Faction ''activity'' evaluation based upon the SRP system

[sindroms]

Sup.
One of my morning shower thoughts.



What if we combined the faction activity system with the SRP evaluation system. My main gripe with the current system is that it has no connection to the roleplay presence a faction has on the server. Our current tracker tracks only online time and, by extension, the amount of active members.

In my eyes, it is counterproductive to the purpose of an official faction- a.i. being an admin-approved group of players, who have proved their standards to be responsible for pushing the envelope and lore of their chosen ID. Roleplay contribution cannot be judged fully on online time due to how roleplay works. More online time could mean more precentage of useful roleplay interaction between players ingame, but in practice it is impossible to judge the ''usefulness'' of an official faction just from those numbers.

So as an alternative I propose the following system:



At the beginning of the two-month cycle, the official faction leader posts a roleplay goal their faction will strive for. This can range from diplomatic ties, to route improvements, to cell changes, to an X amount of bounties collected and so on. The admins (And community) then makes note of it. The faction then has given two months to realize that set goal.

During the end of the second month, they gather up all of their logs and forum material and submit it SRP-style to the admin team, who then have until the next month to go through these submissions and evaluate them and vote on them.

If they get a thumbs up, only then the faction gets to remain official and only then they get another perk they may submit for their ID.





This means a lot of work, yes, but it will motivate factions to actually do something for their ID, rather than just being official for the sake of being official. You are given that title to do stuff for your NPC faction, so it should become a goal and not just a choice.

My two cents.

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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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[FynnMcScrap]

Quite a few good ideas here, so I took the time to comment and ask some questions :

...

What if we combined the faction activity system with the SRP evaluation system. My main gripe with the current system is that it has no connection to the roleplay presence a faction has on the server. Our current tracker tracks only online time and, by extension, the amount of active members. ( correct. And this system is about as easy going as a triangle wheel for a bycicle )

In my eyes, it is counterproductive to the purpose of an official faction- a.i. being an admin-approved group of players, who have proved their standards to be responsible for pushing the envelope and lore of their chosen ID. Roleplay contribution cannot be judged fully on online time due to how roleplay works. More online time could mean more precentage of useful roleplay interaction between players ingame, but in practice it is impossible to judge the ''usefulness'' of an official faction just from those numbers.
( +1 here )

So as an alternative I propose the following system:



At the beginning of the two-month cycle, the official faction leader posts a roleplay goal their faction will strive for. This can range from diplomatic ties, to route improvements, to cell changes, to an X amount of bounties collected and so on. The admins (And community) then makes note of it. The faction then has given two months to realize that set goal.

a) why a 2 month cycle ? I would either set a tight 1 month cycle or adjust to a 3-month cycle to leave room for RL issues )
b) what "kind of note" ? Affirmation by Admin would add even more bureaucracy.
I would like to be able to openly react with a different faction though, so that both factions ( and leaders / community / Admins ) would know the RP has been accepted from both sides.

During the end of the second month, they gather up all of their logs and forum material and submit it SRP-style to the admin team, who then have until the next month to go through these submissions and evaluate them and vote on them.

( so here comes the bureaucracy. Hm... why not do this post openly, and enable community to vote " yes or no " ? Admin would still decide, but would have some feedback from community to aid them . I would suggest a 3 months cycle, and start the cycle at different dates, so Admin dont get a hoard of requests all 3 months )

If they get a thumbs up, only then the faction gets to remain official and only then they get another perk they may submit for their ID.


+1 here


This means a lot of work, yes, but it will motivate factions to actually do something for their ID, rather than just being official for the sake of being official. You are given that title to do stuff for your NPC faction, so it should become a goal and not just a choice.

My two cents.

1+ again

Another important point : Dev´s hinted at a Ticketing system ?

Definitively necessary.
I have waited 3 months for a request to be processed... only to learn at the end of the 3 months that the request and its trial time never started ?
That´s the sort of glitch that makes players leave.

[Laura C.]

While I think that forum activity should be somehow included into faction activity (because when you have limited amout of time for playing, and you do a lot of forum stuff, you are doing it instead of actual ingame playing), I don´t agree with such a system.

From my point of view, for example police factions are quite very limited in setting up goals. We hardly can have our own diplomatic ties, we don´t trade so any route improvements are out of question, we don´t collect bounties because shooting bad guys is simply our work etc. So how much goals can we set up before we run out of ideas? Or before we start doing silly things just for the sake of doing something because we HAVE TO set up some goal? And I think there are more factions which would have such a problem after some time.

Not to mention you would completely overload staff team. There are currently more than fifty official factions so you want from admins to evaluate more than fifty files of materials every two months. I don´t think this is viable.

Also, you are completely ignoring faction´s ingame activity routine and I don´t think this is right. What makes police/military/unlawful faction is the routine - smugglers hunting, military actions, robbing traders etc. That´s how players should know each type of faction, not by fact they are very good in diplomacy and forumlancing (because that´s what majority of goals would be about).

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On a ragebreak. Or ragequit. Time will tell.

[FynnMcScrap]

Judging a faction by activity time alone is unbalanced too.

As always, we should seek a good balance, no ?
And a lot of processed reports ect make up quite a lot of fluff in forum.

On the other hand : what do I get if I have an official faction "ruling" some systems ( like Liberty Navy , together with LSF and LPI ) that has lots of activity time but needs weeks to respond to a simple routine question. Or does not respond at all ?

To judge a faction "fit for officialdom" by flight time alone is unbalanced.

[sindroms]

If a faction is low-activity, at least they should prove their usefulness by focusing on RP quality and the amount of it, rather than bare ingame hours.

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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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[Lythrilux]

It's sad that some factions that have been around for a very long time, who have impacted positively on the server (some of which were at the top of the activity chart a mere several months ago) may are going to lose their officialdom. I think it's crucial that we find a system that doesn't rely solely on mere numbers logged by an imperfect tracker.

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[WesternPeregrine]

I support the idea of leaders needing to establish a set of faction goals for the group to strive for. I consider it specially important for new factions hoping to acquire officialdom to come with something new to the faction they represent, instead of striving to be a placeholder group for a underrepresented faction.

I also support the idea of a rp based evaluation criteria that is complementary to the existing criteria.

I believe that the rp goal should be pondered as something that players will spend the months striving and progressing for, without necessarily accomplishing it at the end of that cycle. If a faction sets up an impossible goal (Hogosha evicting Junkers from New York base), or set up conflicting goals with another faction (Cadiz falls/ Cadiz is defended, defeated party loses it's rp goal.), it could mean active effort by other groups to make that faction lose it's officialdom.

I support the idea of "faction must not be left without goals". I do not support the idea of "faction must be always successful in achieving goals within a time frame to keep it's officialdom".

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[Shaggy]

I do have to agree with this idea, I like it alot, but yes it would be alot of hard work but it could make gameplay more realistic and more fun for all, like the Liberty Navy and Hellfire, there is a big fight going on with them, the 5th are working alot with LPI in defending the LPI PoB and then there was the trouble with Congress, ontop of that Rheinland are back in Texas but the Gauls are moving to Magellan, so there are alot of "Goals" to be done there within Liberty and the Navy itselfs.

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[Highland Laddie]

One problem with publishing a set of faction goals for all to see means that groups can act deliberately to ensure the goals are not met. Would that then count against the faction?

Edit: Wperegrine kinda touched on my concern, after going back and reading more of this.

[Wildkins]

One problem with publishing a set of faction goals for all to see means that groups can act deliberately to ensure the goals are not met. Would that then count against the faction?

Edit: Wperegrine kinda touched on my concern, after going back and reading more of this.

I think the point is not that a faction achieves a goal, but that it made an ernest attempt and generated a quality amount of roleplay regarding that goal, whether or not it was actually successful. If [LN] makes their goal to reinforce Leeds, for example, but their base construction plans go awry after losing BAF| support, it wouldn't mean that [LN] has failed in its goals as an Official Faction - it generated roleplay and interacted with other factions, which is exactly what official factions should do. Their plot is still advanced regardless of their plots being successful - for every Operation Overlord, we must have our Dieppe Raid.

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