OF Perks/Requirements

[Emperor Tekagi]

Every single OF perk affecting matters like ID/ZOI/Techcells can be Player Requested for the Indie ID already, as basically no perk that wouldn't make it for the Indie ID gets approved for the OF ID anyway. Officialdom benefit basically boils down to owning a Core 5. That's it. Everything else, everyone else can do. Even law updates were already done via PR (although with the relevant OFs consent).

Newer ideas for perks some factions like CDI used: PvE payout increase, access to ingame commands, is basically the only other worthwhile niche of perks. Though this one is clearly limited in usefulness to a handful of groups only.

Please give us the list of ideas presented to staff, since I am really curious what else might be feasible options.

[Dusk]

If the leader of the official faction doesn't like a suggested lore/story change, system change etc etc which effects their faction- It doesn't happen. Instead, the faction leaders have full control over which direction the faction goes- within reason.

I agree with this. Official factions should totally have a say, to an extent, in how their faction story goes. This would be a big selling point for me personally.

[Lythrilux]

IMHO I think the fundamental issue with OF Perks is that at the end of the day the perks themselves often are only particularly beneficial or are only interesting to faction leadership or those most invested in a faction. Given how OF ID mining bonuses have been scaled back, short of solid gameplay advantages, it's hard for me to imagine if this system will ever really be worthwhile at all.

IDs are such a complex system that if you give an OF ID a perk that is actually worthwhile, suddenly you have one ID that is significantly better than the others. Whilst I would consider it worthwhile as far as 'perks' are concerned, if something like a Core OF ID had 5kers that would be hilariously unbalanced - even though at a glance it's a simple addition. There's also the balancing act where you don't want your OF ID to be outright better than the NPC ID really, because then where are your indies going to be?

The agency of official factions over their NPC faction has also been significantly reduced in the past several years. I would genuinely argue that at this point being official has zero benefit and is a pretty useless thing to have for NPC factions. The only groups that really benefit from it are generic or semi-generic factions that want to make themselves more distinct and get a unique ID/IFF that is more fitting for their roleplay.

Honestly, remove the system entirely, open the floor for tracked tags with a modicum of activity to have an easier and more streamlined access to SRPs and requests. I think that might be the best things can get whilst taking away the pressure from people to meet a time requirement.

As an enormous fan of the Official Faction system, and somebody who's seen it benefit people who are not the leadership over and over again (case in point, the entire existence of OSI, one of the longest running factions in the mod's entire history), I strongly disagree with your argument, Lyth'.

Remember, we're all talking from our own experience, and we should be careful not to extrapolate our own experiences to the experiences of everyone.

Perks might only benefit leadership if the perks requested are only of benefit to the leadership.

This should not be used to sweep away the Perk system. It's extraordinarily useful as a creative tool.

I feel like based on the example you cited it doesn't dispute my point. Generic groups are the only people who really benefit from the system as it helps them define their idea more clearly and give their group more of a purpose and a role. And that is good for sure. But OFs for non-generic NPC factions however, are more restricted and have much less agency.

I also do really feel that Faction|Joe_Bloggs really does not particularly feel the benefit of non-generic ID perks, other than those that provide additional mining bonuses or advanced ZoI features, but it seems like we're at a point where those aren't really given out that much anymore.

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[Lord Caedus]

Every single OF perk affecting matters like ID/ZOI/Techcells can be Player Requested for the Indie ID already, as basically no perk that wouldn't make it for the Indie ID gets approved for the OF ID anyway. Officialdom benefit basically boils down to owning a Core 5. That's it. Everything else, everyone else can do. Even law updates were already done via PR (although with the relevant OFs consent).

This is by far the largest issue with the OF system as a whole, that being that anyone else can get the exact same thing with a minimum amount of RP. OFs to function as a concept that draws players to them need to have an advantage over the Indie ID. This does not always need to be a pronounced advantage, but there needs to be one that exists. A prime example of this would be for the IMG| OF. They should reasonably have and/or be able to RP out them getting access to 5k transports. This would give them an obvious advantage, but outside of organized mining with a marginal bonus and potential RP, there is no reason to actually join an OF like IMG|.

Yes, having advantages like this would cause a disparity between the OF and the Indie ID, but that is the entire point. Commiting to joining an OF, and an OF commiting to upholding the standards required of them, should come with tangible perks. The current trend of people going and just making a throwaway character to fly an Indie for PvP or an event is a testament to how undervalued OFs are in the current game state.

If the leader of the official faction doesn't like a suggested lore/story change, system change etc etc which effects their faction- It doesn't happen. Instead, the faction leaders have full control over which direction the faction goes- within reason.

I have to say, I do agree with the concept of an OF being able to veto a story beat happening to them, to an extent. Obviously they shouldn't be able to do these things unilaterally and turn the NPC faction into something its not, but having a marginal amount of control like this would be a nice thing to see. I will say that when Barrier was doing events, he would check in with relevant OFs to see if they had input, but it was an informal system, and with a new Event dev coming in to replace him, now would be an ideal time to formalize this practice.

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[Lusitano]

one of the suggetions i gave was a custom skin on their ships. for example a different logo or colour on the tail of the snubs ... or the nose ... or the wings. i see so many players paying so much for a engine or thruster or a contrail, so why not something like a ship that looks "special"?

[The_Godslayer]

If the leader of the official faction doesn't like a suggested lore/story change, system change etc etc which effects their faction- It doesn't happen. Instead, the faction leaders have full control over which direction the faction goes- within reason.

Personally, I have thought for a long time that OFs should have both veto and motion rights and responsibilities for their respective NPC faction stories and actions. Story devs should be around to keep things in line and cohesive, but having Story write for each individual faction seems like a severe input-output imbalance. Your story dev gets run ragged and overworked about something they very well may have little-to-no investment in, and your factions get consistently too little, too late, 100% of the time.

If, instead, both power and responsibility get shifted to the OFs, then Story needs to be there to simply say "Yes, you can declare war on Rheinland. No, you don't have 31 battleships, you have 2 and no real way to support them up there. Are you sure you want to continue with this course of action?" And if the hypothetical faction says "Yes" anyway, then you have one of those funky story beats that becomes a "Well, that was weird" tier interesting factoid down the line. Maybe this faction wins all their events, and somehow pirates from Ithaca with their Arbiter went on a "hold my beer and watch this" and took over half of Stuttgart. As long as it's documented and reflected in the universe, it becomes an interesting bit of living history for a new player to enter the system and say "wow, that's different from vanilla. What happened here?" and look into it.

Discovery had a powerful lack of spectacle that made the space feel smaller, especially upon 5.0's release. Community engagement hasn't recovered from that yet, let alone what balance got up to. We finally have a black hole again after the removal of Omicron Sigma and the Guard System That Shall Not Be Named, we have a pulsar, and we finally got some of our supermassive bases back. We have a few atmosphere systems now as well, which is much better. I hope, at some point, whatever tech was used for Omicron Major is used to get us a few planet surface systems.

The only problem I see with OFs having that power and responsibility is that at the end of the day, OFs and Devs are people, and people can be stupid. One stupid Dev and one stupid OF is all it takes to turn this entire idea into another round of "and Bretonia printed infinite fleets from the fleet printer they built in two days so that they could win everything", and that would be much worse than the dual straining that we have now.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[Lord Caedus]

Oh just had this idea a moment ago. The OF perk of getting a Core 5 should have no other requirement beyond being an OF. I'm not a fan of how tied into everything PoBs are, as I think it limits creativity, but if a group manages to get to OF status, then I don't think an additional vague requirement of "enough RP with other groups" should be considered at all. Ignoring the fact that a lot of factions don't even have groups they can do this sort of RP with, the completely undefined requirement for the Core 5 upgrade means that a severe bias is given towards Corporate IDs, as they have a lot more of an inRP "reach" that they can use to interact with other groups.

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[Chenzo-]

Oh just had this idea a moment ago. The OF perk of getting a Core 5 should have no other requirement beyond being an OF. I'm not a fan of how tied into everything PoBs are, as I think it limits creativity, but if a group manages to get to OF status, then I don't think an additional vague requirement of "enough RP with other groups" should be considered at all. Ignoring the fact that a lot of factions don't even have groups they can do this sort of RP with, the completely undefined requirement for the Core 5 upgrade means that a severe bias is given towards Corporate IDs, as they have a lot more of an inRP "reach" that they can use to interact with other groups.

Bro....

We literally RP'd loads and had great GC/OC/LH~/Zoner interaction with our PoB's- YOU were a part of it, Shigeeee- I for one enjoyed it all...

PoB's are largely what is keeping Discovery alive at present.

Removing how integrated and awesome they are is deffo a step in the wrong direction imo...

Edit: Watch Haste now quadruple the PoB eat and decay rates beyond the joke level they are now just to crap on the community more..

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[Chenzo-]

Server activity as a whole died more and more over the years due to awful dev's and admins. Try to deny it, you are part of the problem. It's a viscous cycle.

Official factions used to have indefinite control over their factions story, system and general moves. This meant they had desire to play, as they weren't just going to get shat on by awful story decisions.

Indies, long standing or new ones seeing lots of official tagged players working together also generated a desire to be part of whatever faction they are observing, which means they then tell their friends about a cool game they are playing, it breeds more and more activity almost indefinitely to the point where you have 200 slots on the server AND CANT GET IN!!!!

Remove all the "balance" Haste has done, return the game back into the "Fun arcade style roleplay game" it once was.

These few but significant changes would make Discovery so, so much better. People would return and dinosaur factions like LH~ would never have been lost. Just the faction idea/concept of LH~ was more immersive that 99% of what exists today. Ignore your personal hate for the players who ran it, go read their faction write up- THAT is what Disco used to be.

/Rant

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[Shulsky]

Bro....

We literally RP'd loads and had great GC/OC/LH~/Zoner interaction with our PoB's- YOU were a part of it, Shigeeee- I for one enjoyed it all...

PoB's are largely what is keeping Discovery alive at present.

Removing how integrated and awesome they are is deffo a step in the wrong direction imo...

Edit: Watch Haste now quadruple the PoB eat and decay rates beyond the joke level they are now just to crap on the community more..

Problem with that whole deal is that, to get a Core 5, you need a bunch of RP that's actually tied to the acquisition of Core 5 itself, not other RP which the base may have generated. Getting a Core 5 as an unlawful is really quite a pain to do for not enormous benefits.

They're just saying that the only requirement for getting a Core 5 should be being an OF, nothing else, because being an OF theoretically already demonstrates that you're generating RP and interest and all that.

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Operation Have Sea