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Family System
Xenthos
Shadow Lord
Estarra requested some ideas regarding existing systems in the games and a discussion on where they are lacking as well as how to improve upon them, so I have decided to put together some issues and ideas.
1) Most Honourable Family.
Right now, it is not really even a competition. The most honorable family gets a huge bonus to their honour for having that. I believe that the intent of this is to make it so that there aren't many back-to-back posts of the MHF changing as they compete, but in practice what happens is that if one family manages to catch up, they suddenly get the huge boost added to them (putting them way ahead of the next family), and then that one *loses* the boost putting them that much further behind.
Solution: Change the boost to be a flat rate of 5,000 points. This means if one takes over the lead, they gain 5,000 and the previous MHF loses 5,000 (which will end up with a 10,000 difference). This is large enough to prevent rapid back-and-forth, while still being in the ballpark for competitiveness.
2) Family Council Representatives
Why? In Glomdoring at least, the family rep is basically a puppet role. Everyone in the family is a subset of people already represented by their guild leaders in the first place, they don't really need a second rep, so we end up just appointing a head when we require a vote and otherwise completely ignoring the person (if one happens to be in the role) as far as a Seated Vote goes.
Solution: Just remove this family perk, it's really not necessary. If you want to replace it with something, make it so that the most honoured family in each org gets a 2/13 Village Influence buff to their org's influencing style (so a Glomdoring family gives all Glomdoring members a 2/13 village influence). I personally don't really like families fighting each other internally for every bit of gain they can get just so that they can get a "reward," though, but am not entirely against being flexible here if there are decent thoughts.
3) Families Barely Hanging On
There are a ton of families out there right now with only one or two consistently active people in them, which makes it very difficult for them to grow. It's even worse if those active people happen to be married into the family-- they don't even have the option to divorce and remarry, because divorcing summarily removes them from the family. These people could be individuals who have devoted RL years to the family and the RP, and be thoroughly embedded into it (far more than most of those actually born to it), but due to mechanics are always essentially second-rate because they're not "true family". All that can be done is to leap upon any eligible parenting-pair the moment they log on and beg them to do Something, Anything (which is also unnecessary pressure upon those people, while also encouraging leaping upon newbies for no reason except for being a "warm body to add to the count").
Solutions: There are a lot of potential things one could do here. Pick one, some, or make up your own!
a) For people who are married into the family, create a new 100cr artifact that you buy (has your mark) and then give to the head of your family (assuming your family is large enough to have a head-- if not, maybe can just use it on your own). When activated by the Family Head, it sets your base family in the system to being your current family. This means if you divorce, you remain in the family.
RP-wise, this would be rather like a family head acknowledging someone's efforts on behalf of the family and officially adopting them (like any number of powerful families in the real-world past have adopted outsiders and made them official members of the family based on deeds or other such things). This frees the individual up to have the same flexibility / options as any other "true" family member.
This person would retain their generation within the family; everything else remains the same.
b) Just open up missing-parent adoption. The mechanical requirements would change this way: One parent initiates the adoption process, and the other parent is still informed. However, if the other parent never even logs on during this process, instead of failing it will initiate a second consideration process (same duration-- this accounts for periods where the second parent might be away on an extended vacation). If the other parent does not log in at all for this second window either, then the consideration will complete and the single-parent-and-child can continue on with their lives.
c) One-parent-adoption, period. This would allow a parent who isn't married to adopt children. If you are married, you can start the process and it then requires your spouse to *reject* the consideration otherwise it is automatically accepted at the end of the consideration period.
d) Multiple combinations of the above, allow families themselves to choose if they want to require "standard" adoptions, missing-parent adoptions, single parent adoptions, or all of the above.
4) Completely Dead Families
I'm not entirely sure what to do with this one, but there are also families out there with no active members at all-- families that have enough members to be Great Houses, perhaps even some historical ones. Is there any thought for allowing someone to become a new generation of these families, assuming that they go through the historical-learning process that the original founders had to do (read the historical written information, etc), or are these families just permanently dead?
5) Family Honour Gain
The formula for family honour gain is... terrible. It's a funky function that squishes down the honour income significantly depending on how much honour the family has. Many honour income rates are a base of either 50 or 100 points (and then adjusted by the house style, such as Blood or Letters). Right now, Shee-Slaugh has enough honour that anything with a base of 50 points gets squished down to being an income of around... 1 point. The 100-point rates get squished to about 40ish. This isn't really displayed anywhere in the game, but it basically means that all of those ticks such as village-influencing provide essentially no honour to high-ranking families.
Solution: Rework the algorithm to be a % reduction instead of what it currently is. You can make it so that higher values are squished about the same amount but lower values are not essentially priced out entirely.
Also, just make the honour gain transparent; show the exact amount of honour gained in the logs (you do for power and essence, why not for this too?).
6) Family Consolidation
There are a lot of teeny little families out there which are not doing a whole lot. Take An'Ryshe, for example. I'd be willing to actually pay some real money (obviously would depend on price, but if you were to do something that could only be purchased with cash instead of credits) to have An'Ryshe folded into another family. Functionally, I'd see it working something like Cults within an Order do (the family head can choose to create 'Sub branches' within the family, and then-- with admin approval as well as that other family's approval-- fold the families together). Someone within one of these sub-branches can then choose to display the main family surname or their sub-branch's surname. It could be based upon # of family members being folded in, or some other such thing-- you wouldn't want 2 huge families merging, but I can see definite advantage to families of being able to work with the smaller families-- too small to be bannerhouses-- instead of competing against them.
7) Banner Houses
Frankly, I think Banner Houses are one of the best things about the current family system. They've allowed Great Houses to be stable that might never have existed in the first place. Unfortunately, they suffer from a lot of the same woes as any other family. One thing is that banner houses provide a lot to a Great House (including making them a Great House in the first place), but don't seem to get a whole lot in return (some honour ticks, seems to be about it). Maybe banner houses, if aligned to the same organization as their main house at least, should get the same other House benefits as the House they're aligned to. Make it more appealing to be a banner than just propping up the # count (and worrying that if you get too many members, you stop being a banner and the house you're supporting could actually lose Great House).
I'm sure the rest of you have some ideas, as well, but this is a lot of what's been percolating in my mind for a while on this specific system.
1) Most Honourable Family.
Right now, it is not really even a competition. The most honorable family gets a huge bonus to their honour for having that. I believe that the intent of this is to make it so that there aren't many back-to-back posts of the MHF changing as they compete, but in practice what happens is that if one family manages to catch up, they suddenly get the huge boost added to them (putting them way ahead of the next family), and then that one *loses* the boost putting them that much further behind.
Solution: Change the boost to be a flat rate of 5,000 points. This means if one takes over the lead, they gain 5,000 and the previous MHF loses 5,000 (which will end up with a 10,000 difference). This is large enough to prevent rapid back-and-forth, while still being in the ballpark for competitiveness.
2) Family Council Representatives
Why? In Glomdoring at least, the family rep is basically a puppet role. Everyone in the family is a subset of people already represented by their guild leaders in the first place, they don't really need a second rep, so we end up just appointing a head when we require a vote and otherwise completely ignoring the person (if one happens to be in the role) as far as a Seated Vote goes.
Solution: Just remove this family perk, it's really not necessary. If you want to replace it with something, make it so that the most honoured family in each org gets a 2/13 Village Influence buff to their org's influencing style (so a Glomdoring family gives all Glomdoring members a 2/13 village influence). I personally don't really like families fighting each other internally for every bit of gain they can get just so that they can get a "reward," though, but am not entirely against being flexible here if there are decent thoughts.
3) Families Barely Hanging On
There are a ton of families out there right now with only one or two consistently active people in them, which makes it very difficult for them to grow. It's even worse if those active people happen to be married into the family-- they don't even have the option to divorce and remarry, because divorcing summarily removes them from the family. These people could be individuals who have devoted RL years to the family and the RP, and be thoroughly embedded into it (far more than most of those actually born to it), but due to mechanics are always essentially second-rate because they're not "true family". All that can be done is to leap upon any eligible parenting-pair the moment they log on and beg them to do Something, Anything (which is also unnecessary pressure upon those people, while also encouraging leaping upon newbies for no reason except for being a "warm body to add to the count").
Solutions: There are a lot of potential things one could do here. Pick one, some, or make up your own!
a) For people who are married into the family, create a new 100cr artifact that you buy (has your mark) and then give to the head of your family (assuming your family is large enough to have a head-- if not, maybe can just use it on your own). When activated by the Family Head, it sets your base family in the system to being your current family. This means if you divorce, you remain in the family.
RP-wise, this would be rather like a family head acknowledging someone's efforts on behalf of the family and officially adopting them (like any number of powerful families in the real-world past have adopted outsiders and made them official members of the family based on deeds or other such things). This frees the individual up to have the same flexibility / options as any other "true" family member.
This person would retain their generation within the family; everything else remains the same.
b) Just open up missing-parent adoption. The mechanical requirements would change this way: One parent initiates the adoption process, and the other parent is still informed. However, if the other parent never even logs on during this process, instead of failing it will initiate a second consideration process (same duration-- this accounts for periods where the second parent might be away on an extended vacation). If the other parent does not log in at all for this second window either, then the consideration will complete and the single-parent-and-child can continue on with their lives.
c) One-parent-adoption, period. This would allow a parent who isn't married to adopt children. If you are married, you can start the process and it then requires your spouse to *reject* the consideration otherwise it is automatically accepted at the end of the consideration period.
d) Multiple combinations of the above, allow families themselves to choose if they want to require "standard" adoptions, missing-parent adoptions, single parent adoptions, or all of the above.
4) Completely Dead Families
I'm not entirely sure what to do with this one, but there are also families out there with no active members at all-- families that have enough members to be Great Houses, perhaps even some historical ones. Is there any thought for allowing someone to become a new generation of these families, assuming that they go through the historical-learning process that the original founders had to do (read the historical written information, etc), or are these families just permanently dead?
5) Family Honour Gain
The formula for family honour gain is... terrible. It's a funky function that squishes down the honour income significantly depending on how much honour the family has. Many honour income rates are a base of either 50 or 100 points (and then adjusted by the house style, such as Blood or Letters). Right now, Shee-Slaugh has enough honour that anything with a base of 50 points gets squished down to being an income of around... 1 point. The 100-point rates get squished to about 40ish. This isn't really displayed anywhere in the game, but it basically means that all of those ticks such as village-influencing provide essentially no honour to high-ranking families.
Solution: Rework the algorithm to be a % reduction instead of what it currently is. You can make it so that higher values are squished about the same amount but lower values are not essentially priced out entirely.
Also, just make the honour gain transparent; show the exact amount of honour gained in the logs (you do for power and essence, why not for this too?).
6) Family Consolidation
There are a lot of teeny little families out there which are not doing a whole lot. Take An'Ryshe, for example. I'd be willing to actually pay some real money (obviously would depend on price, but if you were to do something that could only be purchased with cash instead of credits) to have An'Ryshe folded into another family. Functionally, I'd see it working something like Cults within an Order do (the family head can choose to create 'Sub branches' within the family, and then-- with admin approval as well as that other family's approval-- fold the families together). Someone within one of these sub-branches can then choose to display the main family surname or their sub-branch's surname. It could be based upon # of family members being folded in, or some other such thing-- you wouldn't want 2 huge families merging, but I can see definite advantage to families of being able to work with the smaller families-- too small to be bannerhouses-- instead of competing against them.
7) Banner Houses
Frankly, I think Banner Houses are one of the best things about the current family system. They've allowed Great Houses to be stable that might never have existed in the first place. Unfortunately, they suffer from a lot of the same woes as any other family. One thing is that banner houses provide a lot to a Great House (including making them a Great House in the first place), but don't seem to get a whole lot in return (some honour ticks, seems to be about it). Maybe banner houses, if aligned to the same organization as their main house at least, should get the same other House benefits as the House they're aligned to. Make it more appealing to be a banner than just propping up the # count (and worrying that if you get too many members, you stop being a banner and the house you're supporting could actually lose Great House).
I'm sure the rest of you have some ideas, as well, but this is a lot of what's been percolating in my mind for a while on this specific system.
16
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
I can't really comment on the scoring because not being in a great house locks you out of that, but I assume that you're right about it.
I like 3D because I like options. I'd be very open to a set of artifacts (family upgrades through a different system? Paying credits.) to tweak rules for individual families. Maybe open up polygamy and what not, different types of adoption, and so forth.
I love number six. Please call them cadet branches. It might be neat to let families choose between making them purely hereditary lines, or more like internal factions that anyone can join. Or both within one family! Options are nice.
For 2, I like having some internal competition among families, but I think having a council seat is a bad way to do it. Influence bonus seems like it gives mechanical pressure to be in the biggest family in the city, but I'm not sure it'd be big enough to make people actually push towards that for the benefits. Not sure what to replace the vote with, though, and I'd rather drop it and have no replacement than keep it. There's a part of me that would like to see pledging to a city replaced with pledging to a sub-faction (guild or order) within it to facilitate that internal rivalry, but I still don't know what to do with it and it might make things rough on people in a family outside those groups. I really don't have a good solution here, just a jumbled set of vague desires.
If you do this, add an option to "import" a clan into the family cartel; must be of cartel type the family can support and be deeded to the family. This would transfer all designs and delete the cartel.
In addition to the above, allow families to custom-design the "mark of X cartel" line on crafted items with something family specific (such as actually describing what said mark is) for a cost.
Family relations; allow marking other families as ally/foe/neutral.
Family hunting bonuses (functions like the commandant and RESPECT power), people who are in the same family or an allied family with the squad leader get a small boost.
No real functional effects for foe, though-- would want it to be an RP thing, if there are mechanical effects you would be encouraged to just Foe everyone.
Add the tasks system to families? Could actually have some family rank stuff and more interaction with some mechanical support to it, guidance to invest and learn specific things, and permanent family lore for historical greathouses that helps you get yourself into the mindset even if people who are the most heavily invested leave or take a break.
Family customizations? Pay credits, buy an emote for your family, or perhaps can buy a custom family artifact that can be given to everyone of a certain rank in the family (SS has pendants, but they need to be remade-- I put a rune on mine so it wouldn't decay, but could be neat to have little trinkets of family identity).
If relations become a thing, I would like a 'rival, but not actually enemy' status.
Customizations are always fun.
One big thing I'd like is for Married-out-but-active members to count as either partial or full members of the house they're leaving. After all, no one knows the woman as Catherine Valois of France, she was a de Medici. If we stick with numbers being important (which I agree is probably not healthy), this would give another buffer, and a little flexibility to the system so that you don't hit a situation where two people can't get married because both are in houses that are trying to grow.
As it stands, Shevat (SHEVAT for chrissakes) is only not losing Great House right now because of Paavok and the fact that spouses of retirees aren't booted. Granted this means I have a vested interest in making sure the family system gets more lenient, but that's also putting a great deal of pressure on the remaining active Shevats to newbie snatch and/or marry literally any warm body that isn't already nailed down. Lord knows the Hallifax OOC clan has had enough of my whining about Luce's bachelor status, but the situation is reeeeally uncomfortable, and I know other families are staring at the problem from the other side of the Great House line, sitting at 45 members because two retired, one married out, and the last three promising alts/newbies were gobbled up by Shee-Slaugh/Shevat/Talnara/D'Cente/Nightshade/laSaet.
Aside from outright divorcing it from numbers, I'm not sure how to fix the issue though. I like the family seat because it gives the families something to aim for and because it prevents a 2-2 vote split on the rare occasions those happen (had one for something in my first tenure as CL that would have been an even split if Shevat hadn't voted. The broadcasting tower, I think.) but all of the other benefits of house honour are just so much Boffo.
I would personally love it if families did not effect culture score, didn't give a council seat and had 0 mechanical benefits.
To me remove the mechanical benefits and let houses be roleplay centers.
Right now you are mechanically encouraged to spam recruit spawn because its a good thing for your org(even though its a sucky thing rp wise and for new players to get spam invited into families)
The Shee-Slaugh family is absolutely one of two reasons (the other being the old Harbingers guild) that I have stayed for over a decade in this game, including through a real life year of no new members because the only people left where those who had married in. It's extremely frustrating to know that even though I helped Druken develop the family history and spent real life years building up the family, because of how the historical family was created (converting Inseira vs Druken and I founding a new family), all my effort didn't matter and I wasn't a "real" member of the family I had created and so couldn't even consider marrying someone new in.
Right now the three oldest active people in the family (Eliron, Kalaneya and Xenthos) are all people who married in and have had their in-game spouses dormant for real life years, but enjoy the family enough that they stay, even when it can't grow. Families can inspire so much loyalty and enjoyment of the game; they definitely should not be so hobbled mechanically that even when people are passionate about them, they die out because those people joined the wrong way.
So addressing Xenthos's specific ideas, and a few others here:
2) Family Council Representatives: I agree that the council seat doesn't work out in practice. It's not seen as a legitimate seat. I really like the idea of giving other bonuses, like influencing bonuses. I disagree with @Veyils that families should be centers of roleplay and so have no impact on mechanics. I am clearly biased because I play this game as a roleplayer, but if I devote hours (or years) of my life to building up a family, it's really cool to see that reflected in the game itself somehow. If PK things like avatar raids can have mechanical impacts, then why not roleplay things? The issue is figuring out the right kinds of benefits and the right way to measure when they are rewarded. Maybe instead of the most honourable family getting a seat and a single cultural bonus, every house affiliated with an org gives a small cultural bonus to that org based on their activity that year. Or maybe instead of the biggest house getting a org influencing buff, the buff is something earned by families by participating in revolts/flares/etc. Those things already earn family honour ticks, so gain enough ticks and you get a bonus for the family.
3) Families Barely Hanging On: Everything, all of this. I've already said how hard is to devote time to a family that others have been very enthusiastic about when I can't mechanically add people to it so at times it dies despite having people who love it still playing.
3a) Please, please, I would love this. I'm not likely to buy wonder-anything or most artifacts, but this I would buy. This also needs to not be reliant on you having never been in a family before. Maybe it operates a bit like family lineage and so once married into a family you can claim the family by lineage or some such. But the fact that 10 years ago I enjoyed hanging out with Maellio so we bloodbonded should not override the 10 years I put into Shee-Slaugh if this artifact is made.
3b) I also love this idea.
3c) The one addition I would make is that if we allow one parent adoption, the child shouldn't be able to add a second parent without the first one's approval. No, "BTW, I ran off to Seren and found someone I liked so now you've retroactively had an affair with them."
5) Family Honour Gain: Very much this! How much honour things earn may also need to be looked at. For instance, the Shee-Slaugh is a culture house, but village influencing ticks are currently reduced to nothing but bashing ticks aren't. Why is village influencing--which requires active participation in game conflict and has a much longer lasting impact on the game than bashing--seen as less honorable and creating less renown than bashing to begin with?
6) Family Consolidation: I like this idea. Our numbers just aren't high enough for us all to be competing for new members without it being a detriment.
The current set up isn’t what was suggested, what was suggested was something more like the essence shop where families earned a currency and spent it on family benefits.
I still think that could work, I think you could also replace member number requirements with goals (have a deeded manse/homestead of x size, establish yourself by having spent y honour for bonuses, etc) to go up house “levels”, and then you could rework how honour gain/loss works. (It feels like a board game where everyone does their own thing and eventually someone wins, rather than a competition where you can reasonably support and attack others)
3c: If I could adopt without getting married and no longer feel like the useless part of the family, that would be some serious incentive to rejoin. Shoot, I would buy an artifact of Single Parenthood to make that happen.
5: I never understood how this worked, but seeing those little tics was once more than half of the reason why I ever went bashing/influencing/village-taking... why is this not more transparent? Numbers are great!
And really, even if my current situation leaves me without strong opinions on the subject, all of Xenthos's ideas sound great. We should improve the family system.
I think some things that would help:
1) CL's have the ability to remove an aligned Great House from the City/Commune.
2) For the honours sytem, for every year a family does not meet it's 'quota' honour (100% on FAMILY HOUSESTATUS) they lose more honours. E.g. the first year may be 1000 honours, the second 2000, the third 3000. So that way other houses have a chance to over take them in honours. IF the family makes honours on year 2, but not year three it resets back to 1000 honour.
@Estarra @Ianir
But seems that honour really needs to be a more active and interactive thing. It's really just a number that goes up unless the family takes a break or leaves which then feeds into the buffs for most honourable and council seats.
The honour shop would give families the incentive to spend it for buffs and other rewards. (Maybe families can buy a "guild ritual" that can be activated through an object on their property)
Another way to spend it might be similar to influence in Starmourn, the council seat could be elected by the heads of the families of an org and their vote weight is however much honour they commit to the vote (taken at the completion of the vote). An inactive family is easily removed because they wouldn't defend themselves, meanwhile if there's like one family member holding on to their seat over a series of these elections their honour would be whittled down to the point they could be removed.
Maybe as a future extension, the introduction of semi active social combat would then give that ability to hit other families. (thematically I imagine this would be played out more like courtly intrigue)
And yeah, I'd be looking at the current stuff and also like gifting a squad with an xp buff for family members for an hour with a lesser bonus to the associated orgs members. Which offers a more expensive option to remove the difference.
For permanent upgrades, maybe a family obelisk that gives, effectively, prized return to the family with an honour cost.
The economy overhaul, in theory, should also give an idea of bonuses which would be appropriate.
For the election bit, it's intended "in addition to the shop" as opposed to instead of. In the initial period I'd expect the current highest honour houses would be able to maintain their seats because they could afford the honour to vote, but doing that would be draining and when houses are closer in honour you need to start politicking for people to use their honour on you rather than buffs or other stuff for their house.
For example, a family buff to bashing xp encourages the family to organise bashing times together.
- Would it make more
sense to let families of any size pledge to each other or a great house
and start accruing their own honor and benefits?
- Should greathouse/lesserhouse/whatever status be strictly linked to honour generated or honour generated going forward?
- Do we need to put in a new system that severely reduces the honor stockpiled by families if families can use it to buy buffs?
Some of those I'm in favor for and some I'm not, but those are just ideas off the top of my head.<a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.lusternia.com/banner/minkahmet.jpg">https://www.lusternia.com/banner/minkahmet.jpg</a>