[Question/Suggestion] Alliances: Do they cost too much?

[Belle Hibiki]

The tricky thing about this question is that, to me, it's very much related to the second. In order to really judge rate-of-gain, we need to have people actively trying to get it. More than a couple people have come out saying "I don't even bother trying to turn in a Job because I don't think it's worth it" and then turn around and say it's too hard to get zeni. Hopefully mine aren't the only eyebrows raised by that.

I think part of the above problem actually stems from the previous set-up we had. It's been a while since someone has actually needed to do something OOC to gain, say, zeni.

Theoretically, I have no problems with the rate-of-gain. Obviously there's not a lot of data to mine, so it's difficult to say whether or not that theory proves true or not. (Some might say the lack of data should be telling, but I, again, maintain that it's not actually a problem with the system.)

Obviously any data we bring to the table right now will be anecdotal at best. The whole point of me breaking down the math of it was to try to put the operation in some sort of perspective to judge personal experiences against.

I don't necessarily see what you raise your eyebrows at, so maybe I'm missing something. If getting zeni is hard to do and it yields what many people feel isn't worth it (assumedly it takes too much of it to do anything), people are going to give up before even trying. This isn't unusual. This isn't even unexpected.

I think the fact that so few people have jumped onto the Job bandwagon is telling for the complete opposite reason, and I'll explain why this might be below.

As often as possible. The system is specifically set up to allow anything to be turned into a job quest. We've even made recent changes to make doing so more desirable.

Leaving aside the obvious impossibility inherent here (not EVERYTHING can be a job quest - see Warm Hands), I think there's a fundamental problem with asking/expecting people to do as many job quests as possible. It has to do with perception.

No one has fun doing the same thing over and over in a game, particularly money grinding. Eventually you get sick of it. And while Chubbs does allow you do do a huge variety of things to make money, I don't believe a player is going to necessarily feel like they have a great deal of freedom while engaging in RP under this system if they know they're expected to whore every thread for money.

They realize that their RP is not simply for the fun of roleplaying itself or writing in general, but an eventual means to an end. Even if they enter into it for fun, the real tangible "payoff" is at the end. XP is automatic, so people don't pay attention to it after a while, but zeni has to be solicited for and faces judgment based reduction, which makes it feel much, much more important.

If I had to ask staff to judge/grade 90% of my threads so that I can get money, I think I'd just get fed up and sick of the whole system very, very fast. I already don't like it, and practically all my threads have generated zeni. Feeling like you're shooting yourself in the foot just because you wanted to do a thread which isn't a job quest strikes me as something that could become "not fun" very quickly.

My 2 cents there. And I realize this is probably the weakest part of my post because most of it is speculation on psychological voodoo.

"Hard" is a relative term in this case. As you explained above, it only takes four quests from a group of people in order to be able to buy an alliance. I don't think there is anything hard about that at all. I, myself, have completed four quests and, really, could turn in at least one more from the thread the two of us are currently in. That's more than my share of an alliance.

Not too long ago, Trafford went and turned in a bunch of quests an got a decent chunk of zeni that would put him pretty close to his chunk of an HQ, I bet (don't remember the actual numbers).

How important alliances should be is a difficult thing to answer. Mechanically, I think they're more of a late-game tool. HQs and Item swaping isn't something people are supposed to be able to do right out of the gate.

Obviously, though, alliance mean more than just game mechanics to other people. The importance to some is entirely emotional/sentimental. No real way to account for that, though, so... I'll just stop there.

Hopefully I answered those satisfactorily. If you have any other questions, feel free.

1. "Only" is just as relative a term as "hard," if you want to play it that way. Soldier of Fortune and A Friend In Need were "only" two quests, but it took a lot of time for me to get them out to a point where I was satisfied (months, actually). And I like to think that I'm not a terrible writer.

2. As to you, you're the strongest character on this site, 300 CA above 2nd place, who is 400 CA above 3rd place, who is 700 CA above 4th. 4th place and below is where jumps become less extreme and the huge majority of the site resides. To presume that your personal experience with job quests is in any way a barometer for the average member of Chubbs is somewhat disingenuous, wouldn't you agree?

3. Trafford certainly has a big chunk of change right now, enough to pay for his segment of an HQ. However, it should be noted that 250 of that is his starting zeni; he's only actually earned about 1200, so he's still a job quest away from earning the total that I listed.

Not saying it makes your point invalid, just pointing out that he'd be using ALL the zeni he has made up to this point in the entire game to pay. I think that's a little messed up, but YMMV.

4. I think you're slightly underestimating the difficulty of trying to wrangle five players into doing an extended activity like that. I don't think I can honestly name five people on the entire SITE who haven't had large breaks between posting because RL issues come up, they lost interest in writing for a while, etc.. Maybe if you could clone 4 more of yourself it wouldn't be a problem; but otherwise it's like trying to herd a very unpredictable quartet of cats. From a distance. Through your computer.

5. I can totally appreciate that you want HQs and item swaps to be late game. This is why I suggested keeping the upgrades that actually provide tangible benefits expensive. I just think it's slightly ridiculous that Alliances have to go through all this to get a forum, and a forum is, in my opinion, one of the main benefits to having an Alliance.