Trimming down guilds/orgs

Cyndarin

Saran said:

Celina said:

This really makes no sense to me. It's coming across as an entirely arbitrary divorcing of org leadership from the guilds/factions/whatever themselves.

 If you want organizations at large selecting guild leadership for the guilds, why bother with guild leadership at all? Unless you're proposing councils be divorced entirely from guild leadership, allow guilds to select their internal leaders, and create this weird schism between the org at large dictating who they think should represent each guild regardless of what the guild thinks and the guilds themselves. Popular vote for entire org leadership is the quickest way to have orgs ran by unbreakable cliques, we see this in guilds already but at least guild elections limit their impact. You're really just replacing isolated problems with new ones that are much more difficult to replace by any sort of minority objection. Your proposal is really ultimately aiming to eliminate minority opinion which is generally just a terrible idea, no matter how much you might dislike who has that minority opinion.

Okay, so each seat becomes more "powerful" (a dubious claim, given that council members really don't have all that much "power" to begin with except within their own guilds that elected them), but the consolidation of the population would ultimately resolve population issues that you are citing as a problem for finding replacements for people you think are not valid leaders. So why bother? 

You seem to get halfway to what I'm saying and then go off in the complete opposite direction based on your own assumptions, it's interesting.

At no point have I said that the org should dictate to the guild who their leaders are, that just creates more issues.

There was simply the question about the current structure of guild leadership and modifying that. I agree with a reduction due to what happened earlier this year but I don't agree with two guild leaders because there's no majority there, so if there is a reduction I'd go to one leader which for me would be the GA.

No, but you proposed solution of an org elected council leads to only 2 end results. Divorcing guild leadership from the organization leadership, or keeping guild leaders part of organization leadership and allowing the organization to select for the guilds. It's either one or the other. 

Which is exactly what I said, so I'm not entirely sure how I'm going in the opposite direction of anything. 

I'm assuming, based on this post, you want to divorce guild leadership from organization leadership, which essentially eliminates any sort of minority opinion due to org size and the relative ease at which voting blocks can ensure victories. Instead of 1 bad leader, you're ultimately opening the door for a council of bad leaders with no realistic way to remove them. The guild leader system has always been a checks and balances system. The CL was voted by majority vote, elections within guilds that are not subject to public approval keep the majority from just steamrolling the minority. 

 

Lothringen

Lusternia: The Vibrant Game Without My Favourite Guild vs. Lusternia: My Guild's Still Here But No One Else Is.

Tarkenton

Once again, need to be able to agree, like, and sing praises from the heavens.  So much that.  I've been fairly invested in a fair few guilds over the years.  Yeah, it'd suck to lose the Shadowdancers, or the Nekotai, or the Serenguard, or the Illuminati.  Which is why, of course, wholescale blatant deletion would never be the solution.  Not without a fairly well thought out plan to roll X guilds together, or to just scrap the guilds and go with the societies idea.  But I'd much rather log in, and go "huh, there's five other Night followers on, cool, I should run my uber spooky scorpion themed Night veneration ritual" than go "well, I'm the only one on gwho between me and the Shadowdancers.  Eff it, grab a beer, do some busywork, now time to go play F4/SWtOR/whatever"

Qistrel

I feel like I've done a complete flip from 'Lusternia needs guilds' to 'actually it doesn't, lets all just be in an org'.

Zac

Qistrel said:

I feel like I've done a complete flip from 'Lusternia needs guilds' to 'actually it doesn't, lets all just be in an org'.

Welcome to the dark side, you cold, heartless bastard.

Everiine

As someone who has heavily invested in a guild, spending a lot of time, effort, and emotional energy helping to shape and craft it into something I truly enjoy, I would be sad, even devasted, to see whole guilds just unceremoniously dumped and replaced. But, I do remember when there were only 3 guilds in the 4 orgs, and how great that felt. And, I do think, if done VERY carefully, logically, and appropriately, we could cull guilds mechanically while maintaining the lore and identity of different groups. I just don't know how that could be done. In Serenwilde, I could see some variation of merging the Hartstone and Spiritsingers (both have a very strong tie to the Ancestors) and the Shofangi and Serenguard (both martial, physical, with connections outside the "mainstream" Serenwilde), and bolstering the Moondancers somehow. But don't ask me how I'd structure it.

Tarkenton

I doubt anyone, ever, has argued "just dump some guilds and keep others". I imagine the majority of us who have voted yes, for the health of the game would want the same, actual event driven cause and reasoning, not just flipping a line of code and going " okay have at em boys ". I have access to three of my orgs five guilds. If I cared to, I could likely get the skills from the last two without a lot of hassle. From a skills/mechanical perspective, I could care less about merging guilds. I just would like to see a thriving group of characters that share similar beliefs beyond " rawr wyrd!" When I log in.

Eodh

Here's the thing, it takes some effort to maintain an organization, and a lot of effort to make it flourish.

There are guilds out there that barely have enough members to keep it afloat (HELP SHOFANGI is a moderate example; an extreme case is HELP PYROMANCERS). There are even guilds that look populated, at a glance, but are really just filled with semi-active characters. That's bad, because there are newbies that come in, wait and wait and wait for advancement and become frustrated because there are too few people around who want to help them advance. Covenants only serve as a band-aid fix, and it may even exacerbate the problem: "My guild is so empty I have to get a member from another guild to help me out."

People love their current organization, I understand that. But it would be healthier for the game, overall, if we just outright condensed some guilds with others properly, with a good IG reason why. The old guilds won't be forgotten - they would be part of history, that can't be erased. But new ones, with refreshed identities, should come out, maybe two or three per organization, appropriate for the current population.

Hey, it might even make it easier to get Gaudiguch and Hallifax their monks, since they won't need their own guild on top of the archetype skills.

Cyndarin

HELP PYROMANCERS had one active person literally until yesterday. Now it has two. We're moving up in the world.

Cyndarin

I kind of like Achaea's direction on guilds, actually. I hate houses, because the houses were designed terribly. They were designed around 1 class, that never really changed, and they just started allowing others that loosely (sometimes very loosely) relate with the house theme. Which is kind of where Lusternia is now. We still have guilds designed around 1 specific class, and we just allow people to flex into other classes now. My GM (no shade) is a warrior. The SD King was a blacktalon for a long time. We have guild leaders that can't actually teach novices their lessons right now. We're in the awkward house phase where we just act like we don't see it, and occasionally make awkward jokes about it.

Their new structure is split up between the military, the philosphers/religious people, and the leaders/politicians. It concentrates the population, so guilds are more lively, and also puts like minds together. Progression is much more streamlined because everyone is more or less following the same learning plan, and you are grouping together based on how they want to play rather than what they RP about. Ultimately, since it's a game, more interaction that are the type of interaction you enjoy as an individual will be more enjoyable for everyone. 

Diversity is great and all, but less so in a game where people play for different reasons. They can interact on the org level when they want to, but people naturally gravitate towards like minded players. PKers clump together for a reason, same with the heavy RPers. I think a new evolution of guilds that appeals to this could be a healthy change. 

Sylandra

Celina said:

I kind of like Achaea's direction on guilds, actually. I hate houses, because the houses were designed terribly. They were designed around 1 class, that never really changed, and they just started allowing others that loosely (sometimes very loosely) relate with the house theme. 

Their new structure is split up between the military, the philosphers/religious people, and the leaders/politicians. It concentrates the population, so guilds are more lively, and also puts like minds together. Progression is much more streamlined because everyone is more or less following the same learning plan, and you are grouping together based on how they want to play rather than what they RP about. Ultimately, since it's a game, more interaction that are the type of interaction you enjoy as an individual will be more enjoyable for everyone. 

Diversity is great and all, but less so in a game where people play for different reasons. They can interact on the org level when they want to, but people naturally gravitate towards like minded players. PKers clump together for a reason, same with the heavy RPers. I think a new evolution of guilds that appeals to this could be a healthy change. 

Super duper on board with this idea. It'd be great to be able to pick my guild skills based on what I enjoy and not what RP I like. I constantly feel like I'm supposed to be in Symphonium due to playing an artist-ish person in Hallifax. I can't be the only person who feels that way either.

Daraius

There was an intermediary step between Houses and whatever Achaea calls them now. Cities were required to split their allowable classes among their houses so that none had any overlap. That is, only one could accept bards, only one could accept blade masters, etc. That really screwed over the houses that had flourished by admitting a bunch of classes. Admittedly, there were few of them, but mine was one of them. IMO that was the wrong way to do things, especially since it was a policy change that seems to have been decided on the forums without input from house leaders who weren't part of a secret board therein. The purpose was ostensibly to help floundering houses reestablish some kind of identity, but it didn't work as expected. I'm just going to echo the folks who've suggested that if any change like this is going to be considered (and I do think it can be), please involve the guild leaders who have invested so much of their time and energy into the identity of their guilds, particularly ones who aren't on the forums. Be transparent about the goals of the conversion and give it some heft with lore and events.

Annick

I think a better comparison would be to Imperian rather than Achaea as its about the same size player base and number of cities/councils/whatever. You can be any profession within your circle and be a member of any of the guilds of your city/council but you still see the same issues you tend to see with there being guilds with very low population. You have a greater chance progressing in lesser populated guild in Lusternia than Imperian by far.

Nyxx

Tredian said:

As much as I believe many guilds are struggling because of low population, I do not believe blowing up current ones to recreate new ones with new definitions is the best way to take this on. The players of each guild from the past until now have invested a lot in solidifying their identity/role. I'd rather we continue to work on the path of covenants, make it reach the point where each guild can guildfavour members of the other guilds, see each other's guild scrolls/news posts/logs, have cool covenant rituals (w/ benefits ). We can keep GLs,GAs, GCs of each guild as "class representatives" but maybe merge the protectors, security, undersec, secretaries and archivists(?). I think small adjustments would go a long way.

I love this idea. instead of re-working everything... build on the covenants idea. that way we can still be separate guilds and keep our identities but also be "merged" in the sense that we have to interact with our covenanted guild for various benefits, etc. to the game. This requries alot of work on the players part as well to include the covenant system as more than a simple "yeah we can now advance and test your novices. woohoo!" fix. we need something that incorporates them into each guild, maybe some small event that happens or lore that is fashioned that explains the reasons why the Symphonium and the Aeromancers became a covenant... what they accomplished together to make them "sisters/brothers", what they learned from it and...hey look at these cool new skills we have or can learn or things we can do for the city/commune now that we are a covenant! maybe "secret societies" within those covenants  dedicated to (again hallifax as an example) protecting the secrets of the Voice of Crys of whatever other thing we can come up with. as it was covenants were poorly executed and just viewed as a hail mary pass on not having people around to advance novices. but that doesnt mean we can't change that and build on them now... of course this would mean that covenants would have to be predetermined and can't be changed but I am alright with that, if there is a good strong reason behind it.  rather than changing what we have...why not simply expand on what is already in place...I also like the combining the secretaries/undersecretaries positions as well, the guild leaders would ahve to be more involved with the goings ons of both guilds, etc etc.

Enyalida

Because Covenants are a bad bandaid with suspect mechanics, and don't actually address the issue of empty guilds. Just adding supportive lore won't do anything to change the six elected positions which are almost certainly only partially filled, or change how thinly spread players are.