So, I know everyone else is making these epic long posts with lots of reasoning and arguments. I don't have that really, mine are sort of gut feeling things. But since you want our opinions here:

I hate the idea of changing anything about the guilds/communes&cities and how they interact. I like them how they are. There's an issue with guilds and their numbers but I don't think any of the suggestions raised here deal with them at all for various reasons that other people have already said.

Don't add new things in, let us expand on the things we've got with more intricate RP and other interesting, fun things. There's so much awesome potential in guilds that is untapped that I for one would love to get to explore, as well as using it to encourage people to have more investment in their guilds.

Er...that's it. Basically!

Proof of concept: Midkemia has factions, close to exactly as described. I hear that they work well.

Enyalida:

Proof of concept: Midkemia has factions, close to exactly as described. I hear that they work well.

I'm not really familiar with MKO's factions. My understanding is their factions are more like nations (ie you have the Kingdom, and in it you have Krondor as a faction). It's more flavour, I understand, since there's only one faction in each nation. Unless you're referring to their guild system.

Estarra:


So some way to auto-advance seems to answer that question. You are strictly talking just about advancing in guild rank? I mean if it really is causing a bunch of angst, we could just get rid of guild rank and have novices, members, leaders.

Nooooooooo, I like guildranks. I always get excited when I get a new one. :lol:

Estarra:
Also, the new monk guilds will be released when they are released. We are not going to hold back and wait for population to get larger. Sorry! That's the way it is, but keep in mind that it won't occur until next year in any event.

:(

EDIT: (Also while I'm here: I still don't really think changing anything about guilds is necessary. With that, I return to the background.)

A few of us have continued talking, and after some discussion on envoys I wanted to go back to and re-throw out an idea I mentioned in passing.

That being, removing the collegium from the guilds. That is to say, Guild Administrators and undersecretaries/secretaries no longer are in charge of the collegium, but instead giving that to the Ambassador and his aides. In this manner, the collegium professors (the aides) are specifically there to teach all novices - not just their guild's. There's a prevailing sense of "Not my guild novice, not my problem" in almost every org (though not every person!). This might help alleviate concerns of guild novices feeling ignored etc.

The more I think about it, the more I kind of like the idea of factions. It would re-centre focus away from guilds, but I feel like if the strain for advancement was put on Factions (which maybe could have city council seats as well), instead of guilds, guilds would be able to grow more organically. Many guild advancement structures might fall apart, and a few admin have suggested cutting out some of the ranks (like 15) from guilds, but guilds would be able to re-approach it with a focus more on the lore of the guild and less on advancement. I can't tell you how many guilds I've seen where there's a 'warrior path' and a 'scholar path' and a 'sneaky person path'. That kind of thing might fall apart, but instead guilds could focus on emphasising the depth of the beliefs of the guild, versus 'must advance must advance'.

I also stress this is just a handful of admin brainstorming from topic-to-topic, and would be subject to Estarra's will. I'm just throwing this out there so players can comment and give input - we're all listening and watching!

I like the above idea more.

It's not really meant as an alternative to Factions. Really, the more we talk about it, the more I like the idea of them.

But it is meant to address one of the perceived problems!

As someone who has been in and out of Lusternia, I think the blame lies with the playerbase. If you want more players, then you should open up more to new people. That is, rather than being AFK at the Aetherplex or your Manse all day, go out and do something interesting. You might also work to keep people who kill new players for no real reason under control, since that kind of thing can dissuade someone from wanting to try.

I don't know if it's just people feeling superior, like some have told me. Or if people are always just looking to the next event. The end result can be the quiet game that a lot of you have spoken about in this thread. Whatever it may be, a revised guild system isn't going to address these problems.

Winnae is running for city leader of Magnagora, we had a meeting with most of the big players to discuss things we might change. I brought up the issues discussed in this thread.

What people seem most interested in trying is creating a city clan that exists for idle chit-chat. People in the city want to socialize, but they don't want to use the main city channel for it, so an official city chat clan that is optional to join was the most popular idea that came up.

Chiming in as a not entirely new player, but newer than most of the people I've actually spoken to.

Lately, I've been logging on only to find that my city (Hallifax) is mostly or entirely empty. It's been better the past few nights, but overall it's very depressing and I often log off shortly after. That sort of impulse is probably part of the problem, but I don't know how to counter it.

If I was a brand new player, I probably wouldn't stay simply because I don't like bashing and most other things seem to rely on player interaction. As it is, my main motivation to stay comes from interacting with the few players that I can regularly speak to as well as the divine, who are absolutely wonderful.

It also discourages cultural participation, I think. Sometimes it does feel like any sort of writing for the library gets very little response, and that seems like it could discourage participation. I write anyway, and do take a great deal of pleasure in comments on it, but it can on occasion feel as though such things are ignored. On the other hand, I think involvement in that area is an excellent way to keep people playing.

So to bring a point to all of that background, I have to say that I feel as though that adding factions or any similar system won't actually solve the problem. I like the idea of factions, and would love to see them implemented, but I don't think they will change all that much.

Something that I've noticed overtime is that more and more people try to hush up general chatter on CT and save it for "in case important things come up", like an event could pop up at any moment and we can't afford to have idle chat over that channel. It's especially annoying to me because there's about a bazillion different clans for any number of purposes, and if CT is so "awful" that you want to turn it off, why can't a clan serve that function instead?

CT is the only channel that absolutely everyone in the org is in, unless you go out of your way to make a clan and induct every last person into it, including novices as they pop out of the portal. I feel like imposing this belief that it must be used for "official" matters is harmful, especially with how small the pbase can be stretched. You can say, it's fine, people can just get together to chat if they want to, but often people have other things they are working on, or generally don't want to stop everything that they're doing in order to sit in a room and -only- talk. You might consider that a problem in and of itself, but with all the incentives to be perpetually on the grind that this game has and now reinforces, I think it is a bit silly to choke up on the one channel that everyone in your org has a chance to talk through from (just about) wherever they are.

And so long as attitudes like those exist, how long will it take for them to creep onto these faction channels and such?

Yeah, people who yell at folks who try to chat on their CT don't help matters at all. I mean, there's a sense that everyone is AFKing at their nexus or where ever, but maybe they're not, maybe they're just reading something or writing something or designing something or whatever, and would be perfectly able to chat while doing it. But, there's an ingrained sense of 'chatter on CT is bad!' so everyone is quiet. Even if there's only four people logged on in your city, if you're chatting on CT, it doesn't seem 'empty' like it does if everyone's quiet.

That's like one big rambley sentence isn't it? I'm too tired for grammar.

And yeah, there's clans, but as stated, CT is the only channel every single person in the city/commune is on together. That's the one that should be hopping.

Another idea would be to upgrade the militia clans from clans to official structures that every citizen is in automatically. From there, the city channel opens up for socializing and "serious" things can go onto the militia channel, as there would be no reason to "preserve" the city channel for serious events any longer.

We'd talked yesterday about a casual city talk channel - the general consensus from other admin was that it wouldn't solve anything. It would be silly and frivolous in topic, and most people would turn it off the first time "those citizens" started up acting foolish.

No sillyness on the city aether please. Giving each city some kind of more formalized clan+ for military purposes might be helpful though.

That way raid rage wouldn't be spouted over CT and freak out our beloved newbs. You could even move guild security privileges to it so that people can still get that rank in low pop guilds.

Llandros:

No sillyness on the city aether please. Giving each city some kind of more formalized clan+ for military purposes might be helpful though.

That way raid rage wouldn't be spouted over CT and freak out our beloved newbs. You could even move guild security privileges to it so that people can still get that rank in low pop guilds.

The problem is that people will always default to CT if they can't talk to everyone - even the occasional "I'll join a raid!" noncom.

/slightly off topic, could we get some sort of hard coded probationary status where people are not allowed to talk over CT? Would help with giving people a chance to cool off or silencing people who are obviously trolling?

Right now the only way to keep somone off CT is to try and get their role points docked to the point where they can't do it anymore.

This is the kind of thing I meant before.

"No silliness on CT" - While I can agree that some things shouldn't be on CT (because some things shouldn't be on any channel except a private tell - and even then... :lol: ). "Silliness" is so subjective. A group of people talking about their favorite kind of pie, for example. A frivolous conversation, obviously, but a conversation none the less. Instead of oppressive silence, which someone might actually be nervous about breaking (and, before anyone poo poo's that, when I first started playing, I was always terrified of saying anything on an aeither that had been quiet. Felt like I was going to be breaking some rule and get yelled at or something. I can't be the only one who's ever felt that way) there's a conversation going on. People are interacting. And yes, it's a frivolous interaction but so what? Does EVERYTHING have to be serious and deeply meaningful? Do you live your RL life only doing solemn things?

Then, the idea of a probationary period for CT... on the one hand, being able to stop someone who's picking fights or being obscene or talking about the SUCKY start to the Saints football season on CT would be good, giving someone the tools to silence people who just want to talk about their favorite pie, would not help generate a sense of community, IMO.

I can appreciate wanting to silence trolls and ragers, but from experience punishing people who are angry doesn't help the situation. Worse, it will simply be abused. "Quiet maggot! I am your superior! -mute-" will be only a stone throw away if such were added, I suspect.