Let's Talk About Alt Factions

[Zero_00]

I'd like to gather the communities stance on Alt factions. Why are they important to you? What do you use them for that you couldn't in your main faction? Lastly what could be offered from massive to have their functionality replaced? Please keep the thread on topic. I will greatly appreciate and consider any constructive feed back on them or potential services that could be offered to replace them. I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who is willing to give it

 

[Sir_Daragon]

WoodlandMansion:
I use mine as storage, some Grinders , farm and a place where I can build my own style, outside and underground.
And as a bit of a hoarder, I collect lore and open my storage to my Faction friends to aid them in Building. While I play Massivecraft for longer period of time than them, I farm, Grind and collect. so when they go and build. They can focus more on building and less on collecting. And ya know...Farms to stock my shop at market.

 

[Julu8]

Heya I own OasisAF.

My alt faction is used for me and TakeDown__ to store personal belongings and then we also have some small farms.

Why are they important to you?
My own vault is important to me because I get to keep things that I've received from old friends who don't play anymore, and also my small collection of lore items. I like to have a little place for myself, I do try to keep my AF as small as possible because I don't want to take up a huge amount of space for just me.

What do you use them for that you couldn't in your main faction?
Just having my own space, where I can store my own stuff that I can make sure no one else can get to unless I allow them to.

Lastly what could be offered from massive to have their functionality replaced?
For me personally I think it would have to be something akin to small vaults that people can rent maybe? I think the biggest problem with this is that it would have to be a place with a bunch chests and I don't know what impact that would have on the people using it and the server as a whole as we do tend to have some TPS issues. But yeah.. I guess my suggestion would be something like a vault system where people can rent a space to store their items? But again, that's just for how I use alt factions, I wouldn't know how to replace some of the other ways people use them.

 

[Shearsy]

I used to have an alt faction named ShearsyAF or ShearsyStorage in which I had shared storage with Dexter54 and also some farms and private builds that some factions might not accept.

Why are they important to you?
They are important to me (or in this case mine was important), because they allow me to not only have personal items other than lore and gear, or blocks that are of value. Furthermore it is a place where I feel ''free'' to do my builds in more detail and in a way that I know will last for a long time.
I also add that it is a place only used by who I allow to use, to build or even just to see / get ideas, but or even for simply using.
The farms in this case, as it is something private, are used for their own use, but it can also be for the sale of some items such as potatoes or other more irrelevant ones.

What do you use them for that you couldn't in your main faction?
Having my space and that same unique being! Be totally private or bring only who I allow. A place where I can fully put everything I have that I know is safe and where it can't be stolen by some other player.

Lastly what could be offered from massive to have their functionality replaced?
Honestly I don't think they should have replaced them but rather have some kind of rule that limits them. Perhaps a world apart just for them? This same world with claiming rules where these alt factions could only claim according to the rules imposed on some claims and not exceed them.

 

[JepTheLegend]

I currently own the alt faction ditchwater. I've owned alt facs for most of my time for the soon decade I've spent on massive.

Why are they important to you?/What do you use them for that you couldn't in your main faction?
From my personal experience alt factions serve mainly as a safety net and a means for creative fulfilment/self expression while in other factions.
The safety net aspect is mainly a convenience where you won't be shit out of luck if you for whatever reason get kicked out of your current faction. It helps to have your personal belongings stored elsewhere, and maybe even having a few farms of your own. It is also convenient to have your items in one consistent place when looking for a faction that is right for you, you can't really know until you've spent a few weeks in a faction, but moving your entire storage every time you're trying a different faction is an inconvenience so great it may be detrimental, and a player would prefer simply staying in their own one man fac than risking looking to participate in the greater community.
But in my honest opinion the greatest benefits to alt facs is player self expression, while it would be great to do everything you wanted in a faction, faction owners and faction members can't see eye to eye on everything. Alt facs server as a way for players to make a small part of the world their own, and not simply their faction leader's. Most active players who play this server as their primary server that I've seen, all have alt facs of varying sizes for varying reasons, but even players who have spent half a decade in the same faction, like to have some kind of alt fac regardless. While factions is a community focused game mode, the players making up these factions are still individuals, and need personal fulfilment that they can't get completely from their faction.

Lastly what could be offered from massive to have their functionality replaced?
I don't see a future without alt factions working for massive, the core of the faction community would burn out. I believe as previously suggested, a world primarily for alt factions would be the correct solution, unless it would be more viable to do something like a void instanced world where a player can have their own few chunks to mess around in with survival inventory, though I believe this would be more server intensive than a dedicated world.

 

[TakeDown__]

Heya, I'm replying on the behalf of Dauntless. We make use of a few alt factions.
The factions we use are
- Farms
- BankOfDauntless
- Eskarion

Why are they important to you? / What do you use them for that you couldn't in your main faction?
The alt factions gives us different opportunities that we can't do with our main faction. As stated above we have quite a few alt factions and I will explain why we use each one.

Farms
The name is quite a give-away but this alt faction we use to have a huge farming facility. This alt faction allows us to bend the permissions in a way that /f access just quite cant or would be too much of a hassle to do. Our main faction does not allow everyone to build or break blocks on it's land, as you can imagine this would make it quite hard for a recruit to farm, thus we have our /tp farms. There they can break and plant crops to their hearts content without exposing our beautiful base to the risk of griefers.

BankOfDauntless
This faction has a double use, it is both a darkroom (btw, you can buy access /msg wizkers) and a personal venture of Wizkers as a loan sha- I mean regal lender. Like the alt faction farms, we use this faction to get around certain permissions and flag issues. Such as having mobs spawn. We wouldn't want mobs to spawn on our base and risking recruits being killed by them.

Eskarion
This one is more for aesthetic purposes but also a roleplay purpose. This alt faction allows everyone to teleport to it and has a direct teleport (portal on a boat) to our city docks. It is also connected to the player made road network. This allows for pretty much everyone to visit the beautiful capital city of the Eskari people, Arca. In Dauntless we take security quite serious, thus limiting the amount of factions / people that can teleport to our f home, this is a great alternative for people to still easily reach us.

Lastly what could be offered from massive to have their functionality replaced?
While currently staff allows us to put up a certain rank in /f access, we still run into the issue that it would have to be located somewhere. If we place it under our city, everyone would have build perms above ground. We could make a huge farming field but this would not be as efficient and safe as our current farms. A issue I have found with this as well is that the command doesn't autocomplete, making it look like it doesn't work. It also would be a bit of a hassle, to do each chunk, it would be preferable if we could do it in a way of creating zones as staff. You pick 2 points and in that zone you can build etc or what ever you choose to have it for as long as it is in your faction.

The issue with a darkroom, is that it is a very important piece of infrastructure. They are usually quite big and require the mobs flag to be on, something we don't want for our base. This would mean we would have to claim all the way out of our own claim just to create such an important piece of infrastructure. Perhaps a single darkroom, for everyone to use where pvp is off could be a way to get rid of all darkrooms on the server, but otherwise I would not see a way to incorporate it into our own faction. This would also not be ideal, as everyone has different requirements of their darkroom or wants it differently or just have their personal one. Then there is the issue of people dying and dropping their items. Could also be an issue of leading mobs to someone else so they get killed just to grab their items in a supposed "safe zone".

Disconnected chunks could potentially replace the alt fac Eskarion, but then we run into the problem of not being able to let people teleport there. This could technically be work around by having a portal there, but then you need to tell everyone the passcode every time.

 

[Zero_00]

Really appreciate the feedback so far. Please keep it coming

 

[Ndfeb]

I currently own the AF of nonexistent in essa because I accidentally let the account expire earlier this year and they won't let me reclaim it.

It's needed because I mostly live in them and use them as main factions quite like I did with that claim until I disbanded it like a week ago and I don't want to build somewhere and be "chained" to it. I do not claim lots of space ever I'm currently at 10 chunks just to join a kingdom, I just don't want to spend significant amounts of time building somewhere only to have it effectively restrict me from joining another faction to pvp or chill (kingdom chat is only a really really weak substitute to fac chat people barely use it) without then losing that work again. The 500 chunks AFs should definitely be killed off and limited to like 30-50 chunks but I feel like this massive anti-altfac sentiment that tries to move us back to the just post-reset days of no altfacs at all is a terrible way of killing off the abuse cases.

For this purpose I don't think a replacement is possible unless you believe the whole "but what if you could be in MULTIPLE factions" is a serious suggestion and not just a meme.

 

[EricKilla]

Hello, I'm replying on behalf of the Silferian Empire, and the following (non-exhaustive) list of AFs with a brief rundown of their purpose:

-Conflagration (Public Darkroom/Facilities, Private Build)
-SilferiaHQ (Shared Kingdom Facility, Private Build)
-KaiserreichAF (Faction Facilities, Farm, Private Build, etc.)
-KRDarkroom (Warp Teleport to Darkroom, Private Build)
-BelloqInc (Private Build, formerly Looting)
-Crypt (Faction Facilities/Farms)
-Prussia (Faction Facilities, Private Build)
-Nilfgaard (Faction Facilities/Housing)
-Inolaath (Vault, Faction Facilities)
-Parallax (Darkroom)
-SolverisDR (Darkroom)

Granted, the majority of these are in Essalonia, with only KRDarkroom, KaiserreichAF, BelloqInc, Nilfgaard, Inolaath, and SolverisDR having land in Essa, and all but SolverisDR having less than 60 chunks (and for most, less than 30 chunks).

From most of what I've seen, most people use AFs to get work around the clunky, unintuitive, poorly put together perms system that's a jury-rigged holdover from the days of Cayorion back in 2011. What we need is the ability to dictate exactly what someone can or cannot do within a bounded region within our factions.

They also use AFs to create shops, markets, libraries and museums, darkrooms, grinders, public farms, etc - all well implemented in ways they could never pull off with the current permissions system in their own factions - unless of course you go full Salemslot and build your entire faction around that purpose, which most don't want to do.

What do you use them for that you couldn't in your main faction? / Why are they important to you?

Permissions Granularity:
Alt Factions, and generally factions that are detached from the main faction, are immensely useful in providing faction leaders with permissions granularity and functionality that we've been told would take tons of time and effort for the Tech Dept. to give us within our own factions.

For example, I have an Asteria-style plot town I let my members build at, but I also have a more traditional city elsewhere. Let's say I want to grant a low ranking officer the ability to grant access to new members in the plot town, but I don't want them to be able to grant access to the town or faction facilities and stage a repeat of the Pettiget-Solveris Incident. Splitting off the Plot Town into an Alt Faction allows us to specifically grant access perms in a limited manner, without putting the parent faction at risk.

This extends to basically anything you want to have limited perms without granting full access to the chunk.

Player Freedom
I find this one extends less to me personally, but does affect some friends and other members. Being able to just have your personal build or vault or whatever in it's own AF is far more convenient and player friendly than forcing these players to be in a 1 man faction... and no, I disagree heavily with the sentiment that "Oh just create a Kingdom and then you can have all your 1 man facs in the Kingdom and with Kingdom Chat it's just the same thing - as a Kingdom Leader, it's in no way shape or form the "same thing" as being in the same faction as eachother, and it packs in a ton of extra added risk for no reason, particularly with Sieges.

NdFeB also sums this one up beautifully in his post.

Use as Warps and Facilities/Darkrooms:
As you can see in the list above, the majority of the AFs we have are facilities such as DRs, Farms, Grinders, etc. Facilities you may not want to have in your town, or that are limited by the current faction Flags system. Also, you can use AFs to allow you to create warps/tps to various facilities (such as my /tp krdarkroom) without having to use clunky portals that are hard for new players to understand. Also many of these facilities, such as Darkrooms, are critically important to the current economy, with no real strong replacement put forth by staff at this point.

Lastly what could be offered from massive to have their functionality replaced?

Permissions Granularity:
To provide additional permissions granularity would require a significant overhaul of how permissions and flags work within factions.

Some of the ideas below:
-Give us the ability to have a deny-override over any inherited perms on a specific entity, e.g. /f perm set <perm> <entity> deny <facname-optional>. This would override any and all inherited perms. (e.g. I have an ally who I don't want to be able to f home, he would not be able to f home if I denied him the perm).
-Replace the current /f access system with a system of leader/officer created regions, not unlike a WorldGuard Region, where we can dictate exactly what perms <entity> has. Also allow us to set flags within this region, e.g. I can set mobs to spawn in this small area underground but not above ground.

Player Freedom:
There's no suggestion unless you allow us to have AFs that are purchased through Regals instead of using an Alt, e.g. Warzones. However, given the extra staff work of keeping up with disbands this would create, it's far from an appealing solution.

Use as Warps and Facilities/Darkrooms:
Like before, there's not really many way to replace these facilities, particularly darkrooms (requiring the monster flag). One of the suggested things I've seen is allowing us to create custom warps, but that's been shot down as well.

Is removing AFs Necessary?

Adding this here. Most of the "alternative" suggestions appear to require a significant amount of Tech Work, among other things. From my perspective... the easiest and least effort solution for Massive is simply to leave AFs the way they are and reopen AF claiming on Essa. Keep Essa as the "AF world" and have AFs turned off in the other worlds, or maybe turn them on gradually as new worlds are released, keeping them off for the newest worlds.

What problem is actually being solved by the removal of AFs? No one's given a good reason for removing AFs that can't be mitigated with well-crafted rules (e.g. member limits, claim limits, etc) other than "it's P2W" - but I don't think that argument is strong enough to merit a complete game-change of how Massive operates. The majority of users have interacted with AFs in some way, shape, or form, most positively, such as /tp darkroom and /tp krdarkroom. AFs aren't just about private ownership - they're valuable tools, workarounds to an antiquated system, and an easy means to encourage community cooperation and interaction - without requiring a ton of costly tech work and changes to the server.

 

[Savantly]

Why are they important to you?
Alternate factions have been a part of my gameplay since late 2014 shortly after Thaelyn/Yggdrigasil started to stoop into inactivity.
.
What do you use them for that you couldn't in your main faction?
For me, they have normally served as one-man factions that I will grant to an alt when I decide to join a larger community of players like Novorra, Asteria, or Norgard. I love being part of factions that have an active membership, however often I find that leaders have a certain permission structure or build identity that my interests are not compatible with. Here are the reasons why I chose An alt faction:

- Faction Security: In the typical faction structure the leader can appoint anyone to officer, as they should. But that doesn't always mean you can count on them to appoint reliable/trustworthy people into this position. This leaves the option for other officers and sometimes members to access chests or make adjustments to your house. This is a large reason why I chose alt factions.

- Longevity/preservation: I've been on long enough to see the fall and rise of thousands of factions on massive. I know that any leadership is due to go inactive, rather than putting all my hard work at the whims of someone's IRL schedule, I can reliably know that if I do not play that my stuff will disband. I cannot rely on the monthly activity of a leader as the year's pass.

- Claim Power: In the old days, alternate factions were really nice to claim over beautiful bases and give yourself access. It's even handier when you can have several alternate factions with over 200 claim power, it gives you a ton of flexibility.


Lastly what could be offered from massive to have their functionality replaced?
Birb has done a lot of great work, making the depth of faction permissions much more flexible. Ex. Implementing Custom Faction ranks, allowing to appoint permissions to individual players and other faction ranks. For me, Kingdoms almost completely acted as the solution I need to participate in a large group while maintaining autonomy, except:

SIEGES!
Sieges single-handedly ruins this experience. Yes, I still have control over my 1 man faction, but I lose my alliance chat and kingdom chat by the current iteration of siege lock. It locks me out from ever granting perms by relation (Because they are vectors for abuse if I do). My recommendation would be to put factions in a forced truce (Pink relation) as opposed to forcing them into the attacking kingdom. This would allow players to still see chats and maintain autonomy over relations.

Faction chat!
I'm forced to turn my faction into an alt Faction and join a faction to experience the liveliness of faction chat. It would be epic if we are able to grant our faction chat permission to other factions. This would allow actual players to functionally still be part of their host factions community while acting as the leader of a facility alternate faction.

These changes would serve as an adequate, for my individual one-man playstyle.

 

[RonnanMcA]

I personally have always had an Alt Faction since the day I joined Massive. It's a personal vault for me, I keep mine smaller but It allows the freedom to store all of my belongings in a space nobody else can access them or steal them.

We have all lost items from a faction kicking you randomly, or disbanding, or forgetting to pay taxes even raiders, or thieves.

A personal vault negates that worry and allows your freedom. I Use it to store large quantities of items and building materials and mob drops, lore, I set up my armor and frame my favorite weapons/tools/lore and turn it into a personal Museum/vault. It provides a location nobody can access or steal or lock on you.

There is nothing you can do to prevent or stop AF's. The only thing would be virtual vaults (Breaks server logic and lore) Or make a world specially for AF's. If you made purchasable vaults I still would not buy. Why pay some ridiculously overpriced fee for a vault the server sells when I can make one for free. And sometimes you need to leave the game for real life, If you miss a payment or go away for a while you'd lose everything in the vault, which offers a loss of a feeling of security and adds additional expenses.

My only offer to help with the issue is to allow a world to be created solely for AF use.