Piggybacking off this, staff wouldn't need to create a city elf tribe if they loosened up the rules on player-created trbies. The biggest killer for any player created tribe is that they can't (or almost can't) get new members applying in. This gives all player created tribes a ticking clock as characters either die off or leave for OOC reasons which inevitably ends the tribe.
Yep, we all spent a ton of time debating this yesterday in Discord but you sum it up well here Narf.
WRT the insistence that it's easy to create a player made C-Elf tribe, one need only look at the results and the statistics. Spoiler: numbers indicate this is not an easy or common occurrence at all; most players have never interacted with a player made C-Elf tribe and never will. Spoiler: this is because a combination of docs and coded constraints make this, in fact, nearly impossible. Narf describes it briefly and well here.
Even if the documentation were altered to support more recruiting, there is just the question of why C-Elf is a special case somehow not deserving of an IG tribe. Every single argument about this can be easily refuted:
- Argument 1: City Elf tribes are broken because it gives them a place to hide after they commit crime.
Argument falls apart when you realize this also applies to The Guild.- Argument 2: City Elf tribes are broken because tribal loyalty makes them unfairly immune to infighting.
Argument falls apart when you realize this applies to any other tribe.- Argument 3: A codified tribe is not needed for C-Elves (Mansa's an N13's point) -- Excellently refuted by Narf here, also several other players poked holes in this well yesterday such as
RievSkeelz. The docs about "not recruiting outsiders" essentially kills most player made C-Elf tribes out the gate, in fact, by definition any player made C-Elf tribe would be in violation of the docs as they are today. I laughed at Mansa's example because it has two examples of breaking city elf documentation. And indeed anytime someone says "Make a C-Elf tribe that recruits," they are advocating for violating the docs (or having a snowflake unicorn concept).
- Argument 4: Staff do not want or do not have time to support this. This is the only constraint, staff were awesome and gave us an idea of just how much time they _do_ put in, for which we are thankful! This is the only "legitimate" argument at the table, Arguments 1-3 are disqualified due to logical fallacies therein.
So yeah, per my original brief post, there is a lot of contention around this, but it IS something Staff has spent development time on, and it hasn't been stated as being off the table.