Liberty Navy [LN] Feedback Thread

[Jihadjoe]

Either way, are we totally free to completely ignore official factions, their opinions and decrees? Then there's no issue whatsoever.

There seems to be a statement behind that question...

Let me try to decode it for your readers.

Either way, we are free to completely ignore official factions (this is what I want in all cases, always), their opinions (even when those opinions are clearly stated as not being representative of the faction in RP and are obviously those of an individual within) and decrees (which this was not)? Then (for my wishes and desires) there's no issue whatsoever

Y'know what Mimir... I think you ignoring official factions might be in everyone's best interests. You go right ahead and do that.

I'm gonna get all realtalk here, bear with me.

Let me tell you what leading an official faction, particularly this one, actually entails.

First of all, you get the role against your better judgement. You are given little opportunity to refuse it, as the people who have previously been in charge, leave, dumping it in your hands and giving you the responsbility for maintaining a legacy that is far larger than you in your position as a player. You look around, thinking "Holy shit. I've already got far too much on my plate, and now this one has been dumped on me as well."

At the time I was handed the [LN], I was already an admin, and was leading the XA-. Suddenly, I found myself trying to juggle all three of those, with free time that was rapidly disappearing into piles of paperwork, both from my real life job, and from the second, third and fourth jobs I volunteered for here in internetland.

At this point, you endeavor to look for other people who might be able to take some work off you. First of all you look for someone who could lead the faction in your stead, and if you're unlucky enough to have nobody that can do that, you begin instead to form a high command to whom you can delegate some of the work. These people have to be those you trust and know - People who you think you can work with in a productive and helpful manner... You look through faction-members and friends on skype. Now, these people will inevitably be those who you can gel with. This is the first moment at which you become accused of favouritism and creating a culture of cronyism. It's pretty tedious and tiring, but you remember that you are not actually employing people, and this is more like making an artistic collective than employing people to work for a bank (for example). You shrug and get on with making the faction as good as it can be under your leadership. Inevitably, your attitude will attract the people who find themselves in agreement with it. Those people will apply to join your faction. While this creates a stable internal environment, it increases the crys about bias and elitism and the old-boys club.

Shortly after this, you run into two things at the same time. Approximately half the indies say the following "The previous leader restricted us too much. I want you to leave all of us alone." while the other half say "We want more guidance and leadership from the official faction."

Often these messages can both come from the same individual. You attempt to seek a compromise, and inevitably get yelled at by everyone for being too hands off, or being too restrictive. In my case, I simply asked the various independants to contact me, so that I could keep track of who I was working with, and who I could contact for a fight or if there was trouble. As a result I had a feedback explosion, and a "rebel indy" group on the server who were shooting at [LN] official faction players, within six weeks of being handed leadership.

Then you run up against the following problem - Many people from other parts of sirius put demands upon you, both in and out of roleplay to prevent the independants of your faction from doing things that are illogical - For example, stopping indy LABC's from escorting traders through Kusari.

- You tell them that you cannot help, because that is an issue for the admins.
- Someone points out that you ARE an admin, and it IS your responsibility.
- You remind them that an admin cannot deal with problems related to their own faction, where there may be a conflict of interests.
- You get told that you are useless.

If you attempt to communicate with these problematic individuals either in our out of roleplay, you are told that you cannot restrict them they are free to do as they please. You shrug and go back to slowly grinding your patience into dust.

Somewhere along the line, you look at your faction and find that it is full of good people - People who care about the game and who roleplay well. You develop a bit of affection for these people. You learn to enjoy leading them in game. You give them your respect, you treat them well. You laugh and joke together and this is good. But underlying all the good times are the several directions you're being pulled inby the rest of the community.

Offer leadership to people not directly in your faction!
Don't meddle with anyone outside your faction - even offers of assistance or leadership in the field are restrictive and domineering!
Prevent your enemies from getting ganked by people of your NPC faction!
Let the indies do what they want!
You should be varying your roleplaying more! I want to see indviduality!
Only roleplay cookie cutter naval officials!
Do more diplomacy!
Don't negotiate with X!
Open recruitment to everyone without a test!
Raise your roleplay standards!
Talk more!
Do less talking! You're a navy, your job is to shoot bad guys!
Spend more time fighting the war with Rheinland! You should be raiding Hamburg!
Stay in Liberty all the time and defend traders against the pirates!

You cannot deliver on all of these demands... It is difficult and you will be criticised for it. The rewards are there - Fun, enjoyment of organising events and interactions with other groups and individual characters, the feeling you belong to something, the chance to roleplay in an interesting environment, the chance to develop a character to levels that you didn't think were possible in this environment, the feeling that you're giving something back to a community... But to get to those, you have to wade through a swamp of competing opinion.

The people who throw criticism at factions such as the [LN] often do so because they dislike an authority that sometimes acts in a way they deem unfavourable to themselves. Yet they attempt to set themselves up as a competing (often overtly morally proselytising) authority. The strange thing is that with all the demands, both in and out of roleplay, placed upon the leader of an official faction, the leader ends up with really very little power at all.

Complaining about skypefriends, favouritism, cronyism, powermongering and so on, is just like people blaming the world's problems on the jewish banking conspiracy or the 12ft shapeshifting reptiliods, or government planes with their mind-warping chemtrails... It's a security blanket. If someone can blame their problems and confusion on something - anything they can say is "in charge" - then they can avoid the more frightening truth. Nobody is in control, everything is chaos. Too many opinions push and pull at the institutions in place for them to be anything like an effective concentration of power. The community and the game is completely and utterly rudderless.

You complaining about a really very minor incident, and using it to further your agenda of knocking the official faction system down a notch or two, is much like this. You're taking a kick at a percieved authority figure - someone who represents the power to be fought, and doing it in the name of bringing an authority to accountability. But really, Quixote, you're just tilting at windmills.

Thinking back on this, it makes me feel rather sad, really.