In Unturned 3.X there was just one international coalition that was entirely ambivalent that had no selfish interests or political aims. They were didn’t have any concern that rescuing survivors or international travel could spread the infection further. There were also national militaries, which have almost all entirely collapsed, and collapsed (mostly generic) militia organizations. Most of these organizations played little to no part in lore or NPC questlines. The biggest exception there was in Greece, a curated map, which had a national military that had only mostly collapsed and a not entirely generic militia group (that still could have fit just as well anywhere on the globe) and these groups did play extremely important roles in NPC quest lines. This worked fine for Unturned II, with it’s NPCs and lore tacked on as afterthoughts, however Unturned II will have (atleast it’s currently planned to have) a more planned out and structured lore, more NPC interaction, and more serious elements (I believe all of these points were covered to some extent in SomebodyOnEarth’s Interview of Nelson.) With these changes between Unturned and Unturned II, I believe there’s room for more factions, but these factions must strike a balance between being too bland and generic and being so believable as to become political and controversial (the closer the game gets to portraying real world militaries and governments in a believable way, the more it will be judged based on how those countries are portrayed, especially when it comes to controversial factions such as Israel, Palestine, and China, which many people already have biases about.)
Where do you think factions should fall on the line between being safely generic and portraying controversial issues?
My opinion
Personally, I wouldn’t mind a second coalition of less “Western” countries and maybe smuggling network that runs counter to the coalitions’ quarantines and I would definitely like to see some more regional flair to the militias of various maps, even if the militia forces don’t directly say what they’re standing for. (For example, it would be really cool to have militia type NPCs in Ireland styled after Ulster loyalists or Irish nationalists, even if those ideals or even the combat between them, was considered too controversial to include.)
I know Nelson has avoided portraying potentially offensive or controversial groups and topics before, but I think he has the good sense and good grace to touch on these subjects in a polite manner, but do you think it’s worth risking that someone might get offended?
I think this is a very, very grey area and one that is easy to create a lot of controversy over.
That being said, I wouldn’t be against having variety in such factions or NPC groups, even if they are entirely fictional variation. I would still advise playing it safe as far as making any real life parallels though. It can even detract from gameplay, given more innocuous things have been complained about before (like the churches in France having civilian gun spawns, or even the train crash in Canada being compared to the Lac Megantic disaster. I wish I was joking about someone taking offense with this)
If Nelson wants the factions to be less bland then he should stray from the designs of the current game. Although like you said, nothing wrong with another typical western group as long as there are other non-generic groups.
As for potential controversy, I don’t really mind getting several people triggered. First off, the game is fictional as it is not intentionally depicting stuff relating to real-life history/events. Second, whatever ‘Controversial’ is only what they believe in their own point of view as they do not represent the group or victims involved in said reference (Great Hero J mentioned a few things).
Nothing wrong with trialling the feature until some people started to get a fit over it, but if it received negative media attention or similar then Nelson would remove/rework it all together. Again it’s nothing that big of a deal, as several games made changes to satisfy some SJW’s needs.
Yeah it ultimately comes down to a matter of opinion, which is why I made a post where people could express their opinions.
Well, that's not the entirety of why I made this post...
The original reason I made this post was because I wanted to talk about things like having a less OTAN like coalition or coalition counterpart, by having a cold war type situation, by having a ragtag group of survivors and profiteers with interests that conflict with those of the Coalition(s), and/or by having the great powers of the United States of America, the British Commonwealth, the European Union, the Russian Federation, and the People’s Republic of China collapse early in the apocalypse, leaving lesser powers and fragmentary remnants to form the coalition(s.) I also wanted to talk about having militia/ranger/bandit/survivor type groups be less generic (the Omega, Syndicate, and Mafia groups are better among these, in that they have some unique flair, but still could largely have been swapped into any other country and fit just as well.)
But as I got to thinking about the principles behind why I’d like to see those, and about the reasons why the groups in Unturned 3.X were designed in a way that felt rather bland to me, I realized that an open ended discussion about what principles should be prioritized would be far more interesting and productive.
For the internal politics of a group, it should be something historically connected to the country or a reference to certain things like a Kaiserreich reference. I’d find it interesting and somewhat funny to see a Mussolini Spaghetti militia or Baguette wielding Syndicalists to name two examples.
In other words, make it goofy and funny rather than polarizing and partisan towards one side or the other.
Personally,I would like UII’s world to be entirely shaped and controlled by survivors and survivor groups,while there are little to no organized and/or govermental or national elements to it.For example there could be just your regular survivor groups and bandit gangs of insignificant size,which can be entirely wiped out with a single raid.And then there could be semi or entirely organized survivor groups and terrorist organizations,with sometimes international influence,seeing the outbreak from different point of views,and therefore having different and maybe clashing or mutual interests. (Similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s factions).
In retrospect:This way real world politics wouldn’t matter in UII’s world as it will be an entirely fictional and differnent environment,similar to what @Yarrrr said.
(Disclaimer:I do not mean having players organize themselves in factions,the factions mentioned above will be entirely NPC controlled,players can only influence them and their relations with each other.)
Not sure I made this completely clear in the original post, but the concern is not just about NPC factions that can be interacted with during gameplay, but about all the factions that exist within the lore.
The only way to make Unturned II’s world entirely fictional, (like Mario or Worms) rather than a fictionalized version of our world with fictionalized versions of real governments (like Unturned 3.X or even S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) would be to move away from the usage of real world settings.
Oh yeah I remember people on the Steam forum upset about guns in a church, someone explained how its a safe space to hide or what not. idk.
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I think the factions could (and should) be politically motivated. Every group is ran under some sort of political ideology. Whether the ideology in particular is outlined or explained directly doesn’t matter. The Coalition is an inherently authoritarian group with a hierarchical top-down structure, instead of a bottom-up one. The Coalition uses a command-economy, with fixed prices (lol).
Basically every group follows the same idea in an apocalypse. Authoritarian mess, very hierarchical BS. Theres not much you can change about a post-apoclpytic group besides have a more decentralized Anarchist society with a flat hierarchy built bottom-up (but then that wouldn’t be fun to do quests and go up the chain?).
Sure a group could be politically motivated to be leftist, but what then? What exactly would be so leftist about it? Would they give the player free food or water? Would they denounce paper currency and only trade through contracts (bartering)? Or would they give you labor tickets (a kind of currency only derived from labor value, in this case could be given upon completion of a quest)?
Like… theres just not a lot of space to play around with politics in factions. The best you can do is make up some BS story about how one faction doesn’t like the other and throw in some buzzwords like FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY to really get people riled up.
And let alone you can’t do anything fascist in nature, foreign or domestic politics, such as women having traditional roles, or having expansionist ideals because controversy.
Honestly it really just boils down to the fact that NPC’s aren’t real people, and cant perform like real people, and dont actually have societies that work like a machine to produce an actual political environment. Plus it’s not like you’d be fighting against enemy NPC’s or anything, so really, whats the point of bothering?