Guild and city unification

XeniaXenia ✭✭✭✭✭Member Posts: 1,076 ✭✭✭✭✭
It's been two years since guild citizenship was restricted to cities. I've been curious to hear from admin if this change has provided the desire effect. For my part, I don't feel I have enough of a broad knowledge to really form an opinion. Selfishly I'd love to be both Spirean and Carnifex, but it doesn't make or break my experience and there have been work arounds in the form of clans and player supported RP.

My question is primarily to the admin and hoping to hear about their thoughts on the effect of the changes.



  • CorlinCorlin ✭✭✭ Member Posts: 109 ✭✭✭
    edited April 24
    Speaking entirely as an oldish player returning to a rather different game -

    I don't see a point.

    Tether restrictions should be enough for balance, right?

    So citizen restrictions are what... role play restrictions? As stated, I've been gone a good while, so maybe there's mechanical implications I straight up don't know, but I struggle to see them - letting me move to a city still tied to my tether means that I'm not taking my skills to the other side, so it just feels like restriction to restrict. I'd love to know if I'm missing the big picture, though!

    Edit - This is purely for my own information. I have no desire to move Corlin, I just don't quite understand why I can't. As someone who personally enjoyed self sufficient play with a focus on PvE, basically every change that took place while I was gone from Aetolia has damaged or at least made more difficult my preferred play style. So while I can understand tethers for balancing reasons, and the decision to strongly suggest that players work together because the community needs togetherness to thrive, I'm curious for the reasoning behind locking guilds into citizenship, unless it was entirely because some people didn't wanna be part of the city or atmosphere generally 'tied' to the guild and the lower numbers were deemed 'unfair' - in which case, I still question the mechanical 'fix' rather than seeking to take organizational rp in a more appealing direction.
  • XeniaXenia ✭✭✭✭✭ Member Posts: 1,076 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited April 24
    Hey as a reminder I don't want to start a debate here, I sincerely want to hear how the change has effected things from an admin point of view.

    @Corlin, I personally don't know all the reasons, but were I to wager a guess, there were issues where some city populations were no longer benefitting from the natural population growth that a guild was supposed to bring. Certain guilds (Carnifex) had even RP'd they had 0 loyalty to any city and were just technically housed in one. As I understand it, dynamics like these long term started to take their effect in that many of those guild members were leaving the 'home' city of their guild. This problem coupled with internal struggles was causing some serious population drops and it was getting to a drastic point. As I understand it, this move was intended to rebuild city populations and unification rather than place restrictions on the players.

  • AloliAloli ✭✭✭ Member Posts: 238 ✭✭✭
    Rhyot said:

    I think we need to combine the cities from 2 spirit/2 shadow into 1 spirit/1 shadow, bring the guilds into the one created city that way the players only have to worry about their guild.... instead of forcing them to choose between city or guild. Not only that, but it would also bring about far more player interaction than what we have now among the cities.

    I know my drastic idea is probably vastly disagreed with by the mass populace, but I don't think it would be a bad idea either.
    I'm glad you think your idea would probably be disagreed with. I can see the merits of such a combination but I can also see far greater strife accompanying it. Imagine at the moment, one person being cast out of one guild for misconduct, they have quite a few options available to them as far as where to go next. However, if we only had one city, -everyone- on that tether would be forced to deal with this individual and the ramifications that trickle from that would be on a grander scale. You might also get people entirely disengaged from the city and its community for such reason or another.

    Another reason is with the spread of many organizations, a lot of players have a fighting chance at a political career whereas with fewer organizations that become entirely too difficult on and on a much grander scale of toxicity.
  • RijettaRijetta ✭✭✭ Nowhere ImportantMember Posts: 80 ✭✭✭
    I can see the population argument. Almost every Carnifex in the game would hop ship to Spinesreach if they could.

    But, I think it's a trade: it sacrifices some guild health for city population. I don't think it really improves the health of the cities, though, just the number of people in them and upset about being in them.

    Meanwhile, more than one guild misses out on certain members due to the city lock. 

    So, I guess it comes down to which is a higher priority.
    edited May 8
    After having to leave the Carnifex, I basically just made my own 'guild' to fill that void, and it's been more fulfilling than any post-carnifex experience I've found. And what is nice about it is the freedom to let whomever I wish into it and the option for people to spread stretch their legs and still be in whatever guild they choose.

    Could be we as players should make better uses of clans and flushing them out in RP.
    Post edited by Xenia on

  • TiurTiur Producer Member, Administrator, Immortal Posts: 731 admin
    I'm so sorry we haven't replied! To be honest, we have our own thing about this very topic that's being edited, so I thought this thread was the same as that one. Way to derp, Tiur.

    We'll finish that and post.
    bump, still curious what the official thoughts on this are!

  • TiurTiur Producer Member, Administrator, Immortal Posts: 731 admin
    Well, a lot of it is being discussed in the org structure thread. Generally, we don't think guild/city unification has quite worked out... I STILL get asked to let guilds leave a city. But we're not sure how to rectify it. A ton of ideas are floating around!
    that org structure thread doesn't really talk about this particular issue. I really think if that decision was lifted and that freedom was returned to the guilds, there'd be some better changes on the health of those kinds of orgs.

  • AloliAloli ✭✭✭ Member Posts: 238 ✭✭✭
    Surprisingly, I'm not seeing this decision as a bad thing. I can see the sad part where some people have had to make the decision to leave or stay and choose between guild or city but on the upside of it - you get characters who are fully invested in the culture of the org they're in.

    I'm taking the comical side of this situation, for example, it would be very strange to have a guilded Templar Knight living in Duiran...marching around in full plate armor, getting his or her foot stuck in the mud every few steps. I'm imagining a fully armored Knight swinging between trees and's just funny.

    Or a Shaman living in Enorian, walking around with overgrowth everywhere and the Enorianites grumbling about the mess in their temple.
    I agree, those are quirky images and kind of miss seeing those fish out of water characters at times. The decision has definitely served as a hard reset on forcing players to choose which cultural identity resonates most within them. A hard reset is needed from time to time. I also think it'd be interesting to see how reintroducing those possibilities would add to the day to day scenes of the present day world.

  • PhoeneciaPhoenecia The Merchant of Esterport Somewhere in AtticaMember Posts: 645 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Aloli said:
     It would be very strange to have a guilded Templar Knight living in Duiran...marching around in full plate armor, getting his or her foot stuck in the mud every few steps. I'm imagining a fully armored Knight swinging between trees and's just funny. Or a Shaman living in Enorian, walking around with overgrowth everywhere and the Enorianites grumbling about the mess in their temple.
    Actually, to me? That's not very strange. If you look at D&D, a Paladin can actually work very well in a forestal setting, especially an Oath of the Ancients Paladin whose creed essentially boils down to 'There's beauty and light in life, and it should be protected'. In the scope of Aetolia? A Duiran Templar wouldn't be too weird. Protect light and life and fight for good. If the Templar finds goodness and light in nature and Dendara, where's the weirdness in that?

    An Enorian Shaman might be a little stranger, but can be done. Shamans protect Dendara and fight against its corruption, and commune with the Spirits and Guardians. Enorian knows very little about any of these things. Maybe the Shaman has decided to serve Enorian because they see it as a means of finding a way to cleanse Dendara. Or maybe they want to help educate people there to have more allies to help in their duty.

    In both cases, they stay true to their class roots and themes, but have slightly different methods and motivations, and those nuances can make for some interesting RP.

  • AloliAloli ✭✭✭ Member Posts: 238 ✭✭✭
    I understand any RP can be spun whichever way.
  • AloliAloli ✭✭✭ Member Posts: 238 ✭✭✭
    I know, I've been in the situation where I did want to leave Duiran in the past and was told to hang tight. I couldn't care less about ylem at the time or its perks because I wanted peace of mind and to stay the hell away from certain people.

    It would be hard to dispute any of the scenarios you've outlined, Lexen, but I'm the kind of person to look for the silver lining and I started seriously playing here after that separation between ... (I almost feel like I'm talking about Church and State!)

    Play the devil's advocate with me for a minute, can you see any benefits to the lock? At all?

    Mind you, I'm genuinely asking and I'm sitting with a guild that's pretty small compared to everywhere else, has lost a lot of its members due to this and bad history, the random newb we get is usually an alt that's curious about documentation and disappears.
  • LexenLexen ✭✭✭ Member Posts: 33 ✭✭✭
    I've been thinking on this, and the only benefits I can think of are only benefits for a very specific mindset of people. People that don't want to have to decide or play around with politics, for example. People that don't like to say 'no' to others, and would rather the mechanics do it for them. Those two aspects are the closest I can get, but aren't really my style of enjoyment at all. The first one can still do their thing without the lock-- they just auto pick the city that the guild is housed in. The latter... make a different org leader tell someone no if you can't.
  • AloliAloli ✭✭✭ Member Posts: 238 ✭✭✭
    Every point of view has another angle and every angle has its merits.

    You're focused on the political arena, which has also drastically changed over the years. People need a backbone in it and you won't find someone there who doesn't have one in a way or another. There are a lot of other reasons, though.

    The admins need to keep certain details about their plans hidden for a large variety of reasons and most are geared toward protecting us and them. Considering that you can't think of a good one to keep this lock, it means that when it was released, it wasn't fully explained. So, all we need is some light shed on why its beneficial and how we can make the most of it...since we can't see those.

    However, for me, being put in this situation made me have to come up with different solutions to work with the groups in front of me instead of wishing I had Enorian citizens in the Sentaari or other guilds. That meant if my guild is suffering from a low population, I can help the city look attractive and fix my guild to be better, help make it a streamlined funnel to the guild from -my- city.

    Still, the glimpses into the rash of current discussions and polls about classes, guilds and city integrations, and population concerns all lead to one glaring point and I seriously question if things will go backward as opposed to moving forward with an ingenious idea that further helps cities and their guilds.

    I'll trust that Tiur and the admins fully understand the anguish over this and are working hard to find a reasonable solution.
  • ZailaZaila ✭✭✭✭ Pacific TimeMember Posts: 474 ✭✭✭✭
    I'm trying to think of other possibly arguable benefits... The only additional thing I have come up with is:

    I guess the situation is... SLIGHTLY? beneficial for is people in a situation similar to what Aloli mentioned. If you aren't concerned with being in a city, if the ylem-perks, etc. aren't something you care about and you just don't want to have interact with certain people that are in your guild's home city, but you DO want to stay in your guild, and you DON'T want to join the other city: the rules give you an excuse to do so (especially if you hold a position).

    You can leave your city and use "Well, I can't join the other one, so I'll just be a rogue!" to deflect peer pressure about joining the other city.
    The reason I heard cited most convincingly had a lot more to do with the ratio of new players funneling into each city. Some guilds intended to feed certain cities were diverting all the newbs to others.
  • KalinaarKalinaar ✭✭✭ Member Posts: 157 ✭✭✭
    I dunno.. it sounds good on paper but it's not hard to imagine the result being one or two cities turning into ghost towns. I never liked being forced into Duiran to play Sentaari but in the last year I've minded it less. If the restriction was removed I would end up staying in Duiran regardless.

    That said, I miss Ashtan. *duck*
  • LeanaLeana ✭✭✭ Member Posts: 225 ✭✭✭
    Just end the charade and create a NEW bigger faction that covers Shadow tier and Light tier. Like a super channel, let's call it SCT for SUPER CITY TELL.

  • VyxsisVyxsis ✭✭✭✭ VyxsisMember Posts: 477 ✭✭✭✭
    Xenia said:

    that exists, it's called Market!

    Market does exist, sure, but it's for thinly-veiled unicorns-talking

    (p.s. @Leana SCT is the sect channel)

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