Admin Notice: Factions

[Madvillain]

ps.: madvillain, post #30 - you agree to deny non-factionized players the right to obtain a faction ID and leave them the only choice of a generic one. edit: yes - its different and actually not what i wrote before about "inner faction equality" - but really... its on the same page. it says "official factions gain an advantage over non-factionized players - no matter what" - you have not come up with exceptions and if there had to be exceptions ( like non-factionized players with faction IDs ) - how/who would decide on them.

And as long as there is corsair/oc dreads raiding new york,
a insane capspam of RM caps raiding Texas/Magellan, (just to name a couple of examples, there are tons of examples)
Who refuse to listen to their NPC faction representatives,and even mock them, I stand by that statement.

If I was looking at it from a totally self serving perspective though, I am shooting myself in the foot now , because there are lots of (Corsair) indies that are doing a perfect job.
But this discussion isn't about that.

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Baila Morena | Toilet Trouble | Elder Presidente[TBH] | The Titan Combat Manual | Confession

[Madvillain]

@Anaximander

You raise a very important point:
''You need to open the faction system up, be inviting to more players, and not take the douchebaggery to the next level. You still hold the most vital selling point: In Disco, gank is King and noone can gank like a faction with high numbers of dedicated players. Joining a faction most likely means dying less and killing more - two things a lot of Disco'ers fancy. Plus you get the privilege of being treated as an equal and actually RP'ed with by some of those players who "dislike indies". Try to kill off skype and use the forum and the game, where transparency and accountability is ensured. It's a law of nature that in the disco universe that any power that can be wielded will be wielded. You are very much on the wrong path if you think the answer is to give factions more power.''

The problem is , a lot of people feel looked down upon by official factions and in return , start looking down upon them, by ignoring their bids to apply common sense , by ignoring their bids to at least show the slightest of intend to RP, by totally ignoring ingame orders , and by acting dominant over official factions , while those -really- have to deal with the feedback of all the faction id carrying indies too , not just their faction members.

I do not think the problem lies in skype.
As far as I am aware all the popular ID's have their own skype channel where there can be a very transparant debate between indies and faction members/leaders equally.

Problems arise when there is a lack of communication, either on purpose or because out of ignorance about the ''whole picture''.
Someone said something interesting in a skype channel the other day:

''There are a few types of indy.
1. The indy who just hasn't thought about joining the faction.
2. The indy that hates the faction because big oppressive evil doers of evil and shit, yo. fite tha power. fuck tha police.
3. The type that would like to join the official faction, but perhaps has poor communication skills, or an inadequate grasp of the rules/RP, and feel they would be unwelcome.
4. The type that actually have joined the faction, and keep an indy cap along-side their official faction character.
5. The reasonable loners. (these people tend to listen and be cooperative)
6. The great unknowing. ''

number 2 is posing the only real problem to the server as a whole (especially when they are right! in some occasions they are in fact totally right about that! In that case the official faction(leader) in question is posing the problem by not following these guidelines that are in fact not only guidelines because they can result in the official faction losing its status)
The other ones can't and shouldn't be blamed for anything.
In some cases they just need extra attention and guidance.
That extra attention and guidance is what lured me into signing up for official factions back in the days.

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Baila Morena | Toilet Trouble | Elder Presidente[TBH] | The Titan Combat Manual | Confession

[Blodo]

I view the problem from a bit of a different direction. In a time long past when the server pop was still relatively low compared to today, factions were made to simplify a group of friends flying together, as well as to gain notoriety faster. The "official faction" system came later, and the "one official per npc faction" even later than that, but the reason that people joined officials back in the day was that they were the only organised group of players playing as an npc faction.

What ultimately killed this notion and spelled the end for many officials was organised groups of indies arriving on the server. Suddenly it was clear that it was far more beneficial to run an indie faction than an official one because... lets count the pros and cons:
Pros:
- own forum section
- faction rights (usefulness of most of those questionable)
- the off chance of maybe having a dev approve a proposal of yours
Cons:
- ruthless activity requirements
- it takes months upon months to get approval from admins to become official (people do not realise how big this problem is, but IMO it is huge as unofficials are reluctant to apply because of the cost and timescale)
- large money cost both for clerical stuff (500 mil approval money... possibly more than once if the community/admin team is particularly hostile to your proposal) and faction stuff (because in general you need something to lure people in, as well as you need capitals/shareds/transports to start yourself off... so those kind of costs usually run well into the billions)
- paperwork requirements (no official ones... and yet you do need them to even start the faction up)
- juggling skype diplomacy when you become part of the "big leagues" <- there is no escaping from this one for anyone, neither the leadership nor the membership of official factions
and worst of all:
- constant community scrutiny as to "what your RP is"

All this scrutiny for no immediate benefit (other maybe than the ever controversial FR5s), and it truly does sound like its better to just run an indie faction because "oh they are just indies, who cares about their RP" = they can do what they want, shoot who they want, say what they want and the admins wont just come and tell them to get lost unless they are literally blowing the server apart or something of the sort. I hope you guys see where the issue lies.

Now I honestly have no idea how to let official factions get back onto the proverbial pedestal with the tools that we have at our disposal at the moment. But maybe we are asking the wrong question? Maybe instead we should be asking: what is the point of official factions altogether, and maybe the official faction system should be overhauled completely instead to put less strain on the faction leadership/membership, since they clearly do not receive any benefits from the scrutiny anyway?

Or... maybe we should just repeal the official faction system altogether and get back to the way it was in 4.82? I dunno, but I am just throwing that out there.

---------------

From a less revolutionary standpoint: official faction creation must be overhauled. The 500 mil cost must be removed, the faction proposal must be guaranteed approval or denial in less than 2 weeks time. This is what I view as essential to promoting creation of new officials, and I hope the admins see it the same way.

[Madvillain]

Well.
Instead of just looking at the pro's and conn's of being in/leading a official faction,
I think it's better to point out the necessity of official factions being there:
who else is gonna represent a factions goverment/high command?
If we rather have this static , I think it would be just another nail to the coffin of a RP server.
Ofcourse to the part of the population who doesn't care about RP , this isn't a necessity at all as long as they have something to pew.

I would also like to point out that (most?) factions influence over dev decisions is extremely minimal, and in my own case totally absent.
So this definitely shouldn't be considered a pro for official factions.

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Baila Morena | Toilet Trouble | Elder Presidente[TBH] | The Titan Combat Manual | Confession

[Mercarryn]

...
What ultimately killed this notion and spelled the end for many officials was organised groups of indies arriving on the server. Suddenly it was clear that it was far more beneficial to run an indie faction than an official one because... lets count the pros and cons:
Pros:
- own forum section
- faction rights (usefulness of most of those questionable)
- the off chance of maybe having a dev approve a proposal of yours
Cons:
- ruthless activity requirements
- it takes months upon months to get approval from admins to become official (people do not realise how big this problem is, but IMO it is huge as unofficials are reluctant to apply because of the cost and timescale)
- large money cost both for clerical stuff (500 mil approval money... possibly more than once if the community/admin team is particularly hostile to your proposal) and faction stuff (because in general you need something to lure people in, as well as you need capitals/shareds/transports to start yourself off... so those kind of costs usually run well into the billions)
- paperwork requirements (no official ones... and yet you do need them to even start the faction up)
- juggling skype diplomacy when you become part of the "big leagues" <- there is no escaping from this one for anyone, neither the leadership nor the membership of official factions
and worst of all:
- constant community scrutiny as to "what your RP is"

On one point I can understand why these requirements have been set up, but to my opininion these should be adjusted.

All this scrutiny for no immediate benefit (other maybe than the ever controversial FR5s), and it truly does sound like its better to just run an indie faction because "oh they are just indies, who cares about their RP" = they can do what they want, shoot who they want, say what they want and the admins wont just come and tell them to get lost unless they are literally blowing the server apart or something of the sort. I hope you guys see where the issue lies.

The reason for indies setting up their own unofficial factions may lie in one of the reasons that madvillain has posted.
Let`s take 141| that I am currently leader of, as an examle. And Order ID unofficial faction. It was founded months before I even joined this server.
The reason behind it was, that its founders were pissed off by the then behaviour of Order| to their indies. And as we all know this was vice versa.

Now 141| has evolved from a semi-lolwut faction to one that has earned some respect here by other factions, even by Order|. We had been invited to be incorporated into Order|. We declined.

Now I am going to tell you the reasons behind this:

1. We had some different inRP goals then Order|
   
2. Back then Order| had activity issues, while 141| was highly active. We did not want to solve Order|`s problem to motivate while they could leech on our activity. Instead keep a competition for them so they get motivation the other way
   
3. From time to time, the Order| leadership has shown some strange behaviour in the past (Although it has a bit improved the last months since Rodent has come back to order HC)
   

RFP| on the other hand was able to absorb BGS| which led to an increase of over all activity. But after some moths RFP| was back on their old activy level, people had left because former BGS leader had left Disco.

Or... maybe we should just repeal the official faction system altogether and get back to the way it was in 4.82? I dunno, but I am just throwing that out there.

---------------

From a less revolutionary standpoint: official faction creation must be overhauled. The 500 mil cost must be removed, the faction proposal must be guaranteed approval or denial in less than 2 weeks time. This is what I view as essential to promoting creation of new officials, and I hope the admins see it the same way.

Getting rid of official factions is a double-edged sword. On one hand the current factions would not feel the need to create activity, but then again, those NPC factions with many different factions like Corsairs or Libetrty Navy will end up in a chaos regarding general roleplay, because each one wants to tell the others how the general RP for their NPC faction should go on. I hope you understand what I mean.

Though I agree with you that the overall process of factions becoming official should be overhauled. Several months of testing phase is quite much. In my opinion about too much.
Decreasing the 500 million cost to 200 million for example and a test phase of one month would increase the motivation for others to set up factions and try to become the official ones.
Maybe another point, that had been stated by Reverend Del some time ago was, to let unofficial factions challenge the official ones. Though I am not sure if this will work.

Nevertheless, the points that have been raised now do not solve the problem for those factions that lack the interest to be played all along.

[Ursus]

I view the problem from a bit of a different direction. In a time long past when the server pop was still relatively low compared to today, factions were made to simplify a group of friends flying together, as well as to gain notoriety faster. The "official faction" system came later, and the "one official per npc faction" even later than that, but the reason that people joined officials back in the day was that they were the only organised group of players playing as an npc faction.

I think this is the root of it, but not all of it.

Other games have "clans" that are loose player groups who have self-affiliated for some reason (they play together a lot, they are coworkers/schoolmates IRL, whatever), and player-factions serve this same purpose in Disco too. If you spend a lot of time with some group eventually you feel like you ought to join their clan, or sometimes you spend a lot of time with them and decide you dont want to join up with them, because of whatever reason (numerous possibilities here: strict ranks, whatever). So, from that perspective, player-faction membership is primarily a reflection on how desirable it is to join up with some particular clan and pal around with them. My opinion is if player factions cant draw in members, then their failure is their problem, not a server problem.

There is also the point that the underlying NPC faction has to be attractive to play in order for anybody to fly the NPC faction ID when nobody else is around. This is a wholly separate problem. You can track this number separately by tracking ID activity on the server, and get a feel for which factions are weak then make them more attractive to play (or not). I dont think we need to direct activity into any of these, we just need to be aware that some of them are less attractive for a variety of reasons, some of which can be helped and some cant.

So, two problems, clan activity is a clan issue, NPC faction activity is a dev issue. IMO.

[[As an aside, Disco is still RP-centric--clans are essentially prohibited here because you have to play the faction not the clan; there are a few exceptions of people ignoring faction lore and milking tech for clan advantage, but they stand out because they are exceptions]].

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Echo 7-7]

...
So, two problems, clan activity is a clan issue, NPC faction activity is a dev issue. IMO.
...

There are no clans on Disco.

Secondly, Official Faction activity in this situation is proportional to NPC faction activity. Uncommon to very rare.

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There was a sig here, once.

[Ursus]

There are no clans on Disco.

Some of the closed factions are very clan-like. And some of the supposedly open ones too.

Secondly, Official Faction activity in this situation is proportional to NPC faction activity. Uncommon to very rare.

Mostly but not always. There are a lot of the small factions that have no real activity outside the official faction. You see many Cryer indies? Not just the trade factions either, I dont see many Xenos outside of XA, for example, same goes for Farmers and LWB, and a bunch of the others.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Madvillain]

If there's no one to dictate in rough lines what road of rp should be followed you'll get so much chaos that it will become a server issue.
Challenging official factions to take over their spot would be a good thing yeah,
but on what criteria? and would this mean retconning everything the previous faction did?

I believe Ursus raised a interesting thing about the difference between clans and factions.
many problems we see today arise from clan behaviour.
Groups of new people just look at the ID's and the ships , choose what they think is the most powerful combination, and go into combat with that , totally unaware of the ID lore and whatever , barely able to realise what the enemies are by checking the ingame repsheet.

once they get into contact with the official faction of their ID , often there rise a lot of problems because the official faction demands them to adapt to the set lore of the game , while the clan has it's very own ideas on how to play the game , and how or if to roleplay.
The official faction will raise the argument ''we've been here first and we are official so we know better'' while the clan will raise the argument ''but we have more activity ,more members and we have more members/gank better''
then you'll get the classic sausage fight over whose right , a fight that neither parties end victorious.
This almost seems to happen in a loop , over and over again.
My concern is that this is indeed a server issue , because the quality of RP , the amount of fun this game really is , and the overall atmosphere come in second place to these ego wars.
I think new players on this server should feel welcomed, not only by a ''welcome'' message on the forum , but they should be embraced by the rest of the community and the officials , and treated equal.
People that know me know that I can get really pissed off when people treat less experienced players as less important or even less respectful.

In return new players have to understand that they have to adapt to the ones that went before them onto a certain extend.
This is where official factions play a vital role, and should display a vital service to the community.

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Baila Morena | Toilet Trouble | Elder Presidente[TBH] | The Titan Combat Manual | Confession

[Prysin]

Jinx, from what i know, you have never been the one to join alot of factions. Correct me if i am wrong, but i do not remember you leading any other factions then Omicroners. Now, you are the kind of people who would fit into a certain category, that in my own language is called "forståsegpåer'e". There is no good way to translate it, however the most accurate way to translate it would be: "someone who believe they know how the system works when they barely have half a foot inside the system. The rather annoying part here, is that you jinx, a person who arent known to be any major faction "whore" tries to tell us who have been in and ruled factions for a long time, how we should do our job. In an essence you are no better then the indies. Full of opinions and "correct" ways, but no will to act upon or even execute or demonstrate your ideas.

Before you tell people how they should do their jobs, try put yourself in THEIR shoes and learn what problems each specific faction has to deal with on a regular basis

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