You dont totally need a family rep to raise an ascendant.
You can do it with just the 3 guild leaders and commune leader.
I wish I knew that back when I raised Romaan lol. Also though, it was a bit of pulling strings to get in contact with the player behind the family rep from their busy RL to do that too, LET ALONE that doesn't even play Lusternia in almost the truest sense any longer. This pretty much all the more reason confirms and solidifies my thinking that family reps ought to be totally removed from councils OR do something about inactive families that are going to be impossible to replace with a more active family in the current meta of things.
It is completely impossible to at this point start a new family and make it into a greathouse without cheating by getting 30 people to oocly make alts to join it. Likewise there are great houses with only 1 active (in the playing sense, not the family system sense) player that are not having their status drop. Until families are converted to a system where it relies on active players rather than characters that have not played for rl years there should be absolutely no mechanic rewards like buffs for families.
I'm definitely not trying to dismiss the issue--I just don't have any particular response to something discord specific.
I'm speaking as a player who is already in a GH and is super frustrated
because it feels like mechanically we've been forced into the situation
you describe. We had real-life years where all our active
players were married in, and we all liked the house and concept and
people enough that we didn't want to abandon it.
I'm also speaking as a player who can fully understand that other people have different frustrations with the system. I want the family system to be fun and engaging for anyone
who's interested, not just those already in a GH or looking to join a
GH. That's why I bumped this thread back to life. Broader perspectives will, I hope, mean better ideas generated and reports submitted to fix the system.
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.
I like the idea of honour having a mechanical rewards because it means that families actively earning honour now can use it instead of it just being a place marker in a race to the top that the winners have already won.
[Edited to make my first line clearer.]
I only said there should be no mechanic rewards till the system is fair not that you could not have some changes to how you get members. There are various options to make changes to how to become a GH but I do not think reports is the way to go with that
However since you want options Option 1: - Only 'active' players count towards the required members for a house, active can be determined by the same mechanic as the ranked status or by vote weight above 5. At the same time you reduce numbers of required membership (I am going to arbitrarily say 5 for banner, 10 for Greathouse but even that might be on the high side)
Option 2: - Every family generates points. The top 10 are Greathouses, from 11 - 20 are minor houses and the rest just families. You can then add tiered benefits that are only related to your Org, Order, convenience. (eg no xp bonuses). As example:
All Families:
Select family patron
Can align to a city but not visible to non family members
Deeds
Minor House:
Family Channel
Family Newsboard
Can be recognized by a city as a city family
Gets a free Cartel (if house falls back to previous tier keeps access to designs but can no longer submit new ones)
Great House:
Family help system
Can appoint council advisor (modification to actual council member right now, in that no council powers, but can not be removed by city, pure RP function, maybe give ability to see city stats without being aide to ministries). Requires full council to kick this person out of the city
Family can not be removed from the city, its familymembers however still can.
Can (for either honour, gold or credits) do a form of patron request to have an npc made that resides in the city or an area that makes sense. Both admins and in case of city CL need to agree. If the family aligns with a new city this npc would retire)
I feel like the goal of making it easier to achieve lesser/great house stats is kinda flawed when considered in the longer term.
Harder requirements incentivise players grouping together in large numbers and in turn justifies rewarding them for doing so.
On the flipside it seems reasonable to expect that the suggested requirements would lead even more players to consider setting up their own house and in turn make it difficult to get even the reduced numbers.
Personally I’d leave the requirements but instead make it possible to consolidate families that haven’t reached lesser house status by allowing the root generation of those families to still find parents or bloodbond. This would merge “nameless” families and absorb the nameless family into a house where appropriate.
I feel like the goal of making it easier to achieve lesser/great house stats is kinda flawed when considered in the longer term.
Harder requirements incentivise players grouping together in large numbers and in turn justifies rewarding them for doing so.
On the flipside it seems reasonable to expect that the suggested requirements would lead even more players to consider setting up their own house and in turn make it difficult to get even the reduced numbers.
Personally I’d leave the requirements but instead make it possible to consolidate families that haven’t reached lesser house status by allowing the root generation of those families to still find parents or bloodbond. This would merge “nameless” families and absorb the nameless family into a house where appropriate.
I will agree to leaving the requirements if you agree to only count active players. Either way the playing field is leveled for all orgs. (of course in your scenario there will be no greathouses)
I feel like the goal of making it easier to achieve lesser/great house stats is kinda flawed when considered in the longer term.
Harder requirements incentivise players grouping together in large numbers and in turn justifies rewarding them for doing so.
On the flipside it seems reasonable to expect that the suggested requirements would lead even more players to consider setting up their own house and in turn make it difficult to get even the reduced numbers.
Personally I’d leave the requirements but instead make it possible to consolidate families that haven’t reached lesser house status by allowing the root generation of those families to still find parents or bloodbond. This would merge “nameless” families and absorb the nameless family into a house where appropriate.
I will agree to leaving the requirements if you agree to only count active players. Either way the playing field is leveled for all orgs. (of course in your scenario there will be no greathouses)
I mean, it doesn't really require your agreement.
However, activity is rewarded through other mechanisms I've suggested and realistically... Families aren't clans, not everyone that thinks they have a neat idea for one should start one. The systems in place provide incentives for forming larger families and they're ultimately more beneficial for the game as they provide a larger network of players to interact with on a unique line.
Complaining that families only have one or two active people in them, yeah part of that is probably because people are trying to start their own rather than joining the families that would love to have them. Particularly with older players, choosing to try to start a new family is just dividing the active players that are engaging with the system into smaller and smaller groups.
Tbh, you could probably also lock down new family creation, offer mechanics that make it easier to get into families, and then create a method for splintering with more limitations that family creation.
You could have a "family finder" or something that drops people into willing families as appropriate. (I'd even let older players set a number they'll agree to auto accept if they're inactive, blocked on retirement) Want to interact with the family system without finding parents? Go get married. Want to have your own family? Build it up as part of an established family and then go through the splinter process.
I feel like the goal of making it easier to achieve lesser/great house stats is kinda flawed when considered in the longer term.
Harder requirements incentivise players grouping together in large numbers and in turn justifies rewarding them for doing so.
On the flipside it seems reasonable to expect that the suggested requirements would lead even more players to consider setting up their own house and in turn make it difficult to get even the reduced numbers.
Personally I’d leave the requirements but instead make it possible to consolidate families that haven’t reached lesser house status by allowing the root generation of those families to still find parents or bloodbond. This would merge “nameless” families and absorb the nameless family into a house where appropriate.
I will agree to leaving the requirements if you agree to only count active players. Either way the playing field is leveled for all orgs. (of course in your scenario there will be no greathouses)
I mean, it doesn't really require your agreement.
However, activity is rewarded through other mechanisms I've suggested and realistically... Families aren't clans, not everyone that thinks they have a neat idea for one should start one. The systems in place provide incentives for forming larger families and they're ultimately more beneficial for the game as they provide a larger network of players to interact with on a unique line.
Complaining that families only have one or two active people in them, yeah part of that is probably because people are trying to start their own rather than joining the families that would love to have them. Particularly with older players, choosing to try to start a new family is just dividing the active players that are engaging with the system into smaller and smaller groups.
Tbh, you could probably also lock down new family creation, offer mechanics that make it easier to get into families, and then create a method for splintering with more limitations that family creation.
You could have a "family finder" or something that drops people into willing families as appropriate. (I'd even let older players set a number they'll agree to auto accept if they're inactive, blocked on retirement) Want to interact with the family system without finding parents? Go get married. Want to have your own family? Build it up as part of an established family and then go through the splinter process.
Gaudiguch does not have any established houses so we should not be allowed to have them?
If nobody is joining your house and rather creates their own it is probable this is your failing. If you make your house attractive people join it, but that is harder than just trying to scoop up every novice. If house status is dependant on honour you certainly get incentive to not splinter. But forcing people to join houses that do not agree with their character’s RP will cause conflict and your entire system relies on high jacking a family. I mean I could highjack Talnara, move it to Gaudiguch, however I would be doing a disservice to the RP history and integration in Seren culture.
As for your splinter idea that makes no sense as you run into the same problem new houses do, namely it requires more players than lusternia has to get GH status.
And yes you don’t need my agreement, except of course in the phase of reporting where we get to vote against reports where others that share my opinion that the family system currently only caters to a small player base and unbalances things like culture scoring will vote to not waste precious admin resources on this mechanic so they can work on things that are for all players.
First remove the council position having the biggest house in an org gives. Its a bit of a silly position and really just causes more trouble than its worth. Leave the council as elected representatives.
Secondly introduce a soft cap on the number of points a family has. Any points over this will start to decay on a scaling basis. This is one of the main issues with houses at the moment in that it becomes highly impossible for newer houses to catch up on older houses who can simply rest of their laurels and never have to worry about competition.
Introducing a mechanic to soft cap and stop a runaway points situation would give smaller houses a chance to catch up. It'd also mean that the house at the top of the charts would be the house that has the most active members contributing to the score instead of small number of just old houses.
First remove the council position having the biggest house in an org gives. Its a bit of a silly position and really just causes more trouble than its worth. Leave the council as elected representatives.
Secondly introduce a soft cap on the number of points a family has. Any points over this will start to decay on a scaling basis. This is one of the main issues with houses at the moment in that it becomes highly impossible for newer houses to catch up on older houses who can simply rest of their laurels and never have to worry about competition.
Introducing a mechanic to soft cap and stop a runaway points situation would give smaller houses a chance to catch up. It'd also mean that the house at the top of the charts would be the house that has the most active members contributing to the score instead of small number of just old houses.
Soft capping already happens to an extent. The higher you are, the less you earn. But the #1 family gets a %age increase, so even if they earn less, it ends up becoming more due to a silly (and unnecessary) buff. Hence the suggestion in the first post to make it a flat 5k bump for being top family, instead of a percent boost.
You dont totally need a family rep to raise an ascendant.
You can do it with just the 3 guild leaders and commune leader.
I wish I knew that back when I raised Romaan lol. Also though, it was a bit of pulling strings to get in contact with the player behind the family rep from their busy RL to do that too, LET ALONE that doesn't even play Lusternia in almost the truest sense any longer. This pretty much all the more reason confirms and solidifies my thinking that family reps ought to be totally removed from councils OR do something about inactive families that are going to be impossible to replace with a more active family in the current meta of things.
You can only do it if you get rid of your family council member.
You need 100% support of the council to raise so if you have a council member you need them if you don't you dont.
Eg if you look at Glom, I got rid of our family council member so we only have 3 council members so we only need 3 people to approve ascention. You in Celest still have a family seat so you need four to raise.
Seriously though getting rid of the family seat is really a good idea now for any org that can wrangle it. For many of the reasons you stated mink, you had an issue with and other reasons as well. Family council member is picked by the largest family, can be a mostly dormant person and the city cant do anything about it. Part of the why this happens is that older families with massive points scores just simply outstrip move active agile younger families. Resting on your laurels to the point of mostly inactive families beating mostly active families for ages is the fundamental issue I have with the family system.
I feel like the goal of making it easier to achieve lesser/great house stats is kinda flawed when considered in the longer term.
Harder requirements incentivise players grouping together in large numbers and in turn justifies rewarding them for doing so.
On the flipside it seems reasonable to expect that the suggested requirements would lead even more players to consider setting up their own house and in turn make it difficult to get even the reduced numbers.
Personally I’d leave the requirements but instead make it possible to consolidate families that haven’t reached lesser house status by allowing the root generation of those families to still find parents or bloodbond. This would merge “nameless” families and absorb the nameless family into a house where appropriate.
I will agree to leaving the requirements if you agree to only count active players. Either way the playing field is leveled for all orgs. (of course in your scenario there will be no greathouses)
I mean, it doesn't really require your agreement.
However, activity is rewarded through other mechanisms I've suggested and realistically... Families aren't clans, not everyone that thinks they have a neat idea for one should start one. The systems in place provide incentives for forming larger families and they're ultimately more beneficial for the game as they provide a larger network of players to interact with on a unique line.
Complaining that families only have one or two active people in them, yeah part of that is probably because people are trying to start their own rather than joining the families that would love to have them. Particularly with older players, choosing to try to start a new family is just dividing the active players that are engaging with the system into smaller and smaller groups.
Tbh, you could probably also lock down new family creation, offer mechanics that make it easier to get into families, and then create a method for splintering with more limitations that family creation.
You could have a "family finder" or something that drops people into willing families as appropriate. (I'd even let older players set a number they'll agree to auto accept if they're inactive, blocked on retirement) Want to interact with the family system without finding parents? Go get married. Want to have your own family? Build it up as part of an established family and then go through the splinter process.
Gaudiguch does not have any established houses so we should not be allowed to have them?
If nobody is joining your house and rather creates their own it is probable this is your failing. If you make your house attractive people join it, but that is harder than just trying to scoop up every novice. If house status is dependant on honour you certainly get incentive to not splinter. But forcing people to join houses that do not agree with their character’s RP will cause conflict and your entire system relies on high jacking a family. I mean I could highjack Talnara, move it to Gaudiguch, however I would be doing a disservice to the RP history and integration in Seren culture.
As for your splinter idea that makes no sense as you run into the same problem new houses do, namely it requires more players than lusternia has to get GH status.
And yes you don’t need my agreement, except of course in the phase of reporting where we get to vote against reports where others that share my opinion that the family system currently only caters to a small player base and unbalances things like culture scoring will vote to not waste precious admin resources on this mechanic so they can work on things that are for all players.
If nobody is joining your house and rather creates their own it is probable this is your failing. < Applies even more to the micro houses really, The houses have managed to at least get support from a large number of players over the years but the umpteen micro families that are out there just haven't. Many of them have had well and truly more than enough time to actually grow, they just haven't. If you explore the family trees you can see just how many sub 10 families have failed to survive, especially given how many have almost as many inactive members than active if not the inactives being the majority.
Similarly, if Gaudiguch hasn't managed to grow a Great House in the years that it has existed, on top of the people that were invested in it and that Hallifax has managed to do so with the same backing, seems more like there's some other issue. (Such as people not grouping up and everyone trying to create their own families perhaps) It's demonstrable that other people have been able to do that, there's nothing mechanical about Gaudiguch that gets in the way of this, it is ultimately just the choices of the players that have seen the org not have a house.
The concept of splintering is actually based on supporting part of a family splitting off. The more notable for me is probably Mes'ard, it was always weirdly split between Serenwilde and Magnagora, now it seems to aligned mostly with Gaudiguch (their patron is currently Mysrai).
Splintering could split the family into parts but maintain a connection between them with drawbacks but it's healthier than the current state. So, you wouldn't have moved Talnara, you would have had to build the Mzithrei branch up within Talnara to a sustainable point and then splinter off a portion of Talnara as Mizthrei. As another example, Mes'ard could remain in the org that most of its active members belong (likely Gaudi it seems) with the other branches splintering off to stay with Serenwilde and Magnagora.
You are still ignoring the fact Lusternia barely has 50 players total at this point. It will likely not get more at any point of time in the future. So no, new families don’t stand a chance to in a good and fair way get the status even though they are more active and have far more RP.
And let’s not pretend the old families retained players. The system promoted just grabbing every novice and getting friends in other orgs make alts. A lot of them not even staying active through the considering process. So yes you get to see a lot of ‘active’ people in those families cause they recruited in a pool of people that never really played the game. It is also what makes families more harmful then they are beneficial to player retention.
Mzithrei is not a Talnara spin off btw, I did not create that family nor really intent to built a house from it. The only reason I married out of Talnara is cause it made RP sense. In fact I think families with members outside the aligned org need to have a large passive honour drain for that.
I like the idea of honour having a mechanical rewards because it means that families actively earning honour now can use it instead of it just being a place marker in a race to the top that the winners have already won.
[Edited to make my first line clearer.]
How could this be implimented without locking out players who are trapped in their families?
Doesn't this encourage people to join larger houses, making it that much more for someone to start a house themselves?
I like the idea of honour having a mechanical rewards because it means that families actively earning honour now can use it instead of it just being a place marker in a race to the top that the winners have already won.
[Edited to make my first line clearer.]
How could this be implimented without locking out players who are trapped in their families?
Doesn't this encourage people to join larger houses, making it that much more for someone to start a house themselves?
See: Post #1.
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.
-----
This would let you have your own family branch that's part of a larger family.
I know this is a minor want in the grand scheme of things, but I'd honestly love if the family system were built to enable options rather than lock in a single family. IE: a player can count as a full member of one family at a time, but also gives 0.5 members to inactive families they belong to from both parents and from their spouse's parents' houses. Essentially allow players to be able to switch every once in a while between one of up to five natal* houses (parent A, parent B, progentor, in-law A, in-law with each of the inactive houses still getting a boost from them.
*natal house being a house for which they are a progenitor, or if they are not a progenitor, the first house they joined.
Comments
<a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.lusternia.com/banner/minkahmet.jpg">https://www.lusternia.com/banner/minkahmet.jpg</a>However since you want options
Option 1:
- Only 'active' players count towards the required members for a house, active can be determined by the same mechanic as the ranked status or by vote weight above 5. At the same time you reduce numbers of required membership (I am going to arbitrarily say 5 for banner, 10 for Greathouse but even that might be on the high side)
Option 2:
- Every family generates points. The top 10 are Greathouses, from 11 - 20 are minor houses and the rest just families. You can then add tiered benefits that are only related to your Org, Order, convenience. (eg no xp bonuses).
As example:
All Families:
- Select family patron
- Can align to a city but not visible to non family members
- Deeds
Minor House:- Family Channel
- Family Newsboard
- Can be recognized by a city as a city family
- Gets a free Cartel (if house falls back to previous tier keeps access to designs but can no longer submit new ones)
Great House:Harder requirements incentivise players grouping together in large numbers and in turn justifies rewarding them for doing so.
On the flipside it seems reasonable to expect that the suggested requirements would lead even more players to consider setting up their own house and in turn make it difficult to get even the reduced numbers.
Personally I’d leave the requirements but instead make it possible to consolidate families that haven’t reached lesser house status by allowing the root generation of those families to still find parents or bloodbond.
This would merge “nameless” families and absorb the nameless family into a house where appropriate.
However, activity is rewarded through other mechanisms I've suggested and realistically... Families aren't clans, not everyone that thinks they have a neat idea for one should start one.
The systems in place provide incentives for forming larger families and they're ultimately more beneficial for the game as they provide a larger network of players to interact with on a unique line.
Complaining that families only have one or two active people in them, yeah part of that is probably because people are trying to start their own rather than joining the families that would love to have them. Particularly with older players, choosing to try to start a new family is just dividing the active players that are engaging with the system into smaller and smaller groups.
Tbh, you could probably also lock down new family creation, offer mechanics that make it easier to get into families, and then create a method for splintering with more limitations that family creation.
You could have a "family finder" or something that drops people into willing families as appropriate. (I'd even let older players set a number they'll agree to auto accept if they're inactive, blocked on retirement)
Want to interact with the family system without finding parents? Go get married.
Want to have your own family? Build it up as part of an established family and then go through the splinter process.
If nobody is joining your house and rather creates their own it is probable this is your failing. If you make your house attractive people join it, but that is harder than just trying to scoop up every novice. If house status is dependant on honour you certainly get incentive to not splinter. But forcing people to join houses that do not agree with their character’s RP will cause conflict and your entire system relies on high jacking a family. I mean I could highjack Talnara, move it to Gaudiguch, however I would be doing a disservice to the RP history and integration in Seren culture.
As for your splinter idea that makes no sense as you run into the same problem new houses do, namely it requires more players than lusternia has to get GH status.
And yes you don’t need my agreement, except of course in the phase of reporting where we get to vote against reports where others that share my opinion that the family system currently only caters to a small player base and unbalances things like culture scoring will vote to not waste precious admin resources on this mechanic so they can work on things that are for all players.
First remove the council position having the biggest house in an org gives. Its a bit of a silly position and really just causes more trouble than its worth. Leave the council as elected representatives.
Secondly introduce a soft cap on the number of points a family has. Any points over this will start to decay on a scaling basis. This is one of the main issues with houses at the moment in that it becomes highly impossible for newer houses to catch up on older houses who can simply rest of their laurels and never have to worry about competition.
Introducing a mechanic to soft cap and stop a runaway points situation would give smaller houses a chance to catch up. It'd also mean that the house at the top of the charts would be the house that has the most active members contributing to the score instead of small number of just old houses.
You can only do it if you get rid of your family council member.
You need 100% support of the council to raise so if you have a council member you need them if you don't you dont.
Eg if you look at Glom, I got rid of our family council member so we only have 3 council members so we only need 3 people to approve ascention. You in Celest still have a family seat so you need four to raise.
Seriously though getting rid of the family seat is really a good idea now for any org that can wrangle it. For many of the reasons you stated mink, you had an issue with and other reasons as well. Family council member is picked by the largest family, can be a mostly dormant person and the city cant do anything about it. Part of the why this happens is that older families with massive points scores just simply outstrip move active agile younger families. Resting on your laurels to the point of mostly inactive families beating mostly active families for ages is the fundamental issue I have with the family system.
If you explore the family trees you can see just how many sub 10 families have failed to survive, especially given how many have almost as many inactive members than active if not the inactives being the majority.
Similarly, if Gaudiguch hasn't managed to grow a Great House in the years that it has existed, on top of the people that were invested in it and that Hallifax has managed to do so with the same backing, seems more like there's some other issue. (Such as people not grouping up and everyone trying to create their own families perhaps) It's demonstrable that other people have been able to do that, there's nothing mechanical about Gaudiguch that gets in the way of this, it is ultimately just the choices of the players that have seen the org not have a house.
The concept of splintering is actually based on supporting part of a family splitting off. The more notable for me is probably Mes'ard, it was always weirdly split between Serenwilde and Magnagora, now it seems to aligned mostly with Gaudiguch (their patron is currently Mysrai).
Splintering could split the family into parts but maintain a connection between them with drawbacks but it's healthier than the current state. So, you wouldn't have moved Talnara, you would have had to build the Mzithrei branch up within Talnara to a sustainable point and then splinter off a portion of Talnara as Mizthrei.
As another example, Mes'ard could remain in the org that most of its active members belong (likely Gaudi it seems) with the other branches splintering off to stay with Serenwilde and Magnagora.
And let’s not pretend the old families retained players. The system promoted just grabbing every novice and getting friends in other orgs make alts. A lot of them not even staying active through the considering process. So yes you get to see a lot of ‘active’ people in those families cause they recruited in a pool of people that never really played the game. It is also what makes families more harmful then they are beneficial to player retention.
Mzithrei is not a Talnara spin off btw, I did not create that family nor really intent to built a house from it. The only reason I married out of Talnara is cause it made RP sense. In fact I think families with members outside the aligned org need to have a large passive honour drain for that.
Doesn't this encourage people to join larger houses, making it that much more for someone to start a house themselves?
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.