KOTL Forums
Player Forums => Ideas & Brainstorming => Topic started by: Chalgyr on 03/02/13, 09:36
So my topic of curiosity today - how do you feel about player-run religions and kingdoms?
The MUD most of us came from when we began KotL had a single land or kingdom, but was broken up into 10 religions. Each religion was player run. so, we adopted that here, applying it to both kingdoms and religions - and we had more of both bakc when we would see 50+ people in a night.
Even then, when it mostly seemed to be working - there were problems. People who had leadership positions were often accused of abusing them, others were striving to get leadership positionsand it often led to ooc hostilities.
Still, the argument in favor of player-run was also somewhat obvious - it provided RP opportunities. Sometimes it was for rank (though often rank was given for ooc reasons despite us asking that not be the case) and it led to onflicts between kingdoms and religions. With so many different factions, they mostly lived in peace but these personalities 'at the top' would sometimes trigger wars.
When we did our last player wipe, we went to a different system, that was handled by the system. You needed combinations of things before talking to an NPC mob to gain a propomotion. The tops of the ranks were simply 'filled' by NPCs then - sort of like what you see in a lot of bigger MMO's like Warcraft where you do things and then report for rank.
our numbers were much lower at that point, but a lot of players wanted to see player-run rnaks again. no we have the hybrid system you see in place. Stll, we see some issues where there are ocncerns that players abuse their powers, or players disappear (there's a long-running if sadly inaccurate joke among the imms that if we put someone in a leadership position, it's only a matter of time before they leave).
How do you feel about player-run ranks? what would you do differently? do you personally see some of the problems that have come up inthe past? do you think it would make more sense to have NPCs in those positions and let people just 'rank up' through a system, and have different rewards or bonuses based on rank available?
I think religions should be player run... but at this point, kingdoms might be better off as NPC ran. There's not really a -lot- of roleplay regarding one's kingdom. I think the most that occurs focused on their home kingdom is related to Sye, Tsythor, Daklore, and recently Armengarians.
Granted, at this point, RP in religions is pretty stale... heck, RP is pretty stale across the board. The problem with NPC ran, is the requirements to rank. Too high, no one wants to do them. Too low, everyone ranks up... which is of course the point of the system.... but there's -so many ranks- in kingdoms.
Think back to pre-wipe, there were only like, what, 10-12 ranks in total? With three of them being limited number slots. King/Quenn, Champion, and Royal Advisors.
There's just too many available ranks to climb, and all the lines make it even more bloated. Yeah, pre-wipe rulers would play favourites most of the time... but so would real-life rulers.
I myself am of the belief that kingdoms and religions should be player-run since it will spur roleplaying and make the players actually earn their character's positions within a religion or kingdom. As for the fears of abuse because of player bias favouritism that can easily be resolved by carefully vetting the players before placing their characters in the posts (For example Melira in Murkwood and Tsythor in Calararian I do not know who has characters as kings in the other kingdoms at the moment) within the kingdoms and the religions and that it be impressed upon the players the fact that promotions need to be earned in-character through roleplaying and being tested just as Elios was tested by Fric before he earned the promotions he was given and not just given.
Those that are caught giving promotions to characters via out of character favouritism can be replaced by a more impartial player. Once an example is made of one or two I am certain the rest will fall in line if they are not already impartial. I do not know if my ideas are useable Chalgyr but there you have it.
KoTL is the first and last place that I've seen integration of players on such a wide scale into rankings. Everywhere else I've spent time for the most part just had clans. I think its a pretty unique aspect of the game and I enjoy it.
As far as ways to improve it I'm kind of drawing a blank. Perhaps if the benefits were amped up even more the spots might be more coveted, with increased turnover leading to less inactivity in the higher ranks. I do feel there could be more in the way of rp from our leaders... for the most part the conversations I've had with them have been "You need 8420 more exp to rank Tylon", etc.
Systems such as this rely on high player numbers to really shine. Suppose its better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it ;)
I would argue from an implemantor's standpoint a larger number of players are needed to sustain player run, no? People seem to want the positions - but it's hard to keep them there. At least in my experience. When you consider a handful of the players like Dak have been here forever, that means those other positions seem to turnover a bit more, no?
Yep yep.......myself and Dak do regularly log in and keep active 8). But the complaint about inactive heads has been around for as long as I have been in the game ::Shrugs:: Nothing you can really do but replace those that will insist upon making their chars scarce unless they have got a bloody good reason.
It's known as the leadership curse, on Achaea.
Anyone who rises to become the leader of a city, a house, or an order, usually ends up going dormant(inactive) after they are either voted out of office, or retire. On KotL, it seems this happens more often -during- the term. Maybe it's because, "hey, I've met all my goals. I'm bored now." or a mere coincidence, though.
But, you gotta admit, leaders tend to vanish a lot quicker.... I mean, look at Klevnone after Wolfryc was "defeated". The turnover was incredibly quick during the next real year. And this in turn is what led to the moniker of "Faildom" of Klevnone.
What if.... being a leader (King, champion, supreme, cardinal, et al) had a term limit of 6 months? (3 months?)
At the end of 6 months, maybe a lower level leader would be promoted into the leader slot.
Maybe the Champion, Royal Adviser, Chief Justice and Mayor would vote who from among them would be the new King. (Old King to act as tie breaker?)
On the religion side, maybe allow 2-4 Cardinals instead of just one and have them vote with the old supreme acting a tie breaker?
Advantage is that there is a built-in end to the leadership tenure with a built-in pool of candidates. Hopefully, the lower level leaders would have some incentive to be around and active and interacting?
Thoughts? Have you seen something similar other places? Or something different?
Achaea does have similiar workings, and they work.
... Yes, my answer to everything is, "Achaea has that" >P
But Achaea -does- have different forms of government. The most common is a democractic-republic-esque system. But there are also theologies, dictatorships(term), oligarchy(term with a pre-selected successor), triumvirate(democratic, no term).... and they do work.
The term is usually about 20 years(in-game years, 20 is almost a full real-year, roughly 10 months I think?). But you also have to consider there's a -much- larger playerbase, it's easier to replace a termed leader with someone fresh, instead of recycling the same two or three people.
So i don't think it'd really work on kotl, for right now.
I'm OK with recycling the same two or three people within a religion or kingdom if it gives a fixed point where you know a leader who isn't working out will be out of office.
Of course, I'd also be fine saying anyone who hasn't logged in 4 weeks loses their role too.
I'm just offering up something that will make the changes more routine and less punitive.
Anyone seen a structure they think would work better than the 2 or 3 options we have now (Player run for infinite term, player run for fixed term, npc run)?
I think the four week rule should work. People do have lives, get sick, go on holiday. Yep yep, removal after four weeks of inactivity would work just fine. Considering the current shallowness of the playerbase pool, it is the most sensible route to take.
Blah. Too much monitoring. <makes all NPC run> lol
::Chases Chal with a cricket bat:: KILL! >:D
I'd make it self-monitoring....
At day 21, posted to Notes that "Supreme Cretin of Cthulu hasn't logged in 21 days and will be demoted in 7 days. Please submit your applications to be new supreme to Chalgyr and the IMM staff."
At day 28, demote Supreme Cretin to Elder.
Still requires a new supreme/king be selected and promoted, but much easier than having to remember to check laston on all the leaders.
Quote from: Thalia on 03/11/13, 14:00
I'd make it self-monitoring....
At day 21, posted to Notes that "Supreme Cretin of Cthulu hasn't logged in 21 days and will be demoted in 7 days. Please submit your applications to be new supreme to Chalgyr and the IMM staff."
At day 28, demote Supreme Cretin to Elder.
Still requires a new supreme/king be selected and promoted, but much easier than having to remember to check laston on all the leaders.
A better way would be to have a hard-coded selection process. One where X, Y, and Z could apply to become leader, and the people could throw their support behind one of them through coded commands... and there could be a whole mini-game-esque feature around selecting a new leader.
And the imms/imps could have a final veto say when it comes down to the end of the idle-term and new selection to say, "this person has a leader alt. No." or "I don't like Daklore."
What if the IMMs have the first vote -- you apply, we add you to the ballot, then the appropriate characters vote?
Appropriate characters = characters in the matching religion/kingdom, with more than ... ? 10 hours ? 100 hours ? Based on Rank (Subdeacon or higher for Religion? nobles in a kingdom?)
But then you have to do work that isn't upgrading my religion spells, or making my priest spells not suck, or giving me priest spells that can make people blow up from the loldamage.
And we all know fuzzbutt is lazier than I am anyway. And I'm preeeeeetty lazy.
why would we want to spend time helping out with Daklore skills? :P
Though, the religion spells brings up another topic I've considered in the past as well.
It sounds like overall, people do prefer the player run overall. Of course, that's what we're used to here. Could you envision a scenario where you had NPC run, and you just had to meet their requirements? Take rankings in most MMO's - there's not people running things. But you get titles, or ranks based on some other system (like pvp points or completing certain quests or whatever). But there's almost no limit. No one becomes a supreme for example, but you can have a handful of cardinals - it's just that those people have to put in the work, but it's not limited. I guess I'm just curious if the NPC factions are viewed as a complete 'no' - I'm not talking about scrapping them here or taking away what anyone's got right now. Just more of a general curiosity if you were starting from scratch somewhere.
Chalgyr:
I think there are other factors that come into play besides the knowledge or number of hours a player's character has got in a faith or a kingdom position or in whether or not they have for the roleplay experience points. One of the more important factors to take into account is the emotional maturity of the player behind the character and if they have got the ability to roleplay a character beyond the established rank in religion or kingdom especially in the matter of religion rank.
I believe that players with characters that are kings-queens or hold the title of supreme of a faith do and must take into account those out of character and in character factors. Otherwise you would have players with characters that are cardinals that would be happily abusing their character's authority for some childish reason or other. Keep the non player character supremes and rulers if you must only that there be limits as to how high they may promote a player character.
Benefits of an NPC system: It's a bit more relaxed, but you'd have to look at lowering some of the requirements to rank up--namely time(face it, most of us aren't going to rank up very quickly -because- of the time factor, especially at lower ranks). You don't have in-fighting(rare here, but it does exist in PC run systems) because a NPC(and by extension the staff) control the direction of the city/religion RP.
Benefits of a PC system: More roleplay, well, in theory. In the old system of favourtism, people would have to interact with the ruler/supreme in order to be considered for ranking up. Under the current system, roleplay with the leader isn't really very necessary. But, we also have the low population count. PC run also means that the roleplay of the city/religion develops by player design, rather than just how the staff wants it--which can be good, and it can be bad(bad, it goes in a direction the staff doesn't want because it totally opposes what the original intent was. Good, it can actually make the experience deeper and developed even further than what the staff originally intended). I like to think--I'm biased--that the Tyrek religion background roleplay was the most enhanced during the pre-wipe days(and technically still carries to today) because of the people at the head of the religion ... which was me, which is why I'm biased.
On the flip-side, the other religions were kind of just there, though the Mventious religions had the second most depth because the leaders of those religions were actually in-tune with the idealogy(or were chalgyr). Looking at the religions of right now, Dias and Sys'kee -technically- have the most depth, Sys'kee has a lot of room to expand and improve. Galr and Estrenal are kind of just there, they haven't really been developed because they haven't had that kind of story-telling drive. And then there's Athorien. The only reason that religion is even popular is because of the spells. There is virtually -no- background relevant RP to the religion, there's no visible flavour... it's just, "join for the spells."
So, there's up-sides and down-sides. Personally, I like having player run things... but maybe it's time we downgraded it to player-run religions and consider NPC ran kingdoms. The Kingdoms have the most developped background RP plot, because they were ingrained from the start. They don't -need- the work religions do... ... wait, am I even on topic anymore? The playerbase is just simply too small to have kingdoms -and- religions ran by players. We see this with most people just running away to Tolin. Armengar is now gone, because of the lack of interested population. Tozain and Lapis were "closed" but still remain as they were(no Sye, PCs in the kingdom does not translate to actual population >.>).
So... yeah. If we do revert kingdoms(or religions) to NPC ran, you should really look at trending some of the lower and mid-rank requirements downward. In the case of dropping religions to NPC ran, you'd have to drop the supreme spells down to cardinal as well, otherwise they're wasted(and some of them are pretty good... and some of them outright suck)