Vashner2009-03-03 08:52:14
This has been sitting around at the back of my head for a while now, and I thought that maybe it's time I put it out. I know that it's probably not the best time to put this out especially with the upcoming Envoy Summit on Combat, but hopefully we could have this follow since I feel that the Family System has great potential if we actually work at it slowly and see how we can improve on the current system, if not scrap it completely. Right now it seems to be sitting there and doing nothing.
Please critique and contribute! Otherwise we'll get nowhere.
1. Size/Population Requirement
Required Size for the Great House Status: 50 Players
Required Size for the Lesser House Status: 20 Players
Contribution of Banner House to Size: 25% of Banner House Size
Currently, what we have according to POLITICS FAMILIES & FAMILY TREE is...
-------------------------------------------------------------
The Great House of Talnara 62 Members, Total 62
The Great House of d'Murani 61 Members, Total 61
The Great House of Mes'ard 55 Members, Total 55
The Great House of Dekoven 48 Members, Total 53
------------------------------------------------------------
The House of Starleaf 28 Members, Total 28
The House of Luminare 21 Members, Total 21
The House of La'Saet 25 Members, Total 21
The House of Feyranti 21 Members, Total 21
The House of Kalas 29 Members, Total 29
The House of n'Kylbar 30 Members, Total 30
Based on this table, and the actual POLITICS FAMILIES scroll, I find that:
- The Great House of Dekoven is the only house which became a Great House by virtue of its Banner House, the House of Luminare.
- The Great House of Dekoven and the House of Luminare are also the only houses to have used and benefited from the Banner House System according to this summary.
- The Great House of Talnara and d'Murani only have 62 and 61 Members.
- The Lesser Houses are all suffering negative honour, with only the House of Starleaf maintaining itself at 0 honour.
Considering the Welcome Conditions, we need:
- Both parents and the child to be considered present
Seems simple and straightforward enough. And it is reasonable since you wouldn't want to log in suddenly and find that your spouse has adopted so-and-so. Also, parents should know their children and not suddenly wake up and find that they suddenly have a throng.
However, I feel that this system has a few inherent problems:
- When your spouse suddenly stops playing, your only option if you want to continue adopting children is to divorce and marry another person.
- If you didn't marry into a family, this is perfectly fine but if you did, you find that when you divorce someone you sever ties with said family and go back to your old family, or none at all.
- This prevents you from further propagating a family name which originally wasn't yours.
- In a sense, you become a dead-end for the family and for most RP purposes divorcing your husband to marry his brother or divorcing your wife and marrying her sister is quite out of place unless of course you develop a storyline for it.
Proposed Solution:
- Allow for the case that only one parent considers the child. This should remedy the problem of going through the tedious switching of spouses which takes a minimum of two years. Also, we could add a condition that if we have only one parent considering, it takes 1.5 or twice as long than if we had both parents. After all, you have to consider for the other person as well so you need approximately twice as long to think like the other person and see whether or not the child is indeed yours. This should also stem the member requirement problem, which is the focus of the next point. You could also make it a configurable option whether you want your spouse to be able to consider without your consent/in your absence.
Banner Houses only "Tithe" a Quarter of their Membership:
- Looking at the table above, we find that No combination of Lesser Houses will give a Great House. If Kalas and n'Kylbar merge, we only get a total membership of 37. Plus we have to consider that as far as RP is concerned (see next point), this probably won't happen.
- Even at 50% Tithe, Membership caps at 45 which is 5 members short of a Great House.
- At the current 25% Tithe, we would need the Houses n'Kylbar, La'Saet, Kalas and Starleaf to come together with a total population of exactly 50. La'Saet and Kalas can lose one member each so long as they are not the house that is intending to be raised to Great House Status.
2. The RP-Nature of Families:
- Some houses will never allow themselves to be banner houses. An example of this would be House n'Kylbar, which is historically a Great House in Magnagora.
- Some houses just don't like each other. Such is the case of De'Unnero and n'Kylbar when De'Unnero was still a Lesser House.
- Having people in office should carry a certain amount of prestige regardless of whether you come from a Great House or Lesser House. Just because I'm not from the House Talnara shouldn't make me any less of a member of the Moonhart Council. My family should still be able to claim some honour, that a lesser house such as ours was actually able to get someone to become an influential person. Similarly, Vashner was Archmage for almost three decades but neither n'Kylbar nor De'Unnero claimed a sliver of honour.
Then we consider the benefits of being a Banner House:
- You can possibly make another house a Great House, whilst receiving no woven benefits.
At this point if I were a Lesser House considering being a Banner House, it seems I'll be at a disadvantage all the time. While I could always say "I'll withdraw support if you don't do so and so." and have an agreement with the other house, being a Banner House of a Great House doesn't really give one any cards to play. It is like a village tithing to a city yet not being defended by it during raids, not getting help with commodity quests and generally just being left there to rot. Naturally, the village may be better off not aligning itself but then it may find itself subject to raids from said city.
The conclusion must then be that I need to get Great House on my own, unless I can con a Lesser House or find a ridiculously loyal friend/minion who leads another Lesser House to become my Banner House... and what's the probability of that happening?
Proposed Solution:
- Allow Banner Houses to receive some honour from being a Banner House regularly and allow them to gain honour as though they were a Great House if the family they support is/becomes a Great House. The Great House may also receive honour for having Banner Houses regularly. This should make the politics behind families more interesting once we have more families of sufficient size, and gives Lesser Houses more reason to be Banner Houses. Also, this should alleviate the problem of Lesser Houses having too few avenues for gaining honour which results in negative honour generation.
Forseen Problems:
- Coding behind families might actually be really complicated and tweaking even such a small thing might cause a cascade of bugs to occur with what we currently have.
- Possible abuse from people making hordes of alts to become their children.
- Formation of Family Voting Blocs which may render the Vote Weight System being useless, though d'Murani was already known for this even a few real years back without the benefits. People always told little Vashner that running against a d'Murani was almost impossible in the Geomancers.
Please critique and contribute! Otherwise we'll get nowhere.
1. Size/Population Requirement
Required Size for the Great House Status: 50 Players
Required Size for the Lesser House Status: 20 Players
Contribution of Banner House to Size: 25% of Banner House Size
Currently, what we have according to POLITICS FAMILIES & FAMILY TREE is...
-------------------------------------------------------------
The Great House of Talnara 62 Members, Total 62
The Great House of d'Murani 61 Members, Total 61
The Great House of Mes'ard 55 Members, Total 55
The Great House of Dekoven 48 Members, Total 53
------------------------------------------------------------
The House of Starleaf 28 Members, Total 28
The House of Luminare 21 Members, Total 21
The House of La'Saet 25 Members, Total 21
The House of Feyranti 21 Members, Total 21
The House of Kalas 29 Members, Total 29
The House of n'Kylbar 30 Members, Total 30
Based on this table, and the actual POLITICS FAMILIES scroll, I find that:
- The Great House of Dekoven is the only house which became a Great House by virtue of its Banner House, the House of Luminare.
- The Great House of Dekoven and the House of Luminare are also the only houses to have used and benefited from the Banner House System according to this summary.
- The Great House of Talnara and d'Murani only have 62 and 61 Members.
- The Lesser Houses are all suffering negative honour, with only the House of Starleaf maintaining itself at 0 honour.
Considering the Welcome Conditions, we need:
- Both parents and the child to be considered present
Seems simple and straightforward enough. And it is reasonable since you wouldn't want to log in suddenly and find that your spouse has adopted so-and-so. Also, parents should know their children and not suddenly wake up and find that they suddenly have a throng.
However, I feel that this system has a few inherent problems:
- When your spouse suddenly stops playing, your only option if you want to continue adopting children is to divorce and marry another person.
- If you didn't marry into a family, this is perfectly fine but if you did, you find that when you divorce someone you sever ties with said family and go back to your old family, or none at all.
- This prevents you from further propagating a family name which originally wasn't yours.
- In a sense, you become a dead-end for the family and for most RP purposes divorcing your husband to marry his brother or divorcing your wife and marrying her sister is quite out of place unless of course you develop a storyline for it.
Proposed Solution:
- Allow for the case that only one parent considers the child. This should remedy the problem of going through the tedious switching of spouses which takes a minimum of two years. Also, we could add a condition that if we have only one parent considering, it takes 1.5 or twice as long than if we had both parents. After all, you have to consider for the other person as well so you need approximately twice as long to think like the other person and see whether or not the child is indeed yours. This should also stem the member requirement problem, which is the focus of the next point. You could also make it a configurable option whether you want your spouse to be able to consider without your consent/in your absence.
Banner Houses only "Tithe" a Quarter of their Membership:
- Looking at the table above, we find that No combination of Lesser Houses will give a Great House. If Kalas and n'Kylbar merge, we only get a total membership of 37. Plus we have to consider that as far as RP is concerned (see next point), this probably won't happen.
- Even at 50% Tithe, Membership caps at 45 which is 5 members short of a Great House.
- At the current 25% Tithe, we would need the Houses n'Kylbar, La'Saet, Kalas and Starleaf to come together with a total population of exactly 50. La'Saet and Kalas can lose one member each so long as they are not the house that is intending to be raised to Great House Status.
2. The RP-Nature of Families:
- Some houses will never allow themselves to be banner houses. An example of this would be House n'Kylbar, which is historically a Great House in Magnagora.
- Some houses just don't like each other. Such is the case of De'Unnero and n'Kylbar when De'Unnero was still a Lesser House.
- Having people in office should carry a certain amount of prestige regardless of whether you come from a Great House or Lesser House. Just because I'm not from the House Talnara shouldn't make me any less of a member of the Moonhart Council. My family should still be able to claim some honour, that a lesser house such as ours was actually able to get someone to become an influential person. Similarly, Vashner was Archmage for almost three decades but neither n'Kylbar nor De'Unnero claimed a sliver of honour.
Then we consider the benefits of being a Banner House:
- You can possibly make another house a Great House, whilst receiving no woven benefits.
At this point if I were a Lesser House considering being a Banner House, it seems I'll be at a disadvantage all the time. While I could always say "I'll withdraw support if you don't do so and so." and have an agreement with the other house, being a Banner House of a Great House doesn't really give one any cards to play. It is like a village tithing to a city yet not being defended by it during raids, not getting help with commodity quests and generally just being left there to rot. Naturally, the village may be better off not aligning itself but then it may find itself subject to raids from said city.
The conclusion must then be that I need to get Great House on my own, unless I can con a Lesser House or find a ridiculously loyal friend/minion who leads another Lesser House to become my Banner House... and what's the probability of that happening?
Proposed Solution:
- Allow Banner Houses to receive some honour from being a Banner House regularly and allow them to gain honour as though they were a Great House if the family they support is/becomes a Great House. The Great House may also receive honour for having Banner Houses regularly. This should make the politics behind families more interesting once we have more families of sufficient size, and gives Lesser Houses more reason to be Banner Houses. Also, this should alleviate the problem of Lesser Houses having too few avenues for gaining honour which results in negative honour generation.
Forseen Problems:
- Coding behind families might actually be really complicated and tweaking even such a small thing might cause a cascade of bugs to occur with what we currently have.
- Possible abuse from people making hordes of alts to become their children.
- Formation of Family Voting Blocs which may render the Vote Weight System being useless, though d'Murani was already known for this even a few real years back without the benefits. People always told little Vashner that running against a d'Murani was almost impossible in the Geomancers.
Ishant2009-03-05 06:56:53
QUOTE (Vashner @ Mar 3 2009, 06:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Considering the Welcome Conditions, we need:
- Both parents and the child to be considered present
Seems simple and straightforward enough. And it is reasonable since you wouldn't want to log in suddenly and find that your spouse has adopted so-and-so. Also, parents should know their children and not suddenly wake up and find that they suddenly have a throng.
However, I feel that this system has a few inherent problems:
- When your spouse suddenly stops playing, your only option if you want to continue adopting children is to divorce and marry another person.
- If you didn't marry into a family, this is perfectly fine but if you did, you find that when you divorce someone you sever ties with said family and go back to your old family, or none at all.
- This prevents you from further propagating a family name which originally wasn't yours.
- In a sense, you become a dead-end for the family and for most RP purposes divorcing your husband to marry his brother or divorcing your wife and marrying her sister is quite out of place unless of course you develop a storyline for it.
Proposed Solution:
- Allow for the case that only one parent considers the child. This should remedy the problem of going through the tedious switching of spouses which takes a minimum of two years. Also, we could add a condition that if we have only one parent considering, it takes 1.5 or twice as long than if we had both parents. After all, you have to consider for the other person as well so you need approximately twice as long to think like the other person and see whether or not the child is indeed yours. This should also stem the member requirement problem, which is the focus of the next point. You could also make it a configurable option whether you want your spouse to be able to consider without your consent/in your absence.
- Both parents and the child to be considered present
Seems simple and straightforward enough. And it is reasonable since you wouldn't want to log in suddenly and find that your spouse has adopted so-and-so. Also, parents should know their children and not suddenly wake up and find that they suddenly have a throng.
However, I feel that this system has a few inherent problems:
- When your spouse suddenly stops playing, your only option if you want to continue adopting children is to divorce and marry another person.
- If you didn't marry into a family, this is perfectly fine but if you did, you find that when you divorce someone you sever ties with said family and go back to your old family, or none at all.
- This prevents you from further propagating a family name which originally wasn't yours.
- In a sense, you become a dead-end for the family and for most RP purposes divorcing your husband to marry his brother or divorcing your wife and marrying her sister is quite out of place unless of course you develop a storyline for it.
Proposed Solution:
- Allow for the case that only one parent considers the child. This should remedy the problem of going through the tedious switching of spouses which takes a minimum of two years. Also, we could add a condition that if we have only one parent considering, it takes 1.5 or twice as long than if we had both parents. After all, you have to consider for the other person as well so you need approximately twice as long to think like the other person and see whether or not the child is indeed yours. This should also stem the member requirement problem, which is the focus of the next point. You could also make it a configurable option whether you want your spouse to be able to consider without your consent/in your absence.
I agree with that, it was frustrating having to see Astraea divorce Leiliadhe because she wasn't reliably around to approve bloodbonding. It seems to be a bloodline deadend in quite a few places. There should also be some provision for bloodbonding in similar way, or a concensus among existing active bloodbonded people.
Seeing your d'Murani comment made me laugh since it's not really a matter of them holding all the power, moreso they adopt more pro-actively, much like the Talnara's, Mes'ards and seemingly recently Starleafs. Too tired to comment more, but I think you have some good ideas.
Ixchilgal2009-03-12 01:39:56
To improve the current great house system...
Scrap it.
It's garbage. It was badly thought out, poorly implemented and terribly coded.
This has been said basically from Day 1. Many, -many- suggestions were made to improve it, they were all ignored. As a result, nobody really cares about it anymore.
Scrap it.
It's garbage. It was badly thought out, poorly implemented and terribly coded.
This has been said basically from Day 1. Many, -many- suggestions were made to improve it, they were all ignored. As a result, nobody really cares about it anymore.
Everiine2009-03-12 01:47:17
QUOTE (Vashner @ Mar 3 2009, 04:52 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Just because I'm not from the House Talnara shouldn't make me any less of a member of the Moonhart Council.
Oh come now, this isn't true and everybody knows it
(j/k, don't ostracize me...).But on an On Topic note, there was a lot of thought put into these suggestions. Not being a part of any house, Banner, Lesser, or Great, I never really paid all that much attention to the extended family system. But I like these suggestions alot.
Vashner2009-03-13 02:20:35
QUOTE (Ixchilgal @ Mar 12 2009, 09:39 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
To improve the current great house system...
Scrap it.
It's garbage. It was badly thought out, poorly implemented and terribly coded.
This has been said basically from Day 1. Many, -many- suggestions were made to improve it, they were all ignored. As a result, nobody really cares about it anymore.
Scrap it.
It's garbage. It was badly thought out, poorly implemented and terribly coded.
This has been said basically from Day 1. Many, -many- suggestions were made to improve it, they were all ignored. As a result, nobody really cares about it anymore.
I wouldn't say it's garbage. Granted it doesn't work very well for Magnagora, it seems to work well enough for Serenwilde in the sense that Talnara is tithing an amount of culture and its family members have stronger ego attacks.
It could use a few tweaks, though starting from scratch should only be done if the end product will take less work and will be much better than if we work from what we have now. I'm sure the admin have enough work on their hands.
Shaddus2009-03-13 02:30:56
I think the idea of one parent adoptions for 1.5X the waiting is awesome. If it could be put in, I would be able to have more children, because Kanika isn't always able to be around.
Talan2009-03-13 03:21:20
It would be nice if some of these arrangements could be done without everyone being present at once. Go to the family registrar place, approve the bloodbonding/adoption, and it'll stay 'on file' for a few days, giving the other people a chance to approve it when they log in. This would prevent people from having surprise! kids, and it would accommodate people who have established role-play and then had other things come up, like a schedule change preventing family groups from finding times where everyone is on line at the same time. It would also allow people whose spouses/founders go semi-inactive to continue to grow their families without divorcing/scrambling to find another tolerable partner, which is out-of-role for a lot of people.
As far as problems with this, yes, it might cause many alts in families... is vote weight already considered when determining the active members of a family? It should be. Any way to open up the system more for people who are trying to forge family connections for their rp would be most welcome.
As far as problems with this, yes, it might cause many alts in families... is vote weight already considered when determining the active members of a family? It should be. Any way to open up the system more for people who are trying to forge family connections for their rp would be most welcome.
