ID rework Trial proposal

[HassLHoFF™]

Hi,

first, please let this thread in a constructive manner.

Ok, I've observed the player list since the last 3 weeks nearly each hour the day. I must admit it supports the first impression I once had. With a constant low playerbase about 60 players the overall ingame activity currently contains about 10-15% playerfaction activity and 85-90% indieplayer activity with 65-70% of them being mostly new players regarding their charname-usage.
This signifies that discovery still has a good amount of new players on a daily basis. A good thing to be honest. The problem is to keep these players, introducing them corrently to the community/RP environment and even more important to equally raise quantity and quality at same.
Once, I said, the benefit for being in a faction is minimal, or even non existant. I still say this. There isn't any reason for a new player or an indie to join or create a faction as everyone can gain nearly everything on its own. Is it good maybe? Is it bad maybe? Regarding the facts listed above I tend to say that it might be bad though.
The major mentally within the group of more experienced players is "Others don't log, therefore I don't log." There was a thread about "What keeps you from loggin?", which I seriously like to figure out is "What manages you to log?"
I just can talk for some people close to me and myself. First I seriously like to interact with interesting factions and interesting individuals, having a feedback of RP or even pvp on both sides. This is mostly the reason I do log ingame. Not to say that mostly everything is more fun with others.
What does this has to do with the title?

Well I suggest to move the percentage of players activity. The level of faction activity needs to be much higher that may have the positive effect that the server activity and RP quality exponential will raise. Basically like "this guy/factions is of interest, therefore I login.

What do I exactly suggest?

I suggest a trial of an improved ID system which contains a:

1. Removal of all indie ID's that contain a NPC faction
2. Breaking down of the Freelancer ID, Miner ID and Pirate ID into IDs that better define the RP behind the character it is using. (Researcher ID, Trader ID, Mercenary ID, Miner ID, Pirate ID, maybe more)
3. Removal of mostly all rephacks for generic IDs, except obviously Nomads and faction that are usually hostile to foreigners.
4. Changing Freelancer IFF to Independent IFF

Explanation:

1. Players will be driven to a responsible environment of an official faction when they want to upgrade to a shipclass higher than 3,6k cargo limit or capsize. With this step we can increase the quality of each player roleplaying and using such a vessel and learning RPing such a NPC faction. Furthermore the player gets in touch with other players which may increase overall motivation within a faction and the playerbase and the player.
2. The variety of the freelancer ID is basically useless, because it drives to "I am everything and I can do everything" RP with others don't have a significant hint of their task or profession.
3. Independent players should have the chance to form their reputation exactly with their choices, needs and whishes and even consequences.
4. Useless as all can be under the Independent banner.

I know this might be a hard step, but seriously think about and discuss it.

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[SnakThree]

This won't work due to breaking established system that sustained playerbase through the years. If people don't want to join official faction but enjoy a big capital ship or a big trade ship, why would they have to be put behind artificial barrier that would force them them to endure ranking systems or write autobiography pages. Also, creating new official faction would be narely impossible if you can only fly small ships for 3-4 months ( staff takes way too long nowadays ) and that would only demotivate creating new official factions.

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[Lythrilux]

1. Removal of all indie ID's that contain a NPC faction

This will kill factions. You need indies to stimulate interest.

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[Karlotta]

While you raise many valid points about how newbies should be integrated more, there are a few things that makes your approach counter-productive in this respect.

1. Almost everyone would have at least half of their chars wiped, and more than half nearly all their chars wiped, if they were forced to conform to this.

2. The official factions of discovery are far from acting in responsible ways. Over the years they've repeatedly declined training noobs, declined recruiting noobs, shot noobs because the noobs followed RP instead of OORP commands, intentionally made devs kill activity because they wanted to be in complete control, made devs effectively kill off rival factions, bullied people who wouldnt submit to them off the server or out of "their" space. And they arent going to change over night, because the population of official factions, and the longer-staying playerbase, has literally been "bred" to be like this for years.

There are many things that can be done to integrate noobs better, but unfortunately nothing has so far been able to convince devs and admins to actually do them. One of the main reasons seems to be that it conflicts with the way the community has been "bred" until now.

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[Lythrilux]

2. The official factions of discovery are far from acting in responsible ways. Over the years they've repeatedly declined training noobs, declined recruiting noobs, shot noobs because the noobs followed RP instead of OORP commands, intentionally made devs kill activity because they wanted to be in complete control, made devs effectively kill off rival factions, bullied people who wouldnt submit to them off the server or out of "their" space. And they arent going to change over night, because the population of official factions, and the longer-staying playerbase, has literally been "bred" to be like this for years.

I strongly feel this is a small minority among official factions (with some of it sounding like rubbish completely), and this sort of mentality and unjustified hostility towards official factions is part of the reason why activity has gotten so low.

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[Karlotta]

It may be the minority of factions, but they're a large portion of the NPC factions that especially new people tend to want to play. I can give multiple examples for everything I said. Ironically you have one of them in your own signature right now. The things I described are part of the reason why activity has gotten so low, and the hostility here is just another symptom of it. But I understand it's more convenient to shoot the messenger than to accept this.

The crux of the matter is: Over the years many official factions didn't want to teach noobs, didn't want to recruit noobs, and didn't even want to raise activity in their corner of space. They just wanted to be in control. Do you see them starting training and recruitment drives now, even now when everyone knows that activity is too low and noobs are leaving? I don't. And I doubt they really changed that much, even if some of them may now say they'd totally be teaching noobs non stop if they received more control in exchange.

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[Lythrilux]

It may be the minority of factions, but they're a large portion of the NPC factions that especially new people tend to want to play. I can give multiple examples for everything I said. Ironically you have one of them in your own signature right now. The things I described are part of the reason why activity has gotten so low, and the hostility here is just another symptom of it. But I understand it's more convenient to shoot the messenger than to accept this.

The crux of the matter is: Over the years many official factions didn't want to teach noobs, didn't want to recruit noobs, and didn't even want to raise activity in their corner of space. They just wanted to be in control. Do you see them starting training and recruitment drives now, even now when everyone knows that activity is too low and noobs are leaving? I don't. And I doubt they really changed that much, even if some of them may now say they'd totally be teaching noobs non stop if they received more control in exchange.

I strongly disagree that this behaviour makes up a large portion of NPC factions. In my five-year career in Disco, I have only seen some semblance of behaviour you describe in four factions:

• One of them was a secondary faction out of two who had officialdom (and they shared influence and couldn't be as detrimental as they wanted). Even though their influence in the Staff enabled them to get away with what they were doing, they had their just deserts and the community rallied against them multiple times. They're not around anymore.
  
• Another was in league with the above. But I can gladly say that after some leadership and membership changes, they have done an awesome job in changing themselves and are much better than what they used to be.
  
• The third isn't at fault in itself, but its leader is detrimental and that's what causes the negative impact.
  
• The fourth is subjective, and they certainly did most things right, but I disagreed with RHA's trigger-happy stance on POBs. It created a really hostile environment for base construction in Rheinland and the Omegas.
  

During each of these periods, there have been around 40 official factions at least. If you want to stretch it you can include the Wild faction elitism, but there are valid reasons for that. I'm not saying there hasn't been bad behaviour among official factions, but to act like it's a common norm is a huge exaggeration. It's really easy to take big amounts of short-term drama and pretend it's normalcy.

It's recruitment suicide to not be open towards new players. and I've seen factions make the mistake of not doing that and suffering as a result before they realise the error of their ways and change.

If anything, the reason why factions have been dying is that we're treated like crap and people don't really appreciate the hard work and effort that goes into what we do. It's extremely easy to get demotivated as a leader because there is almost no return on your effort. It's sad to go through the arduous but otherwise enjoyable process of officialdom, only to end up with a huge magnifying glass over you, loads of responsibilities, no rewards and to top it all off you'll rarely get to be more than puppet when it comes to the development of your faction mod-wise. I have this huge list of awesome ideas I want to roll out, but each time I look at it I get demotivated. I dread getting halfway through something, only for someone with a yellow name to come along and tell me "oh no you can't do that, we want you to do something that's completely unrelated to your faction" instead. Or something just as bad: I'll publish some roleplay and then I'll have a mob of people, with the tenacity to poke even the tiniest holes, start banging on my door and complain. Factions are our art. To be pushed out as the artist from our contribution, and to come under so much unnecessary scrutiny, is heartbreaking.

Ultimately, other than literally one example, I really don't see any of your complaints being valid among any of the current official factions.

About my signature: what's wrong with making fun of people's attempt to make fun of you?

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[HassLHoFF™]

This won't work due to breaking established system that sustained playerbase through the years. If people don't want to join official faction but enjoy a big capital ship or a big trade ship, why would they have to be put behind artificial barrier that would force them them to endure ranking systems or write autobiography pages. Also, creating new official faction would be narely impossible if you can only fly small ships for 3-4 months ( staff takes way too long nowadays ) and that would only demotivate creating new official factions.

Yes, this system is established, but as I outlined the hard facts the system as it is doesn't work anymore. Writing an autobiography or enduring a ranking system is something on another page. Of course, under the suggested system the factions have to improve their recruitment very much. This artificial barrier has a function though that it increases the chance signifying others faction X is online and faction y could pirate faction x, etc. It could even motivate these "I don't log alone people".
Question is, what would an indie do if he can't fly this big trade ship or that big capital ship? I seriously believe most of them would get in touch with the specific person, how to get it and may join the faction.
I guess I don't need to point out that we have a couple player factions based on NPC factions that currently die out. But if someone likes to create a new faction they could easily drop an info here at the unofficial faction section and they could get a trial ID based on the requested NPC faction behind.
The process of creating an official faction is out of discussion though.

1. Removal of all indie ID's that contain a NPC faction

This will kill factions. You need indies to stimulate interest.

Could you elaborate this? I don't see a reason why this is an counter-argumenting against my proposal.

While you raise many valid points about how newbies should be integrated more, there are a few things that makes your approach counter-productive in this respect.

1. Almost everyone would have at least half of their chars wiped, and more than half nearly all their chars wiped, if they were forced to conform to this.

2. The official factions of discovery are far from acting in responsible ways. Over the years they've repeatedly declined training noobs, declined recruiting noobs, shot noobs because the noobs followed RP instead of OORP commands, intentionally made devs kill activity because they wanted to be in complete control, made devs effectively kill off rival factions, bullied people who wouldnt submit to them off the server or out of "their" space. And they arent going to change over night, because the population of official factions, and the longer-staying playerbase, has literally been "bred" to be like this for years.

There are many things that can be done to integrate noobs better, but unfortunately nothing has so far been able to convince devs and admins to actually do them. One of the main reasons seems to be that it conflicts with the way the community has been "bred" until now.

1. Why? Just join the original faction with this char or just change to the "desired" generic ID. Wiping isn't mandatory.
2. As mentioned above, yes they have to improve, but just because a handful of people can't act in a responsible way shouldn't be a reason against a change that may revive activity.

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[Lythrilux]

Could you elaborate this? I don't see a reason why this is an counter-argumenting against my proposal.

In the vast majority of cases joining an official faction is a two-step program. You play the indie, then eventually you get interested enough to join the official faction. When you're an indie, you get the chance to properly immerse yourself in the lore and modus operandi of the faction you're playing.

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[HassLHoFF™]

Could you elaborate this? I don't see a reason why this is an counter-argumenting against my proposal.

In the vast majority of cases joining an official faction is a two-step program. You play the indie, then eventually you get interested enough to join the official faction. When you're an indie, you get the chance to properly immerse yourself in the lore and modus operandi of the faction you're playing.

You described as it should be...as @SnakThree commented, but you missed the part that this isn't the case mostly anymore.
The vast majority of indies immerse themselves with doing mistakes contradictive to their chosen NPC faction multiple times and destroying immersion of nearly everyone they pass on their way.
Having a freelancer flying around named ipwnyou123 isn't an optimal thing already. Having an Ageira transport named itrade45@gmail.com carrying slaves and saying lol xD hi xD is another.

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