Better player faction integration between outside and inside the game

[Goose4291]

There is one issue with creating faction recruitment process leader. For example it Mathias Shallowgrave aka rootsrat will responsible for allowing players to join The Winged Hussars, what will happen if he quits from Elite? It is not typical mmo guild scenario where guild is an entity, where owner(leader) can change. I think it will require special Rising To leader functionality because factions wont disappear if leader quits. Or maybe it should be handled differently.


Players should be able to create CMDR organisations. This will be something like Player Group but it will be visible across all game modes and it will have it's place in game lore. Leader of each organisation my pledge org alliegiance allegiance to particular faction. Of course this require good standing with faction and then it will require further factions support in future. In that way anyone can create organisation that support background simulation faction however players will be distinguished by their organisations.

Use the normal method.

Founder gives trusted individuals the abilities to invite/remove players.
If founder is inactive for a length of time without notifying FDEV, then next ranked player gets promoted to founder rank, and founder is demoted.

- - - Updated - - -

.... and a complete lack of definition of the subject in the OP.

Yup.

 

[Adam Jay]

I honestly wondered from the moment my group was issued igf why none such mechanisms are in place already and concluded that that would mean having one player (or somebody at org side) as a group admin, which is something I expect devs wanting to avoid for various reasons, both technical and administrative. Anyone allied being able to join sound splendid and easily implementable, but brings predicament where anyone can commit acts in conflict with faction ethos while only pretending to be a member. That could be solvable if members could vote on who to ban for example but such thing would need more work of course. If the community finds such potential nuisances worth it and is prepared to deal with them, I support the idea.

 

[Mohrgan]

Considering the number of Player Factions out there, the very few R2P Decals available don;t come nearly close enough for being a tool for Tagging. I don;t remember the FH's being part of R2P, so they wouldn't be able to use those decals as an ID. AA had many players from other groups come in a support us in the R2P competition. Anyone who supported AA with just one voucher or ton has access to the decal. The R2P decals just don't suit as reliable ID Tags.

 

[RamirezKurita]

If the Faction's image is sufficiently prestigious (presumably through the actions and organisation of the leadership and members of the Player Group that requested its injection) to attract players, is it so unreasonable to permit that player group to control who becomes a member? Being a prestigious Faction, the Player Group behind it would have an image to protect, after all....

As mentioned previously, there are a very large number of Factions - and players bothered by having to ask another to become a member could simply request that their own, new, Faction was injected.

Not necessarily, a player who isn't really involved in the community wouldn't even know a faction was a player created one, it would just be another minor faction just like the rest. They could want to wear said faction's colours because they like mining in one of the rings in their systems, or they could find one of the station names to be funny, they might regularly use an engineer in/near faction space or it could be simply that they quite like the outfitting in one of the systems.

The whole point would be to ensure that a player who doesn't read the forums, doesn't look at Inara, doesn't reddit and who plays in solo is not locked out of content just because a player/players are going on an ego trip.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Not necessarily, a player who isn't really involved in the community wouldn't even know a faction was a player created one, it would just be another minor faction just like the rest. They could want to wear said faction's colours because they like mining in one of the rings in their systems, or they could find one of the station names to be funny, they might regularly use an engineer in/near faction space or it could be simply that they quite like the outfitting in one of the systems.

.... at which point they'd hopefully be prompted by the game to contact CMDR < insert player group leader here > to be considered for pledging to the Faction of a Player Group.

The whole point would be to ensure that a player who doesn't read the forums, doesn't look at Inara, doesn't reddit and who plays in solo is not locked out of content just because a player/players are going on an ego trip.

If the player is approaching it from the point of view of pledging to essentially a random Faction, why would it be such a big deal if it was a Faction associated with a Player Group and therefore required acceptance?

 

[Xender]

Not necessarily, a player who isn't really involved in the community wouldn't even know a faction was a player created one, it would just be another minor faction just like the rest. They could want to wear said faction's colours because they like mining in one of the rings in their systems, or they could find one of the station names to be funny, they might regularly use an engineer in/near faction space or it could be simply that they quite like the outfitting in one of the systems.

The whole point would be to ensure that a player who doesn't read the forums, doesn't look at Inara, doesn't reddit and who plays in solo is not locked out of content just because a player/players are going on an ego trip.

Players should own organisation and then organisation should peldge support to factions. Thanks to that players may form unified groups with their own identifications and then that group must gain reputation in order to support faction.

 

[rootsrat]

Not necessarily, a player who isn't really involved in the community wouldn't even know a faction was a player created one, it would just be another minor faction just like the rest. They could want to wear said faction's colours because they like mining in one of the rings in their systems, or they could find one of the station names to be funny, they might regularly use an engineer in/near faction space or it could be simply that they quite like the outfitting in one of the systems.

The whole point would be to ensure that a player who doesn't read the forums, doesn't look at Inara, doesn't reddit and who plays in solo is not locked out of content just because a player/players are going on an ego trip.

You can clearly distinguish player factions from NPC ones. All the player faction require a description on the galaxy map, while the NPC ones don't have one.

 

[Matzov]

This is a good discussion, encapsulating some delicate grey areas. I am tempted to say it has no place on these boards! ;-)

I am generally in favour of the OP, but fully recognise there are some thorny issues as raised by others, which would need to be thoroughly thought through before implementation.

 

[rootsrat]

Players should own organisation and then organisation should peldge support to factions. Thanks to that players may form unified groups with their own identifications and then that group must gain reputation in order to support faction.

That's taking it's a bit too far IMHO.

Repeat - all I want is to be able to show my faction's name under my name on the HUD.

 

[CMDR Ahab]

Off topic slightly, dont you already have a decal from the ise to power?

Not really off topic as still do an awful lot of work for them as a minor faction, but yeah got the decal a few weeks after the CG finished. How come?

 

[RamirezKurita]

.... at which point they'd hopefully be prompted by the game to contact CMDR <insert player group leader here> to be considered for pledging to the Faction of a Player Group.



If the player is approaching it from the point of view of pledging to essentially a random Faction, why would it be such a big deal if it was a Faction associated with a Player Group and therefore required acceptance?

It's a big deal, because beyond the initial application to have a faction implemented, the minor faction is fully independent from the players. The Winged Hussars minor faction ≠ the Winged Hussars discord regulars, they simply share a name and that's it. No perks, no special involvement, just a group of like-minded players who like a particular minor faction. Players who want to pledge to the minor faction shouldn't have their membership gated by a 3rd party. They aren't asking to join a chat group or wing up with particular players or anything like that, they are siding with a minor faction, a minor faction that has no official connection with the group of players with which it shares a name.

 

[Robert Maynard]

It's a big deal, because beyond the initial application to have a faction implemented, the minor faction is fully independent from the players. The Winged Hussars minor faction ≠ the Winged Hussars discord regulars, they simply share a name and that's it. No perks, no special involvement, just a group of like-minded players who like a particular minor faction. Players who want to pledge to the minor faction shouldn't have their membership gated by a 3rd party. They aren't asking to join a chat group or wing up with particular players or anything like that, they are siding with a minor faction, a minor faction that has no official connection with the group of players with which it shares a name.

If players take the trouble to work on the reputation of the injected Faction of their Player Group then, in my opinion, they deserve to have control over who is permitted to fly the colours of the Faction that they caused to be injected into the game (a Faction that would not exist for the random player to want to pledge to but for the Player Group behind it). I understand that you will not agree and I'll just have to agree to disagree on this point.

 

[CMDR EDGEL0RD]

I post this thread to see what the support for my idea would be from the community.

Before I start, I'd like to explain the context of my post and show people where I'm coming from. If you're a group leader, you can skip this part, as you will most likely understand. The intro is aimed and people who perhaps never belonged to a group/clan/guild or don't understand that "guilds" (I call them FACTIONS) are actually part of the game now.


INTRODUCTION

There are many player groups in Elite now, many of which also have their player factions in game. I'm sure that most of the members of such groups feel attached to their in-game factions and affiliate with them, supporting their influence, expanding to other systems, winning wars etc.

This is the closest equivalent to "guilds" or "clans" we have in Elite now. Whether you support the idea or not - the fact of the matter is, "guilds" exist in this game. Now, before you start protesting, let me put some context of what I mean by that, so that you understand where I'm coming from.

It's the nature of such games and their communities - people will naturally start cooperating to achieve common goals and then form a certain bond. When Frontier introduced player factions in Elite, it was only natural for the people that created these factions to form a connection and emotional attachment to their creations. I will use my own example.

My group has around 250 people in it. Shortly after our group was formed, our faction was added to the game. We have created it, gave it history, lore and description. We have been supporting it for over 2 years now, controlling the expansions, wining wars and playing together to achieve the goals we set for our group. We've seen our in game faction expanding to surrounding systems and at this point we control 24 systems or so. We have separate forums with over 65k posts, we have our own TS server, Discord and so on.

We consider ourselves a FACTION in Elite world (or a clan, a guild, whatever you want to call it - I prefer faction, as it's in line with Elite lore and nomenclature) and we don't separate our out-of-game entity and our in-game entity. The Winged Hussars is our faction and we are extremely proud of what we've achieved. We also fully accept the fact that anybody can support or work against our faction. This is perfectly fine. But I think it's totally understandable that after 2 years of working our bottoms for the entity we have created, after 2 years of ups and downs, wins and loses, wars and peace treaties, diplomatic actions, community events, NPC's we've created to support our lore and history, all the role playing and all the other things we've achieved, after all this, we consider The Winged Hussars OUR faction.

I'm sure there are many other groups like our one and that's what I mean that there are "guilds" in Elite. This is the context. So, if you are a stark adversary of the idea of guilds - please try to be objective and look at things from our point of view. Because the player factions are a thing in Elite and the game is not about a single player vs the universe anymore - however I believe it is still the biggest part of Elite. But the player groups (guilds/clans) are definitely part of Elite now - in the context I have presented above.

---

Now that we have that clarified, to the main part of my post:

PROPOSITION:

In the context of the above, I think that there is one feature missing from the game to better support player factions: the ability for the faction members to affiliate themselves with their faction IN GAME. We have forum signatures to show, we have external forums, we are flying under our faction banner for all this time and yet the only place where we cannot show we are part of this faction is the most important place - IN GAME.

This is very important for many groups out there. We are proud of what we've created and achieved as a group - and we'd like to show for it. Up till 2.3 there was no way to show the faction allegiance. With the arrival of ship names and ID's, it's the closest to what we have to be able to do that. In our group we use Ship ID as a "faction tag" to show we are working for The Winged Hussars, but anyone can add the same Ship ID as we use and that's no good.

So my proposal is to implement some basic faction management tools and faction recognition on the HUD. Just like the NPC's show which faction they belong to and Power members show their power allegiance.

All I'd like to see, as a group leader and creator of The Winged Hussars player faction is the ability for other players to pledge to my faction and for me to accept these requests. Then "The Winged Hussars" would show under their Commander names to indicate they are members of that faction.

This would be available only to the person that submitted the group and faction creation form to Frontier.

All the rest of the current implementation would stay the same - I don't want control over our assets, I don't want system restrictions or anything like that. I simply want to be able to pledge allegiance to my faction and have some basic control over who can be a member of my in-game player faction.

To the people that oppose the idea - please try staying objective and look at it from a large group's leader point of view. All I ask for is the ability to show my faction name in HUD, so I - and other group members - can be recognised as part of our faction in game. The people that are not part of our faction would still be able to support it, take missions, passengers and do all the other things they do now. I am not proposing to take anything away from anybody and I don't want to change other people's game or force them to do anything.


This change would not affect anybody's gameplay, it would only add integration between player factions outside and inside the game.


I wonder what the support for this kind of idea is out there in the community... Please post your thoughts below and [modhat on] may I ask to refrain from vitriol, sarcasm, personal remarks, offtopic posts about how bad Elite is or derailing this thread to Open/Solo debate. Let's have a civilised and meaningful discussion for once.


Thanks.

Totaly agree with op. This is the small step in the right direction which should be done.
No point getting in a wing currently, as all communication have to be made externally.
So at least some IFF in game is a must have thing for a big enougth clans.

 

[Fenyl]

The whole point would be to ensure that a player who doesn't read the forums, doesn't look at Inara, doesn't reddit and who plays in solo is not locked out of content just because a player/players are going on an ego trip.

We are not talking about locking any content! We are talking about being able to show that we are MEMBERS of said player group. Someone described by you clearly is not a member of a group and is not locked out of anything.

Maybe we should make two different "tags": one for supporters and second for members. The first one would be avilable for anyone allied with faction and the second would have to be approved by faction's command.

 

[Han_Zen]

If the player is approaching it from the point of view of pledging to essentially a random Faction, why would it be such a big deal if it was a Faction associated with a Player Group and therefore required acceptance?

It's meta. Having to be accepted by someone on the internet is unnecessary. If you have done what the faction requires, you should be in.

The group behind the faction could be responsible for setting the in-game criteria to join and what it takes to not be evicted.

If done well, it would create personality for the factions.

 

[RamirezKurita]

We are not talking about locking any content! We are talking about being able to show that we are MEMBERS of said player group. Someone described by you clearly is not a member of a group and is not locked out of anything.

Maybe we should make two different "tags": one for supporters and second for members. The first one would be avilable for anyone allied with faction and the second would have to be approved by faction's command.

The thread isn't about tags for a player group, it's about tags for an in-game faction. The two are quite different, as one is an entirely human-run operation about coordinating the activities of players, while the other is an in-game organisation just like any other minor power.

Maybe separate tags for player groups and minor power affiliations could work, but either they would need to be completely separate in the HUD (we only have so much screen real estate though) or they would have to be completely unique to avoid confusion. The latter would work fine, except that I suspect many of the player groups would rage over having to rename themselves because they share a name with a minor power.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I like it. Very much in line with my idea of how player factions could evolve and people could align with them.

However, I don't like the idea of a single person or clique controlling membership of the faction. I see where you are coming from, but i'd rather keep the factions open to join, and that any sort of recognition is derived from in-game efforts.

And yes, i understand this would therefore apply to my own group as well, i wouldn't get to control who flies under my faction's colours. The price we would pay for an egalitarian system where we keep the sense of being small cogs in big wheels.

 

[Pro Cambarus]

There are two substantial issues recurring in these posts and both should be addressed.
Let me start with the OP's initiative and state my support first. With players investing years of efforts in a player minor faction with all the shared successes and challenges there is no question that players develop an attachment and feeling of ownership. Pledging would be a very appropriate in-game mechanic to honor this in game (the OP has a clear explanation not to be repeated here) that is most universally requested within the group I belong to as well.

Auto-pledge by players and without the approval of the group's coordinative structure on the other hand would be counterproductive. Each and every BGS coordinators of any form know that helping to develop a player minor faction and increasing the reputation in generic minor factions are as different activities as possible. You all know that anyone can get allied with any minor faction by activities that stalls the development of that faction as long as the player is active. It does not necessarily need the intention to harm that particular faction, even does not necessarily due to the complete lack of BGS knowledge. It is a fact, that developing a player minor faction is a coordinated effort and with the nature of the planned BGS activities and the external effects that needs to be addressed by factions it needs daily coordination that covers goals but minimally measures and limitation of activities. Coordination requires at least a common information infrastructure to the player be integrated to.
To put it simply: there is no way to generally support any group present in multiple systems. There are multiple ways to hinder them and very limited options to support their planned development activities provided that they want to develop the PMF in the game through the BGS and those limited activities change daily. Auto pledging would just provide a convenient illusion of integration leading to the deterioration of even finely managed PMFs.

The other aspect is group continuity and I understand where those with lack of faith in player approval in pledging coming from. My group represent a "natural" community behind it that provides an interface to the game. People might come and go, but both the community and the community faction will remain there. I can only provide an example of handling this matter that might be useful in even a multi-model system, but also one that has many of the underlying elements in place already. In many respects we are similar to a foundation. We have a board like body of players that is in close contact with FDev via the general communication framework FDev established for group leaders. This board plays a substantial role in selecting operative management of the faction, while providing liberty in the operation of the MF itself. It is also noteworthy that the player community is very dedicated and disciplined as well and this discipline is coming from the common understanding of the nature of BGS. (Again, this is proof of the shared information framework.)

I understand that FDev resources are very limited and ownership is very important but this a working model that involves all sides. I also understand not every PMF is revolving around the BGS, but different PMFs can be handled with different models appropriately.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

It's in the nature of player factions to recruit as many people as possible.
Beyond a certain number, any fiction of controlling their behaviour is exposed.

That's why the 5C or faction reputation discussion is a red herring.
You won't have any more real control over that even with an admin gate if your faction becomes popular.

I don't think FD would go for that anyway. I think a further reputation level beyond Allied is all that is needed.
Once achieved, a player can choose to display it in the same way as an NPC without requiring an admin's permission.

Having been there myself in another game, I know that the personal link to a faction you've created is very strong, but to be truly successful, you need to let that go and let the members represent the faction more than you do.

 

[CMDR EDGEL0RD]

I like it. Very much in line with my idea of how player factions could evolve and people could align with them.

However, I don't like the idea of a single person or clique controlling membership of the faction. I see where you are coming from, but i'd rather keep the factions open to join, and that any sort of recognition is derived from in-game efforts.

And yes, i understand this would therefore apply to my own group as well, i wouldn't get to control who flies under my faction's colors. The price we would pay for an egalitarian system where we keep the sense of being small cogs in big wheels.

All those are details. Clan system can be implemented in many optional variations simultaneously. But in any way some kind of a clan tag (and some in-game global clan communication) should be implemented.