Official Faction Activity First Quarter 2019

[Vendetta]

So present a new system. If you don't have one, then why bother discussing it at all? You can shout that there's a problem all you want, but if nobody is going to provide solutions then it's a waste of time and text space tbh.

There used to be a requirement that SRP holders make some monthly/quarterly reports of what they've done over the past month/quarter so that they show they've actually contributed to the server meaningfully. Perhaps something like that should exist for official factions as well? Of course that would be extra work for both sides, but maybe factions would be more motivated to do things and write roleplay that way, who knows...

There was Faction Status Reports at one point. I enjoyed them and thought they were pretty good, but other people disagreed with having to do more paperwork.

The problem is that part of Discovery's faction stuff does require a certain level of forum work. God forbid you need to fill out a paper every three months while managing a faction full of people like anyone who manages humans would have to do at some point in any real world setting. The difference is you're not filling out Human Resource documents, but a very small, usually pre-formatted post that serves as an update to both the staff and community on the status of your faction.

Another problem with that is how do you gauge activity based on forum posts? It seems unfair to certain factions which lack an equal opportunity in that avenue.

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Currently unable to consistently be present in the Community due to life constraints.

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[Lythrilux]

"I don't want to put in effort to seek new ways to be active, so everything else should change to accommodate me."

That's what I've taken away from this statement. You're complaining because you're having a hard time meeting activity requirements in a quarterly system, because in three months you could not find something to do with yourself or in-game.

Come on, dude.

That's a bad ad-homiem, friend.

Ooo. Numbers.

How's about you uhhh don't dodge the topic and instead present solutions to this problem you seem to be having?

> Lyth points out some factions treat the tracker as a chore and just afk grind
> You come in and say it sounds like Lyth's faction is having a hard time achieving the required time and should just 'git gud'.
> I show you Core| is doing ok and Lyth is hardly concerned about it
> ???
> I'm dodging the question.

I sadly have no solution on how to make people log and interact with other people on factions nobody seems to care about. I don't even have a solution for making people not log off whenever we log L\- and attempt to interact with enemies. so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Except I didn't mention The Core. I stated that in his argument the only thing I could take away from it was that he was having a hard time meeting activity requirements. You went ahead and got some nice pictures of The Core and Aux activity trackers, which had nothing to do with my statement whatsoever.

I also didn't ask a question. You dodged the topic which has been presented every time these activity checks come up, usually by the same people - "This system doesn't work."

Okay. So it doesn't work.

But it does.

???

So present a new system. If you don't have one, then why bother discussing it at all? You can shout that there's a problem all you want, but if nobody is going to provide solutions then it's a waste of time and text space tbh.

You personalised the argument from the outset. Just look at your use of "I", "me", "you" in your first post. Your initial post wasn't a general statement at all and was a clear ad-homiem to undermine my point that the system wasn't working. It collapsed in on itself when Vasko not only linked a picture of Core| being very active, but more active than your faction. Admit your mistake and move on instead of the backpedalling.

Why are YOU bothering to discuss this issue if your only contribution to this thread is to throw terrible ad-homiens and largely not constructively contribute to the discussion? We've already made attempts to divulge into the issue and at the very least on Discord have been suggesting ways to the Staff to improve the system.

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[Vendetta]

Lyth I'll let you re-read everything and figure it out yourself.

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Currently unable to consistently be present in the Community due to life constraints.

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[Backo]

Another problem with that is how do you gauge activity based on forum posts? It seems unfair to certain factions which lack an equal opportunity in that avenue.

It doesn't need to be solely what was achieved as forum diplomacy/stories, I'm fairly sure that for factions that are quite centered of combat (xenos, nomads, etc) and hostilities simply reporting successful raids and such would also be a good indicator that they've been doing things and playing their role. It's not a one size fits all sort of criteria, which hopefully would also mean it's less likely that people just grind it for the sake of grind too.

I personally don't understand why when you're applying for officialdom your ingame performance, gameplay attitude, roleplay and community's opinion is taken into account, but as soon as you earn the badge you're stripped to merely having to log on for 24 hours every month or so. Maybe it's also a good indicator of why often it happens that factions lose motivation as soon as they achieve officialdom as they no longer need to put effort.

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Republic of the Sword and Sun

[Vendetta]

Another problem with that is how do you gauge activity based on forum posts? It seems unfair to certain factions which lack an equal opportunity in that avenue.

It doesn't need to be solely what was achieved as forum diplomacy/stories, I'm fairly sure that for factions that are quite centered of combat (xenos, nomads, etc) and hostilities simply reporting successful raids and such would also be a good indicator that they've been doing things and playing their role. It's not a one size fits all sort of criteria, which hopefully would also mean it's less likely that people just grind it for the sake of grind too.

I personally don't understand why when you're applying for officialdom your ingame performance, gameplay attitude, roleplay and community's opinion is taken into account, but as soon as you earn the badge you're stripped to merely having to log on for 24 hours every month or so. Maybe it's also a good indicator of why often it happens that factions lose motivation as soon as they achieve officialdom as they no longer need to put effort.

I agree, though I've always considered a portion of the criteria negligible as the "community's opinion" can often be subjectively negative with no real merit or cause and gameplay attitude varies on circumstance. It might be good to have an overhaul of those guidelines and some form of criteria should be established for incentive and continuation of efforts.

Ideally, a system in which faction efforts (with obvious, necessary moderation) can be somewhat reflected provided the so-called "high standard" of Official Factions is met. This'd make it difficult to obtain officialdom as it should be rather than just time consuming, and harder to stay that way.

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Currently unable to consistently be present in the Community due to life constraints.

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[SnakThree]

Another problem with that is how do you gauge activity based on forum posts? It seems unfair to certain factions which lack an equal opportunity in that avenue.

It doesn't need to be solely what was achieved as forum diplomacy/stories, I'm fairly sure that for factions that are quite centered of combat (xenos, nomads, etc) and hostilities simply reporting successful raids and such would also be a good indicator that they've been doing things and playing their role. It's not a one size fits all sort of criteria, which hopefully would also mean it's less likely that people just grind it for the sake of grind too.

I personally don't understand why when you're applying for officialdom your ingame performance, gameplay attitude, roleplay and community's opinion is taken into account, but as soon as you earn the badge you're stripped to merely having to log on for 24 hours every month or so. Maybe it's also a good indicator of why often it happens that factions lose motivation as soon as they achieve officialdom as they no longer need to put effort.

Absolutely on spot. It's harder to become official faction that it is to remain while being barely alive.

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[Loken]

We don't need to protect official factions that have no interest in playing the game. Let them die.

What this system is really in dire need of is an overhaul to encourage factions to log on more frequently but for less time. That way, organic encounters will occur more often on the server and give factions more to do - rather than how it is currently where major factions are literally not even playing the game for three months then grinding all their activity in a couple of days just to cling onto some imaginary power in a game they have no actual interest in playing or contributing to whatsoever.

Edit: e.g. A relatively undemanding, fortnightly activity check. With a limit on the number of times it can be failed within a 12 month period. Something like that.

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[Durandal]

I've toyed around in the past with concepts regarding positive reinforcement rather than negative re: activity times. The idea of letting factions get something out of logging time isn't something I'm personally adverse to experimenting with, but it would need to be done very carefully.

[Bannorn]

You can enjoy experience while being unofficial. People take being official faction too seriously.

To be fair to them, this is largely because our community treats anything not OF as being irrelevant, or worse a terrible crime. Honestly though? Grinding activity isn't hard - there are some names no longer on that list because we did just that, and if you and your faction really want to be official... do what LPI did last quarter and give tagged ships to people who don't even play for you, and hang out in orbit for a few hours. Or powertrade, or whatever - but is it really so bad that a faction goes unofficial if they aren't interested in playing? I'd say we might be better off looking at ways to support OFLs to help maintain interest or whatever. If you see a faction that you think doesn't deserve to die - do something about it.

Edit: Interesting idea Durandal, I'd be really interested to see what could be done there. Ways to support factions to give them a reason to stay and play and keep going are always worth considering I think.

[SnakThree]

Perhaps wiping the difference of being official faction and unofficial and allowing all groups/factions fair chances to get something out of them just playing their roles?

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