We've always worried about promoting Minor Factions - but do Majors now need some love?

[James Justice]

Honestly, I think its ultimately because major factions at this point cost too much. I think of it like this, if you spend thread after thread after thread building up a planet, or building up your faction's territory only to have it shattered because of someone who wants to "loldodge" or handwave their way through it using Rebellions and Invasions and such that is very disheartening. Don't get me wrong, I love rebellions, I love invasions (sorta). On paper, they are great ideas and a great way to tell stories. But like all great ideas, I think they need tweaking. The lightbulb took hundreds of tries before it worked, that didn't mean it was a bad idea.

The thing is you can do twenty posts to a dominion. Or you can do those twenty posts and get beskar armor with bells and whistles and a 10 for protection. The simple economics of it necessitate self-interest (especially on a board where armor and shooting is like 99.9999% of what goes on). Alternately, those twenty posts can get you a stygium cloaked ship and phrik armor in two different threads. The same amount of effort is given--but in different places with "better" results. It sounds selfish, sure, but we are all here for selfish reasons, to RP and have a good time. No one really comes here to give away soup at kitchens.

Also, there is the salt. Frankly, I have been underwhelmed with Invasions and I avoid them like the plague. The fall out of partaking in one is astronomical. The IC-OOC lines get blurred and there is a clear divide created. There are people who do not know jack about me OOC-ly who hate me because their one interaction with me was IC-ly in an invasion. True story. Granted, I get it, studying psychology and sociology I see how that can easily happen so I don't hold it too hard against them. But aside from that, the salt in Invasions makes the ocean look like freshwater.

I think that people are still being incredibly active, just on different levels. After all I think Cira said the factory approved like 100 subs in a week. Amazing stuff right there, top kuddos to those amazing men and women.

I like the idea of major, I really do. Even though James hasn't really helped any majors lately, and is an anarchist, I, Rygen the writer, like the idea. What I think is there needs to be more incentive for involvement. Maybe things that are more personal and tangible? These are just my thoughts. I do like this place and I think that there have been some awesome stories told here, I am looking forward to reading and writing more of them here.

Cheers.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Many people enjoy the idea of a major faction, many people have an idea for one, too. And, really, it isn't usually that their idea isn't good or that they don't really have the skills to be a faction leader (leadership, organization, etc), but that they simply do not try to create that faction.

And when they do, they don't go major.

There's a long list of reasons why this is the case, some of them are more personal while some of them have to do with how the system for factions and regulating activity for the map is done.

Here's a slew of personal reasons from nobody in particular:

• Afraid of not having enough time to manage a faction
• Afraid that nobody will join the faction
• Uncertain of how to grow the faction in-character through RP and don't like to handwave the faction and its lore/history into existence
• Afraid that the niche they are seeking to fill (if even a niche) is already being sought after by someone who is far more capable or well-known than they are and are hesitant to try to compete against them for major (because generally only one Sith/Jedi/etc faction ever makes it to major and survives when two arrive at the same time)
• Are too concerned with pandering to potential member interests that they never see an opportunity to actually create said faction
• Might want to be a member of a faction and not want to be the leader

Here's a few system-related reasons from nobody in particular:

• Might be a member of staff or codex or factory, thus feel they are not able to start or help manage a faction because of other responsibilities - and staff members are, generally, expected to choose between leading a major faction or being on staff.
• Regulation through activity requires those who are using the absolute maximum of sparse free to time to overwork themselves - the realization of this before ever even going for major, or even before starting a faction, is incredibly strong as a deterrent.
• Minor factions have every perk of a major, aside from being able to manage a "large fleet/army" or having map space
• The latter-most of the above bullet point is countered by the ability to rebel at any point in a tier 3 dominion anywhere on the map and instantly go major with a full hex of space. Thus they might simply see going major as a waste when they can take up space on the map whenever they want, so it becomes less of a necessity to participate in "major faction only" roles such as invasions and dominions when they can do so freely and become a major faction quite "easily" if they win a rebellion. It might just be a psychological reasoning, that going major at any time becoming a possibility removes the push for minor factions to request major as they can do so "whenever". That "whenever", with the added freedom of being able to simply rebel in a tier 3 dominion, presents a lax approach to major factions.
  
  Kind of like doing work - if I can do it whenever I want, and it presents more stress and hassles than I have already, why shouldn't I wait "until I'm ready"?

The issue with the above attitude is that "until I'm ready" might simply be never because one might realize that they can do pseudo invasions via rebellions and then requesting to not be put on the map - thus removing influence from a major faction (or preventing them from gaining it, at any rate).

 

[Rusty]

Bouncing off that for a moment, I don't think it helps that the barrier for faction creation is so low. Whee someone does come up with a good idea for a faction, it can get lost in the noise. For every solid concept, there are a dozen crap ideas or vanity projects that'll never go anywhere.

 

[Tellos]

Havint been here a while myself I;ve seen good invasions and BAD ones. I think a lot of whats been said before however are all part of the issue. Being a major faction now is disincentive and as with my arguement on one skirmish even we had hand waving of defenses. Now staff arguement was since it didint effect outcome it is ok. I won't get into that but the poitn beign this happens in invasions I;ve seen it and well there are zero I repeat zero consequences for breakign agreements or one side being a jerk entirely. Now not to say everyone needs to instantly be banned obviously. i will say the one sith did alot of things to bend or even break the rules and got away with it. The result was major factions all worked to jsut gang up and kill the faction. I left it hating the atmosphere inside too. It basically became the leaders ooc whims to rule all things how he decided and if you were not in his special group well you were screwed.

i do think maybe we need to promote helping members as they grow in a faction get put INTO leadership positions. SO we have redundancy and avoid sudden leadership vacuums. Now i know in most cases we ought to try to work out solution's between players for grievances not have the staff need to step in on every minor dispute. But also I think we need ways to better figure out RPing matches. I encounter tons of sith and some jedi players who are all about jsut wanting to kill charatcers in 3 or 4 posts and get mad when they don't win instantly.They jump up and down and get ticked off cause of this and the result is you end up with problems that no amount of communication after the fact helps. So in short almost everything thats been posted in this thread and more is the issue and we need to address what we can. To that end I continue to be invovled in the warmongers faction lead by one of the staff trying to find solution's mechanically to some issues.

Edit: Seems I keep thinking of stuff. So on the note of having to split posts I;ve watched internal plots fall apart cause more time HAS to be spent on dominions thus making other plots fall by the wayside cause there jsut are too many things to maintain status to do them.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

I feel like [member="Jay Scott Clark"], [member="Lily Kuhn"] and [member="James Justice"] basically read my thoughts already, so I won't go into it too much.

But I think they caught an important part of why Major Factions aren't all that interesting anymore.

There is no real point to it anymore, in the sense that the few achievable perks it did have, are now being replaced by minor factions, corporations and the relaxation of factory rules.

What are the perks?

You can own a planet. That's cool, but you can also submit a location in the Codex on an unclaimed world (of which there are a LOT) or an entire planet and simply not put it on the map, and you get the same thing without the risks of invasions or rebellions.

You can own a fleet. Okay, that's awesome, but if you build up your company you can pretty much get anything you feasibly need for a fleet. It's a bit of work, but right now there aren't a lot of risks for corporations. (Or minor factions for that matter)

You can have a big army. Nice... but that generally only is an important thing in an invasion or rebellion, so if you skip those two, then you don't need millions of troops and can settle for corporation forces or minor faction forces.

I think Alric also makes a valid point and that active strong leadership is important, but in my opinion we need to start looking at ways to actually make major factions more attractive in the first place. The moment that a major faction says: "So, faction Y is planning on invading us, why don't we just go minor instead. We don't really lose all that much anyway." is when you know something is wrong.

Give people reasons to ignore the perks of using a company or a minor faction and brave the threat of invasions and rebellions.

Oh, look. I got into it a bit too much. My bad!

 

[Alric Kuhn]

[member="Tefka"]

Im not only speaking of my "one" experience.

Im speaking of what ive seen as an extremely active member of this board since its very beginning and a person whose been an FO and FA of several succesful(and not so succesful) factions.

Factions live or die by their leadership, its just kind of how it is. Thats the core of it. Major factions can have all the benefits and bonuses you want, but if you dont have someone in the faction pushing things, driving, activity, giving directions, knowing what the members want/need then youre going to fail.

Its just kind of how it is. Its happened dozens of times with all sorts of factions.

The issue is theres not really any present way to "teach" people how to run a major faction. We have no resources or guides to it. The only real way is to have a former FO help a new faction staff team along, showing them the ropes. So as a solution to this, why not make a system whereby a Major Faction can request an RPJ to advise them. Have the RPJ present as an OOC counselor of sort, showing the new faction staff how to talk to other MF, How invasion negotiation should look, how to get your members hyped, etc.

 

[Kamon's OOC]

People are too stuck in their old ways. This is to [member="Delila Castillon"]'s point in regards to originality, but when I came around and started getting things going I had a pretty good original faction idea that would have been fun in the map game as well as created interest with in faction RP. If people had joined it, it could have been really awesome.

But instead of people joining, most people said it could never work, and they didn't want to be involved.

Point being: people on this board are too set in their ways of black and white, and don't want to realize that reality exists in shades of grey. So many people are set on the dichotomy of Sith vs Jedi that apparently no one can accept the possibility of the two sides working together for any reason. So, [member="Tefka"], part of the problem is the people here as well. I don't know how you address that people don't want to change or try something new, but it's an issue nonetheless.

Bear in mind I'm being simplistic in the above statement and am aware that not everyone falls under that categorization, but it does seem a general trend. People want the Republic and the Empire, Sith and Jedi, and little in-between seems to last long.

 

[Walak Tu]

As a relatively new member I would say that yes, this site is intimidating in its complexety. Or at least it seams complex. I've had a lot problems finding out if I even want to join because it was hard to figure out how everything works. There are many guides, but most of them aren't very usefull. Informations on this site are scattered, many sources mearly repeat things stated elswhere and some things seem out of date but i cannot be sure. The biggest problem for me was, that in many cases questiones are answered without being answered. This is the first thing i found when looking for help on creating factions (http://starwarsrp.net/index.php?app=core&module=help):

To create a Faction, simply click 'Add faction' at the Faction Portal.

That is not helpfull.

The "Frequently Asked Questions - Please Read Before Posting" looks barebones, answering 4 technical questiones and i dont see anything newer than 2014. Some guides contain dead links, broken pictures etc. And the rules tell me what i may do, but not why. That is nice for brevity, but without context confused me more. Chaos would greatly benefit from an up-to-date, comprehensive guide with lots of examples. And if we want people to create factions, i propose the major factions "Republic of Examplum" and the "Tut'orial Empire" to be created, with a comprehensive step-by-step guide on how it was done. Have them fight a mock battle over an 08/15-Planet. Because if you were to ask me to create a faction right now, i wouldn't be able to do so. I would much rather join an existing one, and maybe create one in a few years. I guess major factions need to look good to attract a few people to actually be a faction on more than paper, and this probably seams easier from the perspective of a long time member.


Also if you have written a guide, don't take this personally, chances are i'm gratefull for the help it did offer.

 

[Tefka]

[member="Walak Tu"]

Thank you for speaking up.

Staff's going to look intently at everything you've mentioned, I very much appreciate the insight. We do have a lot of guides, yes. But is the quantity now outmatching the quality? Apparently so.

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

Maybe now is the time to try out something new.

Wipe the map and establish a staff-run Galactic Empire.

 

[Tefka]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

The funniest part is that you said that idea was 'something new'. We've wiped the map before. And we've had not one but two staff-run Galactic Empires.

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

Sure, let me clarify.

No major factions, only a Galactic Empire.

 

[Tefka]

Yeah, it's not going to happen.

 

[Kenrath]

Ok so this thread was brought to my attention and while I am not back I can't help but feel like adding my two cents to the topic covered.

DRAMA. Drama is the biggest thing killing Major factions, minor factions, and minor factions wanting to go major. Let me explain. Especially in the last 6 to 8 months people just can't seem to get along. Faction leaders abusing members and passing it off as "in good fun", faction leaders abusing each other in power trips, faction members abusing each other and passing it off as "in good fun" or playing "he said, she said" with who started it. Faction leaders and faction members on power trips boot throating anyone and everyone saying look at me look at what I did instead of fostering cooperative writing and idea sharing as well as supporting.

My personal head slamming against the desk is the approach of "hey now that I am the leader now carry the faction so I can look important or I won't do anything. Or the "you are not doing enough so I give up."

Then we have the reasons for creating factions. Creating a faction concept not for good story or for collection progress but as a means of "I can do it better than so and so" or as a "middle finger to so and so."

Another thing I saw recently was the idea of how to apply the new dominion and rebellion rules. I know of at least one case where a dominion was down graded to simply avoid potentially having to face a rebellion.

On the topic of factions I still can't get over the repeated lashing out at and trolling of new faction/recreate factions on the guise of being unoriginal and doomed to fail because "nobody wants to see a Republic 5.0 or a Sith 8.0" For the better part of a year to a year and a half the only successful pitch, and by successful I mean not trolled for three to four pages, is one created by a small clique of "vets".

I saw somebody mention a lack of invasions in the last two months. Well I have a reason for that. It really boils down to these two reasons. The first being as mentioned above faction leaders abusing each other to the point that the negotiations for entering into an invasion scenario break down. The second being the rampant accusations of power gaming, meta gaming, and god moding in what threads have existed that has an outsider looking in appear to be outright ignored by RPJ's and staff. I have witnessed pages of discussion on discord and other mediums of coordination in regards to these actions and an apparent lack of respect being paid to the seriousness of such occurrences and how they effect not only individual RP but the effect on faction rp as a whole.


Now if anyone wishes to question or comment on anything I have mentioned I will log in over the next fee days and check my PM box. If not I will go back to being on LOA.

 

[Jsc]

And if we want people to create factions, i propose the major factions "Republic of Examplum" and the "Tut'orial Empire" to be created, with a comprehensive step-by-step guide on how it was done.

I have just gone ahead and done what I assume you are asking for here. If you get a chance please PM me with your feedback. I am happy and willing to share what I know. What little that is. Cheers.

As for a mock battle? Probably not.

 

[Coci Heavenshield]

Make the boards a level playing field. Get rid of Major and Minor factions and just have Factions.

I would go even so far as to say get rid of the influence cloud of the Major Factions and have them based on one planet. eg., SJO is based on Voss, in other words just have them situated on the map with their capital planets only. I realise this impacts greatly on Dominions, Rebellions and Invasions but these three avenues for RP are not only bogged down in rules and time frames and a heavy slice of win and loose but they are also what creates the most drama on the boards and frustration to not only the faction admins but the members of the factions involved.

Skirmishes seem to be the flavour of the month at the moment, and that is simply because there is nothing to win and nothing to loose and all to gain in RPing a good story. Invasion are no long this, they used to be fun but are no longer this as most Major Faction admins will tell you they spend equal amount of time behind the scenes in PMs fielding issues then they do RPing themselves as the drama only shifted from the OOC thread to the PM. Well at least this faction admin does.

All of the above points as to what is happening with Major Factions and the stuff surrounding them as to the whys and wherefores of the problems are all valid, from the structural aspects of them to the drama, there is not one point that is the problem they all are.

I know this will not happen and has been stated as such, but this:

Maybe now is the time to try out something new.

Wipe the map and establish a staff-run Galactic Empire.

Is actually a very good idea.

 

[Eugen Aker]

[member="Tefka"]

I'm glad you brought this topic up, because I've been wanting to speak my mind on this issue, but I didn't want to come of as hostile or salty by initiating such a conversation.

As others have stated, there really isn't a benefit to starting up a new major faction. I've seen several active minor factions that have the drive and activity to qualify as a major faction, but pass on the opportunity. Or if they do, they pick some far out corner of the map to avoid PvP with other major factions as they build themselves up, only to die out shortly later from a lack of inter-faction interactions as they're too far out. Aside from a few perks like an unlimited big ships (which isn't really a benefit as most members don't care about fleeting in the PvP sense, especially under new invasion rules) there's little that's inaccessible to an individual or minor faction.

All that you really do is paint a target on yourself for others to attack or just grief you. I took the old GR minor in part because I didn't want to go through another 3-6 months of simultaneous skirmishes and back-to-back invasions against you on top of what the GR had already been dealing with from the rest of the board. The UMC could have continued to press their attacks through story based threads, which I would have been fine with, but as soon as the blue blob was gone, there was no motivation to do so.

Part of the problem is that we have no kind of economy or resource system to regulate disruptive PvP activities like invasions or skirmishes. All we really have is a reputation system, which generally favors more established members in terms of history, popularity, and member status (e.g. judge, staff member). We work off a totem pole for lack of anything else, which, depending on your position, can work to insulate you from certain things, or make you more vulnerable. One bad interaction with a prominent member can set you up for trouble. OOC politics dictates way too much of what happens on the board ICly, with little controls being in place to stop it. So you see these instances of groups trying to push hostilities against another group when there has been no real development for it to make sense, or go from level 0 to WW3 after one minor event.

As the map game stands right now, it really only works for a certain kind of aggressive PvP (not in the dueling sense) minded player, or straight up trolls. There is no protocol for skirmishes, people can just launch them on a whim with no respect for what the defenders have built at the location, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a codex to canonize our work to avoid that sort of thing. Invasions cost nothing on the attackers' end. Since their inception, Rebellions have been nothing but basically stealth invasions where one major faction can grief another on their alts. During my relatively brief time here, I've maybe only seen one or two examples where it was actually some new or independent group taking on a major faction. For more PvE minded groups, or just those who would like a tad more structure and cooperation in PvP, this is a nightmare to deal with while their usually more interesting faction threads usually have to be thrown on the back burner, causing the group to suffer in the long term.

Somehow, you're going to have to rework the map game to create greater incentives for going major, if you still want major factions to be a thing. I like major factions, but I think of them more as a wheelhouse or community of like minded people to get together to write stories. Not as competing teams in a game where even supposed allies work to undermine a group to make theirs more attractive. There needs to be a better balance struck between PvP and PvE/Community. Gamefying the map game more with things like hex invasions is the wrong direction to go as it makes smaller groups more tepid to try anything. I didn't come here to play Risk or a text based RTS, I came here to roleplay. If I want to do those things, then I'll just go play a board game or video game with full functioning systems to support that kind of play. Rebellions could especially use a rework to perhaps cap how much involvement external major factions could have so we could perhaps see more interesting asymmetric conflicts.

It would probably also help if the staff and judges were a little more vigilant on cracking down on shenanigans. Personally, I can take some small flub, but I don't want to have to keep writing around mess like people phasing through defenses in one go, tossing around star destroyers like softballs, or nuking a village with a tiny trinket. It just makes the whole PvP process a pain when it's like the referees are just taking a back seat to everything, then just tallying up mishaps at the end to determine a victor. I totally understand that this site is a big place and there are a lot of things to cover, but at the same time, I feel like the staff is a bit too hands off on these issues. I log into Chaos some days and I feel like I'm more on a Naruto or DBZ board than a Star Wars one.

 

[Tefka]

All that you really do is paint a target on yourself for others to attack or just grief you.

Man, if anyone else had said that...

 

[Kamon's OOC]

I log into Chaos some days and I feel like I'm more on a Naruto or DBZ board than a Star Wars one.

PREACH!

I like what [member="Coci Heavenshield"] said, although I think having influence clouds of some fashion is important, otherwise there's no real reason to make a faction if you only ever control a planet. It's like playing risk, but you can't ever capture any territory but you're on. I guess you could have proxy wars, but then you're basically just instituting a mandatory cold war on the board, as it were. The general gist of doing away with major/minor is not a bad one, but I think we'd need to think through how that change would truly affect the map game in more detail than what you've suggested.

 

[Galven Hansol]

[member="Tefka"]
Maybe if administrators had some kind of thing that they can make things happen, like make a planet go into rebellion. Maybe make it so that a faction can suddenly have a financial crisis, and have to make development threads to fix it. Because no one in a faction is actively make their faction suddenly have problems, but if we do this it could maybe make inter-faction play happen more often, and be more important.

P.S: I'm not sure exactly how to make it so that it is balanced, but if it was, it could really help.