Guilds of Historica Introduction/General Discussion Thread

[Sirens-of-Titan]

well, I saw it and it looked pretty demanding to me. I guess the mods are still fixing some of the things. The due date, for example, seemed rather unrealistic.

Still under construction, the list you saw was preliminary and contained more rules than will be in the final challenge. Still, it should be more-challenging than 4.

Cheers!

[Sirens-of-Titan]

Challenge V is officially up. Enjoy!

[NiceMarmot]

Challenge V is officially up. Enjoy!

I think this one could be good! I like the combination of an old, mystic location and a new, temporary refugee camp. Should make for some interesting, creative combinations. The minimum build size is interesting, as it will force people to put a bit of effort in. I think 32x32 is probably small enough that no one should really have a problem meeting it.

[soccerkid6]

Sounds good to me

Looking forward to all the great entries

[I Scream Clone]

Just wanted to say WOW, we'll done guys, we have had 671 topics and over 16000 posts in Historica in about a year! I reckon it has filled a hole for a lot of builders in this theme and I think you all deserve some praise for making this such a success.

Great job guys!

[Kai NRG]

I think this one could be good! I like the combination of an old, mystic location and a new, temporary refugee camp. Should make for some interesting, creative combinations. The minimum build size is interesting, as it will force people to put a bit of effort in. I think 32x32 is probably small enough that no one should really have a problem meeting it.

Yeah, I like that combination as well. Personnally, I don't think this will be too hard, since I love building camps.

[NiceMarmot]

Just wanted to say WOW, we'll done guys, we have had 671 topics and over 16000 posts in Historica in about a year! I reckon it has filled a hole for a lot of builders in this theme and I think you all deserve some praise for making this such a success.

Great job guys!

Great job, guildleaders!

I think GoH got started in early November, so we've still got about six or seven weeks probably until our anniversary. Plenty of time to hit 700 topics, especially with another challenge coming up.

[Mike S]

Well, I think some of them will be back. Some people do have a tendency to drift in and out. I was absent for most of July and early August, and haven't had a chance to build anything really since Challenge 3. But yes, I wonder what people are up to.

More importantly, is there anything we could change about GoH so that more people stick around? Looking at the Kaliphlin first post, I see 45 names listed there as guildmembers. I'm guessing that only about 14 are still posting: NiceMarmot , DaMaximus, SI-mocs, Gabe, SkaForHire, Erynlasgalen, robuko, Mikel Kalores, Kayne, Axis600, Kai NRG, Medic!!!, Sebeus I, gedren_y. Although some of those 45 never really got further than posting their sigfig. I suppose 14 isn't bad, and maybe some are lurking and not posting. Some Most people are not as chatty as you, DaMaximus! I think most of us are in the northern hemisphere, and were a bit distracted by the good weather over the past few months. Perhaps some of them will drift back in.

But would more have stuck around if we'd had more mini-challenges? Fewer? More community-building like the university? Would an in-character chat topic have helped? (I still think we should do one of these, maybe by guild, plus one in a tavern in Cedrica.) Or maybe some more non-building challenges? More tutorials by our master builders? Who knows; they're all decent ideas, but we'd have to hear from some of those who have been away for a while.

IMO there are three reasons why people join GoH and therefore quite a few reasons why they end up leaving.

1. contests- this category most likely sees the greatest drop in members. After participating in one or two challenges it is obvious that unless you are extremely creative and have a fairly large supply of bricks (living near a Lego store with a brick wall helps) you don't have a chance at winning. Possible changes to retain this category is implementing a division and ranking system that would enable members to compete against other members within their skill/brick piece range.

2. contributing to a persistent world- this category would probably see the second greatest drop in members. Due to boredom or lack of Lego bricks to create their vision, some of these members move on to other things. Possible changes to retain this category would be to encourage LDD.

3. improving their building skills- members who join for this reason (note this is the main reason why GoH was started) are the least likely to leave. Possible changes to retain this category would be to have more and varied challenges.

[NiceMarmot]

IMO there are three reasons why people join GoH and therefore quite a few reasons why they end up leaving.

1. contests- this category most likely sees the greatest drop in members. After participating in one or two challenges it is obvious that unless you are extremely creative and have a fairly large supply of bricks (living near a Lego store with a brick wall helps) you don't have a chance at winning. Possible changes to retain this category is implementing a division and ranking system that would enable members to compete against other members within their skill/brick piece range.

2. contributing to a persistent world- this category would probably see the second greatest drop in members. Due to boredom or lack of Lego bricks to create their vision, some of these members move on to other things. Possible changes to retain this category would be to encourage LDD.

3. improving their building skills- members who join for this reason (note this is the main reason why GoH was started) are the least likely to leave. Possible changes to retain this category would be to have more and varied challenges.

Interesting ideas. I think I agree with you for the most part.

You're right about the contests. I agree that there's probably only a dozen builders in GoH who have a realistic chance of winning the major challenges. I wouldn't place myself in that category, but in the second tier. I probably have the bricks, but just don't have the time and I'm not quite innovative enough. Here are some ideas:

• More mini-challenges are probably a good way to address problems people have with brick inventory and/or time.
  
• Improve recognition (somehow), especially of second and third place winners. Perhaps a Hall of Fame page on the wiki would help, with all the major and minor contest winners.
  
• Detailed scoring of (at least some) builds, across several criteria (design, parts usage, photography, story, etc). At least then you could compare your builds over time and see if you improved. But that's a lot of work for the guildleaders or others to rate and score all the entries. I did it when I rated challenge 3 entries, and it probably took two hours to go through all entries and rate and score them.
  

#2 is probably the hardest to address. I think a lot of the pieces are in place to help contribute to a persistent world. The wiki helps a lot too, at least for me. I have two suggestions to improve this area, plus I like yours:

• Encourage everyone to develop a detailed story for their sigfig (backstory, present-day, or both), and build scenes from it. I think this is potentially a big motivator. I've got a whole long story line for my Water Crystal search sketched out, with about a dozen or more builds planned. Who knows when I'll have the time to do it all, but the idea of eventually being able to do it is definitely helping keep me around.
  
• Have a thread (or several) devoted to in-character chat / discussion / role-play. This will help build a sense of community, help people get to know each other, and provide a reason to come to EB and check out the latest discussion. [i'm building an MOC right now that will play host to this for Kaliphlin]
  
• Encourage / allow LDD (at least in free builds and some mini-challenges)
  

Regarding improving building skills, I agree that these people are the least likely to leave, unless they don't see themselves improving.

• More and varied challenges, especially focused mini-challenges, would help here.
  
• Building 'workshops' or 'seminars', where the great builders of our age share their knowledge and techniques, in an interactive program that also gets the 'students' building and following along, not just reading a thread. For instance, I think Derfel Cadarn's tutorial on medieval village building is awesome in scope, detail, and technique. But I'd also like to see someone expand that into something like a four week program with progressively larger and more complex builds every week. And where the 'students' build and post every week, and everyone gives C&C.
  
• Build up repositories of building technique knowledge, such as tutorials and lists of examples. The wiki is probably a great place to do this. And there are already some great threads on specific areas, especially in the Historic Themes forum. Perhaps during some boring conference call at work this week, I will start to accumulate links and put them on the wiki.
  

[Mike S]

Interesting ideas. I think I agree with you for the most part.

Well it looks like you completed my ideas...

[Sirens-of-Titan]

Interesting ideas Nice Marmot and Mikel Kalores. Allow me to offer my own take on each of these issues in the order that MK listed them:

1) Contests. Yes there is something about the competitive nature of these that drives a lot of the more-reserved members away. At the onset of GoH we had a choice to make; do we run it as an open-world, role-play experience or do we make it into a series of story-driven contests. The latter seemed to have the greatest appeal for a few reasons, namely because a key goal of the project was to challenge the builders and make them build outside of their comfort zone. We felt it was much more interesting to have a few builders going head-to-head and developing new mocs and techniques, than to have a few hundred contributing unrelated content and saturating the world without a common direction. After all we do have an RPG forum that focuses on characters/stories and role play, and we wanted and still want GoH to be primarily a place for building.

I'm not convinced everyone who left did so because of this category. We had some excellent and dedicated builders in the first round(Busboy, the Inventor, Dan Church, Viceroy come to mind), who perhaps got it out of their system and decided not to participate after challenge 1. I also know quite a few people found out they cannot meet the time constraints of the builds and did not enter.

2)World Building. I think we've had quite a few very good contributions to the lore of Historica, but it seems that once the boundaries were established and the typical picture of, say an Avalonian homestead were set, people did not innovate past the established/expected vision. Thurs, the "land" may have become a bit stale in some people's eyes. There's something that happens when you build castle builds for too long... I think I have it... What's a nice way to put it? You don't want to build @#%#@*!#@ castles anymore!

3) Building Skills: I don't think anyone has left because they weren't learning anything new. We have excellent ideas in every MOC posted here, and every member can only learn and innovate by seeing them.

4) I would pin the huge membership drop on one thing alone; novelty factor. At the onset we had incredible excitement as it reminded people of a castle community build, which are rare. I don't think anyone thought it would go on for so long though.

I think GoH will be a great project to remember in Eurobricks history. It's almost at its conclusion, and then it's on to bigger and better things! (And you'

re all invited to come along! Not that I know anything about it... )

[Rogue Angel]

Time to add in my two cents...

I would say that a drop off is inevitable. I think Mr. Statham has hit it right on the nose with Novelty. I think that most people have a very hard time staying committed to something consistently for a long period of time. Everything is always more interesting right away, but it loses it's luster. It is easy to stop in every day at first, then every week, then once a month.... and soon you haven't visited for 6 months. I usually tend to go through phases - I'll be really into Legos for 4-6 months, then I'll get into video gaming/MMORPG for 4-6 months, then working around the house.. I rarely keep up a sustained effort on one particular thing for this long, (kudos to the Guild Leaders and all you GoH members that keep me interested!) I think it is very easy to fall away from this the longer time goes on.

I for one have to make a conscious effort to keep building things, and even that has not worked very well lately. The contests are what keep me going. I want to remain a contributing member, and so I feel obligated to compete in every major contest, and what small ones I can (I really was planning on entering yours SK, but I ran out of time ). This is a good thing though, because otherwise I might not build anything at all. I have tons of ideas floating around, but just not enough time to build them.

I personally would say that the largest factor that keeps me interested is the interaction with other members. Add this to the fact that people like de Gothia, Legonardo and Ecclesiastes are posting new MOCs constantly, and I am always eager to see what's new in the forum each day.

A forum is only as good as it's members.

[Legonardo]

I think GoH will be a great project to remember in Eurobricks history. It's almost at its conclusion, and then it's on to bigger and better things! (And you'

re all invited to come along! Not that I know anything about it... )

While I will come along,

GOH WILL NEVER END.

just thought I'd add my own feed-back.

----------------------------------------------------

Seriously though, although we have seen a significant drop in members, GOH has IMO livened up the history forum allot, people are building with storie, builds, not only of one builder but lots of members builds, relate to each other and everything fits. things like characters and role play (not much role play but still) have made everything heaps more interesting, otherwise its just another build.

~Legonardo

[Kai NRG]

Time to add in my two cents...

I would say that a drop off is inevitable. I think Mr. Statham has hit it right on the nose with Novelty. I think that most people have a very hard time staying committed to something consistently for a long period of time. Everything is always more interesting right away, but it loses it's luster. It is easy to stop in every day at first, then every week, then once a month.... and soon you haven't visited for 6 months. I usually tend to go through phases - I'll be really into Legos for 4-6 months, then I'll get into video gaming/MMORPG for 4-6 months, then working around the house.. I rarely keep up a sustained effort on one particular thing for this long, (kudos to the Guild Leaders and all you GoH members that keep me interested!) I think it is very easy to fall away from this the longer time goes on. . .

I agree, a lot of poeple find sticking to one thing for a long time tough. So it's only natural that interest would drop over time (even TLG doesn't keep most of it's themes more than 2-3 years).

[Angeli]

While I will come along,

GOH WILL NEVER END

My thoughts exactly ;)

[kabel]

I'd be sad if GoH were to stop soon. I mean before this I put together a moc like every half a year or so, now it takes me only a few days to put things together, and I still have plenty of ideas, especially for our capital, so don't stop this, please

[Sirens-of-Titan]

I'd be sad if GoH were to stop soon. I mean before this I put together a moc like every half a year or so, now it takes me only a few days to put things together, and I still have plenty of ideas, especially for our capital, so don't stop this, please

Historica and its sub-forum aren't going anywhere. What we mean is that the official challenges will end after challenge 6. The world of Historica will still be very much alive and will be carried by original MOC's, member contests and things like the Builder's Academy. Have no fear, GoH will be a part of Eurobricks for many years to come.

[Ecclesiastes]

Interesting discussion!

Historica and its sub-forum aren't going anywhere. What we mean is that the official challenges will end after challenge 6. The world of Historica will still be very much alive and will be carried by original MOC's, member contests and things like the Builder's Academy. Have no fear, GoH will be a part of Eurobricks for many years to come.

I think it's a good thing the official challenges will end. This means I can focus more on other themes like western and pirates. This is fun and I will be making mocs for Mitgardia in the future, but it's demanding a lot of time so I don't have time for other themes. And ofcourse I could make other themed mocs but that means less points for Mitgardia and I can't let that happen ofcourse

And I agree Historica helped a lot of builders improve their skills a lot. So this would be a fun concept for other themes... I spotted some sort of teaser in sci-fi, so maybe I'll be building spaceships instead of western and pirates.

[Brickdoctor]

Builder's Academy.

Clearly, I've been away from this subforum for too long. I tried searching for this, but couldn't find anything... 'Builder's Academy'?

[Legonardo]

Clearly, I've been away from this subforum for too long. I tried searching for this, but couldn't find anything... 'Builder's Academy'?

I haven't been away from this forum for more than 4 days at a time and I am new to this

[Brickdoctor]

I haven't been away from this forum for more than 4 days at a time and I am new to this

Oh, good, it's not just me and my inactivity, then.

I know the concept of a Builder's Academy on EB has been discussed in the past, but it's never been implemented because it's too hard to set clear rules of what is right or what is wrong or what is a good style or what isn't in MOCing. (and I highly doubt that SoT is referring to TLG's Master Builder Academy )

[Dr Rod]

My thoughts exactly ;)

Actually, I think your thoughts were more along the lines of "GOH will never end... until the Drow rule supreme!!"

Dr Rod

[Legonardo]

"GOH will never end... until the Drow rule supreme!!"

Dr Rod

i rest my case

[ZCerberus]

SoT invites everyone to come along... come along to where? Codes and secrets.

Historica won't end after the challenges do, Avalonians still have thoughts and plans, but maybe some of us would enjoy an official challenge break and wouldn't mind branching out into a new theme.

[Bricktooth]

If you don't mind asking, what is SoT? I hope it's a newer abbreviation, so me not recognizing it isn't a sign of my stupidity...