City novicehood

Tahquil

I think if this put in you might as well demote Houses to High Clans, since that pretty much all they'll be/are right now anyway.

The reasons Houses work in Mhaldor is that no matter if your Naga or Congregation all the Houses Compliment each other to work for the greater goal of the city. A Lot of the novice tasks (when I was there) had to do with the history of the city, dealing with the philosophy of a city etc. etc.

Nearly all other houses are self-centred. The deal only in what is relevant to them without asking a novice to learn about the city they are based in alongside house ideals.

My solution would be to offer up mini history quests task for each city a novice could undertake if they wished so it can better underline why this city is how it is and the tenets it adheres to.. And so on. If you do implement 'cities before houses' plan I'ld demote ever house to a high clan because that's all they'll end up being.

Kresslack

I personally like this idea. There was an aforementioned point by Sarapis that cities generally have more people around on a regular basis than Houses do. This is undeniable. I do look at it from another perspective however, in regards to initiating and encouraging a strong trend of potential RP.

Character Creation(more or less the Birth of a sentient adventurer in Achaea) involves allowing new players to read descriptions of cities and classes, and select the ones they feel they would like to be a part of. It makes more sense for new players to select a Class and start their journey in a City than it does for them to start in a House.

Why? Well, because it not only gives a bit of initial backstory for that person being born in a certain city, but it allows them to experience the City they've selected, get a feel for the atmosphere and engage with other citizens before choosing a House. You can be born into a City, but Houses are more or less designed as institutions for higher learning.

No one has to join a House. Those who do, usually do it to learn to better utilize their skills and follow a certain form of class specialisation. You're not born into a House, nor does it seem practical that you would automatically start off in one. I see them as college like institutions and organizations which allow people of like interests and goals to Apply to them.

Being born in a city, one might be the son or daughter of someone who has chosen to live out any of the numerous professions such as tailoring, blacksmithing, soldier, merchant, politician, etc. This shouldn't set a precedent that new players have to follow a certain path; they should be allowed to choose, however, it seems as if it would be more helpful and beneficial for them to be involved with and experience the actual City side of things prior to jumping into Houses, which seems like it would properly be the next step.

Jacen

Sarapis said:

The proposed solution reminds me too much of autoclass - a few guilds had problems in the way they gated access to class so, instead of dealing with them, the entire system was thrown out and we got autoclass. 

You're barking up the wrong tree there I'm afraid. Autoclass was one of the best decisions I ever made in regards to Achaea, and the numbers are unequivocal. More people converted from newbies to regular players, those regular players played longer on average, and players in general spent more in general post-autoclass. 

Is this an indication that we're reverting back to autoclass?

If yes, I think the this proposed system would merge very nicely. Newbie chooses a city (and thus an overarching philosophy) and a class. Newbie gets oriented to the game, learns a bit about what it'll take to get involved in combat, economics, politics, the arts, theft, infiltration, etc. Newbie chooses the House that best fits the way he wants to play the game. Smooth transition from allowing the player to decide his faction, his class, and then later, the manner in which he advances the philosophy. 

If no, I imagine this could very well decrease newbie retention rate. Allowing the newbie to choose a class and city initially but not a House would give the impression that choosing a House is a bigger decision, and that the newbie will need to do some reading/researching to choose which he wants to play the most. In actuality, however, there wouldn't even be a choice at all. Even if the newbie doesn't spend many lessons in class skills before picking a House ( regardless of the return on lessons for a class change ), once the newbie finds out that he can't play <insert class here> in the way that he wants too, I imagine he would quit rather than reestablish his character as a different class or member of a different city.

Agravain

Do we not already have autoclass? How can we revert back to it?

Eld

Agravain said:

Do we not already have autoclass? How can we revert back to it?

I assume he means reverting back to "full" autoclass, meaning that all houses accept all classes (maybe with some citywide restrictions, such as Mhaldorian houses not taking Devo users, forestals being restricted to Eleusis, etc).

Jacen

Lol, I thought that's what autoclass meant. You kids and your damn terminology nowadays.

Sena

Autoclass is the current system of gaining class. You don't have to join a guild to get a class, and you don't have to pass novicehood in a guild to get the third skill and learn to trans.

Jacen

Oh. Well that thingy where you can join any House as any class. That's what I meant.

Skye

Veldrin said:

the houses are what holds up a city,

That is kind of exactly it, isn't it? The perpetuation that Houses are free to do as they wish because... I dunno, the House leadership doesn't like the City is kind of direct defiance of that.

Like @Tahquil said (<3 Tahtah), many Houses outside of Mhaldor, only deal with their own internal workings and place loyalty to House above loyalty to City. I remember years ago, I was shocked when, during my novice interview as an Arcanist, I was asked one of those 'list your priorities of Order, Guild, City etc' questions and was told that the interests of the Guild came above that of the City despite my reasoning that the welfare of the City would in turn benefit the Guild as a whole. The idea that this is not the case, and that Guild leadership was allowed to insinuate in their novices that they were to prioritise their own agenda above that of the community was a little off-putting.

'if the houses are good, the city is good, if the city is crap the houses just ignore it and do their own thing.'

By your own definition, the statement cannot possibly be true (although it is true that Houses have a tendency to just go and do their own thing regardless of City). If Houses hold up the City, then the reason the City is crap is because the Houses are crap.

Whether they like it or not Houses, as they are now, form an integral part of the system because they hold a not-inconsiderable portion of the city's population. They hold voters and naysayers, all the sticks in the spoke of united progress, and bringing novices in House first merely lets them be indoctrinated into that kind of contrary 'us vs them' thinking.

I'd rather they be brought in City first, get to know their faction (however vague) through untinted lenses and try and establish a kind of factional loyalty before a political one.

You have to remember that we're not talking about throwing novices into the City and letting them flail, I expect that a system will be worked out and the Ambassadors will be given new responsibilities and the City will adapt accordingly.

Nakari

 the more I think about this idea, the more I like it. There is probably nothing in terms of basic features that can not be taught by a city mate, as all classes at the really low levels are fairly similar (similar enough that most people could easily explain the most basic of skills). And even if mechanical mentorship is saved for the house, I feel like some sort of unofficial mentorship could easily be established through the cities to make sure that there are people directly interacting with newcomers. 

I also agree that this might be able to offer the potential (and maybe should), for decreasing the limits on class per house per city. While I agree that was a good change overall, if a system was in place so that new players would be more likely to have an identity set for their characters before choosing a house to join, then there might well be fewer problems with allowing a little bit of overlap (certainly not the chaos that there was before). I don't know, I don't feel strongly about that particular point, and there's another thread for that anyways.

Still, it sounds, for all the discussed reasons, that this could be really good if implemented well. At the very least it could probably make houses more of something that you join because of the ideals and such, and not just because they are there and you will have no idea how to do things if you don't

Iocun

There currently certainly is an issue with some houses being so small that often, nobody who is able to help a novice will be around when one joins, so they are left hanging a bit. City novicehood would indeed provide a greater number of potential helpers for novices.

The problem here however is twofold: in the term "potential helpers" and in the fact that city novicehood would not only provide more "novice aides", but also a greater number of novices to be dealt with, since those who help novices would now have to deal with all a city's novices. Helping novices is something that is mostly volunteer work. It can be rewarding, sure, but it is work and sometimes repetitive and straining.

The reason people do it anyways is often out of a feeling of loyalty and caring for ones house. People know that without caring for novices, they will go elsewhere, and their house will die out eventually. This serves as a good incentive for the smaller houses to still put up a good effort in caring for novices, an incentive which would be much smaller for entire large cities. It may still work in small cities with strong ideologies like Mhaldor and Eleusis, but it will be much harder in Ashtan and Cyrene. I, for one, am quite sure I'd help novices much less if it was city-based rather than house based, simply because I (and by extension Iocun) have much greater feelings of responsibility towards my house than my city.

Of course, that has some positive sides for me as well: if I no longer had to feel obligated to teach novices about basic Achaean mechanics (which really is the most tedious part about newbie orientations), I'd have more time for concentrating on the interesting things in house education, which are usually less mechanical and more RP-based. I'm simply a bit worried about whether all cities will find sufficiently many people who are willing to cover all that work for all city novices. More in-game documentation about certain things may help though. Many of the things that are currently mostly player-taught could be covered with hardcode as well, by expanding the tasks system etc.

Blujixapug

Agreed with @Iocun. I absolutely don't think city novicehood should be a personal interview, manual advancement thing, like House novicehood is, with Ambassador aides as analogues to House novice aides. That seems like a huge mess. The novice aide position is already a burnout machine. The work required would be huge. Some people would do a terrible job by overcomplicating it . The need to find a person and schedule an interview would be a weakness. The potential for a tired or unenthusiastic person to give a poor interview would eradicate the potential charm of this system in providing a strong first impression of the city.

It should be completely automated, as much as is possible. NPC quests, an automated task-tracking system, and automatic completion. Players (Ambassador aides, etc) should just be there to answer questions.

Iocun

Nevermind.

Averi

I like @Blujixapug's idea of city novice orientations being automated. If this happened, i'd support the OP.  Our house already has enough newcomers to deal with. Just thinking about expanding that to a city-wide thing is well... headache-y.  Novices are time consuming and expensive and without a house loyalty behind it, I'd be much less inclined to spend like 6-9 hours directing them through scrolls, shops, hunting, reflexes and such. If the city orientation system is set in, I think a new novice introduction system is required as well. 

Edit: also, it might be helpful to give the novice more items during the trial of rebirth, such as their hunting weapon like in Lusternia. It'd just make things less confusing.

Silas

I'm biased, because I know a couple of the proposals that were sent in regarding Targossas novicehood, and I dearly want to see them go in, but I think it would be good to see cities given the choice of whether they want their Houses or the city itself to handle novices. I think this is one of the things that makes Achaea appealing over MMOs, and I think it's a strength we don't play to nearly as much as we should.

In Achaea, you can really afford to allow people to customise their experience as much as they want without breaking things, and without a massive resource drain. The cities are not just the exact same thing with a minor reskin to show superficial difference - they're completely different places, with differing numbers of organisations, differing power structures, differing governmental styles and structures, etc. The Houses themselves are customisable in that way too. I think allowing (for example) cities to choose a novice academy and have the Houses focus on other things is a good thing to do, because the more choice we have - the more freedom we have to make cities, and our playing experience in general, exactly what we want them to be - the better Achaea will be in the long run.

Vayne

This is something I have been thinking about recently myself. I am wanted to implement a naturalization program though the ambassador that would be required for new citizens. Teach them some vital history, about the government structure, the houses, show them the landmarks and so forth.

I don't see how this would conflict with the house's structure. I reckon they could easily enough show them to the city tutor for some lessons, but I see that as potentially dangerous unless all the aides are well versed in each class's skills. However, I suppose if you stop them from choosing a house right away, you would have to stop them from choosing a class right away as well. If I choose Hashan for a city and Serpent as a class then I only have two options, Serpentlords or rogue so it does not much matter I did not join a house yet( that is unless you are planning to remove the city-class restrictions, of course, do want). So, I would have to say I am against stopping them from joining a house right away but would be in favor with promoting programs city-side that help out new citizens in addition to the House not just as a fall back for small houses/dead times.

Drauka

I like the idea but it's not going to be pleasant for many people. 

It does stink when you want to play a class and think you may try out a city, and you join a house with no one around. In Mhaldor, the city channel is dead except for higher ups saying something very randomly or summoning of all citizens to the gates.

It's much more welcoming to have a whole city of people around and then decide on a class.

I just hope that people will help newbies on city channels, because one of the things I personally don't like about Achaea is feeling so isolated and alone in the game at times, which isn't so much an issue now (But I haven't played in a week due to real-life work and moving), but it does stink. I want to play as a cool race and class and all that, but I always want to play with other players, too.

Even with all the introduction and information about how to play the game, the new user still needs to not feel alone or a bother. If city chatting can do that, then that's awesome.

Morro

This sounds a bit backwards--House and cities would have to already be unified and working together before a system like this could be in place. But it's been stated that Houses tend to feel that their well-being is above that of the city. In addition, it's likely that not all Houses agree on what the ethos of a city should be, and how that ethos should be interpreted. This should be addressed first to prevent the new system from devolving into a political mess with the newbs caught in the middle.

A city would have to at the very least have chelp scrolls available for each class that it accepts. For the sake of consistency, these should probably match up pretty closely with similar scrolls provided by Houses. Or, maybe the newb could do CLASS HELP or something and a scroll comes up outlining basic things like what attack they should be using to hunt and such. Since each city only has one House that accepts a particular class, that House could be in charge of creating and maintaining this scroll. This way, you don't have true newbs spending all of their lessons on Survival before joining a House and finding out that they've invested in completely the wrong thing. Even with the ability to respec, that could be a turn-off to someone who is adapting to the text medium on top of everything else.

One thing that could be a huge plus for this system, however, would be the ability for city novice tasks to integrate with House requirements and ease the tedium of starting up a new character. For instance, an automated set of tasks could cover the gathering of basic equipment like vials and tattoos and other things that would be necessary in any House. By the time a player is ready to explore the RP associated with the class, he's well on his way to being a functional member of the game, and this is when he is directed to Houses. So, little Johnny joins a House bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to go, and has essentially skipped the first novice interview in a lot of cases. This also leaves the potential for experienced players wanting to start an alt to take care of all of the boring stuff without needing manual interviews, and then join a House and get right to the RP. Currently, play sort of drags when one is in novicehood, especially in small Houses were you may have to wait if you're trying to get in contact with someone to mentor you, or to do your interview, leaving a vast amount of time for a potentially productive player to decide that Achaea really isn't their cup of tea after all.

Eld

It still seems to me that one of the easiest ways to start to address the problem of no one in a House being around to help novices would be to add an announcement to the city when a novice joins through the Trial. That way, they'll at least likely get some interaction with citymates (even if it's just a few greetings on CT), and helpful citizens might think to check what house the person's in, and whether they might need some help with the basics if no one else from that house is around. Alternatively, you could modify the notice that novice aides get when a novice of one of their house's accepted classes finishes the trial to also notify them when any novice in their city joins.

@Morro's comment about a need for CHELP scrolls for each class could be addressed by a single scroll in which each house lists the HHELPs they want their novices to read; rogues would still be out of luck, but not significantly more so than currently. Newbs spending all their lessons on Survival would be addressed by the proposal of allowing free full resets during novicehood (I'd maybe suggest up to level 30 for that, just to be on the safe side).

As far as the issue of the apparent confusion of joining both a city and a house initially, it might help to add a few lines about the relationship between the two, and pointing out that most houses will only accept members from one city. Currently, they're treated as pretty distinct, with the relationship not being clear, and while HOUSE LIST shows which city each house is based in, the significance of that is not very clear.

Nyboe

Cities are too big to deal with city novicehood. Like if I was a newbie I wouldn't want to ask insane/newbie questions on the city channel where the entire city can hear me and judge me. A lot of people are not willing to help newbies because they don't see the rewards are worth the time it takes to help a newbie.

Maybe instead of bringing the burden on to the entire city, rather give a better incentive for mentors? Like right now mentors just get some bonus exp when they hunt with their proteges and they can learn 20 lessons at a time as opposed to 15. These incentives feel rather weak to me. An idea for an incentive could be where if the protege became a mentor himself(by playing 300 hours) or if the protege got out of House novice hood the mentor could get a house/city favor and some credits.

And to prevent this from being abused maybe limit to each person have a max of 3 proteges at once.

Kyrra

What @Nyboe mentioned is something that I struggle with sometimes. I don't like to bother people and try my best to figure out things on my own because I don't like being a bother - but some of that stems to a lot of rushed experiences in Houses where I have to read through a library of scrolls while someone is waiting to give an hour long orientation

The role of the Ambassador Ministry in any city, not only involves welcoming new citizens, but looking after novices as well. While I can understand the reluctance to speak on the city channel sometimes - I know Ashtan doesn't really like random chatter - anyone can check AIDES AMBASSADOR to see the list of people in the Ministry and they should all be willing to help you.

When few folk are on, I actually welcome new citizens, and send them a tell to read the relevant city scrolls and the syntax to check for Ambassador aides so they're aware of who they should be talking to. Most of the time, they come back to ask me questions, which is fine because I like helping people anyways. There's a system in place.

Morro

@Eld I was under the impression that novices would be without a House and have no access to HHELPs initially.

Nyboe

Yeah I agree. The Ambassador Ministry does help city novices. When I first played the game I didn't even know anything about ambassador aides.
All I did was pester Romeo and Juliet and they told me to join a house and I would get help. And indeed I did get help once I joined a house. But I had no idea that their were ambassador aides to help novices. No scroll or anyone mentioning this.

Maybe make the Ambassador Ministry more open to the newbies. Like have an opening message which gets sent to the newbie who just got citizenship into the city and it lists all the ambassador aides online in the city and the newbie can then send tells to the ambassador aides if they need help.

As an ambassador aide I would actually be glad if newbies starting sending me tells asking for help because it would save me work from having to find newbies who need help which believe it or not is half the work.

Kyrra

I know there's a message for people inducted through the city denizens but I don't think there's a message for those that join through the Trial.

Eld

Morro said:

@Eld I was under the impression that novices would be without a House and have no access to HHELPs initially.

I meant that as an alternative to delaying the choice of a house (or at least as something that could be done now, without waiting for the time it would take to implement a full city novicehood program).

Eld

Kyrra said:

I know there's a message for people inducted through the city denizens but I don't think there's a message for those that join through the Trial.

That's correct.

Idelisa

I think that this COULD be a benefit, only if class requirements were removed from most Houses.  After all, I would be very discouraged if I became a Sylvan, became very excited about the Sent soldier like attitude only to find out that I had no choice but to become a scholar.  

It would be very discouraging.  Although even now it's discouraging, we have the benefit of becoming 'attached' to the people in our House to at least make it a little less difficult to accept that we literally don't have any choice. 

If novices could join houses because they agreed with the values and tenants, it could be really exciting!

Mishgul

Then you realise that sylvan is terrible in ranged combat and you sit vigouring people all day (PUN).

Class restrictions are a grey area, because a lot of houses use abilities for RP reasons, and then you dilute them by spreading them around.

And then houses become even less important and you end up just having a city without houses and two clans, for scholars and for warriors or something, and then you have a bigger community with the archetypical groups filling the voids and various people being isolated and alienated due to attitudes/beliefs/timezones and nothing has really changed.

Prythe

Oy.

In the grander scheme of things, Houses were the evolution of Guilds. Traditionally people were born in a City, then perhaps later joined a Guild,. so, in that manner, it does make sense when we compare it to our real world parallels. 

I think more would have to be reworked however. If you have classless people coming to Cities, they can learn basics, but as mentioned upthread, newbiekick their way through Minia?

If they choose a class, they gain skills, but then they are forced into a particular House because of the City/House restrictions. Open it up? Would work for me, and would be very interesting. We could skip the Novice part of our House stuff, and move right to Apprentice things.

All THAT said - it is difficult enough to keep everybody on the same track in a House as to Novices and expectations and who can and should Aide (and will there be some sort of "testing" to get them to whatever allows them to be qualified to join a House?) .... I think it would be more than the difficult transition which yes, we would ultimately get past, but into the realm of "A good idea, but not viable in the long run."

Draekar

I don't know how or if this would work for other cities and I won't pretend to comment for them.

@Sarapis this is the single best thing you could see done for Targossas. I could talk all day about why this would work and how much it would benefit the new City, so I'll just list the first three thoughts I had.

1. One central city training school/academy that keeps the entire City/Houses/Orders on the exact same page and working together around the exact same understandings and ideals. It could be it's own org perhaps like the Church was, but be setup solely to set the foundation for everyone who enters the City and teaches the ideals that we all must adhere to.

2. The repetitive training of novices is a bitch and kills everyone eventually. Sharing this task across all the Houses/City/Orders ensures we can pool our teachers into sharing the load rather than trying to duplicate efforts in every House. It will of course give far better coverage of timezones too.

3. Unity. Everyone will have the exact same ideals and focus and each House can then be about adding to that as a specialisation rather than having different or competing ideals (one of the top five things that killed Shallam that was) So House one can take those ideals and train fighters, another House can take those ideals and train librarians, another can take those ideals and train shopkeepers or whatever etc etc. Likewise the orders can draw from the same pool and train better god servants.

Downside:

I do feel class RP might suffer as Houses did have a strong focus on that as part of the novice training. Houses could set a strong culture around classes and I am not sure how that would work in a central pool, and especially with the possibility of multi-class Houses that I have seen discussed. Knights and Serpents and well most classes have really amazing RP arcs, history and tradition across all of Achaea and I am not sure I'd enjoy Targossas missing out on that side of things if we did become the testing ground for a new arrangement.