Archived Simple Faction Lore, Connecting The Communities

[vidivo]

Not a very long while ago, I saw the thread about PvPers no longer having anything to do on the server. I, to an extent, agree with this statement, as the most original feature on Massivecraft and the somewhat only cause of the player base's growth is the server's Role-Play. The server can offer a Role-play experience like no other on Minecraft, but the PvP is, to be honest, pretty outdated compared to the most modern servers. My idea is, as there already is Regalian role-play that keeps getting new players, implementing a simple faction lore and interaction with the role-playing hub Regalia for the survival/faction worlds. My solution is the following:
Factions are extremely numerous and therefor cannot be completely integrated into lore, and also change drastically at a fast pace. To start with the project I am telling you about, there would need to be a system allowing people to register their factions on the forums. However, considering the unstable nature of factions, the applications for registering a faction should be quite simple, an example is provided below.

Spoiler: Template

Faction name: (name of the faction)
Faction leader: (player username)
Faction type: (village/tribe/town)
Demographics: (races, cultures)
Relation with Regalia: (ally/neutral/enemy)
Position in Aloria: (continent/state the faction belongs to in RP)
History: (short summary, 100-200 words)

As you can see, this template is pretty simple and filling it out should take less than 30 minutes. A faction that applies here should not conflict with lore on most parts, but, as this is considered light RP, the regulations would not be as strict as at the character applications, for example, as factions would not become a part of the lore on the wiki (at least in the start). Factions that register here would be mentioned in world progression posts and could affect the Regalian politics under some circumstances, but there would be no immediate effect. Regalian nobles would still be the most powerful role-play figures, while the faction leaders would gain some recognition in Regalia, but much more in the survival worlds.

So, how exactly would this work? The whole system would be quite simple. A faction registers with the template provided above. One of the most important points there is the relation with Regalia. This point reflects how your faction shall be written about in world progression posts. If it is an ally of Regalia, for example a unionist militia, it could be mentioned as the force of good in the corrupt outside lands, while a nest of aggressive vampires would be mentioned as a crushing force that has defeated the Regalian navy. The neutral factions would be able to ally and enemy both sides. Each relation would have it's pros and cons, which will be explained later.

In practice, it would work like this: Faction A is an ally of Regalia and attacks faction B, which is an enemy of Regalia. Faction B surrenders and faction A becomes known in Regalia.

This system, as you can see, isn't very complex, so I decided to add one more element, and that's Regalia itself. Some players (PvPers) could be hired by Regalia and become mercenaries, which would provide them Regals. These players would present the Regalian aid, which would help allies of Regalia and in some cases neutral factions in faction wars.
This would also have an effect on how much money a faction can yield in a war:
•Allied factions would be get Regalian aid in most cases, which would get them a larger number of units, but they would only get a half of the max tribute if they win a war, the other half go to Regalia (are voided), but receive much glorification in world progression post.
•Neutral factions would be able to wage war on both Regalian and anti-Regalian factions, and would also only get Regalian aid on some occasions. These factions get the full max tribute without Regalian aid but only a quarter of it with aid, and receive less glorification than Allied factions in progression posts.
•Enemy factions would be able to wage war on any faction, and get full max tribute at any occasion, but would never receive Regalian aid. These factions would not be glorified in world progression posts, but rather written about as something malicious. They would function similarly to the current faction model.

That's it from my side, I hope you liked it. Another thing criteria could be geographic location of a faction, which would determine the number of Regalian mercenaries helping you, but more about that later. If anything is not clear to you or you disagree with it, please comment below.

Best regards, vidivo

 

[Wumpatron]

If it were to become integrated with lore it would have to be uncanon from all the existing lore. The lore and subsequent progression for the roleplay of the server exists the way it does for very specific reasons. There isn't much expansion to go in on but simply that the lore is designed to be written to effect the "main story" in very specific ways as needed.

Now that that's out of the way I have to say I do like the idea of having the sort of faction lore aspect. It would be a separate entity, but it would create an atmosphere to the factions world that many new players just don't see or experience joining the server. It would have to have it's own unique version of Regalia, however. That way new players won't be confused that the roleplay worlds and the factions worlds are different. I don't see a point in trying to merging the communities. People who want to roleplay will roleplay and people who want to operate factions and pvp will do those things. There is no point in forcing the two together.

So this is my proposed solution using much of what you suggested: having separate faction lore. It doesn't force the two communities to merge, but it does create a way for players in both of them to easily pass between the two worlds. It would encourage roleplayers to try factions if they want and it might encourage factions players to try roleplay. This is a better solution in my opinion. Nobody is forced to be a part of a community they aren't interested in, but they are able to move between them more easily.

In short, love your idea, but merging the communities shouldn't be a priority for encouraging factions. It creates more problems than solutions.

 

[Lord_Aza]

If it were to become integrated with lore it would have to be uncanon from all the existing lore. The lore and subsequent progression for the roleplay of the server exists the way it does for very specific reasons. There isn't much expansion to go in on but simply that the lore is designed to be written to effect the "main story" in very specific ways as needed.

Now that that's out of the way I have to say I do like the idea of having the sort of faction lore aspect. It would be a separate entity, but it would create an atmosphere to the factions world that many new players just don't see or experience joining the server. It would have to have it's own unique version of Regalia, however. That way new players won't be confused that the roleplay worlds and the factions worlds are different. I don't see a point in trying to merging the communities. People who want to roleplay will roleplay and people who want to operate factions and pvp will do those things. There is no point in forcing the two together.

So this is my proposed solution using much of what you suggested: having separate faction lore. It doesn't force the two communities to merge, but it does create a way for players in both of them to easily pass between the two worlds. It would encourage roleplayers to try factions if they want and it might encourage factions players to try roleplay. This is a better solution in my opinion. Nobody is forced to be a part of a community they aren't interested in, but they are able to move between them more easily.

In short, love your idea, but merging the communities shouldn't be a priority for encouraging factions. It creates more problems than solutions.

Click to shrink...

You're seriously arguing that having two separate versions of Regalia would be less confusing to new players?

 

[Wumpatron]

@Lord_Aza what I am saying is not call it Regalia if you want to utilize the concept of Regalia and it's lore for factions. Apologies if that wasn't clear. My counter proposition was for factions to have it's own specific and unique lore so new players aren't confused between having two Regalias. I know that wasn't in the original post, it was my counter idea, but it wouldn't be possible to integrate factions into the existing lore as stated in threads similar to this.

Separate lore for factions that isn't tied to the roleplay community.

 

[SignoreScafuto]

annoying picture that doesn't add anything to the discussion

Click to shrink...

I think the point was to have the faction version of Regalia, as in the most powerful one.

 

[vidivo]

@Lord_Aza what I am saying is not call it Regalia if you want to utilize the concept of Regalia and it's lore for factions. Apologies if that wasn't clear. My counter proposition was for factions to have it's own specific and unique lore so new players aren't confused between having two Regalias. I know that wasn't in the original post, it was my counter idea, but it wouldn't be possible to integrate factions into the existing lore as stated in threads similar to this.

Separate lore for factions that isn't tied to the roleplay community.

Click to shrink...

I'm sorry for not stressing this, nobody would be forced to do anything. Role-Players would still be able to play they way they do now, factions would not really affect them, and faction players who want to play regular PvP could continue to do so. You said that the communities should not be joint by force, but I think they have already been separated that way. It's up to the server whether they wish to have a large river or two smaller streams. It might be confusing to new players, but the fun part of the game is not being aware of every detail there is, but becoming a part of it and discovering something new. I think, as already stated, that both communities have been created artificially and if people want to be both role-players and PvPers, they should be able to do that without getting a split personality.

I as well see no reason for creating another lore, because that would probably confuse new players much more than having just one, and would contribute to Massivecraft becoming a hub server, and there are dozens of those. In my opinion we have two options: we can just iron out the flaws from each of the departments, or generate a point where the two departments meet and create something greater than one could imagine. My idea was to let PvPers affect the lore, but not to the point where it becomes interrupting for role-players. The current lore as well has descriptions of various places outside of Regalia, but they serve no serious cause because they are not very important to the RP itself, but we could inhabit them.

I think it would be more proper if I wrote bridge rather than merge. I believe things like that can create synergy. For example, the races plugin was not as good as traits when you look at it from a close distance, but it is good for what it has caused: people created factions that were about their race, and they were able to get into RP without even reading the lore. And I agree, making a bridge between the communities would cause several problems, but is it really worse to have problems you can solve than to have nothing to solve at all?

 

[FireFan96]

The way the lore is already set up makes this idea impossible to implement. While mentioning a faction in lore progression sounds fine in theory, note that world progressions are something characters are immersed in and have to react to. If all of a sudden there was a faction that was attacking people in Ithania, expect RP levies to go in an keep the peace. There political scene in Regalia is extremely structured to the point that even mentioning a faction beyond the whole "nomadic warriors" makes things messy.

I have to agree with Wump that the only way this would work is by making a non-canon and canon Aloria, kinda like how Star Wars is split between legends and canon. As for new players getting confused, look to the quest worlds. They mention Regalia left and right, yet nothing that happens there can be canon, else we'd have 100 people defeating a spider god by themselves and another 50 missing an ear from a barber. It wouldn't make sense, so the two gamemodes are separate lore wise. There's lore items, but unless I see that Glorious color than I could care less.

To sum it up, faction lore wouldn't be able to translate to the current RP lore, since automatically assigning PvPers a warrior class would just undermine the writing done for RP.


Now to go on a tangent, but I did like the Silverwind idea back when it was new, and perhaps a system could be in place to bring RP and PvP together on a smaller map. However having giant cities in the middle of dangerous jungles on entire continents (not to scale probably) that are already subjected to Regalia would make no sense.

 

[vidivo]

The way the lore is already set up makes this idea impossible to implement. While mentioning a faction in lore progression sounds fine in theory, note that world progressions are something characters are immersed in and have to react to. If all of a sudden there was a faction that was attacking people in Ithania, expect RP levies to go in an keep the peace. There political scene in Regalia is extremely structured to the point that even mentioning a faction beyond the whole "nomadic warriors" makes things messy.

I have to agree with Wump that the only way this would work is by making a non-canon and canon Aloria, kinda like how Star Wars is split between legends and canon. As for new players getting confused, look to the quest worlds. They mention Regalia left and right, yet nothing that happens there can be canon, else we'd have 100 people defeating a spider god by themselves and another 50 missing an ear from a barber. It wouldn't make sense, so the two gamemodes are separate lore wise. There's lore items, but unless I see that Glorious color than I could care less.

To sum it up, faction lore wouldn't be able to translate to the current RP lore, since automatically assigning PvPers a warrior class would just undermine the writing done for RP.


Now to go on a tangent, but I did like the Silverwind idea back when it was new, and perhaps a system could be in place to bring RP and PvP together on a smaller map. However having giant cities in the middle of dangerous jungles on entire continents (not to scale probably) that are already subjected to Regalia would make no sense.

Click to shrink...

I agree with the points stated here. My idea was not to allow huge faction empires to be recognised in the lore, but rather tribes and smaller towns, which would not have a major impact on the Regalian politics, but enough to be known by some people. As for assigning PvPers a warrior class: I only mentioned recognition of factions, not characters. So to say, you could say you come from said faction, but that wouldn't make your character any stronger in Regalia. In actual RP battles and larger or more important world progression posts, players with approved expert level warrior character application would of course be considered much better warriors than PvPers without it.

 

[Omnomivore]

The suggestion of including Factions in lore has been brought up countless times and generally resisted by the Lore Department. I will mark this as "Under Review" but can provide no input on whether that decision will ultimately remain unchanged or not.