

the indorani faction is still very much in its infancy, so i'm not sure whether or not i would endorse this. i think there's something to be said for player-run organizations, but perhaps the class-based guild is no longer the right model. maybe what we need is something more like Achaea's system of 'houses', which are, for those unfamiliar, player-run organizations tied to particular cities & completely based on RP. so long as a class is compatible with the city in question, you can belong to any of that city's houses.

the potential difficulty is that many of our classes/guilds seem to be RPly tied into some important facet of the world. that is to say, there's an ideology bound up with classes - for example, the teradrim keep watch over the pillars of the earth so azvosh doesn't crash into the PMP (and a certain big bad doesn't get free). i don't think this really needs to be a hurdle, though. we already have folks spending the bulk of their time not in their guild class, as made possible thanks to multi-classing. there are GMs, even, who are rarely in their guild's class. if these things don't violate the spirit of the guilds - and clearly they don't - why keep guilds tied to class at all? why not make them 100% RP-based player orgs?

just a thought, i guess.

Xenia

After having to leave the Carnifex, I basically just made my own 'guild' to fill that void, and it's been more fulfilling than any post-carnifex experience I've found. And what is nice about it is the freedom to let whomever I wish into it and the option for people to spread stretch their legs and still be in whatever guild they choose.

Could be we as players should make better uses of clans and flushing them out in RP.

Tiur

I'm so sorry we haven't replied! To be honest, we have our own thing about this very topic that's being edited, so I thought this thread was the same as that one. Way to derp, Tiur.

We'll finish that and post.

Xenia

bump, still curious what the official thoughts on this are!

Tiur

Well, a lot of it is being discussed in the org structure thread. Generally, we don't think guild/city unification has quite worked out... I STILL get asked to let guilds leave a city. But we're not sure how to rectify it. A ton of ideas are floating around!

Mjoll

Take the lock off, we'll sort it out for you!

Xenia

that org structure thread doesn't really talk about this particular issue. I really think if that decision was lifted and that freedom was returned to the guilds, there'd be some better changes on the health of those kinds of orgs.

Aloli

Surprisingly, I'm not seeing this decision as a bad thing. I can see the sad part where some people have had to make the decision to leave or stay and choose between guild or city but on the upside of it - you get characters who are fully invested in the culture of the org they're in.

I'm taking the comical side of this situation, for example, it would be very strange to have a guilded Templar Knight living in Duiran...marching around in full plate armor, getting his or her foot stuck in the mud every few steps. I'm imagining a fully armored Knight swinging between trees and ...it's just funny.

Or a Shaman living in Enorian, walking around with overgrowth everywhere and the Enorianites grumbling about the mess in their temple.

Xenia

I agree, those are quirky images and kind of miss seeing those fish out of water characters at times. The decision has definitely served as a hard reset on forcing players to choose which cultural identity resonates most within them. A hard reset is needed from time to time. I also think it'd be interesting to see how reintroducing those possibilities would add to the day to day scenes of the present day world.

Phoenecia

Aloli said:

 It would be very strange to have a guilded Templar Knight living in Duiran...marching around in full plate armor, getting his or her foot stuck in the mud every few steps. I'm imagining a fully armored Knight swinging between trees and ...it's just funny. Or a Shaman living in Enorian, walking around with overgrowth everywhere and the Enorianites grumbling about the mess in their temple.

Actually, to me? That's not very strange. If you look at D&D, a Paladin can actually work very well in a forestal setting, especially an Oath of the Ancients Paladin whose creed essentially boils down to 'There's beauty and light in life, and it should be protected'. In the scope of Aetolia? A Duiran Templar wouldn't be too weird. Protect light and life and fight for good. If the Templar finds goodness and light in nature and Dendara, where's the weirdness in that?

An Enorian Shaman might be a little stranger, but can be done. Shamans protect Dendara and fight against its corruption, and commune with the Spirits and Guardians. Enorian knows very little about any of these things. Maybe the Shaman has decided to serve Enorian because they see it as a means of finding a way to cleanse Dendara. Or maybe they want to help educate people there to have more allies to help in their duty.

In both cases, they stay true to their class roots and themes, but have slightly different methods and motivations, and those nuances can make for some interesting RP.

Aloli

I understand any RP can be spun whichever way.

Lexen

Also... A shaman walking around Enorian and growing plants everywhere can still currently happen-- they might just be of another guild. And that Sentinel in Duiran that is walking around in fullplate all the time because they fight with Templar class skills.

Where my issue with this lock comes into play is in leverage. Let's say that Aloli finds herself the target of a political plot that results in her being kicked out of Duiran. It's a long shot, but it could happen. There are dozens of ways that it could happen, as unlikely as it might be. It would be really nice to have the option of remaining guildmaster of the Sentaari and still being able to belong to a city, if only for the ylem perks that comes along with it.

Flip it another way: Tenshyo decides that Lexen and the Enorian council are doing something unconscionable, and he doesn't have the political clout or backing to fight a united city leadership. Any threat to leave Enorian to go to Duiran means that he's not only protesting the city, but also abandoning his position in his guild. So if he doesn't want to give up his guild position, then threats to leave the city are more of a punishment to the player than leverage against a city.

Breaking the lock doesn't mean that EVERY guild is going to mix again. The syssin, for years, maintained a 'Spinesreach or nothing' mentality. Nothing stops them from doing that, and if they are still getting the membership numbers they need, then good on them. It would make sense for the Shaman to insist that guild members are members of Duiran. It makes less sense for the Sentaari to do that (though if guild RP and identity has changed since I was there, they might have a reason now!). Right now, we don't have a choice. Guilds don't have the autonomy to declare "this city only" because that choice was taken from us.

This works the other way as well. Bloodloch maintained an "only undead can be citizens" policy for a long time, and they could do that because guilds like the Infernals, who were split on living/undead had the option to be Spirean instead. There were a lot of neat political pushes that happened over the years because we weren't locked in that we're missing out on now. If the lock goes and a city is struggling for members, then they need to reconsider what they're doing that is making the org less appealing to others and work to change that.

Aloli

I know, I've been in the situation where I did want to leave Duiran in the past and was told to hang tight. I couldn't care less about ylem at the time or its perks because I wanted peace of mind and to stay the hell away from certain people.

It would be hard to dispute any of the scenarios you've outlined, Lexen, but I'm the kind of person to look for the silver lining and I started seriously playing here after that separation between ... (I almost feel like I'm talking about Church and State!)

Play the devil's advocate with me for a minute, can you see any benefits to the lock? At all?

Mind you, I'm genuinely asking and I'm sitting with a guild that's pretty small compared to everywhere else, has lost a lot of its members due to this and bad history, the random newb we get is usually an alt that's curious about documentation and disappears.

Lexen

I've been thinking on this, and the only benefits I can think of are only benefits for a very specific mindset of people. People that don't want to have to decide or play around with politics, for example. People that don't like to say 'no' to others, and would rather the mechanics do it for them. Those two aspects are the closest I can get, but aren't really my style of enjoyment at all. The first one can still do their thing without the lock-- they just auto pick the city that the guild is housed in. The latter... make a different org leader tell someone no if you can't.

Aloli

Every point of view has another angle and every angle has its merits.

You're focused on the political arena, which has also drastically changed over the years. People need a backbone in it and you won't find someone there who doesn't have one in a way or another. There are a lot of other reasons, though.

The admins need to keep certain details about their plans hidden for a large variety of reasons and most are geared toward protecting us and them. Considering that you can't think of a good one to keep this lock, it means that when it was released, it wasn't fully explained. So, all we need is some light shed on why its beneficial and how we can make the most of it...since we can't see those.

However, for me, being put in this situation made me have to come up with different solutions to work with the groups in front of me instead of wishing I had Enorian citizens in the Sentaari or other guilds. That meant if my guild is suffering from a low population, I can help the city look attractive and fix my guild to be better, help make it a streamlined funnel to the guild from -my- city.

Still, the glimpses into the rash of current discussions and polls about classes, guilds and city integrations, and population concerns all lead to one glaring point and I seriously question if things will go backward as opposed to moving forward with an ingenious idea that further helps cities and their guilds.

I'll trust that Tiur and the admins fully understand the anguish over this and are working hard to find a reasonable solution.

Zaila

I'm trying to think of other possibly arguable benefits... The only additional thing I have come up with is:

I guess the situation is... SLIGHTLY? beneficial for is people in a situation similar to what Aloli mentioned. If you aren't concerned with being in a city, if the ylem-perks, etc. aren't something you care about and you just don't want to have interact with certain people that are in your guild's home city, but you DO want to stay in your guild, and you DON'T want to join the other city: the rules give you an excuse to do so (especially if you hold a position).

You can leave your city and use "Well, I can't join the other one, so I'll just be a rogue!" to deflect peer pressure about joining the other city.

Arbre

The theory behind the guild-city lock, as I understood it at the time, was so a Spinesreach v Bloodloch or Duiran v Enorian could happen. However, war between cities on one side of the fence isn't going to happen - Spinesreach going against Bloodloch would make both Spinesreach and Bloodloch vulnerable to Duirnorian and vice versa.

Aishia

The reason I heard cited most convincingly had a lot more to do with the ratio of new players funneling into each city. Some guilds intended to feed certain cities were diverting all the newbs to others.

Kalinaar

I dunno.. it sounds good on paper but it's not hard to imagine the result being one or two cities turning into ghost towns. I never liked being forced into Duiran to play Sentaari but in the last year I've minded it less. If the restriction was removed I would end up staying in Duiran regardless.

That said, I miss Ashtan. *duck*

Leana

Just end the charade and create a NEW bigger faction that covers Shadow tier and Light tier. Like a super channel, let's call it SCT for SUPER CITY TELL.

Xenia

that exists, it's called Market!

Vyxsis

Xenia said:

that exists, it's called Market!

Market does exist, sure, but it's for thinly-veiled unicorns-talking

(p.s. @Leana SCT is the sect channel)