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9 minutes ago, Lloth said:


Plenty of people have more than enough hours to get the T. But when you look at how they spend those hours... it's sitting at the cabals commanding armies, farming consumables, etc. - Not promote-worthy investment.

Thats because 20 hours of active in game RP is a CRAZY requirement, then you add a variable un set time period on getting T.  What are you supposed to do? 
 

I personally love to write.  I have a vamp app and story now with like chapters that will be my journals telling an in-depth story that I wrote.  

I find it a stress relief and a great past time.  I use this hobby of mine to fuel my mud time. 

 

But what are you supposed to do aside from that?  When you have some free time.  Why would  a person choose to sit online on the mud, waiting for some timer to tick down while you emote with a stick hoping someone else is watching? 

 

Look at what the mud is competing against.  in 20 hours of free time you can get well into almost any AAA title out there today.  You can also pause these games, leave them at anytime, and don't have the stress of losing all your gear AND the reward you much much much faster.  

 

I just think we demand to much of our players here, way more than the competing mediums.  And in the end TIME is what you are competing for. 

 

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I think a lot of people log in with great intentions but then as soon as they enter the game and see there is nothing to do they resort to sitting around commanding armies or farming consumables.

Some people have fun rping with themselves, others dont. Most people write histories for their characters these days and probably just need a little imm interaction to get their RP juices flowing. It seems to me that we have a very high ratio of Imms to Mortals but I almost never see any imms on. Not bashing you guys, just remarking. It does feel odd to RP by yourself hoping someone is watching or noticing.

Some people naturally write more than others or are just more creative, others are more reactionary but require a catalyst to get going.

I agree that people should have to work for stuff and not get everything handed to them, but how do we solve the problem of there often being nothing productive to do in game?

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1 hour ago, Lloth said:

I have never agreed with the notion that you should be able to skip from 0-50 and get E within a month. 
 

 

This is something that is a little concerning to me. When you say within a month, what type of game hours are you justifying here? I agree that to get E you really need to earn it. Good RP, Good PK and embody the cabal etc.. However, what if someone only plays 10 hours a week, thus within a month only logs 40 hours. So this means if in what, 2-3 months logging in 120 hours they might get it if earned?

What do you do if someone logs 30 hours a week? They can easily get 120 hours within on month. When I was Yewtrunk I logged in 300 Hours as a watcher, fought some of the toughest Tribunals I've ever seen, literally all the time, posted many logs, journals RP'd with everyone and felt I embodied what a Warder truly was, yet I never passed Trusted.  Granted, if I stuck around longer I might have got it. But again, I put in 300 hours in a very short period of time.. and perhaps this could have hurt me. I feel it's important we always consider actual game time played versus just longevity over weeks, months etc. 

 

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The problem stems from different requirements.

Yewtrunk is such a good example too.

I think the staff misunderstands the problem. Most of the players don't want to achieve things fast. We want consistency.

If things are gonna be slow, let them be slow for everyone. If they are gonna be fast, let them be fast for everyone. This ain't me calling favoritism. It's the system that is rigged. It predisposes bias. And it's most visible with cabal promotions.

 

I have these two rules that I like to follow now and then:

1. When a new Immortal takes over a cabal, play it. Chances are you will get promotions fast.

2. When a class gets reworked, play it (but don't commit too much). Chances are it will be too OP at the start and too gimped at the end of its balance cycle.

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1 hour ago, sarcon said:

What do you do if someone logs 30 hours a week? They can easily get 120 hours within on month. When I was Yewtrunk I logged in 300 Hours as a watcher, fought some of the toughest Tribunals I've ever seen, literally all the time, posted many logs, journals RP'd with everyone and felt I embodied what a Warder truly was, yet I never passed Trusted.  Granted, if I stuck around longer I might have got it. But again, I put in 300 hours in a very short period of time.. and perhaps this could have hurt me. I feel it's important we always consider actual game time played versus just longevity over weeks, months etc. 

1. You had a hard time without a dedicated immortal for your cabal.

2. I was told when I took on this new job that you should (sorry by should I mean I was told you were going to be promoted to E as a certainty) be promoted to E. You left the cabal and stopped playing the toon - timing sucks sometimes.

One thing I think we should never do is set ourselves "rules". If you are dedicated, you will be promoted quickly. However on the flip side we also want to ensure some longevity - although that being said, are we too stuck in our ways with these time frames? Perhaps - but still, I don't want to hand over all sorts of responsibility and leave -my- cabal in -your- hands if you're just going to hand in the towel a week down the road.

 

Look at it this way. 3 members of my cabal were offered the opportunity to meet my requirements for Elder. I have not been an imm very long in this inception so..... They were looking at E in 4 -6 weeks of their creation. (ACTUALLY I JUST CHECKED - THE 20th of SEPT) So way less then a month. Hrmmmphhh. Retrospectively was a WAY too generous. Perhaps. Look at how it turned out ;)

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32 minutes ago, f0xx said:

The problem stems from different requirements.

Yewtrunk is such a good example too.

I think the staff misunderstands the problem. Most of the players don't want to achieve things fast. We want consistency.

If things are gonna be slow, let them be slow for everyone. If they are gonna be fast, let them be fast for everyone. This ain't me calling favoritism. It's the system that is rigged. It predisposes bias. And it's most visible with cabal promotions.

 

F0xx whilst I appreciate the sentiment... This is impossible. Your RP/PK far exceeds other peoples and perhaps is worse then other peoples.

How can  you 'reward' someone on the same scale if there is so much differential between the output from different players.

Player A's RP is immaculate, concise, thought provoking and infectious (real effect on other players).

Player B's is self centred, uninteresting and uninspired.

Should both players be on the same path to E? Or will one be meeting the requirements quicker? Perhaps MUCH quicker.

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1 hour ago, Ulmusdorn said:

Player A's RP is immaculate, concise, thought provoking and infectious (real effect on other players).

Player B's is self centred, uninteresting and uninspired.

 

Should both players be on the same path to E?

Of course they shouldn't. I never said the opposite.

What I meant is that we need more defined "requirements", so that two players of type A will have similar wait times for obtaining promotions, and the same goes for two players of type B.

Circumstances prevented Yewtrunk from getting the promotion he deserved. The system that we have in place creates such circumstances.

There are so many aspects of the game that need immortal attention to run properly and there don't need to be.

What does a character need to advance? We all agree on this - PK, RP, consistency. All of those can be measured and you don't need a human for that.

300 RP + 10 kills/deaths (to warring cabals) + 2 months presence in the cabal = E

600 RP + 30 kill/deaths (to warring cabals) + 5 months of presence in cabal = L

 

Cabal induction? That is even easier to automate. And even then, if something goes wrong IMMs can still step in.

 

Is this a perfect system? Not at all.

But the thing is, it doesn't need to be. It only needs to be better than the system what we currently have.

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Everything should be measured in game hours, not months. Thus take whatever the average amount of time played per month is and make that the requirement. If it's 75 hours, then it's 75 hours. Just as fox said, these are just random numbers, but again it would automate a lot of the process. 

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You said it yourself, 10 in game hours for you isn't the same as 10 in game hours for me.  300 hours for Yewtrunk in few months?  Took me 9 months to get that many hours on one of my characters.  Coincidentally, I did get E at just shy of 300 character hours there, not just in cabal.  But what does this mean in terms of character investment?  You could burn your way to L and retire your character long before I come close to getting E on one of mine.  Granted, I tend to take my time on my characters, yes, but what better way to show example than through extremes?

A single dedicated time frame for promotion, be it real world or in game, helps one group of people while it hinders another.  What they have in place right now balances the two well, I think.

If you want your E/L quicker than that, join a cabal that offers coups.

 

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2 hours ago, Magick said:

  But what does this mean in terms of character investment?  You could burn your way to L and retire your character long before I come close to getting E on one of mine.  Granted, I tend to take my time on my characters, yes, but what better way to show example than through extremes?

 

1

Neither of the two play styles should be punished. Some people rise to power quickly and fall just as fast, while others take time to establish themselves and promote overall longevity. Regardless if someone burns out quickly or last through the times, it's up to that person. I personally wouldn't want to have a character that last me 6+ months unless I really have lots of interesting RP to develop. I always look at toons like a book, sometimes I want to write a short story, sometimes a full-length novel, other times a trilogy. Every book is not the same and shouldn't be treated the same.

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I agree.  To add rule restrictions as to when to get promoted past V would ultimately punish one or the other.  So that being said, asking the cabal Imm what they're looking for will go a long way.  From the sound of things, Yew drew the short straw in this example as there wasn't an active Watcher Imm at the time.  That's really the only major drawback I see.

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I can't say whether it was done with Yewtrunk or not (or in any other cases), but I don't think it would hurt to let a player know directly via a note or forum PM if they're being held up on advancement for reasons beyond their control, such as a cabal lacking an active IMM.  The feeling of stagnation is a real character-killer.

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6 hours ago, Ulmusdorn said:

but still, I don't want to hand over all sorts of responsibility and leave -my- cabal in -your- hands if you're just going to hand in the towel a week down the road.

I don't really understand this. It doesn't take any real work on the cabal imm's side (a short RP session and a single command). The responsibility given would result in less work than what the staff would be doing without the elder anyways. If a player wants to get an elder or leader and delete in a week, it doesn't really affect the cabal imm.

A short-lived character might not do a lot with the 'responsibility', but on the other hand, they won't have it long, so that naturally balances out. It is something for the player to decide, not the staff.

An early deletion might affect plots and so forth, but that is actually a problem independent of promotion. Even if an immortal has to give custom skills and all that (about the most the staff directly needs to do when giving a reward), we are talking minutes -- not exactly a huge investment.

What is this responsibility anyways? Typically it is just to remain in good standing and make a good representation of whatever it was that was rewarded. It isn't as if elders or vampires are keeping books and need to be trained as if they were employees in real life.

Also, I wouldn't think of it as 'your cabal', at least not in an OOC sense. The characters might be serving you in game, but the players are not. You are serving them as staff. It shouldn't be about measuring how much the character can do for you or the cabal, but more about how you can use the cabal as a tool to keep the game fun for all players of the game -- both those in and outside of your cabal. This is hard to do when your assigned staff duty is to oversee a particular cabal. 

This is why I think that individual staff should not run individual cabals. If multiple imms are always involved in multiple cabals, it would remove this inconsistent standards problem (as well as activity problems) through the average of the imms involved. Perhaps even more importantly, it would keep individual immortals from falling into the trap of playing the game as staff (i.g. directing their cabal competitively) and keep them focused on working. I would suggest that if the staff do this, they control avatars that are subordinate to the players, rather than players always be subordinate to some cabal staff player. This would be vastly enabling for a lot of things. It would also remind the staff of their true role as enablers and player support, not leaders or protagonists.

In a bigger sense, this is also the problem of staff having a defined in-game character. I ran into this problem as staff myself, because often times what would be best for the players and the advancement of game activity might not be in the interests of your own immortal's personality and consistency, not to mention their immortal powers. When I gave directions to members of my cabals, I was entrapped by those directions --- the characters must carry them out, otherwise I could not reward them, since I ordered them as a superior. If I had done so as an advisor, I could have been much more flexible in my handling of the situations that emerged from player RP. @Kyzarius did not receive (or lost?) an elder slot for directly this problem a long time ago, and I'm sure many, many others have had the same problem.

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55 minutes ago, Celerity said:

I don't really understand this. It doesn't take any real work on the cabal imm's side (a short RP session and a single command). The responsibility given would result in less work than what the staff would be doing without the elder anyways. If a player wants to get an elder or leader and delete in a week, it doesn't really affect the cabal imm.

A short-lived character might not do a lot with the 'responsibility', but on the other hand, they won't have it long, so that naturally balances out. It is something for the player to decide, not the staff.

An early deletion might affect plots and so forth, but that is actually a problem independent of promotion. Even if an immortal has to give custom skills and all that (about the most the staff directly needs to do when giving a reward), we are talking minutes -- not exactly a huge investment.

What is this responsibility anyways? Typically it is just to remain in good standing and make a good representation of whatever it was that was rewarded. It isn't as if elders or vampires are keeping books and need to be trained as if they were employees in real life.

Also, I wouldn't think of it as 'your cabal', at least not in an OOC sense. The characters might be serving you in game, but the players are not. You are serving them as staff. It shouldn't be about measuring how much the character can do for you or the cabal, but more about how you can use the cabal as a tool to keep the game fun for all players of the game -- both those in and outside of your cabal. This is hard to do when your assigned staff duty is to oversee a particular cabal. 

This is why I think that individual staff should not run individual cabals. If multiple imms are always involved in multiple cabals, it would remove this inconsistent standards problem (as well as activity problems) through the average of the imms involved. Perhaps even more importantly, it would keep individual immortals from falling into the trap of playing the game as staff (i.g. directing their cabal competitively) and keep them focused on working. I would suggest that if the staff do this, they control avatars that are subordinate to the players, rather than players always be subordinate to some cabal staff player. This would be vastly enabling for a lot of things. It would also remind the staff of their true role as enablers and player support, not leaders or protagonists.

In a bigger sense, this is also the problem of staff having a defined in-game character. I ran into this problem as staff myself, because often times what would be best for the players and the advancement of game activity might not be in the interests of your own immortal's personality and consistency, not to mention their immortal powers. When I gave directions to members of my cabals, I was entrapped by those directions --- the characters must carry them out, otherwise I could not reward them, since I ordered them as a superior. If I had done so as an advisor, I could have been much more flexible in my handling of the situations that emerged from player RP. @Kyzarius did not receive (or lost?) an elder slot for directly this problem a long time ago, and I'm sure many, many others have had the same problem.

One of the best posts I've read.  Bang on.

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3 hours ago, sarcon said:

Neither of the two play styles should be punished.

I personally think that someone being too active (as was Yewtrunk), especially when he is VERY strong is detrimental to both the game and the player, in the long term.

Noone wants his enemy cabal's members to be constantly on. In Yew's case I even had people, who are very active and strong PKers complain to me that he is always on. This makes people log off. This even makes you log off, eventually, and give up the character because you've simply destroyed the opposition. We had this very recently again, with Behrath and Nictis (who happen to be OOC friends).

That's why I believe that it should be a real life time requirement, and not a game time. But even if the IMMs decide that's not the way they want it, and they want to have it both ways, it can still be coded that you need one of the two (time) requirements completed - 2 real life months or 300 ingame hours.

The whole idea that you need to satisfy someone's expectations in order to advance is wrong.

Cabal inductions requirements are the same. They are so straightforward and easy to automate, yet you still need to have an IMM to approve them. Why?

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5 hours ago, Celerity said:

In a bigger sense, this is also the problem of staff having a defined in-game character. I ran into this problem as staff myself, because often times what would be best for the players and the advancement of game activity might not be in the interests of your own immortal's personality and consistency, not to mention their immortal powers. When I gave directions to members of my cabals, I was entrapped by those directions --- the characters must carry them out, otherwise I could not reward them, since I ordered them as a superior. If I had done so as an advisor, I could have been much more flexible in my handling of the situations that emerged from player RP. @Kyzarius did not receive (or lost?) an elder slot for directly this problem a long time ago, and I'm sure many, many others have had the same problem.

 

You misunderstand me so let me be clear. 

I have 0 issue with my cabal being run 100% by players. (In fact Cenlar is now E - I await his notes/whims for whatever he wants to do and he is already clearing things up) I really don't care what decisions they make. They've just voted on a 3 front war I -OOCly- think is remarkably stupid. 

However what I do have an issue with is letting players make these decisions (Which heavily impact other peoples enjoyment of the game) with out them committing to seeing those  decisions through. 3 of the main characters who voted for these wars have deleted/left literally within 48 hours of committing the cabal to this course.

The point that I am trying to make with this example is this: I feel responsible in every capacity I have - checking logs, journals, descs, RPing with people and finally being a cabal imm - to make the mud better for everyone involved with me. That means I have to be sure that the people making decisions on behalf of others (E's and L's) are around/stick around after those decisions are made.

I am in no way saying that people need to be coddled, I'm saying people need to commit instead of dropping other players in the shit. 

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17 hours ago, sarcon said:

This is something that is a little concerning to me. When you say within a month, what type of game hours are you justifying here? I agree that to get E you really need to earn it. Good RP, Good PK and embody the cabal etc.. However, what if someone only plays 10 hours a week, thus within a month only logs 40 hours. So this means if in what, 2-3 months logging in 120 hours they might get it if earned?

What do you do if someone logs 30 hours a week? They can easily get 120 hours within on month. When I was Yewtrunk I logged in 300 Hours as a watcher, fought some of the toughest Tribunals I've ever seen, literally all the time, posted many logs, journals RP'd with everyone and felt I embodied what a Warder truly was, yet I never passed Trusted.  Granted, if I stuck around longer I might have got it. But again, I put in 300 hours in a very short period of time.. and perhaps this could have hurt me. I feel it's important we always consider actual game time played versus just longevity over weeks, months etc. 

 

 

16 hours ago, f0xx said:

The problem stems from different requirements.

Yewtrunk is such a good example too.

I think the staff misunderstands the problem. Most of the players don't want to achieve things fast. We want consistency.

If things are gonna be slow, let them be slow for everyone. If they are gonna be fast, let them be fast for everyone. This ain't me calling favoritism. It's the system that is rigged. It predisposes bias. And it's most visible with cabal promotions.

 

I have these two rules that I like to follow now and then:

1. When a new Immortal takes over a cabal, play it. Chances are you will get promotions fast.

2. When a class gets reworked, play it (but don't commit too much). Chances are it will be too OP at the start and too gimped at the end of its balance cycle.

 

Disclaimer: I really liked Yewtrunk, and what follows is only from the analytic standpoint from my point of view as a cabal immortal.

This is what I am talking about when I say that players confuse game hours for character hours. It's a fine example of inconsistency. Yewtrunk was gone in his prime. Imagine if I had an equally available character in Nexus, and I promoted them to E. I put a great deal of trust in them, let them take on a lot of cabal duties, and they choose to go to war with 2 cabals. They involve themselves in some heavy cabal-related RP. Three days later, they stop playing. Nexus players far into the future are at an extreme disadvantage and new characters are faced with either 3 active wars, with no allies, trying to pick up the pieces.

How is that good?

I emphasize consistency because the position requires you to not get burned out. It requires you to put in the calendar-time, cabal dedication, and RP to show that you are going to be a good choice for such a high position. Your decisions as and Elder or Leader impact the game and other people in ways that persist long after you are gone. That is why I have a longer examination period for getting to Elder/Leader.

 

9 hours ago, Celerity said:

Also, I wouldn't think of it as 'your cabal', at least not in an OOC sense. The characters might be serving you in game, but the players are not. You are serving them as staff. It shouldn't be about measuring how much the character can do for you or the cabal, but more about how you can use the cabal as a tool to keep the game fun for all players of the game -- both those in and outside of your cabal. This is hard to do when your assigned staff duty is to oversee a particular cabal. 

This is why I think that individual staff should not run individual cabals. If multiple imms are always involved in multiple cabals, it would remove this inconsistent standards problem (as well as activity problems) through the average of the imms involved. Perhaps even more importantly, it would keep individual immortals from falling into the trap of playing the game as staff (i.g. directing their cabal competitively) and keep them focused on working. I would suggest that if the staff do this, they control avatars that are subordinate to the players, rather than players always be subordinate to some cabal staff player. This would be vastly enabling for a lot of things. It would also remind the staff of their true role as enablers and player support, not leaders or protagonists.

In a bigger sense, this is also the problem of staff having a defined in-game character. I ran into this problem as staff myself, because often times what would be best for the players and the advancement of game activity might not be in the interests of your own immortal's personality and consistency, not to mention their immortal powers. When I gave directions to members of my cabals, I was entrapped by those directions --- the characters must carry them out, otherwise I could not reward them, since I ordered them as a superior. If I had done so as an advisor, I could have been much more flexible in my handling of the situations that emerged from player RP. @Kyzarius did not receive (or lost?) an elder slot for directly this problem a long time ago, and I'm sure many, many others have had the same problem.

 

Why would Lloth, IC, give more power to somebody that hasn't proven that she's going to get a long term gain by doing so? Promoting OOC isn't a good path to go down. We have to make decisions on in-game rewards such as promotions or custom skills based on the character of our immortals. Lloth makes it very known what she wants out of her servants, and those that adhere get rewarded. I've talked to every single one of my cabal members, and many of my clan members, about my expectations for them. I encourage growth, cleverness, and personal gain (so long as does not impede her own plans). You note this as a struggle/problem, but I don't see it that way. I still get very hands-off. I advise, discipline where necessary, and note the characters that are doing the right things and reward them. In the inevitability that I get a member I don't like (in character, of course, I like all of you weirdos OOC), I don't have to withhold rewards from them. That's a personal decision that's made because it's easier. Lloth gives her servants enough rope to hang themselves. How much rope that is, though, is consistent with the previously mentioned method of examining my cabal members in consideration of promotions. I don't really see it as a struggle. I've never seen it as a dilemma where I can't promote somebody that deserves it. It's rather the opposite - people wanting promotions that can't be justified. That's not meant as a dig at anyone. It's just an outside observation.

 

 

 

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I thought everything about it was fantastic!! I personally would like to see just one day of it, maybe, to be just the normal combos with L cabal slots. So people like me can have a taste of the potential possibilities of combos we can actually use. Also, I would like to see pumpkin weapons of all types. All in all, you Imms did a great job, loved all of it!

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I thoroughly enjoyed HM! Loved the Imm interaction, the crazy combos, funny names, and other customizations (King of Aabahran crusading about the lands was fun to see). I liked that HM served a dual purpose of an anything goes respite away from the norm and learning about toons that would normally require a bigger level of commitment. To me, that is what HM was all about. I stayed away from things that I didn't want to know just yet, and was able to gain a bit more insight about what I might like to try in the future. A huge thank you and great job to the Imms for making it all happen!

Improvements for next year? Perhaps make some of the more requested items more automated. It should help in those periods where Imm presence is a bit harder to come by. Items like actual live port tickets such as cabals (complete with X amount of CP), qclass, and/or qrace requests. The more unusual customizations can be given as prizes or whatever like the trivia game and brawl that happened at the start of HM or on IMM whim.

Although HM was a fun time for me, there were probably those who chose not to participate. Would leaving the real game port open for those not wanting to participate be an available option as well?

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