rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
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.
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.
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