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Secret Organizations/Societies (or lack thereof)


Saul Retav

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There doesn't seem to be any practical way to create a secret in-game society. These look like my only options:

 

  • I can create an org on the community website, but any org members would have there name displayed for everyone to see... not very secret.
  • I could use a different platform to host and organize the org, but then advertising would be an inefficient pain.

I'd love it if the devs would make the "members" tab (that displays everyone's names) optional. Until then, any ideas for hosting an org with anonymous members? Any support or criticism of having an optional "members" tab?

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Seems pretty neat; being apart of a secret organization that has influence in some areas of the game has awesome appeal. There could even be actual conspiracy theories! My question is, would you leave a "secret" organization open to anyone in the first place? If you don't trust the members, then you don't know for sure that it's being kept secret; I mean of course you can't advertise a secret.

 

Or is what you're trying to do really just make an organization with a public goal but where only you know who the members are?

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Seems pretty neat; being apart of a secret organization that has influence in some areas of the game has awesome appeal. There could even be actual conspiracy theories! My question is, would you leave a "secret" organization open to anyone in the first place? If you don't trust the members, then you don't know for sure that it's being kept secret; I mean of course you can't advertise a secret.

 

Or is what you're trying to do really just make an organization with a public goal but where only you know who the members are?

 

A secret org with different tiers of membership could be open for anyone to join, noobs would just start on the lowest tier until they can prove themselves worthy, essentially functioning like any company does. The difference of course, is that a regular company doesn't have to hide identities from it's own employees; but that too could be facilitated with tiered management (noobs know nothing more than their assignments, managers only know who their managing, and so on.).

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  • I could use a different platform to host and organize the org, but then advertising would be an inefficient pain.

 

... Do you... do you not understand how secret organizations work? Have you perhaps considered that the *best* way to make a secret society is to, in fact, not tell anyone?

 

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that advertising, having designated mechanics, and posting about a secret on public forums are all really bad ways to have a secret society. 

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Okay. I am not the Illuminati, obviously. I shouldn't have even mentioned secret societies (as that illicits preconceived notions of the purpose of my post).

Let me word it differently:

 

It would be great if orgs hosted on the community portal could choose to not display all of their member's names, right? That way it would be easier for people to be involved in controversial orgs without advertising their involvement.

 

 

Disregarding the definition of a "secret society," this was the essence of my post:

 

 

 

I'd love it if the devs would make the "members" tab (that displays everyone's names) optional. Until then, any ideas for hosting an org with anonymous members? Any support or criticism of having an optional "members" tab?
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Okay. I am not the Illuminati, obviously. I shouldn't have even mentioned secret societies (as that illicits preconceived notions of the purpose of my post).

 

Let me word it differently:

 

It would be great if orgs hosted on the community portal could choose to not display all of their member's names, right? That way it would be easier for people to be involved in controversial orgs without advertising their involvement.

 

 

Disregarding the definition of a "secret society," this was the essence of my post:

 

Much better. :P

 

I agree with you on this point. It would be a nice feature to hide member names from the public record. 

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The real problem with this, is that hiding people would negate the possibility of a tag system with NRDS or NBSI policies.


If you can hide what orgs you are in, you could hide fro mthe tag system, and that just makes the game a pain to code right.

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Just saying, if an org has it's members list set to secret, I'm really going to take a closer look. 

 

The best way to have a secret organization is to:

  1. Not create an org. Just have a secret chat channel and an informal structure. You need to trust everyone for this to work.
  2. Operate through one or more front companies. Don't name your group "Black Mesa Mercs, Inc.", name it "Timmy's leet miniNg group12". No one will look twice at that. Better yet, have a bunch of orgs like that, each controlling a small section of your "real" org.
  3. Infiltrate existing organizations and make them work for you.

Now, when it comes to orgs you don't want to be affiliated with, there are a different set of options. But, general rule of thumb: If you don't want to be affiliated with a group, you shouldn't join that group. When you join a group, you join their culture and their wars. You get their reputation, enemies, and friends. If you aren't okay with that then you really should not be joining. 

 

There are some legitimate reasons to not be affiliated with a group. Perhaps you are member of a "pirate" group who has a trader/hauler alt character for doing non-combat things, while you are a proud member with your main you don't want people shooting at your alt all the time. In such cases, your group could create a cover group for your alts. Name it something like "Teran Unions" and people won't realize the affiliation. Or, perhaps, you want to covertly support a group (maybe in a war), in which case do things informally, working with the group without actually formally joining. 

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The problem here is that if you hide the members list of orgs, but you don't hide the current employment of players in their profile, then you're not really accomplishing much. Sure, you've made it more difficult for people to find out who's in what orgs, but you haven't really made anything secret, you've just made a common service more difficult, to the benefit of only the very, very small number of players in secret organizations.

 

A better solution, and one that doesn't require Dev resources, is that you just make your own website to run this org from. Heck, just a Discord server will do, and those are free.

 

I get what you're thinking, but in reality this is an out of game problem with an out of game solution.

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The problem here is that if you hide the members list of orgs, but you don't hide the current employment of players in their profile, then you're not really accomplishing much. Sure, you've made it more difficult for people to find out who's in what orgs, but you haven't really made anything secret, you've just made a common service more difficult, to the benefit of only the very, very small number of players in secret organizations.

 

A better solution, and one that doesn't require Dev resources, is that you just make your own website to run this org from. Heck, just a Discord server will do, and those are free.

 

I get what you're thinking, but in reality this is an out of game problem with an out of game solution.

 

Yep, I agree. Bad idea.

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Wouldn't the best way to have a secret organization be to not have any mechanics in the game for it?

Just have your secret members join different organizations and not tell them about it, and then have everyone do very subtle things to help the secret organization.

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Wouldn't the best way to have a secret organization be to not have any mechanics in the game for it?

 

Just have your secret members join different organizations and not tell them about it, and then have everyone do very subtle things to help the secret organization.

 

So it would seem. A job that I am obviously not cut out for.  ;)

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In response to the more recent posts, there is a relatively high(er) entry barrier or success threshold due to many factors - if you want a professional approach, that is.

 

Hence, I would not bother if you can't bring a set of skills, people or a plan. In terms of just having members obscured, I would also recommend just not using the DU organizations or obscuring it.

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Secret org .... you make outside of DU site duh ... lols   .... well, I would guess .... if I was to do such a thing ... not saying I am or have ..... but if I did you wouldn't know :D

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What would secret organizations do in Dual Universe? Be terrorists? Plan to take over all organizations?

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