Note on The Order policies

[kingvaillant]

you have a point, it is or going to be Christmas, so lets all have fun...




Neway, Igiss logged off. so if you seek an answer from him. you won't have it today:P

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Director of the Liberty Security Force: Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity

The Amundsen Zone-21 Restrictions

[Xoria]

What nearly all of you are missing is the truly critical issue : Who decides?

Are player factions as represented by their faction leaders (many of which are apparently run rather autocratically) in possession of the necessary judgment, maturity, and humility to actively restrict the activities of players who have not voluntarily subjected themselves to that player faction's authority and restrictions? The past few months have demonstrated conclusively to me that the number of player factions with such responsible leadership abilities is somewhere between none and next-to-none. As a faction leader, I certainly don't want the responsibility. I want to play the game, not spend my time policing other players from my character or occupying my faction members' time with it either. That's a sure-fire route to frustration and boredom...and abuse of power.

The results of allowing such power to such factions is ultimately the ill health of the server due to those irresponsible powerplays driving off players, or dissuading them from coming here to begin with. And it is not simply a matter of giving power to responsible leaders, and stripping it from irresponsible ones. One irresponsible use of power does far more damage than numerous responsible uses of power does good. Also, such decisions are inevitably the source of charges of favoritism, bias, etc, all of which does further damage all on its own.

So, in my opinion, power which is abused (and unquestionably that has been the case over the past few months) should be lost. I am totally unmoved by the hyperbolic predictions of capship doom that those seeking power continually cite. The offense is much greater to certain perceived sensibilities than it is to actual server activities. And I say this as the leader of a faction that has been constantly attacked with battlecruisers while flying Daggers and Dromedaries. You who protest so much do not limit yourselves so much by comparison, and have far less to be concerned with.

The undeniable, and not-yet-refuted fact remains that it is the responsibility and appointed power of the Administration to deal with those who refuse to roleplay. It doesn't matter if it occurs in fighters or capships, we can deal with it far more effectively and responsibly than random players on the server can. This is simply a fact, and it is witnessed every time someone goes against these player faction dictates : the player faction members and even its non-members go ape in system chat without any regard for roleplay. I witnessed it last night in fact, when non-members of a restrictive player faction couldn't even properly interpret in-character roleplaying because they were so overly concerned with "stolen ships" according to the player faction's irresponsible power grabbing dictates.

So it really comes down to this : who is more responsible to regulate the behavior of players? Admins or other players?

Players may persuade, convince, cajole, entice, and invite, but when they attempt to force, the inevitably ensuing abuse far outweighs any potential gain. Factions do far better to involve the newly arrived players in cooperative multiplay (else why be on a multiplayer server) than to attempt to bully them into following rules and regulations which only invite rebellion.

The false choice that is constantly being presented of factions doing everything or Admins doing everything does nothing but demonstrate the bankruptcy of the argument.

The two irrefutable truths are :

Factions may do a lot to entice players to cooperatively roleplay without resorting to force.

Admins may take up the issue when a refusal to roleplay is the persistent response. Admin enforcement tools are far more persuasive.

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[Unseelie]

Admins are players, Xoria. No better, no worse.

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[ryoken]

Well said xoria.

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[Wolfpack98]

So it really comes down to this : who is more responsible to regulate the behavior of players? Admins or other players?

The true answer is neither. This has been demonstrated repeatedly in every community i've ever seen, including WoW, EVE Online, and various other places.

The only time that i've ever seen one be better than the other, is when the admins are NOT directly involved in the gameplay at all.

And we have successfully derailed this.

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User was banned for: Compromised account
Time left: (Permanent)

[Snapp]

Merry X-Mas to all whom it accually be Merry for.

What i am about to say may seem off topic and or will offend some people, but in a sense it is about factions dictating how others can or should play the game, and sometimes even when it comes to what is written. I don't really play on the server much anymore because of all the stress it was causing me to try and keep up with all the "drama" and the massive amount of written rp on this forum. Also because of meaningless crap like below happening on a regular basis.

Example; A friend in a cruiser with proper id and a guard iff takes a mission and undocks then seconds later in system chat this is the conversation:
faction: *is your ship registered?*
cruiser: "this ship was comissioned to guard bases and do missions for our people"
faction: *so, your not registered. destroy the thief!* .. *pew pew pew boom* ..

One time is an oorp fluke, every single time you undock is harrassment in my book. Luckily this has since stopped, though too late to matter since it's already basically ruined the fun of playing that character. What i suspect is that it's only recently stopped because the factions know that ships are about to be moved to guard systems which THEY already "own" and thought THEY would have FULL control over. Which is probably why most of them are mad or unhappy with this initial ruling. All those indies killed mostly oorp for not registering and the clans still dont get to control who flys what. I would almost put money on the "registrations" still being used against players even once the ships are moved. *shakes head*


To continue:
It didnt help any that i was unable to join and am apparently unwanted in the ONLY faction on this server i was ever really interested in. Writing a story from scratch atleast 4 different times and having it rejected every single time, you begin to think your writing is worthless and you shouldnt even bother anymore. Here again is an example of a faction that is dictating both in-game rp and forum-written rp. If it dont go with thier idea of what it should be then you are rejected or whats worse than being "pvp whored"?, how about having your RP and other character totally ignored even when they should be KOS.

"Our general opinion is that player factions, regardless of their participation in server events, should not dictate how other players of other groups are playing. Special RP that differs from/expands on what's present in the mod is OK. Enforcing special RP for players who don't want it, and are not even supposed to be aware of it, is no good."

"With the exception of admin-controlled factions like Keepers, I see neither reasons nor ways to restrict this."

So the Keepers were and still are exempt from this and may dictate Nomad Roleplay and Gameplay, including the writing/story, as they see fit, since they control the lore/ships/rep/id/weapons. Hence, why i quit wasting my time writing/playing a Nomad since it didnt seem to matter to anyone but me. Also because i spent months working on it and didnt get any further than i could have gotten without ever writing a single word. I have since given up on that dream as i've had to with many of the things in my life i wanted or hoped to have one day. However, I do still read these forums from time to time and offer any advice, thoughts, or ideas i might have.

I will also say that playing an Order character can be very boring when your PRIMARY enemy are supposed to be nomads/keepers and they arent online "regularly", they log in 2-5 or more deep, do thier thing (usually in-ny btw) then dissapear. The Order and it's characters are then forced to find other things to do besides shoot npc's all day, like raid Alaska/Newyork. Not something i have personally done, but maybe some will see the point im trying to make. It's hard to fight an enemy who is rarely there to fight.

I personally dont think that "public" or "guard" systems should be able to be "owned" by anyone. But, at the same time i also believe that a playerfaction, if having spent the time and money, should be able to have FULL control over a "home system" and everything in it. Basically what im saying is that playerfactions should purchase (or be given with the factions approval) a non-guard system to claim as thier own to modify/make rules/rp/ect ect.

My thoughts, and again, Merry X-Mas to Everyone.

[Tenacity]

funny, xoria, it seems a lot of the 'power abuse' you criticize the players and factions with is the same thing we've seen from admins when it comes to factions like the keepers, phantoms, and wild.

Oh, and using big words is only going to dissuade the less intelligent people here from arguing their point of view, sorry but I dont fall into that category. Quit dancing around the topic and face it head on - there are some things that must be regulated and/or restricted, by whom I dont care, as long as it's taken care of.

The problem here is that not everything falls into your neat little world of "RP and OORP". Let's take the order carrier as an example again, the ship is supposed to be rare, it's very infocard states that there are only a small handful in service. Now, lets say that "small handful" means 5 ships of that type exist.

Two, maybe three people currently are interested in that particular ship - that includes myself and SwissScorch. Now, I've spent almost the past three months now working towards that ship, and I dont mean powertrading for the cash - I've got pages of RP written, I've lead up all of my current RP posts towards that end, I've done graphic work for the ship's posts, and even brought together a squadron of order players in-game who wish to 'operate' out of the ship once I have it. Swiss... well, he doesnt have so much RP for his, but he is well known here and fairly well respected.

So, there's two ships down. Perhaps three more are purchased either by order indies or black squadron members who show appropriate RP for ownership of the vessel and do the work to earn it. All of a sudden, a bunch of new guys come along with no clue how to RP properly as order players. They powertrade for the cash, waltz into omicron 100 without anyone being able to stop them, and buy the ship. Now we've got, say, 6-10 of these carriers, and half of them are running around with minimal RP and ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY for their actions. Hell, half of those new guys probably dont even know what the address for this forum is, and have never read the rules. Some may be sanctioned for breaking rules, but most will get away with being minimal-RP idiots while being just within the rules to prevent any action from being taken against them.

Now, everything they do with the ships not only degrades the value of the other players using them, but it also tarnishes the view of the order for every player they interact with. Still, they're just barely following server rules and there's nothing we can do to whip them in shape.

Now, like I said, I dont care WHO does the regulating when it comes to that ship or others (the osiris is in much the same predicament, though not quite as severe since it's been around, in-rp, for close to 20 years now). All I care about is making sure that people are worthy of the ship before they're allowed to fly it - whether an admin decides the player is worthy, or whether a team of that player's peers decide, doesnt matter to me; but dont you think it would take a lot more strain off the admins if they didnt have to deal with making those decisions on top of their normal admin duties?

Do the admins really enjoy constantly having to read special RP character posts when they've got people to sanciton and want to get in some game time of their own? I dont think so.

Now, perhaps this warrants more than just the player faction being the deciding force. Perhaps we should 'elect' numerous forum members (perhaps a few from each major affiliation in the game) who are respected RP'ers, and have them run through all the ship requests to decide who is and isnt worthy of a vessel based on their RP or behavior. How's that idea sound to you? Have the community, or a large portion of it, vote every time someone wants specific ships which should be regulated, and tally up the votes.

This can go for more than just the order's ships. The zoner juggernaut, the order carrier, the liberty battlecruiser and liberty carrier, rheinland capships, etc. Not all ships need to be regulated, just the ones that are more powerful or more rare than usual.

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[Markus_Janus]

Well the thing here is that you are doing exactly what is always done, sure I can have one because I deserve it but you do not because you don't put in the work I do when I only do it because I enjoy doing it.
If you wish to write 10,000 pages of story then good for you, hell I like reading them myself.
But the thing is if you like writing stories then that doesn't make you anymore deserving for an in-game ship then someone that doesn't write stories.
Stories, forum RP, character bios and in-game RP are all completely different things that have no bearing on each other at all.
There is being OoRP but that is an offense that bears it's own punishment that has nothing to do with you.
Everything else is fine and should not be dictated by those that think they are any better or more deserving than anyone else that does not go OoRP.

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Samura Omotai Zaibatsu.

[Drake]

there are some things that must be regulated and/or restricted

Says who? Battleships already have their limited restrictions, but who says other ships need regulated or restricted? There are already ZoI regulations being implemented for Guard IDs (which are required for most capships). Other than that, it's not up to you or anyone else to say whether or not there are too many people flying X ship, or to decide who gets to fly it.

[Xoria]

Admins are players, Xoria. No better, no worse.

All Admins may be players, but not all players are Admins. The implications are self-evident. Not to mention the fact that that is an entirely inadequate defense of your position nor is it a sufficient refutation of anything I said. Truisms, by definition, prove nothing, so offering them is of no evidential value.

But what is especially revealing here is that when the suggestion that player faction control over ship sales to properly affiliated members of those npc factions may be removed, the response is "what's the point of paying to become an official faction then?" This necessarily implies that the most important and valuable privilege of official factions is placing restrictions on non-members of those player factions. If that is the view of people pursuing official faction status, then I think that demonstrates the inadvisability of granting them such power. It also completely ignores the numerous official factions which do not own systems and do not wish to own systems. According to the implications of the question, they must all be nuts.

---

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