Pre-Promotion (part 2)

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gorboth
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Pre-Promotion (part 2)

Post by gorboth » 05 May 2011 22:00

(Promotion Gear Up - Post 2 of 6)

We now discuss the issue of in-game preparation, and overcoming our "choke
point" issues.

In this, we must consider the effects of a successful full-scale promotion.
If such a promotion were even moderately productive, and were to be followed
by a situation in which even as many as 10 or so characters were created
simultaneously and all began trying to run the opening bits of the game
together at the same time, how would that work? Could the tutorial handle it?
No, not really. Could Sparkle handle it? Hopefully, but we need to find out.
Can the existing playerbase and the guilds handle it? We need to make sure
they are ready to! From these questions, we can develop the following short
list of things that must be implemented in-game prior to promotion.

I. IN-GAME PREPARATION:

A. Instancing for the Tutorial (in-process, nearly completed)
B. Robust set of newbie tours added to Sparkle (halfway completed)
C. Have all players ready to welcome new faces:
1. Friendly and helpful newbie line mentoring (yes - great job!)
2. All guilds that require council approval for new membership
staffed with active and responsible council members.
(not even close - a huge choke point)

A brief discussion of each ...

Instancing the tutorial is something Cotillion has developed code for and
Lavellan is currently testing. It is nearly complete and will make it
possible for many dozens of players to run through the tutorial all at
once without depleting the area of the needed npcs to complete the quests.

The Sparkle Tours I have been working on for the past few weeks. I do not
think it will take too much longer to have all of the things a new player
needs to know represented by these small quests.

Guilds councils represent a dilemma, as this is a concept that is inherently
broken due to the fact that most guilds were created at a time when it was
taken for granted that there would be enough players to staff guild
councils. With our current playerbase, the system breaks badly and we see
interested players locked out of guilds due to inactive councils, or guilds
that essentially are comprised of nothing BUT their councils, making the
councils themselves a rather meaningless concept.

The answer to the guild question is not an easy one to face. To delay
promotion until each guild's council code could be revised is not a pleasant
option, because it would almost certainly mean at LEAST another year of work.
My April Fool's notion was an extreme version of what might, indeed, be a
necessary short-term solution. That being, we simply close down certain guilds
that cannot be adequately staffed by their players and whose code locks the
situation down. This is a very painful option, and one that would cause
a great deal of hardship. It also is a concept that we need to put out
there for the community to digest so that they can, themselves, begin to
make some changes based on this potential. If certain councils can hear this
as a call to action, and resurface to once again make their guild a viable
option, that would obviously make the difference. What I am unwilling to
perpetuate, however, is any guild that is held hostage by a council that
does nothing but exist to hold their own positions. Such a guild *should*
close until we have enough players to make it come to life again. And to
close down such guilds will lessen frustration and allow players caught in
the swamp of that guild's problems to re-assess and relocate to a more
functional situation. The idea, here, would be that when the playerbase does
rise, any guild closed in this way could be re-activated on a case-by-case
basis.

So we can see that in terms of wizard work the in-game needs prior to
promotion are nearly complete. This is GREAT news! The above guild issues,
while requiring discussion and some soul-searching, do not constitute a
major hold-up either, should we elect to deal with the problem decisively.

We turn, then, in our next post, to those things which are external to
the game which must be accomplished prior to promotion.

G.
Mmmmmm ... pie ...

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gorboth
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Posts: 2352
Joined: 03 Mar 2010 20:51
Location: Some old coffin

Re: Pre-Promotion (part 2)

Post by gorboth » 06 May 2011 23:19

This post cannot be effectively deleted from this part of the forum, but I am locking the topic here and have merged it with the Pre-Promotion section of Keeper's Korner. Please reference that area for consolidated discussion on these topics.

G.
Mmmmmm ... pie ...

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