Closing Guilds (moved from Keeper's Korner)

[Strider]

The answer to the guild question is not an easy one to face. [...] 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 [...]

Based on how you presented your follow up, I did not bother writing a long post about guild closure, I simply voted for whatever "that's batshit crazy" option there was and moved on.

In short, the answer isn't to close problem guilds, it's to open them. Write up a simple list of expectations. We can argue them here or you can simply send them to the various guild councils. Once any useful feedback or guild-specific exceptions are incorporated, dictate terms to each guild. Add recruiter positions outside of other guild leadership, if appropriate and time allows. If the Arches determine a guild fails to meet the minimum standards, simply turn off their council powers and add open enrollment. Once a guild is active, reconstituting and re-empowering their guild leadership can be done on a case-by-case basis.

As for the expectations themselves, they should be geared more around giving anyone who makes a reasonable effort enough face-time with their prospective guild mates that a determination of compatibility can be made, and less on admission percentage. After all, it's not that everyone deserves to join any guild, it's that everyone deserves both a chance, and an answer.

[gorboth]

This is a critically important discussion. However, I wanted to move it out of Keeper's Korner to avoid having to moderate what is sure to be some pretty hot emotion on the topic when it wanders far afield from the positive energy that is required in that section of the Forum.

I wrote much of what I will say here in a PM to Strider already, but I suspect there are many who share his view on this. Please keep in mind that this is not a done deal decision. Rather, this is something we have to wrestle with very seriously. What Strider has proposed above, unfortunately, is simply not possible. At least, if said proposal is to "simply" turn off all guild councils and make guilds easy to join for all players.

Guilds in Genesis have not been created with a template, or in any way that is standardized or even normalized. Each guild is a distinctly unique creation (notice I didn't say "mess") of code that one, or a group of people at one time in Genesis' long history created to bring forth some theme that players can enjoy together. In that each guild has been coded COMPLETELY differently, there is no "off" switch that can be easily flipped globally for guild councils to cease to exist. Rather, each guild has a vastly different degree to which the council structure of the code is enmeshed with even the most simple functions that every guild member uses. In some cases, it would not be too terribly difficult to remove council setup. In others, it would require a massive recode of much of the guild.

But even if it were possible to achieve in short order (which it is not) I very much question the choice to remove council structures from guild play, even in half of our guilds. The guilds without councils tend to be the exception, rather than the rule. Some of the most active ones, I coded myself - the new Mercenaries and the Ogres. As much as I obviously believe in these two guilds, I do not at all think that they have contributed meaningful roleplay to the world of Genesis. Sure, as an ogre you have little choice but to be big and loud, but you can do whatever you please without thought or concern for your guild standing. The same is true for the Mercenaries. The result? These guilds both have absolutely zero internal cohesion or espirit du corps. The Gladiators are the long-standing example in the game that introduced this concept, and they are all but dead. Despite what some will claim, this is not because they are desperately weak compared to other guilds. Nope ... they are just dead boring compared to other guilds.

So ... given the fact that we cannot quickly recode the many guilds which have guild council problems, we are left with two basic directions from which to choose:

1. Do nothing. Allow promotion of the game to go forward with guild councils just as they are now. If promotion succeeds, and we have a huge number of new players, we will have advertised a game that offers a vast array of guilds that they do not have the option to join.

2. Close guilds, for the time being, that cannot provide adequate council leadership. I estimate the number of guilds that might suffer this fate to be between 4 and 6. Some are plainly obvious (occ Kender) while others much more controversial. By doing this, we would limit the number of options currently available in the game. If promotion succeeds, and we have a huge number of new players, we will have advertised a game that offers a modest number of of guild options, all of which are staffed by active and responsible guild councils, and all of which have a sense of life and visible membership. The understanding will be in place that numerous guild concepts await to be reopened for a time when adequate playerbase numbers exist to make them viable.

Is this really even a choice? Maybe you can point out flaws in my logic - I would welcome it.

G.

p.s. Did I really just publicly solicit the Vociferous Opiner of Calia to point out flaws in my logic?

[Wolverine]

Why not merge guilds instead of removing them.. RDA and BDA could merge to 1 Army.. Gladiators and Mercenaries could also be combined for a wider range of weapon choices.. And give the mortals what they've requested for years.. Weaponsmasters replacing Blademasters..

[Draugor]

Merge guilds, and take care of guilds that have serious leadership issues. As in remove the current leader and move whoever is more active in there. Ofc people that joined yesterday should be reconsidered but if someone has been in the guild for like 3 years and has a decent title... its better to have a leader that MIGHT screw up once or twice than a leader that NEVER shows his/hers face.

I know the wizards dont want to put theire hands in guilds and leadership but if someone is in a guild with leadership issues they might not always want to leave due to death penalty etc etc so they choose to stop playing instead. Not quite what we want right? Active leadership and preferably leadership that aint tired of the game to the extent that they just keep theire title logging on once every 2 weeks.

[Makfly]

Why not merge guilds instead of removing them.. RDA and BDA could merge to 1 Army.. Gladiators and Mercenaries could also be combined for a wider range of weapon choices.. And give the mortals what they've requested for years.. Weaponsmasters replacing Blademasters..

I don't think this fixes the problem, because it's not the RDA/BDA, Mercenaries/Gladiators that's really dysfunctional.
It's the Priests of Takhisis and the Knights of Solamnia, and then my guess is Gorboth think of the Secret Society and the Rangers.
My problem with Gorboths suggestion is that it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The 4 guilds mentioned do offer interesting roles to play in Genesis, and the game would be worse off not offering these roles to the playerbase. From my perspective it's not really the guid that's at fault, it's the players running them.
So I think it would be useful to think of creative ways to remove the dysfunctional parts and keep the guilds open to offer these roles, which does make the game more appealing.
Is it possible to remove the leaders of the guilds and just:

• put in NPCs as councilmembers, so people can grind up to the ranks just below council positions?
• disable the restrictions on gaining rank, if every rank has to be approved by the council?
• or can't we simply have the guilds running in their current form and have members mail the AoP when they need a promotion to reach the next rank? We're not taking about 100's of players needing this all the time, so it probably wouldn't be a huge job to do it manually, until a better solution can be made.

I'm sure other people can come up with better suggestions than me, though.

Anyways, what I'm saying is, that you should really try your best to not cutting off good content, just because these guilds are dysfunctional due to player-mismanagement and/or unnessesarily restrictive joining/advancement processes in the guild.

Guilds in Genesis is utterly important, because in this game, your guild almost exclusively determines the role you can play. Fewer guilds = fewer roles = less interesting (roleplaying)game.

[Creed]

I think this is clearly showing that the issue is not really guilds.
To me is shows more the current unbalance between good and evil.

PoT stands a little alone in this, since its not a goodie guild, but I cannot say why nothing happens there. I do not play, so I don't have any good guesses.

For the 3 other guilds that Makfly mentioned, I agree that those are probably the issue. 2 of these, Ranger and Knights, will probably be the 2 guilds most missed, if they are closed all 4.

The problem with knights and rangers is that the numbers of enemies, who for the most part of the evil population are seeking pfighters, are very overwhelming at the moment.
The evil guilds are currently overflowing with people, and even the neutral guilds are mostly stocked with people of evil alignment. And so, when a goodie does show up and want to play, they risk being scried, hunted and killed at every instance, and they have nowhere to turn to for help, since there is noone else awake.

Evil keep talking about the alliance, but seriously.. that thing has been non-existing for 10 years.
There is no goodie cross-guild alliance where people help eachother. There might be a few teams here and there that does hunt or fight evils, but a big alliance where we're all together, no.

And so it ends up with the population of goodies being smaller and smaller, we all leaving one by one, simply because its not really fun to play.
My reason is that I do not enjoy pvp in genesis. There is too much at risk, I am too tied to my character and the odds are simply too bad. I cannot tell why others leave, but some of those things might be a reason for more than me.

Genesis as a whole caters too much to evil characters, in my eyes. They can hunt both goodie and evil npc's, so they got a wider area of hunting and more areas to hunt in. That way they grow faster, and they also get groups easier due to the fact that they are more people.

That is, in my eyes, where you should start.
Make genesis more appealing to people wanting to play a goodie character.
There might be a bunch of people in the big world wanting to play a knight of solamnia, after reading about Sturm in DL, and so on. But if they do join now, they find themselves alone and seriously outnumbered by huge enemies everywhere.

And on a last note. If you do close guilds, I hope you just throw us out without killing us as the usual punishment for leaving a guild.
From what I read on these forums I should never expect to be able to play a knight and not be hunted by other players, so for me it would be alright if you close KoS. Apparently I have to find a new guild anyways.

[Makfly]

From what I read on these forums I should never expect to be able to play a knight and not be hunted by other players, so for me it would be alright if you close KoS. Apparently I have to find a new guild anyways.

Just to comment on that small part of your post...

What you refer to is just Chereks rather extreme _opinion_.
Personally I think players of all ilk should be able to enjoy the diversity of what Genesis have to offer, guilds included, without being unreasonably forced into PvP. As in, if you don't go about mocking your enemies and stay off the "fields of war", then you should be safe.

Anyways, don't take just one players opinion as the law of the game, and certainly do not stay away from the game because of it. The goodies need people more than ever, as you yourself points out.

[Draugor]

Creed... you are very, very missinformed I fear

Getting a group as evil aint that easy since WE HAVE NO TANKS, AA arent active and they cant even begin to compare with the Neidar insanity. Dragonorder members choose to team with Calians due to them having the most evil special in the game. And teams above 2 people are almost non-existant for xping. And Creed... if you dont want to pvp dont be a knight, they are thematically made to fight with the dragonarmies and ofc we will attack and if able kill you when you mess around on my plains. Not like most knights hessitate for even a second to attack a dragonarmy member any chance they get.

And the "unbalance" is that we have more members in our guilds, knights are one of the most badass guilds in the realms, perhaps THE most powerfull single player guild when it comes to both tanking and damage, yer not uber tanks but yer not shait either, yer not uber damage but you sure as hell aint shait with yer 4-5 specials-.-

Anywho, I dont think that closing guilds is the way to go, I still claim that we need to fix the leadership issues in the guilds. Who wants to play in a guild where you cant advance? Noone. Who wants to play in a guild where you are low ranked, cant do shit and you're all alone? Thats the same guy, noone. Inactive leadership

[Calador]

I've always hated the idea of closing guilds.
You can close a guild for being unbalanced, or too poorly coded, and that has been done multiple times over the years, but closing them due to lack of members is a waste of time.
Merging guilds is also a bad idea IMO. If I join a guild, it's the rules and philosophy of that guild I accept. It cannot be merged into another guild, because we would just end up with a lot of generic guilds. Besides, merging guilds can ultimately be seen as closing guilds, and putting their members in other guilds.
Back when there were 100+ players online all the time, the problem was, of course, not as big as it can be perceived now, but I actually think our system still works

Besides, I don't think the general policy about leaderless guilds have changed. A player can petition the AoP to take over leadership of a guild if the current leaders have been inactive for too long.

As for people not joining good guilds because there are too many people in evil guilds... well, we all have our own preferred play style. I join a guild because I believe in what it stands for, and therefore I am not concerned about the amount of players in the given guild.

All in all, the only thing that needs done is to make it possible for people to actually enter the semi-dead guilds and then take it from there.

[Draugor]

I've always hated the idea of closing guilds.
You can close a guild for being unbalanced, or too poorly coded, and that has been done multiple times over the years, but closing them due to lack of members is a waste of time.
Merging guilds is also a bad idea IMO. If I join a guild, it's the rules and philosophy of that guild I accept. It cannot be merged into another guild, because we would just end up with a lot of generic guilds. Besides, merging guilds can ultimately be seen as closing guilds, and putting their members in other guilds.
Back when there were 100+ players online all the time, the problem was, of course, not as big as it can be perceived now, but I actually think our system still works

Besides, I don't think the general policy about leaderless guilds have changed. A player can petition the AoP to take over leadership of a guild if the current leaders have been inactive for too long.

As for people not joining good guilds because there are too many people in evil guilds... well, we all have our own preferred play style. I join a guild because I believe in what it stands for, and therefore I am not concerned about the amount of players in the given guild.

All in all, the only thing that needs done is to make it possible for people to actually enter the semi-dead guilds and then take it from there.

Problem aint that you can petittion for it, the problem is that its a 14 day timer on taking over so to speak and people logging on for an hours idling every 13 days makes that system utterly useless.
And thus people feel like not playing especially if the guild is promotion based on abilities