My thoughts concerning factions/Indies and other such stuff.

[Laowai]

Angelfire:


I also read the debate (my flight out of sydney has been delayed by 12 hours and im now sitting in Sydney Airport with time on my hands... only 9 more hours to wait... ) and it was interesting.

My thoughts? - Obviously both types of player have a place on the server, that can be taken as granted. But i think whats missing from the debate, and perhaps a lot of whats being said about factions - indies here is that while what factions like the RM are doing in general restrictions, while in concept is not entirely wrong (Role play a military, excersize military control) and on the surface seem entirely reasonable whats not being said is the underlying ramifications of that; which i think are several.

The RM - through praeytr has stated pretty clearly where they stand on control of Rheinland military players. I.e - you cant be one, unless you're in the faction. What the faction has essentially done here is in effect said "there is no NPC Rheinland military faction, we are the Rheinland military". Thats an extraordinary amount of power to be handed over to a player clan..... Now i know those in support of the policy will say "So? they are military, thats what they do" but i believe this is missing the point - The clan has made the decision to not allow any, and i mean ANY other RM role play on the server, other their own, and that they approve of. No other faction has this much power, though i suspect there are a few that wouldnt mind it. I believe that the RM in this case are out of line in having these restrictions - the RM do not have an "RM" clan ID in the way that the SCRA, Phantoms, Keepers, AW do... and the fact that this "faction specific" ID is not there i think implies that total faction control over and NPC faction was never intended in the games developement.

So, in saying that, the server rules.. ID rules etc are overidden by a faction. It is the admins pertogative to agree with this of course, and Praetyr says some of them have, or at least, not objected.
If ever you were looking for an example of the power that factions have, there is one right there.

The question that was never asked in the debate was = IS it the case then that factions have the right to override server rules?
You see the implications of that.

As it stands - there are 2 or more sets of rules... the rules of the server, which you should read before you start to play, the rules of the factions.. which.. well, they arent really written down anywhere and it doesnt say in the server rules that they are manditory but well... they kinda are and you should also try and learn them as well, which you can do by trolling through hours of disjointed forum threads - you could argue there are a third set of rules, those that are a mix of the above two and given approval by an admin, somwhere... and then even perhaps a 4th set of rules - the ones that no one anywhere knows about but they must be ok because an admin didnt say it wasnt.....

Factions and Indies have issues, but the way i see a lot of this debate is this is a server rule issue and a server control issue. I am not for one instant saying the indies should be running the server, but neither should the factions - Indies should be allowed to fly what they like, play in any NPC faction they like, provided they respect other people's RP and work with the player factions in that area. Factions should see that they are simply a group of players who have chosen to RP together and should not try to control the RP and choices of players who do not wish to join them.
I believe factions such as the RM, while having exemplerary Role play, have over-reached the power allowed a faction, but can get away with it because of the mountainous "grey areas" that exist now in Disco's rule system. And indies now have so much vague versions of the rules to learn to fit in that is it any wonder new people just show up and say "huh??!"

The entire server rule and power structure needs to be re-written and reassessed in my opinion

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