Patronage System

Jacen

Figured I'd pop this discussion out of the rants section so it could be more appropriately discussed.

With factional lines being drawn deeper and deeper in the game, the sensible options an organization has for patronage get fewer and fewer. Choosing a patron for an organization can have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences, from a slow but steady divergence from the host city's ideals and worldview to outright war. Therefore, the choice of patron is a very important and influential decision for an organization, from an RP standpoint.

With the design of the existing PATRON REQUEST system, an active patron is necessary for the organization to make even simple changes such as house additions, permission changes, etc. It is therefore vital for an organization to have an active patron who can work to fulfill these requests.

At any given time the pool of active, canon gods and goddesses is relatively small, forcing many organizations to choose a patron based on either the former or the latter situation, but not both. 

With my reasoning for this post established, I'll give my suggested improvements.

• Remove the PATRON REQUEST system entirely.
• Create an email account for organization requests, similar to events|artefacts@achaea.com. Any organization request (eg. Change permissions to enter househall, buy an enchantment room, alter a room description of an org-owned room) should be sent to this email by the organization leader.
• Allow for various admin to assume the role of a canon god or org denizen for the purposes of informing the organization ( or just the leader) that the requested change has been completed.
• Events or situations that require the attention or participation of a particular canon divine should be reserved for when said divine is active.

What I'm trying to accomplish:

• Let IC be IC and OOC be OOC. If the PATRON SYSTEM is intended to be used purely for OOC communication and it only goes to the inbox of the patron god anyways, there's no reason not to use email here. If you want the attention of a specific god IC, send a letter.

• Get organization requests visible to more than one possibly dormant person. Various admin could fulfill request based on their talents and strengths, instead of their chosen organizations. Visibility also better insures the request won't get lost or pushed aside for too long.

This doesn't cover all possibilities where an organization can be punished by lack of available patrons ( Chiefly on my mind is an active order with a dormant god and OH) but it goes a long way towards fixing some of the problems that exist.

Kaihuti

I can see why you would still want an in game command instead of an email though, it mechanically lets the stuff be filtered. I don't see why a lot of the non-RP related things Houses and Cities need couldn't go to a common pool, and RP events go to an aligned pool.

Sarapis

In the words of Lorielan, "No."

In the words of another immortal, "I don't think they realise that even something like 'give us an enchantment room' is an expansion that requires knowledge of the orgs lore and history, it's not just 6 random desc sentences tacked onto the end."

The suggestion doesn't incorporate an understanding of how Achaea works behind-the-scenes, which isn't your fault of course.

Tahquil

I hate to start it like this but in Aetolia....

In Aetolia there was recently a big move to separate God personas from who was doing what work. The role of RP etc was done under the God's name but they also took on a Celeni name as well which they do all the behind the scenes/OOC work with.

I explained that to explain this:
In Aetolia they have ORGREQ instead of PATRONREQ. When you submit an ORGREQ it goes into a list which most of the admin can see.

If it's something simple like a room change or a custom decoration for an event any admin can do it on their Celani, or even pass it on to younger Celani to practice with. I'f it's something more complicated like an event there is room for comments, which you can comment back and get a discussion going about it. Point is - since most admin can see it not a lot is missed out on.

I see Sarapis lingering here so I think he may be posting...

Kaihuti

@Sarapis‌ So there isn't even a bit of wiggle room for like a silent patron? Assigned by you admins instead of chosen by the players so RP doesn't screw the chances of getting things done?

Silas

This is such a bizarre stance. If Aurora ever goes dormant and you maintain this stance, Targossas and all of its Houses would be up shit creek without a paddle.

Bluef

Not trying to poke a bear with a stick here, but I'm confused as to why the organization's lore and history comes into play in the creation of a "whatever" room. Is it the description of the room (because that's something I've seen orgs handle internally numerous times before)? Is it the way the room ends up getting introduced to the House (can't that be something that House or City leaders work out for themselves)? It sort of makes me cringe to see divine posting that orgs need to re-consider patron decisions based on behind-the-scenes things that could really hamper roleplay momentum. I lived through an era where Gods were scarce and some organizations had to make tough OOC choices that RP-wise made absolutely no sense.

Jarrod

Patrons have, for a significant portion of the game's history, been required to implement anything for Org continuity. Even if Bluef remembers that differently, that's simply how it's been for all but the very earliest days of the game. Even if the Org does all the 'work' of design for a room, it's still up to the Patron to check the description, verify it works with the org, and implement. Most situations the Patrons will work with, and find a way to make it work. A good example of this is the hatchery in the old Shadowsnakes ship. It doesn't make a lot of sense why it's there but the description and introduction made the most of a weird situation. An example of the other side is the Shadowsnake Househall/Ship in general.

To quote the most recent Babel:

"The premise is somewhat funky when the actual IC lore is considered (for example, why did Sinope have an archaic seagoing ship when Himalia was the first seafarer, why is it in Ashtan when she never left Ceylon, and why is it sunken?), and the writing is abysmal, no pun intended."


These kinds of things are kept in check now by Patrons who can look into everything easily for the history of the House and the game as a whole to ensure the world lore has a sensible continuity.


I think I'd rather sacrifice a bit of 'why we have this Patron' to keep this kind of continuity in the game, so unless we suddenly have significantly less Gods, I much prefer how we have it now.

Silas

You're saying that as an Ashtani. For Mhaldor, there is one god and it would make no sense to replace him as Patron.

Herenicus

It seems like it's been a long time since Mhaldor was up said creek, consoling each other with some variation on "after ze revolution, comrade"

Jacen

So seriously, is Cyrene completely unable to purchase househall improvements right now?

Aerek

You seem to be under the impression that Cyrene has house halls right now.

Florentino

This is just a symptom of the larger, ancient problem of relatively poor admin retention. We all obviously have little insight into what the reasons for that might be, but surely this needs to be looked into further. Can't the Garden make being a God more fun? Maybe expedite the timeline so it isn't a RL year of training, and give them fewer restrictions on RP and use of their powers?

Jarrod

It seems like it's a lot easier for the players (aka us) to make being a God fun than for the Garden to try and do random incentives.

Sarapis

Florentino said:

This is just a symptom of the larger, ancient problem of relatively poor admin retention. We all obviously have little insight into what the reasons for that might be, but surely this needs to be looked into further. Can't the Garden make being a God more fun? Maybe expedite the timeline so it isn't a RL year of training, and give them fewer restrictions on RP and use of their powers?

First, I don't think we do have poor admin retention. We have poor player retention, but the average God lasts years. We do have pretty poor Celani retention, but that's by design - we want to weed out the ones that are going to waste our time by taking a God role and then quickly flaking. We don't get all of them that way, but it's an improvement over the pre-Celani days.

Second, you're bringing up "making being a God more fun" in a thread that is literally asking to give the Gods more admin work, which is the opposite of fun most of the time, but especially when you have no connection to the org/players you're helping. Like most people, what most Gods enjoy is working on their stuff, not approving/shepherding/editing/etc your stuff. The biggest issue with being a God is simply that it's not being a player, and you started playing Achaea to be a player. It's impossible to understand what being a God/admin volunteer means until you actually do it. We try to prep people for it via our lengthy Celani and Demi process, but you still don't get it until you're actually doing it.

Gods quit (whether explicitly or by simply slowly going more and more inactive) for all sorts of reasons (we rarely have cause to fire them barring inactivity), from "life" (new job is a big one) to "having a child" (another big one) to "The players in my org are making this unfun for me" to just getting bored to lacking the same kind of communities you have as mortals. Being a God is a lot more 'alone' than being a player is. There are only a handful of us in the Garden, after all, and often we're working on completely separate things.

Honestly, there's really no way for you guys to provide useful feedback on retaining Gods longer. You just lack information and understanding of the context (through no fault of your own - you have no way to understand the context unless you've done it as we're not very public about it all).

Trevize

Sarapis said:
lacking the same kind of communities you have as mortals. Being a God is a lot more 'alone' than being a player is. There are only a handful of us in the Garden, after all, and often we're working on completely separate things. 

This I can both understand and sympathize with. My work (OOC) was - until earlier this week (just hired two to replace the job I did, yay!) - one where I literally had no peers. No one understood anything I did - they were either too far down the chain or too far up - they just knew they relied on it. Really is tough when you can't (easily) get someone else's opinion on anything, let alone rave or rant (to anyone who understands anything you're talking about, that is).

edit: it was implied but not said: everything the Garden does is appreciated, as you've willingly put yourselves in a position I have been trying to get out of for years and spend your time there doing what you can to make the game better for everyone playing, often in ways we don't see. Thank you for that.

Mathonwy

The continuity thing is probably an issue. Also, one of the things Mithraea told me ages ago when I had gotten Empyreal HL and had wild, sweeping ideas for change that would've impacted the Church/Shallam is this principle of  'you can't play with another person's toys.' And it makes a lot of sense.

Like let's say Big S decides to take the Big Siesta (God forbid) and someone else decides, benevolently, to help out Mhaldor for a bit by giving them some love and attention. On the surface this seems like a pretty rad thing. But what a lot of people don't consider is that whoever decides to help out presumably has a.) other obligations to other orgs that aren't Mhaldor and b.) limited time in the day to Achaea. It isn't really fair to the people in the orgs s/he might be neglecting, and in a way, it wouldn't be fair to Mhaldor, either, who might get an unsatisfying and ill-fitting (for the lore) half-event because they're low on the priority totem pole, or, worse, stick Sartan (now or in the future) with unnecessary baggage (like Keresisdor (not that Keresis was a bad god; I only heard good things about her!)).

The biggest takeaway from the Shallam/Te'Serra/Citadel situation, too, is that sudden, rapid changes to lore and canon can be really jarring/detrimental to players' sense of immersion, and I think even in the best of cases, having a bunch of fingers in the same pie is gonna muck it up something fierce. Chaos as an in-game faction is wonderful, but chaos in your day-to-day play experience is far from optimal because it stretches suspension of disbelief. So while for instance Targossas is a change for the better, I suspect whoever was ultimately responsible for making the call did so at the end of a lengthy triage process because what was in place clearly just wasn't working and some factional stability was desperately needed.

Sefnir

Sarapis said:

In the words of Lorielan, "No."

In the words of another immortal, "I don't think they realise that even something like 'give us an enchantment room' is an expansion that requires knowledge of the orgs lore and history, it's not just 6 random desc sentences tacked onto the end."

The suggestion doesn't incorporate an understanding of how Achaea works behind-the-scenes, which isn't your fault of course.

While I realize that every game is different, I know that there are different notes on mobs so that if someone mpos's one, they know how to roleplay them and act with them, what kind of history they have, and sometimes individual history with certain players. Wouldn't it be possible to incorporate the same kind of notes system with lore in an organization?

On the same token of your argument for an enchantment room, you don't really need to be Aurora/Deucalion to understand Targossas' history, roleplay, and general dynamics as an organization. It's information you can obtain both from public resources, as well as hopping into an admin shell to ask (if you wanted to be OOC or incognito about it) or just concealing your presence and asking any of their leadership directly.

Rangor

You really don't have to be eleusis' patron to add shops to eleusis that we design and have locations for. What about player builders for that kinda thing?

I see the point about knowing the lore. I would kill someone if they built a marketplace with a brick square in eleusis.

Tharvis

Rangor said:

You really don't have to be eleusis' patron to add shops to eleusis that we design and have locations for. What about player builders for that kinda thing?

I see the point about knowing the lore. I would kill someone if they built a marketplace with a brick square in eleusis.

don't forget the massive bonfire @Rangor! It adds some flair to the bricks

Riashain

Bricks? Lulz. That's just the path.

I've been approved to erect a steel warehouse just inside the eleusian gates. Any investors?

Tharvis

Riashain said:

Bricks? Lulz. That's just the path.

I've been approved to erect a steel warehouse just inside the eleusian gates. Any investors?

Taug's interested! Should I drop him at the construction site @Riashain?

Riashain

Wait until I have some investors and @Rangor‌ shows up to investigate, please, @Tharvis‌

Rangor

I will burn your home to the ground!

Riley

During one of the painfully long times when there was no Sartan in Mhaldor, way back in the guild days, August and I were fairly certain Clementius stepped in to throw us a bone.

Zii

The whole "year of slave labor" thing is off-putting when you make the Celani calls.

Jus sayin

Silas

I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be.

Zii

I'd rather you cram a year's worth of work in a week, or a 4 hour seminar.

Lorielan

There are a great number of preconceptions here, which is inevitable, but it is worth mentioning that a Celani progresses at the speed he or she feels comfortable at.

There is a great deal more to the training than a week's worth of reading, and everything that is read initially then has to be practiced until the Celani has shown they are comfortable and confident with the methods and mechanisms they are introduced to.

Every Celani is different, and this requires a lot of time invested both on their part and the garden members who oversee, assist, and teach.

Cooper

I think sometimes the admin forget how incredibly frustrating and hurtful it can be to orgs who don't have a Patron, or whose Patron goes dormant without warning.

The responses in this thread can basically be summed up to Targ/Mhaldor as 'If your Patron goes inactive, suck it up, it's not that bad, and no one else cares about your organization.' A little harsh, yeah, but not too far off.

The admin have a responsibility to make the game fun and enjoyable for it's customers - saying "you're screwed without a patron" even though even small things can help orgs stay afloat between Patrons, is kind of ridiculous, and any "it's too hard to do" or "we're too busy" or "we have to focus on our own orgs" is pretty irrelevant to providing a good experience towards your paying customers.

Bluef

Diminishing active divine would seem to mean that there are less people to invest time in overseeing, assisting and teaching Celani, so essentially every time we lose a few active divine, it becomes more difficult for continuing divine volunteers to train replacements. This is understandable and sadly seems to be a repeating pattern in Achaea. Rather than going through lulls where there aren't people trained to handle patron responsibilities though, it would still seem to make sense to create a system whereby requests for organizations are meted through experienced, senior-level divine volunteers, who possess an in-depth knowledge of the game and its organizations as a whole and can handle requests for those organizations that are lacking an active patron. It would also seem to make sense that new Celani are provided with options for their potential divine roles that fill existing gaps in roleplay needs, if that isn't already the case.