What GMH has been up to

[Gynesis]

GMH Team Improvements - Done and To Come

When I first took on the admin position with GMH, one of my very first objectives was to try and make the roles of merchants more enjoyable for the players inhabiting them and more plot/play forward.  One of the top complaints that I had heard was that players spent more time playing vending machine than they did being active and involved - not only with their employees, but with the world and various on going plots across the Known as well.

A few rolecalls later, and the lack of interest drove home the fact that something indeed needed to be done to make these roles more enticing for players to want to play.  Thus I went down a rabbit hole, speaking with other staffers, speaking with players through requests, reading through various GDB posts to try and narrow down some of the main issues, so that I could brainstorm on potential fixes to make these roles more enjoyable.  I am certain I haven't found all of the frustrating bits, and there are more things currently being brainstormed.  The following are things that both I and the GMH Team have begun working on and their statuses.

Project Number One: Emporiums Completed

An emporium for the nobility of Allanak to visit and have easier access to seeing all of the goods that the various Houses make for their Houses, without having to ask the merchants for 'showings'. This could also be potentially done in Tuluk as well.  A large amount of time both player wise and staff wise were going into these showings.  For the player it meant browsing through the masterlists available on their GDB's, submitting requests asking for a list of House only goods, submitting requests asking for items with vague descriptors.  For the staff it meant, hours of looking through the DB for these vaguely defined items, multiple requests to work through, multiple items to track down, load up and place on the warehouse merchant.  Sometimes merchants wouldn't be set properly to load the item and would need to be updated and approved, which adds on more time.

The work that went into the southern Emporiums:

• Going through the database of items (thousands) to ensure proper tags and retag those that weren't.
• Creating master lists of all noble House items for each of the three merchant houses.
• 21 existing shops revamped.
• 140 new items created for Houses that lacked goods.  28 of which were player submissions.
• 67 rooms built and created.
• 27 new shop NPCs and their shops created.
• 51 guard NPCS created.

The inception of the emporiums came in October of 2022, with the first being completed and opened to the public in early January of 2023.  The final two emporiums followed in rapid succession and were finally dropped live roughly around the beginning of March 2023.

It's the hope that these Emporiums will provide the merchants within GMH the flexibility of being hands on or off with nobility, while also allowing the nobility the opportunity to see what goods their Houses already have without having to wait a lengthy amount of time for the process of a showing.  It also provides the player of the nobility and merchant alike the visual of what might be missing and could potentially be CC'd to curate House only items for current and future players.

Project Number Two: Re-introducing Traveling Merchants  Completed

There was a two-pronged issue here.  When we had a merchant in each area, there was less movement, less need for merchant houses to employ independents or the Byn to get their wagons from one place to another.  It created a lot of stagnation for PC's of the aforementioned clan as well as player clans that had been formed with this intention, thus creating less opportunities for interaction.  After a lack of interest in rolecalls, it reinforced my decision to enforce GMH merchants and Agents to travel between the cities and Luir's - as with only one merchant or Agent, if they stayed stationary, the other city would get neglected and stagnate.

All GMH merchants and Agents are now traveling merchants and are not stationed in any one city.  They are encouraged to spend a portion of the year in each location across the Known, though the amount of time is up to the player to decide on.

Hopefully, this solution will result in citizens of each city, and independents and tribals alike the availability of reaching a Merchant for whatever their needs are for each of the Houses.

Project Number Three: Northern Compound 
Compound - Completed Apartments - In Progress

With the reintegration of the GMH into northern society, we decided to approach the build of the compound itself in a much different way than what some of you might expect.  We pulled on Tuluki Traditions, Luir's communal aspects, and some newer ideas in hopes of encouraging interaction across all GMH's.

These include:

• Communal crafting areas with separate warehouses for clan specific only storage.
• Locker storage, though no bunkroom with a coming GMH inked and non/inked apartment building.
• Communal sparring
• Communal showroom
• Communal Wagonyard
• Communal Cook

There is a separate gated area for each House specifically.  We kept things basic in the build, keeping it fair across the board and leaving plenty of things to a level undone so that our leaders have the opportunities to build onto the compounds, make additions, make changes, go through mini-quests to achieve the ability to leave their marks on the compounds for future generations to see.

Two newer things available in the northern compound that atleast the first of will make it's way across all GMH compounds:

• An NPC that will purchase crafted goods (they should be mostly and mainly House items, though Indy is currently allowed) from crafters, with appropriate restrictions according to what each House sells.


• This allows the merchant to have easy and quick access to craftable House goods to cut down wait times for clients.
• Provides the crafter with the crafter cut immediately.  No more waiting for the current merchant to sell your creations and leave your pay for someone else to steal if you can't arrange a meeting time.
• Allows the merchant to buy from the NPC merchant, mark up, and not have to worry about figuring out the math of what goes to the crafter, what goes to the House and what they keep.
• Helps cut down on the merchants time spent hauling off crafted goods to sell, providing them more time to spend attending to interactions, plots, plans, etc.
• A communal sparring group.
• This allows House hunters access to training so the first scrab/goudra/tregil doesn't completely demolish them and eat them for brekkie.
• Is in no way shape or form going to ever get you training as good as a mercenary or a soldier company or sparring group would, but you'll atleast get a small step up on survivability.
• Is currently only accessible and available to hunters - each House has a 2 hunter cap.

Across the new compound, showroom/clubhouse, and apartments for the north:

• 44 new NPCs
• 53 new rooms
• An additional 4 NPCs and give or take 100 more rooms to come - courtesy of Enthemu <3

Project Number Four: Bringing current sponsored role bumps more in line with changes  Completed

With the addition of the special app Byn roles, this brought into question why someone would want to ever play a sponsored Byn Sergeant/First Trooper that could never leave, compared to someone who could burn a special app, get better bumps and then leave after an IC year.  While the team and I discussed this, it also created the question of whether or not the bumps for any of the GMH's were incentive enough for players or if those too needed to change.  Consensus?  They needed to change.

Outcome:

• Sergeant and First Trooper Sponsored roles now get the same bumps that a special app role would, and after a significant time in the role (TBD) can resign instead of being stored.
• Sponsored GMH merchants get double the crafting bumps, some additional perception bumps, plus all other applicable bumps.
• Sponsored GMH merchants that want to play a combat guild can now acquire minimal bumps for combat, plus all other applicable bumps for family members, additional perception bumps and have the ability to submit a CC once every two months where they did not have that ability prior.

Project Number Five: Automating Recruitment into the Byn Completed

I, along with some of GMH team, have played a couple Byn Sergeants throughout our time on Arm, and thus we can completely understand the stress that a Byn Sergeant has on their shoulders with the multitude of demands they undergo from the time they log in until the time they log out.  I am well aware of the headache not only your PC's go through, but you as well when you're bombarded with twenty different people all wanting and needing your attention and yet you have someone looking to join!  Not only do you have to meet with them to chat them up but you have to codedly recruit them, collect their money, get them their gear, take them on a tour of the compound, and go through the OOC rigamoroll of pointing them to the schedule and requesting an add on the GDB.  All the while, your PC's head is filled with current members needing something, prospective clients, the Templar that found out one of your Runners was a magicker - again.  It's a lot.  It's quite probably one of the toughest roles in game.

Solution:

• Automate it.

This is currently being worked on, I have seen the progress personally and it will likely be live within the next week or so.  You will be able to direct all prospective new Runners, or post a rumor on the tavern boards to have it do the work for you, to an NPC that will be set up to handle the entire process for you.  They'll go over the rules with the new Runner, take their money, give them their aba and patch, recruit them codedly and direct them to other NPCs that will take them on the tour of your compound, and they'll even go over the schedule and ask that they send in a request to get added to the GDB.  Or, if you have the time, you can certainly do all the hard lifting yourself!  You get to choose.


Project Number Six: Revamp all warehouse merchants In Progress

One of the major time consumers for a GMH staffer is item orders.  Sometimes the merchant will make use of the masterlist and provide us with appropriate item numbers, other times we just get descriptions of what they want.  Either case, it is a major time sink that takes away from opportunities that GMH ST's have for annimations and directing their efforts into other things like QOL updates, renovations, face lifts, etc.  Merchants waiting on these orders have to deal with frustrated PC's who don't understand why they can't have their things now, now, now, now, now.  Adding more stress to an already stressful role.

Solution:

• Revamping warehouse merchants in all warehouses across the Known (Tuluk, Luir's, Allanak, Red Storm) to stock infinite regional appropriate items for all Houses.
• This will hopefully provide the merchants with appropriate items in the region of their clients at the click of a button, rather than submitting multiple order requests.
• Provides merchants opportunities to hire mercenaries to travel to a region to purchase an item if it's ordered outside of their clients region - allowing for merchants to more appropriately mark up costs to reflect the realism of ordering silt horror as a Tuluki, or bahamet shell as a Nakki.
• Making more items craftable for each House.

While this won't completely solve the many of the issues, since some Houses have way too many items and the shopfiles don't allow for more than a set amount, it will however, certainly in the long run help with PC to PC interactions, as well as cutting down both PC and staff time spent on item orders.

These are just some of the things that we have already finished and finalized, and/or are currently working on.  GMH Team has and will continue to be devoted to improving the playability and enjoyability in our clans and our leadership roles.  I know both my team and I are receptive to feedback and are more than willing to admit that we have players amongst our community that have far more experience in these roles than we might ever have had, and thus I encourage anyone who has ever played in any of these leadership roles - whether it be a Byn Sergeant, Kuraci Dealer, Salarri crafter, Kadian Overseer, to please feel free to reach out to us via the request tool with any feedback that you might have.  Whether you played one as recently as a week ago, or as far back as 10 years ago, your opinion, your experience and your ideas to improve will be valued, welcomed and considered.