Proposed OF Check Overhaul

[Lemon]

Factions actually not logging into the game is a really big problem as well - you could end up with official factions logging 8 hours per month and passing activity checks in our example They will have great forum roleplay, answer recruitment, but they won't actually be present in the game very often - is that really what we want from an official faction? It will lower their need for recruitment, being open too as you will keep 3 players who forum RP and barely play and have no reason to attract new players.

[Elvinos2003]

You know, those Official Factions who rarely logs is mostly because they log when it’s pleasant and RL is always put first. Discovery is not a job and according what you are saying, is they should be more active. Remember that RL is first than this game and you can’t change that fact.

What we should expect from Official Factions is decent Role Play, they help new players and it’s a second family for those who joined them. On the gameplay, they should always be fair in terms of PvP.

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[Saronsen]

Hi, nice start.

Answering permit requests, recruitment threads and servicing Bounty Boards should also feature heavily,

governments generally handle this you know. libgov does it on a 2 week cycle for bounties and answers permits as they come. which is very infrequent.

in other news, theres little to no reason to put forth all of this effort for little to zero benefit of being official, especially when youre rewarded with nothing while required to put forth mandatory effort
talk about it all you want, but when official factions just became chores instead of being involved with ebb and flow of the server and the story, they stopped being relevant. the first time the devs decided to make it official that they had no value in the story besides when THEY decided they need/want the factions involvement, they lost all value and there was no reason to continue maintaining them.

[TheKusari]

@Saronsen , you and others have already put forth your comments about the worth of being an OF. This thread is only going over changing how the quarterly check operates. If you want to discuss the topic of Official Factions being meaningless, kindly take it elsewhere.

As a development to my initial idea, I have a way to make it easy / easier to give factions their weighted checks. Create three of four different weighted lists and then pick the best suited one. Saves spending a bunch of time customizing each list for every OF. Not sure if that would be something that people are on board with.

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

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[Saronsen]

i see you werent able to pick up on the implication that this effort is wasted without solving other issues at large but you do you champ
good luck

[Darsax]

I don’t know if I should voice an opinion here . But i would like to highlight one thing from the perspective of a new player , i joined a faction recently because one player from that faction asked me to, but under no circumstance until that point I felt the need to join a faction to part take in the events and other activities. The only issue that I see is lack of appeal . But this is just one man point of view take it as you like.

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The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

[Omi]

@Saronsen , you and others have already put forth your comments about the worth of being an OF. This thread is only going over changing how the quarterly check operates. If you want to discuss the topic of Official Factions being meaningless, kindly take it elsewhere.

His tone aside, he's right in that these are linked issues. You can't really just write it off as irrelevant when the question lurking behind 'how can we improve the OF check?' is actually 'why should a faction want to pass the OF check?'. If you're going to add more work for faction leaders, you need to give them some kind of reason to want it. I agree that the check system as it currently exists is deeply flawed -- I could point out a handful of factions which seem more like zombie playtime grinders than anything I'd actually want to log into the game and interact with -- and even leaving those aside, I think it disproportionately favours some types of factions over others. If your faction focuses more on things like powertrading or base supply, or pre-arranged, long-form roleplay with other like-minded factions and players (or just within the faction itself) then you're going to have a much, much easier time meeting the time requirement than military or police factions, for example.

All that said, I don't think creating some kind of itemised, weighted checklist and overcomplicating the OF check system is going to fix anything if you don't address the root issue. If anything, weighting forum roleplay and the like more heavily is just going to swing the balance more in favour of groups and factions that already have less of an issue jumping the activity requirement hurdle. I think @xenomorph expanded on what you had to say brilliantly, but you really cannot write off the related question of being an OF at all is even worth it as irrelevant here.

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[Stewgar]

talk about it all you want, but when official factions just became chores instead of being involved with ebb and flow of the server and the story, they stopped being relevant. the first time the devs decided to make it official that they had no value in the story besides when THEY decided they need/want the factions involvement, they lost all value and there was no reason to continue maintaining them.

@TheKusari I know you are as sick and tired of threads being derailed as I am. However, this is relevant information that is involved with your points and feedback. I was thinking about bringing up this very point yesterday but decided not to as I'm pretty disgusted with this community lately and wonder why I should waste my time. But, here I am.

It has been discussed that it is not worth the effort to be official anymore. We even discussed this at length in (the Lemon episode, I believe) of the POBcast. The current requirements still makes official factions not worth playing. I do agree that more requirements should be placed on official factions so that certain factions can't ignore comms or only post for siege declarations and call it RP. Some items discussed were mandatory replies to posts with potential admin waivers if somebody sends a comm to an OF that is bizarre or weird. However, official faction perks must also increase should the requirement increase. Otherwise we'll see an even greater exodus of official factions.

Your feedback is good. Your points are well thought out and outlined thoroughly. However, there are more things to consider than just the requirements to be an official faction. You and I don't see eye to eye often with Saronsen, but a good idea is a good idea and it shouldn't matter where it comes from (are you listening, devs?).

Hit me up in PM or in Discord if you want to discuss further.

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It ain't about what you are capable of, it's about what you're willing to do.

[Erremnart]

Personally, I think of an "Official Faction" on any online server as a group of players who act as role models for other players - they play at least somewhat fairly, have a positive and constructive approach to the game, and try to bring the community and its disputes together rather than stir them up. They should be such an ideal and a pillar of the local community rather than an extended arm of their leadership's ego. Of course, their RP should take a similar approach, being inclusive and not isolated from the rest of the server.
Playing edgy characters might be cool, but if they keep other players away from them - they aren't any useful for the community as a whole. They only teach others to avoid them and not bother.

The official factions should nurture new players as some similarly "official" player groups have done on all manner of private roleplaying servers - be it Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft, Lineage, etc. They should be judged by their positive impact on the community and game itself, not by just doing their stuff.


However, why should official factions in their current form carry any extra weight for story developers when often a better quality story prompt can be written and posted by independent players?

I judge a dev request by the quality and appropriateness of the content rather than by who submitted it. OFs don't deserve any special hotline to the Team if they barely resemble their npc factions and their goals.

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Captain Virginia Belle
Task Force Phoenix
Battlecruiser Roanoke
Feedback Thread

[Lemon]

The official factions should nurture new players as some similarly "official" player groups have done on all manner of private roleplaying servers - be it Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft, Lineage, etc

For this, it is actively bad to be official. Especially if you bring in stricter standards. By far the fastest way for new guys to learn is by mistakes, playing the game, messing up, and improving while being part of a faction, feeling like they belong - but being official opens you up to a much greater likelihood that people will report you, write negative feedback, go after you etc, call entire faction low quality that shouldn't be OF etc. And you have stuff to lose, when you aren't official - you don't, you don't mind players being active, making some mistakes even getting sanctions on the way to learning.

However, why should official factions in their current form carry any extra weight for story developers when often a better quality story prompt can be written and posted by independent players? I judge a dev request by the quality and appropriateness of the content rather than by who submitted it. OFs don't deserve any special hotline to the Team if they barely resemble their npc factions and their goals.

And this is why OF should never have increased passing standards. You treat them like garbage, why should they care? OFs put in the effort to become official, are deemed good enough to become official and represent the NPC faction and then they get this disrespect from staff. They see people having a bigger impact on the NPC faction if you are a buddy of a dev than when you lead a successful OF.


In the context of the thread, I think 3 days should absolutely stay as the sole requirement + auto pass. But we could add a slight allowance for say "if you were reasonably near 3 days, you can remain official if staff deem your forum, events, quality etc. worthwhile. The more hours you missed the greater contribution you had to have to pass" so the factions that miss by a single digit hours don't get failed anymore, there's some reasonable approach to OF checks.