Archived Faction Size And Upkeep Proposals

[Valto]

Before I state anything, I've read Enderdonut's thread and I agree with capping factions at 50ish members to prevent unsustainable growth which will inevitably lead to faction collapse.

In this thread, I'm mainly proposing for new faction rules to be adopted which increase active faction activity and prevent mostly artificial factions from making up a significant portion of claimed land. The point of factions has always been faction interaction, and in regards to this, decaying and/or alt factions are consistently dead factions which are essentially free from the threat of warfare and constantly maintained by someone who either controls the faction with an inactive main or an alt account. Most alt factions also abuse alt joining (80-90 chunks claimed with 1 member 30 minutes after the faction claims the land with 80-90 power) which isn't against the rules while messing up the factions situation.

You might think I'm unfairly targeting alt factions because I don't have one, but I have an alt which is the leader of an alt faction and would agree with being taxed much higher. The current system is too generous for people who decide to go outside of how factions was intended to be played.

Here's the list of my proposed additions:

• Factions have to start out with two or more members - You should need 2-4 people to start a faction. Alt accounts could be used for this, but my other ideas address this problem. Basically you would send a request to another person to start a faction, and if the other person accepts then you are made leader and he/she is made officer. This would also curb new players from playing in a towny way instead of factions.
• Factions with one member have their upkeep cost doubled - This is targeted at alt factions which are used to claim over territories after they are unclaimed in a sort of privateer fashion (no flag) or vault factions which create an unfair safe space for the transfer/storage of items. The cost for maintaining claimed land in this fashion should be much higher due to there not being any real power base present.
  
• The upkeep cost of only claimed chunks over Max Power is doubled - This will discourage players from maintaining/creating unsustainable factions through the cost being much higher than if the chunks were represented by players. The above proposed rule should have priority if the condition is present and shouldn't overlap with this.
• Faction player activity determines the upkeep cost - if a faction only consists of players who have been inactive for the past week or so, then the upkeep cost should be increased in some fashion. The addition of this would create an atmosphere where the physically unmaintained faction state would be reflected in the upkeep cost being increased.

I might add new suggestions to this list, but for now these are my suggestions. Please comment below on how they could be improved or your general stance concerning soft limits on the usage of small factions.

 

[FireFan96]

I'll just go one by one cuz that seems to be my thing:

Factions have to start out with two or more members

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seems over complicated. If you managed to get the regals to start the factions by yourself in the first place, you deserve to be able to choose to hermit or expand. sometimes being a lone wolf and facing the wilds alone is a fun experience.

Factions with one member have their upkeep cost doubled

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I mean sure, but I can just add a second alt to the faction and problem solved. And some people like claiming ruins. They have to pay the extended upkeep already for the claims.

The upkeep cost of only claimed chunks over Max Power is doubled

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I'm fine with having this feature, though I'd like to suggest an alternative rule:
players should be able to overclaim chunks if a faction's claims exceed their max power. If you want the claims, recruit. I don't know why power boosting a faction temporarily for claims was ever allowed, as it seems like an exploit to me. At least have the max power equal to claim sizes.

Faction player activity determines the upkeep cost

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while I get the logic behind this, it seems like a pain to implement

Overall, There's some good stuff here, but a lot of the suggestions seem very unfeasible in the long run of factions. Half of these problems go away when you have a second player in a faction.

 

[Valto]

seems over complicated. If you managed to get the regals to start the factions by yourself in the first place, you deserve to be able to choose to hermit or expand. sometimes being a lone wolf and facing the wilds alone is a fun experience.

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If you want to do this, then you probably don't understand the point of Factions servers and would be much better off on a Towny server that is geared towards this playstyle. I don't think it's a good idea to encourage this kind of misunderstanding through the server's general setup because the new servers will end up with the same situation which is killing factions servers atm (no faction participation). Discouraging Towny-suited players to play like this would lead to Factions players having a better experience.

I mean sure, but I can just add a second alt to the faction and problem solved. And some people like claiming ruins. They have to pay the extended upkeep already for the claims.

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Adding a second alt means that the player can't claim two separate factions with the same amount of land as the one faction, and that's the point of this suggestion: limiting excessive claiming without any sort of power base. I'm not proposing for alt factions to be made impossible to be created because this is not viable. There will be alt factions with 3 players (one to three actual players) if factions with 2 players have doubled upkeep, and then there will be alt factions with 5 (one to five actual players) players if factions with 4 players have doubled upkeep. An increase in restriction would actually cause the alt faction situation to become worse through normalization and cause small factions to be unfairly penalized.

I'm fine with having this feature, though I'd like to suggest an alternative rule: players should be able to overclaim chunks if a faction's claims exceed their max power. If you want the claims, recruit. I don't know why power boosting a faction temporarily for claims was ever allowed, as it seems like an exploit to me. At least have the max power equal to claim sizes.

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I considered overclaiming, but this would cause a lot of problems for players and staff response (one situation is if a faction goes over by 2 chunks, then an enemy overclaims their faction vault and takes an excessive amount of wealth). The suggestions are soft because they are supposed to be changes that wouldn't affect players who are playing in a fair fashion (claiming/maintaining chunks which are represented by max power), and your suggestion would definitely affect these players (4-5 out of 10 members leave a growing faction during one day with a high chunk/max power ratio, faction loses all important chunks to overclaim because of this).

 

[FireFan96]

If you want to do this, then you probably don't understand the point of Factions servers and would be much better off on a Towny server that is geared towards this playstyle. I don't think it's a good idea to encourage this kind of misunderstanding through the server's general setup because the new servers will end up with the same situation which is killing factions servers atm (no faction participation).

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Towny has the same goal in mind, get big and take over the world.
Having experienced faction servers and towny servers, I find massive's play on factions to mimic towny more in its gameplay setup. I personally wish it was more factions based (having to fear overclaiming, checking power, etc) but that seems to get shot down every time it's brought up.

Don't get me wrong, having one man factions owning 50 chunks is a pain in the butt, and inactivity in factions wastes space. But I don't see these suggestions as a viable way to prevent that problem without screwing over the smaller factions and startups.

 

[ZiHAMMER]

having one man factions owning 50 chunks is a pain in the butt

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How this exactly affects you?

 

[FireFan96]

How this exactly affects you?

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It doesn't really. Actually I benefit from having the public darkrooms open. I just threw that in to find something to close on.

 

[Valto]

Towny has the same goal in mind, get big and take over the world.
Having experienced faction servers and towny servers, I find massive's play on factions to mimic towny more in its gameplay setup.

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Claiming, maintenance, and goals on Towny and Factions servers work very differently, so I think Massivecraft is in the middle of Factions and Towny but more towards Factions if the player base is active and utilizing the plugin's features. The point of Towny is to have the most prosperous town through mostly economic means and some fighting, while Factions is mostly driven by power and war while the economy follows these two things. Right now the server appears more similar to Towny, but in an ideal state it is rather far from it.

I personally wish it was more factions based (having to fear overclaiming, checking power, etc) but that seems to get shot down every time it's brought up.

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Overclaiming and other factions hazards (tnt cannons destroying buildings, power being a huge concern) usually lead to low investment in builds and a generally ugly looking terrain along with other issues Factions servers face. Massivecraft is unique in that it allows for the players to build things which won't be targeted for overclaiming/sieging immediately after finished. I agree that the server should look to some increases in pvp action (doors being able to be used by enemies, building being disabled while actively in pvp), but the disabled Factions features are not something which would benefit the server in the long run.

But I don't see these suggestions as a viable way to prevent that problem without screwing over the smaller factions and startups.

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Can you specifically state how they would "screw over the smaller factions"? I can't respond to a concern with no content

 

[FireFan96]

Can you specifically state how they would "screw over the smaller factions"? I can't respond to a concern with no content

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I guess where I was going with this is that if you are a new player and want to make a strong faction independent and by yourself and buddies, you have to put in a lot of effort to compete against the mega factions with everything a noob could want. You'll probably stay small for a long time as you slowly build up necessities for new members. During that time, the changes proposed in my opinion just discourage that growth.

Now I'm far from the norm, having a small faction that will last until I die and then some, so any changes that will affect me probably will be minimal in the long run. I'm really just citing on two years ago when I first built my faction, and I just never cared about the rest of the world because there was little incentive to me. I had my land and my storage, but I never saw the desire to PvP because there was no risk involved whatsoever. Now I RP because I'd rather dedicate my limited time there than PvP prepping and fighting the same three people.

In short, I'm just throwing stuff out for thoughts. Take what you want from what I have. Just throwing stuff out there from my own experiences.

 

[Gumee]

• Factions with one member have their upkeep cost doubled - This is targeted at alt factions which are used to claim over territories after they are unclaimed in a sort of privateer fashion (no flag) or vault factions which create an unfair safe space for the transfer/storage of items. The cost for maintaining claimed land in this fashion should be much higher due to there not being any real power base present.
  
• The upkeep cost of only claimed chunks over Max Power is doubled - This will discourage players from maintaining/creating unsustainable factions through the cost being much higher than if the chunks were represented by players. The above proposed rule should have priority if the condition is present and shouldn't overlap with this.
• Faction player activity determines the upkeep cost - if a faction only consists of players who have been inactive for the past week or so, then the upkeep cost should be increased in some fashion. The addition of this would create an atmosphere where the physically unmaintained faction state would be reflected in the upkeep cost being increased.

Click to shrink...

RIP Darkrooms

 

[Jalapeno690]

Just bring back 60 power