Especially the one that those questions actually have to be answered to people who start playing in the Order, either in the forum or ingame, if you think you will ever get people to act accordingly.
About the unification plan... sounds reasonable, but if you want it to work you are going to have to keep it very simple.
Promotions and demotions are good, but I'd like that promotions can be issued by fewer people (maybe 3 of HC can agree, and people starting at a certain rank can recommend someone to be promoted) while demotions can only be done if there was a court martial and HC unanimely decides or agrees with a 2/3 majority.
Because in a spaceship shooting internet game, the ego is unavoidably bound to get in the way of the judgement of people (especially of the people who have spent a lot of time on a game).
Something in general about factions:
It would help if some factionalized people were less elitist and did more to help their faction, instead of flaming the indies and making them want to stay out of their faction. Thats really the only thing that can help here.
One mistake made in the Order (alhtough the same thing happens with other factions too) is that people who are obviously new are discouraged to join, so that you can keep you Faction| -tagged group looking good.
What you SHOULD do is invite EVERYONE to join and start at a low rank, where they will actually be asked to obey, observe, learn, and not start with a Geb. Tell them they can also fly and indi Geb if they want, but NEVER turn them back when they ask to join. Just make them fly a Nephthys and obey with a low rank while on their Order| char.
Thats the worst mistake you can make if you want to reduce the number of lolgebs, and I'm saying this because I saw it happen more than a few times with the Order. If he is an idiot you can just not promote him until he behaves better or leaves. But you will be putting him in a situation where he will actually want to listen to you.
If you turn people back and tell them they have to show how good they are first, you will get them flaming others to show how good they are, and maybe not helping others since they think they are in a competition. Asuming they will still want to join after that. And you get situations like one I remember very well: a RP event where a fleet escorted that zoner juggy to Iota... and you have 20 lines of indies calling other indies lolwuts for every line of RP. That just makes you want to suicide and stay out of Order group chat.
Especially the one that those questions actually have to be answered to people who start playing in the Order, either in the forum or ingame, if you think you will ever get people to act accordingly.
About the unification plan... sounds reasonable, but if you want it to work you are going to have to keep it very simple.
Promotions and demotions are good, but I'd like that promotions can be issued by fewer people (maybe 3 of HC can agree, and people starting at a certain rank can recommend someone to be promoted) while demotions can only be done if there was a court martial and HC unanimely decides or agrees with a 2/3 majority.
Because in a spaceship shooting internet game, the ego is unavoidably bound to get in the way of the judgement of people (especially of the people who have spent a lot of time on a game).
Something in general about factions:
It would help if some factionalized people were less elitist and did more to help their faction, instead of flaming the indies and making them want to stay out of their faction. Thats really the only thing that can help here.
One mistake made in the Order (alhtough the same thing happens with other factions too) is that people who are obviously new are discouraged to join, so you can keep you Faction| -tagged group looking good.
What you SHOULD do is invite EVERYONE to join and start at a low rank, where they will actually be asked to obey, observe, learn, and not start with a Geb. Tell them they can also fly and indi Geb if they want, but NEVER turn them back when they ask to join. Just make them fly a Nephthys and obey with a low rank while on their Order| char.
Thats the worst mistake you can make if you want to reduce the number of lolgebs, and I'm saying this because I saw it happen more than a few times with the Order. If he is an idiot you can just not promote him until he behaves better or leaves. But you will be putting him in a situation where he will actually want to listen to you.
If you turn back people and tell them they have to show how good they are first, you will get them flaming others to show how good they are, and maybe not helping others since they think they are in a competition. And you get situations like one I remember very well: a RP event where a fleet escorted that zoner juggy to Iota... and you have 20 lines of indies calling other indies lolwuts for every line of RP. That just makes you want to suicide and stay out of Order group chat.
Some points are true, but this last part about inviting everyone can't work. We can't just take in 10 people, and then spend next month with them trying to teach them how to RP. Yes I know as only Order Official faction we have responsibility for it, but I can not, and don't want to spend 100% of my time on Order| char with rookies trying teaching them. I help who asks me, I help when I see someone is having troubles with something, but I am not in Order| to spend all my time with new people.
It's impossible to always have someone experienced online to guide them, and sooner or later they will do something which will harm Order| as official faction.
Official factions have their conditions and restrictions for joining Order| is not different in any way. With new changes coming it will be, but at the moment it's not.
@Wizard, indeed those questions are something that needs to be answered, and if they have been ever asked they would be, I can not fly around and explain to every single player what he can and can not do and why.
It is not my duty, if you decide to make char in some faction indie or official, you are expected to know something about that faction before you join, read some stuff, ask someone, just to get some neccesary infos. New Order indies are poping out almost everyday, you think it's possible to keep an eye on every new name which appears in Minor and then go preaching him.
And excuse me Wizard, but good role player is not someone who expects to get served everything on plate by others, if you want to know more, ask on forums, find out more about Order, there is more then enough of people who can explain it. I won't help or work for someone who is lazy to do his part aswell.
We have ATG| for some time now, whoever from Order| saw some small potential in indies, that player was invited in ATG|, we have 2,3 people taking care for ATG| and those new indies who joined it learned a lot, several ATG| members are in Order| now, with help they learned to RP solid, and in Order| their skills gave sharpen up.
But this isn't discussion about what did Order| do wrong with indies, nor it's place to flame Order|.
We are trying to make some changes which will improve Order| and indie Order players relations, and we will need help and support as many as possible. We chosed the hard way to make it better, so please don't flame and talk what happened or didn't happened in past, and rather stick to the present where you can make some effort and help us.
Its not a thing that only Order should do, its something that all major military factions should do, for example the LN.
I'm not saying you should dedicate all your time to it, but if some people dedicated some time to it, they would end up doing themselves a favor. That asumption is based on the amount of raeg-rants I see everywhere ingame and on the forums about Order and LN ships.
Specifically for people with high ranks in "important" factions, who also expect others to obey them, I would think that these 2 privileges also come with responsibily for the faction as a whole. If you mind that noobs have the same Order| tag as you, just make them put Order|Ens.Name for ensign so people know what is going on.
You dont have to do it all by yourself and at every time on every day. But when I see 7 people as high command, I should think that it would already be enough if only those people conducted a few training exercises where all Order ships are invited to participate. If those 7 arent enough there are plenty of other experienced players aswell.
Such a training exercise will look like this:
-When ever someone feels like it, go to minor and say "Order training exercise will be held in Omicron 100, all order ships are invited to join". If you cant get more than 5 people to join, dont do it at that time.
-You will offer the Order| tag to anyone who registers on the forum, accepts that he will RP as ensign at the beginning, accept Order hierarhy, and accepts that his Order| tagged ship will be restricted by rank (Ensign starts with Nephthys). If they start goofing off on their Order| tagged ship, you kick them out. Tell them that if they want to fly an indi cap ship, they can do it but not with Order| tag. Doing that alone will reduce te number of caps online and increase the number of Order Nephthys that actually obey you. You can call it ATG if you want, but Order| will motivate more people to want to join.
-Training exercises will include naming conventions, pvp fighter training, sometimes cap ship training (Order| caps and fighters vs indi caps), rp and history lessons (be it only telling people where to find it on the forums), lessons on Order structure and hierarchy.
If you think its too much work... think about what happens when you dont do it: Those minimum of 5 people who are there listening to you now will get the same stuff told to them individually by other people, while playing the game. While taking 5 times the time of those people. They will see you Order| guys as a minority who keep the Order tag to themselves, while they arent ready to help new people more than the indies are actually doing, while Order guys only play important and boss people around and seem to be more on the side of the enemy than on the side of Order. Only the indies who teach them stuff will teach them less good, and they will be programmed to go into conflict with you sooner or later. If you say Order| people help new people too, then think about how much more efficient it is to tell 5 or more people the same thing at the same time. And how much more people would want to listen to you if you graciously granted them a Order|Ens. Nephthys and helped them a bit.
Yes Tommy,you are right and like you i don't wanna spend 100% of my time in Order explaining old things
to a new players.
And yes,like you i don't think that everything should be delivered on silver plate to a rookies...of course they must learn for themselves,that's more than obvious,i was talking about some basic stuff,basic
things in Order game-style...and those things stay unanswered very often...
Maybe we should do this:
-register all Order players and ships on one list - official and indies in whatever way is best suitable
-make forum registration under Order name must-do thing for all players (specially new ones) after they got Order ID mounted
-make some sort of Order guide line that will be send to all new registrated players via PM (i know that this thing already exist on Order channel but many players first join the faction and then,much later go on forum and slowly get active in community,so sending them this guideline as PM might be good idea and it might save us lot time and trouble...)
I am sorry if i was sounding like i was flaming Order,i wasn't trying to do that in any way,like everybody here i want to see Order get bigger and better and i hope that this suggestions will help.