| Author | Thread: Call for Multilateral Discussion of Isuues Pertinent to the Community of Muelsfell |
| FatherCoyne Posts: 332
Location: Mallow
Magus Age: 122 years old
Real Name: Kevin Coyne
Email: KCoyne@umail.ucsb.edu
| Message #16799 Posted: Nov 3, 2008, 9:58 pm |
Most of us, especially the senior Magi of the realm, understand that we have a certain obligation to the community (player base) of Magi here in Muelsfell. The extent of personal oversight within the realm is a testament I believe to the genuine concern we feel for our health and growth. But, in spite of the depth of our concern, the matter has until now been mostly unaddressed in public, and cooperation in dealing with threats to the health of the community has been minimal.
I recognized before that unilateral action would not ensure the health of our realm. The efforts of the whole community must go to protecting new and unallied generations of Magi. Furthermore, in order for a whole community to foster the same goals, there must be a framework in place for the communication of issues, and the planing of action. If these efforts, plans, goals, and ultimately actions that do not come as a result of a whole community of contributions, the result will not be something that can sustainably support us in the years to come.
Therefore, I would like to call upon the Magi of Muelsfell to come here and discuss these matters most important to us. Let it be that questions of logistics, authority, and autonomy never keep us from carrying out our duty.
Sincerely,
Father Kevin R. Coyne |
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| Kaelas Posts: 1052
Location: Darghelm
Magus Age: 124 years old
Real Name: Barry
| Message #16802 Posted: Nov 3, 2008, 10:25 pm |
This is long overdue and much needed. I'll be very interested to see where this goes, and I hope that it leads to a much better place than the current situation. As always, we of TOMU fully support open and productive communication between Clans and Magi alike. In light of this, I'd like to put forth the IRC channel #muelsfell_conference on the Darkmyst server, open for any and all to join and talk.
~Kaelas, Chancellor of The Magisterius University.
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| Daryoon Posts: 174
Location: Last Alvia Dawning
Magus Age: 126 years old
| Message #16830 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 3:52 am |
| I don't mind that OTAKU has 3 seperate clans for the different specialities(hell they can have 50 different ones for all I care), but when they all vote on something they should stick to just one clan to vote with. It is a lot easier to get the first few points of great hall and boost any vote you want to pass or fail. At the moment they can vote worth 13 points, and that with the second and third clan's just started recently. It makes it incredibly hard to pass anything in the way of bonus' or punishments with this much leverage. The next highest clan right now is at 6 which is TOMU which is a huge disadvantage to any other big clan, let alone the really small ones. |
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| Boss Posts: 132
Location: Zion's Reach
Magus Age: 121 years old
| Message #16853 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 6:03 am |
In between linguistic meanderings both couth and cumbersome, I surmised Father Coyne's general point.
Clans currently have a tendency to isolate players into picked teams and private forums.
While clans are far from shutting new players out, it may be that they become so wrapped up in internal affairs that they do not notice new players except as potential recruits.
Meanwhile this recruitment is a serious question for new players. Clans do offer many benefits and there are many clans to choose from. However, so many choices can be overwhelming, and one benefit clans cannot offer is a sense of independence.
Although there is no clear "win" condition, this is a game after all. Even in games that do not "save the world," players have a sense of can accomplishment raking up points, as in our own "Ranks." A player who joins a clan is not so much doing something as they are part of something.
Players can have a sense of pride in being part of the team. However, in equal measure is the shame that must be felt in "switching teams." This provides even more pressure to pick the "right" team early on in play.
The simplest solution to the question of teams is to "root for the home team." Regional clans might be responsible for a city or cluster of towns. Pick any city on the local area map and you will see a button marked "Search this City!" Clicking this regularly will show you all your closest neighbors as well as any new arrivals. A regional clan might nominate a welcoming commitee to check for and message new players.
From the point of established contact, questions could be answered, aid given, and all the wonderful cooperation implied by Father Coyne in hid original message could be used to help the community grow.
However, by using the example of regional clans, I implied that a certain clan might have jurisdiction over a certain area, a dangerous idea. If this idea is going to work, it would be better if a welcoming commitee was formed from all clans. Are there any willing to head up this great effort, to do the work of checking the cities for new players, and then reaching conscensus on when and how to establish contact as well as render aid? |
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NinomaiPosts: 41 Location: Asylum Magus Age: 120 years old Clan: STEAM Real Name: sara
| Message #16881 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 4:29 pm |
| Daryoon said:
I don't mind that OTAKU has 3 seperate clans for the different specialities(hell they can have 50 different ones for all I care), but when they all vote on something they should stick to just one clan to vote with. It is a lot easier to get the first few points of great hall and boost any vote you want to pass or fail. At the moment they can vote worth 13 points, and that with the second and third clan's just started recently. It makes it incredibly hard to pass anything in the way of bonus' or punishments with this much leverage. The next highest clan right now is at 6 which is TOMU which is a huge disadvantage to any other big clan, let alone the really small ones.
hey, no problem. me and mine will more than happily go back temporarily to our parent clan to vote. there, my vote will have a weight of eight instead of the two it has now...
if you actually think about how the voting system works, you'll find that we (otaku) has actually lowered our overall voting power when we started diversifying. |
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| Denerid Posts: 279
Location: Rildesjan
Magus Age: 124 years old
| Message #16885 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 4:38 pm |
| Ninomai said:
if you actually think about how the voting system works, you'll find that we (otaku) has actually lowered our overall voting power when we started diversifying.
I would be interested in seeing the math behind that assertion. It doesn't seem to match up with reality.
Otaku by itself has 8 votes.
Otaku + Otaku2 + Otaku3 = 13 votes.
That seems to be a 5-vote gain. |
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ZugZugPosts: 300 Location: Ibonbourg Magus Age: 124 years old Clan: OTAKU | Message #16894 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 5:07 pm |
Fear not Denerid. We do not vote in unison. In fact, we in the original Otaku don't even discuss our votes. Every member is entitled to vote however they want, so it is quite possible that our sister clans cancel each other out.
Also, your math assumes that if we recombined, our weight would stay the same. I don't know if it would or not, but my guess is that it would go up.
As for new recruits, it is very difficult to recruit. There are so many clans and I haven't really seen anyone offer anything to recruits to make them say, "I want to join that clan" short of bribery. I think the idea of clans needs to be strengthened so they aren't just groups of people with access to cooler stuff, but I have no idea how. |
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| Zivdel Posts: 185
Location: Arzenbourg
Magus Age: 126 years old
| Message #16896 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 5:19 pm |
i was under the impression that a clan is there to help the player as an individual... a player has no requirement to join a clan at all. and ultimately the purpose of the clan is to harbor the people under it for there would be no clan otherwise. the fact that clans get a bit of extra weight in the senate is irrelevant if not enough of them vote. and besides a big clan or three out there to put the kibosh on things like UU voting itself money and resources i think is a good thing.
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| Yamikuronue Posts: 1288
Location: Mottonsborough
Magus Age: 122 years old
| Message #16897 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 5:20 pm |
| Weight isn't based on membership but on great hall level. Higher level halls are more expensive than lower levels. It's cheaper to make a number of small clans - your +5 voting power cost less, I think, than adding 5 levels of great hall to your main clan would. |
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NinomaiPosts: 41 Location: Asylum Magus Age: 120 years old Clan: STEAM Real Name: sara
| Message #16910 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 6:15 pm |
| Yamikuronue said:
Weight isn't based on membership but on great hall level. Higher level halls are more expensive than lower levels. It's cheaper to make a number of small clans - your +5 voting power cost less, I think, than adding 5 levels of great hall to your main clan would.
i see now. i always thought it was based primarily on individual voting and not as a majority representation. thank you for taking the time to explain it to me. me and mine will go back to our parent clan to vote. |
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TzadkielPosts: 596 Location: Broukendale Magus Age: 129 years old Clan: OTAKU | Message #16921 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 8:57 pm |
well, to be fair, I have increased the OTAKU great hall several levels. (That would have been much easier if we had the resources of OTAKU2 and OTAKU3) available to us. This accounts for greater votes just as much as the "multi-plexing" of which you speak.
I can not dispute that making a new clan / bumping the Great Hall from level 1 to level 2 is vastly easier than increasing from lvl 7 to lvl 8.
OTAKU 1, 2, & 3 have no reason to vote together - we are sister clans with essentially a mutual defense treaty. Heck, we could have the same such relationship with OASIS or TOMU, we were just far less creative with names. |
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| Yamikuronue Posts: 1288
Location: Mottonsborough
Magus Age: 122 years old
| Message #16927 Posted: Nov 4, 2008, 10:12 pm |
| As I told the people that show up in chat.... even clans as virtually married as MAGIER and TOMU are now can and do betray each other in the long run. How does one sub-clan betray the main? Furthermore, there's no real reason for OTAKU to ever enter deals or ally with anyone because anything they need they do in-house. |
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| BadHorse Posts: 26
Location: Agoia Talia
Magus Age: 121 years old
Real Name: Jay
| Message #16939 Posted: Nov 5, 2008, 1:55 am |
| EVIL hearby swears its not a OTAKU in disguise. Just sayin'. >:) |
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DilvishPosts: 219 Location: Feldspar Magus Age: 139 years old Clan: OTAKU2 Real Name: Jeff
| Message #16941 Posted: Nov 5, 2008, 2:27 am |
As I said in chat, we of OTAKU are kinda a loose group of individuals. A lot of us joined so that we would be left alone by the other big scary Pvp-ers and do our own thing. At least that's how it was with me (before clans I was an XP/alignment point punching bag). As far as voting together, I just looked at the Senate. Nine members out of 55 have voted. Looks like to me we have a lot of ambivalent folks. (I am the Yes vote BTW). We don't stump for votes, and let people vote as they will.
As far as betrayal? That's easy. The clans is are invite only, to hijack the OTAKU2 all I would have to do is demote everyone so that I am the only one who can invite and voila! I am the ruthless dictator. But then everyone would leave and I'd be lonely.
I don't consider us sub-clans per say. More like a confederacy of city states that came from a common shared ancestry. Kinda like the Greeks.Last Edited: Nov 5, 2008, 2:29 am |
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| Denerid Posts: 279
Location: Rildesjan
Magus Age: 124 years old
| Message #16943 Posted: Nov 5, 2008, 3:18 am |
| Dilvish said:
I don't consider us sub-clans per say. More like a confederacy of city states that came from a common shared ancestry. Kinda like the Greeks.
Shouldn't you be warring on each other, then? |
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DilvishPosts: 219 Location: Feldspar Magus Age: 139 years old Clan: OTAKU2 Real Name: Jeff
| Message #16944 Posted: Nov 5, 2008, 4:10 am |
| Nah. Not until we begin competing for limited resources. |
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TzadkielPosts: 596 Location: Broukendale Magus Age: 129 years old Clan: OTAKU | Message #16963 Posted: Nov 5, 2008, 2:37 pm |
and this idea of "Sub Clans" ... have you looked at who is in 2 & 3? If anything, OTAKU is the very large junior varsity proving ground.
You can't take clan items from one clan to the other so this "we can make everything ourselves" doesn't make sense. If it did, we'd all be pillaging each other in a clan bloodbath.
What we have done makes complete sense in a real world scenario. We are an Items/Melee clan. We feel real good about that. But sometime soon Spells will go live and who knows, that could blow up the whole balance of power. Maybe we should dedicate some R&D to learning about spells so we can learn about them from the back end instead of picking golem limbs up off the ground.
Further, we know that Ranged is pretty nasty. Wouldn't it be nice to explore damage combos, armor & speed against particular weapons in a laboratory instead in front of someone's spiked wall in the rain?
These are rational decisions advocated by people who are in a holding pattern - waiting for Spells means little other development is occurring. Recent item releases gave us what, a set of Eyes?
Come on, they got bored. The philosophical completionsists in the clan were fine putting heads down with a dream of a level 20 library; but this is a game still in BETA. It is natural to explore the corners. |
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DilvishPosts: 219 Location: Feldspar Magus Age: 139 years old Clan: OTAKU2 Real Name: Jeff
| Message #17007 Posted: Nov 5, 2008, 10:52 pm |
| True, true. And then there is the fact of boredom. Once you get to a certain point you want to shake things up. In my case, it was build something different. Other people when bored have... oh say... started a war. I think my way has a bit less impact on the game. |
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| Sconibulus Posts: 664
Location: Shuul
Magus Age: 122 years old
| Message #17017 Posted: Nov 5, 2008, 11:51 pm |
| Actually... probably not. The war is much more of an immediate impact, but swiftly settles down, and is merely made mention of. These new clans start small, but over time they shall grow, one would imagine, creating a far greater impact over the life of the game. |
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| Daryoon Posts: 174
Location: Last Alvia Dawning
Magus Age: 126 years old
| Message #17026 Posted: Nov 6, 2008, 1:11 am |
| It seems like it defeats the purposes of having primary and secondary focus in a clan if you are doing them all doesn't it? |
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laidanPosts: 1158 Location: Mottonsborough Magus Age: 119 years old Clan: OASIS | Message #17027 Posted: Nov 6, 2008, 1:41 am |
| An individual player in those clans is still limited to selecting from 2 of them at a time at least. And I can vouch that boredom is a dangerous thing. |
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| Zivdel Posts: 185
Location: Arzenbourg
Magus Age: 126 years old
| Message #17679 Posted: Nov 13, 2008, 5:53 pm |
| Tzadkiel said:
OTAKU 1, 2, & 3 have no reason to vote together - we are sister clans with essentially a mutual defense treaty. Heck, we could have the same such relationship with OASIS.
have your people talk to my people... i like that idea |
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