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Post by Stal on Jun 23, 2009 11:00:14 GMT -5
Cyborg, you're missing the point: I disagree with Hunty's very premise and think a Jack of All Trades is just fine. And I also think these choices should be left to the individual and not someone to decide for you.
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Post by Cyborg on Jun 23, 2009 11:04:36 GMT -5
Stal you're missing the point. A Jack of All Trades isn't a very good idea, the 3 Guild Limit has been fine, from when you were active through the time you've done absolutely nothing in the Guilds to now. It has worked fine, and is logical.
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Post by Stal on Jun 23, 2009 11:16:17 GMT -5
Stal you're missing the point. A Jack of All Trades isn't a very good idea, the 3 Guild Limit has been fine, from when you were active through the time you've done absolutely nothing in the Guilds to now. It has worked fine, and is logical. The Jack of all Trades is only bad if you don't like it. That's the one thing you don't know about me, Cyborg... I tend to BE a Jack of All Trades. I certainly understand the tradeoffs, but I enjoy it. So you can't tell me it's a bad idea--that's just your opinion on the matter. And again, I'll point out that yes, that limit HAS existed since the start. And all those things since the start have done a wonderful job at keeping the guilds healthy and active, yes? So I'm not sure one can argue that it has worked fine. And even if it is a bad idea--you should let people make that mistake themselves. Give people credit and freedom to make their own choices. The argument being used to justify the Limit of 3 is the same kind of argument I could make saying a Limit of 1. How would you feel if I told you that you could only be in one Guild because I thought it was a bad idea to be in any more than that? EDIT -- In fact, that sounds like an excellent position for me. I would agree with Hunty and stand by her "it's a bad idea" position if everyone was simply limited to only one guild (and Hunty, I am aware you're only in one, that hasn't gone by me). And I think even that could help with Guild Activeness. So it's either total freedom to choose for me, or one guild and one guild only. To soften the one-guild thing, it might be easier to look at Wolf's idea for Alliances that go beyond Guild boundaries.971 |
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Post by Cyborg on Jun 23, 2009 15:22:51 GMT -5
See Stal, this is why I called you a bigot. The Jack of All Trades in this case is a bad idea. In the end it doesn't do much, if anything good for Guild activity. As for you're theory of the one guild this is what I have to say. Three Guild limit is reasonable, it allows a person to choose their three favourites, and make completely different characters without going out of control. However one guild allows very little, only one choice of guild, very little character differentiation and such. On the opposite extreme however, too many guilds, gives too much, baically no limits, which will sooner or later turn into utter chaos.
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Post by Stal on Jun 23, 2009 15:42:31 GMT -5
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. "
Cyborg, do try to keep this discussion civil without tossing around names. Hunty and I may disagree, for example, but we certainly don't call each other names.
And you haven't made any logical basis for your claims. You keep explaining how you see things, but you have nothing to back it up. No evidence. No proof. Even now you tell me that the fact I enjoy Jack of All Trades is a "bad idea" but you don't have anything to back that up. You have nothing to support that claim and are simply dismissive of the opinions of other people.
What you DO have is a history of these restrictions and the point you're at now--which doesn't do a good job at showing how these things are good for the guilds.
These changes will not affect you. If you think three guilds is fine, then fine, practice that yourself. If I want to do four guilds, that shouldn't be up for you to decide. That should be for me. What business of yours is it about what I choose to do?
If you want to make a logical basis for restrictions, then the only logical one to go for is one guild alone: that'll commit people to exactly what they want. There'll be no split interest and pure specialization. That's an efficient way of doing things.
But if you want people to have the freedom for character differentiation, for growth, etc, and want variety, then three is as arbitrary as four, or as two. It can be any number. But if you're going to let people have variety, then they should be left alone to decide just what they want to get involved with. You keep saying it's a bad idea, but you have nothing to show that aside from your claims.
Me? There's a very logical basis for me saying that people should be free to choose for themselves. It's one of the tenants of economics, known as "The Invisible Hand". On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for strict specialization. Both of those have a lot going for them.
What is bad for the guilds, exactly? Wouldn't it be better for Guilds to let people make their own choices in the guild framework, and to do what makes them happy? Whether that's sticking in one guild as Hunty does, or wanting to keep up with them all? If people want to do that, and you've got restrictions in the way, I'd say that's bad for the guilds--it's stopping people from getting a fuller enjoyment from them. It's what we'd call a "market failure" in economics.
Bad for guilds, good for guilds, isn't that all based in the eye of the beholder? In which case, shouldn't it be based on what people want? And what's "good for the guilds" will be done by the choices that people make. What's good for guilds will prevail. But imposing these restrictions is saying that what YOU think is good for guilds is prevailing and more important than what people would want to do.971
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Post by Spoon on Jun 23, 2009 15:45:29 GMT -5
See Stal, this is why I called you a bigot. The Jack of All Trades in this case is a bad idea. In the end it doesn't do much, if anything good for Guild activity. As for you're theory of the one guild this is what I have to say. Three Guild limit is reasonable, it allows a person to choose their three favourites, and make completely different characters without going out of control. However one guild allows very little, only one choice of guild, very little character differentiation and such. On the opposite extreme however, too many guilds, gives too much, baically no limits, which will sooner or later turn into utter chaos. As somebody who I guess would be called a 'swing voter' - somebody who isn't currently in a guild, but might be interested in joining one in the future after seeing how everything ends up panning out, as well as somebody who's been following this debate for a while, I thought I might step in with my view at this point. To be honest, I think that saying something is a bad idea for other people because you don't think it would work for you is rather restrictive - if somebody can take an active role in four guilds, then so be it. I don't see why three would need to be a rigidly-stuck-to limit, if there's no good reason why, for example, four guilds would be entirely unworkable. As for new guilds - if the right idea came up, I'd definitely be enthusiastic to go for something like that. Part of the problem, I find, is that the Guilds have always struck me (rightly or wrongly) as a very large dedication - you can either be very actively involved, or not involved at all. Whether or not that is the case is another matter - it's certainly how I as an outsider perceive it. I also find it the case that, because they have all, to a certain extent, earned their place through a massive back catalogue of history and the suchlike, I know I would feel intimidated joining a really large, well-established guild such as the ones that currently exist. That, combined with the fact that no one of the six guilds that currently exist are ones that really strongly appeal to me, would make me slightly less nervous about joining a new guild - at least that way, there would be less of the "help, I'm joining a big scary established guild" factor. But I think that any new guild would certainly benefit, if not require, help from other more regular guild members, be it with them having a character as a member, or simply offering advice in a more neutral role. And I wouldn't want a rule to be set in place that would essentially prevent anybody currently already in three guilds to offer help to the groups that would need it. (I'm sure that a lot of what I've said about the Guilds is inaccurate or based on whimsy, and, in particular, the comraderie and spirit of the Guilds in the snapshot I have seen of them is very impressive, and I certainly wouldn't want any changes that are made to cause that to change - but it's mostly for these reasons, irrational or otherwise, that I haven't joined a guild, and I felt that, since it seems that they need a boost in membership, that I would offer my reasons for, as of yet, not joining, in case that proved useful in the decision-making process). |
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Post by Huntress on Jun 23, 2009 15:56:55 GMT -5
So, all agreed to disagree? xD
It might be my bad memory, but I haven't noticed anyone actually being limited by the rules in place. I've yet to hear talk a la 'dang, I'd really like to join one more guild but I can't'. So I see zero connection between our poor ded guilds and the guild rules. Heck, I don't see why the rules are under discussion in the first place, because they've really had no de facto impact ever since the guilds started >> New guild ideas have been turned down, yes, but they've been turned down because the concepts weren't fit to be guilds, not because there weren't enough people to join the guild. This is a kind of 'fix what ain't broken' discussion. The guilds are dead because of the general lack of ideas and initiative, not because of the rules. I'd rather see which way the guilds start going after the initial merging before radically rearranging the underlying structure like that; for no apparent reason, no less.
...granted, I would be interested to see what the place might look like if the limits for guild creation were to be dropped. Come to think of it, even those limits were actually dropped ages back. The Invisible Guild, anyone? It entered our canon months ago. I imagine that if someone entered the guild activities and roleplays claiming that they're from the little know Thieves/Assassins/Clocksmiths/Candlemakers Guild, and stick to it, it wouldn't be a problem whatsoever - especially now that we're planning to drop the participant limits in guild roleplays. Join in, say who you are, and from that point forth it'll be your actions that determine whether or not we'll take you seriously.
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Post by Stal on Jun 23, 2009 16:06:34 GMT -5
That's kind of one of my points, Hunty. XD That if these rules work then people will naturally gravitate towards that sort of thing. So there's not much of a point in having the rules. Of course, if they are restrictive (perhaps holding people back from joining to begin with) then you'll see some changes.
This has come up because of the re-tooling of Guilds. Your claim as to the lack of new guilds is lacking, because I did see one that was simply shot down (and a person thus not participating in guilds) because some people weren't interested or felt it overlapped. Guild setting and mental ideas surrounding them actually do matter a lot to others, even if you don't necessarily think that Pirates is strictly piracy setting. And as I pointed out, I may very well want to have Stalos in two and Kaizer in two others *shrug*
May as well remove these rules and just see what happens, yes? And if, as you're saying, it's not going to change anything then why not remove 'em anyway, since it doesn't matter. The only point in keeping those rules would be if you somehow thought removing them would result in the death of the guilds, but I have my serious doubts about that happening.
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Post by Cyborg on Jun 23, 2009 16:08:13 GMT -5
Hunty, you're right, all agreed to disagree. I personally disagree with changing the guilds at all.
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Post by Huntress on Jun 23, 2009 18:00:45 GMT -5
That's kind of one of my points, Hunty. XD That if these rules work then people will naturally gravitate towards that sort of thing. So there's not much of a point in having the rules. Of course, if they are restrictive (perhaps holding people back from joining to begin with) then you'll see some changes. This has come up because of the re-tooling of Guilds. Your claim as to the lack of new guilds is lacking, because I did see one that was simply shot down (and a person thus not participating in guilds) because some people weren't interested or felt it overlapped. Guild setting and mental ideas surrounding them actually do matter a lot to others, even if you don't necessarily think that Pirates is strictly piracy setting. And as I pointed out, I may very well want to have Stalos in two and Kaizer in two others *shrug* May as well remove these rules and just see what happens, yes? And if, as you're saying, it's not going to change anything then why not remove 'em anyway, since it doesn't matter. The only point in keeping those rules would be if you somehow thought removing them would result in the death of the guilds, but I have my serious doubts about that happening. Well, that's the entire thing. At this point it rather looks like the entire discussion was pulled out of thin air. If I'd seen people in three guilds saying 'I'd really like to join a fourth guild', then I'd give it a thought, but right now I see it as a non-issue. Since that hasn't been brought up by any of the fiftysomething people who've been active in the guilds over the years, I'm seeing no cons and only pros for that rule (the already-mentioned perception of rivalries: doesn't exactly fly well if we have six rivalling guilds and a rule that says "Join any and all of them if you like ^^". It's the matter of reputation.) I remember maybe three new guild suggestions that were shot down for various reasons... I imagine the one you mean is Kopa's sky pirate idea? We told her that she's free to run that within the framework of the Pirate guild, and she happily joined, and then was never heard of again because that was in July and July was the height of the final battles of GW2, meaning the only thing that ever happened in the guilds at the time. Newcomers didn't generally stick around at that time, regardless of the guild. So it still seems to come down to fixing what's not actually broken. The gain is, at this point, purely theoretical (due to the lack of actual complaints up until now) whereas the loss is fairly apparent (turning the rivalry-based system of the guilds into a farce, for starters: even if it was up to the individual guilders to enforce, the actual rule being there would still make the whole picture look a tad weird and degrade the underlying narrative of the guilds, and now I'm repeating myself). ...very long story short, dead end. Well, dropping the limits on guild creation I can well see, because those rules don't make an obvious difference. Dropping the limits on joining guilds I still have a problem with, for reasons mentioned in a number of textwalls above. In the end I'll be able to work with anything that ends up happening, but now y'all know where I stand x3 |
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Post by Stal on Jun 23, 2009 18:18:05 GMT -5
These are all from last year: Ery, Evil Guild: ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=34597Dannie, Thieves: ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=35846Elcie, Mercs (successful creation) And of course Sky Pirates. So three guilds that could've been created and drawn new people in. But oh no, the restrictions made that unlikely.  And it wasn't thin air. Kat brought up that she had max'd hers. I said "That's something else, should we drop it?" Elcie and Killix said yes. I've said yes. Spoon has just said yes and given a good outsider's view. Keng appears approving of it. Wolf appears approving of it. Only you and Cyborg have voiced concerns against removing it. Other people have made statements that state they're up for removing restrictions and making Guilds more accessible for people and activity. You say it ain't broke. I say you don't realize its broke. I say you take off all the restrictions here, other than the basic of the guild framework. |
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Post by Enn on Jun 23, 2009 18:20:09 GMT -5
Can't we just set up a poll to vote on this?
Personally I'm for removing most restrictions in the guilds and seeing how it works out, for various reasons that mostly Stal has pointed out
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Post by Stal on Jun 23, 2009 18:22:15 GMT -5
Can't we just set up a poll to vote on this? Personally I'm for removing most restrictions in the guilds and seeing how it works out, for various reasons that mostly Stal has pointed out That's fine as far as I'm concerned. Let people make up their own minds on the matter of restrictions, etc. |
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Post by PFA on Jun 23, 2009 18:28:17 GMT -5
Maybe we could go for a happy medium and increase the allowed number of guilds depending on how many guilds pop up? XD; *I dunno just throwing out ideas*
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Post by Killix on Jun 23, 2009 18:35:55 GMT -5
I think the restrictions would work well with the guild's leader(s) deciding for themselves.
Meaning if the Chefs guild wants to exclude anyone from the Demolitioners Guild from joining, that's fine... while the Disco DJ guild might be okay with allowing anyone to join.
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