You can guildfavour at GR5, and it's virtually impossible to advance much beyond that unless the guild has a specific policy regarding that (Like when the Aquamancers GF'd all secretaries up to GR15.)


This is really the fundamental problem. To the newbies, aetherships, crafting, constructs, colossi, debating, influences, conflict, culture, libraries and combat don't exist. At best, they're remote things you may or may not be able to get after spending 24 hours of your life with no relevant or interesting skills doing little more than repeatedly slamming the same alias to hit finks over and over and over again. The lucky ones manage to find out about questing (And maybe they get to do the Newton quest, which is nigh impossible, or one of the village quests, which may or may not be held by people in an enemy org and they may or may not be harassed for going to said villages) or engender some roleplay to have fun. Lusternia basically culls anyone who doesn't particularly enjoy bashing; bashing isn't even particularly important, but the game more or less revolves around it until you have a very well-established character (IE, a tradeskill, or know about most quests, or can bash up lots of gold fast to keep yourself fed).

Back to the topic at hand, there are two primary reasons why novices aren't taught. The first, as has been stated, is the lack of active players (which is a direct result of the lack of novices) and can be dealt with by creating a CNT for the novices to go to just in case there are no people on GNT.

The second, as I stated in the other thread, is that players really don't get anything out of it. Increasing and modifying the reward that players get from teaching would help to make players want to do more teaching. Alternatively, as I have also stated before, a new paid Guide position could be created, where a player is assigned to a guild or city to play the roles of new, guild-specific tutors whose sole purpose is to train new novices.

That may be a reason some have for not considering it, but my reason is that there are a number of guild-specific things that go into a basic orientation that I'm not going to know. Most guilds have attacks specific to them that are accessible to novices. Many guilds have abilities such as defenses, cures, and utility skills that are part of day to day operations.

In other words, I don't believe someone from Guild A can effectively orient someone from Guild B (well, some people can, sure, because they're familiar with the abilities of other guilds) with regard to some very basic information. As long as a new novice is going to be ok with the fact that the person orienting them may have no idea how to use their skills, where their guild hall is, how to attack, etc., then yes, there is value in a city-wide orientation period that could be followed by a guild-specific orientation period.

My only concern is that a novice will be just as frustrated by going through an orientation that can't give them this information than they would having to wait a few days to get an orientation that will. If that concern is unfounded, then my criticism falls, and I'm ok with that.

The nice thing about GNT/GWHO being cross-plane is that it is a minimally invasive thing to try and see if it helps at all. If it doesn't, no big deal. It doesn't really change anyone's experience from what it is, today. Merging GNT into a commune-wide experience, however, is a more significant change, and if it fails, it will fail in a way that will somewhat change someone's experience from what it is, today.

Maybe it would help us appreciate the vision better if we had an example of how you saw your idea working in practice. Walk us through, say, a Blacktalon's orientation of an Ebonguard novice. Or some cross-guild orientation.

This is brilliant.

Dernit! I can't quote you, you didn't use my name directly... sneaky sneaky

This idea is made of epic win.

Daganev makes a totally awesome point.

And thus... Daganev's Signature grows longer.

As much as I loathe to admit it, Daganev has just displayed some sheer brilliance. I support this idea fully.

Edit: Yes, that's just for the signature, I already stated I like it, etc. Gotta keep appearances (uncrowned happy smilie)

Generally speaking I think the merged GNT approach is only viable if, at the same time, other changes are made which allow the undersecs of one guild to be aware of the rules and recommendations for other guilds. If you just do a merged GNT and then wait until later to make it viable, the idea is going to crash and burn. In fact, I think that's why these threads have crashed and burned, the sense that that's what's being proposed.

The bare minimum, I think, is some way to allow undersecs of one guild see the relevant GHELP scrolls set up by the other guilds. The GA needs to be able to flag a list of GHELPs that are "public", and thus visible to anyone with undersec privs in the other guilds in the same city. E.g., the High Chief in the Serenguard does GHELP SHARE BRAVES, which allows Moondancer undersecretarys to check GHELP SERENGUARD:BRAVES and be able to see whatever is current. There'd have to be GHELP UNSHARE BRAVES as well. Then let the GAs work out how to use this for some basic cross-training.

And then when that's been in place for two weeks, then and only then merge GNTs.

People could do this now using books, but at considerable IC cost for what is fundamentally an OOC effort. And since you can look at a GHELP from anywhere but you need to be where the book is to use it, books would be far too clunky. It needs to be as easy on an OOC level to update and access as GHELP is now, so it should be done via GHELP.

That's because it's the idea that's brilliant! "Everyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together." - Georg C. Lichtenberg

But if you really want, here goes. Daganev has proposed a brilliant idea.

It's been said elsewhere I'm sure, but Glomdoring has an Ambassador's clan for the aides, and all the novice teaching requirements for each guild are there in nice, neat scrolls. It's been very useful.

HELL YEAH. Basically tell the novices to choose their three skills, then put the lessons into them quickly. IRE's training system has sucked strongly for a while in terms of excitement and interest... I mean, repeatedly typing in "learn 15 knighthood from marshal, then pressing OK, then watching the same eight messages over and over is liked by no one! What novices really want to do is grab skills and then try them out. Make a little training montage for each guild, taking roughly two minutes. For example, in Ur'Guard Avarath would talk about the Puella ritual if you chose Rituals school, or Soothe if you chose hunting, and Grip for Knighthood, and about Rift in Planar. This idea is epic, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was put in quite promptly.

Great first step, but not quite the same, inasmuch as those can't be the same scrolls the novices themselves are seeing -- unless you induct them somehow immediately. So things are still being duplicated. Plus there's the cost for the clan, which Estarra should probably cover if she's the one pushing this kind of novice-benefitting (and thus Lusternia-benefitting) collaboration.

Of course, with minimal coding effort they could probably give each nation a novice-teaching clan and then automatically join novices to it as they are inducted into a guild, automatically kicked out of it when they graduate, and automatically put back in when they become undersecretaries. Then the existing clan powers and scrolls would take care of everything else. Wouldn't even need a new CNT; the clan's aether would work for that. This might be a better idea than CNT and better than my shared-GHELP approach, since it leverages the power of clans.

Only aides of the ambassodor are in the clan, the clan is just a place to hold GHELP scrolls, the aether is not used similar to the CNT idea at all. But it is great for people helping novices from other guilds.

Whoever said Houses were good for Achaea needs to... just... no.

Autoclass and Houses absolutely destroyed Achaea. There is no RP, there is no control. It's anarchy. Rogues run wild, people like Manu get to get away with whatever they want, the PK system sucks. If someone fails a test they can quit without any disadvantages and join some other House.

As someone who had to deal with novices a lot in Achaea (and was ordered by the GM to call novices "apprentices" and then "newcomers" during the guild-to-autoclass-to-house changes... changing -every- guild scroll was -not- fun, and was not rewarding), before autoclass, things went smoothly.

Newbie A beats up newbie B. Newbie B screams and throws a tantrum at Newbie A and insults Newbie A. Newbie A lies about entire incident. HoN sends Newbie A to their guild and speaks to their HoN in respectable terms about proper punishment. The rest is handled by them. Newbie B gets punished for insulting a fellow Achaean, despite affiliation.

After autoclass... not so smoothly.

Newbie A beats up newbie B. Newbie B screams and throws a tantrum at Newbie A and insults Newbie A. Newbie A lies about entire incident and kills Newbie B again and says to HoN, "Nah, nah, nah, you can't touch me because I have no House and therefore no rules." HoN explains HELP PK and HELP PK CAUSE. Newbie A says, "If you touch me I'll issue you." HoN attempts to salvage any form of RP and calls Newbie A insane. Newbie A screams, "IF YOU TOUCH ME OR TALK TO ME I'LL ISSUE YOU FOR HARASSMENT!" Newbie A snubs HoN and continues to torture Newbie B, until Newbie B gets so fed up and suicides, because he understands that issuing will only cause Newbie A to suicide and come back to haunt him, and there is no RP there.

Imagine dealing with that, day in and day out. Achaea became a job after autoclass and houses, trying to keep everyone in line. Everyone just lost it. It's like Lord of Flies over there. You can't walk out of your city because even if you issue someone who kills you, all they're going to get is a slap on the wrist. There is no such thing as perma-shrub; you get shrubbed for 7 days and that's it. People are rube and obnoxious times twelve.

If Lusternia ever put in Houses, I'm just going to give up on IRE games. Houses and autoclass are the worst things to have ever happened to a MUD game. Ever.

Wow, you're bitter.. and your experience of Achaea is not the same as most it would seem.

Houses have their good points. Honestly.

I'm afraid she's right. Houses and autoclass have lead to newbies in Achaea running rampant and setting traps (!) to kill people in newbie areas. But I'm more inclined to blame autoclass than houses.

Personally, I'm somewhat curious about how the whole guild charter thing in Imperian is working out.

The Houses CAN take care of matters when the newbies in question are members of a House. I remember my Ashuran monk getting slain by a Churchling priest, and Thi got him kicked out of the Church and Shallam with just a quick conversation. So Houses are doing a little bit for damage control, but I will admit that things have gotten much worse in the IC year that's passed since then.

Said murderous newbie was not in a House.