Community thoughts: Faction ranking systems

[sindroms]

Sup, was genuinely curious, so here's the thread:



So. Ranking systems.
The progression of a faction member through the ranks of his fellow players to get to the top and stay there, preferably.

I will say this, I've never really understood what to think about faction ranks. From one side it would add a certain sense of achievement for players, while on the other hand it artificially restricts ships and equipment from people, who would be more useful to the faction as a whole if they could just fly whatever they want. What, for you, constitutes as a ''good'' ranking system and what it revolves around.

So feel free to tell us how you prefer yours: whether to have one at all or your personal experiences with them. As a faction member, leader or whatever.



EDIT:

Alright, so, now that I am actually more or less awake, let me try and explain the actual reason I posted this thread.



For those of you keeping an eye on things might have noticed that ever since I took over the LR, I revamped the ranking system 3 times. This was due to a number of reasons and right now it seems that I might implement changes for the 4th time. First it started off by doing away with the ranks altogether. My reasoning for it was that ranks were, for all intents and purposes for the sake of the players- useless. They were free to fly the ships they were comfortable in, use equipment they were proficient with (As long as they themselves dealt with RP repercussions regarding stolen tech and whatever) and do their own thing.

This did not last long, because it mostly felt like yet another "Spazzy Group" so to speak. While it was geared to be player-friendly with "Less of the unneeded bull between you and fun", it seemed a little bit bare boned, if that makes sense. Especially when it resulted with many older members surprised that their titles were nuked.

With that in mind, I revised the ranking system the second time, this time implementing the Five Rogues system, which would basically leave me as the faction leader oorp and the ingame events would be lead and coordinated by five of the more active and enthusiastic members with other members choosing which project they wanted to follow. Needless to say this system was a little bit too complicated and we only had 2 people sign up as the top rogues after a month of waiting.

So as the third and final attempt I said ''screw it'' and once more did away with the ingame ranks by replacing them with an oorpy hierarchy. Depending on the amount of RP contribution the player had in the Rogues, they would be rewarded accordingly. I specifically made it so that any individual RP on their part would have great impact on how the faction progressed and would reward the faction members to have a sizable control on how the faction did even though they were not in the "HC" so to speak. This was only complimented by the Titles system, which allowed members to earn titles for themselves based on ingame accomplishments.


So why this thread? Well, it is still not working out as I want it to. There is not enough drive within the members to actually do any sort of RP for their characters. They are content enough to log their ships when something is going on, the log off once it is done. Which is not bad in any way, but it is not the kind of stuff I saw back in the 2010s.

So the purpose of this thread is to gauge the interest of faction players and the experience of faction leaders of how they are handling this situation. I can note only a few factions I personally know are doing well with ranks and that was the RM and are the LH. Ah well. What do you guys think?

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[Char Aznable]

343rds ranking system is purely based on Roleplay. Active members in the faction that both provide forum and ingame Roleplay will necessarily rank up quite fast, while people that don't invest that much will stick to the lower ranks.
This provides multiple benefits.
First, it's providing immersion to a degree. Commanding structures help if you're roleplaying a military faction.
Furthermore, the restriction of caps to the higher ranks provides a degree of control over the overall quality of the RPed caps. While a fighter pilot that's having a bad day can be problematic, RP-wise, Caps are always watched more closely, out of logical reasons, and that way you can control what caps are doing out there by restricting people that haven't proven themselves to be capable (even if that sounds strange)
The restriction of Kusari ships and stuff to higher, non-commissioned ranks makes for a degree of immersion, the prestigeous and harder to maintain ships being restricted to the officers that have proven that such ships are logical to be placed in their hands.

All in all, ranking systems fulfill various roles - mostly they ease the way factions coordinate.

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#notmyfrankfurt

[Mephistoles]

I see ship and equipment restrictments as mostly inRP tools. The way I would do things is 1ic, 2ic (as per rules) then one or two semi-leaders to take charge when others are away. Everyone else would be the same "rank" ooRP with any further differing ranks being purely inRP, and provided it doesn't go against RP, there would be as few as possible item restrictions. In, say, a heated groupfight, ooRP friendship and respect take priority over so-called rank. Ideas and agreement take priority over so-called orders.

Better to do things via common sense than rules and regs.

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[The Archangels Fighter Club]

AFC ranking is special becasue it is kinda king-of-the-hill in a way

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[Hannibal]

For most factions:

What's the point?It just limits your gameplay experience and the amount of fun you have flying what you want
Even if you have a high rank inRP the faction will still have same leader as it had 3 years ago(if the person plays anymore or not doesn't matter that much)

Maybe if things will be different,for npc faction only,climbing up the faction ranks will give you more control in that faction,maybe even became a leader(as well as losing the rank if your no longer active)
Now..that will be interesting to watch,something that will motivate peoples in putting more effort in rp and ingame too

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People want to believe that God has a plan for them.
They don't wanna believe that anyone else does..

[Alestone]

I think the problem is that military rank and faction rank are too often bound together. A lot of the militarily organized factions rightly want the faction chain of command followed, but they do that by tying your progress in the faction to your rank. This ties to the whole equipment thing, because, outside of that idiotic rewrite of Star Trek, you do not give Heavy Cruisers to Ensigns.

In the US Navy, they have Line and Staff officers. Line officers command, Staff officers do not. I think you could do the same thing in factions, by allowing people equipment privileges without giving them command authority in faction activities. Commanders and Captains are a dime a dozen in the military, but they command warships; they do not make policy decisions.

My belief is that, if you are going to have perks, you need to have faction rank tied to things other than whether you can have a given class of ship (snubs v warships). I am not certain what to replace that with, but telling the low ranks that they are not allowed to compete at the same level as everyone else is discouraging to say the least.

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Alestone Enterprises

The Power To Get You There!

[Fluffyball]

For most factions:

What's the point?It just limits your gameplay experience and the amount of fun you have flying what you want
Even if you have a high rank inRP the faction will still have same leader as it had 3 years ago(if the person plays anymore or not doesn't matter that much)

Maybe if things will be different,for npc faction only,climbing up the faction ranks will give you more control in that faction,maybe even became a leader(as well as losing the rank if your no longer active)
Now..that will be interesting to watch,something that will motivate peoples in putting more effort in rp and ingame too

Sometimes ranking system is needed. Look at Exiles, in which the backbone of the forces are snubs - fighters and bombers - since Imperial Forces do not have shipyard on their own to maintain the capital ships (even repairing a gunboat is, in lore, a pretty serious thing). You can replace the fighter, but you can't replace the capital ship (so fast). True, it might be bothersome to reject offers of people being based on "I will join you only if I will get access to caps".

As for the rankings, in practice 343 ranking boils down to three ranks:
- The one who leads the 343 and control its future.
- The one who commands group in-game.
- The one who obey the commands and do his or her job.

Changing the leader is a bad thing, because in some cases of smaller factions it would mean changing people who have totally different views on the matter. It might be good, but also - it might ruin the faction as a whole, causing players to leave the (official) faction and create their own indie faction - lurking and awaiting for that faction to die.

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[Maskage]

In the LPI ranks dont determine ship usage so much, mind you everyone is expected to know how to handle a liberator... but it determines authority and positions in combat.

[Fluffyball]

In the LPI ranks dont determine ship usage so much, mind you everyone is expected to know how to handle a liberator... but it determines authority and positions in combat.

It may make sense in the Exile lore, because they have just 10 destroyers and 2 battleships - one of which is crippled. Compare it to the "scattered" Kusari Naval Forces fleet, which possess "just" 10 battleships and circa 95 destroyers. In comparison, Liberty has around 90-100 battleships and up to 350(?) destroyers.

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User was banned for: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=138636
Time left: (Permanent)

[sindroms]

Alright, so, now that I am actually more or less awake, let me try and explain the actual reason I posted this thread.



For those of you keeping an eye on things might have noticed that ever since I took over the LR, I revamped the ranking system 3 times. This was due to a number of reasons and right now it seems that I might implement changes for the 4th time. First it started off by doing away with the ranks altogether. My reasoning for it was that ranks were, for all intents and purposes for the sake of the players- useless. They were free to fly the ships they were comfortable in, use equipment they were proficient with (As long as they themselves dealt with RP repercussions regarding stolen tech and whatever) and do their own thing.

This did not last long, because it mostly felt like yet another "Spazzy Group" so to speak. While it was geared to be player-friendly with "Less of the unneeded bull between you and fun", it seemed a little bit bare boned, if that makes sense. Especially when it resulted with many older members surprised that their titles were nuked.

With that in mind, I revised the ranking system the second time, this time implementing the Five Rogues system, which would basically leave me as the faction leader oorp and the ingame events would be lead and coordinated by five of the more active and enthusiastic members with other members choosing which project they wanted to follow. Needless to say this system was a little bit too complicated and we only had 2 people sign up as the top rogues after a month of waiting.

So as the third and final attempt I said ''screw it'' and once more did away with the ingame ranks by replacing them with an oorpy hierarchy. Depending on the amount of RP contribution the player had in the Rogues, they would be rewarded accordingly. I specifically made it so that any individual RP on their part would have great impact on how the faction progressed and would reward the faction members to have a sizable control on how the faction did even though they were not in the "HC" so to speak. This was only complimented by the Titles system, which allowed members to earn titles for themselves based on ingame accomplishments.


So why this thread? Well, it is still not working out as I want it to. There is not enough drive within the members to actually do any sort of RP for their characters. They are content enough to log their ships when something is going on, the log off once it is done. Which is not bad in any way, but it is not the kind of stuff I saw back in the 2010s.

So the purpose of this thread is to gauge the interest of faction players and the experience of faction leaders of how they are handling this situation. I can note only a few factions I personally know are doing well with ranks and that was the RM and are the LH. Ah well. What do you guys think?

---

--------------
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
----------