(roleplay) Guide To Being Accepted (probably) Anywhere

[MonMarty]

Applications, applications, applications. We've all faced applications on Massive before (myself included), and every one of us has been accepted and rejected at least once. This guide won't cause you to be instantly accepted, but it should seriously help you set up your game to be best way you can to ensure your increased chance for acceptance for whatever you are applying for. This largely applies to Noble Families, Gangs, Charters, but in some ways it applies to any closed group that requires an entry level quality check. This guide is split into preparation steps, and a simple what not to do's to maximize your chances.

Step one: Ensure your Rep
Ensure you have a clean rep. If you did some power gaming (or even ERP'ing), such reputations don't damn you forever, but on average, the community does not quickly forget or change their mindset. Changing your username and hoping everyone will forget about you hardly ever works. What people need after a bad experience, is to have an experience that is good, to put doubt in their mind about whether you would be a bad investment or not. In many cases, everyone's reps are less important than the following steps since even most strict Noble Families are very open to accepting members with dubious reputations. After all, many families are considered Samaritans of the community and expected to help people down on their luck integrate properly.

Step Two: Ensure your support
Support from vouching role players is invaluable. Even if an application does not expressly ask for vouchers from other players and staff, citing them will always give a reviewer extra assurances. Vouchers are simply good to have, even if you don't necessarily plan on applying for anything. Various groups have different values of vouches, I will explain them below:

• Brass Lore Staff
  • This covers the higher ranked Lore3 Staff members and Directors. Top Brass recommendations can get you into practically anything, but they are also hardly ever handed out.
• Lore Staff
  • Lore Staff vouches are valuable, more so than players since they come from the people responsible to judge others. Lore Staff vouchers are very strong to have.
• Noble Family Heads / Charter Commanders
  • These vouchers are very useful to have especially when applying for Noble Families and Charters since groups like recommendations from others at the same QA level.
• People with Trustee Permissions
  • This is probably the lowest rung of useful vouchers since they are easily handed out, and often glanced over. Still, they can add to a voucher collection.
• Your friends
  • Unfortunately, your friends are the least useful vouchers, and often, actually work against you. In many cases, if a single person is labeled as a power gamer by staff, and their friends all use them as a voucher, they by extension are also labeled as power gamers, or as someone who just ignores it when it happens in front of them. In many cases, vouchers that come from people that don't belong to the categories of the above are simply ignored because they don't mean anything.

Step Three: Know the Lore
It should perhaps speak for itself, but you best well make sure before joining for example House Howlester that you have read both their family history properly, asked around with other noble families on how to describe their family, but also read into the Highland Ceardian Culture and know what Gallovia is. Complimenting whatever you're applying for is usually not effective, rather, knowing what you can possibly figure out by yourself shows you're interested and do your homework.

Step Four: Know your priorities
Especially when joining a Noble Family, expect to not be able to get 100% of what you want out of the roleplay. When you join a group, your personal roleplay becomes subject to what the group wants. For example, if you join a Noble House and they want an alliance with another family, they may choose to marry your character off against your will, and that's legal for them to do. In many situations, players strand here because they have the wrong expectations from joining other groups and participating in a group roleplay effort. Humbleness is valuable commodity here.

Step Five: Clean Conduct
This isn't necessarily so different than Step One, but it is extremely crucial that you keep a clean conduct out of game too, especially in what you say to others. There is (as a fist rule) no environment that is safe for you to talk shit about other people. Hawkeye, Skype Groups, Discord, even private one on one situations, assume in any and all groups or conversations, your feelings can be communicated back to the target against your will and knowledge. Don't get caught talking shit about the things you're applying for, the people who process the applications or generally anything that involves you saying hurtful things about other players. That sort of attitude tends to disseminate a negative view of you through the community, and players like nothing more than to reject someone who the community have labeled as toxic. Stay humble and constructive when you are rejected. Talking shit about being rejected will loop back to the people who did the rejecting and before long you will have a reputation of being spiteful.

Step Six: Stay Loyal
Which brings us to the final Step, Stay Loyal. Do NOT under any circumstance apply for multiple (for example) Noble Families or Charters at the same time. 90% of the time, Noble Families will for example all reject an application JUST because the player behind it applied to multiple families at the same time. Applying to multiple families sends a strong message that you're not loyal and only in it for the benefits. I cannot stress this enough, you will literally damn yourself by applying for multiple groups of the same thing. Wait until you are rejected before applying elsewhere and be forthcoming about who rejected you as of yet and why you applied for them first, reviewers will often appreciate this more than having to figure it out themselves (which they will).

Step Seven: Showcase Experience
This is a finer point where you will have to balance experience in past situations that may be applicable without blowing your own horn or implying that you're in it for the benefits. For example, Noble Families will always ask in Noble Chat for opinions about an applicant beforehand. It would be good to pin up these sources before the applicant gets to do this for you, since it takes work out of their hands and makes their life that much easier.

So, in Summary:

• Ensure you don't have a negative rep. Inquire with Lore staff about what your rep looks like if you aren't sure.
• Get voucher support from noteworthy people. Don't bother getting vouch support from your friends, they will just be ignored.
• Know the lore of what you're applying for. Impress the applicants with your in-depth knowledge, they will appreciate the time you put into studying it.
• Know your priorities in what you are applying for and don't step in with misconceptions. Know that you will serve the group, not the other way around.
• Ensure that you keep your conduct clean both on and off the server. Everything leaks, everyone gossips.
• And finally, Never under any circumstance apply for multiple groups of the same thing at the same time before being rejected.
• Cite your past experiences so that the applicants have a frame of reference.

What's most important of all is that you should keep trying! Applicants are still people and in many ways they will recognize your hard work if you put into it. No rejection is ever permanent, and no matter how bleak your chances seem at one point, it only takes a single instance or person to like what you're doing to change your luck around.

 

[Reaganism]

In regards to noble family applications, I find myself denying "generic" applications the quickest. And by this I mean a character pitch that is in no way unique to the house. A mix between three, six and seven, but truly, an applicant should read the family lore throughout and come up with a character concept that wouldn't feel right in any other house.

Skip the "artistic lady in waiting" and the "militaristic male knight" tropes. If you apply for house Typhonus, look into the Calemberg-related combat schools. If you apply for house d'Ortonnaise, avoid Calemberg-related schools like plague. There's so much more possibilities than the niche characters and, as a noble family head I will state this, generic character pitches tend to put me off the most.

 

[Lyee]

Darn, you gave away my secrets! =o

 

[Suzzie]

Also please don't roleplay with someone once, then expect a voucher. Like. No. That's not how it works. I have to know you to vouch for you, and that takes some time.