House Ranks and Promotions

Jurixe

Hi,

I'm not sure if this has ever been requested before - I dare say it has - but is there any way at all that we can get a system which allows for promoting directly to that rank? I say this because our progression system currently, at least up to full member, utilises every rank but we can only mechanically promote to HR3 and HR5. This means that promotion to any other rank requires awkward multi-favouring by people (of which the highest are all HR5 right now) and seems like a peculiar workaround that devalues favours a little bit.

Additionally, it would help if we could set what rank our 'full member' status is considered to be, instead of having it have to be a blanket HR5.

What do people think?

Kresslack

I vaguely remember someone asking about this last year, and I agree; sponsoring someone up a full rank should be an option.

Aerek

An overhaul, or at least some additional options, for the house rank system is overdue, I think. Only 1-5 are setup in a way that a House can meaningfully use them, everything past HR5 is woefully outdated and irrelevant to how modern Houses operate.

Tarkanian

Wouldn't this be part of the house renaissance? Currently dormant, so I haven't had the chance to personally ask folks IG.

Sherazad

Would make our job a lot easier pls

Aodfionn

Is this more in regards to HR2/4 from 1/3, or post-full member promotion? The former I think would be a nifty idea.

Hellen

What is the point of any rank past five? I know that some (all?) Houses get HTS at HR10, but after that it seems kind of... pointless. I mean, I guess something similar can be said about city ranks too.

It seems mostly a matter of showing seniority and how many favours you've earned after HR5 and not much else. If that's the case, fine, but it seems a bit hollow to me.

Sena

For the most part, the ranks are just numbers and it's up to the house to do something meaningful with them.

Rank does affect the strength of favours though, and some commands are given at certain ranks (such as HTS), but I'm not sure how customisable that is or what exactly is tied to rank.

Darklyre

AFAIK, HTS is available to anyone that's fully inducted and off probation. If that's HR5, then everything past that is window dressing.

Jonathin

I would be fine with it as long as there are checks to prevent people from sponsoring their friends up to HRmax#. It has been proven time, time, and time again that we can't have nice things because people abuse the shit out of them. This would be one of those things.

Aodfionn

Darklyre said:

AFAIK, HTS is available to anyone that's fully inducted and off probation. If that's HR5, then everything past that is window dressing.

Eld

Darklyre said:

AFAIK, HTS is available to anyone that's fully inducted and off probation. If that's HR5, then everything past that is window dressing.

It's investible, so it'll vary by house. We have it accessible to all HoN aides, which I think is pretty common. Not sure if you can change the HR10 thing, though; I want to say you can't.

Nim

Jonathin said:

I would be fine with it as long as there are checks to prevent people from sponsoring their friends up to HRmax#. It has been proven time, time, and time again that we can't have nice things because people abuse the shit out of them. This would be one of those things.

Are there checks now? Sounds like there aren't if there's a workaround already possible, if an awkward one.

Kresslack

@Hellen: The two main points of HR's past 5 are a) recording senority, and b) being able to invest different levels of power to certain groups.

@Nim: There aren't checks built in. Currently someone can only grant their favour to someone once per Achaean month/RL day, so if the logs show Player X has bestowed their favour upon Player Z three months in a row...there'd better be a verifiable reason or Player X is going to be in hot water.

Currently, if someone needs to be bumped up a full rank, one of the House leaders will note it in the logs and everyone who is able to will bestow their favour unto that individual until they've reached the proper rank. I've seen such instances, in the case of when a new HL is elected/appointed, that have lasted for quite a few days as House elders circulated their favours until they reached HR15.


I think only the HL should be able to promote someone directly to a rank (ex: HR1 to HR7 directly, for whatever reason). I think HoN should be able to promote a full rank from HR1-HR5. I don't, however, think this is a power every House department and aide thereof should have. I think that alone would cut down greatly on the ability to abuse it.

Halos

Kresslack said:

Currently, if someone needs to be bumped up a full rank, one of the House leaders will note it in the logs and everyone who is able to will bestow their favour unto that individual until they've reached the proper rank.

Yeah, that's pretty standard with Houses, and I agree. I wish this weren't necessary and we could just promote to HR

Right now we can HOUSE SPONSOR PARTIAL people to HR2, HOUSE SPONSOR FULL people to HR3, awkwardly multi-Housefavour people to HR4, and HOUSE PROMOTE people to HR5. I think that Housefavouring and disfavouring really should be investable powers for secretary positions so that the HF race wouldn't be so necessary.

Kresslack said:

I've seen such instances, in the case of when a new HL is elected/appointed, that have lasted for quite a few days as House elders circulated their favours until they reached HR15.

This is, actually, unnecessary. Houselords automatically gain rank over time, getting them to HR15 naturally. I asked one of my secretaries to HDF me once. My rank fell to HR14. My rank automatically rose to HR15 again the following serenade.

I think only the HL should be able to promote someone directly to a rank (ex: HR1 to HR7 directly, for whatever reason). I think HoN should be able to promote a full rank from HR1-HR5. I don't, however, think this is a power every House department and aide thereof should have. I think that alone would cut down greatly on the ability to abuse it.

I'd be fine with this too

Carmell

As an HoN in one of the new houses.  I agree there should be an easier way of promoting people to the rank you want them.  I went to housefavour one of our hr3's to hr4 based on tasks he'd done and found out that I wasn't able to house favour because I was not hr6.  This made the awkward moment of having to tell the HL hey I can't favour this guy and realizing that I now needed to be awkwardly favoured to hr6 just so that I would be able to do my job.  It left me with an amusing house favour to laugh at but at the same time held up the line while we had to fix the issue over the next couple of months.

Kresslack

You're HoN but not HR6?

Carmell

well I'm hr6 now but not when I tried to favour. 

Aerek

A lot of the discussion here is trying to make the current system "work". Sure, you can get 7 people to favor someone every month until they reach HR10, but that's the problem. The current House Rank system is based off the Guild Rank system, which dates back to the beginning of the game, when Guilds didn't automatically have Guildmasters and Guild Rank was one of Achaea's "achievements". That's completely inaccurate in modern days, which means we spend a lot of time working around the HR system, not working with it.

It takes a dozen favors from an HR6 to accomplish anything, or an HR15 has to personally favor someone repeatedly to move them up a rank. Powers come at pre-ordained, unchangable ranks. Sure you can invest powers to aides of an office, but want to give all HR5s the ability to SCORE, SKILLS, and INVENTORY recruits? Tough, can't. Don't want that HR7 to be able to probate people? Tough, the rank gives it to him and you can't touch it.

The HR system needs to be overhauled to give the leaders of the House the means to design the House the way they want it, not force them to figure out how to accomplish what they want within the confines of an outdated system. We need the ability to move someone up a rank at will. We also need the ability to move someone down a rank at will. We need powers to be investable by rank or position, and not automatically given at some arbitrary rank that ties our hands.

The system needs to work for us, instead of making us figure out how to build a house despite it.

Valaria

in house of sentinels, HTS is at HR15.

Jurixe

I know that if accepted, such a system would still take a while to make, but it would be nice if we could know if such a thing is feasible so that we can plan ahead. Any admin hopefully reading this?

Sherazad

Kresslack said:

You're HoN but not HR6?

It happens to new houses.

Tael

My personal preference would be to just do away with the concept of House Favours for ranks 1-5.

For rank 1-5, it should just be "SPONSOR"/"PROMOTE" and each time you do the command, it moves someone up one rank.

After you're HR5, HFs start to be a thing.

The vast majority of houses already function this way. And those few that actually require HFs to get from, say, HR4 to HR5 should probably be discouraged from doing that anyway since HFs are a notoriously unreliable progression mechanism (sometimes people get them quite easily, some people find that no matter what they do, they can never manage to earn them). HFs work great for ranks past 5 since those ranks don't actually matter as much, but they're a poor idea for ranks below 5.

Sarapis

Aerek said:

 when Guilds didn't automatically have Guildmasters 

Huh? Guilds always had guildmasters. 

Mishgul

Tael said:

My personal preference would be to just do away with the concept of House Favours for ranks 1-5.

For rank 1-5, it should just be "SPONSOR"/"PROMOTE" and each time you do the command, it moves someone up one rank.

After you're HR5, HFs start to be a thing.

The vast majority of houses already function this way. And those few that actually require HFs to get from, say, HR4 to HR5 should probably be discouraged from doing that anyway since HFs are a notoriously unreliable progression mechanism (sometimes people get them quite easily, some people find that no matter what they do, they can never manage to earn them). HFs work great for ranks past 5 since those ranks don't actually matter as much, but they're a poor idea for ranks below 5.

But they should matter. They exist.

Suladan

Sarapis said:

Aerek said:

 when Guilds didn't automatically have Guildmasters 

Huh? Guilds always had guildmasters. 

@Sarapis‌ can we get a comment on the rest of the thread? I.e. HOUSE PROMOTE <person> <rank> or similar?

It's a nice-to-have, not a must-have, but would help with handling tedium of coordinating repeated favours of people by everybody who can favour to handle ranks when needed/appropriate - especially in new Houses.

Amarillys

Suladan said:

Sarapis said:

Aerek said:

 when Guilds didn't automatically have Guildmasters 

Huh? Guilds always had guildmasters. 

@Sarapis‌ can we get a comment on the rest of the thread? I.e. HOUSE PROMOTE <person> <rank> or similar?

It's a nice-to-have, not a must-have, but would help with handling tedium of coordinating repeated favours of people by everybody who can favour to handle ranks when needed/appropriate - especially in new Houses.

We got an answer.

[Spoiler] ANNOUNCE NEWS #4236 (11/15/2014 at 17:50)

From : Tecton, the Terraformer

To : Everyone

Subject: House power changes

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We've reworked some house powers as part of the ongoing renaissance, here's the details of the changes:

 

* Promotion of newcomers is now less cumbersome, just a single command - HOUSE PROMOTE <person>, will instantly promote the person to the next house rank (from 1 - 5). You no longer need to sponsor them, and there are no longer any hard restrictions in progressing through these ranks.

 

* HOUSE SPONSOR has been removed.

 

* HOUSE TASKS <person> has been added to show a house member's progress on their TASKS.

 

Penned by My hand on the 3rd of Valnuary, in the year 669 AF. [/spoiler]

Iocun

Actually, I always found it a cool thing that house rank wasn't one of the things that house leaders could just assign willy-nilly, but worked through a uniform system that stayed consistent throughout short-termed leadership changes etc. This is why I also was always extremely outspoken against the practice of some houses to "misuse" housefavours to bump someone up to a specific rank, rather than letting it happen as a mere side effect of housefavours.

Sure, this always lessened the ability of houses to define their inner workings, but I did enjoy the small level of continuity it provided through inner political changes. I also felt that rank working like that made it seem decidedly more valuable.

Nowadays, I don't care so much any more, probably mostly since I'm no longer personally invested in any house. Perhaps a rework is in order, I don't know. It certainly would have some advantages, although I still think that the idea of house rank as a somewhat abstract representation of reputation, rather than an assigned rank has some merit (even though I'm perfectly aware that it was never just the former and always had aspects of the latter, especially taking into account that house powers are attached to ranks).