Starting As Master vs. Rank Recycling

[Malok]

Greetings Chaos, I've come to share with you an idea.

But first, a question. Have you ever heard of tag recycling? No? Well, let me bring you up to speed! It's a quiet practice where, once a writer's muse has expired for a particular Master-level character, they simply request a name change for the alt and start anew. The reason? It's much easier to slap a fresh coat of paint on an alt than it is to grind from Apprentice to Master. Again. It's a work around, basically. A popular, yet never scrutinized, workaround.

So why do I bring this up? Simple. Let's make it so this workaround doesn't need to happen.

As of now, any writer can join the board and start at Knight. Personally I adore that we can start off as a full fledged Jedi or Sith without having to wait for a master to hold our hands for a few weeks. It's great. However, what I suggest now is letting writers start as a Master rank character. Hold on! Hold on! Don't light the tiki torches just yet, let me finish. During the initial phases of discussion for starting as Knight, a school of thought was surprisingly prevalent. People thought there was prestige to the ranks Knight and Master. People felt freeing them up would cheapen them.

And while I'm not personally an elitist I've tailored this idea to suit them. The full idea is simply: Allow writers who have Master level characters to start new alts, at Master. That's it. Instead of recycling a Master tag, like many already will, we can simply pop into the Rank Title request thread and ask for the title to be applied. We'll tag the Master account that has done the grind previously for verification and everyone wins. Our muses are refreshed and those who value the grind can preserve its integrity via the prerequisite of going through the process at least once.

Thoughts?

 

[Jak Sandrow]

I like this, however - and take this with a grain of salt - it should have a caveat - once a writer moves their Master tag to a new alt, that first Master character should not be able to be written until such time as the new character passes on or (somehow) de-ranks.

 

[Evoros]

[media]http://youtu.be/XU_9ucFfhdI[/media]

 

[Eralam]

I like this. You're basically just formalizing something that folks do anyway. There probably needs to be some sort of limit on how many times this can be done before you'd have to work up from the bottom again, but for folks like me who don't work well with factions, it opens doors that would otherwise be closed.

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

I'm in favor of this.

(But honestly, let's just let anyone who wants to start out as Master start out as Master.)

 

[Tefka]

Eventually, this community will move towards allowing people to create Master-ranked characters on day 1.

I'm cool to get there like, yesterday, because I really don't care.

It's not a stance because of pure apathy. I don't care because I don't think it's my place, nor Staff's place, to care. Staff's place is helping run a successful website. That's it. That's all she wrote. We help keep it organized, we help keep it running, and we help members with their problems.

We don't dictate what they write.

Now, naturally, there's the "but Tef what about ban lists, factory items, superweapons, etc." And you're right to ask. I do believe in some regulation, do not get me wrong. I have my own biases, and those biases are very deeply rooted into this website, because I created it. It would be ignorant of me not to admit that. I think, though, to quantify my own biases as a group would be to say "they all lean towards keeping us as Star Wars as we can be." I'm sure there have been actions, etc that would diminish that statement from time to time, but that's what I hope the majority of people would perceive it as.

But rank titles and force user ranks are not something I've ever cared to regulate from a Staff perspective, and that is again my bias. A bias I think we will eventually move towards as more and more people adopt similar reasoning.

Let the factions reign over what titles get to be held in high esteem. It's archaic of us to continue to implement the same mentality some of us have been holding onto for either our own biased, selfish reasons or because it's all we've ever known.

To summarize, I think we'll get there. But I want the community to want to get there, I do not believe this is something I nor Staff should force.

 

[Akabane Jarvik]

Hail Tefka

 

[Jsc]

The full idea is simply: Allow writers who have Master level characters to start new alts, at Master. That's it.

Yes pls

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Forget about status, esteem, and restricting people's choices. I think allowing people to start as Masters is a bad idea for the development of the site. Recycling is bad enough, but anything else will exacerbate even more a problem we already have: factions are quite "top-heavy" in that there's an imbalance of teacher characters to student characters. That's a problem for the FU factions, where teaching is supposed to be a significant part of the RP. Allowing people to start as knights was already problematic in that respect, but can be justified because there are some character concepts that just don't work at a lower level. But allowing them to start as masters is a trap, people will think it's awesome to play a powerful master character, but they and everyone else will be missing out on something.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

Allowing people to start as knights was already problematic in that respect, but can be justified because there are some character concepts that just don't work at a lower level. But allowing them to start as masters is a trap, people will think it's awesome to play a powerful master character, but they and everyone else will be missing out on something.

I see what you are saying here, but that makes me wonder... why should it be up to other people to determine how others approach writing a character? Sure, some people love doing the apprentice-master RP, others love grinding from apprentice to master each time, but some really don't.

The only thing that would change here is people being allowed to skip the grind, if they have already done it once and really don't feel like doing it over and over again. People who do love the grind, who do get something out of that journey every single time?

They can still do that.
--

Personally I don't think any regulation is necessary. In my opinion the writer of the character should get to decide their character's rank, but I think Metus' compromise is a good one. It solves the issue some writers have who somehow feel their own work is being cheapened when others get their toys early, while also granting more leeway and creativity for the writers who already worked their butts off.

I am in support of this.

 

[Stephanie Swail]

Too many cooks, and all that.

If everyone can start as a Master, you'll have so many people all out RPing they are the bigger, better and badass Master and soon clash with others, it'll be...well, chaos!

But then, who are we to say what people must do in regards to what they want as a writer or making a character? As Tef says, I think the community will dicatate how/if this works, and if Masters are literally running amok and there is no room for development or character progression because people are taking the short-cut to be all mighty, all powerful, all Godly, then we will have to say put the brakes on!

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

[member="Darth Saarai"]

I see what you are saying here, but that makes me wonder... why should it be up to other people to determine how others approach writing a character?

The purpose of the site rules is to engineer the site in such a way that the best overall experience for everyone results. Why should it be up to other people to tell you whether you can touch the ball with your hands in a game of football (soccer)? And let's be honest, lots of people thing that playing a master is awesome, for no good reason. They think that playing a master is awesome and so they'll do it, of course, and they underestimate how interesting it would be to play a student. Allowing them to indulge their relatively shallow preference is going to hurt the site as a whole, because there will be a shortage of student-level characters.

I also submit that there is hardly a character concept worth its salt that absolutely needs master rank to work and couldn't be done with a knight.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Allowing them to indulge their relatively shallow preference is going to hurt the site as a whole, because there will be a shortage of student-level characters.

I wasn't aware that we hinged the health of the site on the amount of acolytes and knights in ratio to masters.

 

[Zef Halo]

So people who have an issue with starting as a Master being allowed seem to bring the fact that people who would start as Master will powergame, godmode and etc.

Let me tell you this - someone who powergames will powergame as Acolyte, Knight, NFU, newborn child and etc.

It's not a rank issue.

It's a writer issue.

Chaos has always had a community that was able to balance things right. Or at least most of the time.

Let those who have achieved Master rank be free to start a new Master ranked character.

 

[Enyo Typhos]

but for folks like me who don't work well with factions, it opens doors that would otherwise be closed.

Strictly speaking, you don't need to be in a faction to get Master rank. Simply go directly to staff and ask for a review when you think the character's ready.


It's what I did with Enyo both for her promotion to Knight (that was before the rule change allowed you to become an instant Knight) and to Master, after it seemed to me she was ready based on her IC development. She was factionless then and still is because tying her to a faction doesn't suit her character.

 

[Story Teller (NPC)]

Honestly most of us said that getting Knight straight away would create a power surge and that no one would use the training wheels tag (padawan and such). I still see people as padawan and acolyte. They move up when they are ready to at their own pace. It makes it more pleasant. The whole you have to do this, this and that to be where you want can be and is daunting.

I say we should have access to master like all the others. Let's take that step of faith together and trust our fellow community. I mean if people abuse this there is the rpj's and like anything the kinks will take time to be ironed out.

 

[Lina Renning]

Folks were afraid that letting characters start at Knight would encourage powergamjng and nobody would write Apprentices.

Neither happened.

At the end of the day, if Joe the roleplayer likes working towards a promotion, he can do. If Jane the roleplayer would rather go straight to a higher rank, it doesn’t hurt anyone and lets Jane write the story she wants right away.

Not everybody is going to instaMaster themselves if they’re able to. But the ones who want to should have that option.

 

[Eralam]

Strictly speaking, you don't need to be in a faction to get Master rank. Simply go directly to staff and ask for a review when you think the character's ready.

You can do that, sure. It's still easier to go through the process in a faction, where you have a support system and a more formalized promotion setup.

It's worth noting that communities have ways of policing themselves. If someone goes around acting like an ass, chances are, they're either going to be shown the error of their ways, or they're going to be shunned for it and shuttled off to the corner where all the other asses get sent.

 

[Ras'kala'han]

I, for one, welcome our new 5-post Master overlords!

 

[Edward Vyperion]

Meh, Been here for years, made a Master out of an old name, never regretted it since