Well I've heard this question at least ten times in the last two days on skype, so I'm going to put it here.
What is the point?
What does an official faction get that an unofficial faction doesn't? A faction recruitment thread and a faction status post.. And then about fifteen MORE rules and restrictions, and they have to keep their membership levels high enough to keep an official status that gives them nothing in return. And don't forget the 500 million credits they have to dish out just to get submit for official status.
Official factions have been pissed on and spit on as much as unofficial factions have. Right now I'd rather have an unofficial faction than an official one, and indeed, Kiretsu is unofficial right now, and I've taken no steps to make it official.
The official factions have NOTHING over the unofficial. Can't restrict or even regulate capital ships.. Can't regulate the indies at all.. What can they do? Get in trouble, thats about it.
So please tell me, What is the point of being an official faction?
Recently , admins have taken almost if not all the power from an "offcial" faction and making the "official" status look like a joke. In my opinion there is absolutly nothing to benefit from being official at the moment , expept maby fame and glory , but they don't realy matter when you are surounded by capital ships who have no idea what faction they belong to , who the factions admirals / commanders / learders / directors are and little to no idea how the faction does things.
Official factions and "official" independants of that faction , have invested billions of credits , countless hours of story development / writing and alot more to convince the comunity that they deserve a chance to become official ... and do what ? There is no visible benefit for a person to join a faction. I've also seen that mainly the larger , more famous for there ship class / weapon class and ZOI factions are siriusly affected by this - Outcasts , The Order , Corsairs and more ..... little factions , in wich people have no / little interest in are not the target of such problems - factions like the Volksfront for example.
edit - This is a very real matter that is affecting official faction members in a bad way , people from the factions are starting to ask alot of questions and almost non of them are being answered. I can say from personal expirience that at the moment , communication / RP and everything else is very tense and flamable within the communication centre of an official faction ( namely Skype )
' Wrote:finally someone who dares to speak out what we all think.
(excuse my bad english)
Well, it has been asked before, several times, but never gotten its own thread dedicated to the question. Finding people who dare to speak out about things is never a problem on these forums. :rolleyes:
' Wrote:I have wondered that myself... except the right to design (AND PAY FOR) a system there seems to be little benefit that interests me.
Even the right to design means nothing. I've designed, built, and submitted 6-7 systems for Discovery now. I don't own any of them, and I wasn't required to be in an official faction that paid for it either.. All thats left of that is for them to pay for it..
Ima gonna keep my eye on this... oh and a good question dab hehe.
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Ok, First of Dab, you are a member of the development team and have been for a good while, so when you say "I have designed 6-7 systems blah blah blah" you speak as though anyone can make any system they want, which is not true. Second, all this talk about faction members talking about this or that on skype about factions loosing their power? I haven't heard any of that from my faction members in the Brotherhood or the AFA, nor have I heard it from anyone in the factions I am in, I dont hear it from the LR, and I dont hear it from the RM, I dont hear it from Joe and the Ros folks, nor the Benitez. So please people lets not act like this is all factions members feeling something.
To the main issue, I run two factions here, and I didnt do it to police what other people do. If you think the main benefit of being an official faction is that you get to dictate to and bully your npc faction independents, then you did it for the wrong damn reason, and you should pull down your faction post right now. The role of an official faction is to be an example, not a fascist. We get to have a significant affect on the way the role play develops for the entire npc faction. I think that is significant. System owning factions get to design a system that fits their specifications, for their role play. That is also significant.
If you dont think you get something out of it, dont do it, but the role of a faction is not to decide who can get a ship. If they do something wrong with the ship, deal with it in rp. You dont like it? Pull down that faction post.
Okay so you can't make folks dance to your whims, you can stop them behaving like idiots though. Look at the LN's capship policy, no need to sign on any line, just if you do you get incentives and treated like the official faction. And given the rules are very simple, and based around the concept of fairplay and adherence to the server rules, enforcing it is allowed.
Dab if you do not own the system then any system made MUST be in accordance with the Mod. A system owning faction gets to mold their system to their RP. Any other system is molded to the overall RP.
Official factions get to set policy that can and has shaped the way Disco works and plays. The entirety of the RM's RP is not as vanilla but it is pretty much set in stone as discovery canon, and they couldn't have done that without being official.
Official factions should set an example of how a faction plays, not be determined to dictate how the NPC faction should be run.
The XA bought and designed Tau-45 not for themselves but for the Xenos as a whole, one of our overriding desires was to have Xeno use ships placed within for all Xenos to be able to buy, not just the XA.
The same ethos was used when designing Cassini, I don't want to keep Indy LR out of Cassini, it's their guard system too. Just because I currently own it, doesn't mean others shouldn't be able to use it.
Yes Official Factions are generally favoured over unofficial ones. Why? Because they set the tone of the RP on Discovery. Factions create guidelines that folks tend to follow. Official factions can set laws within their ZOI. And then they can enforce them. They can also grant the right for others to enforce them. Official factions are valid, and frankly I've not heard much complaint about this from many faction leaders other than the 101st. So if anyone really does have a complaint, feel free to PM me. I'm listening.
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