Consultation: Revised system for official factions

[TheKusari]

- What do you want official factions to be? What do you feel their purpose is?

My answer:
Primarily to be a staple of roleplay, highlighted and held to a great standard as examples of what others can achieve. That's what they should be. Their purpose is to entice others to do the same, or join to develop the faction. Their benefits should include bonuses to faction-specific tasks or activities in addition to be able to influence the world around them (up to a certain degree)

- How do you feel this can be achieved?

My answer:
To actually give the factions an avenue to influence and control certain aspects within the game (story, systems, whatever). Majority of this post expands on keeping up with the requirements without really giving much back. Sure, giving us cool art pieces and the FOB Core 1 PoB is nice. But that's not influencing the world, that's just a cosmetic for "being official", a reward more than a benefit that you can achieve once you're a few months into being official.

- What are the failings and / or benefits of the current system?

My answer:
The failings are that not enough change or influence via rewards or accomplishments is given to OFs. The system as it stands now is pretty good, of course adding on the forum assessment would make it better. I feel that perhaps you're overcomplicating the upkeep process. If you introduce any form of grey area, then there's a chance of it being abused, or the players being confused, no standard or anything. I guess that's the only solid benefit that log time has, as it's a rigid number to meet, despite me despising it being the only metric currently being measured.

My own faction hasn't been Official for very long, and I haven't exactly had the chance to explore all possibilities when it comes to faction perks. What one could ask for or influence. Having hearing storied or anecdotes from others who have been official for years saying that story developments were usually influenced or impacted by them was a cool thing. Don't see much or any of that right now.

- What benefits to being official do you feel are needed to balance out obligations and duties?

My answer:
Open up an avenue to the systems ( @Antonio) and events (@Barrier) developers. Allow that influence that I mentioned beforehand come to life via these developers. For arguments sake, if I asked for the Retrofit Transport wreck solar in Ontario to be removed due to this roleplay I went through, would the team approve it's removal? If no, then I have no hope for this. If yes, then there's a basis for doing simple stuff that can be expanded on later.

There's a lot of other good stuff here. I like the custom IFF and the control you give up due to it, I like the custom art (unnecessary in my eyes, as effort could go towards other stuff but still cool and appreciated that it's brought up) and activity over 2 months instead of 3 is a neat change. I do have a question, there's no such thing as grandfathering the current OFs, all are expected to follow whatever new system is agreed upon?

The better system to introduce is new mechanics or new tasks or jobs, activities for the players to enjoy. That way the factions that can do those things will log and do those things. Introduce other group-related things. Adding more stuff onto the requirements may backfire. I dunno, I see where you guys are going with this, and it's great that it's being discussed, but I'm afraid that if a new system is deployed and the expectation is to follow it then it may not... work in practice.

TLR

I like some of the stuff brought up, mainly that forum work will be accounted for but I feel it will be easily abused to some degree. My main issue here is that with these new layers to keep up with, we aren't actually getting much back for it.

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Discovery's Best Faction:  Starfliers
Second Best: Liberty Navy 46th Fleet

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