A Constructive Discussion on Dynasties
THE POST ITSELF.
Currently, Dynasties are in a unique place that is created due to the conflict between a unique atmospheric roleplay environment and taking every Joe, Dick, and Jane that get off the nearest transporter. Neither style is innately wrong from a character standpoint however the current Dynasty mechanics only reward one style of play despite the large upfront cost to have one.
It is very difficult in most cases to reward groups of differing sizes but give no clear advantage to the larger group. So after doing vigorous testing of many classic games from all genres I have settled on a potential solution, is this solution without bias, no. But it is a good starting point. Rewarding Dynasties with one unit of a meta currency for each IC month that the majority of their members log in. At first, I thought this was good enough, but then I realized people could just pad inactive Dynasties with level 1 alts and just go down a list of log-ins once a month to keep grinding currency single-handedly.
Therefore implementation should instead be in the form of a quest that you can only get while you are in a Dynasty. This quest should not give experience and at most some marks that scale based on level. So 1-9 would be 100, 10-19 would be 200, etc. A secondary option would reward them exactly the amount of marks that they would pay when they die. Because they can only do it once a month there won’t be any major economical impact either way. While I personally don’t really care how said quest is implemented, I did consider some interesting options that could be used, but before going too far down the rabbit hole let’s wind it back and address what the meta currency would be used for.
The membership numbers for perks can stay but some of them should also be optional to purchase instead with the meta currency. Some perks, like leadership announce and Dynasty feature, should never be purchasable. But for many smaller roleplay focused groups, having a repository, organization designs, a marks account, etc are quality of life options that there aren’t many in character reasons why they shouldn’t be able to just buy them.
By the same token, it is easy to ask, “Why not just allow people to buy it with marks?” Because spending marks do not encourage player participation, it does not stimulate the player economy, it also just rewards people that have been stockpiling. Spending marks for Dynasty Perks does not address the most important issue of rewarding players who consistently take part while not awarding large numbers. Therefore, meta-currency 'perk’ purchasing is the safest way to go while being the hardest for players to abuse AND starting everyone off on the same footing.
Next up, possible expansion of Dynasty Perks. Most of these are self-explanatory: Ships, Auxiliary Stations, Factories/Refineries, Shops, Ranks/Positions, Repositories, and Salaries.
We should be able to have Dynasty owned ships that members with permissions can borrow and fly. This makes it easier for testing and teaching to be done on an organization-wide scale rather than on an individual scale with no return.
Auxiliary Stations, when an organization owns a majority of the refineries or auto factories at a location said organization should receive some sort of benefit, right now there isn’t a good way to balance this. In the meantime, allowing Dynasties to set a station or planet as their ‘base’ should offer reduced costs after a flat payment is paid. This right should be gained either through membership numbers or a high perk cost. This would ideally operate using already existing stations and planets, but should not be implemented any time soon as it will throw off the economy especially if there is no sort of Dynasty storage ability for ‘finished’ products or a way for Factions and other organizations to purchase things like batteries, metals, repair kits, whatever. Either way, this is technically one of the least important things on the list.
As an extension of the previous point, being able to set the prices/ownership of auto factories and refineries to Factions and Dynasties, this should have permissions so that only specific people in those groups can approve org spending so that the profits then go into that org. It can be attached to the ACCOUNTS power to make it relevant.
A nice option would be Dynasty shops since the framework already exists as shown with the trade terminal artifact, it would be amazing if Dynasties could have an internal shop where the profits could be directed to the Dynasty accounts. Better yet if there could be a cut system where people in the Dynasty could sell items in it and people in the Dynasty can buy those items with a slight mark up being taken to make funds for the Dynasty itself. Or, best option, have the designs sold to the faction and those designs can be created any time someone purchases the item, therefore, paying the base crafting fee and making a profit for the Dynasty. This would also keep the tradeskills relevant due to the need to have them in order to give/sell the design to the Dynasty.
For the price of 200,000 marks, the amount of flexibility available is very limited and restricts our ability to create an infrastructure that is unique to our creative needs. If we have to start off restricted could we possibly be allowed to earn additional position slots? If not, how about a rank system within Dynasties where we can name the ranks within the Org and have them show up the same way Founder and Second Founder do in DWHO. This will help especially since we cannot give suffixes or titles in a Dynasty, so internal structure representation would be helpful.
Repositories, this should be earned as they are such an important and integral part of developing and tracking the birth of so many new and unique roleplay environments that Dynasties give us a chance to create. Due to how expensive they are, almost prohibitively so, instead of just dictating time they can be held, we should also be able to set price for that time. And perhaps different pricing depending on Dynasty Rank. Yes, this can be done manually through discussion, however, with our population in constant flux it goes without saying that no singular person is going to be on 24/7 to negotiate datashard permissions. This would go a long way with validating their current pricing.
As a further expansion of ranks/positions, being able to automatically pay people in the Dynasty for work. Based on the numbers required for getting perms, I cannot imagine larger Dynasties in the future being able to manually handle any sort of business set up consistently. This is my pie in the sky toss in.
Faction: Song Dominion
Class: Engineer
Comments
Do the quests in Thait -> you get the normal rewards + fame, if you're part of a dynasty.
Every RL day, a bit of fame drains away from your dynasty as the denizens forget what you've done for them, so there's a constant need to maintain them.
- Ilyos (August 2019)
Otherwise, as I've told you, I love these ideas and would really love seeing a change to dynasties that allows us to not worry solely about the number of bodies that can take our last name.
I suggest that denizens at any given time have only a limited amount of loyalty to give away. So if you do x quest, the denizens remember YOUR dynasty and forget the others if they haven't being that active. I imagine take downs for some of the more important quests between competing dynasties. You're still competing for fame but there's less pressure to Keep Up With Things because it doesn't decay if you don't log on. Your influence wanes if other dynasties are more pro-active in doing quests though. Make it so that you can't keep farming quests to gain influence for your dynasty. The pay off is that denizens are more likely to give your dynasty jobs and pay better for jobs completed.
The "every RL day x-drains away" mechanic is active in other IRE games across the board. It brings a competitive dynamic adds to the pressure of playing the game that I'm not fond of. You have to Do X, Y, and Z to keep up with things and Get Ahead. I have that, it's called Real LIfe. No thanks. I like starmourn, it's fun and immersive without feeling like a job. Keep things casual but open to crazy competition for hardcore gamers!
- Ilyos (August 2019)
An approach would be to have a minigame like hacking but with a more social flair that members of a dynasty can engage in it to convert certain influential mobs to their sphere of influence. Of course the minigame itself should be resistant to farming such as people cannot simply automate it and has to think through their actions as well. Such as hidden dangers that converting mobs of two groups enemy to each other possess the risk of getting locked from both of them for awhile since no one likes double-agents. Or perhaps converting a criminal element would make a lawful element harder to convert since there are rumors spread about your involvement with criminals.
To spice up things: Possessing a cooldown, dynasties can have action cards that they can use and some of those action cards can be only available after converting certain groups to their side. They are actions to disrupt other dynasties, boost their sphere of influence and gain certain advantages in certain areas. You convert the leader of a mercenary group to your side and then you get Deploy Mercenaries <area> to soften the place for your future conversion attempts while making it hard for other dynasties. Or you convert an Elgan trader and get Shrewd Business Practices <area> card to get some revenue in marks from a place you have more then two converted mobs. The examples can be increased.
Anyways, I do not wish to divert people from the concept itself with providing more examples. It is not an easy task from the side of implementing all these systems by developers, but this would be what I envision if I were to consider the Dynasties of Starmourn similar to Great Houses of Dune.
Just as a clarification to everyone.
Faction: Song Dominion
Class: Engineer
Secondly, rewarding consistency is key for keeping and rewarding people who are playing. And what I have suggested. This also plays into @Slander 's point, even if you don't have the numbers to get the meta-currency, you'd at least get enough marks to pay for one bashing death, so it's helpful regardless without being abuseable. Flat quest aspects and fame don't do that, and on top of that, would take more time to balance.
I don't 100% think this is as complicated and as long term of a solution, but I do think it is a great temporary solution that doesn't need constant balancing and would push Dynasties into a place where they hold universal roleplay value instead of only being useful to a few different Dynasties.
At this point in time a total of 10... TEN, Dynasties, are able to even have a joint marks account for their Dynasty. Whereas ANY clan can do so. For the amount of Dynasties that can have a Repository to organize datashards are 6. And considering that there are only 30 Dynasties, regardless of whether they are active or not, that's extremely low, and with our population numbers, nearly impossible for the smaller Dynasties to brute force their way up.
I think the Dynasty system and meta-currencies and using influence, in GENERAL, could be added onto infinitesimally. I can't think of anything that could be implemented easily that would have a positive impact without ruining the progress that has already been made. But I do think things for people to grind would be great, but I don't think it should be added somewhere so important as Dynasties, as the groups are functionally smaller than Factions.
You and @Tiase have great points and should be looked at in relation to questing in general rather than fixing the Dynasty issue. The issue being: encouraging and rewarding activity, not punishing inactivity and dead orgs, keeping power and creative license to the players in said orgs.
Faction: Song Dominion
Class: Engineer