An idea to help criminals and shadow artists in Tuluk...

[Patuk]

Seeing as I tried apping lately, they are closed as well, yes.

[RogueGunslinger]

Christ. Why is city-elf a playable race again?

[Patuk]

I'd say something about celves being forty percent of any city's population for the umpteenth time, but even staff seem to be giving up on them by now. Joy.

[BadSkeelz]

Slaves are also 40% (or more) of a city state's population and yet they're not playable either 

[Patuk]

As irony would have it, Allanak's current pc slave population is more or less equal to its pc elf population, so there's that.

[Malken]

Christ. Why is city-elf a playable race again?

In my opinion, every single projects on Armageddon should come to an halt NOW and all the energy should be focused on getting a rinthi elf clan re-opened as soon as humanly possible. Staff constantly reminds us that the strength of an elf is in number and their "blood", that's what makes up for the weaknesses of an elf, but if there's no way to codedly play that out and no way for an elf to join a clan, then yes, might as well close them down for play. Fuck Kuraci and fuck the Byn, that's not what I make elves for when I (often drunkenly) create one.

(and please take this with a grain of salt and my usual cynic sense of humor, I know that each staff has different projects and areas of expertise, that's just me overblowing things to state how ridiculous I find the situation that 'rinthi most elves have been clanless for months now )

[Reiloth]

I figure that they were closed due to not seeing any Akai around IC.

I thought it was the other way around, they closed because nobody wanted to play them. (I don't think I'm wrong in saying that a majority of the playerbase really hates the idea of that clan).

I think it's probably a chicken vs egg argument -- They don't seem to be a popular clan, and when there isn't active leadership to accept what few city elves in Tuluk there are, it becomes a stalemate.

[Patuk]

I'd like to note that tribes aren't like GMH's. Your recruitment options are tiny, and the process is stringent. A death in a GMH never disrupts pcbusiness all that much, whereas an elf vanishing affects the clan much more.

[Reiloth]

Yeah, I totally agree.

It's as you describe for clans like the Akai and Jaxa -- It isn't as simple as replacing someone, if they go missing or happen to disappear. Some of those positions take years to get into. It seems every time an Akai dealer pops up, the clan is active for a minute, and then once that PC disappears or dies, the clan is inert. It would be nice to get more superfluous tribes in game -- Ones that can exist virtually and don't fill some grand niche in the same way the Akai do. Sure, they can sell some goods, but not on the same grand level the Akai do. Sure, they can fill some 'crime syndicate' niche, but not in the same grand way the Akai do. And so on.

[Patuk]

Well, yeah, but that'd require staff danctioning at least, and full-on suport at best, while currently support for c-elves is covered by Kurac and the byn alone. And the unclanned staff, I guess.

[Reiloth]

I dunno, I think it could fall under 'Unclanned' or 'Desert Elves'. The old family/tribes of yore in the Labyrinth were more background/filler than 'Blood Blood Blood, do this Blood, sell this Blood'. If you happened to meet someone who was also a part of your family, woo hoo! But it was often just a cool filler/background, there was a no_save place where you could crash (so you couldn't hoard a bunch of crap), and call it a day.

It relied much more on player ingenuity, rather than coded benefits or history. There were some great Dairiki hedonistic spice heads running around the 'Rinth back in the day, and a few Valuren badasses that come to mind. But it was much simpler, much more vague than it is now. I'm not sure if that was 'better' per se, just different, and i'm nostalgic for it.

[Patuk]

Well, yeah, sounds good to me. It's just that with the staffside radio silence on the matter, all we can do is wish.

[Reiloth]

I think we can discuss the benefits/foreseen negatives with such a system, and also pose what is disliked about the current system, in a civil manner. Likely in a different thread, and at a different time, and with someone who has the wherewithal to write something like that out. I nominate Malken!

[Patuk]

That.. Is a good point. We're derailing kinda hard in here.

[Zoan]

Yeeeeeeeah, I'd never play an elf unless I was chargen-spawned belonging to a family/tribe. The whole point of an elf is the tribal mindset. Anything less is just being a tall guy with a big neon 'kill me' sign about his neck.

[Barsook]

Yeeeeeeeah, I'd never play an elf unless I was chargen-spawned belonging to a family/tribe.

+1

[FantasyWriter]

I think the best think that could happen for city-elf-loving players would be to make it alright to role up a coming-out-of-the-closet elf tribe with the same rules and regulations that come with doing a family role call.

I don't see this happening, though. Over the last few years, it seems more and more as if PCs are being herded into tighter and tighter clan options for the sake of player consolidation, which I was hoping would change with the recent player-base growth.

[Malken]

I think we can discuss the benefits/foreseen negatives with such a system, and also pose what is disliked about the current system, in a civil manner. Likely in a different thread, and at a different time, and with someone who has the wherewithal to write something like that out. I nominate Malken!

Hey, I'm just your regular 0 pack blue collar fedora Joe who is very passionate about this mud (it comes and it goes but it sticks with me like the herpes I caught in 1997), so I try to pick my battles without sounding like a bummer, dude. I know best and most about Tuluk so that's why I often bitch (and sometime cheer!) about Tuluk-related topics and I know that we very slowly, and hopefully, getting there. At least we can't blame Nyr for not trying new things and changing it up, but yeah, I try not to write big topics like this one on the GDB too often, the "be the change" answer I got in like five minutes after writing this up reminded me that writing stuff up on the GDB is useless at best and rage inducing at worst.

tl;dr.. I refuse this nomination!

[FantasyWriter]

At least we can't blame Nyr for not trying new things and changing it up...

You've been on the GDB long enough to know better!

Staff: No new/additional clans/buildings/tribes/quit rooms/sandwiches.
Players: BUT I WANT TO BE ABLE TO CHANGE THINGS!

Staff: We're changing this to try and make things better, some changes were IC, some are OOC.
Players: BUT I LIKED THINGS JUST THE WAY THEY WERE!

You'll never please everyone, but you can always please yourself!
lifehack: To avoid jail time, go somewhere private first.

[Malken]

At least we can't blame Nyr for not trying new things and changing it up...

You've been on the GDB long enough to know better!

Staff: No new/additional clans/buildings/tribes/quit rooms/sandwiches.
Players: BUT I WANT TO BE ABLE TO CHANGE THINGS!

Staff: We're changing this to try and make things better, some changes were IC, some are OOC.
Players: BUT I LIKED THINGS JUST THE WAY THEY WERE!

You'll never please everyone, but you can always please yourself!
lifehack: To avoid jail time, go somewhere private first.

Er.. we can't blame Nyr for not trying.. That's too many negatives and now I'm confusing myself. At least Nyr is changing things up is what I'm trying to say 

[Patuk]

The last five additions to the chronology tab on the main page were events in Tuluk wherein the amount of player planning was something approximate to zero. If there's time for that, there's got to be time to write up a few paragraphs about a tribe or two you can jump in at will.

[Nyr]

The last five additions to the chronology tab on the main page were events in Tuluk wherein the amount of player planning was something approximate to zero. If there's time for that, there's got to be time to write up a few paragraphs about a tribe or two you can jump in at will.

Players were involved in all five of those.  Including planning, in almost every case.

That's not really important, though.  I just felt compelled to respond to a really entitled post that did the exact opposite of whatever you're trying to do.  If you want staff to want to help in this, you're shooting yourself in the foot. 

Both feet.

Staff will address almost everything that we consider to be an issue.  At some point.  Eventually.  However, there's only so much bandwidth for projects, and tackling city-elves would absolutely be one.  This is one of those cases where what staff is doing and actively working on (in general, with a myriad of projects we continually work on) doesn't match up with what you want in this one case (JUST fix this one thing and I'll be happy).  It happens.  Sorry.

[Patuk]

Okay.

[Adhira]

Well, yeah, sounds good to me. It's just that with the staffside radio silence on the matter, all we can do is wish.

We don't often respond to these posts, even if we have plans to make changes. We could have these clans ready to roll out tomorrow and we wouldn't tell you.. until tomorrow.

The fact is that when we make changes, even with the best intentions, they often get derailed. As Nyr said we have limited bandwidth for projects. We usually have several projects on the go at any one time, but we're very much aware of the fact that we've announced things in the past that haven't come to fruition. We do try and learn as we go.

So, as you mentioned, you can keep wishing. You can keep discussing with other players, come up with ideas etc. Staff may read them. Just don't expect us to wade in and make promises.

[Nyr]

To address the OP, I want to say we've been watching the shadow artist system closely for PC use, but I have not yet seen a shadow artist actually get targeted in retaliation for them successfully doing a job.  For what it's worth, that's after several months of implementation.  The only exception was noteworthy enough that the target was on the chronology history madoodle.