Unofficial Factions on Discovery Forums

[Korny]

Silly rule, no matter how long it was present.

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[Mao]

Yep... silly. Get rid of it, or at least allow the thingy with "PM me to join".

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[mwerte]

The ability to recruit is, I suppose, a "perk" of officialdom,

One of the few that actually matters imo. I'd say leave it as is. Factions that want to go official get a lot of publicity from their faction officialdom request.

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[Cawdor]

ye lets get rid of it so I'd never have to pay 500 million bucks and endure this whole approvement process again!

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[SeaFalcon]

Silly rule, no matter how long it was present.

this,
Let people have fun with others and seek friends to play with in an easier way.
It also buffs in-game play.

Official factions have more benefits then just 'I can recruit' so.

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Freelancer discovery videos

[Bloom]

Remove please, it's silly, and has no good reason to be.

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[munsan]

I would say keep the silly rule cus its important for the officials, but can the officials recruite for the unofficial faction in thier sub forum, through Rp like, put a note that this group are important to us and are looking for support....

EX. [LN] puts notice of [NG] HQ "info post" link, so that some of the people that try to join LN might not have what it takes so they go to [NG] instead.

this is a way to send the less RP developt people to the starting factions, to learn more.

[Athenian]

This is ridiculous. Discovery Factionlancer has become a game of King of the Hill, complete with camping snipers.

I honestly have no idea what this means.

Saying the rule is "silly"; clearly others disagree. I'm sure people can come up with concrete reasons as to why it should be removed (e.g. it punishes organised players who may be good players) or kept (such as directing players towards factions that meet certain standards, as a means of inducting newer players, etc.)

These are not necessarily my ideas, but are reflective of the level of discussion we need.

The policy is an old one, but that is not a good or bad thing necessarily.

I would assume that we want the good factions to be the official ones, and not official just because they happen to be or fill a convenient niche.

Understandably, as official factions are expected to reflect the lore (and direct it within reason) the one ID per faction rule may, in tandem with this, make it impossible to rejuvenate factions and IDs.

However, that should not mean we can automatically discount the significant effort current official factions put into attaining and maintaining their current status (part of which is a large degree of communtiy and admin scrutiny)

What does being "official" mean? And why should official factions lose the perks that come with officialdom?

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Former member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"
Discovery Community Forum Rules

[Govedo13]

The problem is that official factions eventually loose members and die during the time while new people are making new factions witch could not be official at the same time due to 1 Faction per ID rule, denying to unofficial factions to recruit wont solve the problem.
This rule is silly, and I dont see recruiting in forum as big official faction perk since if the new players in general dont like the attitude of the old "dying" official faction that holds the ID they will never join and will join the unofficial one instead even if the unofficial one cannot go official or cannot recruit on forums. Give official factions more in-game perks like flagships for example or improved trade ships for official trading factions, in-forum perks dont boost activity for the official factions because the large amount of new players who could join official factions are in game not in the forum and if they can use the same toys as the official factions I dont see why they will need official faction tag, except may be the official tag bounty multipler witch is also silly since cause of the tag this ships are easier to track .

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€œ

Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[Denelo]

The biggest issue here, I think, is that recruitment is hardly a "perk". It's necessary for a faction's survival. Being banned from forum recruitment is a punishment for not being official. It is, in psychological terms, "negative punishment". The ability to recruit on the forums is not being "added" to official factions - it's something anyone can do just by making a post, but you punish anyone who is not official for doing so.

In order to further clarify my point, let me define what I mean by "positive" versus "negative" and "reward" versus "punishment".

Reward: a positive consequence
Punishment: a negative consequence

Positive: adding something
Negative: removing something.

So, for instance, giving a dog a treat is a positive reward - I'm giving him good things, which is a good thing. Removing a shock collar is a negative reward - I'm taking away bad things, which is a good thing. Shocking the dog with a shock collar is a positive punishment - it adds bad things, which is a bad thing. Finally, taking the dog's food away from it when it is hungry is a negative punishment, as it removes good things, which is a bad thing.

Thus, perhaps you see why I say banning unofficial recruitment is a negative punishment. You are removing something - specifically, the right to recruit on the forums - not because it's being misused (which would be a proper use of negative punishment, though I still wouldn't agree with it long-term for different reasons), but in order for it to somehow become a "perk" for those you didn't punish via exclusivity. This is not a positive reward - the adding of power - but a negative - the removing of an artificial burden.

The whole idea of unofficial factions being somehow "lower quality" is just silly. 90% of the time, the faction is unofficial because the leaders simply do not want the hassle of attaining officiality, but they still want to actually roleplay their group. In that case, it's just ridiculous not to allow them to recruit; they're not unofficial not because of their low quality, but because of their casual and relaxed nature. They have lives and don't want to dedicate hours a day to playing some game, but they still want to roleplay (and, thus, contribute to the roleplay of the server). And we're going to hamper their efforts to do... exactly what the server exists for people to do? Why, exactly?

This whole unofficial recruitment ban has never made sense to me. But then again, the distinction between "official" and "unofficial" factions never really has, either, so what do I know? I'm just some dude who plays a game on the internet.