Suggestion Reintroduction of Company Tiers

[Alban Roble]

This is an unofficial follow up to Annassari's thread here, in case you haven't read up.

TLDR:

• Company Tier Progression should come mainly from marketplace purchases/major faction contracts and development threads should be more endgame requirements.
• Tier rewards should feel like actual rewards, such as being able to field larger/more ships and build things like large civilian stations at a lower production rate, etc.

Basically, this: Company Tiers, love 'em or hate 'em, provided some sort of progression in the same way that the Map Game provides Major Factions. With a little retooling and ingenuity, I think that company tiers could be revitalized and actually mean something other than fluff without being some boring grind.

Basically for progression, I think for at least the first half of tiers the most emphasis should be on the Marketplace. The Marketplace serves as basically Chaos's economy (in the loosest of terms) in the sense of while there is no credit system, there are still writers making purchases and therefore you are theoretically making profits, or at least making creds. Basing off initial progression mostly or solely on the Marketplace would put a better emphasis on curating storefronts and reward company owners for making submissions that are popular, or company owners who have worked hard to make a marketplace storefront. I also think that Major Faction contracts should figure into this as well.

Let's make a hypothetical progression system, say to get from Tier I to Tier II. In this hypothetical progression, you need 25 points to get to the second tier. A Major Faction contract (which would be producing any amount of anything for the use of a Major Faction) will net you ten points, while a marketplace purchase will net you three points. Therefore, you'd need a major faction contract and five marketplace purchases to progress to a tier, or two major faction contracts and two marketplace purchases to progress to a tier, or nine marketplace purchases to progress a tier, so on and so forth. I'm not suggesting this exact scale of points and progression, but merely using this as an example of the system I'm talking about.

Once you get past half the tears, I think the requirements to progress should change and the rewards from here would begin to ramp up. Let's say that this is a six-tier progression system like the old one (although correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while). Tiers I-III would progress solely through marketplace purchases/major faction contracts. Tiers IV-VI would require an increasing amount of development threads alongside marketplace purchases. Each tier would have a progressing number of points needed to progress (i.e. for Tier I, you need 25 points while to get Tier VI you need 55 points, increasing each tier by increments of 5 points) and at higher tiers, you would also need a development thread to progress. However, at these higher tiers, you would begin to unlock perks for your company that makes the 'grind' worth it. Some examples I've thought of are being able to field larger ships, or being able to produce larger ships and stations at lower production rates (for example, Tier V could unlock producing civilian space stations at any size at a semi-unique rarity).

Of course, this is very roughshod and of course if/when an actual tier system is reintroduced, it would be much more finer tuned. But I personally hope this can be the direction that reintroduction would align with. And as always, feel free to pick it to pieces

 

[Jax Thio]

Are we going to bring back stocks and shareholders? I feel that'll be an interesting and immersive mechanic to RP. Could even inspire some storylines from it.

 

[Takui]

Ideally I'd like to see agreements between companies, or companies and factions (read: larger government bodies, groups, etc) mean something more than "x can utilize submissions from y." For instance, a contract might mean a specific amount of items that would need a new contract to commission another time. That way, there would need to be more role-playing to cement those contracts, and IC would have to carry from one to another.

Additionally, maybe a licensing/contracting system for large ships? Since SSDs are gained through dominions right now, what if we did a development thread styled (not explicitly a development thread) system wherein the parties meet, work out plans, talk payments rendered etc, and ultimately build large ships (think 5km). That way it would steer away from only Majors having firepower but also not give minors or company owners a real estate stake on the map.

 

[Gat Tambor]

Oh god please no ill be outted as a fraud

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

'Ideally I'd like to see agreements between companies, or companies and factions (read: larger government bodies, groups, etc) mean something more than "x can utilize submissions from y." For instance, a contract might mean a specific amount of items that would need a new contract to commission another time. That way, there would need to be more role-playing to cement those contracts, and IC would have to carry from one to another.'

There's nothing stopping company X and faction Y from doing this. You don't require a rule.

Takui

As for reintroduction of tier levels, no thanks. Having a lot of fun with the companies I have (both of my mains are from a time when you had go through a grind to get a tier update), without them. Frankly, virtually all my roleplaying is related to my companies in one way or another.

 

[Beltran Rarr]

Again while I would be interested to see some kind of stock market, shareholder situation, I am hesitant to bring back tiers-at least as they were in the past. The grind was real...boring. Maybe tiers based on numbers of approved submissions? Or based on actually submitted locations/stations etc... to provide an actual real sense of the company's assets? I dunno...just brain storming...

 

[Fiolette Fortan]

Tiers are cool and I miss them, glad I got to the big boss tier before it ended.

I never want to go through that again.

Maybe like a low-key optional grind for those of you who enjoy that sorta flogging.

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

Nope!

The company system was done away with because very few people had the time or patience for it. This is a hobby. If someone wants to submit a two kilometer ISD clone, then just let them do it. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by telling them they need a Tier IV company with 500 points before they're allowed to engage in an aspect of their hobby.

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

Furthermore, plenty of people have subbed new companies since the Factory deregulation. Some of them would be new writers who weren't around for the 'good old days'. It makes no sense to penalise them. Likewise, it also doesn't make sense to expect 'old timers' who went through the grind to start over again.

 

[Takui]

I want something instituted for an economic system. Maybe I should have specified that.

Any of this would be "opt in."

 

[Rynn Vizsla]

I'd rather a company's "progression" remain organic, rather than turned into an OOC goalpost that people can "speed-post" towards with arbitrary rewards. If you want your business to grow? Make good products and throw yourself out there. Advertise. Get people to come to your marketplace over going to the "popular" ones by offering something new to enthrall them, before turning them into repeat customers.

That alone should be enough of a grind to make your company the best of the best, which in itself, is somewhat rewarding. At least, until someone else knocks you from that pedestal and forces you to start the grind once more.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

Basically for progression, I think for at least the first half of tiers the most emphasis should be on the Marketplace. The Marketplace serves as basically Chaos's economy (in the loosest of terms) in the sense of while there is no credit system, there are still writers making purchases and therefore you are theoretically making profits, or at least making creds. Basing off initial progression mostly or solely on the Marketplace would put a better emphasis on curating storefronts and reward company owners for making submissions that are popular, or company owners who have worked hard to make a marketplace storefront.

This would seem to discourage anyone from using Open Market.

Back in the day, Corellia Digital progressed from Tier 1 to Tier 5 making comlinks, datacards, and holo-games. All of my Corellia Digital submissions are Open Market. There's no IC justification I can imagine as to why they wouldn't be Open Market. If the Bryn'adul want to play Endormon Go... more power to them. But, as a result, there's no need for anyone to ever make a purchase in the Corellia Digital marketplace thread for anything I make under the Corellia Digital, Corell Financial, or Holoflix label.

I'd be opposed to an "improvement" that would incentivize Closed Market submissions and forcing company RP into micro-transactions in the Marketplace for the sake of generating some metric like a faction activity check.

Hard pass.

 

[Veino Garn]

The challenge with marketplace threads for company growth is that not all companies make and sell products. So for them, a marketplace thread isn’t nearly as useful.

Also no economic system. I’ve been on boards with that. It was a nightmare.

 

[Alban Roble]

Sor-Jan Xantha Veino Garn

Open Market stuff is a valid wrench in that plan, and I’d have to think of a way that it could fit into it. As for companies that don’t make stuff for the marketplace at all and don’t have any interaction with major factions, it feels logical that they wouldn’t progress as fast but that’s just my feelings on it. Like I said it’s a very roughshod idea.

Edit: Holy Crap I didn’t see the rest of the responses, I’ll try to get to you all XD

 

[Takui]

I think the words "opt in" are getting glossed over, here.

Obviously there are people who don't/won't want to participate in the system, and that's fine. I for one am totally fine with those people not being involved. Subsequently, they wouldn't benefit from any of the things involved in the system, perks or otherwise.

But if they're doing their thing the way Chaos has been since the tier system was originally scrapped, nothing really changes for them anyway.

 

[Alban Roble]

Takui

Great and v underrated point. I think it should be where you don’t get penalized if you choose not to participate, it’s that there are perks outside of normal company stuff you can “grind” for if you want to.

 

[Onrai]

I'd rather not get my factories nuked and forcibly downgraded to Tier 1 another 3 times, tyvm

 

[Jsc]

I always need someone to actually make the stuff I submit to the Factory. As such, I'd love to see a Subscription system like Youtube whereby I could apply to subscribe my IC characters to a company and gain access to their IC materials, production values, and services.

So let's say your company makes and sells ships. I'd apply a character to your company to gain access to your 'Special Buy List' or 'Build To Own' categories. You could approve or disapprove that application. Approval gets you a number which you can put on your companies front page. "100 character subscriptions", "10 character subscriptions", "1,000,000 character subscriptions". Approval gets me special access to cool ships or specifications whereby I can build my own vessel using your companies resources or itemized listings. Such as a durasteel freighter at unique production with a stealth drive. Or something like that.

2 cents. Click like, comment below, and hit that bell icon for more! Thanks.

 

[The Red of Sinner]

I agree, bring back the tiers.

Aint no thing but a chicken wing.

 

[Tegan Starfall]

I would have to say no because I am real old school when it comes to companies. Companies are a story element that you can build over many stories and progress at the player who owns them's discretion.

There doesn't need to be a system for how or when they grow that takes creativity and fun out of it, stagnating it down to a chore that must be done if you want to get anywhere or do anything with your company. Some rules just bog down the system and turn a certain portion of a communities population off to something they could otherwise have fun with.

In the old days you had fleeting rules so strict that it made people just down right hate fleeting to the point it still has a stigma on it to this day even though most boards including Chaos have striped them down to there very bare bones making them very freeing.

Ranks for your characters use to be a thing you had to progress through it started as five ranks over time it became three ranks. Now on most boards it is start at what ever rank you want. The reason this came about is because training threads themselves were often tedious and boring to the point most trainers put themselves on the not able to train list so they could go off and write what they really wanted to. It left people masterless and with no way to resolve the issue. The idea that you had to progress through the ranks to get anywhere and not mention some political games where played with ranks like if you don't do such and such for me you won't get promoted happened a lot causing stagnation and people creatively stifled. Once the rules where done away with you saw even older writers start with new apprentice or padawan because they could now do so many threads and determine when they were ready for the next rank no longer did they feel held back.

A tier system in the business area is the same vein people will feel like they can't get anywhere so won't participate where they otherwise might. I would honestly like to know if there was a boom in company creation after the old teir system was dismantled? My guess is there probably was because no longer was the creative and fun being held back by a completely unnecessary system.

Personally this system is uninteresting to me and would turn me off completely to the business of role play. I see it more as chore then fun and at the end of the day I come here for fun and witty banter.