Eventru:

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.

Ok, well I guess I could see myself doing that. Or more acurately silencing everyone and then using CT to sing songs about how hella awsome I am.

It also assumes that people able to do so aren't the ones throwing the fit or trolling, which is a stretch.

I like the idea of moving collegium professors to the Ambassador, and not just because Svana is Gaudiguch's ambassador. I worry about treading on other guilds' toes by picking up their novices straight from the portal unless no one is about and I don't know how much professors actually use their abilities.

Also I like the guilds as they are and think they'd lose a whole lot of their awesome individual potential and flavour if it was too easy to flip between them or share skills, as fun as that would be for a time.

Guild advancement is motivational for me. I like doing tasks, aiding the guild, learning and adding to its lore and getting a sense of progression. Currently Illuminati advancement is divorced from favours... other than having to give them to make people get to the rank they need. It's a pain at higher levels, I'd rather just be able to do: GUILD ADVANCE BOB to +1 rank. Maybe just restrict that power to me. :)

It's a pain at higher levels, I'd rather just be able to do: GUILD ADVANCE BOB to +1 rank.

(I'm sorry in advance that this is really rambling and all over the place. I've been up for a while and my ability to form a coherent thought has gone out the window.)

You know, something like that might actually be good. Maybe there should be a separate priv for "rank increase", available to the leadership/secretaries/undersecs. That way, if someone does something to get bumped up a rank, instead of having to go through the superfun "please favor this guy 50 million times, but don't bother if you're not 19+ because it will barely do anything" dance, they can just promote them and be done with it.

This could potentially cause guildfavors to see more use, too. At the moment, I never want to give guildfavors unless it pertains specifically to things that qualify for rank advancement. If there was just a "+1 rank" ability, I wouldn't have to worry about saving my favors for something that was "worth it". If someone does something that helps the guild, they can just get a favor; do enough, and they can naturally rise through the ranks by virtue of being a useful member of the guild. (This is how I'd like it to work now, but it doesn't really turn out that way in practice, I've found.)

Of course each guild would develop its own restrictions and system and whatever for advancement still, and maybe they wouldn't make any changes at all-- but I think having the option to simply bump someone up a rank in addition to guildfavors would be quite handy.

I like that... have a rank advancement priv for officers and staff to use for advancement tasks completed. Every guild has them, collect so many of this, write so many of that, fight so many of this, then an undersecretary or secretary and so on checks it, boom. Bumped a guild rank.

But then, the favors are still there, as they currently work, for anyone to get just because they were extra helpful to someone that day or participated in an impromptu guild event or did something spectacular out in the world that makes everyone in their guild look good just by association.

That'd be nice for people who don't like to do assignments, but want their contributions recognized too. They can gain guildranks, because folks won't feel like they can't favor without messing up. Folks who like to do the assignments then won't have to wait for 20 guildfavors to get the next rank they worked for. Win win!

If people are hardly using guildfavours, I find myself saying this: "You're doing it wrong." - I guildfavour rather liberally for things ranging from a donation to the guild, exceptional display of combat aptitude or even because I just simply feel they have worked hard and deserve some recognition.

It's the little things that help with retention and I personally feel that guildfavours are simply not utilised enough and could definitely do with regular usage.

MMO's and MUDs are really about socializing, I would be playing Source right now if it weren't so!

I think then that it is misguided to try and legitimize the whole "shut up you're annoying, lick my boots" attitude that some people have over the channels that always have people in them.

That may be the case in Magnagora, but that's decidedly not the actual attitude I've caught other places. It's generally that the 'older' population will only passingly participate in the conversations, unless it pertains to them directly, or to something important..
It's been a long long time since I've actually heard of anyone invoking Serenwilde's 'Please be quiet over CT right now, unless you have important business' clause. Generally, it's just an aura of quietness that inhibits chatter. Lots of "Hello"s and "Goodbye"s, and the occasional question, but not much else is initiated.

Personally, I don't usually have anything to say that isn't better said directly to someone or a group of people, so I don't say much on CT myself.

On the topic of ct being quiet or wanting a "silly city talk". I always get the impression the main reason people don't talk there is they prefer their OOC clans for chatting rather than doing it IC.

It seems like conversation has died off - I don't feel like there really has been a strong, collective opinion voiced yet. Are the only solutions people think will work completely untenable (ie guilds being removed/combined, multiclass)? Do people think something like a CCT (city casual talk) would be sufficient? Would Factions solve the problem as presented or with modifications? Would my suggestion re Ambassador taking control of the Collegium help with "the novice problem"? Would Guild Bonding work (with things like being able to GF people up to a certain rank like gr3 in bonded guilds)? Would doing your city quest earn guild rank points up to gr3 help? I'm not sure on just appointing to guild ranks (IE it could be abused, then you would want to strip people down, but then a guild master could strip someone from gr19 to 1 and kick them out without others, removing rights to vote, permanently keep people below certain guild ranks, etc). Would a combination of these work?

I wouldn't mind if someone made a short list of what the perceived problems created by low guild populations are ("I can't multiclass" isn't a problem to me), either. That way we can really approach them with distinct problems to solve.

Eventru:

It seems like conversation has died off - I don't feel like there really has been a strong, collective opinion voiced yet. Are the only solutions people think will work completely untenable (ie guilds being removed/combined, multiclass)?

Probably

Do people think something like a CCT (city casual talk) would be sufficient?

No, this might only maybe do something for orgs where ct is restrictive and it wouldn't address the actual issue.

Would Factions solve the problem as presented or with modifications?

If factions were put in I expect what would inevitably happen is that the rp side of guilds would move there and the skill teaching side of guilds would remain with them, with a likely increase in guildhopping because your advancement isn't impaired by it.

Would my suggestion re Ambassador taking control of the Collegium help with "the novice problem"?

The guilds would just retain control because the ambassador would then need to produce novices for the guilds to their specifications. The guilds would still be the ones teaching the novices unless they go through npcs and the time spent in the collegium is far too short for anything more than "learn these abilities and do these quests... oh bye now".

Would Guild Bonding work (with things like being able to GF people up to a certain rank like gr3 in bonded guilds)?

Favouring to rank 3 and the emphasis on it shows what is actually the concern behind those complaints. Also it would probably take one occurrence of a bonded guild doing this against the wishes of the guild to have it crumble.

Would doing your city quest earn guild rank points up to gr3 help?

Doing guild quests to earn a certain level of guild favour would help, as performing the city quest for city favour should. Given that gr3 seems to be viewed by some as "you're not a novice any more" most would not actually be able to complete the city quest by the time they had surpassed this.

The stardock model is rather interesting, you get sub-gr 5 favours for performing quests (you'd be doing them for hours before you hit gr2) and then to move between certain ranks you must pass another mechanical obstacle (I'd ask for no spoilers).

Translated, the hartstone might decide to favour certain honours quests along with having a few minor quests related specifically to their guild lore. Completing these would result in small favours up to a point, after that point they might either require a guild favour to get past the next stage or to perform a specific guild-only quest.

I'm not sure on just appointing to guild ranks (IE it could be abused, then you would want to strip people down, but then a guild master could strip someone from gr19 to 1 and kick them out without others, removing rights to vote, permanently keep people below certain guild ranks, etc). Would a combination of these work?

Why not simply make it that a person can only ever be moved one rank per weave?

I wouldn't mind if someone made a short list of what the perceived problems created by low guild populations are ("I can't multiclass" isn't a problem to me), either. That way we can really approach them with distinct problems to solve.

Not being able to multiclass isn't a issue of low guild population, it's a cause. People who want to switch around, who want to play different classes, either alt or guildhop. Guildhopping within your org is often simple enough that if you don't care about getting above rank 1 in a guild, you effectively have the ability switch class once per day.

For smaller guilds, the possibility of that person sticking around a while to be one more person in the guild can be incentive enough to ignore that they're probably going to hop out again after a while.

Similarly bad/unpopular skills are also a cause rather than a problem in this sense.

As far as issues go...

Druid guilds have mechanical things that they are needed for (totem carving/saplings). The smaller the guild, the more pressure is exerted on the members of that guild for this. There have been times when I have logged in to "We need elders carved" and it kinda becomes a matter of "whose fault is it that all those elders got chopped down" even if it's not said.

Weakness, not necessarily in terms of fighting ability (though, sadly, likely related) but in terms of rp. Fewer people around means fewer people to pass on the guild specific rp, sometimes it can even be sacrificed for the sake of keeping that one more member happy so they hopefully stay. The guild leadership by necessity can become entirely focused on changing things to make people stay, which is something that I would think is beneficial to the game and in turn something that the admin would want to be putting a focus on.

Lessened novice retention, I can say from personal experience that when a guild has few to no people around I dump the character pretty quickly. This is as someone who doesn't really need help when it comes to an ire mud. In Lusternia, in quiet guilds you can wait through the ten hours of novice time and never see anyone able to advance you out of it.

Smaller population, similar to the previous issue but if the novices actually manage to stick around til after novicehood they then hit the issues with no one being around, their encounters with guild rp can be snatches of interaction with guildies they encounter but primarily may be down to reading scrolls, there is also the difficulty of entering pvp without a helping hand. The people that would be there to teach you have jumped to another guild or have stopped logging in, so you need to start again, hopefully get the guild favours to get you to rank three. Gods forbid that a guild runs into the situation where a rank 3 needs to contest just so that there is someone who can favour other people up to it.

Low morale, all of the issues also come with a nice package of this. Over time the players in a guild can slowly get more and more pessimistic about the situation, the desire to leave grows (more so when they hate the skills), such guilds likely lack the resources to get new shineys, and are probably hoping for a chain of envoy changes to patch up their skills.


Mostly the issues are ultimately related to keeping the newbies that come through, so the response of "get more players" is rather frustrating because at least as far as I would expect the focus needs to be on helping guilds retain novices and grow, once that's working then we move on to "get more players" cause otherwise it seems that all that will happen is we throw whatever new players we manage to get at the current situation and the issues present help to drive them away.

I am personally not seeing any benefit to the addition of yet another channel that a clan would not fix. Of course, if there is overwhelming support, then something might be prudent. Just a wild stab in the dark here, but how about giving each org a clan that is deeded and just have each citizen/commune member automatically join it? Would certainly save the hassle of writing new code for what will likely just be "another channel."

Draylor:

If people are hardly using guildfavours, I find myself saying this: "You're doing it wrong." - I guildfavour rather liberally for things ranging from a donation to the guild, exceptional display of combat aptitude or even because I just simply feel they have worked hard and deserve some recognition.

It's the little things that help with retention and I personally feel that guildfavours are simply not utilised enough and could definitely do with regular usage.

This. I favored people for all sorts of reasons when I was in the Shadowdancers. I can't favor yet in the Harbingers...since I'm still guild rank one. Teehee.

Draylor:

I am personally not seeing any benefit to the addition of yet another channel that a clan would not fix. Of course, if there is overwhelming support, then something might be prudent. Just a wild stab in the dark here, but how about giving each org a clan that is deeded and just have each citizen/commune member automatically join it? Would certainly save the hassle of writing new code for what will likely just be "another channel."

It'd be easier to add a second city channel versus coding a special clan everyone is forcibly joined. If that's the best solution though, why do we need to do anything? Players can buy a clan, deed it, and induct everyone. You don't need us for that!

I'm also not sure on the feasibility of "the Stardock approach". I'm not really familiar with it outside the broad concept, but I'm under the impression that idea would be to add series of quests for each guild to advance towards certain points. The answer to that is most likely "not going to happen". You're talking about the equivalent work of a full-fledged area, quest-wise, for every guild. While I'm pretty fantastic (to toot my own horn) scripting five areas worth of quests for just Celest would be an exercise in insanity. Add in that we're talking about 30 guilds for such quests, it's just too much. Most likely we'd be looking at like your city prophecy quest (or for the Serenguard, the Filabelhie quest - I think I misspelled that though!)

At first I just kinda rolled my eyes at a second org channel but now that I think about it, it might actually be helpful.

I know in Mag CT is really just for announcements, quick questions or requests for assistance. Anything else is shut down pretty hard and usually not in a nice way, ie insults, threats of violence or actual violence.

Its the culture of the city to be ruled with an iron fist but that isn't terribly newbie friendly and doesn't really promote a sense of togetherness and can make cultural activities and lore discussions a bit akward.

After some thought, I would vote for putting in a second city aether and let the orgs decide how it should be used to best suit their needs military/RP/chit chat/whatever. If it doesn't help then I think a faction type solution could be explored in more detail.

It would reduce the coding resources needed and be a tangible step toward addressing player concerns. If it doesn't work out then it's not a big enough change to cause any real harm.

As I sort of implied, I doubt a second city channel would help (assuming this is an issue even on the city level), as people prefer their OOC clans anyways.

I honestly like the idea about the Ambassador. As it stands the Ambassador doesn't do terribly much, so putting them in charge of novices would work great.

I'd further ask that GNT be made open to collegium students and that guilds get the option to make GT hearable by them as well.

Greleag:

I'd further ask that GNT be made open to collegium students

Is this not why we have CGT? There is a much broader range of people available to help with all manner of questions.

Greleag:

I honestly like the idea about the Ambassador. As it stands the Ambassador doesn't do terribly much, so putting them in charge of novices would work great.

I'd further ask that GNT be made open to collegium students and that guilds get the option to make GT hearable by them as well.

I think people really need to think about what moving the collegium to the abassadors purview will actually do in practice. I don't particularly care, cause it mainly means that there is someone else who needs to edit that one help file. But I honestly believe that, with no other changes to collegiums, there will be no actual difference.

That's what I said on Envoys. I don't see any real problem with this change, but for the novice it won't mean anything. All the people who were likely to help them before will simply be ambassador aides and keep on helpin' them, or will do so without becoming aides.

The intention (and hope) would be to remove the perception of 'Not my guild, not my problem' regarding collegium students (which is commonly held in every org, or so I get the impression). Have you other suggestions regarding collegiums?