[Poll] Order Members with Mage Alts

[Kinaed]

Some time ago, we removed the ability for members of the Order to have mage alts and vice versa by request of the player base. It was done by demand of the pbase on the whole. The Order has always been a hard guild to fill, but it seems as if this may have actually made it even harder to keep the Order healthy in terms of numbers. Meanwhile, we have had no obvious policy breaches on the subject (though we have had investigations, they've never turned up anything substantial in the space), and the main reasoning is a suspicion or discomfort that Order members with mages will cheat to favour one alt or another.

During OOC Chat, we were requested by a player to remove this block. As it was implemented due to player opinion, we felt it was pertinent to ask about the current views of the playerbase. Please vote and/or comment below!

[BlackSoul566]

As stated in OOC chat, I'm in favor of policy restrictions here instead of code restrictions.

[Tasker]

In my view it's better to trust and hope people do the right thing than just assume they're going to cheat and be heavy handed and pro-active. I can see it being a legitimate issue if there was a serious policy case ever raised about the subject which bore fruit, but there never was. So this has done much more harm than good, and only reinforced the lack of trust swirling about the community which is never a good look. I can understand peoples reservations because the potential to cheat and metagame is high, but this should be fairly obvious to figure out if cnotes are not done correctly and accurately.

[Geras]

I voted yes but I see both sides of this. I think whatever the decision made here it should be revisited periodically.

[Evrald]

I also voted yes. I can see how it could be construed one way or the other but looking at the past, after investigations, none of cases have proven there was cheating involved for it, it just means that the orderites have to separate themselves from the cases that involve their own alts. It's not an overly difficult thing to do, and allowing alts in the order would allow the order to have a bit more of a population again.

[Satoshi]

While initially in favor of this policy, I have come to realize that a lot of the requests for it were based more on a general mistrust of players for other players. I've also come to realize that codedly blocking someone from having a mage and an Orderite doesn't really achieve the goal anyways--it is laughably easy to entangle yourself, if you so wished, with mages and their stories without necessarily having a mage, and nothing is stopping such a character from also having an Order alt. I think the players deserve a little more trust in general, and that any issues that might crop up with crossover are usually on a per-incident basis, rather than something specific to every player ever.

Especially given the new mages guild--players are going to want to explore mages more, and taking away their ability to also be an Orderite forces them to choose between a mage and not--especially given that normal priests are not really directly in contention with mages, only Knights and Inquisitors, I feel it might be worth relaxing this policy for the time being, unless it truly causes an issue.

[mystry]

My personal opinion is to always remove even the option of temptation of abuse. I know I have an unpopular view in that I simply don't trust players to be able to resist metagaming and crossing ic/ooc bounds, but... I just don't. I'm more comfortable removing even the option of them doing that, and keeping those with mage alts out of the Order and visa versa.

Now, that being said, I could perhaps get on board with allowing people with mage alts to make a PRIEST/PRIESTESS character, since as Satoshi said, they really aren't in direct conflict with mages (or at least aren't supposed to be, though they are sometimes targeted by mages). I have no idea how you'd do that in code though, since priest is basically just a rank in the Order GL.

[LANS]

I voted No. I have seen many, many bad examples of this when it was allowed. Playing an active mage and an active orderite is borderline impossible without it coming into conflict.
If the ban is lifted anyways, please apply a ban on Order-Sanctum alts, just like Reeves-BCG.
An alternative is to lift the ban for the non-militant Order (priests).

[Geras]

I like both of Lans' alternatives.

[Dreams]

If the ban is lifted anyways, please apply a ban on Order-Sanctum alts, just like Reeves-BCG.

An alternative is to lift the ban for the non-militant Order (priests).

These would be necessary, I think. And only fair.