Better player faction integration between outside and inside the game

[rootsrat]

For me, it's about keeping players from controlling anything. If the BGS can handle it, the BGS should handle it. I would avoid any in-game perks or devices that is gated, gifted, or bestowed by a player.

Say, a player is in a PG for a long while, he is allied, and has a bunch invested in his Faction. Then, he has a tiff the the Grand Poobah and is ejected from the PG. In your suggestion, that player would loose the tags he earned, over personal issues. Not good. Leaving it in the hands of the BGS, that player would have to annoy the whole Faction, before loosing his tags. This is just a random example, and isn't reflective of anyone, it just points out a flaw, that has been part of the Generic Guild/Clan/Cult scenes since the dawning of time.

We have a clean slate here, well almost, we should preserve the uniqueness of E|D, not homogenize it into all the other offerings floating around out there.

But surely in the example above the same thing happens outside of the game in the actual group, so whether it's replicated in game or not doesn't really matter.

And I gave a counter-example above. If my group has a certain expansion plan, someone can unwillingly working against us in solo, doing missions and dropping exploration data in the system we don't want the expansion to go from. So he effectively wears the badge for acting against the faction agenda. That's not really fair towards all the other players that work for the faction and according to our expansion plan.

 

[Pro Cambarus]

Er, you mighty not have gotten the memo - but right now, people can do missions for your player factions as well and as such do whatever they want without you having any chance to influence anything they do. So nothing would change, besides the fact that people would be able to show that they are supporting a minor faction (and to maybe get some better prices and discounts from them in the process).

So what exactly is your problem? That you don't get more control over "your" player faction? If it's that, then I am actually happy if that will never be the case, since this would mean that you are telling other people how to play their game...

Always remember: there are no clans or any "player lead" factions in the game (and they are not wanted, either - that's confirmed by FD as such), you can only decide to have a player group which will try to influence (see it as "lobbying") a minor faction (for which you could choose a name and government type as well - ONCE) by doing missions and other stuff for them - but the BGS is the one which decides what happens in the end, and the BGS is not (and should not be) controlled by any player group.

As such, your objection actually is not an objection, but a request for more power to player groups in game - which, as I wrote before, I don't like (and obviously neither does DB like it).

- - - Updated - - -



Well, as I wrote in my answer before, it wouldn't change a single thing if you can control who "pledges" to a "player created (not controlled!) minor faction" - since everybody can still take missions from that group, shoot down ships of other groups (or even the player created faction itself) without you being able to do anything about it (as it should be). The only thing this would add would be some kind of "feeling privileged because I am a member of a group" in game - which as such is not a good thing at all. And the whole "nobody should be able to do something we don't like while wearing our colours" thing is just something to play snuggle bunny with your feelings - it doesn't work like that in the real world, either. For example, if I want to put "Hell's Angels" on the back of a leather jacket and wear it, I can do that without any problems - but I will be at least beaten up every time somebody who actually is a member of them will catch me. You are actually asking to take away that option from the game.

So what you are actually asking for is to be able to control other player's behaviour - which is something I will oppose (and do so quite vocally) as long as I am playing the game myself.

To borrow your eloquent, stylish and very impressive paraphrasing saying that the BGS controls what happens in the end is like mightily missing the memo of the F : Dev about only player actions having effect on the BGS. (Or lack of in the case of famine for instance.) Also I understand that you might be in favour of laissez faire factions that are not managed by any communities behind them, that would be a good explanation of having four times as many systems in expansion range than necessary for a single expansion. Or you might prefer your faction to work like an abandoned one. All of these are fair enough, the auto pledge option could be a great one to opt for under those circumstances. (If our PMF would be in a state of an abandoned one or would expand to random systems from many high influ systems and I would be one of the coordinators the board would fire me on the same day and the pilots would deny to carry out operations set out in daily briefings. That's just to show how different PMFs might be.)

The substantial functional difference between auto and community approved pledging is that supporters dedicated enough to pledge (or spies dedicated enough to infiltrate) would seek out the player group behind the PMF so they could be incorporated to the information flow of the group and could make informed decisions to really support (or hinder) activities of the group and PMF instead of messing unknowingly and having no chance to play with and within the group accessing all the added immersion and opportunities.

You can easily understand that this substantial new opportunity would not take away any liberties from any players that are provided by the game engine, that is a framework but not an AI behind the player group dynamics.

 

[rdizz]

Straight up, guilds/clans whatever should be factions in game. Player factions should be able to choose a system out of the 400 billion... And start a small station this would act just like the npc stations but can only join the faction via invitation. Thisn would come with a player designed template driven decal for your ship and maybe paintjobs

 

[Mohrgan]

Again - I don't want any control. All I would like to see is for members of OUR group to proudly display OUR faction's name below our Cmdr names. I'd like to be able to accept who can display that name. That's all.

No faction control, no change to anyone's gameplay or ability to support/act against our faction. JUST the display of our faction's name for our members

It's just a cosmetic thing that means a lot to us. I really can't understand why some players oppose that so badly... Does it hurt that I will be able to decide if someone can't display the name? But they can't do it now either. So literally NOTHING changes for them.

Someone may say it's bragging and if you see that way, fine - we want to brag about what we've achieved over the last to years, because we're proud of it If someone sees that as a bad thing, fine - everyone is free to have an opinion.

But what I propose has literally no impact whatsoever on anyone's gameplay.

---

Any source for "The idea is that a player group shouldn't involve benefits for joining, besides joining" or is it just your view on things? Because my view is different.

As for the "In the spirit of inclusion and how the game works now, expanding how a Faction can be supported is something everyone can get behind, and take advantage of. Whether you are a 'joiner' or not." bit - what I propose won't change that at all.

The source is certainly my views on the subject.

It would change if there is a certain number of Factions who's tags can only be gotten and retained at the whim of another player. Pledging to the BGS aspect of your Faction would remove the chance that a player could lose all of his standing with a Faction at the mercy of the/a gatekeeper. Standing that he gained through actual support of the Faction, not the/a Gatekeeper. If the BGS can do a thing, the BGS should do a thing. The BGS is what ties us all together.

- - - Updated - - -

But surely in the example above the same thing happens outside of the game in the actual group, so whether it's replicated in game or not doesn't really matter.

And I gave a counter-example above. If my group has a certain expansion plan, someone can unwillingly working against us in solo, doing missions and dropping exploration data in the system we don't want the expansion to go from. So he effectively wears the badge for acting against the faction agenda. That's not really fair towards all the other players that work for the faction and according to our expansion plan.

It could and does matter. Being stricken from a PG's roster should be separate from losing Tags earned through activity and time. Making involvement the key to ID'ing with a tag, rather than another player controlling that. This is the big disconnect. Do you own a Faction, or do you ally with the Faction. Are you the Boss, or the Associate. By design, you are an associate. An Associate that facilitates a facet of the Factions operations.

Being able to Tag, or not tag, will not alter having uninformed player running over your BGS. My Faction is in a highly populated system, and it can be rough staying on top. If the action awards a player influence, the action is beneficial to the Faction. Period. Your organization;s goals are secondary, in my view. No Factions can be excluded from the ups and downs of the BGS. If the BGS can do a thing, then the BGS should do that thing.

 

[rootsrat]

Some good news here guys!

Hey guys.

We do still plan to implement proper clan support but I unfortunately can't give any sort of an ETA right now.

I realise that I've pretty much just said the exact same thing you heard a year ago but I simply can't offer anything more concrete at this time

Do rest assured that we are very well aware of the demand for this though.

 

[SaliVader]

Some good news here guys!

Yay!

 

[lenna]

Some good news here guys!

Let's hope this does not turn out to be a bad idea along the lines of heading down the Eve clan route - I can see that turning into an unmitigated disaster for a lot of people.

Again - I don't want any control. All I would like to see is for members of OUR group to proudly display OUR faction's name below our Cmdr names. I'd like to be able to accept who can display that name. That's all.

No faction control, no change to anyone's gameplay or ability to support/act against our faction. JUST the display of our faction's name for our members

In one breath you are talking about controlling who can represent the group, then in the next you are saying no faction control. You can not have it both ways, the former contradicts the latter.

Short answer, no "player guilds" do not exist in ED. They are only there in a meta-play context.

I don't disagree with the principle of being able to display a minor faction you are pledging to (c/f Power Play) but overall no-player should have a say as to who does so.

 

[Mohrgan]

Some good news here guys!

I wish there was a real quote from someone at FD. If that was a post from FD, show the whole quote, with the name of the poster included.

 

[lenna]

I wish there was a real quote from someone at FD. If that was a post from FD, show the whole quote, with the name of the poster included.

Just click the (Source) tag... the quote tells you the poster is CMDR Luna

 

[rootsrat]

Let's hope this does not turn out to be a bad idea along the lines of heading down the Eve clan route - I can see that turning into an unmitigated disaster for a lot of people.

In one breath you are talking about controlling who can represent the group, then in the next you are saying no faction control. You can not have it both ways, the former contradicts the latter.

Short answer, no "player guilds" do not exist in ED. They are only there in a meta-play context.

I don't disagree with the principle of being able to display a minor faction you are pledging to (c/f Power Play) but overall no-player should have a say as to who does so.

We'll just have to agree to disagree then

 

[DNA-Decay]

I'll be right back.

 

[DNA-Decay]

Just going to reiterate the core proposal and the credible opposition to a key aspect of it.

PROPOSITION:

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 idea is out there in the community...

Thanks.

That quote has cut the introduction but is otherwise intact.
There is pretty much universal support for most of this proposal EXCEPT:

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

Against this we have:

Jane Turner of Communism Interstellar:

In game gating, beyond simply reaching allied has to be possible. I get the impression that the reputation scale goes a long way past the limit that you can see. e.g I've abandoned 7 missions in one go for CIU and still been allied.

Even if it didn't there could easily be a time gate added. 2 months would be appropriate

Schlack of the AEDC.

Agree with OP, Jane's mechanism here probably better for existing mechanics and FD's Ethos of the game.

And goemon of the generally sensible and articulate.

while i share your sentiment, i'm strongly against your proposal as it is creating a bottleneck (and a powerfull one).

as with private groups acting as "servers" having one to accept pledges isn't working nicely, it is a tedious workaround. sometimes leading to burn out, power plays and similar things.

instead of it, i'd prefer picking up the pretty inclusive minor faction mechanic, and allow anyone to pledge, as long as he is allied (and stay it till friendly/cordial, as we do know that working the bgs sometimes require to work against your faction).

It's a core point of contention about what type of control the Player Group should have over 'their' in-game minor faction.

 

[rootsrat]

Fair enough, I totally understand that there are players who'd rather don't have other player control who can or cannot display the faction tag. It's two different points of view, but we essentially want the same thing. I just hope we'll get it, one way or another. The recent post by FDEV gives me hope

 

[DNA-Decay]

Oh yeah I think we can agree that every group wants more visibility and affiliation.
Tag me up baby.

The disagreement is about whether the right to display a faction tag is given by an individual player / group founder / hand-me-down authority.
Or
Whether that choice is given to the individual CMDR by some form of in-game reputation grind and or time gate.


As an aside (and to be inflammatory as debate keeps this in people's minds) -
I'm going to suggest that the amount of control that some leaders want is reflected in their language. "My group", "My fleet", or on one memorable occasion "My fans"- even Rootstat does this in his OP. Whereas the ones rejecting this type of control tend to use "we" and "our".

Some of this will come from the older groups being "adopters" of minor factions. Whereas the new groups created their in-game minor faction. The older groups do not see the in-game faction as "themselves". More like that's the faction that your group is supporting. The faction would be much bigger than the Player Group or the CMDRs who support it.

And I think this difference is at the core of what Elite is and is not.

 

[rootsrat]

Oh yeah I think we can agree that every group wants more visibility and affiliation.
Tag me up baby.

The disagreement is about whether the right to display a faction tag is given by an individual player / group founder / hand-me-down authority.
Or
Whether that choice is given to the individual CMDR by some form of in-game reputation grind and or time gate.


As an aside (and to be inflammatory as debate keeps this in people's minds) -
I'm going to suggest that the amount of control that some leaders want is reflected in their language. "My group", "My fleet", or on one memorable occasion "My fans"- even Rootstat does this in his OP. Whereas the ones rejecting this type of control tend to use "we" and "our".

Some of this will come from the older groups being "adopters" of minor factions. Whereas the new groups created their in-game minor faction. The older groups do not see the in-game faction as "themselves". More like that's the faction that your group is supporting. The faction would be much bigger than the Player Group or the CMDRs who support it.

And I think this difference is at the core of what Elite is and is not.

I think that Elite is something very different to everyone

But you may be right - for the adopters it's "just" a faction they support. For the player created groups it's much more I guess - it's something we have actually created from the ground up, including all the history and lore - and we made what it is today.

Not sure how much you will get out of this, as it's fully in Polish, but here's a 1 year anniversary video of The Winged Hussars. I was meant to do the English subtitles, but never actually got to it... But that video shows what TWH means to us:
[video=youtube;S0yZlUNe4Jo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0yZlUNe4Jo[/video]

 

[DNA-Decay]

I think that Elite is something very different to everyone

But you may be right - for the adopters it's "just" a faction they support. For the player created groups it's much more I guess - it's something we have actually created from the ground up, including all the history and lore - and we made what it is today.

Here's a 1 year anniversary video of The Winged Hussars.

Half Hour Video Incoming!

Uh, it's going to be a while before I can get through a half hour video.

That "just" triggers me.

There is nothing "just" about the factions we support.
We have lore and history and artwork and story, and characters.
We are proud of our pedegree and our achievements.

Many AEDC videos are only available to members as they describe who we are, where we are , what we do, how we do it.
So I won't go for tat.

But
This is Victoria Wolf VI of Wolf 406 Transport & Co. You might remember her from the Rise to Power, when the Hussars were one of three in Border Coalition.

But she is not the only character for whom the AEDC has lore, history and on-going activity.
A google search for "Helena Stone" will bring up a pic of the Commodore of another AEDC supported in-game minor faction.

(...snip) it's something we have actually created from the ground up, including all the history and lore - and we made what it is today.[/URL]

It's the same with all the groups that 'adopted'.
They create the ethos, story and goals.
Communism Interstellar have made the Workers of Mainite what they are - and spread of Communism, throughout the bubble.

You should not doubt that other CMDRs feel less strongly for their group.
You see it in football and any team sport. Everyone has reasons to know their team is worth supporting and the others are rubbish.

 

[rootsrat]

I have written that somewhat on purpose

Just as I suspected - you understand how we feel about our faction and what it means to us and what it feels like to achieve something on our own. Subsequently, I don't understand why you wouldn't like to control who can wear your faction's name in game... Maybe it's a bit different for us, as we are way back at the border, where nobody really visits, so every single expansion, war effort, mining event, literally everything we have ever achieved was due to actions of our members, and nobody else. Maybe that is the reason I wouldn't like for just any random Commander to be able to wear our colours? It's our efforts and nobody else's and there is a sense of pride in that. I don't know, it's like someone else claiming praise for your success I guess.

Maybe it's different in the Core, where you have many random pilots supporting your faction. I didn't think of that aspect. Still, to me personally - it does matter who can and cannot wear our name, as we are a closed group that worked hard for the success we have achieved in our little area of space

 

[Pro Cambarus]

As an aside (and to be inflammatory as debate keeps this in people's minds) -
I'm going to suggest that the amount of control that some leaders want is reflected in their language. "My group", "My fleet", or on one memorable occasion "My fans"- even Rootstat does this in his OP. Whereas the ones rejecting this type of control tend to use "we" and "our".

That would be an elegant deduction with only one major pitfall: this is far from being true. Please read back and this question is addressed in many posts. Just ignoring these post and proposals would prove something very different to what you suggest.

As it is common knowledge that BGS does not manage a faction in any way more than the invisible hand manages Google or British Petrol it is more and more my impression that some of those who prefer "observed" factions to "managed and planned" factions try to lessen the management opportunities of other factions and gameplay styles by vocally opposing approved pledging rather than opting for the auto pledge for their faction and leaving the opportunity for approved pledging for others.

Pledging to the BGS aspect of your Faction would remove the chance that a player could lose all of his standing with a Faction at the mercy of the/a gatekeeper. Standing that he gained through actual support of the Faction, not the/a Gatekeeper. If the BGS can do a thing, the BGS should do a thing. The BGS is what ties us all together.

Being able to Tag, or not tag, will not alter having uninformed player running over your BGS. My Faction is in a highly populated system, and it can be rough staying on top. If the action awards a player influence, the action is beneficial to the Faction. Period. Your organization;s goals are secondary, in my view. No Factions can be excluded from the ups and downs of the BGS. If the BGS can do a thing, then the BGS should do that thing.

If / when your faction will expand to other systems you will realize that the BGS can do nothing, especially might not know in any way whether an action is beneficial to a minor faction. The mission system awards even self undermining MF missions with reputation. It does not direct an MFs actions, not designed to do so. BGS has no ups and no downs, only player actions affect the BGS. Players have no influence, they only have reputation, they might gain reputation by helping, not affecting or totally devastating the faction that constantly raises their reputation. The BGS cannot do anything else than it is programmed to: it translates player actions to states and influence. (Reputation is disconnected from many of these actions.)

This is Victoria Wolf VI of Wolf 406 Transport & Co.

That is a really nice follow up to what some PMF pioneered. I also agree that this adds to the immersion that fits in many kind of faction and activity styles, managed, observed or not territory (eg. service, charity, race, exploration or research) focused ones.

 

[Captain Thea Kreutzer]

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.

Would be a great idea i am sure most player groups would agree and it shouldnt be to hard to add in since almost all the A.I. are already appearing as minor factions+you can already choose a faction to side with in all of the conflict zones

 

[Vasious]

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.

I would support a more organic approach to Faction pledging not controlled by a Player, who is subject to human pressure of life, that can result in power vacuums, and power struggles.

As others have said suggested Allied or a high yet tier, limited to one Faction, that anyone can earn in game by their actions support a faction.

After all why should it fall to a player to hose who can get their Faction Emblem, if Cmdr Blogs who plays in solo, picks a faction they likes the name of, and adopts without ever knowing or contacting the Player group connected to that faction who wish to gate access to it.

I'd be quite chuffed if there were people who chose to support my faction not because they had met us, but because the faction Name, Super power (or independence), Government, and Blurb in the home system on the system map.