can it go back to the old way where villagers actually had to actively play to be allowed to compete. In the last couple of years there have been a number of deadbeat leaders who were obvious storage chars before the rites, played for a week or so after then essentially autoed. I mean Fjarn pulled off the storage leader and stayed true once he got it and did it well but he is an exception to the rule.

village life and applicant life is already rough, no active leader or active drillmaster and only semi visible imms makes it a hard sell for a lot of players to even bother trying to make chars for it.

>Fjarn pulled off the storage leader and stayed true once he
>got it and did it well but he is an exception to the rule.

Believe it or not, Fjarn was actually the only character I played over the course of Fjarn's life. While there were spans where I couldn't play as often as I'd like, he was by no means a storage character.

As to your Rites suggestion, I've only been on the imm side of Battle for a handful of Rites so far, so take this with a grain of salt. I personally like the "old way" of only allowing -active- hero range characters to participate. It makes sense to prove yourself before you are allowed to take a shot at leader.

However, it's more complicated in practice. What happens when only a few Villagers actually meet the requirements? Do you hold a 2 or 3 person Rites of War? Do you wait a month and hope that more folks level than con-die/delete? Do you relax the requirements and risk pissing off the guys that actually met them in the first place?

Can the imms set up the Rites to reduce the chances of deadbeat leadership? Sure. But that also reduces the pool of candidates (some of which might make exceptional leaders). Furthermore, there's no guarantee that a leader from the reduced pool would even stick around. So ultimately, it's in the hands of the players - if you can't or don't want to be leader, then don't. If you're made leader and find out it's not for you, don't sit on the char for a month - let us know candidly what's going on so we can figure something out.

What if you allowed any to enter the rites, but only the few active characters could become leaders? The others could perhaps get a couple of points of con?

It was my impression that there's a subjective part to determining who won the rites, it's not simply the last villager standing. Playing hours can certainly be something the village imms take into consideration.

I think that we as players need to assess if we are capable of leading or not before even attempting to occupy a leadership possition. I agree that it sucks but some people out there are just selfish and don't really care about the next guy. I was plenty frustrated when I played Gahtho about the choise in even letting them compete let alone selecting them to lead, but what can you do? The people behind the keyboard have the power to turn down/not participate in these sorts of things.

nt