On the "Direction" of Hikari - An Idea

Hey everyone.

Since there have been several changes recently and Val has indicated that he's open to ideas on the faction's "direction," I thought I'd throw something out there.

I'm not sure about Decus's ambitions when he started Hikari, but I remember hearing how he (or someone here) wanted us to become a TW faction. While I have nothing against TW itself and would be interested in trying it, I think the idea of becoming a "TW faction" is unrealistic, for these reasons:

1. We'd need 80 active members who can commit to being online and focused on the TW on any given weekend evening. Currently we have a couple dozen active members at best.
   
2. Said 80 members should probably be 90+ to even think about TW participation; currently, over half our active members are below 90.
   
3. And this is the biggest one: Levels aside, number of players aside, we have virtually no chance of taking land from a faction whose members are regular CS customers and are specced out with ridiculously-good gear and "perfect" stat plans.
   

Again, I'd still be interested in trying a TW, but as it stands there's no way we can ever be serious about it because let's face it: we'd lose. Badly. XD

A faction with dreams of serious PVP is a self-fulfilling prophecy: you need a large group of people dedicated to it to make it successful. Since I've joined (a few months ago), I've mostly just seen people leaving because Hikari is, arguably, not very active. There simply aren't enough people in it to be realistic about PVP, and if we keep chasing that ambition, it might just implode on us. :-/

It's my opinion that we need a change in focus; specifically a more "back to basics," PVE-style focus. PWI has changed a lot since the faction began. Instance-running is more common due to the existance of Bounty Hunter, Nirvana and other new instance-based game additions.

Bounty Hunter

BH has become a staple for many players (whether they like it or not). Yet, within the faction, I can rarely find anyone to do a BH with.

When I do play a BH, half the time I meet up with at least one person who can't play their class properly and annoys everyone else as a result. It would be a wonderful thing to have a faction built around solid knowedge and experience of good instance behavior... but at the same time, making it accessible to lowbies, which we could "train" by running their FBs to set an example. Which leads me to...

FB Running

And that's another thing: FB running has also suffered. When I joined, we did it more often... and even before that, Hikari seemed to do a lot of FBs. I know whenever Suki and I needed an FB above 19/29, we'd ask Hikari - in fact, Hikari's behavior and cool nature in FBs is half the reason we joined in the first place. I feel as if quite a few other people on Heaven's Tear would feel the same way. In my opinion, we should go back to seeking out FBs to run for people... it's fun, it's relaxing (since often we're overpowered for the instance in question), and it's nice to help people. And if we conduct ourselves well, that plants intrigue in the tabber, meaning they might join later, or even on the spot.

Twilight Temple

I've seen Hikari do a few TT runs, and even participated once or twice. But if we get more people in lower levels, I envision lower-level TT runs becoming more common and more varied than just the occasional annoying 2-3 run. I tend to stay away from TT at the moment because I couldn't ask the faction to do enough runs for, say, a TT80 weapon or armor. And I can't run TT for profit because I almost never get anything worth selling as a DD. ._.

In short: more TT runs should, in theory, be a byproduct of having more members at more varied levels.

FF, Lunar, and Nirvana

I rarely see any talk of running these instances within the faction. Obviously we don't have enough people of the proper level yet for Nirvana, but it'd be cool to do someday in the far-flung future.

And finally: just more level variation in general

When I look at Hikari right now, the sense I get is that we're a group of... maybe a dozen or so high-levels with a few mid-level alts, who're just bored of endgame prospects and are looking for something new to do. But for me, just the injection of 20-30 new people of varying levels would revive the faction and my PWI experience itself.

What would make us different

There's something you need to know about me and Suki: before Hikari, we were factionless up until the late 70's. We would constantly get random, unsolicited faction invites which only served to make those factions seem desparate for members. Some of them even pleaded us to join and acted astonished when we said we didn't need their faction's help.

Please understand that with this whole idea of mine, I do not propose that we go back to such a method. I've been on the "factionless" side of the fence long enough that I'd like to think I know how not to recruit.

The way to recruit is to play a run or two with a person first, get to know them a little bit, then plant the intrigue where appropriate. For example, say the following exchange happens in PMs between two people in a BH run (and trust me, I've had exchanges similar to this):

Person 1: Man, I can't stand that guy.
Person 2: lol why?
Person 1: He's too impatient... he has no idea that you need to wait and be patient when a BM is tanking.
Person 2: Yeah, we almost wiped when he brought that AoE boss over to us...
Person 1: I swear it's impossible to find good BH squads these days.

At this point one could say "to be honest, the faction I'm in aims to correct that... drop me a line later if you're interested." Do you see where I'm going with this? Faction invites are a lot like selling a product: if you're aggressive or you sound desparate, they'll just resent it. But if you form an accord with them, you can make a friend or a faction-mate.

And as a side note, this is the other thing I always loved about Hikari: we have a very adult atmosphere. We need to use that strength.

However, there are plenty of lowbies and mid-level folks who are nice, mature adults as well. Just to throw out an idea... why don't we set the level requirement to 40? Maybe even less, if we have no reason to doubt they'll be active players.

Finally, to clarify: I don't mean to say that Hikari uses bad recruiting methods. We don't. To be honest, I don't feel like we use almost any recruiting methods. But then, we'd need more of a hook to recruit people with.



So in summary:

• IMO, being a serious PVP or TW faction is unrealistic
  
• We should focus more on going "back to basics," marketing ourselves as a faction based around a wide variety of instance-running coupled with an adult atmosphere. This should involve adding a wide variety of people in mid levels.
  
• We can then get back into recruiting using the above point.
  

Obviously, all this is just random thoughts from me. I've just been hearing (and living) so many BH horror stories lately, I feel like there's a need for a good group of solid PVE players.

Thoughts?

Miugre:

You post some very good points in your statements and observations.

I like some of your ideas and as such as of NOW we are going PVE only until membership has increased, at that time we will have a whole faction consensus and see if members are willing/wanting to take a shot at TW but that is down the road and not a major concern at the moment.

Right now i believe everyone that is active often has been given rights to invite new people into the faction. Now I do intend to be on more than the last leader was near the end of his time with us but i am also on a couple alts that i don't have in the faction (and this i do because i don't want a faction full of alts). Now on the subject of membership i encourage anyone and everyone to recuit right now there is now minimum. I will provide 5 teles to anyone that wants to use them for recruiting all you need to do is let me know.

In the next week or two i will be removing the in-actives that i know of from the faction with exception of a few here and there. That will be the first changes that will be highly visible, i will also be starting a contest in another thread once done here and also i am looking for a new home on the internet for us (this is due to the fact 1. i don't have admin rights to the current ones, and 2. i believe that we need to have a fresh start).

Now on the subject of people leaving:

I know that one member in the recent week has caused some uproar and drama in the faction when he left. Now a lot of us have this member in our friends list and I can assure the faction that he did not leave because the faction was not growing. He left because he built his entire char around TW he took the time and made equipment for use in TW and purchased a nix (the only real reason to have a nix is for TW) so he wants to try this and discussed this several times in the faction chat even before Decus left. Now to tell you the truth this person was Decus's first choice for leader but he turned it down knowing he might be leaving soon so please don't be upset with him he still wants to do stuff with us and has always helped those that needed it even to the detriment of getting his own stuff done. So please if you see ChocoFox wish him the best of luck with his new endeavor with TW. I wish him the best of luck and hope that he achieves everything in the game that he wants.