Unofficial Factions on Discovery Forums

[Denelo]

To add to what I said before, I will now respond to a number of posts here, then give several practical, personal examples of why this is such a truly awful idea.

What is the fuss about? If the person trully wants to get into the unofficial faction he will ask how to join by posting it faction's thread or via PM.
Those who can't figure it out - their own fault.

Such consumerism! It's not about the consumers, but about the producers. People looking for a new faction don't even see the unofficials as an option, because unofficials, unlike officials, don't even have recruitment threads. It's not that people have difficulty joining the unofficials if they want to join them; it's that the unofficials don't even show up on peoples' radar in the first place.

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Directing people to official factions is good because:
Off. Faction is more responsible for its members. Really? Unofficials tend to be much more tightly-knit, with far fewer legalistic rules and far more individual responsibility. They know if any individual messes up, they could mess it up for everyone else, whereas if anyone messes up in a larger faction, they'll usually get a token reprimand in order to satisfy the offended party.

Off. Faction has higher roleplay standards. Um... no. Most assuredly not. See: KoF vs. USI. KoF was official. USI was not. Both were active. KoF did not roleplay much if any. USI did. Further reading: BMM vs. AIL, SF vs. QCRF, SA vs. HF (though this last one is rather indirect; there was no officiality at the time, but Liberty Navy factions were banned. HF asked if we could make one and gave a background for it, but were denied, so we went off and made HF as it is today. SA came in, did not ask permission, and flew around almost exclusively in LABCs, Carriers, and Osirises. The admins of the time then came around three months later and officially approved SA - the only faction they'd ever approved - who were, at the time, acting worse than your modern LNS silent reengager).

Leaders are easy to reach and give feedback to, meaning improvement is quicker. Not necessarily true, nor would it necessarily be good if it were. Most of our modern flame wars start in the name of "feedback".

Most of the time off. Factions have more members thus increasing the possible help to new guy. Um. Yes, they do usually have more members. Because they can actually recruit on the forums. They have an unfair competitive advantage. The whole point here is to fix that problem.

Off. Factions are currently responsible with their lore, technology thus losing off. Faction would be bad for general gameplay and so keeping activity above limit is good thing. I... don't get your point here. This is about allowing unofficial factions to compete, not destroying official factions. Of course, if the official faction was inferior, it would lose the competition, and thus the unofficial faction would likely end up becoming official... and so that's a bad thing? It's bad to have a better faction? You'd rather keep worse factions in the name of "they already exist, so they deserve to exist"? You judge them by their existence rather than their contribution? That's much like how this rule is being judged - not by value, but by the fact that it "already exists". The fact that something exists is considered a virtue and a boon to it, even if it exists in pointlessness. This is entirely illogical; there is no inherent value in an idea simply because we currently follow it. If all the world followed the idea that it was a good idea to kill yourself at age 20, would that inherently make it a good idea? The value of ideas is not determined by peoples' approval of them in the past, but by whether or not they are actually quality ideas.

Why unofficial factions are bad:
Unoffi. Faction mostly consists of poorly English speakers thus newcomer, that is not good at English himself can't improve east enough. Um... what? I... have no idea why this would be remotely relevant. Yes, there are unofficials full of poor english speakers. Do you really expect them to be able to recruit well on the forums? Most of them don't even read the forums. Even if they did, the ban on non-english languages on the forums would prevent them from recruiting well anyways. But even if that wasn't the case, the fact that someone has difficulty with english does not make the faction low-quality. As an example, our second admin after Igiss - Korrd - originally had a good bit of difficulty with english grammer.

Unoffi. Factions often has lower roleplay standards. Often? No. Sometimes? Yes, but sometimes it's the other way around, as mentioned above. Nevertheless, if they don't measure up... then they won't compete with the opposition faction. To successfully compete, one must actually have something its opposition does not. This is a clear disadvantage in competition, so I fail to see how it would cause problems for official factions even if it was true.

Unoffi. Factions are harder to give feedback on. You're getting repetitive. Already answered.

Unoffi. Factions mostly are temporary ones, that exist till the leader is happy about it. ... And this is a bad thing? This means that they aren't allowed to maintain themselves as long as they wish, because they wish to have a temporarily timeline for existing? Might I point out that several official factions have been planned so as to exist for a period, then die? The most well-known example is Helghast, but there were several others - factions that are extremely well-known and feared nowadays - that, at least originally, had a set timeline for which they would exist, and a set way that they would die. They told stories, including a rise and a fall. Since when was a roleplay story a negative on a roleplaying server? Since when was contributing to roleplay short-term rather than not at all a negative?

Additionally, a lot of times, they die, not because they want to, but because they simply couldn't maintain themselves without recruitment. They couldn't keep up in the race with the rest of the factions because of the shackles around their feet. I can think of two excellent examples of high-roleplay trading factions that died for this very reason. Trading factions, as you know, are very difficult to maintain. This is even more true with roleplay-based ones, as powertrading-based ones at least have the advantage that people will play them to support their other characters. iKytec died because Avalanche recruited largely laid-back people; he couldn't recruit openly, so he didn't manage to get anyone who was willing to take over leadership. Aves Industries, L.t.d. died for the same reason. We had five very active members - and that was it. We weren't allowed to recruit publicly. So, when our members began to drop away for various real-life related issues, the entire faction imploded, despite its concept, despite its high activity, despite the fact that it was the only shipping company that existed purely for roleplaying shipping and for no other reason.

They are numerous and multiple of NPC factions thus crowding it. Any given NPC faction will support a set number of players due to peoples' interest in that NPC faction. Would you rather these people be all stuck as indies, or would you rather them organize into factions? Would you rather people with roleplay ideas be stuck unable to play them, or be able to play them, thus having fun and contributing to server roleplay?

They rarely have good background behind them and so the immersion is lower. [color#f7f711]You're not only being repetitive, you're generalizing as well. See above on the roleplay of official vs. unofficial factions... twice.[/color]

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I think unofficial factions should be able to recruit but only by the main thread's subtitle "PM to join" thus giving them at least small chance to become bigger, to attract some players. Because the fact that they're newer means that they should have artificial competitive disadvantages at all?

PS.: That's my opinion, it's not facts. See below.

This post annoys me greatly. Why? Because if you're not posting certifiable fact, but just "your opinion" - which, I presume, is, as it commonly is, code language for Subjectivism (i.e., "it is the absolute truth that there is no such thing as absolute truth") - why are you even posting in this discussion? This is a discussion about truth - and why would anyone ever have a discussion about anything but? Any discussion is about finding the truth; there is nothing more, and all examples of anything less that I can think of are nothing but rotten Sophism.

I support the existing rules, since pretty much all official factions provide a higher-quality experience than their unofficial counterparts. Don't get me wrong, there are a few great unofficial factions out there, but they're few and far between. And so we should cripple these "few great" factions for no apparent reason?

Official factions deserve their perks since any time something happens which affects overall faction diplomacy, it's up to the leaders of the official faction to take care of it. Official faction leaders have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders to keep things in order. But... it's not a perk. That's the point. There is no reward here. There's no power you're giving them. You're just taking powers away from unofficial factions via brute force.

All in all, ditto to Snak3's post. If you don't believe that's true, please demonstrate to me an instance where an Official Faction has been replaced by an unofficial faction due to incompetency of the Official Faction. Lack of activity doesn't count since that can be a factor outside of the control of players. There are several instances where that could and should have happened, but didn't because of this very artificial barrier that we're discussing. But I can name one example where it... mostly happened. The KoF and USI. The KoF was official. The USI was not. The KoF was so bad that the USI got official status - but the KoF didn't lose it, even though they didn't deserve it, because they were largely non-roleplayers or low-roleplayers anyways, and existed to powertrade, so remained active.

Edit: The only means of recruitment for unofficial factions I support is by something along the lines of "PM me" written in the faction's info thread - which should be in the clearly designated Unofficial Faction subforum. At most. But this reduces the possibly-superior unofficial factions' ability to compete with the official faction. It makes the competition not based on ability, but based on posterity - not based on value, but based on history. It's a terrible ethic, if you can even call it that.

Why is this policy in place? What purpose does it serve?

Exactly. This - this - is the question we should ask, not only about this rules, but all rules, not only now, but constantly. If there is ever a rule that exists for no reason, that has no purpose for its existence, or that has more negatives than positives - this rule should immediately be stricken from the books. There is no cause for it - and no, historical precedent is not a valid cause, only value.

The only reason for any rule is its value. In other words, it's only useful if it has a valid and sufficiently important use. Unfortunately, too often, the value is subjective; in other words, we do not have any kind of full system of values on Discovery. What is important? We have not decided. The only thing people seem able to agree on is this vague idol of "roleplay", something which turns out to be terribly ambiguous and unclear. Anyone can say that something is "roleplay", and as we have no solid definition of roleplay, it is practically impossible to disprove their claim objectively - or in other words, to truly disprove it at all.

I had thought I would go on further, but have found that further points are not needed, and will not be unless someone raises some kind of logical defense for this outdated and illogical rule. At this point, anything further to add to my argument would be merely repetitive.

There is, however, one possible Sophist attempt at repudiation that I would like to nip in the bud: that is, the idea that the argument is somehow made less valid by the arguer. Too often on Disco, I see arguments rejected, not because their content, but because their source. This is vile. I will not go into further detail as to why this is so vile here - and if you really don't understand, you can PM me about it - but for those who would ignore the above warning, I would like to add one more statement, not to the argument, but against this fallacy.

I am not in any unofficial faction. I am in three factions: the Hellfire Legion, the Rheinland Military, and the Blood Dragons. Two of these three (the Hellfire Legion and the Rheinland Military) are among the oldest factions in Discovery today - both are certainly within the top 7 oldest, and, if my memory of the exact formation dates of some of those factions serves me correctly, within the top 5. I joined the Hellfire Legion within an hour of the first time I logged onto Disco, and within three months of its creation. It is the only faction on Discovery whose continued existence I care about - and it is one of two reasons I actually still play this game at all. Therefore, do not even think about saying that my argument is based on some young faction that I specifically have an interest in. It is based on personal interest, yes - but only the personal interest of my personal enjoyment of Disco, and thus in the interest of improving Discovery's factions so that I, personally, can better enjoy my interactions with them.