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)
