(11-21-2015, 11:57 PM)|nfrared Wrote: People tend to forget that making that faction official is a reward in itself and being recognized as an official faction here is a privilege rather than a right. The sense of acheivement of seeing that post in green saying you have met the requirements and are on the tracker is supposed to satisfy you, but it doesn't.
Sorry, but no. Being recognized as an official faction is a confirmation that your faction met the requirements of officialdom, but not a reward in itself. Faction rights and perks are (supposed to be) the rewards satisfying us, not just those few green words of "yes, we see now that you've indeed been through all this crap needed for this and that", and then nothing.
Restricting things is one method of giving factions an advantage but as Infrared mentioned, it could also have severe consequences that may ultimately be self-defeating.
Ideally we want to make factions a desirable option rather than a requirement, something that is attractive to players both new and old but doesn't diminish the fun of others to do so. That can mean anything from how official factions are formed/monitored, to an overhaul of the faction system itself or even smaller changes such as the previously mentioned expanded ZoI's or custom ships.
(11-22-2015, 12:35 AM)|nfrared Wrote: If these had worked, you wouldn't be seeing this thread.
I'll get back to you on that, since we have a bunch of requests going through right now. As far as I'm aware, we're flying through them and are getting the requested content pretty efficiently.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)
After few thoughts on the subject, I agree with you Croft. Restricting will spoil the fun of some players. My previous post was crap. After all, there is no reason to think that everybody would love to be part of an official faction, and there is no reason to sanction those players.
But it blocks any other possible thoughts on the matter as well. At least for me, I can't think of something more for the officials that is already implemented on the server.
So yes, beeing officials requiers more work and this sometimes is painfull. But at the same time, all the politics, drama, skypelancing, forumlancing is, to me, what is the best part of beeing officials. It is like a second game, or an other aspect of it, that independant players often do not even know the existence. Maybe a good way to make faction more desirable for indies, is actually to promote the use of this forum. Beeing in an official faction is beeing in the core group of players of this game. And for me it's priceless, as I really like this community.
I don't think we can make official factions more desirable than what they already are. The only thing I can tell to an independant player as to why he should join one is that he will meet a lot of nice people, from all over the world, and that he will never really feel to be alone on the server. It promotes cooperation between players, projects and group flights etc...
Once you are in an official faction, it is pretty hard not to be in one anymore. So maybe it all depends on us, the officials, to invite as much indies as we can, so our group gets bigger and so this game will not cease to be.
Instead of picturing factions as a whole try to think of them from a recruit's point of view and ask yourself "what does this official faction offer over an unofficial one?" then go a step further and ask "Why should I join a faction over remaining solo?"
You could break it down into the faction groups and see what rewards would work best for each. Perhaps police factions would like a heavy fighter patrol craft thats slightly faster in/charging cruise? Would the Navy factions like a custom fighter skin with kill counts on the side (not individual of course, think WW2 fighter pilot markings)?
Think small changes that effect everyone and I'm sure you'll come up with some interesting ideas.
- the Tlagnet (i'm not sure of the name) that trade lane detection system that only the RFP can use in Rheinland.
- the docking restriction ability
- an almost automatic access to ore pob for traders
those are the little things that are there already that could make an indie looking toward official factions. Maybe to some extend, we could add:
- Some sort of priority docking at the jumpgates for militaries
- A message for militaries that would pop as soon as an ennemy of the house is nearby a battleship of the said military faction
- Free repairs and ammo for militaries and police
- Automatic map discovery of our house for militaries
Rewarding officials or restricting indies is all the same, how you call officials having an advantage over indies in exchange for their extra responsibilities and efforts is just a matter of opinion, of point of view. There will always be those who want things for free, who want to play and enjoy the full scale of the game without having to put in extra effort to get things. Try to reward officials more and they'll cry rivers, threatening to leave, which due to present days' paranoia of declining playerbase killing off Disco permanently will 100% result in the reversal of any change of such effect. Keep everybody rewarded equally regardless of effort put in and it just won't worth joining official factions, without them standards will eventually drop even lower (just like how it has been since I'm here) and the whole community will succumb into chaos, people one by one leaving in the meanwhile.
Basically we don't choose if or when Disco dies, only how. What path of destruction would you like to take?
Imho, official status is a flawed concept in the first place. It judges factions solely through a clock, regardless of RP quality or actual RP contribution to the server.
If there was no such thing as officialdom, we might have more people trying to cook up groups for the same faction and their worth would be judged by actions, not by what is essentially a stopwatch.
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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Quote:It judges factions solely through a clock, regardless of RP quality or actual RP contribution to the server.
That is very true!
A few other ideas that can be more attractive:
- Ability to teleport between different house BS as a military to simulate active battle groups all over a house.
- Reduced time when killed as an officials for the reengagement. (like an hour)
- Ability to make the trade lanes refuse to accept a special ship for 10 minutes.
- Extended ZOI for militaries to every sytems of an ennemy except his capital system
...
A tad melodramatic Thyrzul, rewards need not be advantages and those willing to put in extra effort should be rewarded, its positive reinforcement which should hopefully encourage similar efforts.
I don't think the activity timer is there to judge factions rather its a safeguard to ensure that groups aren't simply occupying the top spot without effort, the big flaw of course is folks can sit logged in, moving every to often to avoid the AFK timer but not actually playing. Unfortunately there isn't a way of measuring RP quality or contribution that doesn't involve ridiculous demands on part of the admin team, the alternative is to make officialdom appealing to such a point that the top spot is highly desirable, forcing stagnating factions to rethink themselves or move over.
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