Untie Guilds from Skills

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Gub
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Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Gub » 31 Mar 2010 05:23

For me, a curious part of Genesis is this idea that skills and guilds are joined at the hip. If you want to play without weapons you must be a monk, you must be a part of its community.

Now this is a curious idea because if you've played as a monk you happen to know that teaming with other monks is a bit like watching paint dry. I love the monestary and the people within its walls, but the idea of teaming together its extremely redundant. One of the best ways to create a community is to team with people often, be around them whenever you can, etc. By creating a situation in which my skills tie me to the community, you force me to watch paint dry. I either team with my fellow monks or I create a community elsewhere. The problem is, the monestary is condusive to a community (racks, board, start room, roleplay) but my skills arent. Monks know this, this is why you don't see a whole lot of us teaming together too often. Yes there is roleplay, yes there is community without teaming, but why? Why don't we integrate, why don't allow for everything, from the powerplayer to the roleplayer to coexist?

In my opinion if you seperate skills from guilds (and there are ways of doing this without simply saying "you can be anything you want!") you create an environment in which people would be more into roleplaying, and into the powerplayer aspect as well. Some people join guilds just for the skills (OH MY GOD! THE NERVE!) and then the community within that guild which advocates roleplay is upset that the member doesnt uphold the roleplay end, while the powerplayer feels annoyed that the roleplayers don't just say "Ok hold on I'm going afk".

If you untie these communities from each other, then the power player is happy because he can kill what he wants how he wants. And the roleplayer is happy because players who actually want to roleplay are interacting with them. Everyone wins.

In Genesis we have this weird way of viewing things. The view is that only people who roleplay get rewarded and those who don't can go join the mercs or glads and enjoy the lesser skills. In all honesty its just a massive waste of time. No one wants to mentor someone who doesnt want to be a part of the roleplay of a guild, and a power player certainly doesnt want to feel like he HAS to roleplay to enjoy the game. And if the skills werent attached then everyone wins, because only roleplayers will apply to guilds. The powerplayers may form their own clubs and such, and they are content.

In my opinion nothing good comes from this. With the current guild-skill setup you have those people who roleplay into guilds only to drop the act after they enter and ignore the community which has worked hard to have them there. This is not the fault of the either party but the fault of the system. You cannot force people to be something they aren't and if there isn't a powerplayer aspect to this game it becomes very very boring for a lot of its players.

Another thing that seems very curious to me is the idea of OCC vs LAY. Thematically whats the difference? It seems to me that anyone of the laymans we currently have could easily be occupational guilds if the skillsets were changed. So basically we have this odd balance in Genesis where people are trying to figure out how to best roleplay their BDA/Monk. If all guilds were just guilds, and skillsets were changed to main and secondary, you could still have the cool combinations we see and more fluid roleplay. You could be the BDA/Monk in skills but roleplay your Pirate with a little more fluidity because you don't have to bring up some crazy half-assed back story on why you live such a double life.

In end I think you'd end up with two things. One, a power player who is just happy being himself. Two being this idea that guilds are created for roleplay or for people who enjoy each others company to share a board and a rack.

I think something cool would be how skills are then obtained (being trained by monks of Segoy but going forth to Kill Bill).

Anyway, I'm done. :)

(p.s. still think Genesis is awesome)

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Kitriana
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Re: Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Kitriana » 01 Apr 2010 16:25

I actually agree with this a lot. Specially when it comes to laymen and racial guilds. I've always felt that laymen guilds should have less ties in terms of story line.. and be more about increasing some kind of skill set. Whether it be fighting or spellcasting... and that your RP should be enhanced with clubs that would advance your backstory. I honestly find the current setup to be rather limiting.. specially for some of us who have occupational guilds with very restrictive RP. I don't have the same possiblities that others have just due to the nature of themes presented by the current offering.... its just not always possible to make it fit. Then people just call for more guilds because they want something to fit their RP. If you made it so that the laymen more skill base and less theme based... and made the racial more RP ( which honestly it is anyways in most cases)... and just opened more clubs for people. They would get the cool titles and backstory they wanted without all the balancing skill necessities.

I think there is a reason why some guilds have chosen to take up more than one slot.. not just from a skill set perspective. I recall the Mystics took all three spots. While some might think this was due to the skill set... most of the reason had to do with the fact that you weren't supposed to have any other affiliations. You were only supposed to be tied to the guild.
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Kitriana
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Re: Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Kitriana » 01 Apr 2010 22:28

Just as a note.. Shield of Morgul is a great example of this. Its a way to tie yourself to another guild through RP without there being any actual guild slot involved.
If something I wrote sounds confusing ... assume you misunderstood it.

Rhynox
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Re: Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Rhynox » 02 Apr 2010 02:11

I once suggested having a club in Krynn that allowed you to tie yourself to a certain god. This way a neidar could tie himself to Reorx and other deities (in the case of Rhynox, Reorx as primary, then Shinare--goddess of wealth and commerce-- and Sirrion--master of flames--) and obtain emotes to praise them, while a minotaur RDA could tie himself to Takhisis and Sargonnas.

I have some issues with what has been said here. There are combinations that are simply not possible. A dragonarmy soldier cannot be a monk because, from a roleplay perspective, he cannot befriend good aligned dragons. Same as knights with the evil dragons. I also think you should choose, at one point, whether to keep your occupational or layman guild. That is why the neidars don't accept angmarins although the combination could be really powerful, or why calians don't accept pirates, or rangers don't accept gnomes (but mages do accept them), etc, even if some restrictions are done by code.

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Mersereau
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Re: Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Mersereau » 02 Apr 2010 02:30

Rhynox wrote: ...or rangers don't accept gnomes...
Since when?
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Rhynox
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Re: Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Rhynox » 02 Apr 2010 02:52

Hmm... never? Not sure, not a ranger myself, but I have never seen a gnome ranger and they have told me they don't accept creatures that aren't Middle Earth native (half-elves excluded).

Gub
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Re: Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Gub » 02 Apr 2010 02:56

Rhynox wrote:I have some issues with what has been said here. There are combinations that are simply not possible. A dragonarmy soldier cannot be a monk because, from a roleplay perspective, he cannot befriend good aligned dragons. Same as knights with the evil dragons. I also think you should choose, at one point, whether to keep your occupational or layman guild. That is why the neidars don't accept angmarins although the combination could be really powerful, or why calians don't accept pirates, or rangers don't accept gnomes (but mages do accept them), etc, even if some restrictions are done by code.
Ok but lets look at the questionable side of that coin. Neidar/Worshippers and Monk/Angmar. Now let me state this simply, before I receive a bunch of flak from everyone. I have absolutely nothing against the Monks in Angmar and Neidar in Worshippers, I believe that they are the victim of a faulty system not that they are sub-par Genesis gamers or anything close to that. Monks and Neidars should not be forced to play the same 2 layman guilds over and over, so I dont blame them one bit for branching out. However, both of these cases are questionable. Angmars are strongly allied with Morgul Mages and the views of the monestary are not favorable to the undead. Worshippers are not only magical but are allied with goblins. Look I'm going to say this again, I don't blame them, this game gets very old when everyone who is a Monk is a Templar or whatever. And I don't believe those who are currently playing those combinations, should change. Why? Because there are two sides to genesis, one is powerplaying and one is roleplay and they should be viewed as equal. Both views are enjoyable parts to this game, you should not be punished or rewarded for choosing not to powerplay or not to roleplay.

Look you said it yourself Rhynox. You and Tarax were teaming, why? Because numbers are low and you have create your own fun, nevermind roleplay for awhile, lets go kill something. You chose powerplaying over roleplay. I don't blame you for this, I would do the same thing. So thats why I'm saying lets take powerplaying and roleplay and seperate them. This will end the over-balanced discussions, it will end the good-skills vs bad-skills discussion, it will make people sit back and think about what they really want in terms of both (roleplay and powerplay).

I think you should have main occupation (just a skill set) and a layman option. You can be a Neidar layman or a Monk layman, and there are some restrictions on what your combinations can be. For instance you couldnt be a Neidar with the skill set of a Mage. But at least you have choices now, your communities and guilds will be built with people who want the specific roleplay or that specific community rather then the skillset. Now we start to seperate what it means to be a layman and occupation theme wise.

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Re: Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Makfly » 02 Apr 2010 10:39

Rhynox wrote:Hmm... never? Not sure, not a ranger myself, but I have never seen a gnome ranger and they have told me they don't accept creatures that aren't Middle Earth native (half-elves excluded).
They do accept gnomes.
Way back I actually applied and no member knew if they could actually accept gnomes, since nobody ever applied apparently.
So they found out that they couldn't accept gnomes, even if the rules didn't state so. The wizard (Akeisha) took it upon her to fix it for me.
So unless they changed it again since then, the Rangers do accept gnomes.

I never actually got in ofcourse, but that's besides the point :)'

- Just looked it up. Akeisha looked into it in nov. 1999 and it was fixed in feb. 2000.
Mortimor Makfly - Gnomish Xeno-Anthropologist

Tharandil
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Re: Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Tharandil » 02 Apr 2010 16:36

Rhynox wrote:Hmm... never? Not sure, not a ranger myself, but I have never seen a gnome ranger and they have told me they don't accept creatures that aren't Middle Earth native (half-elves excluded).

half-elves exists in middle-earth(Peredhil)...elrond is the first one that comes to mind..

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Re: Untie Guilds from Skills

Post by Rhynox » 02 Apr 2010 19:25

Makfly wrote:
Rhynox wrote:Hmm... never? Not sure, not a ranger myself, but I have never seen a gnome ranger and they have told me they don't accept creatures that aren't Middle Earth native (half-elves excluded).
They do accept gnomes.
Way back I actually applied and no member knew if they could actually accept gnomes, since nobody ever applied apparently.
So they found out that they couldn't accept gnomes, even if the rules didn't state so. The wizard (Akeisha) took it upon her to fix it for me.
So unless they changed it again since then, the Rangers do accept gnomes.

I never actually got in ofcourse, but that's besides the point :)'

- Just looked it up. Akeisha looked into it in nov. 1999 and it was fixed in feb. 2000.
Will ask a recruitment officer if I find one, a couple of years ago I was chatting with someone and he told me they didn't accept krynnish races. I never asked if by code or by roleplay restriction.
tharandil wrote:
Rhynox wrote:Hmm... never? Not sure, not a ranger myself, but I have never seen a gnome ranger and they have told me they don't accept creatures that aren't Middle Earth native (half-elves excluded).

half-elves exists in middle-earth(Peredhil)...elrond is the first one that comes to mind..
Oh, yes. I meant that in Genesis the only way to be a half-elf is by being a krynnish half-elf, since you need to join the Palanthas family racial guild to become one.

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