Under Review Factions Rework: Massiveempire

Format for people to use when replying

What you like:
What you don't like:
What you'd do differently:
Would you participate:

 

What you like: I enjoy the idea itself which to me seems very amusing and interesting.
What you don't like: It's place in Massive
What you'd do differently: Personally I believe this is becoming over complicated for a minecraft server. the main issue I see with this is the fact that first joining the server will feel boring and overcomplicated. When people who are younger join the server they will immediately leave because they mostly just want to join a server where they build and kill right away. Although this probably sounds kind of stupid, Many people can agree they play to kill, loot, Build, and create a community with their friends. This concept is brilliant but I believe we lose the core concept of what people want. Finally, the KOTH plugin will never be a good fit for Massivecraft which was clear the last times we tried and redid. The reason it will become no different is that it will become a breeding ground for free gear for certain large number factions.
Would you participate: Probably not, to be honest, But I do not own a faction.

 

That doesn't help staff decide on anything. Why is it not too good? What's keeping it from being worse? How would you do it?

 

Idk dude I was talking to a staff member, don't remember who about koth recently and they said it can't be done

 

These Empire factions are NOT MANDATORY and no one, new or old needs to join or ally with them.

 

Again i'm not saying that they're mandatory but what I am saying the biggest issue with CoN was participation. When I look at this I see a great idea like CoN was, that will be underutilized due to the complexity.

 

Yes we want these Empire Factions to be PVP enabled. I've described it many times as a "Mini Regalia, with PVP enabled and Chests" Houses/flats will still work how they work in regalia. I'm considering suggesting they be Fireball-Free zones though. Since most new players and peaceful players seem to struggle finding safety and peace once they enter their house.

 

Perhaps not in Factions. As far as I'm aware, the KOTH plugins of old were not feasible in Factions because of the immense lag that they caused, which is why they weren't ever implemented there. As for the recent KOTH plugin that we used, it flat-out broke on Massive and I remember sitting in a Discord with Sephite and Geek trying to fix it when it just wouldn't start. It'd be cool to have it in factions 100% but it may require an entirely new plugin to be coded- and I'd rather see that tech work put into Empires as this thread is suggesting.

 

Oh

In that case I'm all for KOTH in factions

 

Could you possibly expand on what feels too complex in this system and how it could possibly be made better? or simple? How would you do it?

 

For instance, creating a faction based on races what if people would like to be a Multi-race faction.
2nd: Joining a empire with a faction you are not fond of will make for people to feel unsure wether they want to join the race of their liking or not.
3rd we look at the points system itself is overly complicated and currently makes new factions unable to join due to the level of gear and people it would take to take on more powerful factions.
4: People want for their factions to be powerful and incharge making them follow a "empire" will make people not want to join due to factions wanting theirs to be the most powerful. For examples we look back at Algaron, 9th legion, Afrovia, Magnanimus, and even now factions like Argost, Crypt, Enigma, and Alamut

 

So I've read your original post twice, and while I think it's an interesting idea and a take on trying to fix an issue in the factions community, I foresee this idea simply having us end up right where we were at the end of COK: a system that while it technically survived for a year, didn't achieve anything notable that put the health of the survival/pvp community in a better position than a year ago.

I like this part, simply for the fact that it highlights that it's hard for new players to the server to always have a faction to go to with adequate housing and a faction of people that will teach them about how the server operates and is played. That's an issue MassiveCraft has always had, and exist mainly because beyond the initial starter quest we've had at times, we don't hold new survival player's hands when they first join.

We can at least minimize the issue by giving our already existing factions better tools to administer their factions, and encouraging factions to take the game more seriously by providing them better content to engage in as the faction expands and matures - which leads into my second issue and point.

Again, I feel like we end up in the same position COK left us in. Cool, you've done a ton of stuff to get points for your "empire", but who cares? Winning COK drove competition between factions participating, but the rest of the people didn't have to acknowledge any bit of a COK faction's accomplishment, simply by choosing not to. All we're going to end up with is another system that produces this false sense of achievement, but in the end doesn't even really matter when you weigh it against the community's health and how active people are. An idea for the faction community is good when it drives competition by default rather than by an opt in/out situation. I've seen the authors of this idea comment on this thread multiple times that you don't have to align with an empire if you don't want to. I can only assume that means if you choose not then your life in the faction environment goes on the same exact way it was before, regardless of is this idea was implemented or not. That's not good. A good idea includes everyone by default, not some type of opt in/out situation.

As for all the things that you'd do to get points, the ideas are very unoriginal and are simply carried over from COK. Beyond the fact they're also very linear and boring, they do nothing to drive players to improve the overall health of their faction. Content that makes a faction actually develop their faction would be much better. What I mean is content that would encourage a faction to do any combination, or all, of the following:

• develop their faction in a way that they can successfully recruit more members
• develop their faction to retain and teach those members
• develop a faction that assist members in achieving their goals
• develop a faction that can feasibly engage in end game content

We need more factions that can realistically engage in end game content, and more factions that are in the process of achieving that. We'll always have factions at every point on the scale: young -> maturing -> matured (endgame). The problem is that because of a poor content experience and players with low levels of determination, we have tons of faction fizzling out in between the young to maturing phase, which could probably be best described as stagnation. A combination of problems exist that cause this, but I feel a lot of times this is how it goes for a lot of factions that end up stagnating:

• "Alright, I've built a faction and recruited some members. What to do now?"
  
• "Well, I don't really know. Not sure what to do honestly." (This player/group of players aren't as determined/creative/driven as older players were, and don't realize anything is possible on MassiveCraft. This is the fault of the way the server is setup."
• Well, I'm just not sure what to do, so we'll keep logging on and doing the same thing every day." (stagnation)
• -Faction leader and officers begin to log on less due to being bored.
• -Faction begins to decay and die.
• -Faction dies and eventually disbands.
• -Game over.

Repeat the above cycle over and over and over. That's where we're at right now.

Every time I an idea comes up that has the main goal of encouraging more players to play survival, thus increasing the health of the survival community, I always talk about how the server was during 2012-2013. Mainly because it's the best time frame to compare what you're trying to achieve to.

If we want to get back to that time, which was active factions doing things that actually mattered, we have to increase content for players to engage in, and then let them go after it. In the process of them going after it, they'll realize that there are certain things they needed to achieve to be able to accomplish obtaining or completing that content. You will have people that will want to engage in PVP content realize they physically do not have enough armor, weapons, potions, or even the pvp skill to participate in this content. Apply this to all types of content, not just PVP, and you see a cycle develop where people are developing themselves and their faction in all aspects of the game. They'll either choose to achieve all those things, or not. It depends on how good and enticing the content is.

I think the perfect way to describe your idea along with COK/CON, is life support. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't make anything better. It barely keep whatever is there from dying. If you have this picture in your head that this idea implemented would revitalize the faction community to something much higher than it is currently at, you're going to either have to ditch that picture all together or severely alter it to what I described earlier - a faction community on life support.

@ViolentViolette

 

I like this v much. Is good idea

 

The Empire Factions are not solely that one race. The theme and the war lord that owns it will be based on one race but any race can join their "cause", if you notice, the factions have "preferred allied races", So for the Chien'ji, Yanar are the preferred friends of that race but anyone who wants to be a friendly or peaceful faction would suit this "cause".

 

I agree we need a better way of giving non PVP factions and smaller factions an opportunity to get in on the fun. I'd like people to come up with friendly (nonPVP) competitive events and competitions for people in this position.

 

With these Empire factions I did want friendly goals or competitions left in the F home that they could complete, and whichever Faction out the 4, would get a reward of some sort.

But I see what you mean in regards to the rest of us involved. Does feel a bit like we're stuck in a loop, just given a different name.

 

No this would once again make it so that factions would have to comply and become lore compliant to be relevant. I like the idea but seeing as the past 3 year’s attempts to bring the worlds of regalia and factions together have been fruitless I suggest we come up with an idea that lets factions express their own ideas and creativity . There are plenty ways to do this and for one an actual empires plugin or an expansion onto the factions plugin itself to make a new relations (ex: the name of an empire or coalition etc) status with more perms or something. I and many other people I’ve talked to hate the idea of being forced to create something for regalians who don’t even care or appreciate their work. Massive was more diversely unified through creative ideas in the past, and I personally do not believe trying to force rules and requirements on factions will help to create anything that will function longer than a week. We’ve tried to bridge the gap and meet in the middle by promising “recognition and rewards” long enough for us to realize we need to do our own shit. Let us present two different worlds to people coming onto the server and after playing in one long enough they’ll become curious and try out the other. There won’t be any fixes over night it just has to do with getting something stable and appealing in. I for one know that if we brought faction lore back and progression, race strict factions, and things like that, that people will become interested after reading histories about other factions. It’s the same reason the undead war and such worked out in the past. Pride to defend your own ideas and world.

EDITED
@onearmsquid @ViolentViolette

 

Faction's don't have to comply with lore or races, we are only borrowing the themes from regalia to make the server seem more consistent. The problem right now is that players are lazy or discouraged after the reset and aren't really building much to look at and the faction's world feels dead. These Empire factions not only act as hubs and facilities for new players but they create points of interest, and also display what a faction could become if they tried.
I used the Houses from Harry Potter as an example for the CoN side of Factions.

 

My main problem with this is if those who wish to be 'lone wolf' factions and not be loyal to an empire, could they still compete in whatever is being suggested and be rewarded in the same standards compared to those who are loyal to empires are? Ofcourse it would be more difficult for the lone wolf faction since they dont have the backing of big conglomerates, but still rewarded the same?

 

please use the proper response format

 

This is actually a good point that I haven't figured out yet. Granted they could still compete in all the events, and gain physical rewards from them, but where do their "points" go? How do we measure their success and let it be known they're as much as an important faction too?

Then there's the question of, if they opt out of Allying Empire factions and CoN, what are the chances they're even want to compete in events? I think "lone wolf" Factions can easily exist outside of the Empire Factions conflict. It's just if they want to compete but don't want to "follow" one of these 4 factions.

 

What you like: That people are thinking about the next evolution of Factions and using the word Empires. I also like that people are thinking of additional content for the survival worlds.

What you don't like: Let's look at the first paragraph, starting with the first sentence: "there is no real identity". That's a false premise, players create the identity for their factions by what they do and how active they are. Factions are known by the deeds of their active leaders and officers. Does your faction have "no real identity"? Your faction has an old name and the description is "OG's come together". That rallying cry and brought active pvp back to the server about a month and a half ago.

The next two sentences about CoN/CoK are not the problem with it. The problem with it was that it was artificial. On this server we've always created our own stories and drama. The only successful staff created drama in the factions world is when Mrs. Baver visited and messed with everyone then it was the server vs her/minions. You note that part of the downfall of CoN/CoK was that it required too much moderation, but this will require more. Here are some reasons why I think that:
SETUP
* Building 4 cities will take as long as or longer than Regalia v5. I have a suspicion that the World Staff is engaged with the phased roll-out that continues. It will probably require 3 months of work to do this after they've already been building for 3 months.
* Housing in Regalia is accomplished via rental regions. If you want houses in each city to be usable by 25 new players on each of the four sides you'll need 100 rental regions to be created. This is a time-consuming task.
* World staff will need to build a fortress arena with 4 fortresses and a battlefield
* Tech staff will need to integrate/create a plugin to prevent friendly fire, one time access, and empire teams for the siege arena.
MAINTENANCE
* Houses will have to be reviewed periodically to make sure they haven't been stripped or torn down and need to be rebuilt.
* Staff will need to host tournaments. There are fewer tournament hosts today than there were yesterday.
* Staff will need to code and test a quest that allows them to have KotH in the factions world. It will likely involve manual staff initiation at the right days/times to start individual KotH events.
* Staff will need to host and monitor the siege event.
* Points for all events will need to be counted periodically by staff and reported out.

The final sentence of the paragraph is: "instead of.. player factions..four empire factions..allow new players to join and have a place to start." Later it is said that gamestaff will lead these factions. Who are the four gamestaff who don't already run a faction? I could only come up with two, but I don't have a complete list. To lead one of these admin factions the gamestaff will need to leave their faction and take up leadership of one of the new empire factions. These four people will probably spend a lot of time entertaining and educating new players. To me, this sounds like a subversion of player-led factions and a waste of gamestaff time. Saying that the purpose of this is to give new players a place to start because CoN failed and the server needs to create some survival identity misses the viable places to start in player-led factions that can and have been accessed through recruitment chat for years.

Without additional ways to earn points this is just another CoN/CoK, one that will cost more to set up, keep going, and in my opinion harm the authentic factions survival we have now.

What you'd do differently: I think the motivation for this comes from a good place and the true purpose is to create a more engaging survival experience. While I think the means will cause irreparable harm to it I appreciate when you're coming from. The Factions plugin is a set of rules on top of survival that let people form teams. If we're going to get behind something called empires, and I personally would, I would like to see an Empires plugin coded that sits on top of Factions. Instead of asking the staff to create our "empire factions" for us I want to see players create their own empires with new commands. I want to see players agree to alliances, not by application, posts, and acceptance, rather conversation and commands. I want an Empires plugin that creates gameplay mechanics solely in the hands of players. There was a very good discussion in the PvP Think Tank some months ago on this topic. I'll try to dig that up and post parts of it in reply.

Would you participate: Only if they found a way to pull off the Siege thing. Then I would join and just do that.

 

Tbh I think it boils down to factions morals and even lore if you'd like to be a cheesy fucker. Personally if everything were to happen tomorrow, people allied these empires etc. I would love to fight all of the empires and make gains on it as well since I think empires and large alliances are pretty gay.

To answer your questions on where those points would go and how they'd be rewarded, why not just make the points go directly towards the lone wolf faction? If anything it would dedicate Empires to try to stamp out the 'bandit/independent/rebel' factions, cause nothing is more embarrassing then getting one upped by just a handful of dedicated people when you have a large swath of players on your side.

 

Prehaps a moem hypothetical approach to these 4 empires, such as they exist, but none of them have any real towns or cities in Essalonia. This is where factions come in. In order for their chosen empire to be made manifest a certain degree of progression is required. A set amount of factions, land, event resources ect, as well as land development such as roads and feilds are needed. I'll extend on this more later as I'm on mobile rn and half my keys arnt working and it's cancer.

 

I think for this to work, there has to be some additional reward for making yourself compliant to the larger empire faction. The reason crisis never really worked is because there was no real difference in the people that participated and won versus the people that didn't do it at all. So if the goal of this idea is to still allow people to not participate, then there has to be a game changing benefit of participating or else what's the point.

there has to be some reward for the effort and it has to be big enough to make people want to participate

 

I called for such factions to be created maybe over a year and a half ago and staff shot I’d down, I’m all for these proposals and think this is the right direction! As for what maps they should be, I think historic massive city’s should be used, same as siege, battle for control of helvetica for example??

 

I am going to reiterate what I've probably said already (can't be assed to check)

This idea can work as long as its forced. And im sure the staff won't have any issue forcing this since a forced style is already the status in roleplay. You can't RP as batman in Regalia, for instance. Perhaps making a system similar to how character applications are where those who arent officially can participate but those who do have the ability to have more perms, privileges, and prestige. But regardless of that, all factions players have to be involved in this gamemode. Moreover, any rewards for the winning teams have to be WORTH IT. Like carajo Crisis could've been great if it weren't for the fact that NOTHING mattered with it. Like announcing the winner of the last month is the end of their glory. Until recently when ComputerGeek added the point system and the achievement system, there was nothing at all! In March if you asked me who won January, I couldnt remember because there wasnt anything to show for them winning! There weren't even any prizes!! Argost won like 5 times and we never saw any prizes. Even if it did matter, it only mattered to the factions involved. Making it pointless in the grand scheme of things. This needs to take over factions and replace what we've got now or theres no point.

 

Completely agree!!! Either go the full way with this or there is no point, too many times in my time on massive I have seen a half assed attempt to push factions and each time before momentum could gain it was dropped, later that day the same person that initially had been pushing it was posting character sheets etc and tab showed them in regalia, it’s either commit to it or don’t, as this has ALLOT of potential!

 

I'd say leaning on game-changing. Because they have to be beneficial enough for other people to care

 

What you like: The pictures of the town.
What you don't like: That It's mostly pvp/rp orientated. Not saying It's a bad thing but there needs to add more Non-Pvp to gain points, like funding your town empire gains points, or gathering artefacts from events gains points towards that empire (Could sell to other empires which then you get whatever you want for it, and then you reduct a point and they gain a point), Treasure hunter, with some sort of riddle attached. etc.
What you'd do differently: Locate the towns in different locations: https://i.gyazo.com/e856acc3ef4273c2abc229cee30d0e35.png . At least then it will correspond to what the pictures on the map are, cant have some sort of random floating water town in the middle of the grassy plains / sloped hill plains. The picture shows where I would of placed them on the map, considering they all look like port towns, would be more fitting to have them connected to the ocean. At least that way, the towns from the edited picture seem to be all equally away from each other.

Add in trade routes, a bit of a wild idea but wouldn't it be fun to trade amongst the different empires, buy and then sell to the other empires. High, low prices. Gain currency off the other empires, do jobs for the empire town you're bound to. etc

Add in a quest in the tutorial world about empires telling players what It's about, how to join the different empire factions and then add in a one time teleport from the tutorial world to that empire faction. Once in the teleported area, you'd automatically join that faction empire. Honestly, i might call it nations sooner or later haha.

Would you participate: Maybe.

@onearmsquid - Review this if you want lol.

 

What I like: I really like the idea a lot. I'm on board.
The main thing with factions right now is that there is no structure, no railroad to follow. People build their factions, grow them, and then have nothing to do and thus quit.
By having four empires, you are giving these factions a third milestone - becoming part of an empire.
These empires can give them new goals to strive for.

The way I imagine it is that the four empires have a constant rivalry over everything - War, economy, building, (culture?). So for example, Empire Blue is at war with Empire Green and have huge battle on Saturday. All factions that are part of these empires will have until then to prepare for the battle by getting the players online, the gear made and the potions produced.
Or, there is a building contest between Empire Red and Empire Yellow. The Empires urge every faction part of their empire to get more beautiful builds done, whether it's done by the faction's members themselves, or with help from another faction's builder in the Empire.
Like this, new factions that have grown a bit will be pushed to partake in the bigger community. To learn about the other factions and to make new friends, while being pushed to do their absolute best in Minecraft because of the constant competition.

Look at it this way: Now, staff has more control over the factions experience by giving people goals, while still allowing them full freedom to build whatever and however and with whoever they want. Now the experience can be made more fun, without having to rely on factions to actually become good guides for new players. I'm sure you'd like to have more control over the factions experience, @staff. This is the way to do it without being too intrusive.

What I don't like: Needing themes for the factions in the empire.
A faction should join an empire as however they are, without having to convert into some roleplay race theme.
I'm not sure if roleplay and lore should have anything to do with these empires yet. At least, it should not be one of the focuses of this Empires idea.

What'd you do differently: Make the empires purely for the sake of having four sides, which through competition, will give the factions inside of these empires constant goals to strive towards. Roleplay/lore is not important (at the start, at least).
Have somebody be the "Emperor" for these empires, so it's decided when an empire will have a war with another empire, or a building contest, or have infrastructure expanded, or...
Who this emperor is, I'm not sure yet. It can be staff, or one person from the factions inside of the empire, who's been voted in and who reigns for a certain period of time.