Did they ever? I mean, a lot of factions wise, we skip the rope at the tune of the story devs.
<3
To a degree, I would say so. For instance, if you put in a request to have say mining added to an ID, or the rep changed, or the allowances (techwise) changed due to RP, that is to be changed for both the Official ID and the NPC ID, then yes - the Official factions have some control over the development of the NPC faction they represent.
Was talking about story, not toys. Take note, Gallia Kusari mess.
Was talking about story, not toys. Take note, Gallia Kusari mess.
<3
Those toy can be related though. If by means of RP and advancement of story, a faction now has rights to a shipline, or a mining field, that is definitely associated with Story.
For example (not saying this would happen), say IMG gains access to Gallic miners, OR Gallia allows IMG to mine in a Gallic system at a specific mining field - That is a storyline advancement, that affects the IMG Official and NPC ID (if requested). Thus toys and story in that example are connected. Not saying that would happen every time, it more was to illustrate that choosing not to touch on Player Faction advancement of the ID separates the two when in reality they can be connected.
Player factions shouldn't have any say whatsoever in the story development, unless the development is snailishly slow. Reduces the drama and allows the story to progress faster. Also demands that the devs aren't biased at all, though.
Official factions do indeed influence the direction of their chosen NPC faction via contact with the SLIS team and discussions of their given region. These influences actively create the situations that the news reports on, the Kyushu piece for example states a shift in pro-Imperial sentiments which were the result of player voting in this thread and the Mackinac's position was chosen by myself as head of OSC.
Why this is done in really another topic but I'll answer the best I can, if I'm wrong I'm sure the senior SLIS guys will correct and or shout at me.
At the moment with have no less than 58 official factions, can you imagine if each of those were given the full control of their NPC faction? 58 ropes all pulling in different directions, including those who share a root faction, then trying to get every single one to mesh together into an understandable storyline? To say it would be chaos is an understatement.
Stepping out of my dev shoes for a moment I'd sum it up thusly: We're all god damn nuts. Half the time we create drama out of the smallest things. Do you really want to trust the health of an entire NPC faction and by extention, the mod itself, to a collection of wackos who may or may not have everyones best interest at heart? At least with the story team the madness is contained.
If you want to test my theory, try getting every single faction leader to agree on a single ingame change.
Back on topic, currently I am working with a backlog of stories that will cover the next five weeks. After that it will no doubt be current and future affairs, current as in this mod version. Breaking news isn't planned but that's not to say it couldn't happen.
The NPC faction only thing isn't a stated rule, it was done because at the time there was discussion about letting the community submit their own news stories to be published under the Offical News. It was not my choice but I do agree that these articles should remain NPC faction only as anything posted in the Offical News section is considered lore and the fact that anyone can post their own news in the News and Commerce section.
Honestly your not missing much, the stories I post actually get less views than the standard news forum. Go figure.
A well-said reply, thanks @Croft! That does help answer, and one I figured, but just curious. You also did provide clarity in that there are certain instances where the actions of the official faction is considered and included. So thank you for that.
Well folks its time for another session of the occasionally informative, possibly provocative and rarely evocative, Newsroom.
Rather than the previously advertised piece on how important tone and language can be I'll be talking about something vastly more interesting.
Player Faction News
As you may know we've been planning to report on player faction news for quite some time and up until now we simply couldn't find a way of making it work. Having an open submission system, like the one used to register interest for Infocarding would be prone to abuse and utterly lacking any form of verification on who the creator could be. Not an ideal way of ensuring the news is accurate as you can well imagine.
The current idea (which is still very much under discussion) is to make the player faction news into an Official Faction Perk, available only via faction accounts and submitted by using a "hidden" forum like the one currently used for player requests. This would hopefully bypass things like leader changes or absences while also cutting down on confusion caused by shared faction leadership.
In theory all submitted articles would be edited for grammar, spelling and potentially content (we may cut away things that contradict current lore or make absurd claims) to ensure quality and then post said articles under a locked thread in either weekly or bi-monthly intervals, depending on how much news is available.
In order to test the waters of this idea I've created a form called the Rumour Mill which as the name suggests is for the community to create rumours about factions, bases or areas. These rumours will be the "padding" of this news project, allowing us to keep a consistant schedule during droughts of factional news while being good fun to read, hopefully.
This project, if given the greenlight. will be headed up by my assistant-in-training @The Sovereign who has already begun contacting faction leads and will of course be overseen by yours truly.
Not to dampen spirits but this all still depends on a lot of factors, most of all the interest of the factions themselves, the go ahead from the SLIS group and permissions of the admin team. So if this is something you'd like to see happen, let me know your thoughts below and as always suggestions and feedback are welcome.
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