Official Faction rework - one quarter later

[jammi]

Hi all

We've now gone through the first full quarter under the new official faction system. I'm opening up this thread to see how people feel about it now it's had some time to breath, the full set of faction reports have been submitted, and the first staff review has been completed.

Is the current system an improvement?
Are the requirements proportionate?
Are the quarterly faction reports useful to the wider community?
Are there areas for improvement, and if so how?

Rework announcement: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=210533
Faction reports: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=211178
Q1 faction review: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=211691

---

News article library, feedback and content requests.

[Slimy]

Hey Jammi,

first and foremost thank you for the open dialouge we can have here as a community.
I personally would have some questions out of curiousity.

It was stated, that OSI is supposed to go more in depth with their RP, do you have as a Staff-Team an idea on how you would like to see it to have a little guidline on what exactly is excpected?

Omicron Supply Industries, OSI-
Reason: Having one of the strongest trade IDs in the game, we'd like to see more RP interactions and in depth role play activity from the faction, rather than primarily focusing on trading.

Then about the inactive faction leader, would it really be requiered to announce a new one after one failed check or would there be the option to lets say improve the playtime of the current one?

Inactive faction leaders:
The faction leader (1iC) is required to be an active member of the faction (3 hours of activity in the quarter). The following factions must nominate another active member to replace their leader within a month, or lose status:
Bretonia Armed Forces, BAF|
Deep Space Engineering, [DSE]
Junker Congress, .:j:.
Kruger, Kruger|

Thanks for reading my questions and have a great day !

Your
Slimy!

[jammi]

Hi Slimy

Thanks for the comments!

It was stated, that OSI is supposed to go more in depth with their RP, do you have as a Staff-Team an idea on how you would like to see it to have a little guidline on what exactly is excpected?

I think the biggest issue that many staff flagged was in-game encounters. A fairly common piece of feedback was that passing an OSI ship generally resulted in silence or simple comments that appeared to be one player greeting another, rather than an actual character being played.

So really the biggest thing would be focusing on actual character interactions in-game. Could a random faction member confirm their character's name, motivations, interests and hold an actual conversation on them?

There was similar feedback for Samura, too.

Trading factions should obviously focus on trading, but there has to be an actual character at the heart of that rather than a convenient credit optimisation machine.

Then about the inactive faction leader, would it really be requiered to announce a new one after one failed check or would there be the option to lets say improve the playtime of the current one?

Current position is that the leader has to be replaced by a currently active member. There's nothing stopping the faction from later requesting a change to a different leader if the original player returns to the faction and becomes active.

This is intended to encourage factions to always have someone who is actively invested at the helm, even if this means temporarily swapping out while an incumbent leader is unavailable or incapacitated. If a 1iC can't put in 3 hours over 3 months, they really shouldn't be occupying the role.

---

News article library, feedback and content requests.

[TheSauron]

I do have to say that I was surprised you actually went through with enforcing all of the requirements. Even when the rework was officially 'deployed', I wholly expected everyone to pass Q1 with flying colours just for submitting the quarterly. So good job on that.

As for the specific questions, I think the requirements are more than reasonable and the system is indeed an overall improvement. The usefulness of the reports is a bit hard to quantify, though. It's nice to see what the different factions have been up to, but I'm not yet sure what one would use that knowledge for besides personal curiosity. I guess we'd have to give it a quarter or two more to see. Same for the improvements part.

---

One MD Admiral

[Tenshi]

---

Hey Jammi,

I've been quite vocal regarding my liking of the new systems in place for official factions over various discord conversations, and this hasn't changed after the first quarter came to a pass.

Back when the OF changes were first announced I was a bit skeptical. It has been too many years in Discovery where being in an OF didn't really mean you have any actual benefits over anyone flying indie IDs, while having multitude times the responsibilities. I have to admit, though, that the staff did an insane job reworking official factions. The various crazy new rights we have access to, as well as being included in story development matters and being given the freedom to effect story outcomes - to a degree - is something that I never thought would return to Discovery. You basically found a way to reintroduce the Discovery Working Group (I think that's what the server was called?) in a way much better than its original implementation, and for that I must commend you.

All those general comments aside, now to reply to your questions;
1) Is the current system an improvement? Yes, it absolutely is. Official factions actually feel meaningful now both in terms of gameplay (via access to various new game-changing faction rights) and in terms of roleplay (via discussing story developments).

2) Are the requirements proportionate? That's a difficult one, as it always is when it comes to activity. Is 2 days for a whole faction + 3 members that logged a measly 3 hours per quarter proportionate to the power official factions have? No, not really. You'd need to bump up those requirements a lot if you wanted them to match the benefits, and the reason I was skeptical at first is because I thought the staff would do exactly that. This isn't a matter about the requirements being proportionate or not, it's a matter of the requirements being logical in a community such as Discovery's in 2026. You did an amazing job to introduce requirements that don't feel grind-y and aren't annoying to fulfill.

3) Are the quarterly faction reports useful to the wider community? You introduced an idea to me that I hadn't thought of beforehand, when you posted on the main discord server and linked the reports thread, telling people to read it as advertisement for official factions. The report system became so much more genius to me when I realized that it's not only for staff to "judge" who is worthy of official status and who isn't, but it also effectively is people advertising their factions to the community. A new player can very easily navigate to that thread, read the information + goals + future plans of factions and decide what they want to join, without wondering what the future agenda of the faction is. Peak Jammi, rated 11/10.

4) Are there areas for improvement, and if so how? The only thing that comes to mind is the part about the active leader being a requirement, but as long as there is at least one person willing to step up - even if temporarily, as you noted on a reply of yours above - it will never become a problem. Sure it probably is a tiny inconvenience, as it was for us in 46th to have to swap leadership from Doc' who has carried us for so long, but it /did/ lead to the faction suddenly becoming alive and participating in server developments. I can't say it's negative change, after all.

---

Information ≛ Recruitment ≛ After Action Reports ≛ Feedback

---

"Honour. Courage. Commitment."
Task Force Akhetaten - Information

Tenshi

Discord: kagetenshi

Liberty Navy 46th Fleet

[Slimy]

Hey Jammi!

Me again, thanks for you fast answers
and I must say, that in case both
characters not being in a hurry because of IRL or
just being in a hurry because of a deadline inRP
it would be much appreciated from everyone to
put in more time chatting as the character and
I must admit, this also goes for myself, be it
a Faction or Indie character so yeah. Thanks!

Have a great day !

Your
Slimy

[Lolipop12]

I will deliver my two cents as 1ic of Enigma Confederacy. I personally feel it more as a chore than anything and yet useful for people to know where one is going or trying to complete. However, there are some goals that require more than three months to complete for sure and I feel there will be a redundance of the goal to reach in each quarter check.

I think it is feeling up the points: usefulness for the community and requirement proportionate. After all, small factions like mine can hardly reach the 3days easily and having two days is an ease so I will be thankful for this.

I will also agree with what Tenshi said above. But in terms of the 1ic to change if they are inactive, it is hard to do when you view this inRP perspective. For example, let's take nomads or AIs a moment. The following 1ic will need a solid knowledge to truly take over. And for my faction, it was born from my character in a way so... replacing the leader is kinda an impossible thing as long as there is a suitable AI within the faction to handle a node. I do not know if it makes sense.

---

Rhodeia --- Unit-9467F --- K'Halaesh

--- Feedback ---

[Jayenbee]

• I like that the Reports encourage Faction Leaders to be thinking about faction goals and things to do, quarter to quarter.
  
• I'm curious on what the Staff's stance would be on a repetitive report quarter to quarter? Some content fine to carry on over? Makes sense too? How varied and vibrant need it be?
  
• Greatly appreciate that these reports can double up as an ad for the OF, good stuff.
  

I understand that some factions are struggling with goals and things to do, either due to perceived limitations of the NPC faction they represent or a genuine struggle to find things for their members to do. Latching onto this point about playing a character when in-game, I believe if a faction is struggling for motivation they should look to the character they're playing, especially when you're at the helm. Use your character's motivations and rope in your members, encourage them to want things for their characters too, use their strengths for your gain and ultimately the faction's.

---

When contending with a monster, you'd be wise to give the devil his due.

[Shulsky]

I'll put my two cents in.

Is the current system an improvement?

Yes, absolutely. The previous system allowed factions which did not RP to a reasonable degree to continue to have the benefits of being an OF without putting in much work. This places greater expectations on OFs with benefits.

Are the requirements proportionate?

At this time, I'm unsure. What that relies on, more or less, is the devs capability and interest in actually helping factions perform the actions that they have been offered - those being story developments, events, and the unique rewards like the eventual flagship armor upgrade, the OF textures portion, so on. This also relies on the actual enforcement of the breaking of those OF expectations to be performed, and performed reliably. If that's the case, then I'd say yes.

Are the quarterly faction reports useful to the wider community?

I'm also unsure. There haven't been any great revelations through the quarterly reports, given to the wider community. I'd like to say the majority of OFs are open about their goals and interests, and a number of quarterly reports boiled down to, "Been waiting on events" and "Been being shot at a lot". This is generally to be expected, as I think a number of OFs have not really fully grappled with the idea of having large timeline plans to create actual story developments, as that just didn't really happen with the devs.

Are there areas for improvement, and if so how?

More transparency on the requests for events, between the devs, mods, and the OF 1ICs. As it stands, events through server plugins are one of the big ways harped on for OFs to further their stories, and I think holding those up or placing them behind a brick wall will stymie many plans.

---

Operation Have Sea

[Proselyte]

As a bystander, I note that some previously sedentary, less active OFs have now been sufficiently motivated into tooling up outdated pages, considering new ways to spark roleplay and utilize their faction rights, and are actually beginning roleplay with others on their own initiative.

Those that haven't, lost officialdom.

Looks pretty good to me.