Hiring caps: A Self-Defeating Policy of Roleplay Mercantilism

[Clearsighted]

Can I get a helper, or anyone, to please lock this thread? It's not as if there can be much more to be said about it when Eury has not only deleted my original post, but whether in an attempt to be funny or for some other less flattering motive, edited it to make it seem I was posting something entirely different from what I did. I'd rather the thread was preserved in this state, until some other official action can be taken.

[MeTekillot]

I'm hoping Eury clicked modify instead of quote by accident.

[Armaddict]

Yeah, I...didn't see anything wrong with the original post.

Edited:  I'm not sure what that edit is about, either.  There was no proposition I saw about bringing free market trade into the IC world.  Only using economic rules to make an argument on how we handled things.

I disagreed but there was a good level of thought in that.  Did you misread, Eury, or did we miss something heinous in there? XD

[bcw81]

Yeah, I...didn't see anything wrong with the original post.

Edited:  I'm not sure what that edit is about, either.  There was no proposition I saw about bringing free market trade into the IC world.  Only using economic rules to make an argument on how we handled things.

I disagreed but there was a good level of thought in that.  Did you misread, Eury, or did we miss something heinous in there? XD

I am like 90% sure that was an error with the quote/edit button. They're side by side and look exactly the same. We're looking into it. Waiting for Eury to give the final word.

[Clearsighted]

Yeah, I...didn't see anything wrong with the original post.

Edited:  I'm not sure what that edit is about, either.  There was no proposition I saw about bringing free market trade into the IC world.  Only using economic rules to make an argument on how we handled things.

I disagreed but there was a good level of thought in that.  Did you misread, Eury, or did we miss something heinous in there? XD

I am like 90% sure that was an error with the quote/edit button. They're side by side and look exactly the same. We're looking into it. Waiting for Eury to give the final word.

Judging by the timestamps, this seems plausible. I'm wretchedly tired and truly must sleep, but I hope I'll wake up in the morning to Eury confirming that it was an accident, and we can all have a laugh about it later.

[Eurynomos]

Yeah, I...didn't see anything wrong with the original post.

Edited:  I'm not sure what that edit is about, either.  There was no proposition I saw about bringing free market trade into the IC world.  Only using economic rules to make an argument on how we handled things.

I disagreed but there was a good level of thought in that.  Did you misread, Eury, or did we miss something heinous in there? XD

I am like 90% sure that was an error with the quote/edit button. They're side by side and look exactly the same. We're looking into it. Waiting for Eury to give the final word.

Judging by the timestamps, this seems plausible. I'm wretchedly tired and truly must sleep, but I hope I'll wake up in the morning to Eury confirming that it was an accident, and we can all have a laugh about it later.

Yeeeeah, that was an accident. I was confused when my quote/reply didn't show up at the bottom of the list and didn't really look at the OP to see what happened there.

[Nyr]

It wasn't until Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, that the tide began to turn against the tenets of mercantilism and towards new ideas of free trade.

I also don't mean to drop any "Find out IC" bombs on this argument, but common literacy is illegal. Concepts of 'free trade' and 'mercantilism' are most certainly not buzz words at the Noble Parties. People seem to like the status quo as it is, if you're talking about idly there being some sort of problem. This seems more like an OOC issue/gripe that you have, though.

Adding back in what Eurynomos meant to do.

[Nyr]

And as far as the original post goes:

Nobles are only allowed to hire two aides--people working directly for them--not two PCs total.  If there's another role in the House for PCs to fill, then PCs can do that.  That presents the real problem.  The problem isn't necessarily hiring caps (which always will exist) so much as fleshing these things out more to have these playable roles available...so that there are things to play that aren't "aide" roles in noble houses.  That's a documentation need that will continually be worked on, though perhaps not as quickly as one may like...and that is something worth discussing.  It was the direction Tuluk went, and Tuluk was largely a self-contained experiment along those lines in the past couple of years until closure.  I'd be happy to discuss and go over that.  It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that Allanaki noble houses are going to go in that direction (if they aren't there now in some cases).

However, there will likely always be an OOC need for hiring caps.  Those caps will also likely be lower at the upper tiers of playable society...because if everyone that is a PC can work for the richest noble House, they would, and that would skew what is perceived in-game.

One way I can consider that we might remove all hiring caps would be if all hires had to be paid by the employer directly out of the employer's personal account.  This is the direction code is going to go with regards to banking and MMH progression, so linking up autopayment to a clan NPC which is linked to a very real bank account (clan account, perhaps, or even personal account) would be possible.  That's not close on the horizon, though, and moving ALL clans to this would be a significant undertaking requiring more thought and review than a spitballed post on the GDB.

[Clearsighted]

Yeah, I...didn't see anything wrong with the original post.

Edited:  I'm not sure what that edit is about, either.  There was no proposition I saw about bringing free market trade into the IC world.  Only using economic rules to make an argument on how we handled things.

I disagreed but there was a good level of thought in that.  Did you misread, Eury, or did we miss something heinous in there? XD

I am like 90% sure that was an error with the quote/edit button. They're side by side and look exactly the same. We're looking into it. Waiting for Eury to give the final word.

Judging by the timestamps, this seems plausible. I'm wretchedly tired and truly must sleep, but I hope I'll wake up in the morning to Eury confirming that it was an accident, and we can all have a laugh about it later.

Yeeeeah, that was an accident. I was confused when my quote/reply didn't show up at the bottom of the list and didn't really look at the OP to see what happened there.

Glad to hear it. It did seem like the obvious possibility after I thought to look at the timestamps

One way I can consider that we might remove all hiring caps would be if all hires had to be paid by the employer directly out of the employer's personal account.  This is the direction code is going to go with regards to banking and MMH progression, so linking up autopayment to a clan NPC which is linked to a very real bank account (clan account, perhaps, or even personal account) would be possible.  That's not close on the horizon, though, and moving ALL clans to this would be a significant undertaking requiring more thought and review than a spitballed post on the GDB.

That'd be a great idea. I look forward to that ever becoming implemented or made possible. It would be a much better solution than either hiring caps or completely abolishing them, because players are then confronted in-game with a need to manage their own resources. They're unlikely to hire people for flippant reasons, if the result is directly coming out of their limited pocket.

[Armaddict]

That sounds pretty good.  So an active nooble who has invested well, bidden his time, and built up more passive income than just the stipend can, intrinsically, hire more people...which would make sense since those other investments would call for some more jobs needing filled.

Perhaps a happy medium.  One house aide, paid by the house.  One or two soldiers, those of rank, paid by the house.  Everything else paid out of pocket.  (Note:  That means that overhiring means you won't have the coin to get involved in things for those soldiers to do.  Or to equip them.  Etc.)

[Fathi]

Clearsighted, your post is really well thought-out and brings up a lot of good points. Back when I played a leader that came up against a hiring cap often enough, it was an incredibly frustrating experience for me because I played in a different time zone to a lot of my clan's minions. Leader A who played peak time had hired them, leaving me as Leader B with not a lot of leeway to hire people who played during my playing times.

But I've also been in situations where I was trying to do business with clans that had next to no employees due to there being 30 Bynners or 19 Kuraci Fist PCs and that was equally frustrating. Sometimes it got to the point of where I emailed the staff of Clan XYZ back in the day before the request tool and was explicitly told "sorry, there's only 2 PCs in this clan right now and you keep missing them!" I also remember playing a Salarr merchant for quite a while who always got asked if we could just mastercraft THIS ONE SILK THING because Kadius didn't have any PC mastercrafters at the time. Those imbalances end up impeding the flow of the game.

Part of that is a problem with Arm's "one House does ___" monopoly style of play. As long as the game is set up like that, staff are going to have to put an OOC cap on employees in some situations. It sucks, but I understand why they have to do it. 

I am excited by the idea of leaders having an unlimited number of employees as long as they pay for it out of pocket. My leaders always ended up doing something like this anyhow - they'd just have unofficial employees who did odd jobs and got paid by hand rather than being on the clanned payroll. It works great and creates a lot of opportunities for conflict, especially if your real employees feel like their usefulness is being threatened, heh.

A side note on aides: part of the reason why there's a cap on two aides per noble would be to me a documentation thing. Given how many junior nobles there are and how relatively low rank some of them are (especially in the bigger Houses), a junior noble with a giant retinue of personal guards and concubines is kind of jarring. I think this issue will be resolved if and when more types of noble employment are open to PCs, though.

[Clearsighted]

Part of that is a problem with Arm's "one House does ___" monopoly style of play. As long as the game is set up like that, staff are going to have to put an OOC cap on employees in some situations. It sucks, but I understand why they have to do it.  

This is an excellent point, and it's at the heart of a lot of 'issues' within Armageddon's geopolitical landscape.

There isn't as much conflict and competition among the GMHs, because Salarr, Kadius and Kurac serve niche markets with little overlap, and they all (consequentially) need each other to some extent or another. There's not much point for them to try and attain 'exclusive' rights to any organization, town or city.

The noble houses are similarly specialized.

Some level of specialization is needed, and great, and colorful. Each House/GMH should have 'strengths' and 'weaknesses'. However, Armageddon's current Houses and Clans are set up to where their strength is usually a 'near monopoly' and their weakness is 'utterly taboo'.

I think the game world would be better off if Kurac, Kadius and Salarr had more reason and motive to compete with each other. Or if say, all the noble Houses could hire gemmers. It's true that Borsail might not hire as many mages, or have the same relationship to or understanding of them as Oash (since magick stuff is one of Oash's strengths), but that wouldn't keep some Borsail noble form having a Vivuadan support mage for the Wyverns, or a secret Drovian spy mage.

If this were combined with what Nyr suggested might be possible in the future, I think we'd have a much more interesting game world. I also think that the noble houses, with their assured steady stream of income being deposited in their accounts, would become much more influential.

[Armaddict]

I -do- think that steps over into facilitating free market in the game, though.  Which Zalanthas is clearly not a free market.

They don't compete because they have control over their market, and an unspoken agreement not to fuck with each other's business.  Because in Zalanthas, fucking with that business means blades in the back and poisoned luxury foods.

[Clearsighted]

I -do- think that steps over into facilitating free market in the game, though.  Which Zalanthas is clearly not a free market.

They don't compete because they have control over their market, and an unspoken agreement not to fuck with each other's business.  Because in Zalanthas, fucking with that business means blades in the back and poisoned luxury foods.

That's a worthy point. I suppose that leads to two more questions.

1) Does this state of affairs increase or decrease RP activity? If it increases RP activity, then it's a good state of affairs.

2) If it decreases RP activity (through the stifling of PC conflict or competition), then it's worth considering if it's a state of affairs that should be encouraged or protected.

If it would have a very small effect one way or another, then the status quo is worth keeping in place, or at least, even if not ideal, not worth the effort of altering it. But the sole fact of it being the current status quo does fairly little to recommend it. Closing Tuluk and dropping a volcano on the gypsies both affected the status quo a good deal, for example. Having some IC event take place that instigates more competition among GMHs would be more subtle.

But in fairness to your post, I agree that most concerns raised on this board fall into the 'interesting, but not significant enough to be worth the time and effort of immediately addressing at the expense of other projects' category.

[Erythil]

Hiring caps as a method of limiting how much free salary gets thrown around is one thing.

But if I'm a noble, say, and I want to hire a personal bard and personal barber, I cannot actually give these people clearance to enter and leave my estate even if it would be perfectly reasonable for them to have this clearance.  In this way I found hiring caps inconvenient.  Similarly, it's a bit odd that a junior noble gets 2 PC aides, but a PC templar, who is more important in the scheme of things, is capped at one.

There's essentially a very low ceiling on the number of non-combat characters that can successfully be played at any given time, when clans generally have many more roles for combative characters available and we heavily encourage people to be part of clans.  I see lots of characters who show up looking to be aides of some kind, then sort of wither and retire when they realize all the noble PCs are at their hiring caps.

So -- more non-combat clan roles, please.

[TheWanderer]

Similarly, it's a bit odd that a junior noble gets 2 PC aides, but a PC templar, who is more important in the scheme of things, is capped at one.

I think the entire city full of NPCs and a unit of PC soldiers to command is plenty, seeing as how that second aide is usually for flavor or combat-oriented duties. I'm also gonna go out on a limb and say the Templarate doesn't really feel like paying the salary of a second aide for every Blue in Allanak. That's probably a big coin sink for something that the overwhelming majority of them don't actually need.

It makes sense for a templar to be capped at one aide from both an OOC perspective and an IC.

There's essentially a very low ceiling on the number of non-combat characters that can successfully be played at any given time, when clans generally have many more roles for combative characters available and we heavily encourage people to be part of clans.  I see lots of characters who show up looking to be aides of some kind, then sort of wither and retire when they realize all the noble PCs are at their hiring caps.

So -- more non-combat clan roles, please.

There aren't really any fun and engaging non-combat clan roles to offer that don't just boil down to you being an aide, and a noble honestly only needs one or two. I suggest killing your way into the House of your dreams.

[Eurynomos]

Why do these roles need Estate access, beyond sheer laziness of the Noble?

I've seen many successful Nobles 'employ' several people (have them on retainer, reward them for their services, and pay them out of pocket). They didn't have 'official Estate access'. It also pushed the Noble to meet with them outside of their ultra-safe Estate.

[Armaddict]

Why do these roles need Estate access, beyond sheer laziness of the Noble?

I've seen many successful Nobles 'employ' several people (have them on retainer, reward them for their services, and pay them out of pocket). They didn't have 'official Estate access'. It also pushed the Noble to meet with them outside of their ultra-safe Estate.

...because that's part of the prestige of working for a noble, is access to things beyond the realm of other commoners.

[CodeMaster]

Why do these roles need Estate access, beyond sheer laziness of the Noble?

I've seen many successful Nobles 'employ' several people (have them on retainer, reward them for their services, and pay them out of pocket). They didn't have 'official Estate access'. It also pushed the Noble to meet with them outside of their ultra-safe Estate.

...because that's part of the prestige of working for a noble, is access to things beyond the realm of other commoners.

Probably part of the fun, too.  "Oh my god, I just walked into the noble's quarter unescorted and the guards didn't stop me.  This is so cool..."   It's having something the other players don't have, which is all anyone wants.

[Eurynomos]

So beyond the cool factor...Is there any other reason?

Part of the prestige of working for a Noble is working for the Noble, no? You don't get anything out of the Estate. You don't live there. You don't work there, really. If a Noble wants you to come to the Estate, they can meet you at the Estate.

I fail to see why being clanned and having 24/7 access to an Estate is required to be an employee of a Noble.

[Malifaxis]

I want to chime in here quick.

I've had the pleasure of playing several leadership roles.  One of those roles was a command level role for a clan with a traditionally quite high turnover rate.  I started with a hiring cap.

I started being able to take on 5 members.  5.   Fi-ve.

For a high turnover rate clan.

What I found is that it is not the amount of compatriots you have, but the quality of compatriots, and how much you interest them in logging in to keep things going.  That's the trick of a good leader.  You attract people who want to play in your slice of the world, and you present that slice to them in all its glory, making sure they experience every little bit, and want to keep coming back and playing for more.  You don't need 10 to 15 people.  In fact, I'll go so far as to say any fucking clan that has more than 15 people is being a bunch of assholes and stripping fun from the rest of the world.  You need 5-8 dedicated, fun players for military aspects.  A good noble crew can operate with 1-2 nobles and 2-3 aides/bodyguards/whatevers.

That's it.  Anything else is greed.

Am I above it?  Nope.  I've been greedy.  I've had huge clans.  THEY ARE AWESOME.  But they're also dickish, and I always try to keep that in mind after I reach my personal soft cap of population.  If I already have a crew, and I don't absolutely need someone, I try to refuse them so someone else can have a bit more fun.

That's just me though.  And I'm weird.

[Armaddict]

So beyond the cool factor...Is there any other reason?

Part of the prestige of working for a Noble is working for the Noble, no? You don't get anything out of the Estate. You don't live there. You don't work there, really. If a Noble wants you to come to the Estate, they can meet you at the Estate.

I fail to see why being clanned and having 24/7 access to an Estate is required to be an employee of a Noble.

...because clans are good, in this game.  Everything is based around being clans.  From having npc buddies in a fight, to having access to safe areas, to having acknowledgement that you are, indeed, in an official group...clans have always been important.  You're coming across as very short in this regard, which is making me very curious why that's an issue.

Even in the case that nobles should be paying out of pocket, I'd still pretty much want to see the clan there (in ranks that have 0 pay), as acknowledgement from the OTHER people in the clan that you are, indeed, working with them.  They are your homeboys.  You are their homeboy.  Even if you're duping them, they -think- they're your homeboy.  That all goes away if you turn it into just a commoner who gets to talk to a noble at a table and receive coin.

Not to mention, we just did these banking changes, where discussion was brought up about said estates and how they were very secure, but not perfectly secure, and there should be heists.  But you're making a long-game disguise...not viable?

Now I can counter that question, though.  Why is it such a big deal for them -to- be clanned, without pay aside from the noble itself?

Edit:  You essentially just asked me why anyone should want clans in this game.  Because they give you boons.  The noble estate, and the services there, have always been one.  I'm curious what you'd replace that sort of safety with, for an employee.

[MeTekillot]

When I said I didn't come here to have fun, I was joking, by the way. I. . . I do come here to have fun. Feel like that's. . . pertinent to mention.

[Clearsighted]

You don't need 10 to 15 people.  In fact, I'll go so far as to say any fucking clan that has more than 15 people is being a bunch of assholes and stripping fun from the rest of the world.  

Aren't you kind've stripping fun away from the people who want to play in that clan? It might be popular for a good reason. It might be exceptionally well lead and better managed. It might have more exciting lore, or powerful assets. If the only reason someone can't play in a clan is a purely OOC one (a desire to spread the playerbase around), you're basically telling players to go have less fun somewhere else.

Some of those players do go off, and find new opportunities, and have fun. Some don't.

I can't help but feel the best long-term solution is to try and discern why a clan is mega-popular at any given moment while others are dead. But maybe the answers to that requires uncomfortable questions.

[Armaddict]

Eh.  I'm with Malifaxis again, but for different reasons that I stated earlier.

Like I said...anytime you start getting that many people in a clan, it's not fun.  It's -crowded-.  It turns into a hassle.  It turns into a bunch of activities that are fun for 3 to 5 people, but are now just a spam fest and shit storm of people forgetting water or people grouping together around their drama that somehow got dragged into an entire-clan-affair.  Keeping numbers low is not depriving anyone, it's keeping things in a controllable state.  Once it goes beyond that state, it's irritating.  Yes, I -have- gone inactive in clans with too many people until some of them died off, because it's just that irritating to have a sudden bandwagon for no reason other than 'There's always things going on in that clan'.  That status can literally be reached by anyone.  If they had people flocking to them because there were already numbers there, as well.

(Edit here to sum up:  More players in clan good.  TOO MANY players in clan is actually a real thing, and bad.)

However, I'm not certain where the clan cap turned into people not being clanned but still in service.  That's wonky to me.