These Factions are Fundamentally Pointless

[Furry Eskimo]

The point of having factions is for people to get invested, and promote a sense of community and competition (usually), but these factions can Never do that...

Since every faction offers unique items, we're all going to swap between the factions in order to buy every item, and we know everyone else is doing that too.. There's no reason to fight with other factions or try to make peace, or even to be loyal, since we're all literally just watching to clock until it's our time to join the next faction.

Has anyone suggested a way to improve these factions, and actually give us a reason to invest in one factions or the other besides weekly bonuses that require grinding?
Seriously, why do the bonuses for Actually helping the factions expire??? There's no reason to get emotionally attached to any of them since it seems like they basically Want you to leave!!

[Malvinas]

Yea, I suppose after becoming "friendly" or even "cordial" with a faction, it would be cool to somehow get the faction engage with you against an "enemy" faction (via 'bots'), so that you can get (or 'steal') the bonuses and reward items they have. Instead of having you hop from faction to faction, you kinda "stick" to a faction and use it to attack another one and find an alternate way to get the rewards and bonuses anyway.

[Corvax]

Are you talking about the Powerplay? I know Winters have a open play community for her, and I suspect the others have as well.

[Ｍｏｎａｄｎｏｃｋ]

Originally posted by Corvax:

Are you talking about the Powerplay? I know Winters have a open play community for her, and I suspect the others have as well.

All of the Powerplay factions have communities that are fairly active, most being on Reddit, but I don't think that's what OP is talking about.

Powerplay is essentially meaningless once you cycle through all of the material perks of being a member of each faction. Once you have all of the goodies, then it really doesn't matter which faction you hang out with outside of personal roleplay preference.

[Kobi Blade]

Originally posted by Malvinas:

Yea, I suppose after becoming "friendly" or even "cordial" with a faction, it would be cool to somehow get the faction engage with you against an "enemy" faction (via 'bots'), so that you can get (or 'steal') the bonuses and reward items they have. Instead of having you hop from faction to faction, you kinda "stick" to a faction and use it to attack another one and find an alternate way to get the rewards and bonuses anyway.

Honestly you don't need to pledge to any of the factions in order to increase your status with them.

So you play around with all three with no issues, which is what I do honestly, since I'm mostly a Trader, choosing sides would make my life harder when I cross systems.

[JL::Jose-Juan Kenobi]

By factions I suppose you mean the Power Play Powers.

I agree it could use some love from the devs, but it does offer a few alternatives to the regular grinding, when it comes to just role playing, for example on trying to sabotage other powers, it describes what you can do to achieve that on the Galactic powers tab usually either under Expansion or Control sections for the "enemy" power.

Remember, you are no hero, you are nothing in the whole scheme of things :-)

[Agony_Aunt]

Some people do what you say OP, they shop around the powers. There has been some calls over the years for the powerplay weapons to be made regular weapons, remove them from powerplay. Leave powerplay just for those interested in supporting a power.

[Smok3y]

Going on 250 weeks with Patreus. Don't want to break that at this point, meaning I have locked myself out of a whole bunch of goodies just because...

[Jack left town]

Powerplay is a relic of a half formed idea from some gameplay designer circa 2016. Would be nice for rank 5 bonuses to be permanent, absolutely.
As it stands, only Li-Yong Rui has compelling permanent benefits, and the reason he's not taken over the whole bubble is nobody really cares about powerplay and solo/private play can still influence organized players who take it seriously in Open.
Minor faction reputation is handy for getting better job offers, that's about that. Or if you're in a need of a timewaster, you can help them expand and take over more stuff.

[Jack left town]

Imagine the discounts if Shinrarta Dezhra was a LYR exploited system, but Frontier won't even let people park carriers in there.

[Agony_Aunt]

Originally posted by Jack left town:

Powerplay is a relic of a half formed idea from some gameplay designer circa 2016. Would be nice for rank 5 bonuses to be permanent, absolutely.
As it stands, only Li-Yong Rui has compelling permanent benefits, and the reason he's not taken over the whole bubble is nobody really cares about powerplay and solo/private play can still influence organized players who take it seriously in Open.
Minor faction reputation is handy for getting better job offers, that's about that. Or if you're in a need of a timewaster, you can help them expand and take over more stuff.

While i agree with your general assessment of PP your assertion that nobody really cares about PP is wrong. There are many people who take it way too seriously.

[Furry Eskimo]

Yes, Power Play.

To address a few of the points made:
1. Grinding of any kind is still grinding, and is a poor example of how a game can relieve you of grinding.
2. There are people who care about PP, and I've never experienced the affects of their actions, ever.
3. PP items should not be made regular, they're unique and special, but making them accessible only by bouncing faction to faction IS wrong. These don't offer you a reason to develop your relationship with any faction. You have no emotional connection to them.
3.a. A solution may be that you can unlock access to an item by joining a group (as you do now), or perhaps completing missions for your own faction, perhaps stealing or trading with the faction that controls the unique tech.
4. Your status within a faction can vary, such as the weekly bonuses, but there needs to be a real reward for people who never leave the faction!
5. PP hardly affects anyone, not really. You'll never get unique missions for being in a faction, or rejected for being in a faction. Maybe you get a slightly better payout on certain missions, or a discount in the stores, but you don't go to a football game and pick a team to get 10% better prices at the vendors in a section of the stadium, the point is to experience bombastic crowds and enthusiasm!! You win/lose when your team wins or loses.
6. If PP is going to matter, it needs to be more obvious when you enter/leave a group's territory. Right now I have no clue whose territory I'm in. They put their insignias up, but they all look the same to me, grey and boring and not worth paying attention to.
6.a. Something as simple as a station adding a tax to a ship part I was about to buy because they dislike me, or slipping us some free beer, THAT is immersive!!!!

[Veeshan]

I understand the perspective, but oddly for me in this game my primary thrill upon logging in is helping out the meaningless NPC faction. They can put Oodles of effort into something and still get literally nothing out of it, like from me with Arena mode and combat in general. It's there for the players who enjoy it.

[Furry Eskimo]

Oh yeah, and trading from stations you're allied with should provide some kind of pirate immunity! It's always 'the tip was right!' Who's tipping these pirates off?? I tell green bounty hunters that if they're having trouble finding pirates to fight, just put a little gold in your inventory and they'll find you! Seriously, the fastest way to get into combat in this game is to try and be a trader and avoid combat.

Your allied stations should make sure the pirates don't know about you, encouraging you to have an investment in who owns what stations.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by Furry Eskimo:

Your allied stations should make sure the pirates don't know about you, encouraging you to have an investment in who owns what stations.

Whoever controls the station doesn't control minds of everybody living on it. It's not a Borg collective. People living on a station are all individuals. There are different local factions, including pirate ones.

[Furry Eskimo]

Originally posted by Dolphin Bottlenose:

Whoever controls the station doesn't control minds of everybody living on it. It's not a Borg collective. People living on a station are all individuals. There are different local factions, including pirate ones.

True, but do you understand my suggestion? The odds of those seeing you tipping off pirates should decrease the more those people know/like you. That’d be immersive. What’s the opposite of immersive is having someone tip off pirates Every time you buy anything, from anywhere. The pirates always claim to have been tipped off, and that’s how they found you, but this just seems like a difficult to believe excuse for why the devs always spawn pirates to attack traders at all times.