Guilds

Ohm

With professions being dissociated from guilds ... what's the end game for guilds?

Do they serve any practical purpose? I see some awesome guilds - the Bards & Oystir are doing very well. But there are some very average guilds that practically haven't done anything in the past years. I guess it is an artifact of the fact that many guilds were created during the time they could be approved and created but the player-base is now no longer big enough to support all of them. 

Is there a way to revive them? Make them more relevant again?

Some ideas:

- Guild quests - guild quests that you can do everyday to increase the prestige of your guild to ensure activity

- Guild based jobs or bonuses - guild granted legendary quests or trials

- Ability of guild/ council to go independent and function as independent organizations (think Assassins guild) not associated to any particular city or maybe even circle

Anette

The question I'd ask is, being the selfish so-and-so I am, is - what do I get out a guild membership?  The bashing bonus is pretty much the one string to Wardancers' bow to me, without it, Anette would probably not be in it, because the other appeal is politics, and I don't care to involve myself in intrapersonal conflicts any more than I have to, I play this game for fun, not fuss.

I like the idea of guild quests.  I'm sure some exist out there buried, but it would be a great way to add both new content and tie it to the lore of the game.  The problem with that idea however, is -- what happens if the guild merges?  Or ceases to be?   I ran into the old monk-before-avenger spot kicking around in the Manoans earlier and I don't even think anyone can go in there anymore.

Ario

Essentially, guilds serve a mechanical function only. What I would like guilds to function as? Roleplay and group hubs for players to work together on. Would I love for guilds to have their own quests that they could do? Yes. I remember doing guild novice quests for various guilds back in the day and enjoying them immensely because they brought you into that world. (Wardens, and Noctusari stand out for me.)

However, all of these things require players to actually improve and care about the guild that they are in and hopefully try to impact the created world around them in a positive manner for other players. Each person has to craft that story of 'this is what our guild does, and that is what we bring to the table in our little slice of culture'. In Stavenn, for example, you have the Revenants, which have been a mess since the merger, and the Noctusari, which are super inactive culturally. Both of these guilds have the potential to be done rather well, I think, but they still require active and donating players to keep things going.

In my personal opinion, I feel like a lot of guilds fall into the trap of either a) not enough players, or b) lots of players, but no one cares. The problem with not enough players is that we get the WE HAVE TO MERGE to keep the guild together, and I've always felt that the need to merge just to keep a population isn't going to fix the problem of no one really caring about the guild itself. It was the problem that the Diavlous and the Malignists had before their merger. Diavlous were waning in membership, and the Malignists probably had two or three active people at the time. They merged, but no one set up the theme for the next guild so it sorta became Diavlous 2.0 and that caused it's own problems. The problem with too many players, but not enough purpose, is that you end up with a group of folks simply joining a guild for the personal politics, or just because 'my friend is in this one'. I feel like that roleplay/purpose of the guild should be greater than the very small mechanical reward on both of these points.

To answer your question, @Anette, at this point - unless you expressively care for the guild's underlying RP, there is no reason to join them outside of 'we're in a group together'. Unlike Sects that provide major benefits to their players, or Cities - which give access to shard bonuses and collective protection -, Guilds do not have a large mechanical need for membership at this point in time.

My solutions to this:

1) Seconding Ohm's idea of guild quests, if the playerbase within the guild can agree on how they want their guild to move forward. I imagine the admins would be more than willing to facilitate through ORGREQUEST. Push ideas forward. Be like Khandava in this regard.

2) Delete guilds with obviously low player count, inactivity, etc. Give the playerbase within the guild enough time to respond, and maybe direct their ideas on how to proceed. This was the reason for the whole merger system in the first place, and I feel that policy of 'your guild could be removed' should be reinforced.

3) As players we need to push together to put more emphasis on our guilds as hubs for activity within the City/Council itself. This is a world that we create, and as much as I would like the admins to go: oh hey, we crafted 8 different quests for your guild. Enjoy! That time isn't here anymore, so please, put forward the effort to improve your guild.

I will add that I can see some very bad problems if guilds were able to be removed from circles/cities and be allowed to function. You'd have problems with a monk+deathknight guild, or whichever. However, this could be solved by removing circle restrictions completely and allowing all professions to transfer freely within the cities/guilds with certain restrictions per city/council. 

Then again, this last bit, is probably the most unlikely.

I hope my thoughts helped, Anette, and if you're looking for a guild that's -trying- to address this issue, seek out the Bards in Kinsarmar, or us Revs in Stavenn. Tzolkin in Khandava are really good too.

Anette

The wardancers that Anette are in seem to have a very distinct case of "lots of people, not much happening".  There isn't a day that goes by where the count doesn't hit 10 people online at some point.  There's also about that many messages through the day.  No one except Andarius seems to want to lift a finger to do much in the guild, or at least not publicly, and I think it basically comes down to the fact that a lot of secretary tasks are thankless busywork, usually.  There isn't much for one to *do* in an overarching guild unless you're running roleplay events or group hunts, and frankly, AM has had less than a thimble of RP going on at all that I've seen.

Really, at this juncture, people need to have a mechanical reason to want to work together.  With hunting, there isn't that, because as an aspect (yay me, hit it yesterday), hunting just diminishes my already pretty piddling XP advancements, so I only ever group up if its someone I want to socialize with, and I'm going to be blunt, that *isn't* most of the Wardancers guild.

I don't know.  I'm dissatisfied with how things are but I'm not sure how to improve them really.  So I feel like I'm just whining.  I'll stop and sum it up thus:

A lot of it comes down to the fact, I think, that a lot of people playing Imperian at the moment at least in the orgs that Anette is a part of, are just milling about smartly as it were, and in many cases, there's a lot of clashing personalities that are begrudgingly tolerating each other.  While I only have experience with AM really, I doubt that's unique to the circle.  One of the first things I picked up on when I started Anette is there seems to be a lot of people that really, really don't like each other here.  I think the guild problems are symptomatic of this.  I'm not really sure what the cure would be said to be.  You can't make people like each other.

[edit]: Also, the GUILD HEALTH system could probably stand to be adjusted so that it's guilds where people are actually encouraged to advance and work together, rather than just kidnapping a lot of people that otherwise don't interact with the guild.  I feel even Anette is a bit guilty of this - to the Wardancers, she just fills space and improves guild health by being there.  She contributes sweet ****-all to the guild itself otherwise, and she has no reason to want to.  Right now Wardancers are the biggest number on that chart, but that's just because there's a bunch of people in it.  They do nothing and there's nothing going on in the wardancers that engages me in the guild, or the game.

Jules

Guilds do feel pretty vestigial right now, which I am really, really okay with.  The main reason I am ever in a guild in an IRE game is because it feeds free org credits into the game, and even if I dislike the people running my house/guild a fair bit, I feel that is pretty important, painless (sort of) way for me to help the health of the game.  And historically, I did often (not always) dislike the people running my house/guild (it certainly made me appreciate good leaders who tried to dial back the bureaucracy and "you'd better call me Lord Guardian" crap).  The first time I was ever really excited about being in orgs was here in Imperian, and to some degree, my post-Renaissance House over in Achaea, both of which have done a great job keeping down the typical bureaucratic creep and dickishness that seem to permeate almost any org where MUD players are allowed to create hierarchical power structures.

And I swear.  That creep always, always starts with "we need to come up with some requirements".  The person doing it could be the nicest guy, with the best of intentions (maybe, I am willing to entertain the possibility with great skepticism), and before you know it, there's a crappy bureaucracy that almost never dies gracefully in these games, because there are always just enough people clinging to it to keep the org from dying gracefully, so that it could be reborn.  If anything, they will create even more bureaucracy so they can "make their mark".  In fact, Antioch exists basically because orgs did reach that critical near death point where they were essentially on the game's built in life support.  That is a rare opportunity in these games.

  The Crusaders, for example, was dead enough that Ultrix was able to recreate it.  She'd have had a hell of an uphill battle in just about any other game, any other org.  Most likely, if she stuck around at all, she would have had to "fit in" with the existing power structure to a very large extent.  There was a couple who used to play Achaea way back when that I'd put in the "Ultrix" category.  Both older, professional people.  They hated our city's bureacracy.  They eventually decided to see if they could navigate it though, and get the wife in as the city leader.  They did, mostly to see if if could be done, I think, and so they could make fun of the bureaucracy the entire time (which they did, on all counts).  They still eventually quit, and I do think it was partly because they realized that most of the player base was 15-20 and ate that "I are important person with important paperwork duties" stuff up.  If I'd had any sense I would have quit with them.  And... you can certainly craft activities for people (like parties, fun contests), mini-events you could call them, if you have the time and energy.  Those are usually fairly welcome, as long as people don't feel they HAVE to participate. 

All of that said, Sects seem to have more built in goals than Guilds do, even if a lot of them are focused around bashing.  And even I will admit, it is okay to have some goals that are about bashing.  Some.  And, sects have a built in conflict system, even if it is still probably way too rough on anyone who isn't Conquest, but anyway, sects have more of the "objectives" stuff already.  

If you're still reading, here's a long, but really well written post by a guy I usually admire on Achaea about how org requirements can go so very, very wrong and why it's important to be pretty careful what you wish for when it comes to them.  In short, the player base has grown up, and is pretty much where I was in life when I started playing - a grownup with a job who had no need or desire to play at petty bureaucracy:

http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/286944/#Comment_286944

Ohm

Should sects be the conduit of org-credits as opposed to guilds?

Jules

Not sure.  I've considered it... along with pooling them all in the city, which has potential benefits and pitfalls too.  The good thing about them all going to the city is, people are pretty much definitely going to be in a city if they are in an org at all (just as they used to be in a city and guild pretty much by default).  It gives the city exclusive control over credits though... As for sects, so far, the game seems to be doing pretty well offering membership to nearly everyone (or at least not saying no if you ask, but sometimes, you do have to know to ask - magick is that way).  The question might be how many players still see sects as super secret elite organizations with limited membership.  I don't think too many, but I really don't know.  Ideally, you'd want org credits to be tied something that nearly every player is going to be in, for sure.  

Anette

@Jules: Trying to be revisionistic with orgs is always an uphill battle, to be honest, especially long-established ones.  This is probably a fair bit of the problem in trying to do things with guilds as well, and additionally trying to overcome a certain inertia with the player-base in general.

Honestly, if the admin were accepting charters still, I would rather try making something from scratch than trying to revise something existing; the latter runs into a lot of people who like the lore or procedures of a given guild and don't want to see it change.  I certainly know this was case with the house I was in, in Aetolia.  They actively resented me trying to change things, despite the fact that the house was dying.  And surely enough, it's no longer a house anymore, poking the game now.

Khizan

Guilds are useless at this point. They were only ever relevant because they were the gatekeepers of professions and with that gone they have nothing. All they do is subdivide the game down even further, and that's not really needed. There's no purpose that guilds serve that isn't already better served by cities or sects.

Anette

Khizan said:

Guilds are useless at this point. They were only ever relevant because they were the gatekeepers of professions and with that gone they have nothing. All they do is subdivide the game down even further, and that's not really needed. There's no purpose that guilds serve that isn't already better served by cities or sects.

I wouldn't say 100% useless, but right now they just seem like glorified clans.  Because all the seem to facilitate is socialization.

Kryss

Guilds have zero purpose and don't need to exist.

Iniar

During my stint with a startup, one of the best pieces of advice we got came from an entrepreneur who said that the best success comes from having a partnership: one is the crazy dreamer and the other is an amazing executor. It is poignant reminder of everything that is wrong with guilds, and in general, most of what is wrong with Imperian.

Most of the people who end up in leadership positions see themselves as visionary but are actually executors, and no matter what sort of system they create, it is still a system built by someone else - the requirements are all based off things that are hard-coded into the game. On the flipside, most people who have interesting ideas will be shut down by the people who enjoy execution because of the perceived lack of structure or coherence.

What you end up with is a succession of guild and city leaders who feel like they can make a compelling change - what they end up doing is creating a change that is not innovative, and if you are lucky and actually get a creative elected, you end up with a system that wildly creative, but horribly executed, so it too dies a premature death.

With all that said, guilds will need to be a partnership between people who can create and people who get **** done. You could pretty much replace the word guild with city or clan or sect and it would still hold true.

Khizan

That's sort of how it works in Antioch. Ultrix keeps the trains running on time, and I keep interrupting her with "LET'S ADD SPIKES TO THE TRAINS! AND FLAMETHROWERS!" 

Esmyrsia

Guilds = RP outlets. As a player back in the 'glory days', I distinctly remember a ton of guild specific RP and interactions. I understand that the guilds have been around for a long time, and even with the shifts and merges, doesn't mean it has to be extinct now. I'm pretty sure that Cein is running around trying to encourage guilds to throw some suggestions his way so he can help you guys revitalize things and kickstart things.

Orgs can change, and evolve, and you're being given a chance to give your input in how you want your guilds to do that. I'm pretty sure more people would be upset if we got rid of guilds then if we kept them right now. 

Ario

Iniar said:

With all that said, guilds will need to be a partnership between people who can create and people who get **** done. You could pretty much replace the word guild with city or clan or sect and it would still hold true.

This. Exactly this. Work with people and encourage creativity to people who are creative, and management to people who manage.

Salik

Hey, I fully want to make my guild active again. I'm more than happy to participate, to chat, to bring up things related to it. I've run guilds and cities both before, and it can work. As you said though, it matters that you have a bit of both, people to think, people to execute, and people to buy in as well. The RP goes nowhere if people aren't willing to accept it.

Lartus

I like guilds

Khizan

Sure, you can put the work into the guild and get a good RP environment or whatever, but you could also spend that time working on your city or your sect and furthering an organization that actually has a purpose in the game. 

Guilds are never going to be as meaningful and as relevant as they once were. That's just how it is. A ton of their activity came from the fact that guilds were the gatekeepers of class and that meant that everybody in the game had to jump when they said "frog". RP rituals, essays on demon summoning, working up RP backgrounds for things, whatever. If you wanted Diabolist/Summoner/whatever class you had to jump through all their hoops, and that meant you had a lot of people doing rituals or writing up Bard performance routines who wouldn't otherwise be doing that stuff.

Khizan started out as a Bard back in the day and that meant I had to come up with a stupid dance routine and all that kind of stuff to get out of novicehood and then there were guild interviews and all kinds of stuff like that, and that was the price I had to pay to have the profession, basically, because that's what the guild leaders wanted us to do and if I wanted the class I had to do it. 

And there were a lot of people like that who wouldn't normally have been into that but who had to do it anyways. Sure, there were a handful of people who really got into that stuff and really cared about it, but a ton of the activity was because guild advancement was mandatory for getting class and so everybody was forced through the steps.

Without that kind of hold, you're not gonna see that kind of activity in guilds again because you can't just pull everybody who wants Diabolist class into doing RP rituals.

Jules

I didn't start playing my first IRE game (Achaea) until after Guilds had been changed in exactly this way (becoming Houses).  But interestingly, they continued to hold a surprising amount of sway over game life, and not necessarily in a good way.  At least, not good for anyone who didn't want to play the kind of game admin had just tried to change up a bit by not allowing a few players to wield so much power over other players.  For someone who was serious about navigating the city's bureaucracy and maybe changing things up a bit (like my friends in the post above), you'd certainly want to work your way up the ranks in a Guild first, both as a way of building connections and as an opportunity to prove your ability to create paperwork... so strangely, even with the mechanical stranglehold on class abilities gone, Houses definitely remained gatekeepers, and to some degree probably are even now, partly because there was an unbroken chain of political power, and the people who were GMs were also part of the existing power structure.  

Here, a lot of those power structures have fallen apart completely at times even at the city level, which is an incredible opportunity to create something awesome - or, someone can recreate a bunch of "requirements" you must meet if you don't want to be treated like a second class citizen, because cities do matter, although it's true that at least they can't force you to do silly rituals just to trans your class.  All you really need is a city that has a more rigid rank structure where rank is treated as "important".  A couple of horrible decorum laws, or even just quietly agreeing to treat lower ranked people as "commoners" is really all it takes.  And then you have some leverage to make people jump through the hoops you make.  Which are of course not like those other requirements.  Oh no, these ones are different.  They are fun and people love them and they add to the depth of the game... Or... they get tired of it and stop playing.  Because you don't want to be citiless in this game, for so many reasons - so to an extent, cities could be "pushy" with people if they really wanted to be, and I get the impression they have sometimes done just that, even after the changes to guilds.  

A lot of people who play these games (or at least some!) are adults who have held leadership positions in real life, and even if we aren't generally "ambitious" in game (and let's face it, very eager/ambitious players are often dangerous in positions of power because they ARE looking for that kind of fulfillment from a game), being treated poorly is quite frankly going to rankle someone like me.  What is incredibly fun for me is when I get to follow someone who can ACTUALLY lead and work with people I like to try to complete an objective.  I prefer this be mostly fighting, it's true, but I don't even care if that person is the best at winning those objectives, because really, when one side is winning decisively too much, no one fights.  My favorite times in Antioch have been when we were tiny and all of the odds really were against us and we were frankly losing quite a few fights.  It meant we appreciated the new blood we eventually got, too.  It is good for orgs in these games to both wax and wane, and to have people who are united in a sense of purpose, rather than rigid requirements.  

To go back to the original question more directly though, Guilds should be the one truly opt in org in the game, and they sort of really are at the moment.  That's good.  As for a specific purpose, one I see that could work is friendly rivalries within a city/council.  This can be the occasional contest or game for sure.  But on a daily basis?  It's not -quite- split down guild lines, but we argue over the relative virtues of spears vs. tridents.  Jules even had Arakis design a pixie spear to troll the pro spear people, and so she could give spears to cheeky newbies who insist on a spear instead of a trident >.>  Stuff like that is fun and small and completely non-threatening and feels like the sort of stuff a bunch of bored semi-immortal people might amuse themselves with on a day to day basis.  

Iniar

I don't know what you're trying to say, Jules.

Septus

She's trying to say tridents are better than spears, I'm onto her.

She's wrong.

Khizan

Iniar said:

I don't know what you're trying to say, Jules.

She doesn't like it when guilds and cities implement all those stupid hoops to jump through, which wasn't actually my point.

All I meant is that the heyday of guilds had a lot of what was essentially forced RP labor; I didn't do Bardic performances and Noctusari demon summoning training stuffs because I wanted to do them, I did them because I had to do them. You're never gonna have that kind of environment again so you're never going to have the same level of guild activity again.

Jules

Hrm.  I will attempt a tldr  Basically, cities and even sects offer meaningful enough (arguably necessary) benefits that they can be prone to the same sort of thing Guilds were when they were absolutely gatekeepers of professions.  When you allow players to control something other players need, there are many potential pitfalls if you don't luck out and end up with leadership who understand everyone is there to play and that serving common goals is more fun than checklists and extra rules.  

Guilds in their current form could be a chance to do something that is almost completely and truly voluntary - but, don't expect them to be huge and have lots of "participation" because in the past, as Khizan mentioned, a lot of that participation WAS "do this checklist" (no matter how special and not tedious your checklist was of course) and people were doing it because they pretty much had to.  The quests that have been brought up aren't a bad idea.  Heck, you don't even need your own special quests.  Just become the guys that crack quests.  Get together and help each other with them.  Quests aren't easy.  Some of them don't even work.  You could become the guys that say "hrm, maybe don't bother with that one" or "you should maybe think about this quest in this way".  For newer members, you could just focus on exploring.  I freaking love exploring.  The new House I said I actually liked in Achaea based their entire schtick on exploring, and I thought "YES.  This is awesome".  They were also really, really, conscientious about how bureaucracy and obsession with titles and rules had got out of control, and they actively avoided that, and reined in people who were trying to recreate that.  God bless them.  

Ivellios

I think the guild's have to provide an entertainment hook now. For some people, they want to do creative writing things, share it, so they join the bards, even if they don't use the profession, the core of being a bard is doing bard things.

I've only been in...2 guilds one for each character I somewhat play nowadays, but there is a huge difference between the Bards and the Revenants. The bards offer something for someone to do in the guild, even if it's just silly rp/writing exercises, it attracts people that like that sort of thing.

Every guild that isn't active needs to come up with something to entertain/attract members and since they aren't gatekeepers to professions, gotta be some fun/cool rp.

As Khizan said, not everyone likes that sort of thing, so you attract those that do

Jules

Ugh. Okay. I did not mean to imply that Khizan was doing anything other than stating fact... Sorry if I somehow did This is why smart people never use these forums. I am not smart.

Ivellios

Jules said:

Ugh. Okay. I did not mean to imply that Khizan was doing anything other than stating fact... Sorry if I somehow did This is why smart people never use these forums. I am not smart.

@jules

You are fine, don't beat yourself up over something stupid and inconsequential.

Iniar

Bards are probably unique in that sense.

It is a concept based around creativity.

I mean, do people join the Revenants to revenate? Do people join the Inquisition to inquisate? Do people join the Spectres to spectate?

You're always going to have people who want to bards. Bards should never be included in the discussion around guild and roleplay.

edit:

Do people join the Noctusari to noctate? Do people join the Animists to animate? Do people join the Crusaders to crusade (ok, maybe)? Do people join the Dunestriders to stride dunes (lol)? Do people join the Hunters to hunt (no)? Do people join the Idras to ... ok, not going to try that one. Do people join the Sentinels to stagnate? Do people join the Silvari to salivate? Do people join the Stormweavers to weave? Do people join the Tzolkin to tzolate? Do people join the Vindicators to be vindicated? Do people join the Wardancers to boogie? Do people join the Wardens to draw runes?

Anette

Iniar said:

Do people join the Wardancers to boogie?

As a Wardancer .... yes.

Khizan

Iniar said:

Do people join the Spectres to spectate?  Yes, it's the primary use of phase

Do people join the Crusaders to crusade (ok, maybe)? Yep! 

Do people join the Sentinels to stagnate? Yes.

Do people join the Wardancers to boogie? Most people join for the pants-off dance-off, I hear.

Andarius

So dead thread come alive - I would love the guilds to be actually useful again. I agree with the ideas given and can understand why people don't want to jump through hoops to advance. Personally, I feel the work I've put into the Wardancers has been solid and can doubtfully be called hoops. I mean...most people hit rank three upon entry just because the 'requirements' are that simple and they're more milestones for your own progression.

I remember the Wardancers from back when, the RP was lovely and a few of the things are still around. I turned those fragments into a RP system that isn't mandatory but is there - and that's the old warpaint color system. Rather now it's a 'tattoo' of sorts you wear in the description if you so choose to participate.

If there's anything I can do personally to make guilds something more than just a social hub as they've become, please let me know and I'll do what I can.