(01-09-2024, 06:06 PM)The_Godslayer Wrote: And finally, at the peak of it all, with the butchering of OF perks, there's no incentive for indies to let themselves be recruited. There is no roleplay standards for indies, you can do whatever you want, so joining an OF is actually a detriment to you if you don't feel like putting effort into roleplay. There isn't really anything an official faction can provide that an indie couldn't get out of DMing his friends to all log the same ID.
I couldn't agree more with that statement. It's nice to have your own forum section and your own unique ID but beyond that there's really no incentive to be an OF. The amount of effort and RP required to get a perk approved takes months. In many cases, you need to wait for weeks for other parties to respond to RP and also weeks for the Staff team to evaluate and make a decision. Then you have to wait for the next opportunity if you fail. There's also a huge limit on what I could actually ask for. Beyond a XR boost on our ID (which I am not even sure it currently works), what could I possibly ask for more? Good luck getting a tech-compatibility.
In fact, the current model for OFs disincentivizes recruitment because getting new players and being more active naturally correlates with a higher chance/occurrence for sanctions. So you are either forced to take only pros and be elitist or take newbies and have them untagged for months and hope they don't break any rules after you finally give them the tag. And of course, people are naturally not happy they have to wait some time just to get a ship tagged. This is also not a guarantee that they still won't break some arbitrary rule.
It would be nice to have more incentives for OFs for sure. I don't know how difficult it would be to implement from a technical perspective, but it would be great if you could be visually distinct from other factions. For example, personally I would love if DTR ships had bright red engines like our logo, or distinct colored engines or lights in general.
Basically, anything to make you visually distinct. A logo on the ships, a unique base model, maybe a unique color palette to the ships that's tied to ID. Just shooting ideas. Obviously that's tied behind resources - whether it's manpower, tech, limitations, or something else but it would be nice to have something to strive towards. Or at the very least setting you apart from the indies other than a simple tag.
Let's face it, both FR5s and forcing indies to do something in-game as an OF simply doesn't happen.
On a separate note, the current activity requirements are fine. If you can't meet those, you are simply not playing Freelancer. There's no point in having OFs on life support that contribute 0 in actual gameplay.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
