Things have come to my attention. Rather, they have remained and nagged at my attention for months now as I've sat by and slowly watch the work put into the pack challenge system and siege system go to utter and ruinous waste. The decay of the siege system is especially painful to watch for me; as someone who aided with its creation--I named sieges, for one--it's easy to imagine how it simply sucks to watch, for lack of a better phrase.



Whether you love them or hate them does not matter. If you detest fighting, it doesn't matter. If you adore it, it doesn't matter. I'm here to discuss the health of the site's activity and diversity--something that does matter. So whatever disposition you've set up for sieges and fighting needs to be politely left at the door and I encourage you to take up the calm and logical mindset of someone looking for productive discussion on the matter. To put it simply, we're discussing the prospect of potential change. Please continue with an open mind and an attention to detail, reading all of the proposals.



So what led to these descents?



FIRST - PACK/PACK CREATION CHANGES

The first notable dagger put into sieges and pack challenges were the population and pack creation caps. I will discuss this in the order of: creation vs challenging and then the number of packs themselves.



The cost is something that's extremely important with creating packs vs challenging for them. Since I know that pack creation is a feature unlikely to be rid of anytime soon, I'm left with pressing on the requirements for it. Pack challenges cost 400 gems and require 100 posts while pack creation requires 500 gems and 200 posts, as well as 5 followers.



Let's put these two side-by-side. 400 gems is about 80 posts, which leaves 500 to be about 100 posts, meaning that both gem amounts are well-earned by the time that you meet the posting requirements. As far as value goes, for 500 gems you can get a brand new pack, fresh and clean, with your choice of territory while using only half (500 gems) of your earned (1000) gems. But what do you get for a pack challenge? You get the chance at a pack for 400 gems--which takes up all but 100 of the gems that you have earned. And that's about it. Sounds pretty appealing, right?



My point lies in this. Pack challenges hold very little face value anymore. The OOC social repercussions sometimes included with that package deal of 400 gems doesn't help that, either, but that's something I alone can't change so I won't particularly bother to discuss it in-depth here--that's for another day and for another discussion. Pack challenges are literally too expensive for what they're worth. Either that, or pack creation is far too cheap. Finding five followers in a member-base such as Alacritis is deceptively easy--between familiy members and character's children, a character with 200 posts can just as easily pluck out five of the individuals they've met without batting an eyelash.



So I propose that pack challenge costs be dropped to around 200 or 300 gems, but the post requirement remain the same or raised, OR pack creation requirements be boosted massively in terms of gems and/or post counts.



The original number, if I remember, that was first proposed/enacted for post counts was 300 or 400--which is literally probably the best two numbers for it. 300 sounds perfect--it assures that an individual has been here for long enough to be familiar with the ins and outs of Alacritis while having a highly-established or active character worthy of staking out a guaranteed new pack. If not the post requirement being raised, then the gem requirement for claims needs to be raised to be proportionate to the current pack challenge gem:post ratio. As aforementioned, if you challenge at 100 posts, you only have 100 gems left over (100 x 5 = 500 and challenges are 400) while if you claim, you have around 500 gems left over (200 x 5 = 1000 and creation is 500).



Next comes the number of packs allowed. To put it simply, 15 is far too high of a number. 15 packs means that there is the potential to have around 30 alpha characters on the site, with secondary alphas factored in. And that's simply an outrageous amount that takes away the sense of achievement of being an alpha. There used to be a sense of pride and achievement of gaining an alpha position because your hard work put you above the rest. Your hard work make you one of six or seven, and at max, twelve or fourteen, and you were rewarded for it in this manner. It was a big deal and one of the few worthy goals in Alacritis--something to work for. And now, it's mediocre at best with so many alphas and packs.



Think back to when you first joined, when there were only five or six packs. If you were a member who had no ties to anyone on the site whatsoever, choosing even one of those packs as a potential place for your character was overwhelming. Imagine being a member now and having to choose from not six, not eight, not ten, not even twelve, but thirteen packs. That's simply suffocating. That's thirteen packs to consider for just one of your characters and for someone brand new to the site, it can easily confuse them.



The pack cap and vast increase in the number of packs also gravely harmed the worth and benefit of sieges. With such a massive multitude of packs and the low cost of pack creation in comparison to challenging, sieging on someone feels pointless, mostly because they can just as easily create a new pack afterwards, as we've seen. Disbanding is also fruitless--it just allows someone to claim the pack back, and if your character has ever wanted to siege on another pack, I'm certain you know how dissatisfying that is. Not to mention the social stigma that also goes along with sieges--but we'll get to how to prevent that later.



My proposal for the pack limits is to lower the pack cap to around tenor eight packs. Massively and extensively more active and fast-paced sites cannot even fill all of 10 sometimes and still have some of the most diverse affiliations and varieties I've ever seen--and it's wonderful, and it's healthy, and lets your hard work amount to something. Ten or eight would also make it easier on newcomers. As for the matter of the current number of packs and what we would do with them since there are currently 13, I have my next point and reason for the slow downfall and decay of pack challenges and sieges:



SECOND - DISBANDMENT SYSTEM

disband

verb (used with object)

1. to break up or dissolve (an organization)



Currently, pack disbandment means very little. In fact, the current pack cap is even trivialized and will be useless to even think about after we've reached 15 packs due to the disbandment system. Disbanding still keeps that pack in existence--and it's this that is the problem.



Disbanding should actually disband a pack. Not put it up for claim. The pack should be completely removed whenever it disbands, and this would be a method to get the number of packs back under a new pack limit--by enough packs eventually and naturally (or sometimes forcibly) disbanding to reach that cap. As it stands, disbanding is one of the rewards for winning a siege but, as aforementioned, it's not much of one. This would truly make sieges worthwhile as a motivating and driving force of plotting and character development, also.



This would also create higher consequence to evading sieges and challenges through disbandment. Right now, there is very little and it is dealt with very frivolously, when such a matter should be taken seriously. It could also be used as a tactical move rather than what has proved itself to be an evasive one.



Also, as made vastly apparent by the Sawtooth challenge, an actual process of intentional disbandment needs to be put in place or intentional self-disbandment needs to be removed as an option completely.



THIRD - POPULATION CAPS

Remove the population caps. Allow a territory to expand infinitely if the leader earns the gems to buy expansions. They're unnecessary and vastly contribute to every aforementioned drawback to pack challenges and sieges. Nothing really else to say on the matter that hasn't been said.



FOURTH - SIEGES THEMSELVES

As of now, there is little benefit to being on the receiving end of the siege. The attackers gain everything if they win but the defenders seem to gain very little, contributing to the negative attitude of the community towards them. All I have on this matter is a change to sieges that I proposed months ago (and has been mentioned vaguely as a 'possibly upcoming change to sieges' if I remember right. ages ago.) when the whole 'siege on Covari' plot was driven to unnecessary drama and ruin. I will draw this to public attention:

My best and probably most reasonable idea would be to add a clause to the siege rules that states that when a siege is declared in a pack meeting, all involved parties cannot transfer leadership or disband their packs until the siege has ended. Of course, this wouldn't keep a leader from not fighting/responding, but it would make an IC transition for a situation like this much more smooth if it were to happen in the future.

Another idea would be to make the victory rewards for a pack being sieged on larger, to encourage people to embrace the idea of being on the receiving end of sieges for such bonuses. Perhaps a small, permanent boost to the pack's member cap (say, +3 maximum) that wears off only when the ruler is forcibly overthrown, or them getting to skip their next hunting thread or something of the like. Just something small but very appealing to anyone being sieged on. Or a base gem-reward for participating in a siege for all packs!

Also, it seems like Alacritis has a very negative attitude towards fighting and change--especially sieges. Perhaps encourage pack-wide training sesssions and offer small bonuses in siege fights for the wolves who attend. For example, every pack wolf that attends the pack's training receives a +1 or +2 total point bonus (after all points have been tallied) in a siege fight. A bonus like this would be dropped after a wolf changes packs.

Anyway, please contribute to the discussion and your views on everything presented, and please add whatever you have to say! Thank you for reading!

Though I appreciate your thorough and obviously well-thought out suggestions, I would like to respond to all of this. Please note this is all my own opinion, and no other staff have contributed to any of what I'm going to say at all.

What I feel like you might be forgetting is that a large portion of Alacritis feels very differently than you. Many (I'd venture to say over 50%) of the site is driven by the possibility if they are active, contributing members that post often that they might be able to someday have a pack of their own. You can claim that 200 posts is a low requirement and needs to be raised, but thus far, at nearly 2 years of being a site only 42 people have made it there so far (11 of these people are inactive currently). Of our entire site, that is a very low number of people and all of these people have worked quite hard to get where they are. By giving a relatively large amount of packs able to be claimed, we allow people to both fight for them (if they want to) or work their way there via. posting and paying gems. Your suggestion would only make the extremely strong fighters happy, and while a few people on site want to see that number flourish, the reality is that we have many people who love Ala but don't want to fight much (if at all) and that is okay too, even if isn't the ideal you personally want to strive for.

Regarding the number of packs, the very reason we implemented them was because an overwhelming majority of the site wanted to see more. I will agree perhaps the number could be lowered, but I think this will also work itself out with general pack activity requirements (and it has taken a few months to reach a high amount of packs, and now we're realizing perhaps it should be dropped by a few packs).

I will agree that pack challenges are something that could be raised in price and we might discuss this in the future.

We've talked thoroughly about actively allowing disbandment of packs (by physically removing them) as well, but we run into a bigger problem here. Quite honestly, this seems just a way for people who know how to fight to purposefully get rid of packs simply because they don't like our current pack numbers. Almost every time this has been brought up, it is by a member who dislikes the current number of packs. And while I know members can always work to improve their fighting, this creates an entirely new problem -- people running around fighting for packs just to disband them, for no reason other than wanting fewer packs on the site.

I think what we do need to do is find a solution for people who already have high post counts from coming back and challenging/claiming for packs, when they are not regularly active. If you want to make packs feel more prestigious, make it so people can't come back and make a new pack every time they feel like it after not being around on the site for months. They don't have to "work hard" to get a pack, only win a fight, and this can be really disheartening for people who post daily and don't disappear from the site for months at a time. This is not a personal attack, but a very real issue that many people have been messaging me about.

An even] bigger issue, that you did not address (and badly needs to be addressed) is the behavior we have of members claiming packs, or creating new packs only to give them up a week later, or hand them to another character. While you say you miss when packs used to be a bit more prestigious, flipping them from one character to another and purposefully leaving them up for claim only further perpetuates this issue. I'd argue this is a much bigger issue than the number of packs, and far more of an issue than the gems/posts needed to claim or challenge for a pack..

You say "there used to be a sense of pride and achievement of gaining an alpha position because your hard work put you above the rest" -- I think half the issue that this is no longer the case is that people, as I said above, keep claiming/winning packs only to let them die out a week later, and do nothing with them. Most of the complaints I've heard from members coming back and not liking how many packs we have, or not liking how packs feel "easy" these days are the same members who don't keep packs they win or are given around for much longer than a few weeks at a time, at best. I think that sense of accomplishment is shattered when someone, who has earned a pack and is keeping it active, suddenly realizes someone is challenging for their pack... and they have just returned from not posting more than a few times in a month! That is really upsetting for people too and does eliminate the sense of pride people feel in having a pack.

I do like the idea of giving sieges and claiming packs having direct IC consequences and making these things affect the site more, but we have other issues we need to address first. Staff has also discussed making consequences for members who claim packs only to drop them or fall inactive so that regular members don't suffer when fairly inactive members return to try to claim or create a pack.

The siege rules you outlined are great and we are going to implement many of the suggestions we spoke about months ago (they are sitting in the staff board waiting, right now).

I would also like to be frank with everyone and tell you all this:

Alacritis is currently in the process of moving hosts, as east-of-paradise will be shutting down in the near future. Currently we will not be allowing sieges until the move is complete and large rule changes or suggestions are going to be put aside until the site is safely transferred to a new host. While I appreciate the suggestions, I also think you should have brought them to staff first, as it is not the time. We have a lot of changes we want to see happen to the site, but to be very honest now is not the time while we are going through so many other changes behind the scene.

If anyone has any questions or concerns about this, please message me.

And to Star, none of this was meant to be disrespectful so please message me to if you'd like to talk further!

A lot of the issues you are bringing up, you have already brought up with staff. The staff has turned down things, like disbandment, for a reason. The only reason why there were more packs brought in is because members asked for more packs. A lot of members felt like they were being bullied out of being able to have a pack simply because they were not as good a fighter as some people. Also, there seems to be a lot of people coming back to challenge for a pack, only to vanish soon after getting it.

You make good points and your argument is well thought out, but I do think that major issues like this should be brought up with staff who could then bring it up to the members.

As for the amount of characters allowed in packs, the reason why they have a lower limit is because we can have more packs. Even before the packs were expanded and allowed more, there were quite a few packs weren't full, or even close to the cap of members. The only one that was even close to being full was Ludicael and Covari I believe. And before packs were allowed to have a maximum of three lands, yet you suggest that they would be able to expand indefinitely. So one pack, if the alpha is active enough, could rule the whole eastern lands? I know that this wouldn't be likely, but still. Even now with the number of packs we have, alpha's are struggling to even keep the minimum amount of wolves needed in a pack. Even if we went back to having 8 packs (at least I think it was eight) and the old cap which was 35 (again, I think so) members per pack, the packs wouldn't be full.

Thank you both for taking the time to reply! I honestly didn't mean this to be a "hey staff should do this" but more as a "hey, what would the general memberbase's opinion be on this?" sort of discussion to see who likes/dislikes the potential changes and possibly help brainstorm for them. The only reason why I offered potential changes in caps, costs, etc. are because many people are very willing to criticize or bash on something without giving a suggestion for change. It's the same way people criticize a president ("Oh, he's doing an awful job") and yet would have absolutely no plan to rule a country better. I prefer to have solutions to try and support my criticisms so things may actually come of it.

@Nyx

I'm aware that people feel differently than me, and that's okay--but the whole pack claiming vs pack challenging system feels very lenient toward pack creation while being very harsh on pack challenging in the sense that challenging has far, far more drawbacks then creation without creation having any extra requirements to properly compensate for that.

I didn't realize that the general populations' post count was so low--I honestly believed it to be higher, though that might be because of where I've been RPing recently. My apologies--they both have a lot of similarities and I suppose I mix the two sometimes in my mind without realizing. But that is also the reason why I mentioned the gemstone requirement being raised--which you said that it can be discussed in the future with, so I'll lay that issue to rest for now with the potential possibility of change in that. Thank you.

If giving more benefits to excellent fighters is an issue with disbandment, it could easily be made to only be for a siege reward or from inactivity, efficiently solving that problem.

I have nothing to offer on high-post members coming back to challenge. I understand I am one of them, but hiatuses are unfortunately hiatuses for me, in regards to my personal situation, and I happened to find plenty of time off of mine to be active on multiple sites so I took the opportunity to revive my muse, and it worked. Anyway, I have nothing to offer as far as solutions go without, to be frank as well, making Alacritis any more like another certain site than it already is as far as rules and systems go.

We see things differently, and I'm glad, because I value the input. I know it's disappointing to have your pack challenged for when you're highly active with your character (see also: Oddity vs Jupiter for Ludicael and me on another site challenging for a high rank only for someone to contest who hasn't posted in almost a month). I didn't realize that it threw people off so much--I try to work around it when I can and use it for plots.

Oh, the siege ban during site moving is perfectly understandable. I've known that East of Paradise was shutting down for about two or three months now, and I wasn't planning another siege until (hopefully) the siege changes are implemented in the first place.

As I said, I didn't mean to make it seem like a "hey staff, do this!" ^^; I meant for it to be a discussion about the changes or for people to propose something (or say that they don't like something proposed for this reason) without just saying "hey I don't like this" or "hey this needs to be changed." Basically, I wanted to see how everyone liked the suggestions/the constructive criticism.


@Eve

I have brought up disbandment, yes, but then I was only, to be straightforward, complaining about it. I came back with suggestions as to why it should be changed rather than just saying "hey, I don't like this." I enjoy giving supporting evidence to things that I say when it comes to constructive criticism, as you've seen. c: Years of public school and English classes, I suppose. Good habits, actually. About the only thing the school system does right.

Perhaps indefinitely was a stretch with the way I left the argument. Unfortunately, my internet was about to be shut off and I was in a hurry, so I forgot to mention raising the price of such territories. But indefinitely would be a bit of stretch for it, you're right, and I apologize for not having more time to put more support on that suggestion. A higher cap, perhaps? I wasn't saying to "fill all the packs" but rather not leave them as... utterly and disappointingly desolate.


Thank you both for reading and replying. I really appreciate it. ^^; I've been out of the loop so I appreciate the differing point of views. I know things can be a little slow to roll sometimes so I hoped by collecting opinions beforehand it might help a bit, but I apologize if it didn't.