Does Disco still have enough player base to keep running all factions ?

[Blodo]

Basically Curi and Spire is right here... I used to take a hard stance against official factions myself, having the idea that it's a bit stupid that a bunch of old players should have more privileges than indies. Why? Just because they are old?

It took me a while, some 5 years here (or more specifically the last 6 months) to change my mind. At the moment official factions offer the same things unofficial factions offer - but - official factions are subjected to community scrutiny and flight time requirements, as well as being accounted for their in RP actions, while unofficials aren't. Back in the day they rode completely on the fact that they were organised while indies weren't. But with organised indie squads appearing and pvp balance starting to favour combined arms instead of bomber spam, all that changed. Now official factions are in decline almost universally, except for a select few.

But there is one thing that many official factions brought to this server that unofficials haven't: an example. The official factions act as a conduit between new players and the discovery community. New players join official factions, slowly get to know the people, get to know the ways in which RP works, get to know the forum... and they soon realise why it's important to be courteous to one another in this online game. Because that's how we all have fun here, not by absolute winning.

Without the example of the official factions we instead have unofficials led by people like Nikita Ivanov who continue to claim that opposing factions should hate each other with a passion over the internet, and should try and maliciously sanction each other or things like that. Yes, not all unofficials are like that, but those that are cause a lot more harm than those that aren't cause good.

The way I see it, it's a transaction: official factions get to have the privileges over the unofficials, in return for which they get scrutinised by the admins and the community for the purpose of ensuring that they promote good sportsmanship and RP. The official factions should provide first and foremost an example to new players and good natured activity on the server. If they fail at any of those, they should be scrutinised heavily. The transaction must work both ways though...

And yes some factions have abused their rights in the past. That's why we have admins though... there will never be a system that guarantees no abuse. There will either be a no rules free for all or a system where admin oversight is required in some capacity.

And with this post I am officially switching my opinion from pro indie to pro faction rights/privileges...