[Poll] Alternative to seeking?

[Kinaed]

Greetings,

It was floated to TI staff that we may want to take the AE route to allow players to bypass seeking by purchasing into the lowest ranks of guilds with RPxp (or potentially QP).

A quick chat with players on OOC confirmed that it'd be a bad idea to do this for covert guilds, but how would people feel about allowing new players to app directly into the lowest guild rank?

Thoughts, comments, desired limitations, etc - all welcome below.

[Geras]

Yes but not coverts please.

[Taunya]

I feel this is something that could take the place of applications, but the GLs should decide whether to open such up or not.
It might also make sense to only be doable while cyan.

I'll vote maybe.

[mystry]

I disapproved of this change on TI's sister game, and I don't particularly like it here. My thought is that it will cut down on GL RP of seeking out seekers and interviewing them, finding out if they're a good fit, potentially generating conflict if they aren't. I think this would only benefit guilds that have inactive, or nearly-inactive GLs, and if someone is inactive, then they shouldn't be a GL, which is why they are auto kicked after a while of inactivity. I have voted no.

[Deedee]

I agree that seeking can be a good opportunity for RP. It also gives the guild more cohesion by having guild members interview and get to know the various seekers before they're inducted, whereas once they're in they might have less reason to communicate and form bonds with other members, depending on the guild. I haven't played AE to know how it's worked out there.

[mystry]

I agree that seeking can be a good opportunity for RP. It also gives the guild more cohesion by having guild members interview and get to know the various seekers before they're inducted, whereas once they're in they might have less reason to communicate and form bonds with other members, depending on the guild. I haven't played AE to know how it's worked out there.

Right now, the way it works is that someone can pay 1000 XP to get an entry level position in a guild (they call them orgs for organizations, it's a SCIFI theme), which is the lowest rung. Kind of like 'retired' in most guilds, where they have very few privileges. From then on, they have to meet with leaders to get assigned the correct rank and introduced and so on.

[galaxgal]

My opinion is that Guild promotion culture is often unnecessarily bureaucratic to begin with.

Many seekers have obvious experience in the lore, mechanics, etc of the Guild they want to join.

Despite this, there is a very strong culture of making sure everyone "does their time" in Ranks 1 and 2, even when a Guild is suffering from not having enough R3's.

I think that if GL culture and expectations aren't going to change, this is the best middle ground.

If you're an active and time-rich GL, want to know your guild members, vet them to make sure their progression isn't gated, etc, you can do that by restricting ranks 2 and 3, which in all but one or two guilds means the new member can barely do anything without your say anyway.

[mystry]

My opinion is that Guild promotion culture is often unnecessarily bureaucratic to begin with.

Many seekers have obvious experience in the lore, mechanics, etc of the Guild they want to join.

Despite this, there is a very strong culture of making sure everyone "does their time" in Ranks 1 and 2, even when a Guild is suffering from not having enough R3's.

I think that if GL culture and expectations aren't going to change, this is the best middle ground.

If you're an active and time-rich GL, want to know your guild members, vet them to make sure their progression isn't gated, etc, you can do that by restricting ranks 2 and 3, which in all but one or two guilds means the new member can barely do anything without your say anyway.

There's a very good reason for that culture of 'doing your time'. Unless you make a character with a backstory where they were already a member in some other duchy, someone joining is new to the guild, even if they have prior experience. It makes sense that GLs would have them start off at lower ranks, just to make sure they'll be a good fit and not do anything stupid. And then again, if a person is cyan, we're supposed to treat them as though they are new players, because we can't know if they are an older player with a new character or not. It doesn't make sense to fast track them to a high rank out of nowhere without RP supporting it.

[galaxgal]

There's a very good reason for that culture of 'doing your time'.

No, there isn't. The restrictions you describe, especially around cyan players, are strictly personal decisions and interpretations unless stated otherwise by Staff or code.

Guild leaders are allowed to permit, deny, promote, and demote players as they see fit, and own the consequences of those actions, whether it's a Guild full of ICly unskilled crazies acting like authority figures or a Guild starving to death for licensed PC practitioners because the GL is micromanaging.

There is no good reason for any Guild to go understaffed except for a lack of applicants.

[Kinaed]

My experience of 'doing your time' in low ranks is that it's not about getting people into good R3+ roles at all.

Take this experience into account: At one point in time, due to some heavy concerns about the inactivity of a guild, I personally created an alt with the sole purpose of going to help that guild out. Rather than apping in, I preferred to make a PC character with a backstory and work my way naturally through the seeking process because I'm super uncomfortable when people know who my alts are. With an appropriate social class and backstory to seek a higher-than-starting-rank based on help files and their expressed need, I requested to be considered for the higher entry rank because I knew they were looking for players. Whereas I didn't tell anyone I was Kinaed, I was very polite and demonstrated working knowledge of the guild - and highly doubt I came off as anything other than a helpful, polite, experienced player. Except I dared ask to be considered for a higher role.

Upon attempting to request skipping the lower ranks, I was at first told my backstory was not good enough to merit a higher role. Given my relative familiarity with the material (I'd written most of it), I queried that. In further discussion, it came out that the GL didn't 'trust me' as a new character and felt that they'd be held negatively accountable by the pbase for letting a 'new character' enter at a higher rank if I did anything wrong. I still had to earn their trust before they'd let me play any role higher than an entry role. This implies the idea that anyone other than an OOC friend of a GL (or someone in an IC role for a substantially long time) will ever be promoted pretty unlikely - and our statistics on how often rank skips happen mathematically prove this out.

Case in point - there has been only one rank skip that I am aware of, and that one was complained about by lower ranking guild members BECAUSE the other guild members felt it was the GL's friend being OOCly favoured above them.

In my mind, if the barrier to entry on TI to guild RP (and, let's be honest - even interesting RP) is entirely about trust. As a player retention model, that's pretty shit. More than skills - which are capped with a pyramid - the hardest thing about finding anything to do is just being new and having no one trust you. And so, unable to find anything other than tavern RP - they can barely get anyone's attention to enter a guild - they leave. I personally feel like we need to give people meaningful advancement and things to do whether or not we trust them. CEOs don't get to approve line workers in real life or elsewhere. They do get to approve the board of executives. I personally think there's a middle ground here that'll be much healthier for the game, and dealing with an idiot lowbie in the guild making a bad name for someone is at least decent RP that justifies a GL's attention.