Current OF system is deeply flawed, and this, implemented in a right way, might help alleviate its flaws.
First of all, a fixed time limit is ridiculous. It's easy to keep OFdom if you have a faction with > 50 members, even if you don't do any RP at all after achieving officialdom. It's also really bad for balance between different factions.
And the fact that there has been repeated instances of half dead factions passing just by semi-AFK trading for time is sad.
Second, forum activity should count for something, but in game time should still be the primary requirement. Personally, I'd rather have a requirement that each OF has to organize at least one event where everyone (indies and opposing factions) can participate each quarter. Be it a skirmish, smuggling convoy, trading run, siege or whatever. Events can be simple and they should not need a lot of admin oversight or support with configuring stuff.
Third, the Forum RP is not the primary thing that will attract people to factions, but it might help with finding a couple of dedicated members who can keep the faction afloat without committing too much in-game time to it. This is still a light RP server and most people prefer to just do some simple trade runs with appropriate characters or quick pews instead of writing out pages and pages of forum stories.
But with this people who do spend hours and hours on writing stuff can feel they are contributing proportionally with their time commitment.
Still, even with this "band aid" solution, the main reasons on why people don't really want to commit their time to being productive members of an OF will not be solved. For that, the devs need to look deeply into the psychology of their playerbase, their behavior, and on the supposed benefits of being a member of an OF, as opposed to being just some no-strings-attached member of a casual group that plays together.
I could not disagree more with such decision. By implementing such system, you would incentivize:
1) People logging even less because activity would not longer be a determinant.
2) You want OFs to be active because they are essentially (in an ideal world) a model for the everyone else.
3) This is a game after all and the forum is just something supplementary. While the focus in the server is RP, it's not the only feature. If no one plays the game, it's just a ''paper'' D&D with 0 population. It will not benefit the server's longevity.
4) It promotes dead factions to gate-keep and impose their vision on others, when they in theory, would not even play the game. This is usually at the expense of new players or new factions. In this way, essentially one person can invalidate the effort of an entire group just because they post occasional stories while essentially having 0 game-play effect.
In fact, completely the opposite approach should be taken. OF factions that literally just log the absolute bare minimum of hours and have non-existent game-play or RP presence should be removed.
Even the current activity time is too little. You want to incentivize positive impact and activity, particularly on a population starved server, not normalize and reward mediocrity. Allowing people to maintain OF without logging contradicts this paradigm.
This is something that I've addressed in the proposal that I made some time ago for reworking the OF model.
The above can be broken down into smaller pieces that can be adjusted obviously. But bottom-line, the requirements for OFs need to be based around gameplay and what they can actually do in-game. Because you would then incentivize people to actually do something, not just write about stuff. Game-play should generally drive what's written in the forum. Otherwise, you just have a fan-fiction site. By tying it to game-play that makes sense from an RP perspective (eg. Corsairs smuggling as this month's requirement), you incentivize activity. If you extrapolate it across the board for every OF, you will gain multiple interactions because people will have to do something instead of idling in their home space to generate the time.
Additionally, OFs should be able to drive the story on some level with the obvious guidance from relevant stakeholders (story or administration). This would further incentivize OFs to log because they would have an active role in moving the server forward in terms of developments instead of being passive bystanders in the process. In this way, you reward the OFs that put in the work to actually get there.
Losing OFs due to attrition is normal, and we should be promoting those that try to generate activity. Making the conditions to stay one even easier than what they already are is in essence, appealing to the lowest possible denominator. If you can't log 3 days in 3 months, you are simply not playing Freelancer.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
DTR is an anomaly, not the norm. You should not be the point of reference for setting standards in a community where most groups can muster 3-4 folks total. 72 hours per month is nothing short of insanity in modern Disco. It's a game, not a job.
As for the change, I think it's a good call. Hopefully it'll help some more niche groups out, though I feel it might be too little too late.
(06-01-2022, 10:18 PM)TheSauron Wrote: DTR is an anomaly, not the norm. You should not be the point of reference for setting standards in a community where most groups can muster 3-4 folks total. 72 hours per month is nothing short of insanity in modern Disco. It's a game, not a job.
What I've proposed has multiple moving parts that can be adjusted or tweaked if necessary or made slightly more lenient. Either way, if a faction can't log 3 days in 3 entire months, it's a dead faction. If you can't do 2 activities in an entire month, you are simply not playing the game. The current requirements are easy, making them even easier as per the original proposal in this thread is literally converting Discovery into a forum fan-fiction. It incentivizes the behavior I've mentioned in the 4 points at the beginning of my post.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
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If factions want to influence a story in some regard, they can post a request. They can also ask story devs whether A or B makes sense or not. I am willing to listen and take players opinions into a consideration, and I am sure that other story devs are willing to do as well if the way of communication is reasonable enough.
Such proposals in order to succeed must, however, fit the setting and the narrative of the NPC factions - for example, LPI won't stop being a private company by just deciding so one day, the Order won't cease hunting aliens because player Order 1iC befriended some nomad faction and so on. Respect the faction you are supposed to be representing.
There is a possibility that something will be denied or not implemented because it stands in a way of another plans. It's disappointing, I know, but if we would be spoiling story several patches ahead, it would be disappointing even more.
I partially agree with Lemon in a post somewhere above. One should look not into the requirements for the OF but at the why of being OF in the first place. Tbh, as of now, there is little to no incentive to being an OF right now and everything one can do with an OF can be done without an OF. It poses a question: why bother at all with any requirements be they small or big when you can get the same stuff without any requirements at all?
Trading perks are cool but not everyone trades. Events are also cool but not everyone finds them equally exciting or worth participating. Story changes, as Erremnant pointed out above can be requested via specific forms and not always even require to be an OF. ID perk is more of a convenience rather than a necessity for most factions for NPC-based factions, same for subforum. From my personal experience of leading OFs the requirements quite quickly become a nuisance and make the game more sour than playing an unOF or as an indie while the gameplay does not change really. Incentivise people more to aspire to an OF and, perhaps, they will be more willing to become an OF and care more about upkeeping their status.
If factions want to influence a story in some regard, they can post a request. They can also ask story devs whether A or B makes sense or not. I am willing to listen and take players opinions into a consideration, and I am sure that other story devs are willing to do as well if the way of communication is reasonable enough.
Such proposals in order to succeed must, however, fit the setting and the narrative of the NPC factions - for example, LPI won't stop being a private company by just deciding so one day, the Order won't cease hunting aliens because player Order 1iC befriended some nomad faction and so on. Respect the faction you are supposed to be representing.
There is a possibility that something will be denied or not implemented because it stands in a way of another plans. It's disappointing, I know, but if we would be spoiling story several patches ahead, it would be disappointing even more.
For OF s to matter you need a FORMAL and DEFINED system of how they can influence story and how exactly their right to do so differs from non OF s and individuals.
You work on a buddy system now, doesn't matter if someone is OF or not to influence you. "I am willing to listen" is not a system. It provides zero incentive to become OF.
(06-02-2022, 12:59 AM)Shimamori Wrote: I partially agree with Lemon in a post somewhere above. One should look not into the requirements for the OF but at the why of being OF in the first place. Tbh, as of now, there is little to no incentive to being an OF right now and everything one can do with an OF can be done without an OF. It poses a question: why bother at all with any requirements be they small or big when you can get the same stuff without any requirements at all?
Trading perks are cool but not everyone trades. Events are also cool but not everyone finds them equally exciting or worth participating. Story changes, as Erremnant pointed out above can be requested via specific forms and not always even require to be an OF. ID perk is more of a convenience rather than a necessity for most factions for NPC-based factions, same for subforum. From my personal experience of leading OFs the requirements quite quickly become a nuisance and make the game more sour than playing an unOF or as an indie while the gameplay does not change really. Incentivise people more to aspire to an OF and, perhaps, they will be more willing to become an OF and care more about upkeeping their status.
You don't need to be an OF to make events, not at all - I think this thread made it pretty clear - don't cut OF requirements, think of creative ways to make OF status actually matter in the first place.
One idea to make events matter is e.g. 1.5X Rewards during them on official participating Id(s).
E.g. Omega 3/7 event. Indies get 10 mill for a kill - official factions get 15 - positive ways like this that don't take away things from others.
(06-02-2022, 05:22 AM)Relation-Ship Wrote: think of creative ways to make OF status actually matter in the first place.
This right here is paramount. I know it's not the subject of this post, but the OF system needs a serious overhaul. I mentioned once to someone that on Asgard (an old Freelancer server that some people might remember) we had custom ships made for each official faction. With PoB's being able to make equipment with commodities, maybe it's possible to even build these ships in the OF's PoB utilizing certain materials. That's just one example of what we could do for OF's to make them actually worthwhile to get.
As it stands, the only real benefits (that I can see) is you get a custom place on the forum to post your documents, message dumps, RP, intel, etc. You get a custom ID for your faction in game. You can get an opportunity to upgrade Core 4 bases to Core 5. Lastly, you might get the opportunity to be apart of Discovery history in different patches. That's it really. There are no other benefits. I mean, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here but from everything I've seen that's it. Kinda makes getting OF pointless for certain people.
Example: If we use ZDF (the Zoner faction I started recently) you can see where this is a problem:
ZDF doesn't need a custom place for documents. We have Discord and the Unofficial forum to post in.
We don't need a custom ID for the faction. It would be nice, but it's really not even necessary.
We don't have any bases and probably won't either since we have plenty of Zoner bases to patrol already.
Making history is all well and good, but I would rather write my own stories for the faction I help to run rather than have it plugged into an ongoing story that someone else has been writing (no offense Story Devs, I'm a control freak)
So it doesn't really make sense for a lot of people to even be official in the first place. This is just from my personal point of view though, others may have a different viewpoint. If you wanted to comment on something I wrote here, please feel free or correct me if I'm totally wrong.
Anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble.
~Leo
The Starlight Resource Consortium is on Elite Dangerous doing Trading, Exploring, & Bounty Hunting! PM me for information!
If factions want to influence a story in some regard, they can post a request. They can also ask story devs whether A or B makes sense or not. I am willing to listen and take players opinions into a consideration, and I am sure that other story devs are willing to do as well if the way of communication is reasonable enough.
Such proposals in order to succeed must, however, fit the setting and the narrative of the NPC factions - for example, LPI won't stop being a private company by just deciding so one day, the Order won't cease hunting aliens because player Order 1iC befriended some nomad faction and so on. Respect the faction you are supposed to be representing.
There is a possibility that something will be denied or not implemented because it stands in a way of another plans. It's disappointing, I know, but if we would be spoiling story several patches ahead, it would be disappointing even more.
For OF s to matter you need a FORMAL and DEFINED system of how they can influence story and how exactly their right to do so differs from non OF s and individuals.
You work on a buddy system now, doesn't matter if someone is OF or not to influence you. "I am willing to listen" is not a system. It provides zero incentive to become OF.
Did you actually try to talk to story and not cook up some conspiracies? I'm pretty sure we already all went through this in the patch thread where you accused Markam of upholding "Devtonia". They're (the story devs) also a lot more open and even if you're not on best terms with i.e. Wesker or Reeves they do take all input and feedback into consideration. In the end, this is a multiplayer roleplay mod, so everything must fit the narrative and as a result not all submissions will go/can go in and become story, otherwise we'd have House Auxesia by now.
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