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Post by yourvisiongoesblack on Sept 7, 2018 11:45:17 GMT -5
There have been a handful of reviews about Arm where a new player tried to play casually and ended up getting fired from their clan or otherwise ostracized from the general PC population. I feel like the caps on clans contribute heavily to this. Currently, the only clan without a PC cap is the Byn. If they do have a PC cap, it's high and has been historically dealt with via kill-off events rather than OOC mandates. Caps on clans are a double-edged sword and are sometimes arbitrarily-enforced. I mean, at the same time that they had imposed clan caps on nobles and GMHs, the staff was allowing a somewhat large group of players to form a high-karma iso-clan in a remote area. Does that seem consistent? You throttle the population limits of easily-accessible clans but allow a group of high-karma chars and their minions to have the closest thing to a full-blown ISO clan in modern Arm history? |
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tedium
Clueless newb
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Post by tedium on Sept 7, 2018 13:03:01 GMT -5
Clan caps are such an idiotic idea. "Someone somewhere did something right to generate interest in this area, so lets put up arbitrary OOC walls to reduce the impact of that roleplay on the only thing we let anyone influence." It's not as extreme as the Nyr days when you would get told that you were attempting "forbidden RP" and stored if you didn't stop, but it's in the same vein of autocratic-DMing to mitigate fun while insisting on a hands-off approach for anything remotely beneficial to the players.
What's the benefit? Who's pathetic idea was it to bean-count player excitement and decide there was too much and so they must be stopped?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2018 15:33:27 GMT -5
There have been a handful of reviews about Arm where a new player tried to play casually and ended up getting fired from their clan or otherwise ostracized from the general PC population. I feel like the caps on clans contribute heavily to this. Currently, the only clan without a PC cap is the Byn. If they do have a PC cap, it's high and has been historically dealt with via kill-off events rather than OOC mandates. Caps on clans are a double-edged sword and are sometimes arbitrarily-enforced. I mean, at the same time that they had imposed clan caps on nobles and GMHs, the staff was allowing a somewhat large group of players to form a high-karma iso-clan in a remote area. Does that seem consistent? You throttle the population limits of easily-accessible clans but allow a group of high-karma chars and their minions to have the closest thing to a full-blown ISO clan in modern Arm history?
Well. That was an independent group, not a coded clan. You couldnt have a cap on it, because it made no sense. Any clan could choose not to hire anymore people. How do you cap a group that dont hire anyone at all and people just come on their own volition. Indie clans never have member caps, because they're not really clans. But once they become coded clans, they immediately gain coded caps.
I imagine these days, the concept of clan caps are moot. The only clans that come even remotely close to their caps is very occasionally AoD, and potentially Kurac, before the change into Garrison.
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Post by lyse on Sept 7, 2018 16:37:05 GMT -5
I asked before but it probably got sucked into that slap fight thread. Are clan caps still a thing? I feel like they aren't and haven't been since the Miracle Byn. Since the Miracle Byn, I've played in heavily populated clans with quite a few members and there didn't seem to be a cap. What was the cap even supposed to be? I also feel like caps were a thing that was imposed specifically for the Miracle Byn.
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tedium
Clueless newb
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Post by tedium on Sept 7, 2018 17:03:58 GMT -5
I don't actually know that there are clan caps right now. Staff seem interested in turning the game around and have been making pretty good decisions so far, so I can imagine that those would have gone out the window. I just hate the idea of clan caps so much that I couldn't help but mini-rant.
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Post by lyse on Sept 7, 2018 17:10:31 GMT -5
Yeah, I get it. I'm just saying though, people throw clan caps out there and I don't think that's been a policy for a few years now. But that all goes back to them not informing people of policy changes and players just assuming what was...still is.
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Post by yourvisiongoesblack on Sept 7, 2018 19:03:57 GMT -5
I feel like the caps on clans contribute heavily to this. Currently, the only clan without a PC cap is the Byn. If they do have a PC cap, it's high and has been historically dealt with via kill-off events rather than OOC mandates. Caps on clans are a double-edged sword and are sometimes arbitrarily-enforced. I mean, at the same time that they had imposed clan caps on nobles and GMHs, the staff was allowing a somewhat large group of players to form a high-karma iso-clan in a remote area. Does that seem consistent? You throttle the population limits of easily-accessible clans but allow a group of high-karma chars and their minions to have the closest thing to a full-blown ISO clan in modern Arm history?
Well. That was an independent group, not a coded clan. You couldnt have a cap on it, because it made no sense. Any clan could choose not to hire anymore people. How do you cap a group that dont hire anyone at all and people just come on their own volition. Indie clans never have member caps, because they're not really clans. But once they become coded clans, they immediately gain coded caps.
I imagine these days, the concept of clan caps are moot. The only clans that come even remotely close to their caps is very occasionally AoD, and potentially Kurac, before the change into Garrison.
That's really strange to me because, before merchant houses lost the ability to hire hunters/guards, they often were thriving entities in terms of PC population. This was at a time when caps to clans weren't a thing, at all, and one of the issues that historically allowed GMHs to garnish high playerbase is because, like the Byn, the hired half-elves, dwarves, half-giants... but typically not rinthers after the introduction of coded accents, at least as official employees. If you, say, made it possible for House Salarr to have a new incarnation of the Expansion Division, well, then given a lack of population caps and a good leadership PC, you wouldn't have any trouble filling that clan with players, IMO. Right now it can't happen because, AFAIK, GMH PC leaders are curtailed strictly when it comes to who they can hire. Personally, when it comes to combat roles, I think the way things are now is fine. With things centered in Nak, it seems better for the game when military chars are mostly relegated to the Byn/AoD. Obviously, the Byn will always have more PCs because they accept rinthers, foreigners, and minorities. I like preventing nobles or GMHs from having the option to hire PC hunters/guard with the game set up as it is now. Previously, I've argued that clan caps and restrictions are terrible - they definitely have negative and sometimes subtle side effects - but, since everything is happening in Nak, concentrating militant PCs into the AoD, Byn, or criminal groups doesn't seem like a bad idea and also allows a greater chance of indie groups to emerge. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2018 0:43:47 GMT -5
I think currently, the only clans for whom membership cap are a thing is Fale and Oash.
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Post by yourvisiongoesblack on Sept 8, 2018 9:12:46 GMT -5
I think currently, the only clans for whom membership cap are a thing is Fale and Oash. but GMHs can't hire hunters or guards, can they? Likewise for the military branches of noble houses, like the Wyverns or Scorpions. Those are the positions that, by and large, added to clan populations. |
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tedium
Clueless newb
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Post by tedium on Sept 8, 2018 9:38:06 GMT -5
With the gameplay concentrated in Allanak and the Luir's revamp, I'd like to see GMHs allowed to recruit military types, and noble houses allowed to build up their private military. If they really want the houses to compete with each other that's a good way to start, especially with the new classes that allow for combat types with crafting skills.
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Post by sirra on Sept 8, 2018 9:57:37 GMT -5
Can we pause for a moment to reflect that the Borsail Wyverns had to be the fucking joke, out of ALL of the game's noble or merchant house paramilitaries.
This should not have been the case. Borsail had a badass concept of Mul shock troops and slavery. But they never amounted to anything. Tor was Tor (and also IMO, under-performed), and Oashite was where a 40 day warrior could retire to focus on fucking gicker advisors and it always had plot going, but the Wyverns did jack shit.
You joined the Wyverns when you A) wanted a locker and water but didn't want to stay in the Byn, B) when you wanted to spend most of your time in taverns but not have the authority of an Allanaki soldier, and C) wanted to militarily serve one of two major noble houses with the least interesting or supported military and D) wanted to serve the noble house with the most obnoxious and useless nooblars (at least Oashite were often secret gickers, psionicsts or some stupid shit) and the least plot (although them and Tor were almost tied, compared to Oash).
The funniest thing about Tor and Borsail, is that in a city-state where politics and power was dominated by the control and abuse of magic, and in a world where all plots revolved around it, only one House (Oash) was willing to significantly utilize it.
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OT
Displaced Tuluki
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Post by OT on Sept 8, 2018 13:48:29 GMT -5
It's because the intended purpose of those clans was never actually present in the game. Or maybe they were twenty years ago, I don't know; but since I started playing seriously enough to notice what goes on (2003 or so?), the noble house guard clans were a dead end. You had the Borsail Wyverns, a clan devoted to slavery; but you couldn't actually enslave people. You had the Tor Scorpions, a clan devoted to war; but there has been one actual war in fifteen years, and that one was fought mainly between the gemmed on one side and the psionicist templars on the other. And that brings us to House Oash who, of the three clans, have at least had the most opportunities to get involved in shit--but if you were a non-sponsored mundane Oash soldier, the real perks of the job were mostly just the opportunity to hear what the gemmed had been up to before other people got the news. At the end of the day, they're clans whose role in the game was largely virtual because staff neglected to implement it in any tangible way.
Staff's failure to manifest the setting into reality goes back much further than Nyr's disastrous tenure. Imagine what could have been if the north/south conflict was made the focal point of the game. It was, at one point; and the occupation/liberation of Tuluk remains the most legendary and cherished feature of Armageddon's history. Why they did nothing with it since, I will never know.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2018 16:44:06 GMT -5
Generally speaking. Every time when Wyverns and Tor had a big enough population, they 'did' get to do shit. But yes, it was very clunky and required extra effort. There is a reason why there is no recruitment for Tor/Wyverns, unless there is an extraordinary interest. Because it doesnt truly work, unless there is a dedicated staffer, or two, servicing just that particular clan. Rather often some noble would get their panties in a bunch, demanding being able to recruit for Wyverns. And the staff would allow it. Only to have another group of perpetually training soldiers, who can not do fuck all and then the noble stores. But when the staff refuses to reactivate Wyverns, they're blamed for preventing content  . Although, often enough. There is hope for the nobility's activity. Problem is that so many players prefer to play indies. It's not often easy to gather up a bigger number of players to allow them to do plots. Too many players stay away from memberships that require lifeoaths and prefer to stay indies. |
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Post by yourvisiongoesblack on Sept 16, 2018 20:21:29 GMT -5
I've personally had a lot of fun as a Borsail Wyvern by accidentally locking myself in cages and failing horribly while trying, before mercy was coded, to capture NPCs.
I think it'd be cool to let GMHs hire lots of guard and hunters, *maybe*, but then what PCs would join the Garrison?
The three relatively easy-to-access clans right now are the AoD, the Byn, and the Garrison. They all seem to have some PCs atm.
If you doubled that number of potentially-joinable combat roles by opening Kadius/Kurac/Salarr to free-for-all guard/hunter recruiting like was the case before Nyr, I feel like at least the AoD and Garrison PC population numbers would struggle even harder to stay alive. If you tripled+ this number by allowing noble houses to hire PC combat chars, then shit gets even further diluted.
I was reading back through a thread where RogueRogueRanger lamented a Borsail being unable open the Crimson Wyverns. But, meh, I tend to agree more with Sirra on this front, if you add "standing around guarding a noble" to the list. However, this wouldn't be as bad as it was in the past since warriors can now 1) hear people talking at tables if they're following someone and 2) actually have the listen still. As opposed to just standing there for a RL hour(s), unable to hear anything your ward is saying even though you're three feet away. Years ago, this role was torture at times.
I think lots of AoD and Byn PCs right now = a good thing for plots with the way the game is Nak-centric right now. There's a lot of potential, especially when those clans have multiple, active PC leaders.
Diluting this by letting between 3-7 additional clans hire combat PCs might not be the best idea, especially at this exact moment.
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Clan Caps
Sept 17, 2018 9:07:16 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by pinkerdlu on Sept 17, 2018 9:07:16 GMT -5
I've personally had a lot of fun as a Borsail Wyvern by accidentally locking myself in cages and failing horribly while trying, before mercy was coded, to capture NPCs. I think it'd be cool to let GMHs hire lots of guard and hunters, *maybe*, but then what PCs would join the Garrison? The three relatively easy-to-access clans right now are the AoD, the Byn, and the Garrison. They all seem to have some PCs atm. If you doubled that number of potentially-joinable combat roles by opening Kadius/Kurac/Salarr to free-for-all guard/hunter recruiting like was the case before Nyr, I feel like at least the AoD and Garrison PC population numbers would struggle even harder to stay alive. If you tripled+ this number by allowing noble houses to hire PC combat chars, then shit gets even further diluted. I was reading back through a thread where RogueRogueRanger lamented a Borsail being unable open the Crimson Wyverns. But, meh, I tend to agree more with Sirra on this front, if you add "standing around guarding a noble" to the list. However, this wouldn't be as bad as it was in the past since warriors can now 1) hear people talking at tables if they're following someone and 2) actually have the listen still. As opposed to just standing there for a RL hour(s), unable to hear anything your ward is saying even though you're three feet away. Years ago, this role was torture at times. I think lots of AoD and Byn PCs right now = a good thing for plots with the way the game is Nak-centric right now. There's a lot of potential, especially when those clans have multiple, active PC leaders. Diluting this by letting between 3-7 additional clans hire combat PCs might not be the best idea, especially at this exact moment.
I used to be a big proponent of the centralization and consolidation of the playerbase. Nowadays, I see it as more of a case-by-case basis. In this situation, I'll have to disagree with you. I don't think the Armageddon playerbase reacts well to consolidation; especially when it comes in the form of the restriction of play areas, clans and guilds without giving the playerbase anything in return. Consolidation needs to be followed by the improvement of current clans, engaging plots, the opportunity for conflict and advancement. I'd argue that we haven't seen any of this - not at the scale on which it needs to be. What is there to aspire to? You can become... Byn Sarge. Garrison Sarge. Or AoD Sarge. Damn - slightly different roles, different uniforms and that's about it. Fuck. Let people spend a couple of years in the Byn and then join a noble house or a GMH - put a cap on it, make characters work for it, make it prestigious. If it ends up being boring as fuck, guess what... people will continue to play in the Byn, AoD and Garrison. |
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