I agree that there are too many guilds for such a small player base and that the number of guilds should be cut down/consolidated to on the order of 3 or 4 per circle, rather than per city/council. (How you get to that lesser number, however, is a different question altogether -- forced mergers? Delete inactive guilds? I don't know.)
I am curious to know what people's thoughts are on this point -- with the change in how sects and cults operate and the fact that entities are no longer required, and with the (proposed) change of removing professions from guilds, what do people see as the meaningful difference between sect/cults and guilds? As I understand it (as I wasn't a player back then), previously when the gods were around, guilds had patrons in addition to orders that people could individually join. With the death of the gods, and now having removed the requirement for sects/cults to have entities, I really don't see how there is any distinction in terms of 'RP opportunities' between the latter and guilds, aside from the fact that guilds currently have professions tied to them and therefore serve as sort of a "welcome newbie, here's how you learn about your profession and basic things to do in the game aka where to go bash."
Getting to that lesser number would probably need admin at the helm to minimize hurt feelings (and just to have the thrust to push it forward). People are pretty attached to their orgs, even if they are orgs in name only, and even if there really needs to be some consolidation. Then again, maybe Imperianites are just that awesome.
The Achaeans' "Renaissance" has meant some House (Guild) consolidation and a retooling of House focus/goals. The houses became more about goals than professions (combat, art, exploration, etc...) although here, everyone's primary goal is combat. Anything else is nice, but truly secondary, and I like that. Those "other" things can be done in fun ways, and my own post-Renaissance House is focused on exploration, but also has sub-paths that can include art, combat and lore. I am in the "pure" exploration path, which manages to be fun and feel meaningful (rather than a slog, which can become a real problem when an org starts to "bloat" over time).
With sects having such a focus on killing each other for XP for the glory of one's belief, I wonder if they'd ever really be an appropriate place for newbies. I often wonder if *I* belong in one because I have the potential to hurt my own org if I die enough. That said, it might be a pretty easy thing to make all but the highest ranks of a sect totally neutral in terms of sect warfare (can't contribute to belief, can't detract from it), and then sure, why not have it function as a Guild functions now, I suppose, and consolidate/add all Guild mechanical perks into sects. Then again, it may create a situation where we don't want to promote people and they feel stagnated. Not sure.
Historically, I think the Order/Cult/Sect part of IRE games has been intended as sort of a capstone org for a player who's at least decent at PK, but historically doesn't always have to mean forever. Some people like to do a lot of RP with it too, which is easier when you have an entity of course. And by RP, they often mean ceremonies, which.... I'd be okay if that sort of thing continued to be a very minor part of sects
My primary goal is not, and has never been, combat. And there are a number of players like me.
Sects have a role for newbies. You can participate in a sect without ever fighting.
Imperian has already squashed together/eliminated guilds, though I'm not sure that was particularly effective by any metric. It left guilds standing that have been and will continue to be dead, and the ones that were squished together don't all seem to have embraced the change or adapted to it very well (though some have).
I'm leery of major changes to role like that (removing guilds or combining them) because Imperian has an absolutely atrocious track record of handling the RP behind the change. We just sort of.... do it. And expect players to figure out the why and deal with whatever the consequences are. We don't do gradual or explained, we just do traumatic.
I'm leery of major changes to role like that (removing guilds or combining them) because Imperian has an absolutely atrocious track record of handling the RP behind the change. We just sort of.... do it. And expect players to figure out the why and deal with whatever the consequences are. We don't do gradual or explained, we just do traumatic.
I'm sure we can blame it on the horde somehow! (Right? )
To add to my idea I was thinking there could be rankings at the end of the imperian year.
Whichever guild had the most player kills would get a prize for the rest of the new imperian year. An idea for said prize would be something like the room message from 1000 player kills achievement "Upon slaying a player, the room will be marked with your name in your fallen foes bloody gore." only a different message.
An idea for the guild with the most mob kills could be something like a Vial of Perpetuity for health for new imperian year or perhaps a toadstool equivalent. You could also give some sort of combat bonus but it would require making that guild exempt for the year after for fairness.
Even if your guild isn't getting top rank every year your guild can still work towards getting the achievements every year such as
Give guilds the ability to do some basic events and/or progging. Docents would be somewhat of an example for the events part. You had mortal players who could take control of mobs and RP, though docents couldn't do it with their current organizations. Let them, with the proper oversight and training. Who else could RP some awesome events for a guild than someone in the guild. With the proper over site and individuals conducing it, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Another possibility is letting some individuals do minor progging, item creation, event stuff for their organizations. I can't speak to the success of the builders program, but I'd imagine individuals would be pretty excited about the opportunity to help out and work some stuff in an organization they love, rather than building/promoting to Celani and above and not be allowed to work directly (at least for a while) with the organization they've worked on and loved for years. There would be an application process, and only qualified/trusted individuals would be allowed to participate. If a guild doens't have an individual who can cut the mustard, then tough cookies. Their work would go through the same process that celani's do (approval, code checking, etc.). I understand that having additional folks in need of training and watching could potentially be a burden on the existing admins, but the payoff could be massive, and bring in an influx of players who haven't been around in a while, or possibly even from other IRE games.
Both things above could also help out to thin some guilds out, eventually causing them to die. The consensus that there are too many guilds seems to be a common one. Drawing active individuals into guilds where things are going on would help this.
I'll be honest, I still haven't gotten over the killing off the gods. Taking away some things from guilds (like professions) and not replacing them with something could feel like a 2nd, massive blow. I'm already not a huge fan of cities (not just in Imperian, but also in Achaea) and the closeness and size of individuals within a guild is a huge selling point for me.
Out of curiosity what don't you like about cities?
Like anything, they have their ups and downs.
From an RP standpoint, rogue is the way to go for me, and I've been a city leader in the past. Part of it is the forced sense of combat that some have (shardfalls, defending against raids, etc.) with little to no other emphasis on anything else. I haven't seen any yet that value things such as history, culture (in the way it should be), etc. A good portion of the time it's simply a channel for communication and a place to go shopping. Nothing to get excited about there. The Divine never really seemed to do much city RP that I can remember, it was mostly focused on guilds. Plus, when you have a rather large organization of people, it is easy to get lost in the clutter.
Now, if anyone has any brilliant cities out there I'd love to hear about them. Unfortunately, my views on cities is limited to about 4 cities throughout 2 IRE games.
I've been meaning to comment on this. As a recent newbie, I like the notion of being able to be any profession but still stay in your guild. When I joined, I started off as a hunter and was placed in the Hunters guild. I changed to druid shortly thereafter, and was happy that I wasn't given grief for changing and that I could stay in my guild, although I had a different profession. It made the place much more welcoming to me. Also, although my guild did have novice aides that were very helpful, I found that the others in Celidon would also reach out to me as well to make sure I was okay and offer guidance. I think with city novice aides, newbies can get the same assistance and perhaps the Novice Aide title in guilds can become 'Recruiter.'
I also agree with some of the previous suggestions to create some unique mechanical advantages for the various guilds in an org. That would assist with differentiation (combat, culture, etc.)
I also agree with some of the previous suggestions to create some unique mechanical advantages for the various guilds in an org. That would assist with differentiation (combat, culture, etc.)
As soon as you do this, RP ceases to be a factor in guild choice and the only criteria to judge a guild by is what benefit it gives you.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
We plan to make a post responding to the thoughts and concerns here. I'm currently traveling for work, so I can't put something coherent together with the time I have free, but expect something early next week.
I also agree with some of the previous suggestions to create some unique mechanical advantages for the various guilds in an org. That would assist with differentiation (combat, culture, etc.)
As soon as you do this, RP ceases to be a factor in guild choice and the only criteria to judge a guild by is what benefit it gives you.
I only have maybe 2 months experience in imperian, so I'll both generalize my comment and apologize in advance if I miss key imperian only specifics. I do however have other IRE experience (9 years)
Maybe have each circles council and city merge into one empire/kingdom/whatnot. Create a new position as leader of both, and two very important sub leadership positions one for the council one for the city.
Make the CT empire/kingdom/etc wide but allow a subset descriptor to each member signifying wether they are council or city based and show this on the cwho (the cwho that now has both city and council members in one). Then trim down the various lower leadership positions inside each branch of the main org to meaningful things (diplomacy commerce war hunting etc). This makes more sense for the size of the player base (small).
With these changes, allow for the reapplication of guild charters to the empire/kingdom/etc that involves a large monetary investment. 5 or 10 million gold to remain a guild. This won't be a problem for the active and healthy guilds but will eliminate the dead weight guilds that are further segmenting the small population. Paying 5 or 10 million for a dead guild is still doable but will make members of those guilds mentally evaluate wether it's worth it.
Move professions out of the guilds and into the larger empire/kingdom/etc orgs as you suggested.
This will be a three teir main org system: kingdom > city/council > town
This makes anthropological sense as well as makes sense when looking at the communities small player base.
And for what it's worth - remove rings, make group xp work off a circle check, push ooc into the confines of private clans and watch as CT and GT become actually relevant
Obviously should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The views above are opinion, constructive criticism welcome, flaming unwelcome.
The idea has merit. A circle-wide organization makes sense. A few of the obstacles, however, would be: conflicting points of view on nature, duplicate guilds, and general power struggles. Some of those things are important, but none -need- to stand in the way of the 'kingdom' idea. They just would be 'kingdoms' with some internal strife.
Five or ten million gold is not a lot of gold, and would allow most guilds to remain guilds with little effort.
A 'three tier main org system' of 'kingdom>city/council>town' breaks down at the town level, I believe. There's not a lot of reason (barring rp/or commodity quest) to belong to a town. And if there ever did become reason aplenty, 10 towns is a lot of towns for one kingdom.
Rings are a double-edged sword. They're amazing in that the very specific way they work here in Imperian (almost forming an informal clan) makes them a low commitment way to welcome people to get to know most everyone in the circle, something I've never seen actual clans do in IRE games. Clans seem to have always been for people you already know and at least think you can tolerate, across IRE, or they're pretty formal "org" clans. Ring fills a gap I'd never realized existed. Interestingly, we have several "functional" clans for things like coordinating everything from pilgrimages to shard falls, all of which seem to be pretty much dead. I think this is because ring is incredibly fluid and lacks hard and fast rules, and also lacks a designated leader (although if people misbehave, they will of course get a talking to).
The chilling effect ring has on other channels is undeniable, though. Then again, the more I think about it (because this has come up before) I just don't care that much about the other channels - at least not in the sense that I even think they're the ideal place to discuss a lot of stuff. When you're on an OOC medium you can clarify, explicitly, if need be, which helps immunize us against everything from hurt feelings to not understanding instructions. Again, once they're in, it also provides a very welcoming place for the new player. The only real concern I see is that it does make the org look possibly too quiet to the newbie who *just* finished the introduction. That's important, and I'd like to figure out something better there but personally, I'm not keen to ditch the current mechanics and usage of ring. We can't really invite right away, because there is a lot of coordination there, and I think people want some sort of bare minimum assurance that you're there to play as AM.
Kingdom thing I guess could go a couple of ways. It already behooves the cities and councils to work together, although I suppose if you managed to get two leaders who hated each other enough, it could be a serious problem (which a united leadership model does attempt to prevent).
Not keen on the gold idea, because it just drains gold from active guilds too - gold that could have gone to shinies for the guild. We do seem to have more orgs than our player base supports, and someone (hopefully someone who isn't a player) may eventually have to take on the unpleasant task of consolidation.
I actually really like Claudius' idea. Yes, there would be strife in the orgs, but it opens up the game to -real- politics again, instead of the nonsense we have now. Discussions about the role of -insert faction- in the world, what common tenets of belief its members have, where they differ, all have a place.
Opens up new opportunities for RP.
Makes coordination for faction v faction conflict WAY easier.
It lessens the empty feeling the game can have sometimes.
And it provides a pretty elegant way to clean up some dead orgs.
Built-in faction allies presently feel really remote from one another. They probably shouldn't. I dig it.
While I love the idea of making a formal city novicehood and devolving the power from the Guilds entirely (which in my opinion serve little to no function for Imperian as it is now) I would be against the hard coding of the alliances between Cities/Councils.
The massive advantage of playing a text game over something with visuals it the inherent flexibility bought about by the simplicity of changing/adapting the world in which the characters exist.
We should be embracing what makes a text game different to other games and work towards a more fluid approach to RP/Politics across the board.
This stands out. I like Claudius' idea is forcing guilds to repay to retain their existence during the restructure. We have too many guilds. Delete some, drain some gold out of the economy (probably more than we think, some people are too attached to their guilds and will shovel out the millions regardless), etc.
@Cadeyrn - we are past the time when a city or council can afford to have the mindset that they can be antagonistic to the other org in their circle. We should be removing as many options for that sort of behaviour as possible, as infighting is a pretty big reason why circles often can't get their shit together. Forcing them underneath one kingdom would alleviate this issue immensely.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
To both points raised by Cadeyrn and Sarrius - yes it would have a more fluid opportunity to relieve infighting within orgs, but Cadeyrn, I think the hard coded umbrella of a kingdom/empire/whatever offers more intrigue if you look deeper.
Yes city and council leadership are restricted to elections by only player characters based under them, meaning Antiochians can't vote for leader of Ithaqua election. But the higher monarch is a general election of all characters in the kingdom (both city and council) and obviously there is an advantage to having that person be from your base org. Say the election for the monarch (or whatever title for leader of the larger umbrella may be) is going on, the intrigue might rise to levels of the war of the roses (for you history buffs). Not necessarily civil war, but most certainly more political maneuvering, allegiance saber rattling and do or die capture the vote campaigns.
It's almost as if hard coding the two together would create more intrigue and dynamic political rp. Because with a shared agenda being set by elected players elections become more important. Ambassadors play a larger role within the circle itself, cooperation can exist leading to flourishing circles or not exist leading to fragmented (but in a very positive role play role) circles.
Anyways, I'm pleased to see a few people liked the idea. It's just one of many. That's the cool thing about games that listen to their player base. We shouldn't ever be afraid to throw out comments and suggestions to where we want to see the game go. Wether they are well thought out or off the wall.
The real goal in coming up with the merging of circle orgs was to adapt to a small player base more efficiently while maintaining a level of autonomy for them. It's a very rough idea
While I do like the idea of having an umbrella organization it would be better if these were player driven rather than generically assigned.
Imperian has effectively removed all the opportunities for RP conflict/intrigue, leaving us with our major conflict mechanisms of Obelisks, Shards & Caravans. None of these mechanics would benefit from the umbrella arrangement that is being discussed, as they already exist under those terms and as such it would effectively provide 0 new real opportunities.
We'd end up seeing the same person "ruling" these umbrella organizations for decades, as we have seen throughout the life of Imperian. Meaningful conflict (i.e conflict with measurable stages of planning, execution and success) would not be generated by telling half of the cities that they are going to be ruled by someone from the other one in their Circle.
A fair number of people already move around in their Circle precisely because they object to the leadership in their other options for City/Council membership. We'd end up seeing more fragmentation and stagnation precisely because you would be forcing people to try to get along.
If we were to go down this route we may as well just delete half the Cities/Councils on the roll of a dice and turn them each into a Horde/Undead/Demon bashing ground. Then force the populations of those Cities/Councils to either join up or **** off.
One obvious problem is if Antioch has more members the vote is swayed to them leading both orgs. Like I said its a rough idea just being thrown out there. Not to say people shouldn't just vote for the best candidate and not on party lines -cough cough-
Imperian has proven over the course of a decade that players will do what's mechanically driven -way- before they'll do what's sensible. So while I personally would prefer if players would get it through their heads that there needs to be -some- level of coalition between faction-aligned orgs, I know the likelihood of that is roughly nil.
Having an overarching, mechanically bound structure that links city/council together would make it way more likely that players will coordinate, interact, and generally do things with their aligned org.
Limit the powers of the overarching leader to -only- deal with matters that lie between the two organizations. Cities/council remain mostly autonomous.
I am possibly one of the biggest supporters of anything that improves the likelihood of political RP being a thing again. It is -hands down- my favorite form of RP, and there is frankly -none of it- anymore. Nor do I see that changing. The decision by the administration to hardline each organization and ensure there could be no shades of grey in the game eliminated all potential for that, really, and cemented it with the Circles being mechanically bound. Internal politics are games of pure popularity. I don't like engaging in those. (It's also put a stranglehold on the evolution of culture in our orgs, which is why almost everything feels stagnant and is slowly dying in terms of RP/excitement/engagement, but yanno..)
My point being... Claudius' idea is the first one I've seen that meets the desires of the administration for the development of the game and allows for the return of shifting dynamics within organizations, which is required for political RP. That plus is opens up higher population accessibility to players, which increases activity in all areas of interest in the game. A+, man.
We plan to make a post responding to the thoughts and concerns here. I'm currently traveling for work, so I can't put something coherent together with the time I have free, but expect something early next week.
Any updates on the expected timeline for the administrative responsive post?
Comments
Sects have a role for newbies. You can participate in a sect without ever fighting.
Imperian has already squashed together/eliminated guilds, though I'm not sure that was particularly effective by any metric. It left guilds standing that have been and will continue to be dead, and the ones that were squished together don't all seem to have embraced the change or adapted to it very well (though some have).
I'm leery of major changes to role like that (removing guilds or combining them) because Imperian has an absolutely atrocious track record of handling the RP behind the change. We just sort of.... do it. And expect players to figure out the why and deal with whatever the consequences are. We don't do gradual or explained, we just do traumatic.
Stavenn. It's the bee's knees.
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Maybe have each circles council and city merge into one empire/kingdom/whatnot. Create a new position as leader of both, and two very important sub leadership positions one for the council one for the city.
Make the CT empire/kingdom/etc wide but allow a subset descriptor to each member signifying wether they are council or city based and show this on the cwho (the cwho that now has both city and council members in one). Then trim down the various lower leadership positions inside each branch of the main org to meaningful things (diplomacy commerce war hunting etc). This makes more sense for the size of the player base (small).
With these changes, allow for the reapplication of guild charters to the empire/kingdom/etc that involves a large monetary investment. 5 or 10 million gold to remain a guild. This won't be a problem for the active and healthy guilds but will eliminate the dead weight guilds that are further segmenting the small population. Paying 5 or 10 million for a dead guild is still doable but will make members of those guilds mentally evaluate wether it's worth it.
Move professions out of the guilds and into the larger empire/kingdom/etc orgs as you suggested.
This will be a three teir main org system: kingdom > city/council > town
This makes anthropological sense as well as makes sense when looking at the communities small player base.
And for what it's worth - remove rings, make group xp work off a circle check, push ooc into the confines of private clans and watch as CT and GT become actually relevant
Obviously should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The views above are opinion, constructive criticism welcome, flaming unwelcome.
The idea has merit. A circle-wide organization makes sense. A few of the obstacles, however, would be: conflicting points of view on nature, duplicate guilds, and general power struggles. Some of those things are important, but none -need- to stand in the way of the 'kingdom' idea. They just would be 'kingdoms' with some internal strife.
Five or ten million gold is not a lot of gold, and would allow most guilds to remain guilds with little effort.
A 'three tier main org system' of 'kingdom>city/council>town' breaks down at the town level, I believe. There's not a lot of reason (barring rp/or commodity quest) to belong to a town. And if there ever did become reason aplenty, 10 towns is a lot of towns for one kingdom.
Overall though, I like the basic idea.
Opens up new opportunities for RP.
Makes coordination for faction v faction conflict WAY easier.
It lessens the empty feeling the game can have sometimes.
And it provides a pretty elegant way to clean up some dead orgs.
Built-in faction allies presently feel really remote from one another. They probably shouldn't. I dig it.
The massive advantage of playing a text game over something with visuals it the inherent flexibility bought about by the simplicity of changing/adapting the world in which the characters exist.
We should be embracing what makes a text game different to other games and work towards a more fluid approach to RP/Politics across the board.
@Cadeyrn - we are past the time when a city or council can afford to have the mindset that they can be antagonistic to the other org in their circle. We should be removing as many options for that sort of behaviour as possible, as infighting is a pretty big reason why circles often can't get their shit together. Forcing them underneath one kingdom would alleviate this issue immensely.
Yes city and council leadership are restricted to elections by only player characters based under them, meaning Antiochians can't vote for leader of Ithaqua election. But the higher monarch is a general election of all characters in the kingdom (both city and council) and obviously there is an advantage to having that person be from your base org. Say the election for the monarch (or whatever title for leader of the larger umbrella may be) is going on, the intrigue might rise to levels of the war of the roses (for you history buffs). Not necessarily civil war, but most certainly more political maneuvering, allegiance saber rattling and do or die capture the vote campaigns.
It's almost as if hard coding the two together would create more intrigue and dynamic political rp. Because with a shared agenda being set by elected players elections become more important. Ambassadors play a larger role within the circle itself, cooperation can exist leading to flourishing circles or not exist leading to fragmented (but in a very positive role play role) circles.
Anyways, I'm pleased to see a few people liked the idea. It's just one of many. That's the cool thing about games that listen to their player base. We shouldn't ever be afraid to throw out comments and suggestions to where we want to see the game go. Wether they are well thought out or off the wall.
The real goal in coming up with the merging of circle orgs was to adapt to a small player base more efficiently while maintaining a level of autonomy for them. It's a very rough idea
While I do like the idea of having an umbrella organization it would be better if these were player driven rather than generically assigned.
Imperian has effectively removed all the opportunities for RP conflict/intrigue, leaving us with our major conflict mechanisms of Obelisks, Shards & Caravans. None of these mechanics would benefit from the umbrella arrangement that is being discussed, as they already exist under those terms and as such it would effectively provide 0 new real opportunities.
We'd end up seeing the same person "ruling" these umbrella organizations for decades, as we have seen throughout the life of Imperian. Meaningful conflict (i.e conflict with measurable stages of planning, execution and success) would not be generated by telling half of the cities that they are going to be ruled by someone from the other one in their Circle.
A fair number of people already move around in their Circle precisely because they object to the leadership in their other options for City/Council membership. We'd end up seeing more fragmentation and stagnation precisely because you would be forcing people to try to get along.
If we were to go down this route we may as well just delete half the Cities/Councils on the roll of a dice and turn them each into a Horde/Undead/Demon bashing ground. Then force the populations of those Cities/Councils to either join up or **** off.
Having an overarching, mechanically bound structure that links city/council together would make it way more likely that players will coordinate, interact, and generally do things with their aligned org.
Limit the powers of the overarching leader to -only- deal with matters that lie between the two organizations. Cities/council remain mostly autonomous.
I am possibly one of the biggest supporters of anything that improves the likelihood of political RP being a thing again. It is -hands down- my favorite form of RP, and there is frankly -none of it- anymore. Nor do I see that changing. The decision by the administration to hardline each organization and ensure there could be no shades of grey in the game eliminated all potential for that, really, and cemented it with the Circles being mechanically bound. Internal politics are games of pure popularity. I don't like engaging in those. (It's also put a stranglehold on the evolution of culture in our orgs, which is why almost everything feels stagnant and is slowly dying in terms of RP/excitement/engagement, but yanno..)
My point being... Claudius' idea is the first one I've seen that meets the desires of the administration for the development of the game and allows for the return of shifting dynamics within organizations, which is required for political RP. That plus is opens up higher population accessibility to players, which increases activity in all areas of interest in the game. A+, man.