A probably impractical way to resolve the number of orgs ‘problem’.

Came up on Disord so rushing out this idea I’ve been mulling over for a bit. I get that the mechanics of this are possibly too much. But maybe it’ll inspire the Admin.


Lusternia has six organizations.


One way to reduce the number of orgs would be to use the Lusternian concept of Alternative TimelinesTM.


The players of the basin could experience time Fluxes which could take one or more orgs out of play. Resulting in players taking up alternate versions of themselves in other orgs.


Simple example for illustrative purposes (not meant to be a suggestion of what should/could be done):


Opposite Timeline orgs

Timeline 1: Serenwilde, Celest, Hallifax

Timeline 2: Glomdoring, Magnagora, Gaudiguch


Original vs Interlopers Timeline orgs

Timeline 1: Serenwilde, Celest, Magnagora

Timeline 2: Glomdoring, Hallifax, Gaudiguch



The mechanic. Timeline fractures: Some orgs are made ncp (doesn’t have to be three, that’s just the example). People in those ‘frozen’ orgs are tossed out into 1) A void, 2) Trapped within the Mirror of Tzarazinko, 3) the Wheel of the Goloths, 4) crap what did Gaudiguch and Hallifax just do? 5) does it matter for this example?


Inside you have to choose between ‘all the other yous that are possible in this reallity.’ Your skills shift into your new org’s skills. In short, pick a new org and join that one (this mechanic allows for staying with your spouse).


That’s it in a nutshell. You reduce the ‘active’ orgs without overly penalizing the players. You give them more things to do by embracing a second org. It will probably have some effects on alliances, etc.




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Comments

  • So in this example, if I was say, A serenguard and got shifted to I dunno, Hallifax, I would just instantly swap Moon for Aeonicsand be a Sentinel?
  • Arix said:
    So in this example, if I was say, A serenguard and got shifted to I dunno, Hallifax, I would just instantly swap Moon for Aeonicsand be a Sentinel?

    I've mentioned in the past I have worked on mud, but that wasn't an IRE one. So guessing the best way to code this is a bit beyond me.

    I suggested the Limbo as a place where the player could make the choices the game needed to work things out.  You'd have to limit a lot of actions or people will escape (death, smokestep, haven, etc.). That was easy in the game I admin for as you could trap all commands in a room and only let specific things though. I don't think the ire engine works that way.

    It could be done by lookup tables, if you have x in this org it is the equivalent of x in that. Then it would be like classflex plus.



    ---- 

    As an aside, @Estarra remember way back when the overhaul was proposed and there was some talk of I believe it was called 'skins' for the arena. This is the sort of cool things you can do with a game that is designed that way. Would also let you become odd things in the game or 'go back in time' and relive a historical event.


  • Another idea would be for this year's big event, orgs get forcibly merged against their will, setting us back to three total. Org would have their classes put together so if I did a weird example - Tahtetso and Nunchaku. Kata into either Tahtetso or Nunchaku, choice of Harmonics or Zarakido, then their normal terts. If the communes were forcibly merged, they'd pick between Night/Moon and Crow/Stag and I think that's the only variation between the two. Not a great idea, and tons of people would fight it, but it would solve the population problem of player distribution!
  • I'd be super upset if I lost my skill and I'm also thinking what a nightmare this would be to code and all the rooms they'd have to design. Plus the areas they'd have to build for this would be immense undertakings.
  • Mmmmm, someone took my idea way too seriously, and here I thought it was obvious it wasn't supposed to be. No areas would have to be designed in Steingrim's proposal, it'd just be modifying the classflex system and giving you your lessons to learn the skills that are needed.
  • edited February 2019
    I was idly wondering if the 'light' orgs Celest and Seren could be merged, and the 'dark' orgs Mag and Glom (yes I know they hate each other), but then you'd have to somehow give Gaudi and Hallifax druids and wiccans. Skarch desert druids? The Crystal Forest? Probably would be too much work to pull off.
  • Seren isn't a 'light' org, not even close.
  • Jeez, why does everything on these forums get nitpicked apart so much. I purposely avoided saying good.
  • Ask a Serenwilder if they're light oriented, they'll tell you they want nothing to do with Celest as a city etc. You can get upset about it sure, but its the same thing as calling Glom tainted.
  • Yeah I don't think when Niwynne said "light" org they meant "following light", I think they meant as in "not evil" , which is not wrong. Extremely simplified, sure, but enough to get their point across.

    We're an org where everyone talks about History but no one will tell you what it is (mostly joking lol don't come at me)


    You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
  • As for the topic of discussion, personally it feels complicated and difficult to implement. Besides, I like all the orgs and I think they're all great in their own way. I wouldn't want any one of them to get scrapped.
    You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
  • Coraline said:
    Yeah I don't think when Niwynne said "light" org they meant "following light", I think they meant as in "not evil" , which is not wrong. Extremely simplified, sure, but enough to get their point across.

    We're an org where everyone talks about History but no one will tell you what it is (mostly joking lol don't come at me)


    I don't think Seren is a 'light' org in terms of RPG standards. Seren is I think by design a neutral org (stemming from the Celest: good, Mag: bad, Serenwilde: neutral trinity lusty started with).
  • But there is an element of "light" (not Light light, but "light" as in opposing "dark") in the sense of maintaining "purity", not allowing taint/undeath in residents, and no blood sacrifices.

    It's "neutral" in the sense of "we want to be left alone" but there's also the element of "we're the last pure forest" which is not a neutral stance to take imo.

    Regardless, I don't think Niwynne's statement was that deep and the point of their comment had nothing to do with any of this.
    You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
  • Coraline said:
    no blood sacrifices.

    Bahahahaha

    -----

    Merging Celest and Serenwilde would basically destroy not just the identity of at least one of the orgs involved, it'd ignore the events we've had over the years featuring interactions between the Ethereal and Cosmic planes.

    After picking through the confused mess that is Serenwilde's history, it would honestly be less immersion breaking if they decided to form a Faethorn org with Glomdoring than merging with a city.
  • I like this idea. Even though you said this was impractical it's more practical than anything I've thought of. I've long been a proponent of nuking some orgs but that's impractical and would cause a lot of heartache. This has a similar effect without wasting all of those hours of work in making these skillsets/areas/quests/etc.

    I think for this to work it'd definitely need to be such that class skills get totally refunded and people get a free classflex because I wouldn't want folks who don't have a plethora of lessons around to suffer for it.

    One thing I like about Lusternia's lore is that for any given pair of orgs there's a reason why a given org could be okay with them and one or more reasons why that same org would hate them. Given that I don't think you'd need to be as structured as in your example, you could have it be totally random and I promise you that players will create that RP distinction between the orgs. 

    In short I see the following benefits from this:
    • Reduces the number of organizations without wasting effort (although this idea itself would I'm sure be a pain in the butt to code)
    • It's scalable, if our population were to suddenly massively increase you could choose a different number of orgs to be active.
    • It could potentially shake up things politically (in a good way, imo) for both city and guild leadership.
    • It will hopefully allow people to empathize with other orgs by shifting them around. On a more envoy/mechanical level it will allow people to experience what certain class specific skills are actually like to use.

    All of that being said I do have a few concerns/challenges to note about this:
    • You have to be careful not to flux so frequently that there's a feeling that nothing matters. For example if you make it such that folks have to do an election to establish the first CL again (which imo would be a good thing) you wouldn't want to flux super frequently like monthly, because now winning your election just means you have that seat for potentially one month.
    • Similarly there's a danger that folks who are really tied to their cities will lose interest when they can't play in that city. I personally felt this way when the old guilds dissolved but the big difference here is that the guilds are more personal and the guilds were dissolved for good.
    • There might be a political mess to figure out here. It's easy to think of a scenario where someone is enemied to all three of the available orgs for example. The admin could make a rule that during fluxes that enemy status goes away but players still know and like/dislike each other and our orgs are supposed to be player controlled. I think you'd need a strong RP justification that would allow people to accept someone in their org that they were battling a week beforehand.
    • Last but not least I'm sure this would be a huge pain to code (but possibly still less than some other solutions).
  • Also, to further support this idea, we already have precedent of seeing other version of people in our world, anybody else remember Celina x Xenthos? I do!
  • What did Celina do? 
  • Oh, was part of the whole Xynthin event, where different versions of Xenthos started popping up all over the place, in every org etc with odd marriage pairings. This pairing was in Serenwilde, the one I mentioned.
  • I don't really care for having orgs flux and change. We already have to establish guild identity, and this would just be too overwhelming for me when we have so much left to develop.
    The cool night-time breeze shivers in the arid caress of the streets of the capital city, brushing the earthen taste of dust across your lips.
    *
    A blessed silence falls upon the city for the moment, most activity confined to the towers and the
    theatre due to the snowy weather.
    *
    Pinprick points of light twinkle in the deep black overhead, their brightness full of a cold,
    hungering malice.
  • edited February 2019
    I'd be down to nuke/merge 2 orgs and bring it back to 3. Permanently.
    image
  • So which org just doesn't exist in your eyes already?
  • Deichtine said:
    What did Celina do?  WWCD?

    FTFY
  • I feel like temporarily or permanently removing orgs is a useful conversation to have once many other strategies to improve player recruitment, participation and retention are shown to be ineffective.

    If timequakes, the new daily credits system, and the huge amount of work being done to make the game more newbie-friendly aren't enough to bring activity levels back up, then yes, I'd be down to consider nuking orgs. But we need to give these new changes a chance to have an impact.

    Not sure how I feel about forced alting. I'd enjoy it a lot but I feel like it might disengage many others and make it twice as hard for newbies to get their footing. Not to mention the nightmare of coding all of this from a practical perspective.

    I think it would be better to come up with a much more robust and complex alliance system, in which allied orgs have very strong incentives to interact, fight, and rp together. This adds to the game, rather than taking away.
    Arix said:
    Tzaraziko died for your spins
  • EaEa
    edited February 2019
    Deichtine said:
    No mergers. Blow everything up. Everything. Everyone has to migrate and form a new city/commune somewhere else. Maybe some things survive, maybe they dont.

    I actually wouldn't be all that opposed to this idea, personally.
  • You mean like another Project Cosmic Hope? I'm sure Celest can cook up a way to ruin the Basin again (I'm joking, don't lynch me) But that might be interesting, perhaps find a way to narratively remove orgs to compress the population.
  • On a serious note, I have no reason not to believe this concept would not at the very least provide *a lot* of role-play and character development. If that idea gets considered, I'd support it fully under the right circumstances.
  • edited February 2019
    Man, it's almost like my original post! Glad someone agrees! My mergers probably would be Mag/Halli, Celest/Gaudi, Seren/Glom.

    Just think...Mag/Halli could give us the Jaeger to fight the soulless! Science with machinery, GIMME!
  • EaEa
    edited February 2019
    Crek, that's probably the coolest idea ever. Hallifax could be destroyed, or maybe it crashes into Gaudiguch because they couldn't figure out how to use the brakes (insert obligatory big giant crystallized lava castle) . Magnagora/Celest become a crazy inqusition-esque faction.
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