From the sounds of it the number of members in a company or settlement actually effects the mechanics of various gameplay elements. The cost of feuds, how much it costs to feud you, and how effectively your group generates influence all depend upon the number of members you have from my understanding.
Based on this I'd like to make a proposal. Inactive members should not be counted. I would say any member of a company that hasn't logged in during the last month should be placed in inactive status and removed from it's member count.
Goblin Squad Member
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I'm assuming Enruel is referring to the size of a company/settlement contributing to Influence and DI accumulation - thus leading to recruitment of 'anyone with a pulse' mentality.
I don't think we've heard anything about how DI and Influence are gained over time. I'm hoping it is based on member activity and not just on pure numbers of members.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From the sounds of it the number of members in a company or settlement actually effects the mechanics of various gameplay elements. The cost of feuds, how much it costs to feud you, and how effectively your group generates influence all depend upon the number of members you have from my understanding.
Based on this I'd like to make a proposal. Inactive members should not be counted. I would say any member of a company that hasn't logged in during the last month should be placed in inactive status and removed from it's member count.
Goblinworks is not a charity to support active players. It is a business. When a person is paying them $15.00 a month to use virtually none of their server time, where is the justification for denying the customer a portion of the small amount of benefit they may derive from their subscription?
If the settlement doesn't want them, it can exile them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I thought it was members going out and getting achievments which contributed to Influence/DI?
I tried to dig for the quote, but just got pulled away for the next several hours. This is my memory as well; they're deliberately encouraging, through use of this mechanic, continuing recruiting of newcomers, because then they'll earn achievements--including all the early quick ones--giving credit to your Settlement, and not someone else's.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Exactly:
From the moment of its creation, each company begins earning influence—a measure of the ongoing deeds of its members, and a currency with which the company can claim territory, trophies, and various boons for its members. Each time a member player earns an achievement, his or her company also earns a small amount of influence. Ambitious companies are therefore encouraged to actively recruit low-level members, guiding them through their early development in order to benefit from the rapid achievement gains of new players. In addition, special company achievements and even some items and trophies provide influence boosts.
An inactive character will not gain Influence. An inactive character on a company rolls might actually decrease the cost of feuding that company a little (smaller companies cost more to feud), and the character isn't there to help at all in the feud.
Companies will probably boot their inactives pretty quick.
Edit to add: Maybe I misunderstood the OP. If the intent is to shift characters from active status to inactive status to make the company less of a target (or a more expensive one, anyway), I could see that. We probably all have left a game for months and returned; it would be good to have a company to fall back to. I'd think it could be a manual act by company leadership, and a character would have to be offline for some period before it could be invoked.
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From my understanding the smaller your company:
1. The less it costs to feud someone else.
2. The more it costs to be feuded.
3. The greater efficacy of influence generation your current members will have.
I'm least sure on point 3 but I thought I heard something about a drop off in efficacy after 50 members to a company.
The reason this concerns me is this leads to the practice of kicking inactive membership when leadership might rather not. Logging in after a time inactive to find yourself without a company can make you feel unwelcome, and lead to loss of membership that was actually valued.
Giving members inactive status saves leadership from having to make the choice between cutting valued inactives loose and making active membership suffer the bloated membership count.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From my understanding the smaller your company:
1. The less it costs to feud someone else.
2. The more it costs to be feuded.
3. The greater efficacy of influence generation your current members will have.I'm least sure on point 3 but I thought I heard something about a drop off in efficacy after 50 members to a company.
The reason this concerns me is this leads to the practice of kicking inactive membership when leadership might rather not. Logging in after a time inactive to find yourself without a company can make you feel unwelcome, and lead to loss of membership that was actually valued.
Giving members inactive status saves leadership from having to make the choice between cutting valued inactives loose and making active membership suffer the bloated membership count.
If they still want you, why don't you just contact them when you get back and ask to join again? Why does this need to be a system?
Because being kicked can leave the impression you're no longer wanted even if that's false.
Making the system makes sense because it should be simple to code and if membership counts are listed anywhere it gives a more accurate depiction of a company's true size.
Implementation aside can anyone list a downside to doing this?
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Goblin Squad Member
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As long as the character is actually inactive, I don't see much downside.
A settlement might not be advantaged by companies with inactive members that do nothing for a month or three, then show up one day and buy a lot of training, only to vanish again. It depends on how training works.
Honestly, I don't see the point. If the leader wants you out, he can kick you—making it manual seems like it'd be less trouble long-term.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Caldeathe, I can't think of any benefits the company gets for keeping an inactive member on the rolls. Influence, for example, stays with the company when a member leaves.
Switching characters to inactive seems to have potential benefits for long-term retention. It covers people for those long business trips, vacations, and deployments; they might even let their subscription lapse. (Or, gaining XP over time, they might want to keep the subscription running). If the character needs to go a week without a log-in before being switched to inactive, that might prevent whatever shenanigans we don't see now.
edit: I think there should be a text box in the guild company management window for each character, so one leader can make a note like: "Urman is out on business trip, back Sep 2014," and it's available to others.
As long as it also removes any benefits, not just drawbacks?
As others have stated I'm aware of no benefits presented by inactive members but if there are those should go to.
The main point is coming back to find yourself without a company can often lead to feeling of rejection/feeling unwanted yet the leadership may not really want to cut you loose. They're just doing it min-max their bonuses.
Best for everyone involved to save them that decision.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wonder if characters which do not have paid training can earn achievements and contribute influence to their companies. Should they or not? I'm thinking not since we don't want to enable a newby achievement unlimited influence scam.
So if we make characters who aren't earning XP "inactive" for member count purposes, I think that solves any problem in this area.
I wonder if characters which do not have paid training can earn achievements and contribute influence to their companies. Should they or not? I'm thinking not since we don't want to enable a newby achievement unlimited influence scam.
So if we make characters who aren't earning XP "inactive" for member count purposes, I think that solves any problem in this area.
That will be interesting to see. If unpaid accounts can generate considerable influence with minimal effort then that's certainly a problem worth consideration.
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Goblin Squad Member
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edit: I think there should be a text box in the
guildcompany management window for each character, so one leader can make a note like: "Urman is out on business trip, back Sep 2014," and it's available to others.
If this is implemented, the availability should be limited to the leader of the company or settlement. Wide distribution on the Internet that someone is away from home is not advised.