[Poll] Alternative to seeking?

[mystry]

I was personally inducted at a higher than starting rank on two different characters, and I have personally inducted people as a GL at a higher than normal rank twice as well. In none of those instances was I an OOC friend of the GL, or was the the inductee an OOC friend of mine. In fact, to this day, I still don't know which player was behind either those I inducted or the ones who inducted me.

Not trusting someone immediately who comes to you is a completely organic thing, based on hundreds of little things like word choice, how someone phrases things, whether or not their backstory matches with your own or if there are similiarities... and just letting someone buy their way into entry level bypasses the entire thing. It removes the GL's chance to be trusting or not. And at the end of the day, it doesn't even matter because once you by your way into entry rank, you still need to work up the ranks, which requires the GLs to trust you to promote you.

Fearing political fallout from taking a brand new immigrant and putting them in a higher than normal position is also realistic. I've been criticized before for promoting someone who had yet to 'prove themselves' to people who weren't even in the guild at the time. This did not bother me, as it gave my character the chance to explain to that person WHY he felt that person deserved that promotion.

Lastly, while there is some merit to the reasoning that the CEO of a company doesn't approve line workers - and is one of the reasons why I think the purchase role thing can work in TI's sister game - the Guilds in TI aren't corporations. There are typically 3 or 4 ranks, maybe 5 at most, and each guild has a 2nd guild leader whose express job is to oversee Lithmore (city and duchy), leaving the rest of the duchies for the 1st GL to handle. There are some exceptions to this, of course, like the Order or Brotherhood, but in general, that's how it's set up, lorewise. It makes sense to me that the 2nd GL would be heavily invested in vetting new applicants and handling promotions personally, rather than having a medieval 'HR' team to do it for them via the purchase system.

[Deedee]

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.

Not sure if the one rank skip applies to just the guild from your experience, but in the Physicians at least, we do induct people at higher ranks depending on their character background, and knowledge of the four humors, treatments, and such. Such is tested during the seeking process. The majority currently in the guild started out skipping a rank or two.

[galaxgal]

I'm not sure how Guilds are supposed to always have background vnpcs (a fact that past GL's have tried to use to immunize themselves from criticism due to understaffing) yet also the 2GL is personally vetting every single promotion and promotion ceremony in that guild (by anything other than proverbial rubber-stamp, at least.) Almost all "trade" Guilds are implied to be using master/apprenticeship programs, as well.

Again, the first rank in a Guild is almost nothing. It's access to helpfiles, a Guildhall, and it uncaps your Guildskills for independent pooling, which is generally pretty slow anyway.
TI doesn't even let new rank and file characters access the Guild store, instead totally restricting access to the GL. A player can quickly and easily be booted for making a butt of themselves. What's lost?

[mystry]

What's lost?

The entire seeking process where the seeker or GLs find each other, have a meeting, get to know each other, the seeker finds a sponsor (unless the guild membership is low enough to require 0), and have a formal induction.

In other words... hours of introductory and character establishing RP.

[Dreams]

What's lost?

The entire seeking process where the seeker or GLs find each other, have a meeting, get to know each other, the seeker finds a sponsor (unless the guild membership is low enough to require 0), and have a formal induction.

In other words... hours of introductory and character establishing RP.

I disagree.

They come in as recruits/retired. And everyone in the entire guild (at least in AE) is pboarded about the recruit joining, encouraging them to seek them out for RP.

Why is getting to know them before raising them to an active rank, and getting other people to vouch for them lost? You can make it a requirement in your guild to still do these things - they just can find people easier, because they can get into the guildhall.

[mystry]

Making those a requirement to get to an active rank is basically invalidating the whole point of removing the seeking system. If the seeking system is removed.. and then we say 'okay well all the things we usually did during seeking is now required to get to an active rank', then what was the point of removing seeking at all? If that makes sense. I'm probably not explaining it very clearly.

That being said, there's a nuance to scenes with seekers. A difference between a scene where someone wants to join your Guild, and you're talking to them about it, and someone who joined because a vNPC rubberstamped them, and you're talking to them about it. I guess at the end of the day, I'm in favor of GLs having complete involvement in their guild's membership, including joining. And if there's an issue with GLs being too inactive to meet with seekers and handle them, then I see that as an issue with the GL, not the seeking system itself.

[galaxgal]

Making those a requirement to get to an active rank is basically invalidating the whole point of removing the seeking system. If the seeking system is removed.. and then we say 'okay well all the things we usually did during seeking is now required to get to an active rank', then what was the point of removing seeking at all? If that makes sense. I'm probably not explaining it very clearly.

The point is to give cyans something to do - practice their guildskills in a safe environment, RP in guild-themed areas, read Guild helpfiles - while they wait possibly hours for their time to line up with the GL's time. It's a vast improvement to the NPE, especially for mundane characters, who are otherwise left idling or doing tavern RP for hours on end.

It also means GL's aren't on the hook to bend their schedules over backward to meet every individual seeker before they bounce off the game in sometimes less than a day, which is a net improvement to the Guild-leading experience.

[Philly]

I have to ask if we're focusing on the right issue here. I do think there are serious issues with rank stagnation in TI and I understand players are looking for new QP/RPXP sinks, but I would personally rather see a system that automates guild promotions than a way to pay for ranks.

It seems to me that the issue is GLs not actively promoting their guild members. There are several (relatively active!) guilds right now where individuals have been stuck at a rank for 3-6 OOC months. This is an issue many players, both new and old, have griped about in the past: needing to pester their GL endlessly for a review, feeling like rank stagnation was stifling their RP, getting a sense they were 'stuck' in a role not because of their IC abilities but because of OOC scheduling issues or being in a different time zone than their GL.

I've seen this on both sides. As a GL, it's easy to lose track of how long an individual has held a certain rank. As well, there's a desire to personally review each person before giving their rank a boost, as it feels that any character you promote who behaves badly will reflect poorly on you as a GL. It's also horribly time consuming, especially when you have exam questions to write, works to read, or projects to assign in order to conduct an IC review. On the other hand, as a player, I've liquidated characters before because I felt there was absolutely 0 professional growth to be had. It's frustrating to meet IC standards for promotion (completing projects, reaching skill thresholds, gaining IC support and dedicating time) only to sit on that for OOC months until the guildleader "gets around to you." For players in quieter time zones this issue is exacerbated further.

Why not build a system where guild members are automatically promoted after a certain length of time unless GLs 'opt out' and provide an IC reason why they've chosen to keep a character at that rank? If GLs want to keep players at low ranks for thematic IC reasons, they would still maintain autonomy to do so, but OOC issues like GL activity/apathy would no longer hinder individual players and their growth quite so much. It would allow members to grow in guilds without active leadership, too. A similar system could be developed for seekers: if a seeker has the appropriate level of sponsors and the GL hasn't gotten around to meeting them within a certain time frame, they could be automatically guilded. The GL can always deguild them later if they deem it a poor fit.

TL;DR: Would rather see promotions/guilding become something GLs need to 'opt out' of for their members than a purchasing system. In my eyes, it would fix the same problem with less of a pay-to-play vibe.

[Kuzco]

As long lived Poet Laudate I have had all sorts of people try to apply. From obvious mages (remember purple-haired girl?) to people who hadn't the faintest idea about lore. I admit I preferred seeking back then, though it wasn't absolutely necessary.
I do believe however that for roles like inquisitors, seeking and low ranks ought to be more necessary.
I say that maybe guild apps should be open more often, then closed when, say, there's at least 2 active PCs of every rung of the ladder.

[Kuzco]

Why not build a system where guild members are automatically promoted after a certain length of time unless GLs 'opt out' and provide an IC reason why they've chosen to keep a character at that rank? If GLs want to keep players at low ranks for thematic IC reasons, they would still maintain autonomy to do so, but OOC issues like GL activity/apathy would no longer hinder individual players and their growth quite so much. It would allow members to grow in guilds without active leadership, too. A similar system could be developed for seekers: if a seeker has the appropriate level of sponsors and the GL hasn't gotten around to meeting them within a certain time frame, they could be automatically guilded. The GL can always deguild them later if they deem it a poor fit.

See this is a good idea.