480 replies to this topic

[Joseph Mallan]

HARDKOR, on 26 January 2015 - 07:32 AM, said:

So, WTF is the difference when you play a different faction? I feel like it's nothing but window dressing at the moment. All IS houses have the same clan battles and there's rarely anything going on on the IS borders, and when there is, there is nothing to make it feel more like I am fighting Dave or the dragons or the pidgeon. Same stuff, different icon.

I'm amazed people manage to get so butthurt over a half baked watered down test run that has little to no faction flavor.

When I play for a different faction (one of my Alts) I actually try to improve teh new factions standing. At least that is teh difference for me when I put on a different hat.

[Cerlin]

This whole thread is bringing up and issue but I think this alt account thing is fine. You are making an out of game agreement and are pissed it does not get fulfilled. If you are so pissed, make Steiner accounts and defend them.

The faction councils can give guidelines (I even help one of them) but if you choose to ignore them, that is your right.

Spies and alts are part of the fun too. Stop whining please.

[John Winters]

One could cite the Red Corsair in cannon as a example to break the Truce.

[WhoopieMonster]

Perhaps I'm being an idiot here.

But no one can actually claim to speak for the entire faction. If unit A wants a ceasefire and unit B agrees to said ceasefire then that is a ceasefire between two units, not two factions. If 95% of units/people on each side agree then cool. But is still a ceasefire between units, not factions. I think this distiction needs to be made as people appear to be talking on behalf of their faction, forgetting they are infact a unit representing the faction.

[Almond Brown]

Davers, on 21 January 2015 - 10:29 AM, said:

Well, none of the battles on the Steiner/Davion border matter. You guys could hit each other for weeks before any chance of opening up a new front occurs. You guys are really making much to do about nothing.

It is all quite confusing now.
First "The Ugly 12" were taking a single Planet and that was very naughty of them.
Now it appears that single Planet that "The Ugly 12" were fighting on is not even in an area along the Border that actually matters to the affected Faction...

So did "The Ugly 12" pick a good or bad planet to attack? It is all quite confusing now.

Dimento Graven, on 21 January 2015 - 10:31 AM, said:

Sure it is, until I and 11 of my buddies start doing it to you...

Then Egomane could hire "us" as Mercs to look into the matter on their behalf. We just needs coordinates and proper compensation and we will deal with it for them.

That is what Mercs do right?

[Almond Brown]

MischiefSC, on 21 January 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

I'm not sure I'm in favor of letting players run factions and create enforceable alliances. I have no issue with players deciding to attack allies of their faction - again, alliances are at best gentlemen agreements between the loyalist members of factions.

My real issue is pretending that doing so is anything but being a petty inconvenience. I get the desire to do that - feel like you're doing something different or special or whatever. Being special and counter-culture or whatever hipster rebel term you want to use. That's great. The reality is though that the big groups and general consensus drive factions and faction tactics overall. If you're dropping in group queue and you're a 2man dropping with a 10man, the 10man gets to call the tactics. Even if you don't agree it's pretty stupid to be a 2man running off and doing your own thing.

Then again the 10man probably wasn't counting on the 2man of renegade pug-esque guys to do anything useful for winning the match anyway.

CW is no different. The big units and player made councils are going to decide the direction of their relative factions. That is what it is. If you work with them you can be part of the success of the faction. You work against the overall faction direction then you're a minor inconvenience and everyone, your faction or others, is going to remember you as a largely useless bunch of twits but whatever. What you're not going to do is significantly derail what the big groups are doing. It's just a matter of wanting to be useful vs wanting to feel like a cool hipster rebel outcast rambo pug, or whatever your motivation is.

It is obvious the offenders knew it would not be seen in a good light, otherwise why use throw away Alt accounts. They should have shown some true kahonies and used their real accounts to make a point. Whatever that point was, we can assume to just to state that if they are not included in the decisions, then here is how we will roll it.

Maybe a true Faction Alliance decision should include "everyone" who fly's that flag, not just a few.

[wanderer]

Quote

You will have to fight them to bring them to heel. WHICH YOU CAN DO NOW.

If someone's in my faction and dropping on a world, it is highly against the TOS to shoot them.

So no, I have no stick to use on such people. Seriously, if it was legit I'd gleefully TK any group that decided it was time to go to town on a Marik world. Without them adding every iota of pressure to Davion, we'd likely have been torn to bits. Smaller bits anyway.

And it makes factional warfare a joke. HARDKOR is correct, faction without influence is a joke, and all we can do is withhold our own numbers if someone decides "HURR HURR HURR, I'm gonna start attacking planets!". A PvP game with factions requires someone in charge. If that means someone in PGI acting as House military heads that designates planets to attack, then I'm all for it. Because that gives us someone we can collectively go up to and (as members of X faction's players) say "We don't want to attack these, we'd rather attack (insert faction here)".

[Harathan]

tl;dr: CW, without Factions existing as an entity, is just Public Queue with a map.

[Nastyogre]

Joseph Mallan, on 21 January 2015 - 02:46 AM, said:

Attacking an ally is not a tactic. A tactic is how you complete the mission. So if the desire is to mess up the Factions relationship with it's ally, attacking the Ally is a tactic. So if teh mission is to disrupt ally cohesion, you are a Traitor OR a enemy plant. Both os which should be allowed to be dealt with.

Its a game of war, and underhanded doings like this need a mechanic to deal with it. We Need a chain of Command for the Houses, and an ability to review Unit Loyalty to the House's agenda.

No we do not need a chain of command for the houses. Units are player made artifacts and PGI is in no position to monitor them. You think way to much of yourself and take this way to seriously.

Dimento Graven, on 20 January 2015 - 09:00 PM, said:

There's an issue that we've noticed with a certain "unit" claiming Davion loyalty constantly attacking Steiner worlds.

They are a relatively new unit (not on any previously posted unit lists), and the members that we've been able to search on this forum to attempt to find forum profiles for, don't appear to exist.

Before I name and shame, I want to know what PGI thinks of this sort of activity, the creation and use of alt accounts to have one faction attack an allied faction?

Is this a valid tactic?

Yep, entirely valid. No problem at all. The game is controlled by PGI. If I want to make an alt in the Clans or any other faction, including Davion to sabotage their unofficial, player based alliances you have nothing you can do.
IF my unit were to organize alts (and I'm not really in the command structure) to do this, it is entirely acceptable and in fact I have considered this specific thing. To screw with this stupid, too damn big for your britches attitude that comes out of all these "alliances" "councils" and other BS. It think its awful that the factions, especially the clans aren't fighting each other at all. Lore showed the Clans still dueled over worlds on the edges of their attack corridors. The IS mostly didn't fight each other during the invasion but not entirely stopped.

Here's the kicker though, PGI setup the game that there are no official ceasefires. So, its allowable, and complaining about it is asinine. If you knew that some CJS unit was making alts in the Fed Suns to try and sabotage the ceasefire with Steiner, if you knew the players that did it. What would you propose? PGI stop them? Its a player based group and decision, they aren't going to do that.

Go burn your energy on something useful. Better, get our fellow Davions to make Clan alts and jack them up. Or just lead the Fed Suns in stomping everybody and their grandmother. This is silly, "BUT they are breaking the rules we made up" guess what, other players don't have to follow your rules. So this is just preposterous.

If you don't like what some other unit is doing, too bad. Nothing you can do. Come here and complain? They can, and should laugh at you. You are screaming into the wind. It doesn't do anything, does it? You just make the Fed Suns players look like whiners.

[Nastyogre]

WhoopieMonster, on 26 January 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

Perhaps I'm being an idiot here.

But no one can actually claim to speak for the entire faction. If unit A wants a ceasefire and unit B agrees to said ceasefire then that is a ceasefire between two units, not two factions. If 95% of units/people on each side agree then cool. But is still a ceasefire between units, not factions. I think this distiction needs to be made as people appear to be talking on behalf of their faction, forgetting they are infact a unit representing the faction.

THIS X 10000000000000000000000000000000000

The ceasefire is between units and groups of units. NOT FACTIONS. Nobody speaks for factions.

Damn this makes me want to make alts just to do this... if I only played enough to devote the time and energy to this.

[pwnface]

I have no problems with players making alt accounts to stir up trouble as long as they aren't intentionally throwing matches. If you want to join an enemy faction and attack one of their allies to cause drama more power to you. If you join an enemy faction and start teamkilling or disconnecting so your real faction has an easier time winning matches THEN you should get BANNED.

[Harathan]

Stiletto, on 26 January 2015 - 04:12 PM, said:

No we do not need a chain of command for the houses.
To screw with this stupid, too damn big for your britches attitude that comes out of all these "alliances" "councils" and other BS. It think its awful that the factions, especially the clans aren't fighting each other at all.

You're aware that 22AL is part of the AFFS Command group, right?

Go look up the word 'hypocrisy', because clearly you're not so against it that you refrain from being in a unit that is one of the main units engaging in it.

Edited by Harathan, 26 January 2015 - 05:09 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Stiletto, on 26 January 2015 - 04:12 PM, said:

No we do not need a chain of command for the houses. Units are player made artifacts and PGI is in no position to monitor them. You think way to much of yourself and take this way to seriously.

I'm not thinking OF myself, I am thinking of the game as a whole. I have been a GM/DM off and on for 20+ years, and a game needs direction or it boils down to unnecessary chaos. Units Are players yes. Players pretending to be Mercs. Mercs get Orders and Pay from a Client. Thus as Mercs you ARE WORKING FOR SOMEONE. And thus need to do what THEY want is ya wanna git paid.

Many contracts require a Liaison officer And some even insert agents to make sure the Mercs are dealing in good faith. If you are a Merc Command you are slave to the paymaster or you go broke.

Your Merc Contract says you WILL guard Timbuktu, Thats what you do. You don't go faffing around in the Kerensky Cluster.

Right now, The system is chaos thanks to it being beta, but a bit more control needs to be put in place.

If I wanna fight Jags I need to be Kuritan or a Kurita hired Merc. OR even Davion Hired Mercs ordered to fight Nova Cats on Luthien.

[Nastyogre]

Harathan, on 26 January 2015 - 05:07 PM, said:

You're aware that 22AL is part of the AFFS Command group, right?

Go look up the word 'hypocrisy', because clearly you're not so against it that you refrain from being in a unit that is one of the main units engaging in it.

I am very aware of what the leadership of the 22nd AL is involved in. I don't agree with it, we're I leading the unit, we might agree to not attack Marik, Steiner and FRR, Liao and Kurita? Not any day, ever, and under no circumstances. What's more I'd encourage making alts that sabotaged the agreements of other factions. False Flag operations have been around for thousands of years. I've made that clear to the leadership of the unit. I follow the agreements Metz and Radio enter into. We don't require that I agree with it, just that I abide by it. They also don't have any problem with me pointing out the idiocy of taking the game too seriously. They certainly don't. Even if they don't agree with me. They certainly don't call for some sort of heavy handed management of the factions by PGI or any way to prevent people from playing alts. They have their own. So it's not hypocricy for me to belong to a unit that engages in diplomacy and strategy WITH OTHER UNITS IN OTHER FACTIONS and to call out people who think that because a handful of units enter into an agreement that they somehow speak for a whole faction.

[Nastyogre]

Dimento Graven, on 23 January 2015 - 07:12 AM, said:

Not insulting you. Insulting the stupid idea you presented. I'd answered that same sort of non-logic, AT LEAST, 10 times before that point. I chose to ignore it and you come off like you've made some super unanswerable quandary, or I'm somehow afraid of it. PUH-lease... Again, you're telling me 12 people decide they don't like Faction A's politics against Faction B, create throw away accounts to join Faction C, to attack Faction B, and that is somehow supposed to cause Faction A some sort of inconvenience?!?! PUH-lease.... If they wanted to screw with Faction A, they could have done so with their original accounts, attacking Faction A's allies/non-aggression partners. EXCEPT, that in THIS particular case, it really benefits, THE ORIGINAL PRIMARY FACTION. And why create brand new throw away accounts to do it? Why not take your original primary accounts, JOIN the Davion faction and do exactly what you're talking about? Oh, no, that's not what happened. An entire unit created brand new accounts to this sort of thing. WHY? Because they new it was going to benefit their original primary account's faction. This wasn't RP, this was a BS maneuver to provide their primary faction some breathing room on a front they were losing on. You presented NO FACTS, so there were none to "gloss over" you presented a THEORETICAL circumstance that DID NOT apply to the situation I originally posted about. You keep wanting to make it some sort "oh so intelligent and super tricky RP element" when in fact it was just a BS maneuver designed to weaken one front of a faction they were having trouble with on their original accounts. If you presented ACTUAL FACTS of the situation I'm posting about, please do so again, I keep missing them. Theories are not facts, they are guesses. Yeah I have a problem with an entire unit of people creating brand new throw away accounts to joining one faction to attack another faction in an attempt to provide their PRIMARY account's faction some benefit. I insulted your ideas, not you. You are not your ideas, and again, after having responded to the same silly idea so many frickin' times already, excuse me if I get a little impatient at having to repeat myself.

There is no such thing as "primary faction" every account has but one faction. A faction you can change at any time. I could theoretically switch to DC or CSJ or whatever, right now. You assert things exist that do not seek to impose your ideas on others when you have no right to do so.

1.There is no primary faction of a player, just the faction of an account. Players are allowed to have more than 1 account. PGI makes no restrictions.
2. You think that a small group of players (compared to all the players in the faction) have some sort of authority to speak for that faction. They do not, just because you want it to, doesn't make it so.

You take the game too seriously man, way too seriously. If you knew I was somehow sabotaging what the AFFS Command group was doing by making alts and attacking other teams that the AFFS command group was in an agreement with, you could go to CMetz and ask him to tell me to stop. He would either agree to do so or not. If he came to me, I would either stop or not. If I wouldn't he could do nothing but kick me from the unit. That's it. Your actions can impact what is mostly outside the game and only impacts player controlled actions within the game. End of story. If CMetz didn't want to do anything, all the AFFS command group could do is remove the access to 22nd AL. Again, they couldn't stop us from making alts, and attacking people you didn't want us to. They couldn't stop the unit from just doing so on our primary accounts. The AFFS command group is a player organization and can only act and should only be able to act within those confines.In fact, it has less power than a unit itself.


Too big for your britches to think that you should have some way to "out" players with alts, or sanction them. Sure if they are throwing games, but that's already against PGI's rules and you don't enforce it. Enough, be quiet. This is ridiculous. Some people won't play by the rules you want to make up, guess what, you don't make the rules. You aren't the GM and we aren't going to play by the rules you want to impose because you don't like one aspect of CW. I cannot see PGI ever implementing somthing like this. Deal with it.

[Lukoi Banacek]

How does a player participate in CW with a different faction if their first account is on permanent contract.

They can run a second account. That is about it.

Much of this thread is predicated on the assumptions of someone's motives.

In the end, it is immaterial. Players do not run factions. They can only influence the units and players within their factions. That is it.

CSJ has mercenary units who did things that a large group of CSJ loyalists were not looking to do. Guess what...it happens. Nothing to be done about. We did not convince them to go our way, they did not convince most of the loyalists to go their way. And so two independent agendas occured, tied to the faction as a whole.

If you do not exert enough influence over folks, guess what...they will follow their own agendas (whether to your detriment or not).

It has been what...week plus now? Game is still going, internet hasnt exploded....what is being damaged by players running second accounts, that doesnt already happen with roving merc units? Nothing. You cannot punish mercs, you cannot punish secondary accounts. The player does not have the right to do so, never has. Folks really need to learn their place in the pecking order.

[Harathan]

You know what PGI? Just cancel CW and stick a map overlay on the Public Queue. Apparently, the idea of Community driven Faction vs Faction warfare is so repellent to some people that they're prepared to actively and deliberately screw it up for other people. So why bother? You're wasting your time with it. Just divert the resources back to making maps and doing hitreg fixes and bringin in mechs. And hey, it's not like anyone would be surprised with you for not delivering something you promised.

[Joseph Mallan]

Harathan, on 27 January 2015 - 08:41 AM, said:

You know what PGI? Just cancel CW and stick a map overlay on the Public Queue. Apparently, the idea of Community driven Faction vs Faction warfare is so repellent to some people that they're prepared to actively and deliberately screw it up for other people. So why bother? You're wasting your time with it. Just divert the resources back to making maps and doing hitreg fixes and bringin in mechs. And hey, it's not like anyone would be surprised with you for not delivering something you promised.

Dude there is always someone out there trying to ruin Christmas for everyone else. Why would it be different this one time???

[Kdogg788]

WhoopieMonster, on 26 January 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

Perhaps I'm being an idiot here.

But no one can actually claim to speak for the entire faction. If unit A wants a ceasefire and unit B agrees to said ceasefire then that is a ceasefire between two units, not two factions. If 95% of units/people on each side agree then cool. But is still a ceasefire between units, not factions. I think this distiction needs to be made as people appear to be talking on behalf of their faction, forgetting they are infact a unit representing the faction.

This is the jist of it right here. There are no real in game truces between factions just forum agreements between larger units. If my unit and a few others agree not to attack Davion for a few days, does that mean that anyone else in HK is prevented from hitting them? Of course not. Agreements are between factions not houses.

-k

[Harathan]

Kdogg788, on 27 January 2015 - 09:38 AM, said:

Agreements are between factions not houses.
-k

You mean agreements are between units, not factions.

But is CW Faction vs Faction warfare, or Unit vs Unit warfare? If the former, Factions have to exist as an entity in some way, even if it's nothing more than a contract board (which is not what we have now). If it's the latter, just stick a map overlay on the public queue and call CW done.