Request For Feedback

[Sanvean]

Here's an idea that we're currently tossing around on the staff board: having staff members rotate clan responsiblities on a regular basis.  One form might be this:

Every six months, one swaps clans.  This would be staggered so when a new person came on board for a clan, there would be someone else working with them that had been working with the clan for three months already, that would be able to get them up to speed.

Pros of the idea, as I see it:

Avoids a problem with staff members getting overly attached to and protective of clans, which sometimes leads to dissension and possible plotlines getting discarded.
Brings a diversity of talents to the running of clan: one staff member may want to revamp the docs, another to build a bunch of NPCs, another to create interesting plotline, setc.
Allows staff to expand their overall knowledge of the game.
Allows staff to understand the dynamics and special considerations of other clans better when interacting.
Facilitates some standardization in the way various clans are handled.

Cons:
Loss of continuity and ability to oversee longterm plotlines from start to finish.
Adminstrative work in setting up change schedule.
Creates difficulties as far as not running avatars in your own clan is involved.
Creates work in the form of having to come up to speed on a clan.
Loss of a feeling of clan "ownership".
Risk of people being assigned to clans they don't particularly care for.
May lead to too many changes in clans as they shift from one set of hands to another.

So here's the question: what reservations or hopes regarding this idea would you have from the player side of things?

[Desertman (not logged in)]

I dont really care for this idea. While it offers alot of staff pro's I see quiet a few player cons. If I was a clan Leutenant and I had been working with the same IMM for two months and things were running very smoothly, I would be a bit odd for me to continue my ideas in the same format with this new IMM...what if the new IMM hates the direction you have been going for two months and dosent agree the way the last IMM did? I dont really care for the idea.

[Agent_137]

I think a longer rotation time would somewhat lessen the cons, though not eliminate them.

I also think it's worth a try. If everyone comes to hate it, put them back with their original clans.

[Morfeus]

I honestly do not like this idea at all. I was in a clan which changed IMMs more than once during time I played in it (with a very long lived character), and it was very awkward for me as a player. The new IMM needed time to learn details about the clan, needed time to learn about current plots and also about my reasoning for actions of my character, sometime they dislike ideas which previous IMM liked, NPCs suddenly acted differently, didn't know about things they used to know before...
Therefore however I see some pros for this idea, I do not like it.

[drunken bard]

Personally, I am strongly against such an idea.

I have been involved in clans who have gone through multiple imm swaps in the duration of my PC. I've seen the effect this has (a new imm a month for Kadius back in '97? horror). As it stands now (and please, no one on staff take this the wrong way, it is not an accusation) you have a good many imms running clans who really don't know a lot about the clan. I've had clan imms ask me for information about clans I was in in the past. This is mostly the case when you find staff members taking charge of a clan. There's a long growing period, and things can grow stagnant in that time. Less gets done. Things goals/plots get sidetracked if not dropped all together. IC conflict come up because one staff member has a different notion of running a clan than another (I remember a case where a new staff member came on to a clan I was in, and had to completely rework a 6 month character because they wanted things done differently). And personally, even with the lesser amount of swapping that occurs now, I think it has been detrimental. Most clans no longer have a sense of "clan"... they're just jobs. Way to get food and coin.

Some of the pros you mentioned for going to a higher swapping system.... Staff members getting attached and protective. I think a degree of this is healthy. In the last few years, there seems to be very little interaction/conflict between clans, partly due to clans having multiple imms and all these imms in any clans that have interaction needing to agree on things... I think this has hurt the game. Again, no sense of "clan". Get some competition going, get some conflict going. I loved it back when clans had more of a sense of being a single entity.

Diversity... I touched on that earlier. A problem revamping things can often throw a major wrench in the works.

Overall game knowledge... Important, yes. But I would say that having detailed knowledge of the clan you are running is far, far more important.

Standardization... I think that's a pretty good thing, to a degree. Though I would think it would be easier to do this with long term clan imms, than short.

Cons....

Loss of continuity... I think this is a big thing. Even with the degree of period restructuring we have now, there seems to be a big lack of "the greater picture"

Administration, avatars, coming up to speed... I think it's safe to say that this process will take, at the minimum, several weeks. And likely a couple of months to get going in full. Lots of lost time.

Ownership... thumbs up, as mentioned above.

Assigned to a clan they don't care for... I was once in a clan where I knew the imm didn't want to be there. Emails went unanswered, requests left pending, to the point where clan members were in serious trouble.

Too many changes... I've seen it happen again and again. Every time a new imm takes over, they have at least a couple ideas, things they'd like to see done differently. Very very jolting to established clan members.

[Sanvean]

Just to clarify because of one of your objections - each clan would have a minimum of two staff associated with it, so at the time a new staff member came on board, there would already be someone in place who had been there for three months.  Wanted to make sure that's clear.

[EvilRoeSlade]

Certainly I've witnessed the harmful effects of a staff member getting too attached to a clan (No one messes with KURAC!) and thus refusing to hear out complaints of player twinkishness and allowing it to run rampant, and even in some cases allowing the use of NPCs to facilitate PKing, an activity that most clans disallow for very good reasons.

Furthermore, I've been playing Armageddon for five years, and there are some immortals who have been attached to the same clan for that entire period of time and probably longer.  Change helps a clan grow, and I would say that in this case, it's no different.

Six months might be slightly too short a period of time.  Eight perhaps?

This idea gets a big thumbs up from me.

[LoD]

I see advantages to this in another format.

I am with Desertman that a 6 month rotation that completely changed the face of the Imm Staff behind your clan would lead to a lot of potential arguements between the old and new Imm-Player administrational styles.

However, I think a system like this that involved some kind of overlap might be better.  Perhaps something like:

Imm A & B run House Salarr and the Guild together.
(6) Months Pass : Imm B leaves and Imm C becomes new clan Imm.
Imm A & C run House Salarr and the Guild together.
(6) Months Pass : Imm A leaves and Imm D becomes new clan Imm.
Imm C & D run House Salarr and the Guild together.

That would allow you to have a consistent Imm for at least 1 year and the new Imm would be able to have something of a mentor from soneone who had been working with the clan for 6 months already and can describe what is going on, what direction they are going, etc...

-LoD

[Tamarin]

I'm in love with my current clan imm, and if you take her from me, I'm going to throw a hissy fit.

If that weren't the case, then yeah I'd probably support this.

[mansa]

Immortals wouldn't know the 'characters' as well as they would if they have been watching them for a full year.

This problem, I think, will be helped with the latest Biography feature.  Long term players will now have a massive huge feature to help those immortals just switched over to their new clans.  But it still is a major problem.

New immortals will have a conflict with current characters, when current characters -know more- than immortals with regards to the clans.

The only way to help this is to have better modes of communication between players and staff.


However.

I love this idea.

[Morfeus]

Well, I am trying to imagine the situation: I app for a sponsored role, two IMMs agree with my ideas. I start. One of IMMs leaves three weeks after I start, new IMM doesn't like my ideas at all. Six months later the second IMM leaves as well and now both of IMMs dislike the concept I run....

There is one more problem I see: some IMMs are on only in peaks, some are not. I'd not like to see suddenly being without support of NPCs just because the IMM who used to help me in clan suddenly left.

[Marauder Moe]

As you said, each clan tends to have two immortals.  Each immortal also seems to mange two clans at a time as well.

Perhaps a hybrid system might be better?  Each immortal has one permanent clan they're responsible for and one rotational clan that changes every few months.  This way you have both the consistency of a permanent immortal but also the 'breath of fresh air' new ideas and such from the rotational immortal.

[Delirium]

A more detailed list later, but one of the major cons for me is a loss of continuity.  

Especially as long-lived players in a clan, you find that in a lot of ways, your truly long term relationships end up being with NPCs.  I've already seen this happen in some respects with NPC guards that my character befriended along with the person they guarded - once that PC stops using that NPC, it's like your relationship with that NPC never existed.  You develop some history and a connection with the roleplay of a certain animated character or superior that is usually handled by a specific immortal, and that strikes me as difficult to continue with a completely different immortal without losing something.  There might be inside jokes or past events that you refer to and the new immortal has to go "wait, I'm not sure I knew about this yet" or maybe the NPC has a shift in attitude or whatever, and probably unavoidably, a shift in playstyle.  Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal to most people, but I thought it was worth bringing up, since, whether NPC or PC, if they are a part of your character's story, it makes it awkward and/or difficult when they get a "reworking" so to speak.

[Morfeus]

As you said, each clan tends to have two immortals.  Each immortal also seems to mange two clans at a time as well.

Perhaps a hybrid system might be better?  Each immortal has one permanent clan they're responsible for and one rotational clan that changes every few months.  This way you have both the consistency of a permanent immortal but also the 'breath of fresh air' new ideas and such from the rotational immortal.

Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the best ones.

[Cuusardo]

I don't like the idea of rotating clans, and I base this on my personal experience.  It seems to me that a clan will run much more smoothly if the same IMM(s) are in charge of it.  (Yes, I know IMMs can come and go.  That's a whole different story.)

 I was in a clan with a long lived PC that came to be a leader.  The same IMM was in charge of that clan for most of the time that I was in it, and then suddenly that IMM left, and someone else took over.  It was quite frustrating, for several reasons.

:arrow: Npcs were being roleplayed differently.  It is extremely jarring to have a long standing rapport of a certain type with an NPC, and then one day the NPC has a completely different personality.  This disrupts game play, and can make adjustment very difficult.

:arrow: The new IMMs had little to no idea what the clan's PCs had done and accomplished in the past  I had to send an email to them with a whole huge list of things my PC had done, what its goals were, etc, etc because the new IMMs had no idea.

:arrow: And there's the simple fact that no two IMMs will run a clan the same way.  The lack of consistency hinders roleplay, because all the PCs are trying to catch up to what the IMMs are doing, and the IMMs are trying to catch up to what the PCs have been doing.

In my opinion, consistency is the key to keeping clans running smoothly.  Change is very difficult for both the players and the IMMs.

[amoeba]

I would give qualified support of this.   I think it would be imparitive to have overlapping imm support, where the shifts were staggered in and out so that there would always be an IMM who was well filled in on the history and plots.

Some advantages I would think would be breaking up some of the enivitable player/IMM cliques that crop up.  It is human nature for similar views and personalities to connect, but long term this -can- have a detrimental effect on the game and other players.  I'm not citing any particular incidents that I know of, but it is possible for some players to develop a close relationship with thier clan IMMs and find themselves falling into the jucier of plots more often.  Nothing nefarious here, just human nature.

It has also bothered me to not see NPC leadership aging and moving on as would happen in real life.  Moving IMMs in and out of the clans, can and in some ways should include rotating the NPCs out of power.  Yes this means more documentation work, but I think the outcome is worth it.

Putting new people in also can revitalize enthusiasm.  New challanges, new ideas.   I do dislike hard and fast rules though. If the clan is on a particular upswing, upseting the cart by slamming a new IMM in can do more harm than good, so the plan needs considerable flexiblity.

[moab]

Change is good and as long as there is the switching of one of the pair of staff at a time (as Sanvean mentioned), I think this is good.

[Malifaxis]

I would love to see a staggered shifting, with one staffer being in for a full year, so that new staff can rotate in and learn all the plotlines, etc that are currently happening.

Multiple times (like at least five) I have joined a clan, become part of SomethingAwesome(tm) and then suddenly had the staffer who was the main force of that SA(tm) bail due to RL problems... and no one knew what the heck was going on.

I am very much for this idea, but communication is essential.

[ale six]

I also don't like this because of the continuity issue.

While I wouldn't mind more of a "collective" approach to clan management to help the times when some imms are unavailable, I think that all clans should still have primary staffers who can be the go-to people and the ones who control NPC animations, etc.

Lots of other people have posted dissents that I mostly agree with.

Maybe, if more staff involvement across all clans was desired, the way clan reporting is done could be changed? For example, instead of having Vanth be the only contact for House Nenyuk, make a housenenyuk@armageddon.org email address for people to send reports/questions/etc too. Vanth would still be the primary staffer for Nenyuk, but if Naiona, Sanvean, and Halaster wanted to help out too, they could add themselves to the list and know what was going on. If Vanth was too busy to log in for two weeks, other people keeping tabs on Nenyuk could still fill in.

That sounds like a lot more backend work on you guys' part, and it may not really address the reasons this was proposed for... but anyway, I wouldn't like such a fluctuating staff.

[buzz]

Maybe, if more staff involvement across all clans was desired, the way clan reporting is done could be changed? For example, instead of having Vanth be the only contact for House Nenyuk, make a housenenyuk@armageddon.org email address for people to send reports/questions/etc too. Vanth would still be the primary staffer for Nenyuk, but if Naiona, Sanvean, and Halaster wanted to help out too, they could add themselves to the list and know what was going on. If Vanth was too busy to log in for two weeks, other people keeping tabs on Nenyuk could still fill in.

While it's a minor derailment, I love this idea.  And I think it'd be absolutely necessary for Sanvean's idea.  I don't remember to cc: the right people normally, especially when other clans are involved.  How the hell would I be expected to remember, for example, that Adhira isn't the Atrium imm any more, when I'm playing in Salarr?

As for the idea in general ... Other people have said what I would.  The change in styles and discontinuity would concern me.

[Morfeus]

I like alesix' idea, but I don't think it solves the main trouble - I would not expect the new IMM is going to read -all- emails on that adress. Not even all emails from last half-year. Thinking about it, even emails from last two weeks might be too much.

[da mitey warrior]

I think it'd be a good thing.  New staff, like new players, breaths life into clans and bring new ideas and energy.   Also, having a finite time to run the clan might be good, since they'll know they only have a limited time to get things done.  Fewer big, unworkable projects and more insentive to get smaller plots off the ground quicker!

I've been in clans where the Imm has changed and it hasn't been a big deal.  I'd really recomend that new imms make a new supervisor npc whenever possible, because using it's wierd to have well known npcs go through wild personality changes.  

The average life of a PC, even a sponsored role in an clan, is only about 3 months anyways.  So it's not like there'll be a great deal of upheaval in most PC's lives.

[marko]

I would give this idea qualified support so long as there were better procedures followed to insure continuality.  These procedures would include more information recorded about what the Clan PCs have been doing - perhaps some sort of wikki / blog for each clan where PC Reports get filed along with immortal responses.

One of my concerns is that some people don't quite "get" certain clans so there may be moments of confusion and apparent "wrongness" about how certain interactions are handled at the start.  This tends to happen not so much because of knowledge or lack thereof but of personality.  I know there are some roles that I just plain suck at and some roles I completely excel at.  The same goes for handling clans.  Having a second imm watching and probably some highlord oversight would mitigate this and it would probably vanish over time.

There is a continual belief amongst many players that certain clans are sacrosanct and inviolate.  This type of yearly rotation would certainly help to alleviate that belief.  

Overall - I believe that if there was some sort of backend that recorded events (even minor events) within a clan so a new imm can review them and get up to date quickly then this rotation could work out great.  I will admit to having some reservations about clans losing imms that _really_ know them inside and out for someone fresh to the clan - but... I think overall it might be for the better.

[Cuusardo]

The average life of a PC, even a sponsored role in an clan, is only about 3 months anyways.  So it's not like there'll be a great deal of upheaval in most PC's lives.

I don't think this is true at all.

[Morfeus]

The average life of a PC, even a sponsored role in an clan, is only about 3 months anyways.  So it's not like there'll be a great deal of upheaval in most PC's lives.

I don't think this is true at all.

I was just thinking - I am very off average then.  :twisted: