City Novicehood

Jeremy Saunders

We are planning on some changes to guilds and cities in about two weeks. This is based on some conversations from the forums over the past few months.

The main part of the changes will deal with moving professions and novices from guilds to cities. Guilds will then be free to recruit and use whatever promotion requirements they desire. Previously we have had to squash some of the more elitist requirements.

I am looking for feedback and suggestions on the items listed below and also for features or tweaks that will make things better. Feel free to add your city and guild wishlist items. We can think about adding them as we are already working in that code.

Here is a list of changes we have already coded but we are waiting to release when we sure we have things where we like them.

- Removing the professions from guilds.

- Adding professions to cities. Cities will have access to any profession

  a guild in the city had prior to this change. The city can purchase 

  additional professions by contacting me.

- All city professions can be learned from the city tutor.

- City tutors can teach lessons in any city profession skillsets.

- You must be a master in one profession before you can learn a new 

  professions. This will apply both to tutor-apprenticeship and 

  player-apprenticeship. This is mainly to keep newbies from being confused

  or overwhelmed too early.

- Creating CITY SCORE <newbie> and CITY SKILLS <newbie> for ambassadors.

- Adding auto titles to cities when a player joins in the introduction. This

  is also an ambassador command, CITY [PREFIX|SUFFIX] <profession> <title>.

  Each profession can be assigned its own titles.

- Denoting city newbies in CWHO so they are easy to spot.

- Removing the GNT channel and making GT default for all players. This is 

  mainly because we do not want to split up the player base in this way.

- Removing TOPGUILDS and GUILD HEALTH. 

- Changes to the intro to deal with putting newbies into cities.

Krysaliss

Do you still intend to remove guilds that cease to serve a purpose and what metrics will you use to determine when that will occur? 

Will there be any new incentives to encourage guild membership or do you see a long term future without guilds entirely? 

Rahiel

I kind of dislike the disassociation between classes and guilds. Speaking as someone who has seen something to this effect happen in other IRE games, you end up damaging the roleplay behind guilds if there's no longer a class (or classes) at the core that represent them and their respective ideologies. It doesn't mean that the class wholly represents the guild, but it's still a large part of it. Achaea suffered massively in this department when they first implemented Houses because the Houses were made from the empty shells of what the guilds were. It wasn't until Achaea's renaissance that houses started becoming their own "niche", but even that took a large overhaul and is still a work in progress.

A better alternative would be to keep classes associated with guilds while implementing the rest of these changes. I would also suggest implementing a whole city-wide novicehood system similar to collegiums/novicehood clans in other games. This allows for advancement as a novice to be handled by anyone (like an aide) in the event that a guild member is not around (it also gives a more personal touch instead of an NPC, though you could keep NPC advancement as a backup alternative). You also have a central repository of information for novices that the city can provide by implementing such a system. Once the novice passes their initial novice requirements, they go through their guild for all further advancement as per the norm.

Jules

I really like the idea of relaxing a potential stranglehold on profession skills, while making sure that there aren't Stavennite devotion users or something. 

What about the credit purchases that Guilds get, though?  Those seem to help round out the city's economic health in general, and if people aren't joining Guilds until much later (or at all) the community is missing out on those credits.  Here in Imperian, those credits are still more officially a "paycheck" for the GM, but the GM does of course use many of them to make improvements, and sell or give to members.  As an aside, I actually think that a portion of them should go to the GM as bound credits or something, because eventually, the players really do start to see those credits as being *completely* community property and I do think GMs deserve a paycheck.  

If power structures get too bloated I am all for admin quashing them (and sometimes they are the only ones who really can).  Why leave Guilds to be as elitist as they want to be?  Many of them already seem to have problems, and this seems like a good way to kill them permanently, by letting them kill themselves (along with their income).  

Krysaliss

I considered the collegium briefly but discarded it as a request because I found that, as a novice, it was sort of hit or miss on response within the collegium. If  it's  considered the responsibility of the city as a whole to address novice needs, I think there's a greater likelihood of response. Also, it integrates the new player quicker into the city as a whole. 

As for the damaged roleplay, I think that already started happening when guild charters popped up and classes started to get merged into multiple guilds. I don't think this will do that much greater harm to guild RP, and maybe has a chance to improve guild RP as people will join guilds whose theme they have an interest in, rather than simply joining to gain access to a particular profession. 

My primary concern is that, given the general interest in RP in the game, guilds will see a steady decline and eventually be...pointless.

Eoghan

Krysaliss said:

Do you still intend to remove guilds that cease to serve a purpose and what metrics will you use to determine when that will occur? 

Will there be any new incentives to encourage guild membership or do you see a long term future without guilds entirely? 

We don't have current plans to implement a system through which guilds are deleted, but the fact that the introduction will no longer induct players means that guilds have to keep themselves alive to be relevant. This means active recruiting, among other things.

These changes intend to make guild membership entirely a roleplay decision. Cities/guilds will still have the option of merging guilds together (or contacting the administration, if the wish is to delete them entirely).

Rahiel said:

I kind of dislike the disassociation between classes and guilds. Speaking as someone who has seen something to this effect happen in other IRE games, you end up damaging the roleplay behind guilds if there's no longer a class (or classes) at the core that represent them and their respective ideologies. It doesn't mean that the class wholly represents the guild, but it's still a large part of it. Achaea suffered massively in this department when they first implemented Houses because the Houses were made from the empty shells of what the guilds were. It wasn't until Achaea's renaissance that houses started becoming their own "niche", but even that took a large overhaul and is still a work in progress.

In Imperian, this disassociation has largely already been made. Many guilds now hold a large number of (relatively) unrelated professions. The shift away from restriction and housing within guilds has been happening for some time, and this is just the final step there.

Guilds have long been places to house ideologies that serve as a roleplay base. This change frees them up to pursue that without the overhead of housing professions, and fully releases professions from restrictive guilds that may not fit all players.

Rahiel said:

A better alternative would be to keep classes associated with guilds while implementing the rest of these changes. I would also suggest implementing a whole city-wide novicehood system similar to collegiums/novicehood clans in other games. This allows for advancement as a novice to be handled by anyone (like an aide) in the event that a guild member is not around (it also gives a more personal touch instead of an NPC, though you could keep NPC advancement as a backup alternative). You also have a central repository of information for novices that the city can provide by implementing such a system. Once the novice passes their initial novice requirements, they go through their guild for all further advancement as per the norm.

This is something that we've talked about up here, but the exact mechanism through which we would accomplish that isn't something we've determined yet. We want to avoid hard-coded things like novice quests, both because they aren't good for a changing world, and because upkeep of them requires a lot of volunteer man-hours.

Rahiel

Krysaliss said:

I considered the collegium briefly but discarded it as a request because I found that, as a novice, it was sort of hit or miss on response within the collegium. If  it's  considered the responsibility of the city as a whole to address novice needs, I think there's a greater likelihood of response. Also, it integrates the new player quicker into the city as a whole. 

As for the damaged roleplay, I think that already started happening when guild charters popped up and classes started to get merged into multiple guilds. I don't think this will do that much greater harm to guild RP, and maybe has a chance to improve guild RP as people will join guilds whose theme they have an interest in, rather than simply joining to gain access to a particular profession. 

My primary concern is that, given the general interest in RP in the game, guilds will see a steady decline and eventually be...pointless.

You'd pretty much be making guilds largely pointless by removing professions at their core. I don't state this as a baseless assumption, but rather I've seen it happen on two other IRE games now. Achaea only fixed it by overhauling Houses completely with the Renaissance when they removed classes at their core.

I think novices should be everyone's responsibility in the city and I think it's universally easier for everyone to pitch in and allow the novice to have integration into the city proper when there is a system in place to help them through their novicehood and everyone can help them regardless of their guild. Novicehood requirements tend to be the same across every guild anyway. Once they pass the "collegium requirements" as a novice, they gain access to GT and start working on guild requirements from there and specializing.

@Eoghan: You may want to allow guilds to overhaul themselves then if that is the design decision you're going to go with. I can't really imagine an Idrasi guild without Predators at their core, as an example.

Krysaliss

That's sort of the point. Guilds are already gutted, because professions don't really matter much. The Idras are an outlier. The Noctusari have a host of professions, assassins have never really had much of anything to do with the role of the Noctu, and yet. They are really a shadow of what they were in the past. 

So this either finishes the job and makes guilds truly purposeless, or it grants them a chance to find purpose by stripping them down to their core reason for existing - to provide another RP hook. 

Jeremy Saunders

I would be more then happy to add some tools to guilds to make them more interesting. Right now they are glorified clans with guildhalls. Thoughts?

Curran

Are we going to offer an incentive to join guilds?  The guilds are the main reason some of us have been playing this game so long.

Curran

yes people are important too but they come and go.  If wasn't for my guild I probably wouldn't still be playing after so many years.

Jules

One of the main reasons my characters in all IRE games are in cities/guilds/houses is because I know it brings in "free" income for my overall org whenever I buy an assload of credits.  That translates into all kinds of perks for everyone, most of the time.  Sometimes I benefit directly, sometimes not.  

Sarrius

Guilds hold no purpose besides being a hub for a spedfiic brand of roleplay. I don't really agree with giving them any incentives. The point of this plan is to devalue them because they cannot effectively do what newbies need in this current Imperian. Honestly, guilds are antiquated organizations at this rate anyways.

Rahiel

Jeremy said:

I would be more then happy to add some tools to guilds to make them more interesting. Right now they are glorified clans with guildhalls. Thoughts?

While I hate drawing comparisons to other games, I think they serve as good examples as what could be done: one city in particular held their Renaissance fairly well in my opinion in Achaea and that was Targossas. They had the Dawnblade as the military arm house, the Luminai as the military intelligence house, and the Harbingers as the 'priestly deliver the word of the Light' culture house.

Lusternia also tied guilds to the kinds of guards that could be summoned. As an example, a bard called bard guards that knocked people out of the skies. Warrior guilds had the martial guards. Each guild could call upon different discretionary powers to benefit the city/commune as a whole. Warrior guilds could use a power that would empower their guards if they came under attack and the Druid guilds did something like the old Council powers where you could forest enemy someone (not that I'm advocating bringing back such a mechanic, this is just a brainstorm session).

Ultimately, I think you'd need to tie the guilds into some kind of mechanic, be it conflict/culture/or what have you that makes them more than glorified clans and simultaneously gives them identity and ties them into their respective city/council. However, I think that'd ultimately be a lot more work than what this change is supposed to serve and that is helping novices. I don't think gutting guilds is the answer and the solution can be reached by implementing a group (like collegiums) where they can have their questions answered by anyone at any time and anyone can do their advancement.

Krysaliss

The point is clearly not to devalue them, considering what's been said here. 

The point is to ensure that people who don't have an interest in participating in specific guild or guild RP at all are not forced to just so that they can access a particular class they want to play. 

A lot of the guilds already have some mechanical benefits with the exp bonuses and the like. I like the idea of tying in the RP of the guild into a mechanical benefit that helps the cities, but the problem with that becomes if the guild is dead and that mechanical benefit is a necessary edge, the city with the lowest pop gets screwed even more than is already the case. 

Iunno, I'll have to think about what might be a shiny, interesting incentive without pushing even more imbalance based on population.

Rahiel

Krysaliss said:

The point is clearly not to devalue them, considering what's been said here. 

The point is to ensure that people who don't have an interest in participating in specific guild or guild RP at all are not forced to just so that they can access a particular class they want to play. 

A lot of the guilds already have some mechanical benefits with the exp bonuses and the like. I like the idea of tying in the RP of the guild into a mechanical benefit that helps the cities, but the problem with that becomes if the guild is dead and that mechanical benefit is a necessary edge, the city with the lowest pop gets screwed even more than is already the case. 

Iunno, I'll have to think about what might be a shiny, interesting incentive without pushing even more imbalance based on population.

They're not forced into a guild to access a particular class. Imperian has multiclass and has for some length of time. Just find someone to apprentice you, which isn't difficult.

Krysaliss

I'm mostly talking about it from a straight new player perspective with regard to being forced into a guild. You make a new character, you pick a class, you are foisted into a guild right from the get go. 

From older player perspectives, that has no bearing.

Most of the big changes seem to circle around new player retention and I think that's  a big part of why this is being looked at (please correct me if I'm wrong). 

We have a bunch of dead guilds. If you create a new player in this game and join a guild you think sounds interesting and end up never talking to anyone, you are a lot more likely to get discouraged and stop playing. If you join and you are immediately linked up to an active city (even our dead cities are far more active than some of our worst guilds - hello Saboteurs) then that increases the likelihood of retention. 

What it doesn't do, however, is negate the role a good guild can have in keeping people engaged and invested in the game. City RP has -never- been a major draw for me. It's never as tight knit or as focused in terms of RP potential as a guild can be. 

Jules

Make fewer Guilds if need be.  Even big old Achaea only has 3 per city.  Maybe drop us down to.... less than we have now, and split the assets of the defunct Guilds between the remaining and/or new ones.  And, since Guilds are per circle, rather than per city, make that choice based on city and council population.  If there were a city novicehood, people could help that newbie pick their Guild as one of their "TASKS" (a formal list that is tracked by the game itself, just like ACHIEVEMENTS).  I've seen that done, and it's probably a pretty good way to go about it.  Newbie still gets Guilded pretty quickly, and is more likely to make some kind of informed decision.  

Would also like to mention that with leadership, Guilds aren't exactly hopeless... There are some upsides to having CT be more formally the place where newbies can get help, but having separate organizations does give each leader a chance to build and manage their own "team".  Done well, this seems far better than having everyone lumped into the city.  

Also related, I think is that admin seems to have honed in on the silence of many org channels.  Much as I love ring, it does create some problems, even in orgs that are doing very, very well.  It has a subtle, very difficult to counter chilling effect on CT and GT.  Some people consciously try to counter that effect, and many people try to quickly make sure that newbies get into the "main" ring.  Not sure what to do about that, because I'm not keen to get rid of ring as it works right now, either, because ring is mostly great.  

Xylia

I am absolutely opposed to this. Speaking as a long-time Imperian player (10+ yrs) and PAYING CUSTOMER, the dynamics and features of this game have been vastly condensed and consolidated. This action proposed would progressively kill off what little RP and character diversity is left without a doubt. If you want to ramp up RP, put more work into guilds. Religious diversity is already killed off (lets face it... these cults and sects are down right flimsy). Give guilds more power and tools to be unique and diverse. One of the benefits of the Gods was the essential partnership with admins. Conduct more guild inspired events. Let it be in the interest of cities and councils to attract and keep guilds to further their own prosperity. Isn't that how it really should be? Damage has been done to guilds by allowing professions to be bought. Really not a big deal. If anything, it's not even smart to buy a bunch of professions unless you have the knowledge and the support to train. If you do... more power to you! PvP is incredibly one-sided and will forever be as long as master coders are around creating their automated "kill switches" and selling it to the masses. Imperian can still be popular as it's blood-mongering self as long as there's good RP to keep the populace interested.

In short; Empower guilds with admin support. If man power is in question, alleviate this by educating GMs on how to craft quality events, quests, NPCs, etc. If GMs know what options are possible, then less footwork needed from admins. Simplifying to city control kills diversity and fun.

Oh, and Jeremy... I still love you pookie bear.

Sumie

I thinks guild do need big changes after this though.

An idea I would like is to make guilds into a group progression system. 

Basically you would have achievements but guild-wide. One example would be a hunting achievement, 100,000 mob kills it counts every mob kill that person gets as a member of the guild and adds it to the total. Once the 100,000 kills are reached it would then give an experience bonus or some other reward to every active member of the guild. The catch would be that every year the total goes down to 0 and the achievements are active again so you can regain it. You would a progression of those achievements and try and see how far your guild can go, could they get 500,000 kills? 1,000,000? It would promote a more group oriented activity in the guild and could even involved grouping up to get boss kills. 

The negatives to this idea though is it would hurt low member guilds and promote everyone joining one guild. So perhaps adding some sort of increase to the difficulty of achievements based on amount of members with the ability to remove yourself from the counter if you do not want to participate 

anyways just silly thoughts

Curran

I have noticed at times the city doesn't address the needs of all players.  The guilds help with that.  If we downplay the guilds.  We downplay more ways for people to make connections that keep you in game.  I like Sumie's idea to have group achievement or quests.

Sumie

ps I would also like to see being a member of a towne to be more useful. Perhaps moving all council/city housing to townes making townes where everyone lives and the cities/councils becoming more the commerce and politics sort of place. It would also ease the security risks involved with people raiding cities/councils by getting into a house.

to clairify on my first point I meant Imperian year not an actual year.

Khizan

I think you should take it a step further, honestly.

Implement some form of circle-wide channel and run it as a circle novicehood. Joining a city on the downswing like Stavenn or Ithaqua can be extremely rough for a new player, and making it circle wide increases the group of people that newbies are given to interact with.

It might seem like it's forcing the organizations to get along, but honestly? The system is already like that. Obelisks are circle-based, events are circle-based, circles are already treated as an over-org comprised of the member organizations for almost all purposes, etc. 

Arakis

I have a lot of love and hate for this decision. Firstly I'm a Templar running a Predator/Monk guild, I know barely enough to help novices of those professions then null for what to learn in what order to benefit them in the long run. That means I've had to lean heavily on my HoN, and why I've gone through three of them. And yet despite a minute membership, our guild enjoyed a stay in the top third of Topguilds (because of which is in my opinion is an inaccurate and antiquated system that this change -needs- to overhaul with this change). This decision is going to be -great- for novices. They go from having two orgs the moment they're thrown into bashing (thanks to our loved/hated non-intro, intro) which means one much larger pool of people to get help from.

 I joined Achaea right after their Renaissance and I have to say for them at least it worked much better, I was able to learn two professions and get help understanding how they work and what to learn and equip. All without ever joining a guild. When I finally did join a guild it was for the roleplay aspects of it, not the necessity. I then promptly abandoned Achaea because it'll never be as fun or simple as Imperian.

This decision is going to strengthen cities and benefit newbies, but it's going to hurt the guilds, a lot. Guilds will be free of the responsibilities of handling novices, but they'll also lose the default boon in membership for their profession, and a few of them will lose a big part of their identity, be crippled by it, and die. Guilds are going to have to undergo a rapid evolution (how rapid will be determined by how fast this change is implemented) or they're going to have to die. With professions not being tied to guilds I can see some of our wealthier lunatics dropping ten million gold to get charters for whatever guild their megalomaniacal-plutocrat imaginations find fitting (If I see a Puffin guild I will end you all). And while we'll probably see at least another merger or two. In the long run Imperian will limp on. I'm sure we'll lose at least one person over this, but I doubt we'll lose as many as when we lost the gods and got, stuff, in exchange.

Guilds are going to go from being a clunky necessity to being a frilly and meaningless garnish.

Krysaliss

It's impossible to compare what works in Achaea to Imperian because of the massive population difference. You just have a TON more options on how to handle things when you have those sorts of numbers. Our leaders (at least in the lower pop end of things) are working with a very small handful of people who are interested in -doing- things, whether that means planning or just participating. A large population also means you are going to have larger pools of people interested in doing the variety of things IRE offers. So you'll have people that dig crafting, RP, PK, hunting,  random tedious nonsense (my specialty), etc. Right now, we are lucky if we can cover all bases.

I liked Sumie's idea of cooperative achievement-style quests. Kabaal and I were discussing it a bit and he had some good daily (monthly) quest goal ideas that I'll let him elaborate on. Streamline the benefits guild membership gets (all guilds should have the exp bonus for guild membership, for example).

I wish there was a way we could do unique roles attached to guild membership for the conflict generators  (like the shards and caravans), but everything I can think of ends up being imbalanced in favour of higher population centers and screws low pop places. 

Iniar

nvm.

Kabaal

Guilds could be retooled to offer a set of daily quests for every player? Something thematic with difficulty choices ranging from novice to stuff requiring maximum skills, groups, etc. Could be an IC way of introducing a "quest" tool

They'd need more, and it might not even be a great idea, but stuff along those lines - pushes towards the sorts of gameplay city stuff doesn't push you do, or introducing some "progression" mechanics.

Basically, Imperian is the land of mechanics. Either give guilds some fun mechanics, or delete them and add clanhalls while bumping up the city credit bonus a touch.

Iniar

The problem with more quests for guilds is the pay-off yield for Imperian. A lot of work, some maintainence and minimal benefit.

Bathan

Xylia said:

I am absolutely opposed to this. Speaking as a long-time Imperian player (10+ yrs) and PAYING CUSTOMER, the dynamics and features of this game have been vastly condensed and consolidated. This action proposed would progressively kill off what little RP and character diversity is left without a doubt. If you want to ramp up RP, put more work into guilds. Religious diversity is already killed off (lets face it... these cults and sects are down right flimsy). Give guilds more power and tools to be unique and diverse. One of the benefits of the Gods was the essential partnership with admins. Conduct more guild inspired events. Let it be in the interest of cities and councils to attract and keep guilds to further their own prosperity. Isn't that how it really should be? Damage has been done to guilds by allowing professions to be bought. Really not a big deal. If anything, it's not even smart to buy a bunch of professions unless you have the knowledge and the support to train. If you do... more power to you! PvP is incredibly one-sided and will forever be as long as master coders are around creating their automated "kill switches" and selling it to the masses. Imperian can still be popular as it's blood-mongering self as long as there's good RP to keep the populace interested.

In short; Empower guilds with admin support. If man power is in question, alleviate this by educating GMs on how to craft quality events, quests, NPCs, etc. If GMs know what options are possible, then less footwork needed from admins. Simplifying to city control kills diversity and fun.

Oh, and Jeremy... I still love you pookie bear.

I love the proposed changes. I think they'll help out a lot.

Keep it civil in here, please --Eoghan

Iniar

If guilds are going to end up being clans with guildhalls, can clans progress and end up being clans with clanhalls? Can I also then orgrequest with my clan. Thx.

E: might as well call them cults.

Glijije

1. Give the guilds the option of concentrating on one of these three things: defensive combat, offensive combat, hunting.

2. Cut the number of guild ranks down to 10.

3. Assign a bonus of 0.25% damage resistance, 0.25% damage (physical damage for physical classes, etc.) or 0.25% bashing damage per guild rank.

4. Double the bonus for guild master.