My name is Sindroms, otherwise known as Spazzydragon and during the writing of this tutorial, I have been a part of Discovery for around 6 or so years. During this time I have had the pleasure to be a part of, lead and create plenty of factions and groups, which were lead, joined and sustained by amazing players of all ages and backgrounds and roleplay preferences.
Factions, when it comes to Discovery Freelancer, are very different from our usual perception of ''clans'' in other multiplayer games, even those centered around roleplay. Unlike Clans, Factions in Discovery offer the player a chance to experience group activity and roleplaying their characters in a pre-set manner without having to limit yourself to one single faction. Any player has a right to join as many factions as they want and enjoy the company of many kinds of people. For this is what makes Disco indeed Disco.
They are so fun, in fact, that many new players and old ones alike are sometimes all too eager to throw their own idea into the arena, though as you might have guessed, it takes certain kind of experience to make it work on the first try. This is the reason for this tutorial: not to assure you a 100% success rate for creating a new faction, but rather listing a few ideas and give examples of a few more common mistakes made by faction creators.
It should be noted, however, that all of what is written below comes from my own experience as a faction member, leader and creator. The ideas expressed here will not necessarily compare to your own or even the general majority of our community. Use these as you wish and at your own risk.
If you would like to contribute to this tutorial, please send this information to my PM box. Obviously, you will be credited for said information if it gets added to the first post.
So you want to create a faction A spazzydragon's tutorial
Step one:Difference between player groups, unofficial factions and official factions.
We are not going to go too in-depth with this one, since the definitions may vary depending on the group. This is just to explain the words we will be using further down the tutorial. Player groups are a small group of players, usually three or four, who just happen to play together and fly characters with the same ID. They are usually skype friends or Teamspeak buddies and generally work towards the same goal, without needing specific roleplay to do so. Unofficial player factions consist of many more players and have picked a single ID to represent their ID. It should be noted, that these factions are not always aiming to become official. Official factions are admin-approved groups of players, who, because of their expressed effort in RP and ingame activity, have been given the chance to have direct impact and represent the ID they have chosen to use. This, however, does not apply to all official factions, as some unofficial groups aim for officialdom in order to gain their own custom ID, if their intended roleplay can not be done with one of the existing ones. Official factions also have a lot of power and responsibilities alike.
Keep in mind that the descriptions given above are very generalized and will not apply to every faction.
Step two:Understanding our perception of new factions and groups.
In order to properly describe how Discovery Freelancer views new factions as a community, we need to discuss how new groups were usually created in earlier versions of our mod. Needless to say, not everyone had the rights and ability to just add a tag to their name and declare themselves a new faction. Despite that, at some point a few poorly made groups popped up and soon enough instilled a still circulating view within the Discovery community. Any new group is crap until proven otherwise. While this does sound rather harsh, one must consider that there had to be plenty of these types of groups for the community to adapt such a ultimate. As a new faction, overcoming that label will be your biggest challenge. Working around this idea will help you a lot, because it is the self-imge of a new faction which will overcome this first barrier. As long as you can prove that your new group is above the usual trife, you will be fine. Something to keep in mind, however, is that because of this rather draconic view on new factions, a large part of the community take special delight in putting your newly-made faction through ''trial by fire''. Expect people to try and nitpick every single thing wrong with your group and you yourself and try to drive your whole effort into the ground. If you break, the idea goes down with you. Surviving the innitial onslaught, however, will reveal you as a solid community member. Not surviving it will mark you as ''that guy who made that one shait group, lol'' so I highly suggest you consider if it is worth the drama in the first place.
Step three:"How are you different from X"
Be ready to receive this question a lot. Discovery is a home to very many factions, both official and non. So many, in fact, that we have an activity tracker, the purpose of which is to filter out inactive and dead factions. For this reason the question above is a common one. Many people see making a completely new faction for an ID that already has a few, a total waste of player activity. This mostly applies to non-generic IDs, so if you decide to make your own fighter wing for the Liberty Navy, expect this to be brought up. Why don't you just join the [LN] and build a new wing within it? The reasoning for this is that many people see factions like that as something of a "Screw you guys, I will make my own faction" move from the faction creator. That is an impression you must work very hard not to give off. Be ready for this question. You must predict which factions yours will be compared against and write up a list beforehand, stating what sort of differences make these two factions completely different. However, as you do, try your best to state it as something obvious. You should never sound apologetic when you try and compare your ideas to something that has already been done before.
Step four:Responsibility of a faction leader.
One of the most offensive mistakes a new faction leader can make is forgetting that it is the members of the faction, who give the group their face and name. Plenty of factions have been plagued by the leader and his left and right arms engaged in some sort of oorp-fueled drama with other factions and completely neglect the rest of their faction, viewing the members more like sources of activity and pvp might, rather than for what they really are.
Step five:Dealing with feedback.
So at this point you have probably posted your feedback thread. Feedback comes in different ways, but you must be ready for the both sides of the spectrum. Criticism and complaints are common, when it comes to new factions. As it was already stated in the previous steps, new factions are especially given the ''treatment'' in order to expose every possible nitpick to jab at and you must understand that there are always people, who despise factions out of spite and will often try to go to many lengths to make your project fail. The trick here is to spot these individuals and try your best to handle their comments much more constructively, because anything you will say in return will be forced against you. One of your biggest weapons is being able to ask "what do you suggest we do?" to them. In many cases, these whining people are not ready for a faction creator to consider changing things about their writeup, so such a question can shut them up for a while at worst and expose them as malicious whiners at best, quickly to be dealt by the forum moderators. That being said, you should keep in mind that critisism and complaints can still be quite valid and not just a bunch of veterans whining. Make sure you keep an open mind and willing to change, because as far as I have seen, very few factions ended up being done in the same way as their innitial writeup. Keep in mind that suggestions from the rest of the community can make a big difference, even if some of it seems odd. This goes doubly true if you are a relatively new player. New players are not yet familiar with the more unwritten rules of our community, so something that seems pretty straightforward for you might not come even close to the rest of the community. Keep an open mind and make sure you filter out the unneeded information at the same time. If everything fails, pull in a vet. They are more likely to spot problems and will gladly help you straighten them out.
Step six:A note on imports.
Imports have always been a touchy subject for new factions and it is probably the first thing that people notice. Be it a clan of peeps you roll around in Battlefield 4, or perhaps a chill little group of guys from Void or Hamburg freelancer servers. Any such groups will still be shot down. Imported groups, within the eyes of our community, have no place in the Discovery lore. Any new factions must remain original and use what we have to offer in terms of lore. There have been only a handful of moments, when imports were accepted as a part of Disco faction-wise and only after a huge amount of drama.
Step seven:Quality over quantity.
It is nice to have a very active and large faction, but it is something many new factions get too carried away with, often recruiting newbies from Pennsylvania just to boost their numbers. Quality of roleplay and overall behavour is something you need to focus on during the first months of your faction as, something that I've already mention time and again, you will be kept under a magnifying glass by the rest of the community. In worst cases, people will actively seek you out just to see if your peeps will do something stupid. Mass-recruitment of inexperienced players, especially with the promise of ingame credits has never worked, as to my knowledge. Not to mention such actions are generally frowned upon and won't score you any points with the community.
Step eight:Learn about your local factions.
While this is not necessary, knowing details and in-depth lore about your neighboring factions can lead to some interesting roleplay possibilities. Even more so, it can help you avoid difficult situations before you announce your faction. Knowing how a faction works with Disco is essential, a good example being the Zoner ID. While lacking a one true official faction, the Zoner ID has attracted many and multiple factions, which all govern in a group. Knowing little details like this will help you in the long run.
Step nine:Focus>Generalization
Being able to offer a multitude of ingame actitivties will attract a lot of potential faction members, but you must not split it up too much. A good example is what I had back in the day with the LR. The Rogues were a primarily piracy faction, but at some point we decided to open up a smuggling wing. Needless to say, we had three people join, who did not care much for piracy, but wanted only smuggling. They joined because they wanted to fly with other people. It turned out that all three were in vastly different time zones and ended up never being able to fly together and instead they constantly flew around alone until they left the faction. Roleplay centric, PVP centric or Income Centric factions need to decide just what is their primary goal. This is just something to keep in mind before you start writing up your faction.
Step ten:Does my faction need a ranking system?
Recruit. Rookie. Veteran. Adapt. Ace. Second in command. Leader. These are commonly used by military factions, but these ranks do not really serve any purpose other than provide minimal in-faction competition between faction members. But in the end most factions do not look after ranking and there is no way to unseat high-ranked members when they go lazy. Most people know this when they join, so in the end the ranking system is just a gimmic, which in most cases are not needed. If you feel you need to promote some in-faction competition, instead of a ranking system give out titles, medals or other sort of rewards for ingame actions.
Step eleven:The anti-capital ship policy.
Capital ships have always been a rather drama-filled topic for Discovery. Ironically, they are considered one of the main additions to the mod as well. It seems, though, that factions favoring the usage of snubs are much more well accepted than those which use caps. At the same time, not having caps can also leave out one less target for whiners to poke at during the faction feedback. When the faction is large enough, then decide whether or not you actually need capital ships or not.
Step twelve:A leader leads, instead of simply giving orders.
Back in the day, the RM was my favorite faction for one simple reason. The big cheese himself more often than not rolled around with the new recruits and kept a rather wide variety of characters for him to fly on, not just as the admiral of the Rheinland Military, but also his recruits and officers. Being able to fly with your faction leader is a rather big deal, so don't neglect your peeps.
Step thirteen:Posting your roster on the forum.
One of the more foolish things you can do is make yourself a target because of a certain member of the community joining your faction. While this is not possible to avoid, because the people in your faction still see each other and you can never be sure who is upset at who, it is still a very good idea not only to avoid posting your roster on the faction page, but also consult your faction before adding any new member. In many cases, the older and experienced members will point out any potential trouble and in total will make your whole experience much better, both for you as a faction leader and for the rest of the faction itself.
Step fourteen:Attempting to revive dead factions.
Faction activity and popularity depend on many things. Starting from your ID limitations to the ZOI you have, the factions around you and so on, there are factions in Disco, which just do not seem to survive for too long. And still, time and again there are people willing to restart these abandoned or dead projects out of spite and then act surprised and angry, when it all falls apart again. Some IDs are just not meant to be played as a faction. Some factions, on the other hand, tend to be overshadowed by more successful ones. The best example are most trading factions. There are a few that are the most active and populated, usually because of a certain good trade route, so people simply join them.
Step fifteen:Failure is always an option.
You will never make a successful faction from the first try, if you are a new member. You really need a certain amount of experience for it. Experience, which you can obtain only by learning from your mistakes or the mistakes of others. Do not be discouraged if your active project is doomed to fail. Disband it and go back to the drawing board. Many people have given months of effort only to have their factions fall apart sooner or later, so that is always something you need to keep in mind, if you create a new one. Failing is always an option and the reasons can be many and plentiful. It will simply be up to you to either leave it well enough alone or start over.
On the other hand, some factions and groups are not meant to live long. As said above, not every unofficial faction strives for officialdom. Sometimes it is just a gimmick or idea that attracts your faction members, so when they are tired of it, it will be time to move on for them, and so should you. Keeping your peeps interested in Discovery is the primary focus of a faction and you, as the creator and leader should always keep an eye on the health of your faction and know when it is time to poke your peeps into doing something else. For their own sake.
Community Contributions
(04-21-2014, 02:04 PM)Echo 7-7 Wrote: The most important piece of advice I would offer to an aspiring faction leader would be to join an established faction first (either official or unofficial), in order to gain an understanding of what's required to make it work first-hand, and also to understand what non-leader players have to go through. This is particularly important for those new to Disco in general, so they can become familiar with in-game mechanics, forum etiquette, and gain a broad understanding of how the community operates.
The core idea that I tried to keep in mind during my days as an Official Faction leader was "What can I do to offer the members an entertaining experience?" There is no faction without players, so it's important that logging on to the server is a positive experience. If that's too broad a question to answer, just focus on making their lives uncomplicated so they can focus on playing how they like (within the bounds of your faction's M.O., of course).
WIP. Feedback welcome.
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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