Shattered Kingdoms

Obviously it's not functioning with fewer face stompings, since you have travesties like the Talons happening regularly. I'd say more, and more public, face stompings are in order to stop the very nonsense you were complaining about earlier with leaders getting flags and attempting to rebuild everything about an established faction's background and current positioning on a whim.

I find it challenging to agree because of the difficulty I have in determining whether you're advocating punishing the player or punishing the character involved in, to keep things anchored, a hypothetical hellion Talon leader wanting to snowflake the entire Kingdom. It sounds like you're talking about punishing the player more than the character?

If having your leader flags removed and/or being removed from the faction is a punishment to the player, I guess I am.

I'm saying that characters, controlled by players who have no clue what they're doing in leadership roles, shouldn't be given leadership roles until they've shown they can actually lead.

I appreciate your clarifications. As I understand your position more, I find it easier to support.

How do you prove someone can lead before making her a leader? That's the only thing I'm still not clear on with your approach; seems like a potential Catch-22 and might alter the possibilities for the "grow into the role" idea that I liked in one of your earlier replies.

It's a pretty simple combination of log submissions and observation. Do you have the RP/diplomacy ability to organize a PvP or PvE engagement? Log it and submit it to KD. Can you manage to engage in PvP and at least hold your own? Log it and submit it to KD. Can you, in some other way, back up your talk with your walk, and do so in a way that's consistent with the philosophy of the faction you are attempting to lead? Log it and submit it to KD. And this would be bolstered to some degree by the direct observation of the KD in question.

Again, give candidate Joe a chance to walk like leader Joe instead of just flagging Joe because Joe is available at the time.

From multiple personal experiences I can tell you...If you're the only member of a dead faction, but you start actually being a leader, people will come to follow you and your faction won't be dead for long. Throwing a flag on someone doesn't revive a faction; throwing a flag on the right someone does.

EDIT: It's the old saying, "Dress for the job you want, not the one you have." But in this case, change dress to act.

That makes sense; I like documenting successful character behaviors.

What if there are also negative ones? There's the simple capacity question, but then there's also a matter of constancy. It just seems like a vast amount of oversight to implement something like that without resorting to OOC info and playing the OOC ID game that results in so much of the bad experiences.

It's a pros vs cons weighting like any decision. If the bad ones are bad enough (like, "Man, I just lost that PK engagement, got full looted, now I have no idea where to get gear and prep!"), then no good will outweigh them. If the bad ones are minor, or can be corrected, or are small quirks of character that won't undermine the entire group because snowflake, let them slide.

EDIT: Again, it's not about being the best ever all the time. It's about being capable enough to keep a faction going and keep the members of it interested, engaged, invested, and excited. You can't do that while failing to uphold the responsibilities of leadership.

I think Cabal Guardians should have 5 relics, each representing a certain power. An enemy cabal can then select which powers to disable from an enemy, though cannot sever all of them, without forfeiting their own. Or can mix and match powers from others.