Also, paying RL money or buying off the credit market aren't the only ways to get credits. Lusternia gives away hundreds of them every month with the bardic/artisanal contests. In fact, unless things have changed, Lusternia is the best of the IRE games about doing this regularly.

Which is a bit off topic, but considering all the emphasis on free vs paid in the last few posts, I thought I'd mention it.

Draylor:

One of the main problems with Lusternia is the mindset and mentality of some of the playerbase. Just sayin'

That may be, but mindsets/mentalities don't arise without a source, and don't vanish without changes in the root cause. This is the old "Buck up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps" argument, that just makes no sense. Being optimistic versus being realistic does not cause your situation to change. It might change how other people interact with you (and therefore change certain portions of a IRL situation), but it won't move facts.


I agree with Jozen (odd, right?) that a lesser number of organizations and great changes would do the game a lot of good, and make for a better environment. Of course, that's never going to happen. I'd rather just see guild choices opened up for RP reasons, or collegium changes that would make the guild choice more of an educated character choice, such as Svorai's decision. I feel like that would make it a more IC decision, and more a part of the story of the character that way.


Edited for grammar.

Okay, working off the premise that we aren't merging, etc etc.

Can we at least have the same person run multiple guild leadership positions?

You can already do it for city leadership (I think), so why not let the guild do it too? Some guilds are small enough or have the sort of RP where this will work.

In fact, I would even go one step further and maybe the admin can allow each guild to customize their structure somewhat. If one guild wants to delete the GA function and distribute the specific powers to other positions, let them.

Basically, allow them to customize their entire structure.

Pros:
-More active leadership by virtue of someone being masochistic enough to run different positions
-Less coding hassle
-Condenses guilds in another way without actually merging them

Cons:
-Increased chance of burnout/ragequit for the person

Sojiro:

Can we at least have the same person run multiple guild leadership positions?

Not possible, sadly. This was changed not all that long ago to make it so a person is simply unable to hold multiple elected seats. Hell, I was given the choice of resigning as La'Saet family head or as guild champion.

Whilst I agree this would solve a lot of problems, and support from me is a firm, "Yes!" - I find it unlikely, in reality :(

Cons:
-Increased chance of burnout/ragequit for the person

Totally depends on the person!

Cantors have no real active GM -or- GA at the moment and we're doing just fine.

If one person could hold several guild positions, all I can think is 1) If that person vanishes, then that's the entire guild's leadership needing replaced and 2) it becomes that much more difficult for someone new to try their hand at leadership.

X leader vanishing isn't anything new though. If it happens, contest as per usual.

RE: new people - I honestly wish we had the problem of someone new wanting to try their hand at leadership.

But we don't. So, we should just do the best that we can.

Wait, you can't be family head and any other elected position? Alriiiight. (That should change. Just make it so you can't be on a voting council twice.)

Enyalida:

Wait, you can't be family head and any other elected position? Alriiiight. (That should change. Just make it so you can't be on a voting council twice.)

Sorry, that's what I meant. Not fam head. You just can't have an elected seat and hold the rep seat with it.

Enyalida:

I agree with Jozen (odd, right?) that a lesser number of organizations and great changes would do the game a lot of good, and make for a better environment. Of course, that's never going to happen. I'd rather just see guild choices opened up for RP reasons, or collegium changes that would make the guild choice more of an educated character choice, such as Svorai's decision. I feel like that would make it a more IC decision, and more a part of the story of the character that way.

Well, would you volunteer Serenwilde for deletion? Each organization has its own niche in the world, and once opened it's very hard to retcon all of that.

You're not rewriting history, but changing the course of the future. There doesn't need to be a retcon.

A decrease in available organisations, ceteris parabus, will result in greater intra-organisational activity. However, it has been pretty much stated coldly that they will do no such thing.

Also, paying RL money or buying off the credit market aren't the only ways to get credits. Lusternia gives away hundreds of them every month with the bardic/artisanal contests. In fact, unless things have changed, Lusternia is the best of the IRE games about doing this regularly.

Which is a bit off topic, but considering all the emphasis on free vs paid in the last few posts, I thought I'd mention it.

You pretend like it's not a contest where talent is involved. Some people do enter and get nothing for their efforts.

Well, there'd be nothing but intra-organizational activity if you took out all but one org and guild. But since that's not happening either, we can just keep on thinking up ways to work with the amount of orgs we have to make things work smoother. Quit being a Negative Nancy and think up some cool ideas too.

Nobody said reduce it to one. There are six. I said less, how does that mean one organisation?

I did give my idea. It was rejected. Anything else to stem player-base dilution is palliative. There has to be a mechanic in place to formally merge organisations.

Noola said it better. :(

Onward with the ideas working within the parameters!

Jozen:

Nobody said reduce it to one. There are six. I said less, how does that mean one organisation?

I was being facetious to make a point. :lol: You knew that.

Bump for multipositions :(

Not sure why you need multipositions. One person shouldn't harbor all the power. Especially when in some instances you need multiple votes to outguild.

No to multi-positions.

We really do have far too many organizations for the number of players here, but I don't think there's any decent solution to that now. It's a self-perpetuating issue, as people, especially new people, will tend to gravitate to the more populous guilds.

It seems to me that, if, like Estarra et al have said they want, the city or commune is the main org. The one that we're all meant to identify with first, and if things are changed to make that more obvious and natural feeling, then who cares if some guilds only have a few people in them. If the guild is only supposd to be a sub-set of the org then as long as there's enough people in the org, it makes up for not a lot of folks in the guild. Seems to me, we just need to come up with ways to switch the focus from guilds to orgs and to make access to guild-related things easier for people to have automatically/remotely (like having guild lessons/history/etc stored on the stage, for example) so when someone's picked a guild without a lot of people they can still learn how to use their stuff.

We really do have far too many organizations for the number of players here, but I don't think there's any decent solution to that now. It's a self-perpetuating issue, as people, especially new people, will tend to gravitate to the more populous guilds.

Unfortunately, the only solution besides reducing the number of organisations is to create a giant influx of new, active players. But this doesn't necessarily solve anything either.

If we give six degrees of freedom to every new player, and they begin at an organisation that has a weak established active player base, it is very likely that they will leave the organisation for a more populated organisation--if they even stay around to play. The number of new players that must come into Lusternia and stay has to be almost sixfold as a byproduct of the available options.

There are just simply too many choices, and to compound the problem, the disparity between organisations are readily apparent to even the newest players.

I am just curious if we can possibly provide an in-game mechanic to enhance inter-organisational alliances to stem the perception of dilution. I will note however that the current political dynamic is the skewed 3v1v1v1. Since, alliances are dictated by players, it's still going to be a problem, but it may give us more flexibility down the road.

In this sense, instead of permanently removing or merging organisations, we are strengthening the bonds between organisations through formal in-game mechanics. This will reduce the sense of isolation or withdrawal from the community.

It's still not going to guarantee a remedy to the perceptive issues associated with the population, but it will give the flexibility to allow smaller organisations to join with others and strengthen each other through alliances.

Jozen:

I am just curious if we can possibly provide an in-game mechanic to enhance inter-organisational alliances to stem the perception of dilution. I will note however that the current political dynamic is the skewed 3v1v1v1. Since, alliances are dictated by players, it's still going to be a problem, but it may give us more flexibility down the road.

It wasn't exactly even when it was 3v3 either. But let's not go down that route of discussion.