Staff Feedback Thread

[Ilya]

Although I agree that no faction should have too many advantages over another for the sake of fairness, I think I have to repeat something I said before, because there is a very fundamental issue that GMs still don't understand, judging by the responses.

Discovery does not lack factions.

Discovery lacks PLAYERS.

The decline in factions does not cause a decline in players, as long as players can find another faction to play, if that faction is fun.

What does cause a decline in players is that the game is not attractive. There are many things that make discovery unattractive and I won't go into all of them, but one thing is that people are forced to spread their chars over many different factions and many different IDs, and that ends up with throw-away characters and throw-away RP that people do because they have to do it so the are able to do X, not because they like it.

Yes, make things fair between factions, and I also had the impression that some factions like Aux had advantages over other IDs, although I didnt study the matter closely.

However, if that is true, give other IDs more things they can do as long as it's not illogical for them to do it and thereby immersion breaking, instead of making this ID bad because that ID is bad.

Make IDs equally fun instead of equally crappy.

I don't think that all factions have to be very niche and promote players to have multiple characters with different IDs. It's much better not having to log a different account every 10 minutes in order to have a chance for meaningful interactions and gameplay. Better for immersion, for involvement, and character development.

Does not mean profitable mining for every ID that "has a mining background", as that would likely blur the faction's intended purpose and role. I think most unlawful IDs have viable smuggling options.

Also, there is a widespread tendency where player factions view the canon (in-lore) power and its dynamics as a measure of their success as players. To my view, this is a bad approach that results in a lack of consistency and more often than not backfires at the said player factions. And this for sure has to be kept in check.

Where does this end?

It ends when there is an actual irp reason why they shouldn't have it.

Balancing IDs by adding restrictions because an ID is too much fun compared to another ID is strangling the game by making it more boring, poorly RPed, anonymous, annoyingly restrictive, rule-lawyery, balance-bickery, biased, and paranoid.

You might just as well ask "Where does all this restricting IDs because they are too good compared to each other end?".

Farmer's Alliance look at some of the other Unlawfuls and decide the others are too good and they shouldnt be able to mine or have cruisers?

Mollys look at Aux and say they shouldn't have a large ZOI than them?

Brigands look at Maquis and say they shouldnt have Cruisers?

Maquis look at the Red Hessians and say Hessians shouldnt have Battleships?

Red Hessians look at Corsairs and Outcast and want to a) remove their bonuses and b) give them a ZOI that is as small and boring as theirs?

All this "restrict stuff because we want people to make characters in 23 faction instead of 4" is not only harmful because it literally makes gameplay worse, but also because it's based on a wrong premise. People dont spend more time playing disco if they are forced to have 23 chars in 23 factions instead of 4 in 3 factions, and they don't interact with other players more. They just do it more annoyed, lonely, bored, and anonymous.

How is it so hard to understand that "lets make the fun ID as crappy as the boring ID" is a much worse way of dealing with balance than "lets make the boring ID as much fun as the fun ID"?

I've remained very quiet as i felt not being here for many years didn't entitle me to have opinion of great value, that being said, @Karlotta and @Sava have made some extremely accurate points, ive highlighted some in red.

From my observations there has beena trend to make all factions as active as possible, however the current reality does not make this feasible. Instead of making new factions and trying to get people to have 10 different OF toons, instead look at condensing factions.

Too many factions, means too few interactions between peoples , with factions having only 1 or two people active routinely at any time barring large events. I know it goes against the grain, but it may be logical now to consider faction mergers, to reduce factions operating, like merging mollies and rogues, or like the 5 corporate factions in liberty RP "Business mergers" to reduce them to 2 as examples, and yes i expect large deep breaths.

Less factions means a higher population density in those factions and more interactions and immersion instead of being the lone person in .. i dont know, IC for example. it is not really ideal to have one person in 10 official factions, because they can only play one at a time.

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