Instead of getting right into business, this time I'm doing something different... that I always do. I digress and ramble about things that seem to have little relevance to the topic at hand. But humor me this time. Instead of continuing reading the next chapter, take a 45 second break to think of your next reincarnation what it is going to be like and after that, continue reading, but not before taking that break..

Alright, now you're probably part of the 95% majority who cheated their way without thinking anything. That's fine. If you didn't cheat, give yourself a pat on the back. When you think of your next reincarnation, what kind of things go through your mind? I think that for most people the thoughts are something like "What guilds shall I pick next?" "What race would be suited?" and "Do I have equipment for that kind of character build?"

So, what else? Boons maybe? Perhaps some quests you're going to do that you haven't already finished? Perhaps. But let's face it, apart from choosing race and guilds, there isn't much else to choose that those two other picks didn't do for you already. Choosing the race and guilds pretty much sets you on your path. The skills and spells that you take are very much defined by the choice of your guild. That's fine and we don't want to change it. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the basic principle how the character in BatMUD is built. The easiest way to tell a character apart from another character is by its guild selection. The other one is race. But apart from that, the characters are fairly similar if we don't compare their power levels. Quickly counting, it seems like these two choices are the only ones that are permanent in reincarnation. It might be interesting to add a new dimension to it - to make it 3D to put a playful spin on it.

Roleplaying games have a lot to do with adventuring, but more and more it's also about character building too. The possibility to create a unique persona is one of those things that makes RPGs interesting. Having new game features and new elements of the player character can be valuable. New aspects make character building more fun and more challenging. New ways of improvement do not all need to be about experience or power. Some of these can be social or it may be power in limited environment. If you think about ships for example, there are maybe some pirates who are more infamous than others. While a person may not be top class in everything - he/she may be very adept at something specific.

The House System last spring was introduced mostly for two reasons. The main reason is that we have been building a new tutorial system (that is still in development) and we felt that new players needed some system that would ease their way into the community and would allow them to make new friends easier. The other reason was to implement a new aspect to the player character. With houses you may create your own community and compete against other houses for status. Contrary to the common belief, the reason for implementing the system was not to get money out of the game. It's a good added bonus. When things need money, it's worth more and there's less inflation. In a game like this where money is created from thin air, it is also important that money leaves the game one way or another.

I've been watching the house system since it was implemented and now after about six months later I have noticed a few things. The positive aspect is that new players have really been able to become members of communities and those new players who really have wanted to play the games have - almost without exception - become members of some house. Many house channels are active and new friendships have been made. If pros and cons are estimated, I think House System has been mainly a positive experiment.

That being said, there are many things that I'm not so thrilled about. I acknowledge there's still some imbalance in how growth or class points are generated and the amount of growth points that are lost in growth cycles might need some readjusting. I have a list of small things that could be modified, but these are all minor things so I'm not going to concentrate on these in this blog.

One bigger issue now is the way how commoners and full members are decided. For the sake of how the system works, I knew I had to throw in the level split somewhere. The idea of having limited amount of slots was to encourage players to found more houses, but I also wanted to limit house sizes so that it wouldn't be possible to invite everybody like is the case with secret societies. Some secret societies have more members and less discussions than Noah had in his ark so I thought that maybe if the community was smaller, it would be easier to get to know the people who would join the house.

I didn't realistically believe that six level 50-60 players could ever achieve same social class with their house than for example six level 100 players. This is perfectly okay, but it does create a small imbalance with graduations. Some new players are more privileged than others when they have a chance to join a house that is ran well by the elite of the game and they enjoy the goods without much responsibility while some other players are not even close to being in the same situation financially for example, but they have shown entrepreneurship by actually founding their own house. Well, isn't this an ironic imitation of real life then? Perhaps, but to be frank (you can be James or Sue if you're a girl or unsure about your masculinity!), it is something that I would like to address somehow. I don't know exactly how, but I'm looking ways to encourage lower level people to found their own house rather than being a member of someone else's. A level 100 person who is paying the costs should not necessarily be on the same line than a graduated member who started the game six weeks ago.

Another issue that now concerns me is something of a faux pas of mine that I did not take into consideration at the time when I planned this system. Originally I thought it was good that the houses could grow through graduations and in time, we would have a lot of big houses and lively communities. Having watched the system for some months, I suppose there's no shame to say I was wrong. The end result about having houses and lively communities is not bad, but I failed to take some technical issues into account. First of all, very big houses 'house who' might become really big with houses that would have 200 members, but this is the least of my problems.

These rapidly expanding houses cause following concerns:

1) They create those TOO big communities that I was originally against.
2) The amount of house points required to buy the bonuses is always counted the same way. This means that the price is same for house of 3 members as it is for house with 50 members. I probably don't need to explain that it is easier for 50 members to come up with those points.
3) The amount of class points required to advance house rank is always the same. This leads to the same problem as that point 2. There is no real challenge for houses with 100 members.

I don't have direct solutions yet, but this leads me to draw some conclusions. Those who do not even want to belong to a house are perfectly free to do so, and I don't take those into consideration when I present some focus points:

1) Some focus needs to be put on those mid-level players who are not members of any house and who have not grouped to found their own house. The people on this group are mostly those who had reached level 50 when the houses were implemented and therefore were not eligible for commoner position.

2) I need to re-evaluate the graduation concept. Should original regular member who takes a slot be more special than a player who graduated from commoner to regular member? I also need to think if it is possible that I can perhaps encourage those graduates some day to leave and found their own house. This would help keep the house communities smaller and it would create more houses.

3) I need to put some focus to come up with new challenges for the house system. One of the things I'm considering is creating different kinds of "advancement trees" for house system. The current "tree" would be the social class, but perhaps in some future system the house could perhaps have more trees and the house could decide which trees they wish to advance.

As a final word, I want to say that I don't ever want houses to become a "larger than life" thing that you must be member of, but I believe that we should have many different overlapping conceptual features that would contribute to the diversity of the player character. To put this into more blunt caveman language, I mean that it wouldn't necessarily harm the player's character experience if its power came from different sources: race (stats), guild (skills and spells), equipment(caveman instruments), social standing (houses) or from something new: vocational career, religion, nationality or from something else.

There are many ways to make characters different but it requires planning and coding. They are both timeconsuming work. Nevertheless, sometimes coming up with something completely new can be refreshing. Many of us enjoy juggling our reincarnations with races and guilds. In addition to that, what if you could combine those with a third option?