City & House Promotion Changes

Zuko

ANNOUNCE NEWS #4510                                     (02/04/2016 at 16:30)  

From   : Tecton the Terraformer

To     : Everyone

Subject: Advancement in houses and cities

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Another of our changes in 2016 is working with our organisational leaders to help make their orgs 

more compelling and rewarding! As the first part of these changes, we've introduced a change to the 

way promotions and demotions work in houses and cities. Here are the details:

* Movement through the ranks is now handled by HOUSE|CITY PROMOTE|DEMOTE <person>. These commands 

will move the member by a whole rank.

* House and city favours will no longer covey a rank increase, but now exist as a way to recognise 

the achievements of your members. All favours will now be visible to all members with HOUSE|CITY 

FAVOURLOG <person>.

* Leaders of these organisations can now specify a credit amount to be awarded to favour recipients. 

This can be anywhere from 0 - 50 bound credits from the city's coffers. HOUSE|CITY FAVOURCREDITS to 

see and set this.

* PROMOTE/DEMOTE only works for members who are lower in rank than the person. This does not apply 

to the leader of the organisation.

* Access to these commands is given via an investible power in houses and by rank six (or city 

leader) in cities.

We'll be continuing these changes over the coming weeks and months as we continue to refine and 

improve the experience for you all!

Feel free to discuss the changes here.

Personally, this makes a lot of the House/city administrative aspects easier. But I also loved that House and City favours had a substantial value to them. It was a pretty fair way to promote.

It seems like in the new system it might be easy to be forgotten, or visa versa. But the same stands true for the old system, so I'm not really sure! I suppose we will see how it goes.

Kiet

This is pretty huge, no idea how cities especially will handle it.

Zuko

House demote matias Oathswearing

You have already used your house promotion for this month.

Oops. Well this will prove to be an issue. Especially when testing multiple novices a month.

Qwyn

Since CF is a cosmetic command now (aside from the org leader credit aspect), perhaps it could be given at CR 1 or 2 - this would let citizens recognize other citizens for work they've done, while the actual promotion part would still be a high-level priv.

Antonius

How exactly does the credit rewards work? It reads very much like the org leader sets the value, then all favours (from anybody who can favour) automatically applies that award. If that is the case, I can't see many (any?) city leaders wanting CR1 or CR2 individuals being able to award city credits to other members of the city, which would essentially mean they can't use the credit reward mechanic at all.

Qwyn

Ah, I read it completely differently and assumed only leader's favors conferred credits. I see now what it says. I wonder if this means favors will become more elusive and cities will monitor them more. It could end up a headache if there are rules for who you can favor.

Matias

Zuko said:

House demote matias Oathswearing

You have already used your house promotion for this month.

Oops. Well this will prove to be an issue. Especially when testing multiple novices a month.

Deladan

Yeah this system lol. What ever.

Medi

@Deladan what would you do different?

Kafziel

Matias said:

Zuko said:

House demote matias Oathswearing

You have already used your house promotion for this month.

Oops. Well this will prove to be an issue. Especially when testing multiple novices a month.

You dodged a bullet there, system protected you from getting demoted

Tael

This seems like a real step in the right direction.

Promotion through favours was always a weird, ugly way of doing it.

I really like that this puts into place a way for people to be rewarded for particular deeds and a way to show more wholesale progression.

I don't like that there's a limit to how many promotions a person can do a day. In small houses that's going to be a problem. At the very least, the restriction shouldn't apply to promotions applied to people under HR 5.

I'm also nervous about this being used as an excuse for every house and city to actually formalise the "requirements" for every rank instead of the more organic system used for HR>5 and CR right now. I don't think the game would be made better by losing organic progression in favour of more checklists in help files.

Ahmet

Tael said:

This seems like a real step in the right direction.

Promotion through favours was always a weird, ugly way of doing it.

I really like that this puts into place a way for people to be rewarded for particular deeds and a way to show more wholesale progression.

I don't like that there's a limit to how many promotions a person can do a day. In small houses that's going to be a problem. At the very least, the restriction shouldn't apply to promotions applied to people under HR 5.

I'm also nervous about this being used as an excuse for every house and city to actually formalise the "requirements" for every rank instead of the more organic system used for HR>5 and CR right now. I don't think the game would be made better by losing organic progression in favour of more checklists in help files.

Definitely should unlimit promotions/demotions for HL and HoN if it's not already done.

Kaden

I personally think this change will be good for Houses but feel a bit on the fence that it's also been applied to cities. It kind of feels weird because essentially cities will have to micro advancement now and will have to define a system to ensure that everyone gets a fair shot to rise in the ranks as opposed to the gradual rise you get when you contribute in cities which somehow feels more natural.

Khaibit

I would hope that promoting novices would stay as many as you need for a Novice aide in the House. I have promoted at least 5 people in one day as the most active aide in the house. If that is now no longer an option.. that's a lot of novices who are screwed

Citrus

Kaden said:

I personally think this change will be good for Houses but feel a bit on the fence that it's also been applied to cities. It kind of feels weird because essentially cities will have to micro advancement now and will have to define a system to ensure that everyone gets a fair shot to rise in the ranks as opposed to the gradual rise you get when you contribute in cities which somehow feels more natural.

Adding to this, the speed at which someone rises with have to be watched as well.  Before it was limited because you had to earn more favours for each rank up, taking several cityfavours to gain in rank.  Now though no matter how high rank you can just be promoted to the next rank, although it does have to be someone higher rank than you already are, so there's that to keep it in balance.  We'll have to see how this affects things.

Telendrieth

I'm.. unsure on the system as a whole. It's neat and gives us more power, but on the off hand, it also gives us more power.

My initial apprehension involved cronyism. It has happened in a few of the houses throughout the years as I played, and this would make it quite a bit easier. That being said, there being less houses overall will hopefully cut this down. It'd still be a good thing to look out for.

Secondly, city ranks were achieved by years of dedication and service. This new system forces each city to now micromanage ranks. I'd also be more than a little annoyed to see 20 year old Lords and Ladies walking around.

Seems like this would help houses a whole lot though! Looking forward to seeing how it is used, and how certain things end up being valued by each city.

Zuko

house demote matias Oathswearing

You have demoted Matias to house rank 1.

The serenade isn't here and it is still Daedalan so thinking they lifted the limit.

Qwyn

Maybe offer another new command for newbies, like HOUSE GRADUATE <player>. Would only apply to people below HR3 (?5?) and could be used unlimited by novice aides.

Zuko

Tael said:

I'm also nervous about this being used as an excuse for every house and city to actually formalise the "requirements" for every rank instead of the more organic system used for HR>5 and CR right now. I don't think the game would be made better by losing organic progression in favour of more checklists in help files.

My thoughts exactly. The last thing I want to see right now is another point system to gain rank. The Targossas House switch to this was risky enough.

edit: @Rohai I'm talking to you! Don't do it

Saeva

I definitely love it for the houses. I'm still curious how it's going to work in cities. Favours were great because all city leadership eyes were always searching across the gameworld for people to favour throughout all time zones. Now it's going to take a new means of communication. Not bad, just going to be interesting.

Matias

Zuko said:

house demote matias Oathswearing

You have demoted Matias to house rank 1.

The serenade isn't here and it is still Daedalan so thinking they lifted the limit.

You have been promoted to Oathsworn of The Dawnblade! The reason given was: 

promotion to his next rank..

Valkyn

I didn't realise this was going to go through for cities until it was implemented, that could be interesting. 

Tael

I really, really hope cities will resist the urge to add in this "micro advancement". Same for houses too, for ranks above 5. The one saving grace of all the checklist-style org management was that it largely abated at a certain point and the rest of the progression could be more realistic, organic, and individualised.

Cronyism is not the problem. The worst-case scenario there is a couple of people end up higher rank than they should be. Who cares. Stop worrying so much about how big your neighbour's car is and whether they really earned it.

The problem this change highlights is not the potential for cronyism, it's everyone's insatiable desire for "fairness" at any cost, even when it shouldn't actually matter very much. Imposing a system that eliminates freeform progression (affecting everyone in the org and requiring time and effort to design and administer) just so a few people can't game the system quite as easily is not a victory.

I'm also worried about a certain type of person who sees this as an opportunity for more checklists because they think of checklists as "giving people more stuff to do". A lot of orgs have historically had a problem with having so many rigid checklists that when the people hit the end of them, they have no idea how to actually enjoy the game - they don't know how to let their role dictate their actions, how to set their own goals, how to make their own stories, how to interact organically with other players. You still see this in some houses where house-related activity is basically nonexistent outside of short-term contests. If formal progression systems start to creep into city ranks and higher up into house ranks, I think that really presents some potential problems.

My hope is that most cities and/or houses will settle on a system of recommendation and review: people can put forward, say, anyone who's been favoured in the last year for review and a majority of secretaries has to approve it, or maybe a quota of city officials (like 4 total people from the council and the ministers combined).

But I'm wary of how this shakes out, even if I do think it's probably an improvement over how mechanically wonky favours were.

Qwyn

I just worry that it's going to make favors more scarce since there are credits tied to them. Favors feel good to get and are a great way to recognize and motivate people. On the flip side, the credit addition means that favors matter for people at CR 6...but couldn't leaders have given out credits before this system?

Tael

Huh, my thought was that favours would be more common. Most cities are sitting on absolutely ridiculous stockpiles of credits and gold (why isn't gold an option for favours?) and I know a lot of cities (and houses) have historically been ridiculously stingy with favours because of the way they increased permanent rank - instituting rules that say only the leader can favour or requiring extensive reviews before favours could be given, etc.

If cities and houses make it just a couple of credits, which I expect they will, I can't see why anyone would be more hesitant to give out favours now than they were before when it increased rank.

I wouldn't think twice about giving someone a couple of city credits for a job well done.

Verrucht

Credits don't need to be tied to them, however. Cyrene will probably go with a system stating that X number of favours will equal a city promotion, with X depending on your current city rank. It'll be the same system. Using the CITY FAVOURLOG will make it easy to track how many favours someone has had to earn their city promotion.

Edit: Also, Cyrene is definitely not sitting on a stockpile of credits, since when we have credit sales that outpaces the amount of credits purchased that year and we've had pretty solid credit sales since the system came out in 626, missing just a couple years here and there. Coupled with the credits we give to devotionists who wake up (300 bound) that means we're at a relatively low level overall -- if gold was an option, we might go with that, but as it stands the overall system will mean little net change to how Cyrene functions in regards to favours or cityranks.

Edit2: Also, I disagree that cronyism isn't a potential problem, since you now have an even more finite group of people determining actual advancement. Before maybe a non-ruling council person would favour here or there and favours over time could be earned more readily, whereas now those favours will have no inherent meaning. I would imagine pretty much every city will make it to where the ruling council will be the ones who determine city promotion, even if technically all CR6 people are allowed to do so. I agree that this boils down to fairness, but fairness is kind of an important thing when you're talking about arbitrary numbers and points that people put value into.

Edit3: My mistake, you're required to put at least 1 bound credit in as a reward for favours. Which is kind of garbage.

Qwyn

Tael said:

Huh, my thought was that favours would be more common. Most cities are sitting on absolutely ridiculous stockpiles of credits and gold (why isn't gold an option for favours?) 

Ah interesting. In Aetolia (probably due to smaller player base), micromanaging credits was often a headache for GMs and CLs because orgs didn't have tons and tons. Do orgs have deep credit pools here?

Marisella

I like the House changes, but I am not sure if I like it that CITY PROMOTE/DEMOTE extends to city changes as well.

In the wrong hands, it could prove dangerous and be abused to fast promote someone through the city ranks. Before the change, city ranks also determine how much someone has done in their city. With the current change, it is difficult to judge when someone's contributions to the city is worthy of a city rank promotion. Having a set of criterias to determine if someone has done enough to deserve city promotion/demotion can also be unwieldy.

Is there a way city leaders can get the ability to strip/return the promote and demote powers from someone, much like citymute/cityunmute?

Trey

Medi said:

@Deladan what would you do different?

Please no, you really don't want to know. 

Verrucht

Marisella said:

Is there a way city leaders can get the ability to strip/return the promote and demote powers from someone, much like citymute/cityunmute?

If people are unable to properly use the demote/promote as set by the rules set by the city, they can be cordially introduced to the wide and exciting world of being a rogue.

Edit: Aha, I did read it right the first time, I thought I hadn't -- you could also just demote the CR6 person to CR5 and thus remove their ability to promote or demote.

Khairt

I approve. Rogue is best