Consultation: Revised system for official factions

[RedEclipse]

I'm not sure how balanced this system would be. But aren't most faction rights considered a myth? So if we review the system, would it change?

The current official factions seem pretty balanced, you get almost nothing from being official, and similarly official factions don't get much for staying official if they want to.

[Ravenna Nagash]

It's nice to see an active Staff-led discussion about changing the OF model. This is an area that could benefit a lot from a change. I could write a lot on this topic but I will try to keep it to the essentials.

- What do you want official factions to be? What do you feel their purpose is?

To promote server and community health first and foremost:

• By playing the game and creating activity.
  
• Generally trying to have a good time, have fun and enjoy the game, in simple terms having a positive atmosphere.
  
• Supporting new players and trying to help with retention.
  

- How do you feel this can be achieved?

This needs to happen from the community itself. What staff can do is to support this change/model by:

• Changing the OF model to support this vision more clearly - incentivizing positive behavior (which this thread is in line with).
  
• Supporting groups or people that act in ''good faith''.
  
• Removing bad elements from the community. This is debatable and I am sure people would have a different definition. For simplicity - actors that do or support actions that aim to bully or make individuals, groups, sides leave the community outright. Pattern-recognition is important here. A single act is one situation, a series of repeated actions is another.
  
• Be more lenient (here's one example of where it goes wrong) on new players, sanctioning new players creates an inherent negative first impression that will likely cause someone to quit.
  

- What are the failings and / or benefits of the current system?

I don't think the current system has anything positive. It's not inherently bad, it's just not fit for purpose with what I think OFs should be.

• It keeps what I would argue dead OF groups on life-support afloat.
  
• It actively punishes groups that have a lot of activity and who onboard new players. These groups are likely to have more sanctions on average by virtue of playing the game and having more new players. Luckily, I think current Staff wisely understands that supporting such groups despite the increased likelihood of rule breaking is a good policy. People can say - ''OFs need to teach their people.'' I can definitely attest that excruciating amount of effort goes into creating guides, constantly reminding people, fostering good behaviors on a daily basis. The fact is people will make mistakes. More people and more active playing correlates with seeing mistakes more often. This is not an issue as long as there's willingness to get better, to teach people, to promote learning. It takes in some cases months/year for people to gradually grow and evolve.
  
• It doesn't really provide any benefits for OFs that put in the work. The control mechanism after the initial application is non-existent.
  

- What benefits to being official do you feel are needed to balance out obligations and duties?

I think the current proposal is very much an improvement on the existing system, particularly 5.5.c as I know the guys and myself included would love if our ships reflected the faction theme. Even a simple darker re-color or red engines would be a great addition, let alone actually adding our logos to ships, banners, etc.

As far as the model change, overall I think it's good. Some suggestions:

1.2 - Any faction that fails to maintain (1) one day of activity within a two-month review period will be stripped from the tracker.

3.1.a - As part of this review process, each official faction will submit a report detailing a broad overview of their current in-roleplay and out-of-roleplay goals, ongoing events, and challenges. Links to ongoing story threads and in-game footage of events are encouraged.

These two are good in-so-far as they promote or check actual in-game activity. Good RP is always nice, but in my view a faction that has no actual in-game presence is not really an OF. We are after all playing a game and not a literal fan-fic club. Yes, it's an RP server. But if you have zero presence in the actual game, if nobody sees you anywhere, you don't actually impact in any tangible way. Naturally, the opposite end of the spectrum is not ideal either (but one could make the argument that it's better to have 0 RPers and X players, than it is to have 0 players and Y RPers). New players (with new skills) don't come to dead games.

4.1 - Membership of an Official Faction requires a character (or characters) played exclusively by one person to be listed on the public roster of the faction. This means ship names and their corresponding character should be listed, even if the name of the actual player is not recorded on the public roster.

This is fine, as long as it doesn't mandate someone to have a forum account or to do forum RP. There's a decent number of players in DTR for example who do not have a forum account. One of the reasons DTR is so successful in onboarding and retaining players relative to other groups is that when I created the onboarding process/model I treated forum roleplay as an activity. DTR is a casual jack-of-all-trades kind of group. In DTR, people:

• know RL is always first
  
• can come and go as they please if RL demands long breaks, they can instantly come back when they are active again
  
• can enjoy raids, smuggling, POB logistics, PVP, RP in-game and in forum, etc.
  
• forum roleplay is completely optional
  
• people join DTR sub-groups based on preference, no one is mandated to do X,Y,Z. As long as they contribute to the team's goals in some way or to some of our metrics at least minimally, they are fine.
  

No problem in being completely transparent about our roster or who is who. We can even discuss potentially providing Staff with access to our discord channel where we list our ships (excel file became too difficult for one person to regularly update and self-service is always more efficient if people can update their posts/ships on their own). DTR has always been transparent in terms of who's who, what's our motivations, etc. It would become problematic though if there's an expectation for all our members to make a forum account or do forum RP. That impacts the onboarding journey and makes it mandatory for people to do forum RP. Not everyone likes to do that and I would respect their preference. If that became the case - I would instantly suggest DTR to become an unofficial group as it would impact the community element (which we value very much and above all other metrics) in a detrimental way. Bottom-line, people should be able to do what they like and enjoy.

4.3 - In the case that members of an Official Faction disagree with the direction of the faction, they are advised to handle the dispute privately with faction leadership. If this fails to resolve the issue, faction members may ask for a Vote of No Confidence, whereby staff will privately poll all members of the official faction as to whether or not they believe the Faction Leader and/or Second-in-Command(s) should be replaced.

We discussed this in DTR's discord and my only concern here is that one does not end up seeing Staff supported coup d'etat. How do you discern difference in vision vs. genuine mismanagement? @Luminium brought a solid point where you could have an absent non-playing leader holding the keys to the fort and that's a definite use-case I can imagine where I would agree Staff can get involved. But I think outlining specific thresholds where Staff would get involved would be good here.

5.4.c - Temporarily restrict the ability of individual player ships to dock on their NPC faction’s bases with the /nodock command. House Police factions may additionally prevent player ships from docking on any House Police, Military, Intelligence, or Corporate faction base.

I hope this applies for unlawfuls as well patrolling and policing their spaces, as it's a pretty cool idea.

That's all I can think of at present moment. Overall, I think it's a step in the right direction.

EDIT1:

Different people have different vision for what an OF is. Staff should agree on the definition internally first and then implement a model that is the most likely to achieve the expected behavior depending on what you define.

As in if you are expecting to push a certain behavior from OFs (which in turn are expected to influence the rank and file), different steps are to be taken if you want:
A) more new players and lively community
B) higher quality RP
C) higher quality events
D) whatever else

Align on what outcome you are trying to achieve first if you haven't already.

I see OFs in the current player numbers as someone who should drive activity for the server, actually make people play the game and give them the tools for roleplay - DTR being the best OF example and role model.

Thank you for the kind feedback.

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Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

[Lord Caedus]

5.6 - Official Factions may, on a monthly basis select one of the following:

5.6.a - Select one mineable commodity as a “priority”, conferring a 3.5x Mining Bonus on the Official Faction ID. Factions with no mining bonuses may not apply.
5.6.b - Select one non-mineable commodity as a “priority”, conferring a discount for purchase and/or profit bonus on sale while using the Official Faction ID.
5.6.c - Select one refinable commodity as a “priority”, conferring an enhanced POB manufacturing discount and / or increased refining speed.

I'd like to suggest a 5.6.d for lawful OFs to request a monthly boost for turning in captured pilots and/or prisoners unless that would be covered under the 5.6.b commodity list. Possibly a boost for that OF on FL hook bounty payouts for NPC kills? I'm not sure if that would be possible or not, though I'm sure @Aingar would know.

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[The_Godslayer]

This fundamentally cuts to the core of what official factions are actually for. It means you're a sub-community within Discovery that staff feels happy promoting and recommending new players join.

So, in the case of a faction that clearly states that it is not for new members, and is instead targeted at experienced roleplayers and experienced Discovery roleplayers

There is a large difference, of whether you already aren't familiar with roleplaying a Nomad, or you are confident enough to apply directly to K'Hara player faction, or you rather need more guidance. More on that below...

We have a recommended alternative joining method, if you feel inexperienced in the Nomad roleplay.
That is joining the more-human Oracles cult at first.
Tagging along with members of the K'Hara faction, getting used to the roleplay and provide support.
It's a great way if you are just looking for more relaxed roleplay, before you apply for the more complex Nomad roleplay.

Code:

[26.08.2024 03:41:27] Solraki: Mind i ask what you are up to?
[26.08.2024 03:41:53] [OOC] K'Hara|Shozak-Mahknull: deep rp
[26.08.2024 03:42:18] Solraki: mind if i join you?
[26.08.2024 03:42:33] Solraki: not sure how to role play a nomad much though
[26.08.2024 03:43:06] [OOC] K'Hara|Shozak-Mahknull: I probably will, then, this is sort of a higher tier thing. message the_godslayer on discord, I will explain to you
[26.08.2024 03:43:27] [OOC] K'Hara|Shozak-Mahknull: also will explain nomad rp to you

Does not even being a place for newbies just mean you get shafted as an OF now? I and my predecessors quite clearly explained that Nomads, and especially K'Hara is not a faction for new players who are unfamiliar with not just roleplay, but Discovery Freelancer Roleplay. We are meant for experienced Discovery players that are looking to expand their horizons and get fully submerged in roleplay and storytelling to, for lack of equally potent terms, autistic levels.

Am I expected to destroy the history and tradition of my faction to appeal to brand new players? We've already thrown away a lot towards the indie ID to make it easy for new players. You can now get norp engaged and oocd in local at by indie Ishtars with cloaks. How much worse is it going to get? Does maintaining an endgame faction mean we are not allowed to be Official anymore? Does maintaining a faction not meant for new players mean that staff is going to work against and be passive-aggressive towards us?

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[LordBuglette]

Here's my "hot take" as a response to the direction you want to take things here. Since official factions have no impact on the development of the story and lore and all that (since there's no difference between official and unofficial/indies in lore) you can do the following:

Have staff create an official faction for every ID, that is open to the public, that anyone can assume leadership of. Said leadership is passed down to whoever the members in the faction want, whenever they feel that the leader is not doing well, or the leader has left. (Staff can also intervene to shut down harmful cliques) The ID can be modified upon request and review to fit inline with the current actions said OF is taking. This method is pretty pressure free for the players who run and participate in the OF.

This method works well in many games where conflict of interest arises, and unofficial factions which are player created, can still branch off and do other things. After all official factions are the "representation of the NPC faction and ID" by your own words.

Now an argument can be made that you'd be taking away more ability from the players, but lets be honest, do we need more than one official faction for most non-generic IDs? No, the game has more factions than the server has players during peak hours. We don't need 4 Liberty navy official factions, we need one that isn't a closed friend group. (Which is most OF's besides maybe something like DTR) Also, its not like us players have any say in what happens story wise anyway, which in my opinion is the entire purpose for a "Official Faction" otherwise your just another dude with another tag.

For a good few factions, they've never even had an OF, meaning there's been no quality direction control, or even player interest for said factions, and if something like this isn't implemented, there never will be player interest for those factions.

Oh but one more thing.

Actually play the game. No ones going to log in unless you log in, yes we're all thinking about you, and how we want to play with you, so do it.

Anyway I'm going back to drinking excessive amounts of maple syrup, stay safe out there folks.

[Lord Chaos]

Regarding the proposal itself i prety much underline every word @Ravenna Nagash said, i do see there are many interesting things on it for sure like the ZOI extender for instance.

But honestly, what if we approached it differently?

Why not just remove "Official/Unofficial" Player Factions?

Like in any other game that has clans and factions and groups, it would be just "Player Factions",

Why would players "control" an NPC faction that serves as that same faction's "driver" of the plot? "That is like the charriot whanting to pull the bull" imo.

For fairly obvious reasons, players are not and should not be involved in Story Development, one thing is to have an oponion or to be heard, but to demand "ownership" of and NPC story is just disingenuous

Suppose there was only player factions in the system.

Player Factions can pay in credits to have their very own personalized ID and logo for the group, if they so choose. The team is free to demand as much as 50 million dollars for a "custom" ID and logo, subject to the RP assessment, of course.

jammi Wrote:
5.6 - Official Factions may, on a monthly basis select one of the following:

5.6.a - Select one mineable commodity as a “priority”, conferring a 3.5x Mining Bonus on the Official Faction ID. Factions with no mining bonuses may not apply.----- rotate weekly
5.6.b - Select one non-mineable commodity as a “priority”, conferring a discount for purchase and/or profit bonus on sale while using the Official Faction ID.--- rotate weekly
5.6.c - Select one refinable commodity as a “priority”, conferring an enhanced POB manufacturing discount and / or increased refining speed.----------------------------this should be an option for all PoBs, or rotate weekly

This would balance things out so Indies also get "Toys" and the Dev. Team could use it to drive player activity around the map as they see fit.

Everything else can continue to function as it is, this system would take preassure off the Team as well as the Faction themselfs greatly reducing atrition, and improving overal enjoyability within Disco.
By turning certain aspects of the game into something achievable without spending years in it
All Faction perks could still be requested pending RP.

I think you guys get my idea, its "Player Factions" period,
Wanting to have a say on an NPC faction is a weird power grip only possible on Discovery to be honest.

All player groups whant nice things,
Players say:
-"if i cant get a Toy and the other kid has it, and we whant official too etc, etc, etc"

Team solves for good:
-Toys are availabe to anyone who pays XXX Credits you can have a Holo-logo (great idea btw) on the ship and custom image on your ID and your own tag.

-Special requests, crazy Perks and Core 5 for your faction needs tons of RP and work. Cheks if this is maintained inRP will be made, if you have no activity or no RP folow up after your "gifts" are attained, your "Gifts" will be removed.


(Regarding the Governments and that kind of stuff... pls cut the power grip by the root... make factions what they actualy are: Player Grroups 99% of the time made by friends, and yes they whant nice things too ofcourse hehe)

Cheers

[sindroms]

The part about which factions contribute to the server and which do not has always irked me, personally.
I still prefer if roleplay contributed to the server is for its own sake and not to fill an activity bar, to gain a new ID line, a ship or some similar goal. What was the term? Roleplay for the sake of Roleplay?
If you judge the factions only for the above and only offer them tangable goals and rewards based on specific criteria, you might be encouraging the wrong sort of activity.
I suppose the question is - how will you sort roleplay contribution for the sake of gaining benefits, from roleplay contributions that are not aimed at a particular goal but warrant some sort of formal nod and reward, even if not asked for. Because the whole official faction system, flawed from the start, encourages only the former style of roleplay and as subjective my view is on the matter, it leads to very artificial feeling lore at the best of times and straight up weaponized roleplay where players roleplay -against- another group.

Introducing changes like this will telegraph which sort of roleplay you want on this server and community moving forth and I heavily advise against being too hasty on this matter.

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[TheKusari]

To make it much easier to read, because I'm a stickler for showing it off in a clearer format, here's what was presented by @jammi. Apologies if I missed something.

. . REQUIREMENTS Faction review by staff every 2months At least three members (1IC & 2IC included) 24 hours of log-time across 2 months Submit a report of inRP and ooRP goals / achievements across the 2 month period . .

. . BENEFITS Custom OF ID Faction Subforum Player Faction Custom IFF (Optional) In-game and forum authority over players of the same IFF Request that an individual player or faction be set hostile to their represented NPC faction Temporarily restrict individual player ships to dock on their NPC faction’s bases with /nodock Create an Official Faction restart Core 1 POB with two weapons platforms that may be deployed freely once every two weeks Equip faction flair pieces including insignia, logos, color schemes, et cetera SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING MONTHLY One mineable commodity as a “priority”, conferring a 3.5x Mining Bonus One non-mineable commodity as a “priority”, conferring a discount for purchase and/or profit bonus One refinable commodity as a “priority”, conferring an enhanced POB manufacturing discount . .

. . MY THOUGHTS In addition to my first reply, I wanted to compile what was presented by @jammi in a more readable format, so we can quickly read over what the current cost / benefit proposal is. I understand you guys want an itemized list, a good idea for internal use. Good to also display it in a readable format too My thoughts here are thus: This balance right here is good, after listing them both together as above. My issue here is that the level of roleplay (consequence, accomplishments and such) doesn't affect the game world nearly as much as I'd like (possibly others too), see my example I presented in my original reply. You have provided us tools to place a player base and given us a better mining bonus, but to me, this is like duplicating a current entry and upping the numbers for the official guys. The variety in the benefits are effectively the same. Just a different flavour. So I will bring up affecting the game world now. I'll give an example of how deep I'd like this to go. If there's DSE and Ageira Official Factions, and they roleplay together to deploy a new trade lane (leading to a PoB or other area of a system), can that happen if it's not completely game-breaking? Of if the Junkers roleplay to clear up the Hammen Hole or some other systems dev related change? Having that influence come through via how the official events conclude would be fantastic. The Theta stuff is great, though there is a difference here. One side is the Story / Event Devs having a sequence of events already queued and getting the players unknowingly play a losing conflict (known only at the very end of post-event story writeups), or getting the Story / Event Devs to only put together the next event (based on what happened before), see who wins out of the OF participants and then go from there. Though this may introduce situations where DTR may win every time due to their sheer numbers, which would mean they'd be rewarded every time, a problem for a different time. Affecting the game world, making a change via roleplay and having it show to passerbys would be an omega-level goal for many here, including me and my little gunless faction. Right now, as I'm an Aussie, my interactions in-game are limited, and the impacts I have made only come up during interactions with others. The story between the characters. If something huge comes around, and we influence it, or others influence it, I want to be able to see the aftermath of that change without having to interact with characters. It's like if BAF and LN got together and designed the Leeds Monument, both OFs submitting that and then the devs putting that in. That kinda shit would be awesome. That's the kind of impact I want to see Official Factions having. At the extreme scrutiny of the admin / dev staff . .

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The Starfliers are the best faction.

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[Ravenna Nagash]

So I will bring up affecting the game world now. I'll give an example of how deep I'd like this to go. If there's DSE and Ageira Official Factions, and they roleplay together to deploy a new trade lane (leading to a PoB or other area of a system), can that happen if it's not completely game-breaking? Of if the Junkers roleplay to clear up the Hammen Hole or some other systems dev related change?

Having that influence come through via how the official events conclude would be fantastic. The Theta stuff is great, though there is a difference here.

One of my first proposals while being part of Staff was exactly that. That the Staff team can provide a template for OFs to fill and go about themselves to acquire approval from the ''enemy'' OF leader. That way you leave the negotiation happening between OFs without Staff intervention like the previous system. If both factions agree then you can eliminate Staff being a mediator and have their role being a facilitator of the technical side of the request (assuming it's possible). Over time, hopefully OF leaders would come to some sort of agreement because otherwise nothing would get implemented. This prevents the Nash equilibrium situation. It's up to Staff to shoot down unrealistic agreements - because they don't make sense due to lore or because they are technically impossible or very hard to do.

And yes, I do agree that OFs should have some form of input on what changes happen via their RP or actions.

Though this may introduce situations where DTR may win every time due to their sheer numbers, which would mean they'd be rewarded every time, a problem for a different time.

You can implement guard rails for such scenarios. But overall, that implies that there's something dishonest about DTR's size. DTR is where it is today due to its model and the hard work of its members. There's a serious amount of effort being put in recruitment, onboarding, writing guides, teaching people, retention, events, rewards, management, and more. People put in the work and that's the benefit of it. That's not something that should be punished. Other groups can learn, adapt, or do it themselves as well. I have even offered advices and suggestions - both you, AWES and HS leaders have approached me in the past for advice. You yourself have also asked me personally in the past if you can recruit within DTR and I've allowed it when I was leader of the group. If anyone has any questions, they can always reach out to me.

If we are talking about fairness, numbers isn't the only metric that should be looked at, not by a long shot.

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Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

[Erremnart]

I don't think we should resolve any significant story matters through PvP between OFs at all. It shouldn't matter what players you have on the RP server but what faction and characters you play. PvP results should be involved only in OORP stuff, such as rewards or titles. Or maybe some tiny, cosmetic story bits that do not matter in the larger scheme of things.

The way I see possible OF involvement in the story is that the OF proposes to do something, and the staff will decide whether it makes sense (npc faction might preoccupied somewhere else, might be not in their modus operandi or they might be simply too weak to challenge their foes), modify it if necessary (mostly to fit into the story), and outline the end results.

We should encourage roleplay and immersion in our setting, not how many PvP players a faction X can gather on Discord before the conflict.