Discussion: Dual Guilding to Removed

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

5) Dual guilding?

Dual guilding to be depreciated and grandfathered across the board. Seek
will change so seekers cannot seek if guilded. Existing dual guilds will not
be able to be promoted above rank 10 if they're not already above that rank.
Existing characters will be left as is.

This change seems to be coming out of nowhere, for me; dual guilding has always been a great thing for my characters (it does not, of course, apply any more as I've taken over Order GL responsibilities) but I know that I, and many others, have really enjoyed finding RP by serving a second guild in a "support" position. What is the point of this change, what problem — that I'm unaware of — is it trying to fix?

[Zeita]

I've always found dual-guilding to create some pretty iffy situations from an IC POV and that it doesn't particularly jive with the theme very well. You can still work with other guilds as a support member without joining them through the use of passes and properly setting up your guildhalls.

That said, not sure of any particular spur behind this recent change.

[Rothgar]

I've heard the "It creates strange IC situations" meme being tossed around, can anyone explain to me what IC strangeness would be created by Dual guilding? Seeing as how Reeve/Thief and Manus/Order already aren't allowed, I'd be very interested to know what pairings were deemed so grossly unthemely as to completely remove the dual guilding system.

Otherwise I think this is just going to make it even worse for new players, and make an even larger divide between old and new, seeing as how old characters are grandfathered in. Which also begs the question of : if there was such an egregious breech of theme in a dual-guild pairing, why are they being allowed to keep that pairing while only new players are forced to choose only one guild? Why not take it away for everyone, force the survivors to choose what guild they want to serve? This decision just makes absolutely zero sense to me.

[Voxumo]

I've heard the "It creates strange IC situations" meme being tossed around, can anyone explain to me what IC strangeness would be created by Dual guilding? Seeing as how Reeve/Thief and Manus/Order already aren't allowed, I'd be very interested to know what pairings were deemed so grossly unthemely as to completely remove the dual guilding system.

Reeve/Thief and Manus/Order were allowed, as long as it was on the same alt. Across alts it wasn't allowed.

[LonelyNeptune]

I'm surprised too. It's odd to see a significant change like this go through without being brought up in the OOC meeting that was held earlier the very same day.

I think that removing dual-guilding in normal situations is fine. Guilds are a big commitment and it's difficult to give both the time and attention they deserve. It's disappointing to see dual-guilding characters stick around long enough to develop their guildskills and then go off to serve in the other guild.

However, this is pretty crippling for those who are members of a covert guild. If you are an active player who is not a part of a public guild, it's a blatant sign of being Brotherhood/Manus. Infiltrating other guilds as a member of a covert guild is now codedly impossible. Dual-guilding should be allowed if one of the guilds is a covert guild.

On grandfathering in, I agree with Rothgar. If new players cannot dual guild, then existing players should not be able to either. It's only fair, and grandfathering in existing players won't help with solving the issues that this change aims to solve (whatever they may be).

[Tasker]

I've voiced some of my concerns in-game on the OOC channel, but I'll slap them up here too.

I'm really concerned that this is going to diminish what is already a pretty small smattering of players in guild rosters, I do not believe we have the playerbase to further dilute what people can achieve. It is already a big struggle to try and find people to fill the needed roles, and I do not believe making it even less appealing to be in a guild will help this. I'm really not sure what this is trying to resolve, as stated by the others.

The problems that I've heard, that people are just joining guilds to get the guildskills and leave... yeah, that's been a problem. Steps have been taken IC'ly and OOC'ly to mitigate this. I know the Order has done so, and so have the physicians. The Merchants are a bit more tricky to wrangle, as it's a very disjointed guild and not very centralised in the sense the others are. This can, and is being sorted out IC'ly - and if staff want to push home the point that just bumming around in guilds to nab the skills and bounce is frowned upon, they should make that clear.

All the problems could be sorted out on grid by the players, if given a prod by staff about the way GL's should be doing things. You say that we can still do other guild stuff by way of passes, and inter-guild communication and whatnot- but that's already going on, and I've been doing some of that myself. So I don't see why dual guilding needs to be removed to further facilitate this. If the goal is to slowly wind guilds down so they become much less important to the game, then this needs to be made clear.

I do agree with neptune & rothgar in that it'll be a bit detrimental to allow old players to keep their places, if this is to have any effect at all other than just tripping up newbies and putting them at a disadvantage- much like the asset system and removal of purchase silver. (Which was a good idea.)

As I said in OOC, I don't want to come across as a doomsayer and I hope this works out for the better... but I'm having a hard time seeing it. I would like there to be a review of how this is progressing at a later date, to see if it has actually made any effect for better or worse.

[wimple]

I suppose this should be taken with a grain of salt because I don't particularly like guilds or normally associate my characters with them, but I don't think this is the death knell of every covert character. Census had something like 50+ people being in guilds and some 90+ being in game. That's hardly every player in a guild or every non-guild character a covert. There are also roster jobs and other things that players can pick up, which is going to spur more public RP. Infiltration can still happen through RP, you just can't guild and suddenly get all of that guild's plot secrets on easy access, which also means more RP to get the info that coverts want.

I agree that it seems odd to grandfather people in - likely done to make what was going to be an unpopular decision a little less unpopular, but should probably be done to even things out.

[Starstarfish]

There are also roster jobs and other things that players can pick up, which is going to spur more public RP.

You currently cannot take a roster job if you are a member of any Guild. I'd argue allowing people to start doing so with GL permission would take care of a bit part of that. And would give new players a good way to build up report/RP. It would also allow Novice/Apprentice/Journeyman Merchants who take roster jobs appropriate to their skill area to have for RP purposes a set (v)NPC Master for RP purposes, etc. I think this would flesh things out a bit more, myself.

I agree that it seems odd to grandfather people in - likely done to make what was going to be an unpopular decision a little less unpopular, but should probably be done to even things out.

I'd second that, if the argument is that people don't have time to do all these things as the RP reason for the change - How do people grandfathered in arguably have that time? Things that older players/characters can/did have that new players/characters can't creates this gulf where it feels like you can't measure up. That you can't do or accomplish the same things that others did. It makes the sandbox feel a little bit smaller and if it is such a fundamental problem - why is it okay for some people to do so but not others?

My concerns with this is that:

1 - It encourages people to make alts rather than develop one character further. In my experience watching some players with multiple alts this doesn't tend to increase overall playtime, but decreases depth of development and availability with each additional alt.

2 - Financially rewarded Guilds even more for active members will not necessarily encourage GLs and players to join the Guild that best supports their character/concept. I think it has the risk it will encourage people to seek out whoever offers the best "goodies" and as who has the most "goodies" is based on Metrics and Membership it becomes sort of a self-feeding cycle.

3 -I am worried that rather than flesh out membership in key Guilds like the Order/Reeves with folks who might also join say ... the Merchants to pursue a hobby of some kind, or a Priest who also joins the Bards to learn to be better at Singing for Mass et al. A lot roles that are really vital to the game have a lot of "down time" where without a secondary interest/hobby things can get boring and that just encourages people away from the roles.

4 - This will encourage a lot of repeat concepts in crafts as folks who have another interest will need to stick to only non-Guilded crafts. I don't know given current player numbers how many brewers/cooks/herbalist/Artists we can support when other trades are under-represented and more needed. And that seems to be a big portion of recent apps/characters (at least from what I can tell.) I fear it will require players at a meta level to start deciding what to push other people towards based on game needs because people can no longer do multiple things to try and plug gaps as easily.

[Klapman]

Here's my input:

1. This is a stupid decision

2. What are you doing

3. Stop

Stop removing things every time two people come to you with a problem. Adapt it, change it, but if you continue to remove things there's going to be even less of a point to playing than there already is. Doing it unilaterally because you knew it would be widely disliked is even stupider. How many people do you think play this game? How many people can you afford to alienate before it dies? I still post on these forums, but that's because I first played TI when I was 14 and it's interesting to see what's going on, but decisions like this have pushed me further and further away.

Stop doing things just for the sake of having people know you're doing things. Work on the things you said you'd work on instead of making these inane decisions all the goddamn time. This is pointless and damaging for no decent reason, and you should have more common sense than this.

[Kinaed]

Re: Klapman - I've said this elsewhere, and I'll say it again here - people who have no active characters and come onto our forums to comment are not welcome, particularly if it appears to be an attempt to troll a situation. You haven't logged a character into game for over a month, and you weren't active then either.

1. That's a stupid decision
2. What are you doing
3. Stop

When you become active, we will deem you a player once more, and you'll be welcome to raise your input.

(EDIT: the responses to this were split to here to keep this thread on topic.)

Now that is out of the way, to address our actual players' concerns:

- We did not discuss this decision with players because we knew the overall player reaction would be negative. Therefore, there was no need to poll for a view of pbase feelings. We felt those negative feelings would only be exasperated when we asked players how they felt, then went against their wishes anyway. Staff were absolutely unanimous on this decision, which says something about how needed we think it is. Staff have to make hard decisions now and again.

- To be clear, there are multiple reasons for this change, which were listed on the OOC channel. It is not just about people joining guilds OOCly to farm skills, though that is *part* of the cultural problem. The other reasons are that the underlying guild code consistently has problems - in fact, I think a recent change to the code that was supposed to block GLs from dual guilding not working properly and being very hard to fix without affecting other things is probably how this topic ended up on Staff Talking Points in the first place.

- The cultural problems relating to dual guilding aren't all about people joining guilds to farm skills, though that is one of the more blatant issues. The other problems are around a lack of focus in character concepts that often make characters feel less meaningful to the world around them, both for the player and for others interacting with the character. Dual guild characters also seem to imply to everyone that the default setting for having a guild role is 'whatever the player wants regardless of how reasonable it is'. Three, people react better and have more appreciation for things that are scarce.

- However, the culture around dual guilding isn't the only issue, there are also serious thematic problems with people having multiple professions. It's extremely unrealistic. I don't know a single practicing doctor/policeman real life. Or a shop owner/priest. Or an actor moonlighting with another full time profession. Heck, most people with full time,
professional jobs do not have other full time, professional jobs. In fact, I don't know *anyone* IRL that fits this description, at best you get hobbists - who are reasonable at rank 36 and 'adept'. And in the extremely unusual cases where one of you does know a person who fits the dual profession description - it'll be less than 5% of the irl population, so it is definitely not usual enough to warrant being "normal" on TI.

- As for the thought that GLs can and are handling this ICly - perhaps there are patches where this is being dealt with, but this change requires a cultural shift that cannot be upheld by one or two GLs standing up for what they believe in on their patches of turf - it's not even fair for staff to ask them to enforce it. The responsibility for decisions like this belongs in Staff space, and it's our responsibility to handle it, even when it's unpopular.

- With regards to GLs fighting over characters - please do. It is far better for the game for seekers to be engaged by multiple people vying for their attention as they're frequently new characters. It helps them build relationships and hurts no one.

- With regards to covert concepts being 'tanked' - firstly, I think that's a wild exaggeration. At worst, they have one less option from a myriad of existing options. We've heard testimony from some players in this thread alone that they're non-covert players and they are adverse to guilding. Further, I think the statistics raised from the census data above stand on their own.

- As for why we grandfathered - that's because we're not heartless. No one in a dual guilding position was doing anything wrong, they were just playing the game as it was presented to them. We recognize it took time and energy to get into multiple guilds. Nor are we keen to change people's existing characters and situation with the wave of a magic wand; that's painful for everyone. Sometimes it cannot be avoided, here it can be. So we did.

Hopefully I've touched on all of the points people raised; if I missed any, my apologies.