I know what you mean.

Hey, Paul!

GET A RESERVATION AT DORSIA NOWWWW!

I wonder what the outcry would look like if another org, say, Magnagora, put in a law where you could only get CR5/6 through raiding.

On a more serious note: Ileein mentioned a clan which defenders can join (being removed if you don't continually defend so you don't get freeloaders) to get additional benefits, such as being able to purchase more credits. This was suggested IG. It was rejected. Ta-da.

Well one of the values of the Collective is some measure of respect for the lower Castes.

Some, at least.

Other orgs don't have anything like that built into their culture, history, and roleplay. Flawed analogy.

Hallifax actually does have a city-wide combatant/influencer coordination clan, go ahead and look it up at CLANHELP ARRAY.

I want a pet Ampharos.

You're baiting me Shuyin. Boo.

Though, if alliances become so set in stone that they never move, that's its own problem. I definitely feel that the current state of things was not only well outside the control of anyone in a decision making capacity in Gaudi at the time of occurance, but also a pretty unfair albatross to bear consequence wise for the better part of a year. It seems like the admin used to be more inclined to shake the snowglobe now and again, which kept things from getting quite so static.

Though, even if they did at this point, I'm left with the impression that the real loser of such a shake up would be Serenwilde, because nobody would want to fight the Rome in Shuyin's sig, nor would anyone want to be on the wrong end of the incureable running gag.

In other words, everyone would want to be the Grover Dill to Scut Farkus.

On the other hand!

It would be really tempting to hop if there was a Halli/Mag alliance. Because then you'd have Elo and Raezon on the same side, and the only possible result of this would be as follows.




...ok, I'm done now. Also, Godwin'd.

1. Thought experiment.
2. Magnagora's leader is traditionally called the Warlord. There's little reason they couldn't have a roleplay of military conquest being valued above all else. That they do not is a choice of the players. That is, Hallifax players could easily roleplay the castes in a different manner. Known artists/scientists are able to purchase more credits, for example. The name of the ranks don't even correspond to the castes...Burghess? Alderman?



That's the coordination clan. Even people who only occasionally join in should be a part of it. The idea was, for a reward system, you would only want to reward people who constantly defended. So you would need a separate clan where you could remove anyone who didn't continually defend.

I keep telling you guys, all we have to do is make the non-combatants feel persecuted by raiding Hallifax (which can only be done by bribing Glomdoring into leaving it be, sadly), and then everyone will be equal in their unhappiness, and Hallifax's population will find an appropriate equilibrium point somewhere around zero combatants and zero snugglers.

You're thinking too small.

You're all thinking far, far too small.



That's my meaningful contribution to this thread.

(I'm also going to add I don't speak german, beyond 'flying baby crap!' and counting to ten. I apologize if NaziDalek says something offensive.)

"Snugglers and combatants" is just as much of a false dichotomy as "roleplayers and lulzPKers."

I r confused :<

I agree. Tying cityrank to caste doesn't make a whole lot of sense, imo. Consider that bureaucrats/lawgivers are supposed to be under scientists/artists, and yet, anyone who wins the CL election gets CR6.....



/thread

I don't think anyone has yet come up with a feasible proposal for tying caste to something other than cityrank, which was how our lovely revered Chairman (a.k.a. teh adminz) informed us it was to be done. It's not as easy as it sounds, considering it has to 1) fit with underlying RP, 2) be visible, and 3) give people some kind of sense that they are, indeed, in the lower/middle/upper castes, which tends not to happen when you've got people in the lower castes throwing around citydisfavours. Frankly, despite a few issues which are nowhere near as large as people like to make them out to be, the current caste system appears to function quite well, especially when you keep in mind that you can get up to CR4 with 'lulz I killz j00" and get the last two ranks by giving lectures on how to do "lulz I killz j00!"

The higher you are in the castes the more classified information you have access to?

I have no idea how much of a problem it is, to be honest. I guess someone could always make a poll thread to get an informal feel for how much the current system is limiting how many combatants come to Halli.

Poll threads are extremely unreliable, given that the forums (and, more specifically, the people who post on the forums) tend to constitute a vocal minority of the player base.

Also, re: classified information: have you any idea how hard it is to keep things a secret in MUD-land? IC and OOC? Because it's never acceptable to assume that the person you're telling this stuff to OOCly has a strong IC-OOC barrier, or that anyone they might tell, or anyone they might tell, etc, etc. Let alone the vast number of loopholes that exist ICly. It's the same reason actually having any of Gaudi's secret societies exist could easily be a bad idea: they'll shortly become not-so-secret societies, which rather ruins the fun.

The issue with the caste system is going to get worse over time. See: the sandwich analogy. Really, all that is holding up Hallifax is Glomdoring. Without that support, we'd have no defenses and the think-skinned people would start leaving and crying and you could watch the city fall apart.

It gets a bit worse than that when you look at village influencing. There are going to be very, VERY few people in the upper castes and that will reduce our ability to influence. (Though, if you wanted to start keeping track of it, I suppose you could keep track of given lectures and papers written and so on and 'move the people up to the higher caste system and start to favor them as defenders still, but stick in the higher castes, but that is another idea.)