I really don't think clans is the way to go.

Read the topic, would type more but I have this awful essay that I swear to God I will finish on time.

It took Syl 20 in-game years to reach Alderwoman, and I think she was one of the first five Hallifaxians to do so without the bureaucratic rank boost. If you want to say it's currently easy to get CR6 if you're a scholar or artist, I guess it's easy in comparison to warriors or merchants in Hallifax. But it's still tedious.

With regard to clans, I foresee there being an issue. Mostly because it's going to be a drain on city funds and it's just going to clog up the ten clan slots of most citizens. I'm already in...4 for the city alone. Bureau, Board, Aeromantic Command, Array. I had to drop North Wind at one point (aero combat clan) and the city aethership clan as well. Personally, do not think clans would be a good plan, unless there's a clever way of utilizing the ones we already have.

If a point system went into effect, I wouldn't be averse to it. It would require, however, voicing when a citizen does something. Which was the issue of the aforementioned Aeromancer point system. It got outdated because newer people arrived and were unsure about how it worked. I should've gotten points some time ago for some things but I never documented it in the guild/bugged Phoebus, and that's just what happens when you don't speak up. Some things won't be explicitly named in the system at first, but luckily all systems can be adjusted. Nothing is forever. Sure it's extra paperwork, but Hallifax loves its paperwork.

Also grats to Arel for making this a topic. And to everyone who has responded thus far.

*will return later*

My problem on this point is...well, I would do it. I know I would. I would obsess freakishly over making sure everything was in order. But that's not fun. And not everyone is as nitpicky as I am, so there would be mistakes, there would be periods of time where no one wanted to work on it. But even if this wasn't the case, and everything was perfect when it came to the people managing it...I still don't think points are the way to go.

Points might not be the system to go with. I kind of think points is overly complicated when you streamline it. I just do not understand the people who think writing down and splitting up who is who by caste is too complicated.

I'm still thinking, and I've mentioned it a few times, that assigning people to a caste and just giving that caste its lists of things it can be favoured on. Each caste gets its own privlages and negatives based on rank within that caste. Expand on it as you will. It won't need to constantly be updated on points though. Just something simple listing a persons caste and what their favourable tasks are.

If we decide points are the way to go, we could always create a department for it (create a project and appoint someone to keep it up), and give bureaucratic favours for x years of keeping up with it. I know I wouldn't be adverse to being in charge of it. My original character concept for Tulemrah was to have her be a merchant/bureaucrat, so it would be right up her alley. Also, I think certain things should have less weight at higher levels. Like I said before, you shouldn't be getting favours for just showing up to a revolt once you reach CR4ish.

Othero, stop saying things that I like.

Having too many clans is one of the issues that everyone who ever becomes leader faces. Though I'm trying to work out where you have five required clans from it seems excessive at most I've had four required.

The point where the lines become blurred was passed months ago. I'm not trying to be offensive but... we have six castes but everyone refers to higher, middle and lower castes. There is no tracking of who is part of what caste, it's primarily assumption based and only the ministers are likely to be refered to correctly.

What do you do if a citizen refuses to accept their place in the caste structure in any of the other proposals? You have it written down somewhere that they are a servant but they insist that they are a scholar? I remember guilds in ire games that had set up clans purely for the purpose of housing their advancement structure making it impossible to get anywhere in the guild unless you are a member of said clan.

I'd never join a clan just so someone can say I'm part of X caste. It just won't work.

You laugh them out of the city. Peer pressure is how any of these systems would be enforced.

As mentioned, either the guild specific combat clans or the array could be converted into a warrior caste clan. I'm sorry but little to nothing is done with it, plus looking at the warrior caste the people that are in the array should have the minimum requirements for entry-level warrior caste covered.

The bureau... eeh, I'm still not sure as to the point of its existence does the culture ministry absolutely need its own clan, how much difficulty would it create if it were rolled into the Artistic caste or BoD which, depending on how the Beaurocrat caste shapes up, could be rolled into the beaurocratic caste.

That's three current clans that could potentially be repurposed. With a rule that your highest caste determines your actual caste being in all three should not be an issue.



My objection to the point system would just be that it's not a caste system, sure you assign different values to different things and it might be easier to rise one way. But any organisation could implement such why is it going to maintain the caste system in hallifax?

@Rika: Non-participation can always mark the citizen as casteless and so below indentured servants in hallifax society.


@Othero: And when someone logs on an hour later then confirms that the person was indeed telling the truth it's just that the one person in the city responsible for maintaining the project hasn't updated it yet?

I assumed you were discussing a situation where someone was blatantly refuting the system and saying you had no way to enforce it. A situation where a person seems honest and the paperwork says otherwise? You wait and double check things.

So who's paying for the credits to buy the clan slot?

Well actually it's one of those issues that could go either way, especially in a project based situation. The activity level of the maintainer determines how easily everything will flow, rl happens sometimes people are inactive without warning. You could have a few days of changes backlogged because the only person responsible for doing all of the updates is suddenly not logging on, or doesn't feel like updating the lists.

A single clan with the following structure would be far easier to maintain.



Off current activity levels this should allow for almost constant coverage, though it shares the visibility issues present with projects. (How annoying that will be is dependent on how often caste would need checking.)

@Rika: You are more than welcome to make a request, I believe there are a few guilds out there that owe their guild members credits because they require membership in a clan by this logic. Actually, Phoebus should be drawing guild and city credits because she has required clans. And the hartstone would have needed to be handing out credits to every novice when I first joined.

What if more then one person kept track of the lists? Hell, the city could appoint each caste a caste head and that person is in charge of keeping the order of their caste and representing them to Hallifax.

No system this important should be on one persons shoulders. One leader, sure. But give him helpers who can make updates and keep things moving.

Or you just say that to be Hallifaxian, you must sacrifice one of your ten free clan slots, or buy your own extra. Come on, there are ten slots, and 25 credits is pretty cheap.

If you could think of a way to transform the clans to help out the problem, I'm all ears. Really open to anything. I just think it's perhaps not the most -efficient- way to handle this. If you can prove me wrong, fantastic.


Bureau is to alert Aides to things going on in Library and Cultural Affairs. Also for discussing fun things like, oh, culture articles. Also it's where arena plans are documented. Also where aides can pose ideas to their Ministers.

Possible it could be converted.


Like I said, if you can come up with something snazzy, dooo it. Me being proven wrong is not a bad thing.


Really depends on definition of caste, eh. If we go with Eventru's whole book = 25 points, revolt = 5, there's still incentive to be an artist or scholar. It's still "unequal" when comparing a fighter to an artist. Now that being said, there are issues associated with the point system like what Othero said earlier - for example being maybe a bit too complicated and requiring a lot of upkeep. All the ideas here are imperfect, and it's good that we're all poking at them with sticks until we find one that's the least squishy.


Oh, definitely. One caste clan would be nice as opposed to several. And I could see the format you proposed working.


Yes.


One caste clan would be completely doable.

@Sylandra: As a Hallifax alt player who's been kinda sort of around, I'm crazy happy someone is finally taking this sort of idea serious. Just don't expect everything to get knocked out and perfected here. Take this IG and work it out with Hallifax's leaders. Make it work!

Temporal shift causing double posts.

Honestly, I think Nariah's solution is the best, combined with increasing the middle caste to CR5 (burgher does, technically, mean 'someone of the middle class'). Then aldermen would basically have to be God-Emperor tier, of course.

And now for a rant.

I'm really more of a combatant than anything else. I'd never written anything and barely did much designing ever, in all the years I've played Lusternia. When I went to join Hallifax (and Elostian's Order, by extension), I realized that I'd have to write. I didn't really want to, but once I'd topped out in the middle caste, I basically had to. So I did. It took maybe a couple weeks between other things to get a few pieces together, but I managed to write/design some stuff decent enough to win prestige, and that was basically all it took to put me through CR5-6.

I don't see why that's horrendously difficult for anyone to do, especially if you're wanting to play a Hallifaxian character. You have to branch out and actually put some effort into appeasing the roleplay of the city you choose. That's the way it should be. Unfortunately, people are a little bit spoilt nowadays, with all the horrible leadership and drama going on in every org which leads to arbitrary favouring and other metagame nonsense. A couple years back, I remember when it was harder to get CR6 in Magnagora as a combatant than it is to get to CR6 in Hallifax now.

Fighters needing CR6 as a 'requirement' for revolts is pure metagame :censor:, and if anything, the admin need to either nerf and stamp all the corrosive metagame elements into the dirt or stop pretending this is a roleplaying game and make flagrant mechanical changes to balance out the fact that nobody cares about RP any more.

tl;dr It's the rest of the game that's broken, not Hallifax.

*nostalgia goggles*

Everything is broken. Hallifax and the rest of the game. But Hallifax can have their cake and eat it too by coming up with a RP system that lets them have what they need to compete.