Official Faction vs Non-official Players

[Athenian]

Define follow lore, 'Tenian?

A bit ago it was ruled, that a standing (apparently not opposed by the Lawrds of teh Lawr) agreement between Daumann and IMG - BOTH official factions representing their respective NPC counterparts entirely - was put in jeopardy due to the some folks going after RH corporate miners openly. Now IMG shunned those peeps and asked for a FR5 so that those guys would be out of IMG for good, but was refused because it was APPARENTLY lore, that IMG should start just blasting other miners outright.

I mean, back then I was like... "How short-sighted/stupid can the admin team possibly get?" - if they tell IMG| to blast miners, then we have RM on our asses. Oh wait, is it lore for RM to retaliate? Sure as hell felt like it.

In other words - How about make up your minds and either set faction can-dos and can't-dos in some neat post, thereby doing away with their diplomacy and saving some trouble.

Or knock it off with the Lawr already and intervene only if something gets REAL stupid like the Order conquering Connecticut, leaving diplomacy and consequences to RP and factions.

Or am I misinterpreting the whole thing?

Define something stupid. It's a relative term. I'm sure many people feel that shooting up Liberty in a Rheinland battleship is stupid. But the Houses are "at war", so what would you expect when people log on to play a spaceship shoot em up game.

There's no one intervening here. This thread came about because of players, not administrators.

Faction diplomacy is one thing. Player agreements are another - the latter often come about because of convenience, for players' selfish reasons, or to correct perceived imbalances in gameplay. If those agreements mean that a faction is veering away from the understood role of that faction, then the parties to the agreement no longer have the power to order non-faction members around.

Shaping faction roleplay is not simply a matter of faction leaders posting on the forums. If, for example, someone decides that bounty hunters no longer collect bounties in capital ships, that flies in the face of the infocards for one of those ships (The Thresher) The infocards then need to be re-written. In-game rumours and news reports would have to be added.

That is the responsibility that comes with the significant power given to factions by these rights - a power that extends to a few people within factions - the idea being, I suppose, that these people would contribute to the development of the mod to reflect the dynamics of the game.

Factions falling short of meeting that responsibility have to recognise that the player base is not going to accept being ordered to do something that any reasonable, casual player who doesn't check every forum post would assume is normal. One example that comes to mind is of BAF shooting Outcasts. At some level, there appears to be an "understanding" regarding these factions. But the Outcast npc's will still disrupt lanes in Bretonia and try to demand your cargo. So the casual player seeing a Outcast in Bretonia would (rightly to my way of thinking) assume they are up to no good. Imagine his surprise when he gets ordered around for doing just that by the official faction of the BAF. It's a source of pointless friction.

At any one time, the majority of players on the server will be in non-faction ships. Most of them probably aren't aware of the roleplay intricacies that govern relations between factions. Don't be surprised when they are surprised, and aggrieved, at an order to not do something they fully expect to be able to do.

Also, enough with the flaming and that's an order.

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Former member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"
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