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A.) Each Producer needs to be the only person with a guaranteed pay check, and pay should be doled out based on work completed to people based on tenure. The idea of 'getting to play a God' being your payment is extremely antiquated, and is not effective. We're all mostly 30+ years old now, not 18 anymore. In this, each game should have a projected budget each year that's split up by the Producer to encourage people to do more.

While I'm not logging in, I have been unable to resist clicking on the links people have sent me of various ongoings since I made my post, and none of which have tempted me to log back in more than this statement, and I'm going to say it as clearly as I can: this is an atrocious idea and if it were ever implimented, it would spell the end of Aetolia and would likely be the thing that pushes the game into Imperian Territory.

I'm among the most passionate "Celani should be compensated" people out there, but turning Aetolia into a series of poorly-paid independent contractors skittering about desperate to get scratch is not the recipe for productivity and creativity that you seem to think it is. Dangling a few bucks over someone's head as "incentive" tends to work the opposite way, and is similar to putting a gun to someone's head to motivate them. It's ineffective and, in fact, can lead to decreased productivity and creative problem solving abilities. These sorts of "do work, get reward" systems often cause a lag in productivity as bad as 50% or more over other motivational/drive/compensation systems (see: Glucksberg, S. (1962): The influence of strength of drive on functional fixedness and perceptual recognition if you're a turbodork for more specifics on the studies they've ran on this.) If you want to see a game with more content, I can assure you that gutting our current compensation model is the worst way to do it, and I would highly recommend that if you want to see this game get better, you don't advocate for this sort of compensatory model (I bet you anything Keroc would've quit during the Celerity Incident if this were the compensation model of IRE/Aetolia).

What motivates people is complicated, but it's a point not worth arguing, because much of this is treating Aetolia (or in this case, IRE) as a business with limited resources. This isn't the case. At all. Aetolia might have limited resources, and if it does, that is because the resources aren't doled out by the parent company.

Aetolia (at least at one point in the past year) had the highest dollars-earned-per-capita of online players than any other IRE game. More than Lusternia, its closest rival, and more than Achaea. The money is (was?) coming in. The resources are there. They're just not being put back into the game or development. They zip straight out of Aetolia LLC and to IronRealms, and then a certain amount (of which there's no transparency so I have literally no idea how much) is returned to the Producers (or just Tiur, I'm also not clear on that) as bonuses. And that's essentially all the ROI we see as players. And, to be frank, it looks like the "get paid for the production you make" model isn't working very well here to begin with.

Celani should get compensated in some way. Aetolia should have a person paid to maintain story direction and lore (even if they're just parttime). Aetolia should have the resources to do this-- and I've had my problems with Tiur that I'm sure haven't been the most subtle thing in the world to an outside onlooker, but at the end of the day this is actually a problem out of his hands. The financial structure of IRE as a whole (here's where I veer back to agreeing with you, Aeryx) does limit the resources of Aetolia, but it's an artificial limit. It's the exact same scenario as your favorite game studio that produces game after game that makes BAZILLIONS OF DOLLARS, but always finds themselves understaffed, overworked, and pressured to put in anti-consumer elements in products, and that's because the people above them are more focused on their own bonuses and pleasing their investors than they are the satisfaction and productivity of their workers. As long as the money comes in, the message remains clear: screw the workers, and screw the consumers.

What Aetolia needs is to see more of the money that goes into it to come back into the game, and less up the chain where it's never to be seen again. And if they're gonna pay people, it shouldn't be nebulous contractual work, they should be getting paid a salary and feel secure in their position and empowered to take risks, and feel safe in their role. Because if we get into this "incentivizing with crumbs of carrots" bullsnot, it'll only accelerate the decline, not staunch it.

Overall I think you raise very good points, and I don't want this to read as a critique of the post as a whole, but that one section, I felt, needed addressed, because I feel like it's not an uncommon idea/attitude among the playerbase.

Anyway, tl;dr: