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Character Levels, Influence, and Factions
A few days ago we shared some initial info about what factions will be like in Star Wars: The First Sith, and we were thrilled with the reaction. There were also a lot of questions, so we want to share more info with you. Particularly because we're making a lot of changes to the site, including how factions and characters work.
Characters
Let's start with characters. In the past we've only had in-universe faction ranks, and then the Faction Leader roles. The new timeline will introduce out-of-universe "levels" that characters will climb through the timeline. These will be tracked on in-universe, character sub-accounts — yes, we're bringing them back, and their use will be required for every character so levels can be tracked.
You won't be able to rank up without leveling up. To level up, you'll have to earn experience points (XP) by creating and role-playing great plots and threads. Everyone will start out at the first level, which is Level 1. And by everyone, I mean literally everyone. No one can start off at a higher level or rank. Not you. Not me. Not anyone.
As a result, higher level characters, such as the Jedi Council, will all be Non-Player Characters (NPCs) when the timeline starts. That includes Faction Leaders — no one will be a Faction Leader when the timeline starts, nor will anyone be a Faction Leader for a long time. You can earn your way up to that rank, but we all have to work for it if we want it.
PC and NPC Organizations
This also necessitates changes to how independent factions are set up. In our current timeline, you can start an independent faction with 6 corvettes, 2 frigates, a base of operations, etc and you can call yourself the leader of this faction. In the new timeline, you and your indie faction — which from here on out I'm going to refer to as PC Organizations — start with nothing. You have to build it up. You have to kick and claw your way to owning every little scrap that you get. If you want to be the leader of a faction, you have to built it from dirt. You have no territory. No assets. Just your character and the clothes on your back.
Then we have the NPC Organizations that we talked about, like the Kingdoms of Alderaan, Serenno, and Onderon. Creating one of these doesn't make you a faction leader. Thinking of these NPC Organizations as factions is a misnomer in general, because the emphasis in NPC Organizations is "NPC." No one owns them. No one controls them. They're play settings that you can create as sandboxes for other people to play in. If you create one, you're saying it's a concept you're excited about and a world that you want to role-play in, but that it's a world that anyone else can play in too and you don't care about ownership of it. Similar to creating a Planet or Species write up in the current timeline.
And like with Main Factions and PC Organizations, even if you want to say you're an Alderaanian noble, you still start from Level 1 and have no more or less influence than anyone else until you work for it.
More excitingly though, an NPC Organization can have as much or as little influence as players put into them. Meaning if a group of players band together as members of an NPC Organization, creating plots and stories and interacting with other factions, they could push that organization into prominence in the story in the same way one could with a Main Faction or PC Organization.
Influence
In the past, we've seen a lot of people who aren't in Main Factions say that they don't feel like they can have an impact. That their stories don't matter as much. Obviously there's no way around the fact that Main Factions are bigger and the starting focus of the storyline. But by putting every player and every character on equal footing from the beginning, it evens the playing field for the impact or influence that any individual player can have.
In a galaxy of untold numbers of people, all PC characters are inherently the elite, stand out Star Wars characters. The fact that your story is being told is a big deal in its own right. But in this new timeline, no one gets to start out being more of a spotlight than anyone else. Whether you're a Jedi Knight in the Jedi Order, a pirate captain in a PC Organization, or a noble in an NPC Organization. you only have influence if you build it.
So to sum up what characters and being in a faction means this timeline: if you want it, build it. That's true of influence. That's true of power. That's true of rank. It's true in a Main Faction and it's true in a PC or NPC Organization. It's true across the board, which we think is really exciting and makes the stories every single one of us are going to tell all the more exciting and meaningful.
This will obviously create a lot of questions. "How are factions going to work without Faction Leaders?" and "What are the ranks?" and "How do people level up?" and "How are NPC Organizations going to work if they're just sandboxes?" All valid questions, and all things that we'll be talking more about moving forward.
In the meantime, if there are questions we can answer, we'll do so in this thread.
