(01-01-2020, 08:54 PM)Thunderer Wrote: @Lythrilux I invited the Core into Exeter to give you a chance for more activity, still got no response and no Core. I hope you haven't abandoned everything?
We lost ZoI there because of system classification changes. I've raised this issue twice in two separate places and it's been ignored.
Maybe we could perk Core ZOI in the system if Bretonia gives a military base to the Core in exchange for help? That round station above Exeter had a Core IFF in the first patch by mistake. Or was it a mistake?
I'm not allowed to talk about the station but the Exter thing is I think - I hope - an oversight. It'd be pretty silly to perk back something we used to have.
We could simplify the concept we currently have indeed. OFs are one obligation too much in a space shooter game, for me at least.
Every ID should be taken care of by one capable player and his 2ic and that's all. They would have rights and duties, like knowing their members, providing order, rankings, trainings, RP school and make their fellas do things good for a game. Like professors in school. They would be supported by GMs in case they can't solve some issue alone. Some professors would be more popular and/or efficient, ofc.
What OFs could offer us more than that, beats me. Every game is about people.
(01-01-2020, 08:09 PM)Lythrilux Wrote: If anything I feel like this system has evolved into a mostly automated chopping block with minimal admin, or staff input required; providing a dirty means to reduce the number of factions, and therefore requests/development needed to sustain them, that the staff would otherwise have to invest time into.
The issue is clearly bigger than the OFs themselves as indicated by the majority of factions on that list having little to no indies, or secondary groups that could swiftly replace them if they were to disband or die out.
If this was the case, then I appear to be spending a lot of time doing Staff 'things' with which I could be doing more productive things, like playing.
5 Factions lost Officialdom today and 5 had their first failure. Of those 10, 7 failed to achieve, in 3 months, the minimum time required for an Indy Faction to remain on the Activity List. The other 3 were slightly better in their times.
There are currently 8 other Factions going for Officialdom, of which 3 of them are in the voting process.
Quote:New players would rather apply for official factions. Having your own structured subforum also helps to handle things. You may have fun promoting your faction if your threads fell down onto page 5 or deeper in unofficial factions forum.
Most of the Ships, at any time, I see flying around are Indies mostly without any Tags.
All well and good having an 'easy to find' OF Application Thread, but if the Players don't actually see the Faction in Game (except for the last few days of a quarter, where there is suddenly a big push to achieve the required activity), why would they bother applying? Just look at the handful of Factions that achieved the 3 days in the last month (quite a bit of that was achieved in the last few days).
This is why I mentioned, earlier, about OFs just sitting on their laurels. You want people to join? Then the Factions need to 'fly the flag' and be noticed.
People may throw up their arms and blame the Staff for everything, but it is about time some of the Players took a bit of the responsibility for a few things.
You want people to join and stay, then you need to do some of the work. Make Discord a more friendly place for newer Players. Make the Forums somewhere you can be proud of, instead of the constant 'sticking in the knives' to all and sundry.
In Game, the OFs are supposed to set a high standard, I have many a time said 'Good day' (in one form or another) on my Indy Ships and have been totally ignored by OF Ships (I am not saying everyone is bad, but there are a few out there). It doesn't say much for the OF and give a good impression.
When you meet the newer Players in Game, on your Pirate Ships, try and make it an enjoyable encounter. '5 mill or die' encounters are quite frequent with a 5 second countdown before the shooting starts. Maybe try and explain things, to them. You don't have to 'splash' the target every time even though we know your Bombers can 'eat' a Trader in a couple of seconds.
Try to remember how bewildered you were when you first stepped in to Disco. The older Players (when I joined), even the pirates, would talk to you and explain things.
One of my first encounters, with a pirate, was in California. I had just bought a bigger Trade Ship (Mammoth, I believe) and had spent all my money buying it. He caught me at Riverside with 2 LR Pilots in my hold. He asked me for 2 million and I told him I was completely broke. He then demanded the 2 Pilots and flew off. About 30 seconds later, he sent me 10 million. I was shocked.
The long and short of it is, the new Players need to be nurtured and the OFs are the people that the Indies should looking to get that from. There are Indy Factions that also do it, but they are not as prevalent as the OFs.
Log and show them that it is worth staying around.
'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are' Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person
(01-01-2020, 10:06 PM)St.Denis Wrote: If this was the case, then I appear to be spending a lot of time doing Staff 'things' with which I could be doing more productive things, like playing.
I meant that the Developers aren't sitting down with the factions that are struggling as much as they should be, not that the GMs aren't doing anything.
(01-01-2020, 10:11 PM)Lythrilux Wrote: I meant that the Developers aren't sitting down with the factions that are struggling as much as they should be,
While I respect and am happy that there is a good admin and support team still running this mod and developing new content for an almost twenty year old game, I feel like this system is a little archaic, detached, and clinical. It has no real meat to it except to say that "You don't login for X amount of days then your faction is either dismantled, forgotten, or taken off the official listing". While I understand the reasoning and principle behind this, it doesn't feel like it measures up to the quality I'd expect from an RP server, if that makes any sense. Now that I've got that out of the way, allow me to offer a something of a possible solution.
Instead of having only the requirement to login for X amount of hours per quarter period, we add something onto the end of that but not make it require one or the other.
As an example, say that I run an official faction--lets call it Ultimate Awesome Dudes. or UAD. Now, myself and my people are only able to log 40 hours in one period. Currently, by the rules of an official faction (going by the metrics put forward by St.Denis), means that we are 5 hours short from maintaining official status or getting a warning that we're below the metric required for maintaining our status. There are a multitude of reasons for falling short of this. Holiday seasons, work related things, personal emergencies, you name it. If we fall short again, that's it, we're done and out of official status until we can get it back by showing that we're active.
So, here's where my idea comes in. Let's use the same situation as above. We've only been able to log 40 hours in a given quarter and are in danger of being removed or being given a warning. At this point, the administration could look to the RP forum to see if our faction has had a RP post going over that same period or has done any RP on the forums whatsoever. Let's say that I can't login very much as of late because I've recently had a new addition to my family. Taking care of a small human being is a lot of work and I may not always have time to login to do trading, get in spats when other factions, or what-have-you. However, when I get a spare moment, I throw up a few RP posts with my buds, do a few communication posts, and stay active where I can on the community representing my faction. That should count along with how much time I login to the server representing my faction in a live setting.
TL;DR - Use RP posts as a metric on top of the login metric to gauge whether or not a faction needs to be removed from the official listing. This is an RP community after all and should be counted along with activity.
(01-03-2020, 01:47 AM)Edge Wrote: TL;DR - Use RP posts as a metric on top of the login metric to gauge whether or not a faction needs to be removed from the official listing. This is an RP community after all and should be counted along with activity.
It's a good idea in theory, and I'd be all for a system that can incorporate forum RP into activity timers for official factions. The problem here then is how you determine which will be counted for or against a faction's timer via the forums. Some factions could provide phenomenal quality of RP via the forums at the cost of not being able to post as often, while others could provide a post per hour of forum RP for their faction at the cost of being rather iffy in quality and maybe a bit copy-pastey. How do GMs decide which is worth keeping a faction official for, and which to not count for officialdom checks?
It's a very bias-prone system I feel, and while I would love to see forum RP be counted for and against officials as a check of not only their activity but potentially their impact on the server I feel as if this archaic system of ours is as cut and dry without any way for preference to impact the system.
(01-03-2020, 01:47 AM)Edge Wrote: As an example, say that I run an official faction--lets call it Ultimate Awesome Dudes. or UAD. Now, myself and my people are only able to log 40 hours in one period. Currently, by the rules of an official faction (going by the metrics put forward by St.Denis), means that we are 5 hours short from maintaining official status or getting a warning that we're below the metric required for maintaining our status. There are a multitude of reasons for falling short of this. Holiday seasons, work related things, personal emergencies, you name it. If we fall short again, that's it, we're done and out of official status until we can get it back by showing that we're active.
So, here's where my idea comes in. Let's use the same situation as above. We've only been able to log 40 hours in a given quarter and are in danger of being removed or being given a warning. At this point, the administration could look to the RP forum to see if our faction has had a RP post going over that same period or has done any RP on the forums whatsoever. Let's say that I can't login very much as of late because I've recently had a new addition to my family. Taking care of a small human being is a lot of work and I may not always have time to login to do trading, get in spats when other factions, or what-have-you. However, when I get a spare moment, I throw up a few RP posts with my buds, do a few communication posts, and stay active where I can on the community representing my faction. That should count along with how much time I login to the server representing my faction in a live setting.
The old System used to require 24 hours activity per month. Therefore, you could lose Officialdom if you had a bad 2 months. There were complaints, which were deemed valid at the time, that holiday periods, RL etc got in the way and it could lead to OFs losing their Officialdom too easily.
It was decided, to try and mitigate this problem, to extend the period to 72 hours in a 3 month period. This was deemed a better way to overcome the fluctuations in availability. This allows an OF to have a 'bad' 3 months and make up for it in the next 6 months.
It was, initially, that if you failed one quarter and passed the next quarter, your Faction retained Officialdom. There was a problem with this that some Factions started playing a Game of 'ping pong'. Fail, 1 check, pass the next, fail the third, pass the fourth etc.
It was decided to try and 'nip this in the bud' early on and instigate that if you failed 1 check, you had to pass the next 2. If you care to look back through the quarterly checks, there are some Factions still playing the game of ping pong.
The requirement of the activity check of 72 hours, in a 3 month period, is also with the caveat that there are at least 3 active Members (this used to be 5).
If we say that an OF needs 72 hours, 3 active Members to pass a quarterly check (call it 90 days), this equates to 16 minutes per day per person (1 hour 52 minutes per week per person).
This system requirements can't really be reduced much more.
If OFs want people to join their Factions, they need to 'fly the flag' and be seen in the Game. People complain that they can't find 'in-game' interactions. OFs should be the 'creme de la creme' of the Factions in Disco, but are they really?
There are a lot of Players out there that are not Members of an Official Faction and have set up their own Unofficial Faction and are surpassing the activity times of most of the OFs (most of them do not show up on the Activity Tracker). Maybe it is time to ask yourselves why?
There are a few factors, in my opinion, that are the cause of OFs losing Officialdom.
1) Reduced Player Base.
2) OFs using 3rd party programs to alert them when certain other Factions log. If all sides are sitting awaiting the alerts, then it becomes rather self-defeating.
3) Because OFs aren't really flying the flag, the newer Players aren't applying in their droves.
4) Too many OFs for the Player Base.
We now need to ask why there is a reduced Player Base.
1) Too much 'backstabbing' going on in the Forums, in game and from what I hear, on Discord. People decide that there are better places to be.
2) An old game.
3) Lots of new games out there (a big increase since this was conceived), therefore they take up people's time.
How many Players are in actual OFs?
How many Players are in only 1 or 2
I am sure that there are plenty who are in 5 or more (hence their time is split quite drastically)
I know of at least one person who is more than 10 and I am sure there are a few more.
We are 2 days in to a new quarter, look how many Players have more than 4 hours activity, already. At least 90% (probably more) don't belong to an OF.
'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are' Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person
Freelancer being an old game is not an excuse, given there are older games with way bigger communities that go into thousands of players with no need to pull out the artificial life supports. I watched the Official Faction system from over 7 or 8 years and it is still as faulty as it used to be, despite changes.
My proposal? Introduce Officialdom without any time limit, based on three warning system on basis of overall behaviour of the leader and his players a) in-game, b) on the forums and - here's a surprise - c) on Discord. Like @St.Denis said, backstabbing on Discord should be a big no-no - I know a few cases of severe abuse on Discord, as well as mocking players behind their back. That's why I believe that players and leaders of the Official Factions should be held accountable for what they do and write on Discord too. You may like it or not, but activity over there is the extension of Discovery Freelancer's player factions and as such should be taken into consideration.
TL;DR If you belong to an Official Faction, you should give example not only in-game or on the forums, but also with your own Discord.
I witnessed such a system applied in a few places and it works just fine.
(02-09-2020, 06:10 PM)The Listener Wrote: TL;DR If you belong to an Official Faction, you should give example not only in-game or on the forums, but also with your own Discord.
I witnessed such a system applied in a few places and it works just fine.
How would you enforce that. Discord thought police to monitor the faction servers for the greater good?