IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Neutrality implies you are neither in favour nor against a particular thing. This is reflected well in player alignment, where neutral players may join aligned guilds. However it is not reflected in guilds: only neutral players may join neutral guilds. We have already bumped into this problem when a few players had to renounce citizenship before they could join our guild. Still others hold gov't positions, so they are not able to join our guild which is civ-neutral.

Once in a neutral guild you also may not declare citizenship or align yourself to a religion, depending on the guild's type of neutrality.

There are two kinds of neutrality: you truly don't care and freely welcome anyone and everyone, and you are firmly anti-anything and only rigidly welcome other like-minded individuals. In a sandbox environment both types of groups should be represented, though only the latter type is currently supported.

Please add support to allow guilds to welcome anyone and everyone to their ranks, regardless of citizenship or religion, or the lack thereof.

In regards to the statement you said where players hold government positions so they cannot join, even if it was allowed to stay matis, fyros, etc most governments require you to be from a guild of that race, so it would still be limited.

Overall I like the idea. This was actually an issue with myself a while ago upon wanting to join Amicitia. Though in the end I renounced my noble status and matis allignment in order to join Amicitia.

Though I can see where it also may be an issue. If it was allowed for them to be in player governments you may eventually dominate every government if you get diverse interests.

Also, your guildies would be butting heads if its for a roleplay point of view.

It is a good idea, but I just don't think it would be that great of an idea to implement it. I can see too many issues that might arise. Especially if the racial allignment ideas continue to advance as they seem to be.

-1

Actually, only two governments pull members from civ-aligned guilds. Fyros elect their government representatives from the base of Fyros citizens, and Zorai do weird things (probably involving hallucinogens) to promote their representatives. You still wouldn't be able to have members of Matis or Tryker governments in neutral guilds, because of the way those positions are chosen. So conceivably, this could affect half of the governmental positions.

I don't roleplay, but I'd assume that someone joining such an open guild wouldn't have an overwhelming devotion to whatever civ or any particular viewpoint, but more of an accepting and tolerant point of view. If they were strictly neutral, they could still join those types of guilds.

All this is intended to do is to give players a little more flexibility and freedom to make their own choices. To "add some more sand to the sandbox" as someone else said in some other post.

What other issues might arise, though? Maybe there really is some problem, or maybe there's a solution to potential issues that wouldn't hinder this kind of concept?


Care to elaborate?

well about my -1 after reading it all again a seccond time lets say i would turn it in a -.5 and +.5
i do understand the civ alignment i think ppl should be free to civ align in all types of guilds since the civ align events aren't really based on op wars so i can see guildies fight eachother in quests without big problems
i do nut understand the religion thing that is alot harder i don't think a kami should be allowed in a kara guild and so on also a neutral guild for me does mean real neutral so no tp's (can't say you are neutral and just alligned for tp's since that doesn't make any sence and is just plain stupid)

That's why I said there were two types of neutral. One type of Neutral is " We don't care what you do, lets just have fun!" and welcomes anyone regardless of their civ or religion choices. The other type of Neutral is "We DO care about what we choose, and we specifically choose 'None of the Above'!" and they only accept people who also choose the same way ... much like the civ- or faction-aligned guilds do now.

Right now, the game only supports the second type: if you choose neutral, that means you reject all formal association with all civs or with all religions (or both).

I'm asking for the game to also support the first type. Some people will take advantage of it, and some won't. But the players themselves would get to choose instead of having the game choose it for them.


And thinking back to the government officials issue, is it really that much of a concern to have multiple representatives, or even a majority of the representatives, collected into one guild?

If the Fyros representatives all happen to be in one guild and the players have voted for them, then the players have spoken their will. The same with the Zorai and whatever they smoke to get promoted.

The beauty and unpredictability of a sandbox game is that the community decides what happens within the game; players get to choose their own path ... and live with the consequences of those choices. It's not a pre-written story with strict rules dictated down from above every year or so, like the game everyone loves to hate. The game mechanics exist to allow freedom of choice to happen with some basic sanity checks in place and then stay out of the way the rest of the time.

I would just like to add that the current implementation of civ-neutral guilds actually has the potential to create the situation where only one guild is represented in a government, because of the difficulty involved in building up a new guild for that civ.

Something just occurred to me. Perhaps it would be most flexible to allow guilds to buy permission to include members of particular civs? That way neutral-only guilds could stay neutral-only, Kara guilds could choose to accept Matis and Tryker, and indifferent guilds could choose to accept all civs. I'm not actually clear on what other benefits civ allegiance has for guilds, though, so I don't know whether this should be made more or less difficult than simple allegiance.

Actually, you're dead wrong.
The only government that doesn't do it are the Fyro, they accept applications from anyone who's a citizen.

Zorai, Tryker, and Matis all require that you be guild leader or high officer of an alligned guild, with the Zorai and Matis additionally requiring specific religious allignment as well.
The Tryker at least, and I think all others, require specific fame levels on top of that (at least 50 fame with your nation).

M'mm, loving the hostile delivery. Much appreciated, thanks!


Only the Matis flood the government with representatives. Tryker Taliari must be guild leaders; HOs may not be Taliari, but can represent them in absence. I need to double-check with an Awakened friend, but Zorai may only need to be Initiates and there may be a maximum number allowed. Fyros may only have five. I haven't seen any reference to specific fame values above the implied fame required for citizenship.

But thank you for the clarification on Zorai, no matter how aggressively worded. After re-reading the Zorai government document multiple times and trying to decipher the core from all of the fluff, it appears that Zorai citizenship is the strictest: unguilded players may not be citizens, since they must be a member of a Zorai-aligned guild ("Citizens of the Witherings, wearers of a mask or not").

The method for selecting Awakened allows for one guild to dominate the Zorai government, which is actually the case right now. But I'm still not sure that is a problem, as long as they follow the lore and guidelines of the Zorai culture.

This means only Akenak are not required to be in a guild, and only Zorai citizens are required to be in a guild. The rest are flexible. This would have minimal impact on representatives ("governmental officials") but could impact a number of citizens.

That still only touches on one smaller part of the whole idea, and I'd still love to hear the possible issues that can arise which could only be introduced or made worse by implementing this idea. The limited reach of this idea with regards to government officials actually negates one of the original concerns: a single guild dominating every government.

Did you have any concerns about the idea Iala, or did you just want to attack my error?

Actually, you're the one who is dead wrong as usual. There is no such requirement for Zorai to be any rank in the guild.

Unless the rules have changed since I left, there was NO requirement in the Witherings that one be a member of a guild at all, much less in the heirarchy of a guild. The only requirements are that one be a Zorai citizen, have 50 fame with the Zorai and be Kami. This does mean that one must not be a member of a guild aligned other than with the Zorai, as it would prevent one from holding Zorai faction at all. :)
It is possible for a given guild to gain power through being Awakened, as Inflatable Friends did, for example, because no one else was interested in being in the government of the Witherings at the time.

Guild membership is not required for Zorai citizenship (initiate). The part about wearers of the mask or not is actually saying that any race may join - Zorai race wear masks.

You do not have to wear a mask to be Awakened (We have a fyros as Awakened), Nor do you have to be in a guild. As Aeralin stated, Its fame with kami and zorai based. If anything it is one of the easier ones to get on board with as long as you dedicate the time.

That means a Matis could be Awakened?? eeewww. Having a Trykerette for a boss was already bad enough *dodges Aeralin* =P