City novicehood

Jonners

I seriously believe that Houses need to be reworked from the ground up to be more than just the help file repositories most of them are, to the point of forcing them to drop their class name from the house's official name where appropriate. Each House should have more purpose than being -the- House for a certain class within a certain city. If that purpose can't be found the House should be deleted imnsho. With the novice system moving to the city's purview it becomes even more important that Houses have something to give them purpose as people won't be joining them to learn how to be effective in their class as much as for the roleplay opportunities that resonate with their characters beliefs.

Korben

I see two paths for Houses going forward:

1) They stay more or less as they are, but get some hardcoded perks so people will want to be in them.

2) They become exclusive (ish) clubs. Let's say your character is a tradesman in Hashan. After some time plying his trade, he becomes successful enough / rich enough that the Merchants send him an invitation. People would no longer choose a House, Houses would choose people.

Jonners

Korben said:

I see two paths for Houses going forward:

1) They stay more or less as they are, but get some hardcoded perks so people will want to be in them.

2) They become exclusive (ish) clubs. Let's say your character is a tradesman in Hashan. After some time plying his trade, he becomes successful enough / rich enough that the Merchants send him an invitation. People would no longer choose a House, Houses would choose people.

The first just seems like propping up a corpse to pose for a photo, just bury him all ready.

The second idea reinforces the 'old boys club' mentality that Achaea has repeatedly curtailed with things like autoclass. I don't see it as an option, frankly. At least you're thinking though.

Korben

The problem with autoclass wasn't the mentality by itself, it was the mentality in the hands of people who could take away your hard-earned class, added to the fact that the supply of new players was starting to dry up.

If the worst the old-boys can do to you is decide whether you can hobnob with them in their posh estates, I don't see how it'd be a bad thing. The best way to make people want to join something is to tell them, "Well you see, we don't accept just anyone. We have some standards."

It can also work the other way; a thief in a city gets approached by the local guild who tells her, "Join us and pay our dues or else".

Nim

Jonners said:

Each House should have more purpose than being -the- House for a certain class within a certain city. If that purpose can't be found the House should be deleted imnsho.

I disagree that this can't be a fine purpose. Plenty of houses do it well (knight houses, the Naga, the Occultists). Plenty of houses, however, don't do it well, and should thus not be bound to it.

Kyrra

Runewardens for the Ashura please!

Pretty please?

Santar

Only if they can dsl with blunt clubs that deal 33% increased damage from the icon.

Achimrst

Korben said:

I see two paths for Houses going forward:

1) They stay more or less as they are, but get some hardcoded perks so people will want to be in them.

2) They become exclusive (ish) clubs. Let's say your character is a tradesman in Hashan. After some time plying his trade, he becomes successful enough / rich enough that the Merchants send him an invitation. People would no longer choose a House, Houses would choose people.

Option 2 sounds like you want to turn houses into clans, high clans at that. Which is why I disagree although option 1 the perks seem nice but then you will have it so that people in the house can threaten to kick you out and take all the perks from you which brings us back to autoclass....

Korben

Ah, autoclass. Do we even remember everything that led up to it ?

You started out classless. You got a class by joining a guild. If you left the guild before you got rank X, you lost your class, lost a bunch of lessons and couldn't get another class unless you entered another guild (and the first thing the new guild did was ask your old guild why you left). This worked pretty well for a while; there was some abuse of power but on the whole if you joined a guild and did what they told you, you'd be promoted, gain ranks and eventually reach rank X. Getting to the point where you could no longer lose your class was hard, but it was the 'right' amount of hard, enough to motivate you to get out and do stuff. People who weren't good at following orders and rules got kicked out, but hey... they weren't fit for this game anyway (or so we told ourselves), and there was no lack of new players.

Then rogues came along. People who got rank X, quit the guild and went somewhere else, taking their class with them. Being a rogue could be good - if you were one out of only 2-3 concoctionists or totemers in city X, you were a valuable (and valued) asset. Guilds were not happy with this; rogues could take some of their clout away. They looked after their interests as they saw them - they started making it harder to get rank X. They added to novice and post-novice requirements, and the other guilds (even us, the monk guilds, who weren't particularly threatened by rogue monks) jumped on the bandwagon. It soon became ridiculous, we were making up new requirements because every other guild was doing it, and we all told ourselves our guilds were being 'improved'. People started quitting the game in frustration and complaining to Sarapis. Around this time, the flow of new players started to slow down, because other pay-for-perks games were coming online.

Autoclass didn't happen because people got kicked out and lost lessons (although that did happen, in many cases unfairly). It happened because people had to jump through increasing numbers of hoops just to play the game.

The way I see things going forward, the equivalent of 'just play the game' will be people joining a city, learning the basics from the city, and staying on as a citizen while they learn skills/gain levels/do their stuff. Cities become the organizational hub of the game, not Houses. What role can Houses fill in this setup ?

People respond to incentives. If you don't give them an incentive to join a House they won't join, and we may as well scrap Houses. I for one wouldn't like to see that happen.

Kyrra

The above is basically why I went dormant not long after getting class and quitting my guild. The two -years- I spent just going from GR1 to GR2 were exceedingly frustrating and the only reason I stuck it out was because I wanted to be a runie. And Jarik promised rogue was worth it >.>

I've never really had any incentive to join a House. Given my experiences with guilds, I don't really want to waste that much of my time to make some progress in an Org that makes no difference to me.

Cities and Orders were always enough for me.

Sylvance

I think that what we really need is more Houses with no City affiliation. This might require disbanding the Houses that don't quite cut it on the Cost-Benefit ratio.

Korben

It seems that Consolidation is the current theme in Achaea. When we traded Shallam for Targossas, the militant went to Targossas and everyone else went to wherever suited them best. Win-win.

We lost a bunch of Divine, and the people in small Orders / Orders with dormant Divine consolidated into fewer orders with more people in them. Again, win-win.

The Druids folded into Eleusis. More consolidation, and from the outside I'd say it looks like win-win as well.

I'd guess we have more consolidation on the road ahead and most of it will be directed at Houses. But coming out of the process, with fewer Houses (such that all of the ones left are 'active', whatever we mean by that), we are still going to need a new role for them to fill.

Mazoth

Having played dead end characters over the last few years before recently coming back and sticking with Maz, I find city focus a great idea.  I haven't read the whole thread yet, but what I see on the last few pages I heartily agree with.  I recently quit my city/house on Maz because I'm not interested in being Team Green, Eleusis just wasn't my cup of tea and now I'm hanging out in cities as a rogue just getting a feel for them.  

Not anywhere in my mind has it occurred to select a house then city, I think the new factional rank closing(if you call it that, that's how I see it) has shifted things on a more city focused level in and of itself.  I think tending novicehood toward the city not house is a solid plan given the political state of Achaea

Halos

wrong thread

Seakas

Sorry, maybe i am missing something, but the first thing you do is choose a class, and since as a certain class there is only one house for you at most in every city, you automatically have your house chosen when you choose a city. And houses handle newcomers pretty well, this would only change the focus to the entire city helping instead of more specialized help from the house, I do not see the point of this.

Achimrst

Seakas said:

Sorry, maybe i am missing something, but the first thing you do is choose a class, and since as a certain class there is only one house for you at most in every city, you automatically have your house chosen when you choose a city. And houses handle newcomers pretty well, this would only change the focus to the entire city helping instead of more specialized help from the house, I do not see the point of this.

Disagreed because houses are built to handle new comers and then they get bored of it or don't understand the house and leave. Like you said they are forced into a house when they join a city so it's not like the person wants anything to do with what the house is or does as a group they stay so they can learn things and ask someone questions. Which I might add they do in Newbie channel as well.

Jonners

Seakas said:

Sorry, maybe i am missing something, but the first thing you do is choose a class, and since as a certain class there is only one house for you at most in every city, you automatically have your house chosen when you choose a city. And houses handle newcomers pretty well, this would only change the focus to the entire city helping instead of more specialized help from the house, I do not see the point of this.

It's not like house novice channel would suddenly disappear, or at least I'd hope not. As I've stated previously I am all for more ways for novices to get help quicker and easier.

Seakas

Thing is, Sarapis said you would join a city, but not a house, but there is just one house in the city for you anyway (assuming you chose a class already like most), so why not join that house immediately. House members of the same class can also you give more specialized advice towards your class, because they are of the same class. But if they want to add something like a city newcomer channel that sounds fine.

Adet

I think the idea behind the new system is that there wouldn't necessarily be only one House in a given city which accepts your class - so you would have a choice.  The city newcomer system would get you through the basics that everyone should know (supplies, commands, curing, city ideals etc.), then you'd go on to more specialised apprenticeship in a House - which would hopefully then have a better-defined role in a city than "the monk House" or "the mage House".

The advantages of this for novices would be a more unified novicehood, with a greater pool of people on whose advice they could draw; the advantage for cities would be a generally better-aligned set of Houses (I'm thinking Shallam's various political nightmares, versus Targossas' relative unity currently (which is in part because there aren't any Houses anyway, admittedly)); and the advantages for Houses is that, if they had an actual aim, they would be free to accept a wider range of classes - for instance, the Crown Merchants would be allowed to accept alchemists, who could fit in with their tradesman purpose, despite the fact that the Spirit Walkers already have them.

Sylvance

Adet said:

I think the idea behind the new system is that there wouldn't necessarily be only one House in a given city which accepts your class

This would be a substantial enough change to the status quo, all by itself, that I would be quite amazed if it hadn't come up in Sarapis' initial post. There have been (recent) threads in which the problem of Class-decides-House has come up, and the Admin haven't pointed folks towards this thread.  I'd love for what you're thinking to be the case, but I've not seen a single thing to suggest that it is.

Adet

Ah, my bad - I thought I had read it in the initial post.  Looking back now, you're right.

Aduan

The idea of making cities in general responsible for their novices isn't such a bad idea. In fact, that is what cities were supposed to do. With a bit of a novice introduction and explanation of the city and where things can be found.

These things can easily be taken from the Houses and not impose any loss upon the Houses themselves.

The part where it becomes more problematic is when it concerns class-skills, what should be taught/learned to advance. These are confusing at first and are better left to hard-scripting into achaea. If a novice learns the wrong abilities, he/she wouldn't be able to efficiently bash for example, which has happened quite often. (a gimmick firelash can solve it, but still).

The Houses in general should have something to teach beyond advanced combat skills. Sadly for most houses this involves tons of reading, replicating the reading, and writing more stuff for someone to read. 

This process is in general fairly tedious and without proper guidance teaches next to nothing. People had reason to advance through it to gain permanent access to their class.

Without such a stick behind the door, Houses have found an understandable lack in new members, or members to stick around. Honestly, this is the main reason i didn't enjoy guilds.

If Cities were to implement a same system for city novice hood, you'd soon find the Archway to Minia overcrowded with novices. That this is the most likely outcome, is highly likely, as the people in charge in the Houses are in charge of the cities. Which leads to replicating of systems and existing methods.

Ergo: Novice joins.

City: Welcome, please read scroll X and X. Then we'll contact you.

City: Did you read scroll X and X. What was on line X and who does it mention?

Novice: Answers or thinks eh... whut?

City: Either: Kick for not reading and being a jerk.

OR Good, now write how you fit into the whole, think of a thesis or bladibla.

Changing systems works, if there is genuine interaction, a point and something to be done, instead of writing a novelle. I still think it will turn into something like this that requires little interaction and a lot of automation.

Korben

I'm not so pessimist. The reason we got extensive guild reqs (including essays) was because guilds wanted less rogues running around.

Cities, on the other hand, want more citizens. It's in the cities' interest for people to learn their stuff and stay. If people start leaving because of reqs, the reqs will be fixed.

Rheve

I kinda agree with Aduan. You certainly don't want cities to replace houses in terms of requirements. Some players join cities while staying out of houses to -avoid- tedious requirements. If you force that onto citizens as well, you're going to be seeing a lot more players who refuse to even join cities. 

Sorry, Korben. But, it's been proven that players get stuck in a certain mode. They don't want their precious requirements messed with. They won't change them. Instead, they will grow into complicated spectacles that make the game more work than down time/fun, which is why people play in the first place.

Aduan

I'm not saying it's a bad idea Korben, just that it needs some real changes from Divine to work.

Because if it is left to the citizenry, they'll automate the introduction by scripting. So someone joins followed by the : Read scroll X and X spam.

From my experience from Houses, the amount of individuals willing to genuinly interact and teach a newcommer are small. Partially because newcommers might leave, so spending an hour talking to them might not be worth it, and part because it takes a lot of time. (In which one could be making gold, harvesting or practicing sparring).
Shifting this to the city, won't fix the former problem. It will just shift the problem.

A more proper introduction could be that there's some sort of ritual held by the clergy in the city that explain what the city stands for (NPC maybe). More engaging then helpfiles and generally more indicative. After that some human interaction on showing spots around the city and general questions.

Jonners

I like helping newbies, it's opportunities for rp that drive me and that is a great opportunity for it. One of the problems with having enough novice aides is having few members in a house period. Even Mhaldor if they had all their novice aides helping the whole city, rather than just their houses, would have more comprehensive coverage.

Aduan

Jonners said:

I like helping newbies, it's opportunities for rp that drive me and that is a great opportunity for it. One of the problems with having enough novice aides is having few members in a house period. Even Mhaldor if they had all their novice aides helping the whole city, rather than just their houses, would have more comprehensive coverage.

Well that is the point Jonners, if it is ONLY the novice aides and ambassador aides, the coverage will still be spars all the time. THere's some in Houses/Guilds that do a lot of work, and many that don't. Shoving it from Houses to the City means all Novices are helped by the aides from every House. The coverage doesn't change. The pool of aides doesn't increase and the pool of Novices doesn't decrease. You might have a bit of failover for the small houses. But it won't change the status quo.

 

Not to mention novices will think bugger it, if they are required to go through the vetting process for joining a city and end up rogue in Minia. The next step is pooling all resources from cities to service Minia's rogues?

Jonners

Your logic is flawed. You forget all those houseless rogues, like myself, who would love to jump in and help but are restricted because we don't know who those needing help are for the most part. 

Also, the time consuming tasks for aides are two: initial orientation and House tasks. Initial orientation takes some time for certain but frankly the majority of it should be automated so that novices get a consistent experience. With this in place I could see more willing to become ambassador aides.

The main reason why novice aides burn out is because not only are they responsible for hour+ long orientations frequently but they also have to judge house tasks which can be time consuming too.

By spreading the burden out and the production team continually improving the newbie programs I don't see how this could be a detriment.

Kyrra

I quite enjoyed being a novice aide with the runies forever ago. 15 minute orientations at most and while I was a little bit strict on testing novitiates, most people just enjoyed the interaction while making progress.

I also quite enjoy helping out. The era of Achaea that I started playing in, there were guilds. Guilds trained you understanding and learning to play your class, but there was also a fantastic city community that got everyone involved. Maybe it only existed in Cyrene. Novices asked on the city channel first if they needed help with anything, and they were encouraged to do so. There were constantly ratting contests, hunting contests, quizzes, and games that were run very frequently. Not only because it was a great opportunity to learn and get people involved, but because they were fun. Tt was the mindset at the time that not only is it okay to be involved but it could be a rewarding way to spend your time without monetary rewards, you got to know your city mates and bonds were forged outside of the guild. The city came first and the guilds supported who you wanted to be.

That's really not the case anymore and it's part of why I found Cyrene so suffocating upon my return from dormancy. Spending 2-3 years playing and actively contributing, because Achaea used to be a solely RP game and OOC was frowned upon, the basis of the Runewarden ethos was that a Runewarden served her city first. Imagine how depressing it is being frequently told not to bother or to stop wasting my time. People seldom want to get involved in things outside of their houses, people do their own things, and the city you now live in just happens to be another channel to talk on.

Part of what I see happening with Targossas is perhaps a return to the way things used to be in the time of guilds. They have no houses right now. They are a new city and they only have their city. They have to interact with everyone and asides from the two Orders, there are no organisational splits. The entire city helps with the few novices they get and there's no real thoughts of "Joe's not a member of my house, I don't have to help him, I can ignore him until someone else comes along." Targossas is really promising and I truly hope their community spirit continues to grow when they finally do get houses.

It's not just the Ambassador and aides responsible for new players and novices. Every single person, especially within your own faction, becomes an example to a new person. Someone new will look up to these people as they learn, and they are a role model. Whether it's Mhaldor, Targossas, or the tree hugging forestals, the examples that you set and how you interact with new people will large determine how they go on to play the game, if they even stick around at all. A small kindness or taking a moment to help someone out might actually stick with them, and might encourage them to do the same for someone new further down the line.

Korben

Aduan said:

The coverage doesn't change. The pool of aides doesn't increase and the pool of Novices doesn't decrease.

 

Aside from what Jonners said, the coverage does change. Suppose House A usually has no one on from 3-6 GMT and House B has no one from 6-8 GMT. If all the aides are covering all the novices, one House's aides can cover another House's empty times.