greetings. i'm actually new here to the forums, this is my first post.
i'd like to warn in advance that this is long, and as such i've tried to make a very brief TLDR at the bottom, but it doesn't touch on any of my specific suggestions as much as it explains the gist of the post.
onward then.
there are, in so far as i know that this is accurate, 75,844 minor factions - https://eddb.io/faction
using the link above, and through time in my travels, i've realized that many if not all of these factions were named/created procedurally. this is why they have colors in their names: red cartel, or blue mafia, etc.
seriously, there are too many factions types, let alone individual factions. let's go through some of the ANARCHY government systems with a criminal element associated title. we have:
crew, gang, posse, cartel, mob, mafia, rats, boys, brotherhood, dragons, pirates - to name just a few.
if we expand on that a bit, let's add a random color: we'll use blue
a simple search using only the word BLUE in the name yields 2608 results, 10 of which are allied to alliance, roughly 200 empire, 1000 federation and the rest independent. government types are split to corporate or anarchy exclusively.
what is your current level of interest for any of these factions?
i can tell you of the factions that are currently, and for the foreseeable future, meaningful to me:
sirius corporation
eurybia blue mafia
federation
empire
li yong-rui
that's it.
those are the only factions, organizations, or individual powers that i currently care about at all, whatsoever. i only care about them in that i need to maintain my powerplay rank for the week, that i need to increase my rep with blue mafia because i got hosed when i leveled it to cordial when 2 minutes later i was disconnected and demoted to neutral again after i logged back in, and now have to grind a whole lot of missions to get to cordial again - so i can unlock liz ryder, and i care about sirius corp to an extent, because i'm already allied, but i need to go and unlock marco qwent. i care about federation and empire equally as in pertains to ranks.
do you see where i am going here?
i have an idea i'd like to throw out there on how to tie them all together and make them more integrated, interactive and meaningful
step 1 - consolidation
factions should be consolidated based on factors pertaining specifically to allegiance, government, and system.
we can do this in a number of ways.
example: take all BLUE [insert criminal enterprise, let's say MAFIA] factions, and combine them, galaxy wide. this combines 20 factions into 1. all have independent/anarchy states, and should send/receive as priority missions/passengers to/from each other.
we can use these identifiers as secondary ways of consolidation, combining factions using the same colors under parent organizations or however it needs to be done on the backend. you could use this as an opportunity to drive home some in game story telling narrative, and roll it out in waves - "such and such organizations are consolidating under the banner of such and such in order to solidify their standing within such and such systems, or to diversify our assets within blah blah blah".
if we follow this same process for all of the various communist groups, democratic groups, etc, this could cut the number of overall factions by ~50%. i openly admit i haven't done the math here, but this should be a good estimate. even having 50% fewer factions would still give us a huge number of over 30,000 individual factions.
step 2 - faction reputation
let's apply some meaningful benefit to players who take the time to choose which factions they ally themselves with, and adjust npc interactions to accommodate that playstyle.
bounty hunters could gain benefits such as increased credit % per bounty turned in to allied system factions. traders could get a similar benefit, something monetary. explorers could be given increased credits for exploration data. pirates and smugglers, well i'm not sure what you could offer them other than more money - see where i'm going here?
step 3 - powerplay
now that we've consolidated the minor factions into fewer numbers, and larger organizations, let's align some of them with powers! obvious, this could lead to interesting mechanics as it pertains to powerplay features such as fortification and undermining.
if we can apply the reputation grind to become allied with a chosen faction or organization, let's offer some incentive to gain that good standing in a way that provides a benefit to players wanting to utilize the powerplay mechanic.
example - player is allied with faction xyz in system abc which is exploited by such and such power. now, that player has access to say a 20% increase merit/influence gain for fortifying/undermining that system; every 100 power commodity allocations delivered could net you an extra 20 merits. etc. apply similar concepts for other powerplay functionality.
step 4 - emergent game mechanics
let's apply some more emergent content using the now consolidated and integrated faction/powerplay system even further in order to bring more activity to the more populated systems - let's say anything with 100,000 population or more, or the systems that are in some sort of growth/turmoil - in particular: boom, war, civil war, outbreak, famine, election, lawless and anarchy states. also, let's specifically add powerplay states that are either in expansion or turmoil.
depending on the controlling faction and powerplay representative, or lack thereof, we could introduce instanced events for pvpers, bounty hunters, traders, miners, and bus drivers. generate a handful of preset scenarios similar to any Unknown Signal Source only make them picked from a pool associated with that system state. for instance, systems in states of open war controlled by an allied faction with an allied powerplay rep could see bounty hunters engaging larger fleets of enemies, and being successful leads to gaining yet a further increase in merits and credits. create similar scenarios for bus drivers using their buses to deliver fleeing refugees from a burning station, offering greater material or commodity rarity rewards.
summary -
by consolidating all of the like-minded or similarly goal oriented minor factions, we can now attribute those factions to certain playstyles. using the example i gave in step one BLUE MAFIA, being who they are and as their name indicates, this can be a pirate friendly faction. apply the same to all MAFIA, MOB, CARTEL, CLAN, GANG etc factions.
the main problem, as i see it, with having so many factions is that none of them, outside of a couple of instances where they are necessary for permits or unlocking engineers, is that the overwhelming majority of these factions are completely trivial and meaningless in the overall grand scheme as it pertains to players. they're gatekeepers to better paying missions and canon fodder for bounty hunters, and that's it.
one of the things i see come up often is that 'the galaxy is empty' or similar lines of thought. i don't necessarily agree, yet, in that i'm still new-ish and haven't gone off on a 50k light year voyage to the other side and back. i haven't seen all the sights that are supposed to be points of interest. i've only seen 2 megaships, and encountered thargoids 5 times total. similarly i haven't yet done any pvp combat, or multicrew, or even flown in a wing. i spend most of my time in solo, and don't have any friends in game other than my buddy travis, who hasn't logged in since he bought it on a steam sale.
as an mmo veteran who legitimately loggged well over 6 months /played just on my primary character in world of warcraft (when i finally quit wow about a year and a half ago, i had 12 characters, and had been playing since 2005...), playing in higher end world ranked competitive raiding guilds, i found reputation systems and the grinds associated meaningful mostly because there was a carrot at the end of the stick, and when i got to it in the end, i did get to eat that carrot.
after spending a week or 3 grinding reputation with argent dawn, i unlocked naxxramas, which was the hardest and biggest raid in the game - it was end game content for the better part of several years, even after the burning crusade expansion drew to a conclusion it remained incredibly difficult. i did that before the first expansion released, and it took a lot of time. the reward at the end was just unlocking a gate, but it was a carrot worth chasing.
using wow for another example, they eventually added class specific scenarios and one of those was for the character i played, a warlock, and it was simply an arena encounter with an extremely difficult npc. to have that type of encounter translate to elite dangerous, it would be the equivalent of taking on a thargoid capital ship + wingmen in an a-rated sidewinder.
i would love to see some more challenging and/or interactive gameplay events that we could unlock after working towards higher ranks via factions/powerplay. they don't need to be huge scripted events with assets that don't already exist in the game as it is either. add a few abandoned capital/mega ships out there for miners to scavenge/salvage, or for bounty hunters to protect those miners. send players off to do patrol missions with security forces if they're of the law abiding type, or to fight them if they aren't. if i'm a miner, mining all day in my type 9, and i'm allied with such and such mining corporation, and their transport and capital ship came under attack by thargoids 4 jumps away from my home system, maybe i can get a message from such and such mining corp offering a mission to go and bring them supplies or fuel, and when i drop out of supercruise there's a small battle going on around the ship between its escort vipers and some thargoid scouts - i have to move quickly before i or my objective become targets.
i know this is long winded and not particularly well put together, but i want to see this game become the great game that i think it can be. after 150 hours, i can easily say the game is good. i think that a lot of elements are in place and can be tied together more cohesively in a way that takes this game up to the next level and become great. most of the suggestions i have already utilize instances, which is a great tried and true system for situation specific scripted events. taking existing faction tables and consolidate them, and then integrate those factions and reputations with powerplay, and tying them into those events - think highlighted unknown signal sources here - with some increased incentivisation for participation, and now you've got a stew cooking. when spawning these events, you could even give priorty to their locations - let's say you make them most likely to spawn in proximity to earth-like, volcanic, and ringed planets, followed by suns, water worlds, etc. in doing so you ensure that there are less encounters happening in deep space, and rather near objects creating better environments, visually, for the events to occur in.
i'm not trying to complain that this isn't there, or we need that, or this is broken, etc. i could go on and on about a buy/sell all button on the commodities window, or a claim all rewards button on the missions menu that shows all of the assorted rewards on 1 screen rather than the 20 i have to click through now. i am not here to about how we only interact with npcs via screens of text, or gunfire. i'm not trying to complain about the lack of cinematic storytelling, or storytelling at all - in game anyway. this isn't a post to whine about rebuy costs, or beg for upgrades to my favorite ship (dbx) because it doesn't have enough module space to carry: AMFS + shields + srv + fuel scoop + scanners AND cargo OR a passenger cabin, and really needs another class 2 slot so it can have one or the other. i'm also not going to complain that if as much effort was put into sound design as were put into the user interface and tutorials, then this game would be game of the year best seller for 3 years running on steam. nope. not here to do any of that.
what i'm trying to get at, is that as an mmo, i believe this game really does have a lot to offer. perhaps not necessarily with my ideas, but perhaps somehow find a way to integration factions, reputation and powerplay, and then i believe these systems can really become more feature rich experiences. doing so could provide opportunities for advancing story elements within the game, and with new galnet audio features, could provide an opportunity to bring a lot of news and activities to pilots across the galaxy.
i do realize these things take time to implement, and that's why i've tried to come up with a way to present it using specifically only features or elements that currently exist in the game as it stands. in the end what we're talking about are modifications to background systems which could probably have some number of unintended consequences of just a few switches were flipped and all of my ideas were implemented at once. i know these things need testing and iteration.
but please, for all the players out there playing the game now, and those who will play in the future, consider some of these ideas as a way to improve these systems for the betterment of everyone.
tl;dr -
i'm not a developer, but i hope there could be some added depth and meaningfulness brought to factions, reputation, and powerplay through an integration of the 3, along with some scripted instanced events. i believe there exists a way to fully integrate these currently in game features and assets, at least in the short term with little to possibly no need for new asset creation, in a better way, which i've tried to roughly outline above, that could create some vibrant environmental encounters, streamlined reputation and rank grinding, and overall more enjoyable experiences for players.
if anyone has any feedback, criticism, or otherwise want yell at me about how i'm wrong, i'll be out in space. hopefully i'll see some of you out there.
signing out
CMDR eviscerations
i'd like to warn in advance that this is long, and as such i've tried to make a very brief TLDR at the bottom, but it doesn't touch on any of my specific suggestions as much as it explains the gist of the post.
onward then.
there are, in so far as i know that this is accurate, 75,844 minor factions - https://eddb.io/faction
using the link above, and through time in my travels, i've realized that many if not all of these factions were named/created procedurally. this is why they have colors in their names: red cartel, or blue mafia, etc.
seriously, there are too many factions types, let alone individual factions. let's go through some of the ANARCHY government systems with a criminal element associated title. we have:
crew, gang, posse, cartel, mob, mafia, rats, boys, brotherhood, dragons, pirates - to name just a few.
if we expand on that a bit, let's add a random color: we'll use blue
a simple search using only the word BLUE in the name yields 2608 results, 10 of which are allied to alliance, roughly 200 empire, 1000 federation and the rest independent. government types are split to corporate or anarchy exclusively.
what is your current level of interest for any of these factions?
i can tell you of the factions that are currently, and for the foreseeable future, meaningful to me:
sirius corporation
eurybia blue mafia
federation
empire
li yong-rui
that's it.
those are the only factions, organizations, or individual powers that i currently care about at all, whatsoever. i only care about them in that i need to maintain my powerplay rank for the week, that i need to increase my rep with blue mafia because i got hosed when i leveled it to cordial when 2 minutes later i was disconnected and demoted to neutral again after i logged back in, and now have to grind a whole lot of missions to get to cordial again - so i can unlock liz ryder, and i care about sirius corp to an extent, because i'm already allied, but i need to go and unlock marco qwent. i care about federation and empire equally as in pertains to ranks.
do you see where i am going here?
i have an idea i'd like to throw out there on how to tie them all together and make them more integrated, interactive and meaningful
step 1 - consolidation
factions should be consolidated based on factors pertaining specifically to allegiance, government, and system.
we can do this in a number of ways.
example: take all BLUE [insert criminal enterprise, let's say MAFIA] factions, and combine them, galaxy wide. this combines 20 factions into 1. all have independent/anarchy states, and should send/receive as priority missions/passengers to/from each other.
we can use these identifiers as secondary ways of consolidation, combining factions using the same colors under parent organizations or however it needs to be done on the backend. you could use this as an opportunity to drive home some in game story telling narrative, and roll it out in waves - "such and such organizations are consolidating under the banner of such and such in order to solidify their standing within such and such systems, or to diversify our assets within blah blah blah".
if we follow this same process for all of the various communist groups, democratic groups, etc, this could cut the number of overall factions by ~50%. i openly admit i haven't done the math here, but this should be a good estimate. even having 50% fewer factions would still give us a huge number of over 30,000 individual factions.
step 2 - faction reputation
let's apply some meaningful benefit to players who take the time to choose which factions they ally themselves with, and adjust npc interactions to accommodate that playstyle.
bounty hunters could gain benefits such as increased credit % per bounty turned in to allied system factions. traders could get a similar benefit, something monetary. explorers could be given increased credits for exploration data. pirates and smugglers, well i'm not sure what you could offer them other than more money - see where i'm going here?
step 3 - powerplay
now that we've consolidated the minor factions into fewer numbers, and larger organizations, let's align some of them with powers! obvious, this could lead to interesting mechanics as it pertains to powerplay features such as fortification and undermining.
if we can apply the reputation grind to become allied with a chosen faction or organization, let's offer some incentive to gain that good standing in a way that provides a benefit to players wanting to utilize the powerplay mechanic.
example - player is allied with faction xyz in system abc which is exploited by such and such power. now, that player has access to say a 20% increase merit/influence gain for fortifying/undermining that system; every 100 power commodity allocations delivered could net you an extra 20 merits. etc. apply similar concepts for other powerplay functionality.
step 4 - emergent game mechanics
let's apply some more emergent content using the now consolidated and integrated faction/powerplay system even further in order to bring more activity to the more populated systems - let's say anything with 100,000 population or more, or the systems that are in some sort of growth/turmoil - in particular: boom, war, civil war, outbreak, famine, election, lawless and anarchy states. also, let's specifically add powerplay states that are either in expansion or turmoil.
depending on the controlling faction and powerplay representative, or lack thereof, we could introduce instanced events for pvpers, bounty hunters, traders, miners, and bus drivers. generate a handful of preset scenarios similar to any Unknown Signal Source only make them picked from a pool associated with that system state. for instance, systems in states of open war controlled by an allied faction with an allied powerplay rep could see bounty hunters engaging larger fleets of enemies, and being successful leads to gaining yet a further increase in merits and credits. create similar scenarios for bus drivers using their buses to deliver fleeing refugees from a burning station, offering greater material or commodity rarity rewards.
summary -
by consolidating all of the like-minded or similarly goal oriented minor factions, we can now attribute those factions to certain playstyles. using the example i gave in step one BLUE MAFIA, being who they are and as their name indicates, this can be a pirate friendly faction. apply the same to all MAFIA, MOB, CARTEL, CLAN, GANG etc factions.
the main problem, as i see it, with having so many factions is that none of them, outside of a couple of instances where they are necessary for permits or unlocking engineers, is that the overwhelming majority of these factions are completely trivial and meaningless in the overall grand scheme as it pertains to players. they're gatekeepers to better paying missions and canon fodder for bounty hunters, and that's it.
one of the things i see come up often is that 'the galaxy is empty' or similar lines of thought. i don't necessarily agree, yet, in that i'm still new-ish and haven't gone off on a 50k light year voyage to the other side and back. i haven't seen all the sights that are supposed to be points of interest. i've only seen 2 megaships, and encountered thargoids 5 times total. similarly i haven't yet done any pvp combat, or multicrew, or even flown in a wing. i spend most of my time in solo, and don't have any friends in game other than my buddy travis, who hasn't logged in since he bought it on a steam sale.
as an mmo veteran who legitimately loggged well over 6 months /played just on my primary character in world of warcraft (when i finally quit wow about a year and a half ago, i had 12 characters, and had been playing since 2005...), playing in higher end world ranked competitive raiding guilds, i found reputation systems and the grinds associated meaningful mostly because there was a carrot at the end of the stick, and when i got to it in the end, i did get to eat that carrot.
after spending a week or 3 grinding reputation with argent dawn, i unlocked naxxramas, which was the hardest and biggest raid in the game - it was end game content for the better part of several years, even after the burning crusade expansion drew to a conclusion it remained incredibly difficult. i did that before the first expansion released, and it took a lot of time. the reward at the end was just unlocking a gate, but it was a carrot worth chasing.
using wow for another example, they eventually added class specific scenarios and one of those was for the character i played, a warlock, and it was simply an arena encounter with an extremely difficult npc. to have that type of encounter translate to elite dangerous, it would be the equivalent of taking on a thargoid capital ship + wingmen in an a-rated sidewinder.
i would love to see some more challenging and/or interactive gameplay events that we could unlock after working towards higher ranks via factions/powerplay. they don't need to be huge scripted events with assets that don't already exist in the game as it is either. add a few abandoned capital/mega ships out there for miners to scavenge/salvage, or for bounty hunters to protect those miners. send players off to do patrol missions with security forces if they're of the law abiding type, or to fight them if they aren't. if i'm a miner, mining all day in my type 9, and i'm allied with such and such mining corporation, and their transport and capital ship came under attack by thargoids 4 jumps away from my home system, maybe i can get a message from such and such mining corp offering a mission to go and bring them supplies or fuel, and when i drop out of supercruise there's a small battle going on around the ship between its escort vipers and some thargoid scouts - i have to move quickly before i or my objective become targets.
i know this is long winded and not particularly well put together, but i want to see this game become the great game that i think it can be. after 150 hours, i can easily say the game is good. i think that a lot of elements are in place and can be tied together more cohesively in a way that takes this game up to the next level and become great. most of the suggestions i have already utilize instances, which is a great tried and true system for situation specific scripted events. taking existing faction tables and consolidate them, and then integrate those factions and reputations with powerplay, and tying them into those events - think highlighted unknown signal sources here - with some increased incentivisation for participation, and now you've got a stew cooking. when spawning these events, you could even give priorty to their locations - let's say you make them most likely to spawn in proximity to earth-like, volcanic, and ringed planets, followed by suns, water worlds, etc. in doing so you ensure that there are less encounters happening in deep space, and rather near objects creating better environments, visually, for the events to occur in.
i'm not trying to complain that this isn't there, or we need that, or this is broken, etc. i could go on and on about a buy/sell all button on the commodities window, or a claim all rewards button on the missions menu that shows all of the assorted rewards on 1 screen rather than the 20 i have to click through now. i am not here to about how we only interact with npcs via screens of text, or gunfire. i'm not trying to complain about the lack of cinematic storytelling, or storytelling at all - in game anyway. this isn't a post to whine about rebuy costs, or beg for upgrades to my favorite ship (dbx) because it doesn't have enough module space to carry: AMFS + shields + srv + fuel scoop + scanners AND cargo OR a passenger cabin, and really needs another class 2 slot so it can have one or the other. i'm also not going to complain that if as much effort was put into sound design as were put into the user interface and tutorials, then this game would be game of the year best seller for 3 years running on steam. nope. not here to do any of that.
what i'm trying to get at, is that as an mmo, i believe this game really does have a lot to offer. perhaps not necessarily with my ideas, but perhaps somehow find a way to integration factions, reputation and powerplay, and then i believe these systems can really become more feature rich experiences. doing so could provide opportunities for advancing story elements within the game, and with new galnet audio features, could provide an opportunity to bring a lot of news and activities to pilots across the galaxy.
i do realize these things take time to implement, and that's why i've tried to come up with a way to present it using specifically only features or elements that currently exist in the game as it stands. in the end what we're talking about are modifications to background systems which could probably have some number of unintended consequences of just a few switches were flipped and all of my ideas were implemented at once. i know these things need testing and iteration.
but please, for all the players out there playing the game now, and those who will play in the future, consider some of these ideas as a way to improve these systems for the betterment of everyone.
tl;dr -
i'm not a developer, but i hope there could be some added depth and meaningfulness brought to factions, reputation, and powerplay through an integration of the 3, along with some scripted instanced events. i believe there exists a way to fully integrate these currently in game features and assets, at least in the short term with little to possibly no need for new asset creation, in a better way, which i've tried to roughly outline above, that could create some vibrant environmental encounters, streamlined reputation and rank grinding, and overall more enjoyable experiences for players.
if anyone has any feedback, criticism, or otherwise want yell at me about how i'm wrong, i'll be out in space. hopefully i'll see some of you out there.
signing out
CMDR eviscerations