The family system has been bugging me for a long while now. Shiri refuses to shiribot up the last topic on it, since it's a year and a half old, so I'm going to make a new one.



The family system right now is flawed. I can understand why families are limited, especially coming from Achaea. But it goes too far, I think. It's been two years, almost, and there is no one yet even near to being a Great House. We have Demigods and Titans, but no one is even halfway to a House as yet. Even if a family were to achieve such status, it is almost meaningless. People know the large families already, if they're active enough, and all of them that have a shot of ever making a House already have a clan, which negates every mechanical advantage being such would grant them.



Why would there be any problem with allowing a third sibling, especially if one of the first two goes inactive? If time for building a family is such a concern, make it take one extra year of consideration per sibling. The third would take two years, the fourth, three years. Growing a family that way would be cumbersome, and much slower than it would be through children or marriage, and yet it would allow vital leeway in the system that currently harshly punishes people trying to roleplay any sort of family that doesn't strictly follow the guidelines set down, of two siblings or one married couple.



Also, rejecting doesn't act as you'd think it would. I rejected Estelonde when I divorced Joli, and soon thereafter, Veralidaine did as well. Joli remarried. There are no active members, yet it still exists, and I'm still listed as being born into it, which is blatantly false. Married into it, yes, but I was not born into it, and it sucks roleplaying as a Talnara (since I can't mechanically be one) with that on my honours. Yes, it's my fault I let Joli talk me into it, but I also assumed it would go away when I rejected the family.



Anyway, in summary, can we get this looked at?

Well, the only benefit of becoming a greathouse that I know of is getting a clan. You can bash up 500,000 gold in no time with 5 people. Like a week or two tops.

Why not RP it like Magnagora does it? It almost (and this might just be bias) seems to be better that way.

I'd be fine with RP, and Magnagora has a great background for theirs, that the RP follows through very well.

However, it's hard to RP something when mechanics are in the way. For Magnagora, they can wriggle around that because of the histories. The rest of us can't.

And really, we don't want to. I don't care if Talnara is a great house or not; I bought us a clan, and we're active and talkative and it makes me happy. What I hate is that I can call myself a Talnara all I want, but game mechanics say I'm not, and mechanics almost always trump RP. It would be silly to say I can breathe underwater, if I don't have trout totem or waterbreathe, because mechanics make it obvious that I can't. Same thing with families, it's just more subtle. I can say I'm Nejii's brother, but I'm not, according to the game.

The Treerippers have been dealing with it forever, nobody really is concerned.



Its just like real life, My daddy says that Uncle Sally is my uncle, but the DNA shows that Uncle Sally is really from another planet. Guess Uncle Sally isn't really my uncle anymore???

Right, and according to the game you can't smoke kombu, but you can certainly RP it. Just because the game says something doesn't make it the end all of be alls. I'd hope that people could overlook a bit of code when RPing.

I agree with Sylphas. This really is NOT working out the way it's supposed to. And please, please PLEASE don't say that you are still working on Aetherspace and can't fix this. It is important, and gets in the way of RP, and you can't have a roleplaying game where the roleplay doesn't work..

Oh, and Sylphas, I am keeping my books, no matter what your Forum Title is. I like them.

Fixing it would require rethinking it, which would take up a bit, this is really minor compared to other things.

Ytraelux, I would not confront the administrators like that. People have been complaining about this since the game began and it has not been fixed. It obviously requires a rehaul that takes expensive time spent on more important and moneymaking aspects of the game.

Roleplay does work, you're just choosing to allow it not to.

Jahan, look at it this way. You go up to someone. They introduce thenselves as John Patterson, for example. You happen to have a copy of their birth cetificate on hand, and you read that it says John Fredsmith. This will lead to awkward questions. You know it is definitely his birth cetificate, yet he claims it's wrong. He explains that he has changed his name since the birth cetificate was printed, but it wasn't changed. He mentions that he gets this a lot, and it is difficult for him to use his real name, in a world where everybody who looks him up sees the wrong name.

Nobody wants this to happen.

But you CAN smoke kombu. I smoke rosehips all the time. You can smoke any herb you want, they all fit into pipes. They just have no mechanical effect. It's an entirely different thing when the mechanics actively work to thwart your RP. I can't RP that I have Stagform, because I don't, and it would be silly.

If the admin don't have time, I understand that. But it would be nice for everyone to just know that they've heard our concerns. We've had them for a year and a half, and nothing has been done. Is it -ever- going to be looked at, or will something else always have higher priority?

Personally, I think removing Great Houses while there are none is a good idea. The family system could do with a major simplification and review.

Aye. It's a neat concept, but in practice it doesn't work. Better to do it before someone manages it and whines about nerfage.

Yep, my thoughts exactly. That way, no one will whine. You can just buy a damn clan and then no one cares about getting a great house. Hell, my clan is called House Carthan. I believe, that families are limited so that you can't get a great house easilly, and until I'm told otherwise, that's what I'll believe. So, ditch great houses, and allow for expansions of family. That way, I can add Aris as the third Carthan finally.

Yeah family is wierd.... turns out I am married to my mom's cousin.... GO ME!!!

Hell, I'd almost be happy to keep it as it is and simply allow a third sibling. Seems many of the complaints are about that, especially if one goes dormant.

Estarra in the other thread at least mentioned that she knew of our complaints, which is a start. I hope it's at least looked into at some point, we have been asking for over a year now.

There are alot of tweaks I am sure need to be done before it but, yes for instance Reiha's parents are Lyco and Yukari. Yet she cannot be official since she bloodbonded to another person earlier in her life. She rejected that family to marry me and take the name Kalas. But still the bond haunts her and there is nothing she can do to be officially recognized as Yukari and Lyco's daughter. I think it does need some work but I do think they are taking things on a priority level.

yeah.. you all got problems


I'm familyless

Gah, family system right now annoys me to no end. It pissed me off when I couldn't bloodbond with Tervic because he was already engaged to Clise, which led to him being officially considered an Aristata by marriage when both him and Clise would have been considered Freewinds if we had been able to bloodbond. (following the basic standard of wife inheriting husband's surname)

That was almost 2 months ago, now I'm getting grief because Kiarlea wants to consider my wife, Adee, as her child. She can't do this unless her husband Klia, who is currently inactive, also considers her. We agreed to hold off on officially founding the Freewind family until Adee was considered, so now the system of how considerations go through is interferring with me founding my family.

I don't know, I think right now the benefits of being a Great House are very minimal (like Richter, we have a House d'Murani clan already), and the requirements are extremely high. But at the same time, I'd rather not see a large amount of great houses. I'd rather see a system that doesn't require a certain number of active players, but rather a decent number of players and then some form of application to the admins.

In Magnagora, families are required to have served in the army and as ministers or some sort of leadership positions to prove their "worth". It's actually pretty neat, and a great way to reward people and make people strive to not just adopt tons of people, but to really take time to look for good additions to the family.

What is the point of a Great House, aside from the clan, which everyone already seems to have?