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+--- Thread: Factions!! (/showthread.php?tid=198571)
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Factions!! - Tunicle - 09-08-2023
Yes Factions!!
Are they as useful as they could be?
What do we expect of our factions, official? unofficial?
Are they pointless?
Checks and perks?
Just a few questions that may spring to mind when you see the word factions.
Now is a chance to help design a faction system that improves what we have, what are the best bits, what needs changing?
Putting together a small group (6ish) to try and rework this aspect of Discovery, a couple of "staff" plus community players who would like to get involved. If interested pm, and/or post below.
If you would like to provide suggestions/discussion use this thread, but give rationales and try and be constructive.
You may have noticed forum warnings are back, if not then anything abusive, trolling, not discursive etc, will disappear and remind you of this system. Keep it on track and lets try and avoid some of the less positive traits that parts of the community are often wont to display..
RE: Factions!! - Minna-Dietlinde Wilcke - 09-08-2023
From what I could perceive, the main benefit of the status of Official Faction were never the perks but the opportunity to provide input on the story, but that time is past us and the story working group was abolished, as far as I'm concerned.
Perhaps, reorganising it would be a good step, appreciated by many.
RE: Factions!! - Arne - 09-08-2023
I guess i'm one of the few people that don't mind the devs deciding on the story.
However, I do have some personal inputs on it.
- I think the OF perks are fine as they are. I do also believe non-OF factions should have influence on the story.
- Some better guidelines on what the factions should focus on would be great. One faction can work on rp, only to see it nullified later on.
An idea for this could be: Devs give the faction a direction. Then decide what happens on the choices that faction makes. That way storydevs still decide the story, but the players have a choice how to handle a situation.
- I also believe FLhook should be more encouraged to be used. This way NPC bases have more use ingame. I know a player who was eager to use it, but after requesting one to the admins/devs, it came on deaf ears. I feel this system has a lot of potential. It's there, it just needs to be used.
Of course I'm unaware of how much of this is possible.
RE: Factions!! - Sombs - 09-08-2023
(09-08-2023, 03:45 PM)RaumDeuter Wrote: I do also believe non-OF factions should have influence on the story.
That essentially means anyone can influence the story, which is already the case, as anyone can apply for story dev or make submissions.
My main concern regarding official factions THINKING they can influence the story is that most of them did nothing to qualify themselves for doing so. In most cases, the people running the official factions right now are not the same people who went through the ambitious effort of getting the faction official in first place. Right now, most faction leaders are 1iC/2iC because they inherited the position by being there, not by meeting a firm set of standards that qualify them.
Maybe that would be different if active official factions would be required to fulfill the same requirements that new factions need to meet to earn and keep the privilege to have a stronger-than-none influence on story decisions compared to the random person that contacts the right people on Discord. The Official Faction Check-ins were ideal to provide transparency on what is currently going on. I think that would be a good start to re-introduce, because having factions log into the game for the sake of completing the three days of activity by, in the worst case, avoiding literally everyone else outside the faction, is probably not the general idea behind keeping a faction official. Instead of promoting online-time, promoting interactions - and not necessarily just combat-based interaction - should be promoted.
Everyone is interested in diplomacy and scheming, but I have yet to see two factions forming defended convoys together as joint operation. Inter-faction trading is mentioned over and over again on comms and is loved to be brought up in debates. What people mostly get to see is smuggling convoys when the Three-Day-mark needs to be met.
RE: Factions!! - MFDViking - 09-08-2023
Factions are the same as Clans in other games, guilds, brotherhoods, alliances...
Factions bring unprecedented Role Play to a game that would otherwise be empty and uneventful. NPC-wise that is.
Official and Unofficial factions however offer much much more to the table. They offer a community within a community to play with. They offer a haven for those of us that only know specific lore and culture when it comes to new players. Official Factions should be at the forefront of the story (development-wise) as they are the ones going to war with others, calling for peace, making deals, offering chances to players new and old to interact with the NPC's in a thrilling and interesting way.
Official Factions Specifically: These factions are the ones that should be the most active groups, the ones that the staff/admins pay attention to in one fundamental way. These factions actions and reactions should be the stone that throws the equilibrium of the universe into a ripple that affects so many different factions regardless of the obvious strings being pulled. These "stones" ultimately affect the greater lore of the sector. This does not mean that Official Factions should be given preferential treatment, simply that they should be paid attention to.
-> These factions should attempt to hold events within their space, things that bring players together to interact with the storylines that they want to tell within their RP. (An example is the EXTREMELY AMAZING Roleplay that the Akhetaten does through Liberty space, backed up by the 46th)
Unofficial Factions: These factions are the ones that should get involved in the events held within the space that they want to be a part of. They should not be ignored, nor take a back seat to the Official Factions; but they should be the kind of groups that form naturally through the similar NPC factions that they choose to fly with.
-> A great example of this is the DrengrCo faction, they make things extremely interesting as they attempt to make Civilian roleplay more fun and prevalent. They take part in several events, causing their name to be known even through those players that choose to fly their main ships and characters in a specific area of space.
-> Another example is the one that I am doing, an attempt to make Smuggling and "Danger Run" trade routes more enticing with the start of an unofficial Freelancer faction. Freelancers tend to simply be Mercenaries but there should be the kind of Freelancer through space that simply takes on the jobs that no one wants... including Waste Removal, delivery of Alcohol, medicines from Hostile Space to Hostile Space... Stuff like that.
Ultimately, I believe that there is a bunch of things that could be improved for the Player and Non-Player factions. This is a GREAT idea, to put together a group that takes a look at Factions through a Magnifying Glass.
A word of caution: There is always a possibility that factions will want to make things happen their way simply because they have the numbers to back them up. Please be aware that factions should not be the only thing that drives the storyline of the server/mod.
Much Love!
RE: Factions!! - Barrier - 09-08-2023
I think before making suggestions, I wanted to highlight what I see as less-obvious benefits of being an official faction:
- Your own sub-forum. As someone who has dug through a lot of faction-related pages, it's very useful to have all that info in one place. Those sections also give everyone a good idea of how active the faction is, since you can simply check the last post dates on all the threads.
- Event RP reasoning. I like making events, and I also like these events to make some sense within existing RP. It's very useful when I can contact a faction leader or veteran member and ask them about what their faction would do in a certain situation. If a server faction doesn't exist for a certain NPC faction that I wanna involve, things become more difficult. I can either decide myself how the faction will react, or try to track down players who used to play as that faction. Of course unofficial factions serve a similar role, but if I'm talking to someone from a long-standing OF, I know I can get a solid answer.
- Story focus. While I would also prefer that devs discuss more things with factions, OFs still have a lot of power in deciding how certain RP elements are to be played out. Really as long as you're playing within the limits of your ID, you have a lot of leeway, and since you're an OF with bounty and FR5 powers, other people are likely to come around to your way of thinking.
With that being said, and keeping in mind the known list of perks, I do wonder why there aren't more OFs out there? A simple answer seems to be that all of these benefits are still not worth the requirements to becoming an OF. As many have put it, staying an OF is easy, you just have to log and basically not afk, and that part is easy if you already have RP setup for why your faction exists.
But getting OF is a pretty big hurdle, and that's what I think we need to focus on. Should it be easier in some way? I think so, because I want there to be more official factions on the server. So let's look at the requirements again:
- One month as OF. Simple enough, since you already have a good idea, and transferring it properly into info pages and report centers is a relatively complex process.
- At least 3 active members. Also pretty simple, if your idea is that good, you should be willing to find likeminded people to agree with it, otherwise you're just doing a very complex SRP.
- 500mil SC (refundable upon gaining status). Easy breezy, you can mine, sell ores from pobs, or participate in trading events.
- Creation of a faction feedback thread upon approval. No problem, everyone likes constructive feedback.
- Your performance on the server and forums is evaluated over a 3 month period.
Now this last point is where things start sounding scary, at least to me. The evaluation is done by devs/admins/mods, who you may actually never encounter in-game. Yes, they can look at your forum comms and MDs, but it seems like you almost need to figure out who the judges are and what they play in-game, and try to interact with them. So maybe we need to solicit player feedback during the OF approval process. It will still be useful after OF status is approved, but it seems critical to the decision of whether a faction should get OF.
The other scary part of this point is the 3 month commitment. Say you get 3 people + you, but things happen irl, and you have to bin the faction for a bit. Well, your application is screwed, because you're not putting out content from your faction. This is less of a problem if you have more interested players, but you still need to be active to organize and encourage RP. To deal with this, I propose two things: the evaluation period may be paused/resumed at the faction leader's request, and the judges may vote on officialdom after a month has passed, provided there's sufficient evidence of solid RP (which would include positive player feedback).
RE: Factions!! - Emperor Tekagi - 09-08-2023
Total abolishment of a "official" and "unofficial" faction system. Let there be just "factions".
Streamline and highlight what you as player/group can do already in our game environment to impact it "officially" (read: Player submissions to story, event requests, Player requests, etc.)
All, individual, official and unofficial are equal for the methods stated above already. Bear that in mind.
Official faction rights are mostly redundant. FR5s are so scarce, they'll hardly be missed. Instead of FR5s, bounties should be promoted. At the end of the day, a simple rename avoids both but it is what it is. FR4, read: holding authority over ship sales is redundant with current techcells. FR3 (the event one) is also a joke, because every normal player event restricts participation and incidents of a non-invited third party ruining it are extremely rare. FR2.. is this even applied? And FR1 was always extremely situational. If someone keeps obviously defiling lore in such extremes that FR1 could apply, there's already "2.6 - Every character must have only one type of ID equipped and must play according to the role and restrictions of that ID."
As for bounty regulations, they will need an overhaul. Without OFs as "authority person" who can blanket bounty freely, BBs need obvious changes.
House Laws are already player requests and would stay such. House Govs, well, here I can just promote an open and inviting policy by those who already run House Govs. Some do so already. Are they justified then? According to some, they are useless garbage and shouldn't exist anyway and we would be better off driving even more RPers and RP opportunities off the server. So yeah, each their own here, I guess.
As for the OF sub-forums, just make it a fee like tracker for unofficials is right now, quarterly if you must so that you just take the sub-forum away upon missing payments. A sum? Dunno, 400 mill per quarter? Something normal and not outrageously expensive.
Advantages?
Everyone can have order and accessibility to their faction's forum stuff.
Downside?
More work for our poor Admins and Mods.
So why the 180° away from any "systems" for factions?
Fairly simple, the past years (3,5,8, how many you want) were all a constant decline of players and quite the drastic decline of official factions. But what happened when the official factions starting to crumble lost their status as OFs? They often disbanded altogether and quite a few straight out left the game. Why? The constant illusion of relevance. Fading into nothingness over less interest, time or appeal led to OFs slowly falling apart. Many cling to their OFs of old days though and when they're failed, they leave and do not move on. Sure, that's on them but this isn't a thing of 3-4 people only.
Honestly, Disco needs not to portray a "difference of status" between factions anymore. I know devs don't make any such differences since a few years now but the systematic approach leads to this false picture. Plus the current bonuses for being OF are ridiculous, you see above that basically all you get as bonus is sub-forum and BB rights. Everything else, anyone can do.. and this is good. But why try to restrict it still? Why restrict the casual people or long-timer players with vastly different RL situations than 5 years ago from accessing these two goodies by making them "OF only". Why keep a 3 people gang of newbies from having their own sub-forum to enjoy?
We should cater the players in a way that makes both game and forums have their respective appeal. Especially on the Bounty Boards and sub-forum page, we cater just "the entitled" OFs. We shouldn't do so anymore, these times are past.
Let factions be just factions and use or not use all goodies offered by the staff at their own discretion. Let people play, not chase hours or in a new system "chase sufficient RP posts" as supplementary to logged hours. Understandably, nobody would enjoy having an ominous "someone" judge their RP and declare it "sufficient" or "insufficient" in regards to OF activity checks.
RE: Factions!! - Xithon - 09-08-2023
The Op asks: "What do we expect of our factions, official? unofficial?"
From Unofficial?
Generally speaking for new factions(not true of everyone), I'd expect below-average RP, a lot of honest mistakes, various rule violations, and possibly a lot of bad encounters.
Ideally, one would want to see an arc of growth for said faction away from those things, regardless if OF status is the end goal or not.
From Official?
As a rule, I would expect above-average RP at the very least, be it in-game or on the forum.
I would also expect a certain level of ooRP and inRP professionalism during in-game encounters, regardless of the circumstances or faction ID.
I would expect its leaders to emphasize and encourage an ooRP attitude of excellence from anyone wearing the tag and carrying the ID in-game.
I would expect the faction to be Visible in its respective ZOI. This would mean establishing a felt presence there, through both RP / PVP, and maintaining that presence.
Likewise, I would expect the OF to be visible and active on the forums.
IMO, official factions and their contributions to the community are vitally important to the overall health of the RP environment. More quality, not simply quantity is what is required of Offical factions. Officialdom is not currently about the perks that come with it or reasons that existed years ago, but what an OF is doing to improve the community at large, within the boundaries of its ZOI and ID lines.
Getting rid of "Official" and "Unofficial" is not the answer, as in this instance "gatekeeping" "standard bearing" is really very necessary. However, perks for being official should be improved and made more lucrative for the factions themselves; in exchange for what is already expected.
Perhaps for starters, a quarterly credit stipend for House Military OFs from the Devs for meeting activity? It would be nice, Bounty Board can get expensive.
RE: Factions!! - Czechmate - 09-08-2023
I sent you a PM @Tunicle, I think I lead the most OFs in effect, have brought most to officialdom last few years, lead the biggest non OF too.
I will listen to all opinions, it's important to look at the hard data most importantly where possible and where there's access to them. There isn't OF as an OF and a lot of factions are official for different reasons and could potentially be approached differently when it comes to criteria.
RE: Factions!! - Erremnart - 09-08-2023
I would get rid of the Official Factions altogether and made their "perks" accessible for all factions as rewards. There can be some "cooldown" on the demands for forum subsections, so whoever is organizing the forums won't get overwhelmed (like one organization request per three months/six months, unlocked by an initial payment of 1 or 2 billions to set some reasonable entry bar).
As a story dev - I am an advocate for the equality in this matter. Dev requests shouldn't be gatekeeped from players just because they aren't in an OF. Story influence requests should be judged based on the canon lore only, thus indies and factions are all equal.
As no faction speaks for the whole npc faction anymore, the word "official" is misleading by itself.
As for bounties, I'd get rid of the unlimited kills/blanket bounty system altogether. If you want to bounty someone, at least make some effort and make a wanted poster - either through plugin one day or on forums.
As a story dev - I am an advocate for the equality in this matter. Dev requests shouldn't be gatekeeped from players just because they aren't in an OF. Story influence requests should be judged based on the canon lore only, thus indies and factions are all equal.
As no faction speaks for the whole npc faction anymore, the word "official" is misleading by itself.
As for bounties, I'd get rid of the unlimited kills/blanket bounty system altogether. If you want to bounty someone, at least make some effort and make a wanted poster - either through plugin one day or on forums.