OOC: Player Meeting changes

For a while now we have been noticing a decline in interaction during meetings and the legacys.

Because of this we've been working hard to try and think of ways to get more interaction and more involvement between the players and the Legacys and governments.

Firstly we have tried to get the legacys walking around out in the open a bit more, this has not really worked, unfortunatly when the arks that play them actually find free time to get on them it is rare for anyone to notice them, let alone the core roleplayers. However we will continue trying to get them on more often outside of meetings, you will just have to keep an eye out for them.

Secondly have tried advertising the fact that players can send In Character emails to the events characters directly (or indirectly to there groups, you wouldn't mail your CEO to ask for more paperclips now would you?) by sending appropriatly written mails to events-feedback@ark.anarchy-online.com

These mails can be anything from sending reports on whats happening (Player or ARK events wise), asking questions you havn't been able to ask in meetings (or cannot wait untill the next) or requesting a meeting with the Legacy to talk face to face (we may have to resort to sending lackeys if people are not availabe at times).

This has been somewhat succesful, as we have received slightly more in character mail then previously, however interaction is still slim.

As such we have been thinking up ways to make the meetings themselves more accessible. These changes are not a sure thing at the moment, we will not implement any changes listed below untill people have had a chance to discuss and have there own say in what they think of it. At best, these changes will be agreed upon at the next one of each meeting in character at worst they may be scrapped altogether.

So without further ado here are the changes we have come up with so far.

Council of Truth:

-The Council Meetings will be open to all clan players, regardless of their standing in organizations or size of organizations.

-Any number of members of organizations may participate in the meeting. This may change if it gets to the point where we struggle fitting people into the council chambers (yeah right)

-During the meeting the inside door will be locked, any late comers will have to stand in the entrance hall, they may or may not be allowed late entry.

-Guards will be placed inside the entry hall.

-Trouble makers will be ejected from the council building and they or their organization may be banned from further participation either temporarily or permenatly

-Only those organizations which sign up to the council and pay there annual fee may cast a vote in any official polls set up by the council. The sign up for offical participation will follow the existing rules, this is the only way to get an active vote in polls.

Omni-Tek Affiliate Meetings:

-Any number of players from an affliated organization may enter the building, however only 2 members may participate in the meeting due to space limitations, the rest may remain in the foyer. We may lock the door out of the foyer if people are found to be wandering around too much, access to the toilets will be allowed.

-If numbers increase to the point were we have a full meeting room and still people wishing to participate (in other organizations) secondary meetings may take place in the side rooms.

-Players with no organization will still have to sign up for self affiliation as currently stands.

Newland City Council:

Currently we have no changes planned for these meetings, however if you feel you have a suggestion that could help, feel free to comment.


As I stated above, non of these are set in stone, we would like to hear you, the players, feedback on these changes before implementation.

Looks good to me.
One more thing.
Earlyer the log from Bod was posted in editor news. Could we get that back? People might be more interested if they knew what was going on

NLCC:

how about fogetting the 100 level clearance for instance?
or give FC a notice that storywise the borealis situation has grinded to a halt in which hardly anyone is intressted anymore to rping more about, also the ooc reasons like pvp are silly now that playerpeople have BS. what also is funny is that currently the neutrals from the newb isle that enter the game, start in borealis that isnt really neutral anymore...

and stop calling it the newland city council but call it neutral city council instead. Newland isnt as popular as it used to be, most people only enter it to run on toward the phasephont deck or the BS thing outside, locate it in a more populare place. (aka get borealis back, and run it from there somewhere) and/or run more mayor elections in several neutral cities.

a little side note for all meetings, they are all located in the least visited areas.
if you want more people to get attracted run them in the more populare places like OA, ROME, and well borealis. players do have a habit to be more curious when they see silverstone or any other bluenamed guy walking in that city.

now that the CoT will be behind closed doors will the guards give latecomers/newcomers information about how to attend to the next meeting?

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Originally Posted by Tucxedo

NLCC:
and stop calling it the newland city council but call it neutral city council instead.

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You have point there. Although it's called the "Newland City Council" in practice it has not operated as a city council but as a Council of Truth for Neutrals because ultimately that's the people wanted.

But ultimately to argue against that is just as pointless as arguing that December 31 1999 was not right date to celebrate the Millennium; you might be technically correct but nobody cares.

As for the proposed BoD changes, I'm not sure how much difference they will make at this point. The decline in attendance is in large part a reflection of decline in player population as a whole. To make the most o the limited pool of roleplayers I'd be inclined to look for solutions that allowed players from all factions to interact more (not necessarily in a friendly manner) rather then fragment further the already small community.

First of all...

It's a little late in saying this, but ARK/FC/whomever was responsible, did a great thing by putting the Editor News in the community section. The first few days it was there, there were people outside of the normal role playing suspects actually reading it. So, a definite pat on the back for that one.

I have a pretty limited role in the Council these days so ultimately this is just one opinion of the proposed changes.

I think I have an agreeing audience when I say that the fact that any former troublemakers and meta-gamers can roll a level 1 alt, form an alt organization, and join the council, which makes the private logs of the meeting kind of null and void.

The sad fact is that there will have to be secrets in these organizations and it's another sad fact that there are still people out there who are going to meta-game with this kind of opportunity in front of them. While i'm sure there is always some sort of spying going on, this is going to be almost a free pass.

Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing because goodness knows these organizations do need more publicity, and on a personal note, I do believe that this is going to help more than it hurts. However, it's just one more thing that we have to be aware of before we rush into it. God forbid...ARK might have to have access to the forums of these organizations to see who is passing information around to quickly get rid of it.

Anyway, to sum this up... /shrug. I don't see anything so detrimental that these changes are out of the question, but there are things that are going to have to get some attention.

A few quick comments.

The BoD meeting minutes being posted I beleive was a player run operation using the RSS, im sure no one our end would complain if people picked that back up (although we may censor things in editing).

We can discuss altering the level limit on the NLCC, but at the same time I doubt you want a level 1 person taking one of the few council roles.

the Newland city council is a city coucil, thats the story behind it that we have been given and what we work on. So I can't really see that change happening, but please see the post in rimor buzz that I will make for a bit more clarification on other points.

Multifaction systems have/are being tried but generally have failed/are failing, but if you have any thoughts feel free to contact us about it.

We cannot police metagaming but if its clear that people are abusing the open system then we can look into it, that said only those that sign up in the way possible now can participate properly, it just allows more people in.

And if you feel changes need some attention please do discuss it here, thats what this forum post is for.

with drop the level 100 level I meant to a more suitabl level like 50, just like the omnies have.

run mayor elections in all neutral cities,(borealis ofcourse illegally) then replace the ministers by the mayors (that you ark guys) and let players from orgs join then, if necesairy just 2 per org. sorta like the NDI had, but this time with your involvement.

this might be blasphemy..but how about moving CoT into the vanguards building on OA? closer to the "public" where people get triggered to see silverstone and jacobi etc walk around? or is silverstone a scared little girl who doesnt dares to leave his previous city/tower?

Much of the old BOD stuff has now been braught (is that even a word?) under AO-Universe. ask them nice to keep files up to date like affiliates and perhaps ask them to "continue"to pick up BoD logs?

Not really about the meetings, but I would like to ask the ark to read up on the AO storyline.
I will not go into details in a public thred but
Latley we have been getting orders from the board that makes no sence at all and LTC's are saying things that would send any other player to reform.
I know several players that have stopped doing ark storyline events over this.
There are 3 factions on Rubi-Ka, not one big happy familly under ICC.
If the ark starts to be loyal to the storyagain, people might come back to the meetings.

This is not meant as ark bashing or anything like that. I appreciate the work they do and I seak out LTC's as often as I can and enjoy their company.
I'm just worried about where this is leading

Thanks for some great idea's tuxcedo, and just remember we can't change the game programming so theres little chance of us being able to move the tower of truth to old athens.

Gimpeline, feel free to email complaints to events-feedback@ark.anarchy-online.com if you wish to discuss things outside of a public setting.

Well, the old timers who role played on a regular basis for years ended up earning a Council of Truth Invitation. It was a great way to reward people back in the day. I still have mine, and it still works.

So if you handed those to the people who have shown to be active, they would still be able to join a meeting, even if it's in mid session.

As for LTC's, I will be frank here. It's about name color. Back in the day we saw greenies, we FLOCKED to them, hell word would spread and more than once we would CRASH a zone. Now every quest NPC's name is blue, so are LTC's, we ignore that color now, it's not ARK's fault, it's just... the god damn color.

My guess is that ARK thought having to share the color green between LTC's and regular ARK's who do petitions may confuse (or already was confusing) people, mixing things up and therefore creating a misunderstanding with volunteers.

Instead of making the LTC's green color change to blue, the most practical solution was to change the ARK's name to orange, it would still stand out and it wouldn't be confused with ANYTHING else (well maybe not orange, but more like beige or whatever color is closer to sand).

Here is an example (ok so it's text, but imagine looking at the name above their heads in-game). A roaming NPC with blue colored letters is walking around, an LTC with a green colored name is also roaming within the same area and an ARK pops in to handle a petition nearby.

ARK Whatevername says: Hello, how can I help you today?

LTC Name says: Hey there, what's going on?

Ok, the colors will differentiate both their roles, even tho the questions are similar neither will be mistaken for an NPC.

I was very heavily into ARK RP events for years, the green name was perfect, the nickname "greenies" was always in the mouths of roleplayers in regular conversations... I'm yet to hear what the... blue colored LTC's are called... but one thing is for sure, I wouldn't be surprised if they call them "the blues" it can be just as depressing, heh.

I always pretend to be colour blind :D

I still call them greenies...

and don't have any issue with the name now being blue its confused me twice with some of the new walking quest npc's but once I learnt they were npc's not hard to differentiate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xenotric

I still call them greenies...

and don't have any issue with the name now being blue its confused me twice with some of the new walking quest npc's but once I learnt they were npc's not hard to differentiate.

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Now try to explain that to a new player who wants to roleplay and be involved in events.

"See that NPC over there with blue letters? ok there are a few hundreds of those in the game. Oh yeah, some Long Term Characters will be roaming around and interact with you, they just happen to have the same color name, good luck figuring out which is which."

Even with an LTC tracker (which only Rimor has and it's player-run), new RP players could easily get confused.

I suppose, I just see blue and thing roleplay, regardless of wether its sentient interaction or quests with a story.

"see that blue name? that indicates its some sort of in character person, some are NPC some are actual people. if you right click them and a chat box comes up its a quest, if you right click and trade opens, you have to appologise for putting your hands into their pockets"

Or some such I guess.

channel42 has a LTC notifier too, not a tracker tho

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Windguaerd

Instead of making the LTC's green color change to blue, the most practical solution was to change the ARK's name to orange, it would still stand out and it wouldn't be confused with ANYTHING else (well maybe not orange, but more like beige or whatever color is closer to sand).

Here is an example (ok so it's text, but imagine looking at the name above their heads in-game). A roaming NPC with blue colored letters is walking around, an LTC with a green colored name is also roaming within the same area and an ARK pops in to handle a petition nearby.

ARK Whatevername says: Hello, how can I help you today?

LTC Name says: Hey there, what's going on?

Ok, the colors will differentiate both their roles, even tho the questions are similar neither will be mistaken for an NPC.

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Nice idea, but think about the colours again? Orange for ARK ? with the serious income of players; now and tomorrow for the new engine, green belongs to ARKs. don't be shabby, why not ARK green and LTC orange ?

Because Orange looks like the pet's message colour, and you didn't want to tell it aloud :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mceagle

Nice idea, but think about the colours again? Orange for ARK ? with the serious income of players; now and tomorrow for the new engine, green belongs to ARKs. don't be shabby, why not ARK green and LTC orange ?

Because Orange looks like the pet's message colour, and you didn't want to tell it aloud :D

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Considering the roleplayers got used to greenies for years and any returning roleplayers won't see a single greenie and may thing RP is dead...

ARK has another thing on their favor, their org name is VERY VISIBLE and UNMISTAKABLE regardless of color.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gimpeline

Looks good to me.
One more thing.
Earlyer the log from Bod was posted in editor news. Could we get that back? People might be more interested if they knew what was going on

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I stopped submitting those, Lise, because it took them 1-2 months to post them.... I then started posting them on AOU's BOD section... but stopped after attendance dropped at the meetings... :-(