Admin Notice: Factions

[Mercarryn]

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What ultimately killed this notion and spelled the end for many officials was organised groups of indies arriving on the server. Suddenly it was clear that it was far more beneficial to run an indie faction than an official one because... lets count the pros and cons:
Pros:
- own forum section
- faction rights (usefulness of most of those questionable)
- the off chance of maybe having a dev approve a proposal of yours
Cons:
- ruthless activity requirements
- it takes months upon months to get approval from admins to become official (people do not realise how big this problem is, but IMO it is huge as unofficials are reluctant to apply because of the cost and timescale)
- large money cost both for clerical stuff (500 mil approval money... possibly more than once if the community/admin team is particularly hostile to your proposal) and faction stuff (because in general you need something to lure people in, as well as you need capitals/shareds/transports to start yourself off... so those kind of costs usually run well into the billions)
- paperwork requirements (no official ones... and yet you do need them to even start the faction up)
- juggling skype diplomacy when you become part of the "big leagues" <- there is no escaping from this one for anyone, neither the leadership nor the membership of official factions
and worst of all:
- constant community scrutiny as to "what your RP is"

On one point I can understand why these requirements have been set up, but to my opininion these should be adjusted.

All this scrutiny for no immediate benefit (other maybe than the ever controversial FR5s), and it truly does sound like its better to just run an indie faction because "oh they are just indies, who cares about their RP" = they can do what they want, shoot who they want, say what they want and the admins wont just come and tell them to get lost unless they are literally blowing the server apart or something of the sort. I hope you guys see where the issue lies.

The reason for indies setting up their own unofficial factions may lie in one of the reasons that madvillain has posted.
Let`s take 141| that I am currently leader of, as an examle. And Order ID unofficial faction. It was founded months before I even joined this server.
The reason behind it was, that its founders were pissed off by the then behaviour of Order| to their indies. And as we all know this was vice versa.

Now 141| has evolved from a semi-lolwut faction to one that has earned some respect here by other factions, even by Order|. We had been invited to be incorporated into Order|. We declined.

Now I am going to tell you the reasons behind this:

1. We had some different inRP goals then Order|
   
2. Back then Order| had activity issues, while 141| was highly active. We did not want to solve Order|`s problem to motivate while they could leech on our activity. Instead keep a competition for them so they get motivation the other way
   
3. From time to time, the Order| leadership has shown some strange behaviour in the past (Although it has a bit improved the last months since Rodent has come back to order HC)
   

RFP| on the other hand was able to absorb BGS| which led to an increase of over all activity. But after some moths RFP| was back on their old activy level, people had left because former BGS leader had left Disco.

Or... maybe we should just repeal the official faction system altogether and get back to the way it was in 4.82? I dunno, but I am just throwing that out there.

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From a less revolutionary standpoint: official faction creation must be overhauled. The 500 mil cost must be removed, the faction proposal must be guaranteed approval or denial in less than 2 weeks time. This is what I view as essential to promoting creation of new officials, and I hope the admins see it the same way.

Getting rid of official factions is a double-edged sword. On one hand the current factions would not feel the need to create activity, but then again, those NPC factions with many different factions like Corsairs or Libetrty Navy will end up in a chaos regarding general roleplay, because each one wants to tell the others how the general RP for their NPC faction should go on. I hope you understand what I mean.

Though I agree with you that the overall process of factions becoming official should be overhauled. Several months of testing phase is quite much. In my opinion about too much.
Decreasing the 500 million cost to 200 million for example and a test phase of one month would increase the motivation for others to set up factions and try to become the official ones.
Maybe another point, that had been stated by Reverend Del some time ago was, to let unofficial factions challenge the official ones. Though I am not sure if this will work.

Nevertheless, the points that have been raised now do not solve the problem for those factions that lack the interest to be played all along.