Aegis Initiative - Official Faction Creation Request

[Haste]

To me, Aegis in its current iteration is the embodiment of this graph (I made it myself in paint (and I even put a little border on it afterwards)):



As a faction, it's collected a solid group of (significantly) above average PvPers. I can't say much for the roleplay of the faction, as my interactions are both fairly limited and generally have been little more than a few lines of foreplay-tier roleplay. I have attempted to get a little more out of the Aegis ships I have encountered, but as of yet have not succeeded. I may however simply have gotten unlucky and bumped into the wrong people or the right people at the wrong time. I'm not too fussed, as I don't think bounty hunter roleplay has to be particularly elaborate. As an (aspiring) official faction, of course, a little more will be expected of you, and only time will tell if you're able to deliver.

Anyhow, back to the point I was trying to make. My biggest concern with this faction is this: Discovery is an "open world" game with no matchmaking whatsoever. Players are free to pile as few or as many ships on targets as they desire. However, historically, players have generally self-enforced some basic fair play rules. These rules basically boil down to: attempt to make any fights you pick as winnable for both sides as you can. There's all sorts of tools for this, but the most commonly employed ones are (or were):

• Pick the right players. If your players significantly out-skill the opposition, consider letting your weakest players have their shot before sending in the big guns. Alternatively, allow yourselves to be outnumbered to a significant enough degree that your opposition has a realistic chance at winning, or at least collecting a few blues before being taken out.
  
• Observe how a fight is going, and if it's lopsided in your own favor, pull some players out. Either take the fight outnumbered or replace your stronger players with weaker ones, if possible. This can be tricky, of course, as the player you may want to pull out might also happen to be the enemy's target and the one bleeding bots, in which case pulling them out would be a dick move.
  

As a highly PvP-focused faction that is often the initiator of combat, the onus is usually on Aegis -- who find themselves in the driver's seat more often than not -- to show restraint. I am aware that the culture around fair-play has shifted quite radically in recent years -- for the worse, unfortunately -- but I also do believe that we can still turn it around. It's up to factions like Aegis, especially as an official faction, to make that happen.

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Bear in mind though I see people complain ''Aegis comes online time to die I guess'' - Bounty Hunters are supposed to be competent, if we weren't there'd be no reason to play bounty hunters as we wouldn't have a single pay out. It's the nature of the faction.

Takes like these worry me a little bit, as it appears -- at a glance -- to be an attempt to use the fact that this faction -- unlike most others -- gets paid for successful kills, as an excuse to forego the fair-play etiquette mentioned above. If your goal is to ensure that every time you log in every possible target you got anywhere near is dead, then at the very least you should make sure that your targets are getting ample chances to collect some kills themselves, as that tends to soothe the pain of being shot down quite well.

I think, however, that the problem lies in the graph at the beginning of my post. Players on their climb to the top tend to develop egos that have yet to be cut down to size. Aegis has a large roster of individuals that are, probably, still in this stage. It's these players that often struggle to "allow" themselves to be killed in PvP, and as a consequence are hesitant to really take self-enforced fair-play rules to heart. What I don't think helps Aegis' case, either, is the fact that in this faction this attitude is coming from the very top.

Despite people making claims that they're trying to course-correct, I have yet to really see any significant positive changes. However, I genuinely hope to be proven wrong in the future.

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