Should official factions represent the whole NPC faction?

[Xoria]

Should official factions represent the whole NPC faction?

No.

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[Akura]

Depends which official faction.

[Mao]

Should official factions represent the whole NPC faction?

Yes, because we have the "one official faction/ID". If it wasn't for this rule, I'd say, no. But that means more official factions with the same ID, each one of them covering a certain aspect of the NPC faction.

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[Akura]

No it does not. That is the point.

Yes it does.

For example, the Das Wilde represent all of the Das Wilde NPC faction, as they are quite literally, all of the Das Wilde, no indies.


The NLH however, are the part of the "True" Gaians, not the vicious pirates and thugs. Perhaps they shouldn't represent them all as they're only a small part of it.


The [LN] on the other hand, are the Primary Fleet, the main fighting force of the Liberty Navy, the indies are merely reserve, defence or secondary fleet pilots and ships.


Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

[sadtranslation]

Depends. For example, the same NLH mentioned above represents not the whole Gaian movement, but the conservative part, not involved in piracy and standing on high moral ground, and plays that role. But in general, it all depends on the role one faction or another picks up for itself. I can't tell about other groups, but that's the picture. Some faction can't represent a single group. Police and Military should be the one and the only representative of NPC factions to stop the chaos.

It all highly depends on the storyline the faction writes for itself. If the faction don't want to do a thing - well, it's something that can be hardly changed. If faction heads spend less time with the group they lead - well, that's what nobody can change again. It's the work of faction leadership to maintain not only routine activities, but the storyline of a faction and develop it.

Also, without an official faction unable to represent NPC faction when it comes to diplomacy, faction rights or other similiar stuff. I should not remind anyone of the events that took place this fall - that's how unability of a player faction to represent NPC faction works. It's good roleplay-wise, but bad gameplay-wise due to game mechanics.

It's bad gameplay-wise. So we have the lesser of two evils.

Also, the stagnating factions are stagnating, no matter if they are official or not, no matter if they represent the whole NPC faction or not.

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[Panzer]

Yes.

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[Ayem]

Depends which official faction.

In factions where the official group comprises the whole player base, the point is moot.

People may find this unsurprising, coming from me; but generally I'm with Spazzy.

However, while there may be stagnation in a context where the official faction is treading water, complete overview also grants a great deal of possibility to the people in charge.

A Molly (in vanilla) might have gone, "Dublin is to be shared by Bretonians and Mollies, they'll stick to their side, we'll stick to ours, and never shall a shot be fired between us", but he would have power only over himself, those he could persuade, and those he could force.

Instead the Molly-Bret armistice was forged by people who were considered leaders of a people, and so it has been cited by others, disseminated until almost every Molly player knows about it and acts either in collusion with it, or knowingly against it.

Official factions are able to change the fabric of political interaction in a more permanent and effective manner than independents by a mixture of exposure and perceived hierarchy.

Is this necessary? Perhaps not, I do not think the official factions should be able to say, "all you people who are beneath us, you must do this, not do that, and like it."

I believe independents should have as much leeway with personal rp as possible, but I see and appreciate the effects of official factions in creating -contexts- for those personal rps.

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[Akura]

Good example.

Mollys.


In the case of the Molly Official Faction signing a treaty with the Bretonians.

Killed a whole faction. Even the indies haven't been as cool since then.


Worst.

Idea.

Ever.

[Fletcher]

In my mind, I considered the players as representatives of the faction as a whole, not the faction as a whole.

An easy example is the LN, how can, lets say 60 people represent what is I assume full of thousands of people in RP?

Now lets take a less populated faction, for example the LWB. (Now AGS) While there is less people in there, the LWB/AGS are representatives of a progressive group, moving WITH the future.

In some cases, I welcome actual faction changes in the game code itself that lets factions move with the times, however, I only see this with custom factions, or factions moving with the developers approval.

I'd love to see the LN moving on from just being the hammer of Liberty and changing politically, with the smaller factions having much more maneuverability with their politics.

Why are smaller/custom factions able to have SUCH leeway? Let the big factions have some chance to alter their play! Lets say... Liberty releases the Rheinland embargo, but decides to pull a sod off to Kusari for the Gallia ploy, and embargos them. While the gameplay motive is still there, the entire roleplay aspect changes completely.

I welcome some changes, though bigger factions/more popular factions are hampered by lore, and developers in my eyes.

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[Bobthemanofsteel]

I wouldn't mind OF's not representing NPC factions... But who will?

Over on FW:ToW we're going with Devteam (All admins being on the Devteam:P) ran factions, headed by an immovable object NPC character (Luke Skywalker for the Jedi, etc), with a player as their 2IC. The player has a fair degree of control over the faction, but when it comes down to it, it's the Devteam that makes the big changes in factions.

But, FW:ToW only has six odd factions, so that's a little easier.


Factions here tend to only go along with Roleplay if it benefits them, and ignore it if it doesn't. Everyone wants to be all powerful.

One thing I'm Trying to do with Ageira is put them in a vice of sorts. Very Tense relations with Kusari (Where ALL of their Gate projects are based right now) leaves us somewhat on the edge. We've insulted the Emperor (at least in Kusari eyes) enough that he probably could put a ban on Ageira ships in Kusari.

What we're banking on is that the gates are too important to do so, as if we were unable to get there, we'd have to cancel the project, leaving Kusari with a couple of half finished gates.

A bit closer to home, Ageira's going through various security breaches and problems of their own. (A certain Junkess currently has the opportunity to make us very very mad, and I literally invited the Hackers to hack our DB >_> )


TL;DR:
You'll just get new leaders who will end up doing the same thing.
There's not enough Admins/Devs to do it the other way, and if you tried some factions would be horribly neglected.


EDIT: Fletcher, when there can only be two hundred people in Sirius at any one time, numbers account for squat.