State of the Donut - 2019

[Arman]

Knowing wizards seem to be leaning toward ending the AOD as an occupational choice casts a long, cold shadow over my Friday. The numbers would increase if the guild were updated. There are many good suggestions, dating back years, among monks and former monks, on the guild board. I get that we need a wizard to care enough to do it (Ckrik, where are you!? Shanoga?), but unarmed combat and a philosophical approach to violence and rich, dragon-sparkling lore - all of this adds a unique choice for players. Without monks as an OCC guild, unarmed combat as a serious discipline (i.e., not merely as a pursuit on the side that helps spellcasters) would disappear from the realms. An entire class of fighting, gone. (Please don't come back with something about mercenaries ... for very good reason, literally no one does that). If no one is interested in taking advantage of the opportunity that recoded monks represent, at least let them continue quietly as they are. Who are they bothering by being few in number? If they are happy enough to stay ... It sounds to me like monks are likely to go, though, and that is so damn sad. What a bummer. Happy weekend I guess.

We are spitballing ideas at the moment Sylphan. Guild consolidation is one of a raft of possible focus areas for us moving forward, and it may not see the light of day. So don't let the discussion ruin your weekend!

[Cherek]

Sylphan: I completely understand that even mentioning the idea of closing a guild is likely to cause a lot of worry and anger amongst members. This is understandable, but I had hoped I made it very clear that this was just me thinking out loud, and absolutely not something thought-through or anywhere near to truly happening. LIke Arman said, Goldbezies post sparked a conversation between myself and Arman. That's all.

It sounds like you think it's a done deal and the monks will close tomorrow. We are not "leaning" towards anything, I am not sure what made you think that. I simply mentioned a couple of guilds as _potential_ candidates for a layman transformation. We wizards discuss all sorts of things all the time, and I figured I'd try to take this discussion in public as well, to involve you players and be a bit more transparent about possible ideas to reach the goals I mentioned in my post. See this is an open discussion on how to make guilds feel less lonely, not as a list of guilds that must and will be close. That's not the case at all.

Like I mentioned, closing, merging, or transforming guilds to layman are some things we could do to try to combat the loneliness and inactivity in many guilds. That alone won't be enough of course, and may not even happen at all, and I am very open to listening to your ideas on how to improve activity and sense of community within guilds.

[Cherek]

It would be great to see more active players awake in each guild. Though I am not confident merging or closing unpopular guilds is going to provide a significant boost in that regard. I think some would be dissatisfied to find their occupation of choice removed and leave the game - likely I among them. I enjoy the diversity of occupation. If there are mechanics issues that prevent low membership guilds from functioning properly (is this the main reason?) I would recommend revising those mechanics to make those guilds less reliant on active councils. I dont think everyone wants to be a mercenary, more choices caters to more people. I enjoy taking a path uncommonly traveled.

When you say you "enjoy taking a path uncommonly traveled" I completely understand that. However, with so many guilds it is quite easy to take that path these days. And if the majority of players take that path, I think we risk being left with a solo game where players care mainly about themselves. To me, the word "guild" generally refers to community of likeminded, a group of people with similar beliefs who fight for a common goal. You mention revising mechanics and make guilds less reliant on active councils. How, specifically, would this work? I am all ears if you have an idea of how to improve the situation with inactive councils and guilds where players struggle to join or progress due to inactivity. The only way I can think of right now is to automate things more, but I worry that decreasing the need for human interaction in guilds would be another blow to roleplay in Genesis, and also another step towards a solo game?

More choices may cater to more people, true. But the more options we have the less people will choose the same option as you, and that can be a problem as well. If Genesis should be more of a solo expeience where everyone plays there own game, with fairly little interaction, roleplay or conflicts with other people, then yes, more options are always good. But if we want interaction, conflicts and roleplay in Genesis, I think too many options can be negative.

In my opinion:

- To create more interaction between players, more people must be in each guild, to socialize, team up, help applicats, etc.

- To create more roleplay, we need to promote more human interaction, and have humans teach other humans about the roleplay in their particular guild. Automated and/or empty guilds are not helpful for roleplay I think. Some people might thrive making up their own roleplay, but I think most players need a little help. The community within an active guild with roleplaying leaders and members is very helpful to promote roleplay I think.

- To create more conflicts we need to make players pick a faction and give them a reason to fight other factions. As it is now, the majority of players aren't aligned to any cause or faction, and generally just do what they want. And even the various evil and good guilds have little reason or interest in fighting their enemies. Also, the lack of players in each guild makes any sort of guild conflicts unlikely as well. The likelihood of even finding a potential enemy online is slim these days. And yes, there are other issues with PVP, I know that, but let's discuss one thing at a time

If you agree with me that Genesis SHOULD be a game where interaction between players, roleplay, and conflict, are major parts of the game, then some relatively big changes are needed. That is unavoidable. Now, you may feel that things are perfectly fine as they are, and there is no need for more interaction, roleplay or conflicts. That's totally fine! Feel free to argue your case about why we should not do any major changes, and instead continue on the path we're currently on. I completley understand and respect that not everyone is likely to feel the same as me regarding this.

[gold bezie]

Great, my post made arman and cherek think about maybe closing my guild
Ill be surely beaten with some shields by my brothers and sister later.

Truth is ofcourse, what makes a guild populair and what not... Make a new guild 'fireknives' and people will explore it.
But even though i like the theme, i bet it will be empty and soulless in a few years.
Or have a powerful guild with a council who will help an active player to grow fast in ranks and in growth, that will help ofcourse as well...
Or with a guild like the rangers, who are neglected for years, simply because the recode in ME is difficult and people cant agree on on what it should look like, but still has a populair and not too hard roleplaystyle with a great theme and it will get some younger players attention as well, as some stubborn mythical players too .

Monks should not be made layman, they should loose the layman branch, they should loose the shields and get a nice combat style so they will attrack players. And yes we are not with that many (3 active players at the moment and some who pop in now and then) but we do alright and stable. We do much better than other guilds looking by the numbers of cherek. Even though people need to follow a decent trainingperiod when they join and even if they have to fight with two shields, instead of weapons. We would i think do amazing if we really would get that recode.
SU, ive never joined that guild, but man it would be a huge lost to the realms.

So if you want my opinion again /grin, i would suggest think of all options and use them all. Create the alliances (again this will not help the DO), transform the soulless and less populair guilds into laymans (start with one who doesnt hurt that much: gladiators), and transform the bda and rda as well as roi and ron into guilds with one council/general.

[Drazson]

I strongly believe we need more reasons to group up in general, with this conversation focusing on the fact that grouping should be especially prevalent within our Occupational guilds. I have thought about guilds having more influence in general, particularly being a threat in their area with NPCs.

This might sound irrelevant, yet imagine mobs that see you as an enemy "gain courage" or "are bored" from the challenge you pose and essentially buff/nerf themselves towards (not entirely) your mortal level dropping on you in numbers, blocking exits et.c... that would require some grouping to fight off.

Would this mean people avoid these areas? Possibly. They need more help to go there now, that's true. Isn't that absolutely normal, however? In any case, the aim is not to close off areas per alignment and/or per guild. These places could wield more experience and better items, which makes sense since they are supported by an organization (the guild that influences the place). With a bit buffed team experience as well, we'd have enough incentives to go there instead of "free" places, wouldn't we?

MMs should guard Ithilien with mobs like the one that comes for you if you knock the gates of MM.
Bree should have Rangers around that flock towards the minotaur farming hobbits.
Vingaard Keep should have a supermyth Gunthar and his Orders coming for you if you mess with his people anywhere in the area.
SU should suddenly ambush you with a small excellent (!) unit if you try to farm in the dark. Utterly devastating..

Add to that a warning that guild members get (reports from survivors for example) when an intrusion happens, in the form that makes sense for each guild (mail, a messaging spell, a guild messenger).


I might be suggesting a lot, yet I knowingly bash my head against reality-check walls all the time, so why refrain here...

[sylphan]

It sounds like you think it's a done deal and the monks will close tomorrow. We are not "leaning" towards anything, I am not sure what made you think that.

• I am glad you're discussing some of these things publicly. I appreciate the opportunity to air my views, which it seems I've done clearly. This is satisfying.

• I do not think it's going to happen tomorrow.

• I am under the impression that, if any change is made with respect to the monks, it will be in the direction I've been arguing against. I think so because this is the only context in which you've mentioned monks.

• As Goldbezie said, the way to increase numbers in a given guild is to make it cooler. Players have been suggesting ways of doing this for years now. I truly believe the AOD could be a popular guild if some of these suggestions were acted upon.

• Another way of increasing numbers is to put some more thinking into the website and promotion - I know this is already happening, which is great.

• Consolidating guilds will in some cases mean forcing longtime monks, e.g., to "interact" more with people in a guild they aren't actually passionate about, which I find unlikely.

• I know this isn't only about monks, and probably people already tire of hearing me out on this, so I'll try to make this my last statement on this particular question, for a while at least.

Thank you for the opportunity to weigh in on these issues, and for listening.

[gorboth]

One thing that isn't being discussed here is the fact that, quite often, the most represented occ guild in the game is actually "not in an occ guild." If we want to increase membership in occ guilds, we might consider doing something about that.

It would be possible to, upon leaving the Tutorial, have players meet with a recruiting officer to "auto-choose" an occ guild to be a member of, when starting the game. Perhaps you have three choices - "Knights (good)", "Monks (neutral)", "Dragonarmy (evil)". We then create a quest, and a purse. If the player stays in the guild, and achieves a particular amount of guild-exp (or title, or whatnot) they can return to the recruiting officer and claim their (very large) quest reward.

This would mean that players, when they enter the game, instantly join an occ guild, and get started being part of the social structure of the game, feeling part of a family, whatnot. It would also mean that the three guilds we choose (whatever they actually were) would need to have some way to allow players to join without being approved for entry. Perhaps, like the Calians, there could be some "proving" rank that players start at, and can earn their way out of it in some manner.)

Once they've completed the quest, they could leave the guild and try a different guild, or stick it out and enjoy the guild they've developed themselves as members of. This would definitely favor the three guilds we choose, in terms of membership, but perhaps that is okay? It also jettisons the entire "Cadets/Academy" concepts we currently have in place. But perhaps that is okay, too. Those concepts are lonely, and do not promote any kind of social benefit.

The three guilds I listed are just ones I chose out of thin air. I chose them because they all have a roleplay structure, which I think is important here. The guilds used in this way would not want to be guilds without leadership. But I do think it would be important to limit it to three or so, so that we funnel enough people into *select* guilds, and intentionally create concentrated membership. The guilds which are not part of the recruitment quest would, naturally, not be favored. But, perhaps that is okay, too. People could still seek them.

My intuition is that closing guilds will lose us players, though perhaps only in the short-term.

G.

[Kvator]

- To create more conflicts we need to make players pick a faction and give them a reason to fight other factions. As it is now, the majority of players aren't aligned to any cause or faction, and generally just do what they want. And even the various evil and good guilds have little reason or interest in fighting their enemies. Also, the lack of players in each guild makes any sort of guild conflicts unlikely as well. The likelihood of even finding a potential enemy online is slim these days. And yes, there are other issues with PVP, I know that, but let's discuss one thing at a time

Good that you are aware of that, but honestly the focus should start from the very main issue with PvP:
Current game mechanics are total crap in regard to PvP. The only possibility for a player to kill another player on similar size is either:
- attacking while enemy is afk
- finding enemy in no-exit death trap (super rare)
- be a member of one of few guilds that actually have some cc and tons of dmg + spend lot of time and resources on preparations (super extra rare)

Closing /altering guilds because of that should be the very last step (the fact that assassin-themed guild was opened in game where pvp system is so weak is pretty funny* - how many 'assassinations' they perfomed since opening? 0? )

* it's almost like having a thief-oriented guild in game with no use for thief-oriented mechanics (where you can also get perma-deleted for stealing)....oh wait! lol.

[Taro]

I'm a fan of a an alliance system of some sort, though I doubt it would see much use anyways the way PvP is at the moment. One thing that was really cool for me as a newer player looking at the history of the game was seeing that Alliance of Elnoven website and seeing about the war that happened there.
I also think that a lot of the stronger roleplay guilds also have stricter requirements to join, which discourages newer players from seeking them out, despite the roleplay being one of my favorite parts of the game.
Seeing a system that introduces new player to roleplay or having a pathway for new players to be introduced to guild lore in a more involved way would be interesting to see.

[Ckrik]

Ckrik, where are you!? Shanoga?

I'm around, however, RL (i.e. work) has me working 7 days a week, limiting my presence on Genesis.