What kind of community structure do you prefer?

Imvra

The Pools team is heavily discussing several conflicts we see as we look at our organizations and our population. We recognize that the game has changed over the last decade, and like the rest of IRE: Our playerbase is spread thin across too many orgs. Some guilds flourish, others struggle, filling ministerial positions goes through dry spells. We want to help, but HOW to help isn't always very clear! Admin time with each guild can help for a time, but there's an issue of continual maintenance with each leadership turnover, each world event, and the constant struggle between too much and too little interference.

What is it that you love or hate about guilds and cities? Not specifics, not Bloodloch or Enorian, but the organization structures themselves. We want to hear from you, the community, and check your temperature. Reminder: We don't want to nitpick over specifics of so-and-so's leadership or how you think X theme just sucks. We're looking at structure and engagement priorities at this time.

On one hand: Guild-City structure as it is
Pros: - Communities to develop individual identities
      - Specialize in niche roleplay
      - Close sense of community

Cons: - Difficult population sizes
      - Too isolated from cities, leaving them as a backdrop rather than
        organic entities.
      - Each struggles in its own way, requiring even further split in Admin
        attention when it comes to the smaller-scope purposes outside of the 
        city's goals and identity.

Possible Fixes:
      - Simply delete some 
           Pros: Less orgs and consolidated population, 
           Cons: people are burned and certain niches are lost

      - Consolidate into larger dual-orgs like Houses from Achaea 
        Example: Illuminai
           Pros: Consolidated population, new overlap RP
           Cons: ...Houses 3.0, cities remain backdrop

On the other: City-centric structure
Pros: - Cities become the focus, allowing admin to consolidate and better 
        specialize their attention
      - Enriches each city's roleplay opportunities and integration into more
        breathable settings and environments.
      - Possible daily mission system for helping with city functions

Cons: - Compromised niches
      - Less customizable space for the tradeoff of city unificaiton
      - Questions about how to restructure positions to preserve as much of
        each involved guild as possible
      - Possibly too focused on the city, which while this would allow Admin more
        influence to help get them into healthier shape, may not be as enjoyable for
        players who are having to adjust and face hard choices.


        Clarification on this loose concept:
        - City-centric structure would reprioritize over condensed ministries
        - Guild halls would become quest/class hubs
        - Ministries would consolidate, and Ministers become contestable positions 
          that lead/organize their recruits. City Council would become those 
          Ministers, with an additional general Peoples' Representative position.
        - Newbies would still go through the academy. Then people would ENLIST
          within their field of preference. They could RESIGN and re-enlist at any
          time.
        - Possible CONTRACTing into a second function so you can be involved in both
          Security and Chancellory duties, etc.
        - Daily MISSIONS type quests for stipends/payroll flavour. 

We want to hear your thoughts and opinions on what kinds of structure and environment you find engaging. Not specifics, not aesthetics, not light/dark/noble/blood thirsty, but the core things that those wonderful wrappings fit around.

Agothaxl

After having played the game since the start, I'm just open to anything new at this point. It's clear that the city priority did help city population, but guilds have fizzled. The ones with the most interesting lore/story behind them, or classes, get the most amount of people while the ones that aren't that great just see little to no interest from new players. It'd be great to have something where cities are still the focus, since that's where the primary lore comes from, but have smaller sub-orgs to give people other things to help flesh their characters out. If that's houses, okay, but I think something entirely new would work. What new could be? I have no idea right now, though the loose concept described above sounds very interesting.

Xenia

I am reluctant to vote because I don't fully understand this new structure described above. While I've stepped back from being fully involved in the day to day of the city as well as contributing much to the guild I'm part of, I find value in the aideships I have to city ministries to help govern and maintain things behind the scenes.

Having these little facets of city governance be impacted by a stronger political drive, having ministries contestable and restricting how many ministries a single player can be part of would definitely feel alienating for me.

I agree a change needs to happen, but if I could hear more on what the vision described above looks like in terms of how it would effect people who have resigned themselves to the background and ensuring the basic needs to function are maintained while the spotlight is still shown on others.

Phoenecia

Having played as a rogue (both guildless, cityless, and full rogue) off and on for a long time, I hate guilds. I like them as a concept, but I hate their execution, and I hate that they're still tied to class. You might find x class fun or interesting, but if you're coming in from the intro, you're pretty much FORCED into a guild just to get the class you want to play. Yes, we have multiclassing, and you can pretty much be any class you want in any guild within the same tether, but you're still forced to take on the guild's requisite class whether you want to or not.

And honestly? Guilds don't really have much of a mechanical purpose beyond class. Yeah, sure. From an RP standpoint, guilds each have their own unique niches, but they really don't have a whole lot going on compared to a city. With cities? There's much bigger incentives. Ylem perks, access to commodities, city credits, participation in global events or PK things means way more and have a bigger impact.

Right now, guilds feel like factions, just with players, but they feel even more useless than factions because it doesn't really feel like you're doing much of anything. Factions at least have rewards, goals, and actual missions or quests you can complete.

I wouldn't mind seeing something new, though I voted for 'Other' because I still like the niches guilds offer.

I'd love to see guilds separated from class completely and have them be like houses. Each house has its ideals and values and what they hope to achieve in the world, and maybe different quests/missions/tasks you can complete to make it actually feel like you're furthering your guild's goals in some small way with multiple tiers or ranks with rewards. And if you hit max rank? Make prestige rewards or something. You can already be in almost any guild with any class with multiclassing, so why not just go all the way and have guilds be banded around ideals entirely without having to be forced to take on the guild's class?

I'd also probably be okay with seeing guilds go the way of the Indorani and be made into factions entirely. Guilds are often susceptible to becoming cults of personality run by 'x and their friends' where it becomes next to impossible to unseat anyone and bring about any kind of change because the guild is too small or inactive.

Cities can become cults of personality too, but because of the population size, it's a lot harder, and things usually balance themselves out.

In terms of RP and lore, getting city stuff is great, but I can see how it'd be easy for people to just get lost or disinterested. Guild RP is nice because it's usually been more focused, but it should still reinforce city things. The best example of this I've experienced in recent memory was the Cult of Kaarn event a year or so ago where the Shamans would get called into Dendara to commune with the Guardians, but the event still involved all of Duiran, and Enorian to an extent.

Long story short: if anything needs to be pared down, guilds need to have a serious looking at since they really don't serve a purpose beyond RP at this point, but they feel empty and useless, and there's no real, hard benefit to being in a guild as there is for being in a city.

Imvra

@Xenia -- I will speak with the team and see what we feel appropriate to divulge beyond this, but I can say that this poll and discussion is to help inform us as we design rather than what will give the final stamp on what comes in the future. We are trying to unravel a puzzle in as engaging and fulfilling a way possible, recognizing that there will be sacrifices in each direction: Someone will lose their comfort zone, someone will lose some mechanical access, someone will have to consider where their character leads them. But we want to keep this rounded and enable cities to continue to function well, and provide opportunity for players while also helping better develop those unique niches. So in regards to aideship mechanics: these could become a little more amorphous in their application for each consolidated ministry. We recognize people have multiple interests, so having opportunity to have some overlap will remain, even if it is not quite as much overlap as you can have right now.

Mjoll

Warn us before you rip our hearts out.

Xenia

To further expand on my choice here, I think the current guild structure is fine, but I would, if anything, prefer to see the directions/purposes presented to the guilds from a lore stand point, but something that the players can drive with some level of autonomy and doesn't require ongoing admin support.

As example the Carnifex were first introduced to me (and from what I can understand based on historical hearsay) as a guild directed to be always at odds with Dhar. This became a difficult plot point to drive within that guild because it required their motivations as an organization to be trying to 'end' Dhar's control of the underhalls. It was unrealistic, and for anything meaningful or interesting plot wise to occur, the players needed something from the admin, typically RP. Overtime the players chose to drop that plot point and remake themselves as seeing their position in the realm as antagonists that strive to ensure everyone is seasoned and ready to face whatever is to come.

Currently as an Archivist our primary plot point is to acquire and study relics. As far as I know, we have no relics or if they exist the lore knowledge was lost due to RP that closely guarded that knowledge. Even if these things exist, it's very hard as a player to support or grow off this because at some point we have to have substantial support that says, "Yes this is a relic, this is what you can learn from it and here's why it's important." I fail to see how to do this without close support from admin.

Rather than redefining how the community is created and organized I'd be more interested in seeing the various factions purposes redone to not make them so reliant on ongoing admin participation and support.

Edit: To be clear, ideally there would be consistent participation and guidance from the admin to make these current purposes and lore points in guilds feel real, but I think it's unrealistic.

Iazamat

I also don't know how to vote. The current structure certainly has its flaws, but I haven't seen anything visibly attempted with it outside of guilds being deleted and created and then dropped half-finished into the game. I definitely see the issue with bloat and divided attention under the current setup, though, and agree that it's a problem. But cities haven't changed in years, for the most part, or had any large-scale RP pushes, which doesn't exactly instill confidence in moving to a city-centric structure, I'm sorry to say. And nothing has stopped that from taking place except resources. Something is sure to suffer in the long-term transition, and so far, responses to change from both player and admin - as well as solutions being extremely slow to implement when players are clearly unhappy - don't leave me feeling great about any of this currently.

Eliadon

Best I've got is 'try not to wipe out ideological differences'.

As an example, Eliadon would rather be guildless than merge the Ascendril with anything else in Enorian - they all have too much faith, and the Ascendril is the only organization within Enorian where that faith can be questioned without everyone stoning you.

Imvra

The Carnifex were built on the Infernals, with a purpose of creating a worthy world of strength through culling the weak, and death. Outside of the event, the Carnifex' opposition against Dhar was purely player-driven and player-created.

I am personally of the opinion that part of the problem with guilds and guild management, is this sense of purpose. There needs to be some moderating, or things stray too far and trying to fix it comes too late for the damage to be undone or mitigated. In addition, each guild needs something unique, which is difficult with how many there are vs their playerbase. It is a lot of time and energy devoted to small groups of 4-20 players, and away from the cities, away from even

Throughout Aetolia's history there are slips and surges -- we are too involved, or not involved enough, and a lot of time trying to figure out what's appropriate that the windows of opportunity pass by. We are trying to learn from this, the good and bad. Developing, coming to terms, checking temperature (there's a lot of temperatures!), then figuring out how to balance and code, is a long and iterative process. There aren't any easy answers. Right now, we see problems, and there's a lot of ways to go about addressing them. Picking the best way for the long-term health of the game is something we want to do with input and understanding from you, whose engagement it will impact.

Xenia

it's news to me that the Carnifex vs. Dhar fight was player driven/created. I thought when Roan escaped from the underhalls and taught the art of deathlore it was based on him stealing it from Dhar and telling them to go after Dhar and own his domain. Granted I've only had access to the old books written by players who were part of that event and filled said books with what appears to be copy/paste log of the event.

Imvra

That was indeed part of the release event! However, Carnifex skim souls before they get to the halls, and Dhar's got other things to worry about and manage. They're not mosquitos, but in the scale of things, and the other fights on hand? Carnifex aren't vs Dhar. Dhar is certainly an enemy (like other Spirit Gods), but their conflict axis was never fixated on Dhar itself outside of player interest. They went through several guildmasters evolving the foundation they were built on before that was brought in and pushed as a guild focus, through player choice.

Oonagh

Being a leader of an information based guild, there is alot of potential for RP, however not everyone wants to be all for the Gods in that type of roleplay niche.

We have some fun new changes in my guild, but I do lose alot of people who want to be rogues, or Duiran...where I would like to work with them and expand on the roleplay rather than outright lose them, a house system focused on the guild purpose, entertwined with its place as part of the City it resides, or for guilds perhaps outside cities with a strong focus on their personal goals outside a City, it could really be beneficial.

I liked the House system, it gave alot of character development which could otherwise be limited by specific City membership, and I think the community can do well enough to ensure that we have appropriate laws/membership criteria

Sarita

I also wasn't entirely sure how to put this in terms of the voting options, but I do generally like that there is a guild structure where each guild has unique RP opportunities. Even when the population is smaller and cliques can develop, I also tend to like the fact that guilds can set up their own mechanical hierarchies, especially now that we have guild positions to customize.

Something I could see helping out is letting everyone pick a "primary" guild. Similar to orders and congregations, people who are interested in learning more and participating can join the congregation more or less freely without major RP repercussions, but in theory, the order itself is a more select group, and is the only one where people can actually have status and so on. I think something like that for guilds could be good where the primary guild has a similar sense of being better (minus the fact that people have to be initiated into the order, of course.) That said, I could see each guild being given a lower group that ICly would be more rank and file members that other people can join (probably with restrictions based on city, tether, whatever.) Unlike congregations, people could get involved in one primary guild and one or more of the secondary groups to help increase overall population.

Rhyot

So.... I'm of the opinion that we are in severe need of a destruction of a lot of orgs. At most, we have 60-70 people online.... and yet we somehow have 4 cities. At most, that's about 15 people per city (though we all know that this is actually in no accurate as some cities have more than others).

I honestly feel we can merge into 2 cities and just maintain the guilds on the tether city that is made. Bloodloch can get blown up by the volcano, Spinesreach can be covered in an avalanche, Duiran can get crushed by the Great Oak tree falling, Enorian (not sure how they'd get blown up since they've been blown up 2 times now)... and then new cities are made and the guilds just merge into the 2 new cities (one light/one shadow). This consolidates everyone who want to be part of a city and the guilds have a single organization they belong to.

Additionally, you could destroy guilds in the merge that fail to meet some sort of activity requirement and then just call it a day. At most, 2-3 guilds will be destroyed. This will leave it to 2 cities and maybe 10 guilds (if not less). The more we consolidate, the easier it would be on an admin level.

But I'm all for trying something new.

Vyxsis

- Consolidate into larger dual-orgs like Houses from Achaea
Example: Illuminai
Pros: Consolidated population, new overlap RP
Cons: ...Houses 3.0, cities remain backdrop

at the time of my brief stint in achaea, i wouldn't have called our illuminai much of an analog to their 'houses'. certainly the illuminai house two classes, but it seems to me like the illuminai are still based more around the class-guild paradigm. for the house system to work, though, that paradigm has to be abandoned - the houses in achaea allowed any class compatible with their city and had nothing to do with obtaining said classes. they were pretty deeply connected to the city, as well, in that each fulfilled a particular *city* role based on an archetype (i.e. warrior-defenders, researcher-priests, and merchant-diplomats). (some of) the cities themselves each had more recognizably distinct flavors - ashtan was all about chaos, for example - and so the houses took on different personalities while still being city-centric. this wouldn't reduce the number of orgs necessarily (unless you merged archetypes to only have two in a city or something), but it would allow for tighter integration between city and org.

personally, i like the idea of mating such a system with a faction/hub system for classes. you get a starting class, yes, but you choose a house based on which 'flavor' most interests you. if you want to change class, get a new one, or simply pursue the lore/history of a class, you go to the faction/hub.

whatever is decided, i think guilds as we've known them are a thing of the past. any system going forward needs to acknowledge multiclassing has obliterated the meaningfulness of the class/guild relationship (cf. numerous guilds whose leadership are never in the guild's class), and so we need a different way of organizing players. class-agnostic archetypes within more strongly 'themed' cities seems like a good way, imo.

ps/btw/fwiw - for myself? i'm fairly certain vyxsis will never join another guild. she'd join a researcher-priest org in a heartbeat, though.

ETA: an idea just popped into my head as i reread my own post (lol, vanity)... to more fully integrate these 'houses' into the city, make each house's leadership responsible for the spheres controlled by our present ministries. for example, the warrior-defenders would oversee security and war, the researcher-priests would oversee ambassador/HoN and cardinal, and merchant-diplomats would oversee trade and ambassador/foreign relations. this would give the orgs more direct ties to the city, keep leaders from just getting a position and sitting on their butts, and ensure that city functions remain staffed.

Arbre

Imvra said:

- Ministries would consolidate, and Ministers become contestable positions 
that lead/organize their recruits. City Council would become those 
Ministers, with an additional general Peoples' Representative position.

That's a LOT of elections.

Corlin

Get rid of all the antiquated organizational structures, tie the perks to factions, give us mechanical reasons to support or oppose the factions that exist and call it a day.

I've never had a problem finding a guild / clan of people who make my playing experience more fun in games that don't feel the need to organizationally typecast their skillsets, and I feel that a focus towards mechanical incentive over roleplayed incentive would both allow for more freedom and less dithering.

I don't want to be part of a city, but playing this game without ylem perks is like playing football without a helmet. You can do it, but it's not gonna be very fun if you do it for long.

I don't want to complete arbitrary tasks set forth by someone who literally had to invent arbitrary reasons to allow me to advance through their organization because there's nothing better to do. But I gotta do those tasks if I want access to the perks of the guild - which really don't exist, save the ability to give myself titles and maybe buy some cheap credits.

Give me a mechanical reason to do a thing, and I'll hammer away at it for as long as it takes - doing my daily quests in FFXIV just to get myself a giant dandelion puff to ride on (despite having twenty other mounts to pick from) or standing there catching bucket after bucket of fish in Aetolia just to raise faction points so that I could... catch more fish? I'm for it.

Players actively recruiting for their clan or drawing support to and from their allied factions would encourage a whole lot more interaction than 'GW (.*);GT Hey, matches[2], how're you?''

Toss the new players into a generic faction friendly space that lets the established players recruit merrily, make factions that suit basically every flavour with obvious allies and enemies with plenty of neutral crossover, and people will create their own reasons to band together or oppose one another that needn't be tied to a specific, necessarily vague umbrella like a city or a tether.

Stine

Arbre said:

Imvra said:

- Ministries would consolidate, and Ministers become contestable positions 
that lead/organize their recruits. City Council would become those 
Ministers, with an additional general Peoples' Representative position.

That's a LOT of elections.

My understanding is that instead of having a ruling council + 10 ministers, excluding Cardinal, it would be X ruling council, of which each one of them have Y, Z and Q ministry assigned to them, along with 1 general role. So I imagine 4 or 5 ruling council and they each get 2 ministries to handle, which most cities already do but in a non mechanical way.

So the elections would be the same as they are now, for the most part? Except there would be more incentive to rotate out inconsistent players or ones who aren't doing the job as well as someone else.

I'm down for trying something new. I think it's pretty clear that we can't just leave both cities and guilds the same, something has to change to encourage both being in and participating in them.

Aishia

I think the problem with upsetting the community structure is it almost always feels more damaging than enriching. It really seemed to smash Lusternia. I only ever heard bad things about it from Achaea for years. When we've deleted/consolidated guilds here we've always lost more players than gained from what I've seen. There is something to be said for leaving enough niches for people to feel they meaningfully have leadership over something a step removed from primary orgs. I know any thoughts of rotating back into Lusternia after years of taking a break were smashed by how scrambled it felt to me.

I sort of almost see the class/org tie thing being sort of harder to pin down in the world of multiclassing but losing all the established lore and significance in one fell swoop feels heartbreaking. Vaguely consolidating primary class usage helps funnel individuals into the org most likely to be able to help them with the class and gives focus to understanding the mechanics/lore/etc and imparting them in meaningful ways.

Aishia

Just spitballing off something I was kicking around in the past, most guilds are already broken down into spiritual/philosophical/martial lines for cities already, there might be an easier way to just sort of sidegrade existing guilds into a system more in line with what you're thinking without completely abandoning the current structure/lore/etc.

Arbre

@Imvra This would be a good thread to announce on READNEWS CHANGELOG so people who don't forums can get an opinion in if they'd like.

Xenia

I think I'm a bit confused, but if the House system in Achaea is not based around class at all and instead about city specific duties the way @Vyxsis defined it, I'd switch my vote to this.

Haven

The issues described in the original post are real but I think we're looking at the wrong culprit. The core issue isn't that Aetolia has too many organizations to support the current player base. While deleting content or consolidating parts of the player base might yield short-term wins, I do not believe either option will garner the results you want in the long run. These problems are largely symptoms that stem from the lack of player agency (i.e., stagnation). It will cripple any game.

Stagnation comes from when we broke the driving mechanism the game was built upon: the cycle of user-generated content via conflict resolution. Just about every org level has a mechanical conflict resolution in place when conflict reaches its peak except for cities now. That's where player agency stops and stagnation fosters on a game-wide scale that forces admin to continually intervene which creates player-admin dependence. The removal of the war system without a viable replacement of player agency was probably the biggest mistake the game has ever made. Aetolia's bread and butter has always been user generated content and the war system was one of the core systems within the game that helped maintain the self-sufficiency and generation of meaningful user generated content. If you had an idea, you took over an organization (Guild/House/Clan/Order/etc.) and with that organization you'd influence the city to foster a campaign for war. This all came with ramifications from the user to the organization to the city and back again to the individuals who endorsed the campaign which in turn started the cycle again based on the political fallout. The entire process was a simple and effective formula of self-sustaining content that allowed Admin to intercede at any point in the cycle to spice things up and add to user engagement as an OPTION without creating player-admin dependency. Admin interaction was thus a bonus and not a requirement.

That is no longer the case unfortunately. Sure, perhaps the wars sometimes ramped up too quickly or occurred too frequently or was abused by some groups but that's cause to tweak the mechanism's limitations not abandon the cycle entirely. The importance here is the fundamental game design of the self-generating cycle and the fact you could not ignore war. What do player's have now? Cities have become central orgs for a wide variety of reasons but ultimately there's little for them to actually do. For anything meaningful to happen on a game-wide level, users are required to be dependent on admin intervention on most things or wait for Events to occur. This matters because the Admins and mechanics are the only things other users cannot simply ignore in-game.

It would be in the game's best interest to return to such a cycle. Easier said than done, I know but it would be a start in the right direction especially when the game already has so much lore and material players could play with. Police where necessary and continue to foster and develop systems that enhance user-generated content. I know I may be in the minority in thinking this but... -shrug- That's my two cents.

Imvra

We are definitely conscious about the void of a conflict system. While they interrelate, they are separate problems, however, and each need their own solutions -- and solutions that consider the void of the other until we have something in place. Player-Generated conflict is best left to its own thread, which I can begin a discussion on with some initial thoughts over the next day or so, so each conversation has the appropriate focus.

In regards to the Ministers being a lot of elections -- this would come with considerable consolidation. Instead of having 10 appointments, 5 elected CityRep spots, AND the 3 guild elected positions, it would simply be the 5; double duty as it were, but sustainable duty appropriate to the focus and with some freedom to create supporting positions within that sphere.

General question: What would you say are the top 3 things about being in a guild that you would like to see sustained?

Agothaxl

1. Roleplay/lore/niche
2. Access to credits for rewards/buying
3. Another place to have things to do/goals

Ansidia

I have to agree with Haven here 100%. When I first played Aetolia ages ago the war system was very active and it was the most fun I had in any of the IRE games. I have played them all except Mikadema and Starmorn.

One thing I will say about consolidating guilds or removing their ties to their primary class. It has destroyed the purpose of every guild in all of the games it's been done in. When Achaea switched to houses with no class restriction on entrance the houses felt extremely empty and the players lacked a desire and drive to move up in the ranks. Getting gr3 for class was a huge motivator for people to interact in their guilds previously.

Imperian has similar issues. They allow players to merge their guilds, and their guilds are only vaguely tied to the cities they reside in. Ie there is no mechanical holdback except tether on who joins said guild. Guilds in imperian basically wiped each other out, leaving no niches and since they have no real structural ties to the city except for a seat on the city council, they have become rp wastelands. Only a place to get cheap credits and free bashing buffs. It made stagnation worse and caused about half their playerbase to leave.

Lusternia's destruction of their guilds for 3 factions tied to the city is still newish and I haven't played there in any significant way since it went in, but creating a newbie or logging in a character there lost a huge bit of its flavor with the removal of guilds.

My suggestion for guilds is this and its simple: let people who have the guilds class and are in that tether be able to join that class's guild even if they aren't part of the guild's city. 

Let rogues choose to pledge their allegiance to a tether but remain city less, thus allowing them to join the guild for their primary class if they so choose. 

Let players who have multiple classes set their "primary" class for the purpose joining a guild or tether. 


And bring back the war mechanics in some way please! That was so much fun and totally player driven.

Xenia

I'm really confused in that the conversation and responses from @Imvra because everything that is being discussed is about how to restructure the city's and the way they function but all the voting results are around guilds and how they look.

My primary concern is what it sounds like more and more, is a vote for change/something new/whatever is being planned for implementation is stripping away roles and functions from the players to play and consolidating them to five (that's what I saw written in an earlier post). This means more people are going to be competing within their organizations for roles of influence, it increases the political conflict system rather which is a more inward focused system rather than an outward one.

All of this is really disappointing to read about as the solution being considered. To speak to the good parts of the current city system-- It's flexible. If a city's population is flagging, there's nothing stopping them from consolidating the power by assigning the same people multiple ministry roles. When the population is growing, and there are fresh new places, it gives the city governing body meaningful duties to more people to engage in.

Why is a solution that removes more ways for people to engage in their city the answer to the problem of, 'There are too many unique factions, we need to consolidate so they can all get the attention required.'

If that's the case, shove the guilds even more under the umbrella of the cities, take away their lore and class specific roles and create three new ones for each city, open to any class, and focus them towards realms of interest. This alone would alleviate the stagnation felt within guilds that are set up with abstract, lore specific roles, that require heavy reliance on admin to continually develop.

Edit:
There was already a major shift for guilds 2 years ago when they were pushed towards their cities and restricted the membership from being tether base to city. There's yet to be any form of response on how this result has been viewed from an administrative level, but from a player level, it only looked like it killed off the population in a lot of guilds and disenfranchised players a bit more, rather than achieving the goal intended.

Oonagh

What it appears to look like is there are two possible outcomes being presented, that seem to be the choices that have been decided prior our input.

I honestly feel like what was done in Duiran was a nice start, having representation from each guild as City leadership, this could follow through to other Cities if we modify the CITY structure. Giving equivalent representation from Organizations is nice, and gets things outside of a funnelview.
-THAT being said, this is not a discussion about City Structure.

The Guild/House dilemma is that right now we have few problems:
-Hardlined City Membership/Organization acceptance.
--We really punish rogues down for being rogue.
--We have too much administrative/hard coded guideline that has no IC explanation other than (It's the will of the GODS) with no means to overcome.
(You literally CANT induct someone not in your guilds City)
--Our Organizations are -already- forced already into a City-centric role.

Honestly just releasing the reigns a bit would be really great, since I started playing it has been a consistent battle of having fences built that block access/conflict/player governing.
We created tethers because we wanted to outline a hard differentiation between Shadow and Spirit.
-This took away from roleplay opportunities where we could have literally made it political/player driven based on Organizational laws

Xenia

Oonagh said:

Honestly just releasing the reigns a bit would be really great, since I started playing it has been a consistent battle of having fences built that block access/conflict/player governing.

So much of this.

Here is a picture to illustrate what I mean:

Steele

Here is an idea I have been mulling over for a while:

Delete all guilds. I like my guild, we have some cool roleplay, but it's small and restricted and feels very gatekeepy and exclusive, even where the reality is that things are just starved for members. I don't think every guild is bad enough to warrant it, but for fairness' sake, delete them all, so we're all equally burnt and can't go REE ADMIN FAVOURING X ORG.

Instead raise new guilds (or give them a new name, will refer to them as leagues) that float across whole tethers. Make them separate from class - with apprenticing existing in its current iteration, guild roleplay for class is kind of dead anyway. Multiclass killed that. Give each League a solid, niche focus - exclude all overlap with other Leagues (maybe opposite tether overlap might be interesting in a rivalry sense), make each league completely independent of city or class, only tether.

The leagues would be advanced instead of basic. Not something every novice has to join, but instead something to work towards in a similar vein to orders - getting into a league would be something earned, whether a particular league has a set entrance task or applicants are chosen case-by-case, whatever. It would be something prestigious rather than mandatory.

Give each league a sort of pre-order or a factional clan, sort of like the Carnifex's "reserve" clan - this could be a place for applicants, or if you're a more exclusive league, somewhere to induct people you've noted as candidates for an opening (or however you'd handle it).

Bring over the mechanical support guilds have - logs, an orgtell channel, banks and credit accounts, et cetera. Leagues should be rewarding to join, not just a clan. Membership should open doors, close some others, provide something that other leagues cannot.

Please DON'T give the leagues goals that can't feasibly be completed within the game, eg "Bring about the Age of Dawn", "Stop Azvosh from crashing into the PMP", etc.

I think defensive goals like "Protect Dendara from Corruption", "Kill all Shadowbound that slip free of the Shadow plane", etc are pretty good, but my personal favourites tend to be the more abstract, conceptual purposes, like the templars' holding to their moral code while punishing evil and corruption, the archivist's collection of all knowledge while being conservative in how that knowledge is spread, the carnifex's combination of honor and domination in combat.

Ultimately, I think that guilds are weakened by being a usually mandatory, often reluctant set of organisations who can't really curate themselves well, due to that mandatory, everpresent nature. The exclusivity and status of the new system wouldn't be something that benefited every character, but I think it would enhance the roleplay aspect of the orgs, hone their niches and make those niches more prevalent in the world. Even if it was a 40/60 split between leagued and unleagued, I think it would add to the world fairly tangibly.