' Wrote:What you are describing sounds like an unusual and short term situation that wouldn't even last long enough to merit debate.
Perhaps. But if they were required to join the faction before they even had a chance to determine whether or not they'd stay interested in the character, for some people that'd be a "come up with something completely different" moment.
Now, I do agree with the chain of command issue. Perhaps, then, we can agree that "independents" working with all-encompassing factions such as the RM should be limited to the lowest rank(s), and if they want something higher, they should join the faction and work for it?
Edit: Gah, I'm not used to Tenacity making sense.:PHe raised some good points in his post too; I think perhaps factions should be a little more open to accepting characters with different ships from the normal if it's backed by sufficient roleplaying, as I believe he has done.
A. They are part of a paramilitary organisation, not a military one
B. They are led by an Admiral, not Orillion.
However, the bit about handing out orders seems problematic. Your character isn't a Black Squadron officer, and if he's in a gunboat he almost certainly is an officer in the Order, with a specific commission that would exclude both the section of Black Squadron and others outside his command. But that's getting off topic.
' Wrote:Perhaps. But if they were required to join the faction before they even had a chance to determine whether or not they'd stay interested in the character, for some people that'd be a "come up with something completely different" moment.
Now, I do agree with the chain of command issue. Perhaps, then, we can agree that "independents" working with all-encompassing factions such as the RM should be limited to the lowest rank(s), and if they want something higher, they should join the faction and work for it?
Well, if they want to roleplay as a member of said group, they should ask first, in my view. But, as I said, it's an unusual situation that wouldn't generally come up in the first place. But it keeps things easier to manage and overall less complex RP-wise if you factionize. That's my personal view.
Quote:However, the bit about handing out orders seems problematic. Your character isn't a Black Squadron officer, and if he's in a gunboat he almost certainly is an officer in the Order, with a specific commission that would exclude both the section of Black Squadron and others outside his command. But that's getting off topic.
I fly a cruiser.
People usually think "OMG POWERGAMING!" when I say "hand out orders"... it may look like that, but it isnt.
See, I dont tell people to go suicide themselves against battleships or anything unreasonable like that. The -only- time I start giving orders to other Order players (BS or independent) is when there are immediate threats to order space (keepers, BH's, liberty, smugglers, whatever), or when nobody is doing anything.
In the situation that these other players are just sitting around toledo with nothing to do (much like liberty and manhattan), I either organize an RP based event (checking out a nomad system, trying to collect nomad power cells, or infiltrating a house system) or ask them to help patrol order space - directing them to particular jump holes or stations to defend. All the while, we're ALL in a group - every time I log on I automatically check order space for hostiles, and immediately afterwards invite all order members I recognize into a single group so that we can be more organized.
Now, despite the fact that myself, and a lot of these other players I work with are 'indies' - I've seen a LOT more organization and teamwork out of them than I've seen in many other large/official factions. I hate to fall back on liberty since I bash them a lot for this... but lets take a look at the [SA].
SA members, along with a large number of LNS liberty independent caps, and quite often =LSF= members, seem to sit around manhattan orbit all day long. They get annoyed when they cant stop a smuggler within the distance from the trade lane to the manhattan docking ring, but they never seem to do anything about it.
Hell, the only liberty lawful I've ever seen actively patrol z21/alaska is gafwmn, and he's not a pc faction member - he's an independent.
Now imagine if all those SA, LSF, and liberty independents formed a single group for organized communication, and spread their forces out - sending one player to each trade lane intersection and jump gate in the system or beyond. Do you realize how many more smugglers and pirates you would catch? Or how much more fun the players would be having, rather than sitting there outside of manhattan absolutely bored and spewing OOC chat until they finally decide to log out? Tons.
All it takes is respecting other players and working WITH them and not AGAINST them.
I would say that's perfectly reasonable (handing out emergency orders).
Laziness or poor activity on the SA/LSF's part is something, if what you are saying is true, that should indeed be fixed, but doesn't really direct relate to the question of *roleplay* involved.
I might also add that the SA, in the first place, shouldn't be in New York, given that they are supposed to patrol the southern parts of Liberty, not the northern parts.
' Wrote:But it keeps things easier to manage and overall less complex RP-wise if you factionize. That's my personal view.
I don't like it, but I agree. As you can probably guess, I'm not really the military type.
I gotta ask, have some other servers shut down recently or something? It seems like these issues have been flaring up a lot more - some indies being jackasses, factions reacting with (in some cases excessive) hostility, and the anger escalating from there - and I can't figure out what would cause such an influx (which seems to be mostly newbies) short of another server closing...
' Wrote:I would say that's perfectly reasonable (handing out emergency orders).
Laziness or poor activity on the SA/LSF's part is something, if what you are saying is true, that should indeed be fixed, but doesn't really direct relate to the question of *roleplay* involved.
I might also add that the SA, in the first place, shouldn't be in New York, given that they are supposed to patrol the southern parts of Liberty, not the northern parts.
all I'm doing in that regard is keeping players -busy-. When people are -doing- something, they have more fun and have a higher tendency to keep things in-RP.
When players get bored, they start slipping - they stop RP'ing and fall back on OOC system chat or shooting at people 'just for fun'.
All you have to do is keep things moving, and players will naturally fall into RP (as long as they arent idjits)
I think communication is an issue here - but its not the whole issue. On the extremes of both sides you have people's attitudes - Indies who are at fault are the ones who have no respect for the fact that there is an established community here, with rules and things you should or shouldn't do - a respectful person should at least make the effort to acknowledged that fact and take the time to see how it works - "fly quiet" for a while, i dont mean not talking, but not being too out there till you know how the place works.
On the other hand you have factions who while they might not say it publicly, although some i dare say, come close - firmly believe they run the place, the attitude that comes across is it's "theirs" - and there is a far degree of arrogance floating around amongst some of them at the moment. They create an atmosphere of there being an "IN" club, entry to which, they dictate. Factions do have more power, but how they choose to use that is up to them - a respectful faction would acknowledge the fact that while they have greater time here and numbers, they don't own the place, making an effort to be more inclusive of other's RP, and guiding those who are new, not berating them, would go a long way.
Another problem that i see is not directly related to these 2 camps but impacts both of them.
We have "server" rules and "faction" rules - with no clear arbitration from the admins. You cannot run on rules that are ambiguous and vague. You cannot also expect people to read the server rules and then come in game and somehow... "know" faction rules... it takes time and effort of course, but people can be forgiven for thinking they read the server rules and thus know how Disco works.
However, there are faction rules that seem contradictory to server rules - and a problem with this is there is no clear authority in arbitration on this:
Admins - who we all admire and respect with due kudos etc etc are absentee managers much of the time - as the appointed judges of the community, they should be the one's clarifying the rule grey areas, NOT factions, and not Indy's who are fresh off the boat. With all due respect to the admins of the server, much of these debates and flames could have been ended by admin arbitration and careful consideration among the community of admins themselves.
This almost never happens anymore - A solitary admin will occasionally post in a thread at the best of times, or a mod will lock a thread that has spiraled into flames though nothing is resolved, but the community as a whole suffers and fragments because it is not led.
You have a case of too many chiefs all wanting to run the show their own way, but none of them actually can because they don't have the authority, the rules a laid out on the forums are sometimes overruled or amended by faction rules, but this isn't spelt out anywhere (in my experience, rules etc need to be black and white and completly IDIOT-proof) - thus some factions think they run the show, whereas indies quote server rules..... The communities admins, who are the authority in the community are awol much of the time - and then you add in the respective ego's of the many many people in the community and you have...
I think I can see both sides points, its not the indys its the bad indys thats the problem.
For lawfuls it's easy to correct setup a reserve/militia that is affiliated to the faction and to join them you have to submit a bio and short story/essay to be registered in it. bang reserve police officer / military reservist trying to get or keep his rating and allow him/her to get a ship that they prove to need/want.
You can even differenciate by adding a letter such as =LSF=R_john-doe or something to that affect. Thereby providing a way for indys to be indys and help seperate out the chaff from the wheat.
for unlawfuls same as what the zoners in the zoner registry to help weed out the ones that want the power but not the responsibility that comes with it.
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