make houses app only & restore old gear/improve gear

[nelly]

Howdy,

Let's see if I can do this short & pithy (spoiler: I can't).

Disclaimer: please note I am not talking about my current PC or situation. These are observations about the average retainer/Ward PC, the dynamics I see in the climate before those PCs, and how I would propose solving the current low House activity situation. I am writing this with genuine eagerness to help improve the current House dynamic/climate!

Context
House numbers have been very low the past few months across the board. The only House lately to boast any meaningful numbers is House Orza, which, is effectively the most relaxed House in terms of limitations on RP for PCs (more on this as a factor below).

Observations
1. The Ward has simply been around for a long time, and creativity around the Houses is certainly drying up some. This is natural, and definitely more complex to fix than the next points. I won't directly propose a solution for this beyond "up incentives, which ideally will give people drive to be more creative". More on this in the proposed solution part.

2. Joining a House restricts RP for most. Why? You have an NPC/DM group overhead that has an image for what you should/shouldn't be doing. I'd like to not focus the discussion here, but the logic is simple: compared to player-started factions, where the world is your oyster, Houses provide a mold/structure and most players will attempt to be good actors within that. Humans, at our core, are just big apes following breadcrumbs of incentives. As much as we want to beat our chests and say "The Houses are what the Players make them", most players want to color inside the lines and feel like they're "doing a good job". And yes, DMs set those lines (nelly's leadership principle #1: those with the breadcrumbs set the rules). TO BE CLEAR: I don't think there's anything wrong with this! But it's a factor to consider into the current landscape, and ultimately feeds into my recommendation.

3. Incentives for Houses are currently at an all-time low.  I'll break the core incentives into the following categories, with my perception of their current "status":
- DM support: medium, a good bit of DM activity lately and the Houses definitely are not unsupported (worth juxtaposing this with player run initiatives that are also at a "medium" status indicator, so while sufficient and enjoyable, it is not an "edge" of being in a House)
- PC concept "bank" of ideas: low, per my above explanation, I believe the obvious concepts are dried up by now and players will have to dig deeper to interest themselves in a concept
- Mechanical power: low, the recent faction store nerfs have made many of the pieces much less powerful than found or craftable equiment. You may be thinking, "Well, Nelly! No way - the previous power of the retainer gear was game breaking and stupid to have everyone and their mom run around with OP gear." Yes, I agree, having high caliber loot available to anyone with 900 gp is dumb & this is why I will later propose application-only access to rate-limit these items in the economy.
- Team/community: low, I believe the above factors are causing the dearth of players, but team momentum/size in-of-itself is a key factor. In the start-up world we have a phrase "the flywheel effect" (an upward spiral of momentum, where the act of having momentum in the market begets more momentum in the market) -- what's happening with the Houses at the moment is the opposite of this, goofily dubbed "the doom loop". Lack of momentum is causing a downward spiral that only begets more lack of momentum.

All-in-all, if you're looking to join a House vs. start your own initiative or float, there is very little incentive to join a House (and in fact it is less lucrative at this time). The more exciting and rewarding option, by far, is to do your own thing, ring run, (or float without consequence). If you join a House, you will be staring down the barrel of limited fresh PC concepts left, the same amount of DM support as player-led factions, faction gear that is just OK, and your House numbers will be low.

Proposed solution
1. Make retainer gear strong - either by restoring it to what it was, or bolstering what it is today. We can pretend this doesn't matter. It absolutely does impact player's desire to play within factions (especially when incentives are low, per my above). If we want retainers to be an actual force for their House, and to be at least somewhat feared in the Ward as an authority figure to the wandering masses/peasant PCs, then we need to give them highly sought-after and exclusive tools to enable that. Besides, it's not like the Houses are bursting with players right now and this is going to break any balance (so long as it's controlled, e.g., app only). Make a wanderer/floater/non-affiliated PC spitting at a retainer something they should be scared of. It used to be this way, and I think making retainers have an edge mechanically is the way to get us back there.

2. Make Houses app only - this will force individuals to think (if even for a second) about their concepts and goals, which should help grow the "PC ideas" metric. It will also, in theory, give some awareness to DMs about the motives of House PCs before they join, which may help provide a slight advantage on the "DM support" metric. Lastly, it will help rate limit access to the proposed stronger retainer gear (which I think in of itself will provide benefit).

My solution, in theory, should improve PC concepts/ideas, DM support for those PCs by providing awareness, improving mechanical incentives for players to ideate/push agendas for the House (positive feedback loop into the PC concepts/ideas and DM support), which should lift us (hopefully) out of our "doom loop" of team sizes and push up numbers. Now, of course, with this suggestion the Houses will not end up with 8+ large man sizes again, but I think they are more likely to have a core set of 3-5 key PCs pushing meaningful things that lead to a more interesting world for us all (and will minimally be better than the 0-1 levels we have now).

Thanks for coming to my TED talk. =)

[Diabl0658]

I agree with the "Doom Loop" observation. I was in Glitt not too long ago on a high conflict paladin, and the fact that I had so few allies online sapped my will to play the PC. Houses come with alot of restrictions, and you cannot easily abandon them when activity drops low without also abandoning your PC. It would be nice to balance this with additional perks and mechanical support.

Players enjoy mechanical boosts, and maybe thats not such an awful thing.

[Scitus]

I Don't particularly see the need for house gear to be more powerful, people looking to join the houses for gear aren't the people representing the houses well in the setting.

But I do agree with an application to join the houses, membership inside the houses should be a bit more tailored, but the only reason I suggest an application is combined with the ability for retainers to met law out in the ward without the supervision of a DM.

On my retainers, time and time again, people flouted the law, because they knew without DM oversight there could be no repercussions. You can't set tariffs, you can't fine someone, you can't arrest someone.  Ultimately all that ends up happening is murder, just killing. As the only major form of conflict, because it only requires a DM to be present at some time near the other person, not at the point of a law violation.

as a consequence of murder culture all other forms of social conflict also get tossed to the wayside. Why convene a council to pass a law no one can enforce? when you can just kill them. Why try to make an alliance with another house when it's members will soon die and be replaced by people who have no connection or interest in the diplomacy you were working on. The Ward feels less like a Feudal society and more like the wild west. There is an appeal to the threat of danger and death, but it's so common and banal that it ruins all the other forms of conflict. There is no social conflict, no cultural conflict, no economic conflict. Only Physical violence to prove power. And that definitely has it's place but I think it's to the detriment of the setting as a whole.

With the Ward being an amorphous blob which can shift and warp as you desire. Only the people able to enforce their will through conflict can shape it, and so the strongest people with the biggest groups rule the roost until someone dies and it collapses and the next group does. I think this is stifling. I think the appeal of the major houses is that they work to balance each other out in an uneasy peace. But when killing is the only way to make any kind of change, you get moonspear totally being wiped out again, or glitt having 1 person on staff because no one wants to join a "Losing" faction. Giving retainers more powers, not more mechanical power, would improve the ability to have a wide spectrum of conflict.

That's my thoughts anyway.

[TsunamiWombat]

I don't think House gear is weak, you just have to pay for FP now.

Retainers being non-app is part of the charm as i've always seen it. You are literally some guy recruited off the street. The fact it's very little different from a gang is part of the point. The houses are just Gangs and Syndicates that dress themselves up posh and rely on a steady stream of stupid violent young people with no prospects (aka adventurers) to be their muscle. The city is anarchy. Law is an illusion. The ward is an island surrounded by literal and figurative shit. Never forget you are Visigoth's squatting in the burned out remains of Rome. The real issue is you can't quit, but then that's part of being in a gang isn't it? No way out but a beating or a coffin.

Being in a house only restricts your RP as much as you let it. If you wanna hang with changelings, just keep it on the DL. Someone accuses you? Accuse them back. Duel them. Don't like the houses actions? Sounds like an IC conflict, quit.

Houses ARE NOT the end all be all of server involvement, conflict, plot or development. They're tools for that.

[VanillaPudding]

I agree with applications for factions and stronger faction loot, I always have in fact. I think associations have a great place in the world (blackjacks and otherwise) but feel like they allowed concepts to be more watered down and less thought out. However, people do not enjoy waiting on applications and this would vastly increase the amount of them for the DMs to handle.


As for the rest of the post, people will gravitate towards what is fun and active in their typically limited play times. Very few people want to play alone or wait five days for their friend to log in, or whatever else might be happening due to real life, and so they move on to what is available at that time. It is a pretty normal ebb and flow of how EFU and other servers work. There is a rather large number of characters right now sitting on shelves that log in sparsely or for events but otherwise are busy / not in game.  So not only are said players not playing something in what I' would call the "core" of activity, but that is not appealing to try and follow OR conflict against for most people and so they simply avoid those places.


This is a pretty rare time where the "changelings" have the upper hand and I truly do not think the core of the setting needs to be changed to adapt to it (The houses were literally JUST full of people a month ago with or without the prestige changes, though admittedly the prestige stores are missing support for a lot of character classes and probably got balanced slightly too far in the "nerf" direction). If players / characters do not like it then they have the luxury on EFU to hop in game and change it with their own agendas. The best part is that the established culture of the Peerage and principles of the setting really enforce this idea, so anyone who actively hops out there to work against the current (and brief) status quo will likely be noticed and rewarded.

That is literally the best part of EFU is that it allows players to shape these things themselves and that it does not need DMs to oversee the powerful choice of killing off villains / enemies of note / deserving folks. Click red.

[TsunamiWombat]

Do changelings even have the upper hand? They have the same "upper hand" they have always had, which is "see you in the woods". And this is the age old problem of fighting an insurgency hiding in the wilderness. Except the insurgents can turn into animals and shit.

[Lalena Steele]

I would support some sort of app for retainership  if only because I would like folks making a retainer/joining houses to be doing so on PCs that they intend to be playing for a while. 

I've seen it happen quite a few times where people join a house, get help gaining faction gear, then just abandon the PC without a word. Joining retainership is supposed to be a life oath so it should feel a bit like that, unless we are to believe these retainers all get eaten upon their first night sleeping in their house [we could start rumors that there are cannibals feeding of fresh retainers that won't be missed I guess, which could be its own horror/conflict].

[putrid_plum]

I think the lack of DM factions for COR has really hurt the setting.  I do think associations have their place but I truly believe the noble houses being application factions would really better the houses and the server.

Of course this is my opinion.

[Iconoclast]

So when I compare the Houses to the factions of the past, there seems to be a bit of a bottleneck now that I can't quite put my finger on. First feeling is because with the houses a lot of Peerage intermural RP revolves around a churning tit for tat, that you can theoretically become a Retainer on day 1 of making your character, or that it is pushed by NPCs rather than an intangible ideal. But here we go with my brainspew.

Spellguard/Watch/Society - The holy trinity in my eyes. Each faction had a "cadet" branch available for non-app players, but the application side of the faction really opened things up and put the faction in perspective. Even simply the appearance carried social weight that doesn't feel the same with the Houses, maybe only touched on by veteran retainers. The faction conflict was real, it wasn't as deadly but  it had eyes far beyond (or deliberately within) the hub. You might have taken orders from NPCs, but in all 3 you FOUGHT for an idea.

Aberdenn/Caermyn/Order/Conclave - Aberdenn and Caermyn didn't need an app and had much of the Hatfield/McCoy vibe that the Houses have, but maybe the duality allowed it to be more concentrated. The Order and Conclave were marked by a cause more than a grudge, and had a really imposing appearance because of it. This set up created a balance, where if you wanted to non-app grudge match you could, or you could apply to be part of the larger than life organizations. I didn't play EFUM as much as the others, but I also have few gripes about it.

Stygian/Sons/Conclave/Order - Back in the day when all factions required applications and kids got yelled at for playing stick ball on the lawn. Each of these had a cause, and an impressive swagger of their own. Not only did you need to pass your application but you really had to work to earn it IG as well. If you wanted a non-app faction you had to find one or make it up yourself. This era really pushed personal projects that weren't as dependent on DM oversight, and you worked around the major factions, not under them. EFUA in my eyes truly had the most dynamic player factions.

[efuincarnatereturns]

Played a Retainer before the gear nerf and after, and the gear is def nerfed.  In the end though, that is minor due to the ease of joining a house .   Free resting, storeage, sometimes plus 10 crafting stations, safe haven behind locked doors is a thing alot of non retainers do not enjoy..tho alot of recent game mods have made that less important then in the past..
Story telling matters.  I hate apps as I am lazy but I like Lallena have seen a dirth of recruits join a house get aid in getting faction gear and then just go poof., for whatever reason.  I think making apping to join a House may be appropriate. ...but..only if the Major Houses had more to offer in conflict resolution-   PVP unsupervised for Retainers in the Ward when enforcing "laws, tariffs, council rulings, etc  I think this used to be a thing, or maybe folks just ignroed the DM Present rule alot in the past........  non FD pvp of course,  FD should always have a DM about.   The app would hopefully limit the number of Retainers to those seeking a longer term concept and perhaps naive in my thinking but also prevent abuse of such a   "law enforcement roll".     

But wtf do I know, perhaps the decline of the Ward is exactly as intended as we approach what feels like doomsday, just stateing my lived truth! .   Truly it is playing with a group that makes efu fun,  as VP said above.   Maybe apps would just make the Ward retainer population even less..  ok..old man rant over.