Guild/faction/nation auto-advancement

Vorjel

Having returned as a player after so many years, I'm effectively a semi-newbie again - so apologies in advance if this is not in line with the overhaul direction.

Is it possible for all types of organisations (guilds or the new factions, nations, maybe even clans) to flag existing quests and achievements that will automatically contribute to increasing your rank in that org?

So for example, Serenwilde sets the pixie power quest with a value of 3 per completion (repeatable unlimited times), the quest to help the spirit wolves with a value of 5 per completion (repeatable three times), the epic flame quest with a value of 100 per completion (once only), and the kill crow quest with a value of 1000 (once only).

They then assign a certain number of activity points per cityrank (maybe 50, 100, 200, etc), and as soon as the cumulative total for a city person hits that level, they are automatically bumped up a rank. This could be limited to one rank per ingame month if desired, just to allow an org to respond if they don't want a particular player to rise too fast.

I really like the way the collegiums allow a player to play the game itself in order to work themselves out of college, and I think having that automatic progress would be beneficial beyond newbie status too. This is both to avoid having to rely entirely on artificial task lists (which are good if you like that sort of thing, but can be a bit too much like homework, as discussed in the other excellent thread), as well as to make use of the wonderful quests already handwritten and superbly crafted to drive play that contributes to an org and feeling part of one.

Additionally, if quest completion is saved against the player, it would be *really* good if this could be automatically applied when you rejoin a collegium (for example if you switch guilds as a freshman novice), given the time to graduate gets reset. 

Ssaliss

I've wanted an auto-advancement thing (at least for the lower ranks) for a long time now. It would help remove pressure from the GAs/secs, and it would help newbies not have to catch these people to get advanced. I think it'd have to be a bit more advanced than that though; for instance, creating requirements a'la the achievement system (for instance, you could create a requirement that checks if you have all four cures in certain amounts, or if you're a certain level, or if you're a certain explorer rank, etc).

Tekora

Could be a good idea to include with the guild/faction overhaul.

Saran

MKO did something like this with Stardock, I think it's like the first four ranks you progress through by completing quests, with tests to progress to rank 3 and 5. (Super secret automated tests which are initiated by higher ranked players).

The main issue with these quests AFAIK is that they very quickly became grinding, some of these quests were even a bit beyond the newbies that were typically doing them when I jumped in initially but were things you needed to do to get out of Student/Apprenticehood.


But I guess, what do you really learn from questing? Yes, they offer insight into various different aspects of the world we play in. But what does say... the Mornhai quest really tell you about Mother Moon?

It'd most likely be on the Moondancers list if implemented, but there's nothing really to do with being a priest of the coven, it shows how people before Ellindel interacted with the fae but nothing really with how they do so in the modern age.

This is why we have the "artificial" task lists, because it's really the only way people learn about and develop the RP of their guild. Sure some guilds only have really simplistic things, but others are really quite good and I think sometimes this is really expressed by how wildly guilds can vary in rp. Some systems just really encourage it and an effective way and the guilds are full of lore while others that aren't so focused on it are struggling with identity issues.

Something like what @Ssaliss mentioned would be useful because it could be a "quest" that the newbies perform which replaces novice advancements. But beyond that, well I worry about pixie gathering leaders who have no concept of their guild rp (it's already happening without this system sadly, though more limited )



All that said, something I would love to see is like... guilds/factions getting a gain from their members representing them in questing. Like, if a member goes and performs quests that are aligned with the Faction, then the Faction get some reward (maybe gold, maybe some unique currency). I imagine favours would flow from this with the reasoning "representing the faction well to the denizens of the basin", this could also then tie into participation in village influencing and other combat mechanics where possible. But my idea is also about giving factions mechanical

Vorjel

@Saran - I think you learn a lot from questing, not to mention exploring and participating in other activities that the existing quest & achievement system would probably be able to manage.

I just really like the idea of giving members options on how to advance without feeling like you have to jump through hoops and essays, particularly if it means that they also get involved in the game right away, and hopefully hooked to boot!

The way I was envisioning it was that there would be dozens if not hundreds of activities that an organisation would view as worthwhile, to different degrees, so it wouldn't be a matter of having to repeat the same task over and over again just to advance. 

So you may just happen to be helping defend against a raid, earn the 'Contribute to the death of a city enemy within your nation's territory' achievement and automatically get a little bonus set of favour points for your trouble. 

For more practical 'task' like activities, maybe a guild sets up an achievement to speak an oath to each one of their Elemental Lords, or to have one of their books accepted into a guild library, or to engage in an arena match with a certain number of other archetypes, or to find hidden locations on each of their protectorate planes. But I really like the idea of quests and achievements that involve actual game systems being a viable and easily tread path to growing in an organisation over time, and giving senior players the freedom to award their favours liberally and for their own reasons.

And besides, does it matter if someone gets to CR10 solely by dumping thousands of power into the nexus via endless questing? They're still contributing to their organisation, and it's almost impossible to do the various organisation quests and not pick up a little bit of RP along the way.

Twytch

Teaching and giving advancement interviews is tiring. Together with the fact that we don't exactly have the population to spread the workload, it gets incredibly easy to burn out. With that said, Gaudiguch's favour rewards are pretty easy, I think. It'll be even easier if there's a thing like 1 auto favour for x power.

Saran

Vorjel said:

@Saran - I think you learn a lot from questing, not to mention exploring and participating in other activities that the existing quest & achievement system would probably be able to manage.

Yes, you learn a lot about the world. But what do you actually learn about your guild? 

Again, as a nature user Mornhai is a relevant quest but it only really teaches about what things were like for the Sighted and some information about the Vernal wars, it's a nice insight into the world but it's not an insight into the Moondancers or Serenwilde (likely specifically done so that the quest can be appealing to anyone). 

The epic quest in Serenwilde shows a few different groups in lusternia coming together to empower the Hart, but it's not really going to teach you what it means to be a Shofangi.

I just really like the idea of giving members options on how to advance without feeling like you have to jump through hoops and essays, particularly if it means that they also get involved in the game right away, and hopefully hooked to boot!

I would say the potential for this is already incorporated into the game, and moving to a quest based system actually would delay the advancement for some given that many of the quests in the game would require you to be out of novicehood before you can really consider them and some can be problematic without decent non-primary skills.

I'd also mention that jumping through hoops and specifically essays here is a bit of a red herring (maybe), I've not seen a Lusternian guild actually require someone to write an essay for lower level  advancement and the majority of the advancements that I have seen include this often have it among other choices for advancement, more often than not choices that include questing.

In fact, one of the ragey complaints I've received about an advancement system was that the Hartstone required people to read a book that mostly discussed... how to take care of trees. They felt this was too much rp to learn the weight trees should be mulched at, or how to grow a totem/tree.

The way I was envisioning it was that there would be dozens if not hundreds of activities that an organisation would view as worthwhile, to different degrees, so it wouldn't be a matter of having to repeat the same task over and over again just to advance. 

So you may just happen to be helping defend against a raid, earn the 'Contribute to the death of a city enemy within your nation's territory' achievement and automatically get a little bonus set of favour points for your trouble. 

And what I would suggest many RPers consider to be a valuable and worthwhile activity is spending the time to actually learn about your guild and org roleplay. Something that is difficult to impossible to achieve in the proposed system without significantly increasing the workload of the admin. 

Also, while it might not be the intention for people to grind. It's going to happen.

For more practical 'task' like activities, maybe a guild sets up an achievement to speak an oath to each one of their Elemental Lords, or to have one of their books accepted into a guild library, or to engage in an arena match with a certain number of other archetypes, or to find hidden locations on each of their protectorate planes. But I really like the idea of quests and achievements that involve actual game systems being a viable and easily tread path to growing in an organisation over time, and giving senior players the freedom to award their favours liberally and for their own reasons.

The first suggestion here really isn't something that the players can set up, it'd be a quest that an admin would need to program, test, and release. This is also the sort of thing that typically costs a guild a decent amount of gold and resources, similarly with the hidden places idea (though I'm not aware of any extraplanar addition request actually being approved, there was an addition but afaik it wasn't actually requested to be off prime)

Having the book accepted is still a manual process on the guilds side and it would be just as easy to favour for it. 

Regarding favours, even in the older times when there were more people around this wasn't much of a concern. 

And the comment about things that "involve actual game systems" is kinda... meh, this is a roleplaying game, much of the story of this game happens outside of the limitations of its systems, indeed the guilds that have forged their identities over the past ten years have done so through roleplay.

And besides, does it matter if someone gets to CR10 solely by dumping thousands of power into the nexus via endless questing? They're still contributing to their organisation, and it's almost impossible to do the various organisation quests and not pick up a little bit of RP along the way.

Yes, it really does. A CR3 can challenge the guild leadership, they can delete every single help file in the guild and remove every last book from the library, they can decimate a guild if they feel like it and it takes a week or so to remove them from that position if necessary. 

The reason this is a concern is because it has happened before, multiple times apparently.

Because people think they should be allowed to advance in their guild, to be marked as knowing and understanding their guild, because they influenced some mobs, or because they just really want it.

Guild advancement doesn't really give you any mechanical benefits once you hit rank 1 (3 if you want to be able to contest), the only real benefits are recognition for your work (which quests give you in the form of honours and other rewards (such as orgbixes)) and other purely RP rewards, such as some of the cool hidden ritual rooms.

Why should someone have access to a sacred ritual room of their guild if they haven't engaged in the rp of the guild?

Xenthos

Auto-favours are only a good idea of a guild (or faction) has full control over their setup and implementation and can customize it to fit. For example, I do not want auto-advancement enabled at all for gr1-2, or for 4->5. Five is when you get GTS and is meaningful to the Ebonguard (you become a Warden and get some other RP perks too). The advancement task to go to gr2 is intended to have some roleplay discussion so that a newbie starts to get some of the flavour (super-easy tasks, the discussion is the important part). Other guilds may have completely different threshholds and expectations. No thanks to a one-size-fits-all system that strips out RP in favour of automation (which makes the whole idea a lot harder to implement, unfortunately).

Tynghall

Auto-advancement should be relegated strictly to novicehood, in my opinion. I rather like Aetolia's system of this. Get your first two guild skillsets to adept and achieve level 21 and you can GRADUATE FROM NOVICEHOOD. From thereon, the guild is the sole proprietor of your advancement.

Enyalida

Novicehood already has auto-advancement, just wait for the requisite time. Collegium status reduces the time based on quests completed and it's possible that separate collegium and guild novicehood status will go away once guild/faction is no longer tied to skills. 

Guild advancement does nothing but increase your power to sway the guild roleplaying or display status within the guild. Therefore, each guild should be totally free to adjudicate and adjust its own qualifications for each rank. If you want to gain status and respect in a particular guild, you have to play by that guild's rules. If you don't want to do that, there is no punishment and no benefit is withheldfrom you (unlike deciding to not participate in any orders, which does withhold some concrete benefits). 

I've never really understood the logic behind totally free-form tasks early on - You are welcome to do as you please, and certainly should be rewarded for doing creative things to further your RP and the RP of the org. If there is a list of specific tasks required for specific rewards designed to promote particular activities, you need to do the specific activities for those specific rewards. If you don't want those particular rewards, don't do the tasks. If you want those rewards, do the tasks. If you want different rewards, do different things - that's okay too. The existence of different activities and different rewards doesn't invalidate a task->reward structure

Twytch

Saran said:

Yes, it really does. A CR3 can challenge the guild leadership, they can delete every single help file in the guild and remove every last book from the library, they can decimate a guild if they feel like it and it takes a week or so to remove them from that position if necessary. 

The reason this is a concern is because it has happened before, multiple times apparently.

Whoa there fearmonger. GR3 does not, by itself grant all these powers. Changing guild help files falls under Archivist position, which you have to be appointed to by the guild leadership. The same goes for messing with the library, I think. The only true statement above is the part about gaining the ability to run for election. 

While not specifically a pro- or anti- guild advancement, keep in mind that most guilds do not, in fact, have a lot of people to "engage in RP" every single novice that comes out of the Portal. And not everyone plays in the magical prime time when there is someone around to handle advancements.

Prior to @Tzolla taking over the Illuminati GA, we didn't have anyone during offpeak that could handle advancement. I had to play catch the @Steingrim for a week or so, since he was the only one who came close to playing in the same time as I did. Thankfully, this has been rectified, with Tzolla and I being the main teachers around during offpeak. Can other guilds say the same?

Granted, this problem may be alleviated in the upcoming Guild Overhaul. Hopefully.

Enyalida

My question is: What parts of the game were gated off by not being able to gain guild rank in a guild where there were no other ranking members availible with which to RP that rank anyways? 

Tynghall

Having been GR3 many times in many different guilds, I can confirm that it does not confer GHELP or archival privs. At all. You have to be appointed to a certain position to get access to all that.

As for this, per Enyalida... 

"Novicehood already has auto-advancement, just wait for the requisite time."

Dude, fuck that. I'm a grown-ass man that works 60 hours a week, on average, when I'm working (construction is built on work some, get laid off some, work some, get laid off some). In addition, I have union school twice a week after work. In general, I don't have time to wait around to be able to have access to a class's skillsets if I start an alt, or guildhop. Why? Because I'm usually only relegated to maybe one hour, or maybe one and a half hour of playtime before I need to go to sleep to wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning.

I feel like the "wait ten hours of login time" is over the top for what we need at this point. Sure, there's guild advancement systems in place. Doesn't really help underpopulated guilds, though. Either no one's around, or when they are, they're too busy to help you do something. By the time they're ready? Well, time for me to go to bed.

Sure this might be a bit better with the "faction" system, but I still feel like Aetolia's GRADUATE FROM NOVICEHOOD system would be a great thing to implement. Hell, we could even expound upon it by allowing each guild to add X or Y requirement.

Another potential option would be to use Imperian's old automated nov to GR1 system (which I actually prefer). They had a system set up where you would undergo three guild quests which were given to you by the guild tutor. Upon completion of these tasks, you were promoted out of novicehood.

I didn't mess around with too many guilds, but I recall the Malignists' tasks to be a riddle (something having to do with when you die. They have a weird death system there); a task where you torture a prisoner of war to get information (about five different commands for torture devices. The key was to get information without killing him due to shock); and you had to kill an NPC cleric. 

Twytch

Enyalida said:

My question is: What parts of the game were gated off by not being able to gain guild rank in a guild where there were no other ranking members availible with which to RP that rank anyways? 

I'd rather there be new people fill in the aforementioned guild ranks, rather than letting it just sit there unused.

And parts of the game gated off by rank: contesting guild leadership, which requires GR3. It's better to find ways in order to make it less of a hassle just to find someone to help you advance in the guild, rather than wallowing in your attitude of "well, no one else is gaining rank, anyway, so why bother?".

Enyalida

@Tynghall that is valid, but there IS an automatic advancement mechanic, good or otherwise. 


It's not wallowing. As pointed out, there are some things that rank are used for now that could easily be destroyed by fully automated (or even moderately complex semi-automatic schemes). If there aren't real harms beyond general empty guild badfeels, which happen regardless of advancement or the lack thereof, it's a net loss to get rid of those things. 

Personally, I think that guild rank in its current scheme - with the behind the scenes points, empty ranks, and set rank powers - should be abolished entirely. Guild leaders should be able to create arbitrary 'ranks', assign them powers, and set players directly to ranks. Basically, use the clan system of creating and empowering roles. This accomplishes all of the good gating uses of ranks (which peter out at 25% of the total ranks) and gets rid of the pressure to favor ad nauseum or push formal advancement schemes related to nebulous ranking. Roll novicehood into collegium (which also already has automatic advancement), leave in unlimited duration novicehood (locked to Mastery skills) after collegium until the player issues an ADVANCE-type command so that they can't accidentally time out of being able to choose a different class. 

If everyone still wants a guild favor mechanic, make it a weak, non-stacking mini-god-favor type thing. If faction want to create sub-ranks, they can easily do so with gradated faction titles or other non-mechanical perks. 

EDIT: So, the only thing gated off by having an empty guild is being leader of the empty guild. You want to be able to contest leader after not having to interact with any guild members? For why? My question still stands: You want to advance in roleplaying ranks to roleplay with other guild members who aren't on at the same as you? Wha?

EDIT2: Bonus if the delegation power (set people to a particular role) could be qualified so that some roles can only set people to certain other roles. And just like clans, you should be able to hold more than one role, which functionally collapses all of the ranks and guild positions into the same mechanic. Some of the roles could be assigned the power "Listed", which would make a list of the members in that role show up (along with the role name/type) in the HELP <faction> file.

CyndarinAscends

The novicehood timer is less an advancement system and more a limited access trial period that was super obnoxious. Most guilds fast track players that aren't total newbies through it the second they are inguilded (and if you don't, you are doing it wrong). 

There does need to be some sort of automated trigger to let players who gain nothing from 10 hours of sitting on your hands to skip past it. Mini quest and skill demonstration or some such.

Not so much a fan of Order style guilds where the GL moves people up and down as they see fit. I've definitely been in guilds and in guild disputed where people would have used that to pursue grudges. At least high guild ranks provide a cushion against guild leader grudges trying to punish people. Guild leaders with that degree of authority to redesign guild ranks and assign them as they please can realistically  mean a whole new guild set up with every leader. 

Ulalah

I can see the value of having some level of automation, particularly in guilds where there are few players (for instance, currently the Harbingers lack a lot of higher-end activity, and I've seen a couple Murmurs leave because of that). That said, as a player who went from COL to GR3-5 in less than 3 IG years (that's what, a bit over a month?), I also feel there's a great amount of value in relying on general advancement from your leaders. You get more RP, you get a feel for the game world and the guild you've chosen to be a part of, etc.

Also, @Xenthos has a great point: some of those guildranks come with special RP perks that mean a lot to the people who get there, and making it something that you just automatically walk through is sort of unpleasant to those of us who earn those the hard way.

Saran

Twytch said:

Saran said:

Yes, it really does. A CR3 can challenge the guild leadership, they can delete every single help file in the guild and remove every last book from the library, they can decimate a guild if they feel like it and it takes a week or so to remove them from that position if necessary. 

The reason this is a concern is because it has happened before, multiple times apparently.

Whoa there fearmonger. GR3 does not, by itself grant all these powers. Changing guild help files falls under Archivist position, which you have to be appointed to by the guild leadership. The same goes for messing with the library, I think. The only true statement above is the part about gaining the ability to run for election. 

While not specifically a pro- or anti- guild advancement, keep in mind that most guilds do not, in fact, have a lot of people to "engage in RP" every single novice that comes out of the Portal. And not everyone plays in the magical prime time when there is someone around to handle advancements.

Prior to @Tzolla taking over the Illuminati GA, we didn't have anyone during offpeak that could handle advancement. I had to play catch the @Steingrim for a week or so, since he was the only one who came close to playing in the same time as I did. Thankfully, this has been rectified, with Tzolla and I being the main teachers around during offpeak. Can other guilds say the same?

Granted, this problem may be alleviated in the upcoming Guild Overhaul. Hopefully.

Poorly worded but a GR3 can challenge a leader and a successful challenge will mean they can do whatever they like, we have had people elected in the past who were thought to be good and proceeded to just delete the guilds rp because they didn't actually like it, they didn't want to be a part of the guild they wanted to make up their own one.

Hi, I'm from Australia? Most of my game for ten years has been off-peak.