Easy, but still a single point failure.
Allow the leader to delegate to trusted members of the Faction.
It's something that you do when you're head of an area in real life, so why wouldn't it work in a game?
Easy, but still a single point failure.
Firstly, my apologies for not understanding this. PS4 cockroach just feeding off the crumbs falling from the table...
Wasn't the Colonia Expansion Initiative a nod in this direction?
Honestly I have read as much as I can but my brain just hurts now, it's only small. Someone explain it to me? Pretty please?
CEI was for existing player factions to have a... new player faction established in Colonia. That is all, there was no new functionalities etc. So now the winners have 2 player factions - one in the Bubble and one in Colonia. And they can't pledge or show allegiance to either. Not in game at least.
Ah OK, I think understand a little better. It's not what you are asking for, but do you think it could be a kind of test to see what kind of interest there is in player factions getting more functionality in the game? I don't understand what you mean by 'player faction established in Colonia' as I've come to understand that player factions don't have any real mechanics in game.
Sorry I know I am not really adding anything to your thread, which by the way seems a good idea and one I would support in principal. I've seen the Winged Hussars logos/name a lot in the forum and your faction seems to be a great asset to the community. If there is somewhere you can point me without having to answer my daft questions I would be happy to go and read up!
Hope this explains that to you! And sorry if I sound a bit chaotic, I'm tired after work today...
Firstly, my apologies for not understanding this. PS4 cockroach just feeding off the crumbs falling from the table...
Wasn't the Colonia Expansion Initiative a nod in this direction?
Honestly I have read as much as I can but my brain just hurts now, it's only small. Someone explain it to me? Pretty please?
CEI was for existing player factions to have a... new player faction established in Colonia. That is all, there was no new functionalities etc. So now the winners have 2 player factions - one in the Bubble and one in Colonia. And they can't pledge or show allegiance to either. Not in game at least.
Not to mention that you have to modify the name of the group in Colonia so it is not the same name as you normal in game faction the way I understand it
I would really like to see this implemented. The process needs to stay in the hands of the faction leaders though. Sure there will be 5c attempts but the leaders can vet during the application process and remove the faction label if its needed. Nothings perfect but its not like said faction leaders would let problems arise out of freely handing out tags.
Hostile | -2% |
Unfriendly | -1% |
Neutral | 0% |
Cordial | 1% |
Friendly | 2% |
Allied | 3% |
I am not a big friend of "managed groups" in a game (saying that as one of the Admins of the "EDC Flying Tiger Squadron", who are registered with FD as well right from the start about two years ago and who are present in 19 systems, "owning" most of them - and who are in control of 35 stations in those). As such, I don't like the idea to create any in-game groups which get managed by players.
Instead, I would propose a very simple thing, which would actually support even more players in playing their game in the way they want to play:
FD should just add the option to pledge allegiance to any minor faction (of course only to one at the same time) - maybe in the same way as the pledging in PP works, only for a minor faction (and with less advantages and less punishment for "defecting" to another faction).
This way, even single players could pledge allegiance to their favourite faction (be it a player faction or not - after all, who cares if your player faction has more supporters than the ones who are actually "registered" on your own web-/Facebook-page? The more, the better!
And as a bonus for doing so, every player who is pledged to a minor faction would e.g. get a bonus / discount when trading at any station owned by that minor faction - depending on your own reputation with that faction, e.g.
Hostile -2% Unfriendly -1% Neutral 0% Cordial 1% Friendly 2% Allied 3%
The bonus/discount would be applied to everything at the stations owned by the minor faction, e.g. commodities, refuel/restock/repair, shipyard, outfitting, bounties (only from that minor faction), combat bonds (only from that minor faction) and exploration data - I would exclude fines, though (for quite obvious reasons - after all, you are not supposed to work against that minor faction, right?).
This would help people to kind of "feel at home" in the systems owned by the minor faction they pledged alliance to, without taking away anything. And since everybody could simply pledge to any minor faction, it wouldn't give members of player groups any advantages over players who don't want to be part of a player group.
As I wrote, defecting should work in a similar way as it does in PP - only with less punishment (since it's not such a big deal compared to PP), e.g. that you cannot pledge to another minor faction for 24 (or 48) hours after defecting (to reduce the exploit chances).
Since you don't get any "secrets" by just pledging to a group, it shouldn't be a problem for your group's role play and goals - since all your RP and lore are on your own group's web-/Facebook page, so somebody who pledges to your player faction in game won't get any hold on anything like that (unless your members tell them in the chat... but it would be fun to have the possibilities to have some "spies" - read: players who pledge to the minor faction in game only and then try to get gather intelligence from your group member's via chat - in game through that as well :O ).
This idea would be quite inclusive (and for sure much easier to implement for FD, since no "group management interface" is needed) than having player managed groups who can control who pledges to "their" minor faction.
Just my 2 cents.
This^^
I'd be happy if there was a time gate to Pledge to an in game Minor Faction.
Allied plus a month cool off. = Pledge.
Defect = two month cool down.
That should be a deterrent to any but the most hardcore of False Flaggers.
Countdown to "Pledge Day"
"but anyone can add the same Ship ID as we use and that's no good."
No individual player should ever have admin privileges over any aspect of any other player's game.
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.
Could work (I especially like the cool-downs) - although it would not seem to handle pledged CMDRs attacking / destroying each other - I'd expect that there would have to be some form of penalty for attacking a clean CMDR pledged to the same Faction.
Why?
People in the UK atacck people in the UK all the time. We have a C & P system in game (in the UK obviously as well), I cannot see why it is different from a player pledged to faction A attacking a clean NPC form faction B.
Simon
Why should CMDRs receive no Faction penalty for attacking / destroying CMDRs pledged to the same Faction? There'd quite reasonably be a reputation hit that could, ultimately, forcibly un-pledge the attacking CMDR.
Pledging to a Faction could be considered to me akin to applying for residency (as in most cases the Faction in question will not be in the home system of the CMDR) - and bad behavior would reasonably result in expulsion.