It's like that every week with points, I don't think we've had any second place gangs match 50% of our points a week since the 12 member limit allowed us to take 3 extra players off the waiting queue.

I have no clue why the events were cancelled, I asked Seth and he refused to comment on it. There were sufficient players among sufficient gangs, and the competition was definitely fierce; I got more gang deaths in that one bhpk than I have the past two weeks of raiding combined.

I had a pretty cool idea for future gangs; brainstormed it with Rams, Amsel, and Ishmael the other day. SM really liked it too, hopefully it will go somewhere. It's way too complex to post the full idea without a tl;dr so lets just see what happens with gangs before summer comes.

Two gangs won't work for reasons I don't feel like getting into.

Three gangs won't work for logistical reasons.

It's either four or many more, pick your poison.

An aside: It's trial and error. Some ideas work, some don't, and some are just not worth trying, ever. Guess which category yours fits in? Exactly. Some of the things I designed are still in effect (i.e. even this current gang system was a framework founded by me, loyalty stuff, guns, bases, etc etc).

I think this system works fine for the school year. It keeps raiding relative and gangs somewhat alive (best you can do). The summer, however, needs adjustments... just not yours, Koho. They're not good, other than the one piece I highlighted earlier.

Rogue I'd like to hear what you guys came up with.

I still don't know why people even bother writing on the forums. Nothing ever gets done.

delete BH pk, it's retarded and jst interrupts real raids.

if you like retarded, play ULMS

I have to say I agree with the BH PK thing. It's silly and just falsely inflates gang/player stats.

I agree with deleting BH PK. But I can do what I did with simulation raid and lock it to being hosted once a week. Thoughts?

Actually I'd rather just remove it.

beach pk gets hosted a lot. just now another one is being hosted and the previous one was hosted like an hour ago. easy money with the easy points tho. bout to get in on this.

BH PK is probably the most joined event, I don't see why you'd want to remove it... Maybe more limitations if need be.

I don't really see problem with it anymore.

There less events overall from what I've seen, people don't interrupt raids with BHPK as often.

I changed it to a 8 minute default awhile ago, and it has a limit of like once every 10 events. So you don't have it hosted 5 times in a row at 10 minutes a piece, it's more of a warm-up to a raid and gets everyone on tag. There aren't anymore insane 1000 point jumps from 30 minute BHPKs or ULMS anymore so points are much more accurate to constant activity and not abusive hosting.

The issues now lay mostly within the gang structure itself. I'm more with Wil to pushing at 4 major gangs to support the larger summer player count. But we really need to mix things up in a way so-as it doesn't become stagnant or simply dominated as is routine when our main PK group is playing. Maybe you should read my tl;dr concept Blue.

Oh god..

Have you ever asked yourself why it's the most joined event? Rarely any raids.. They want points but cant get points because of this so they abuse this event to get the points. Let's be honest, BHPK is the place where majority of the points come from now and it's been this way for quite a while. I recall the ETA hosting it 5 times in a row one night and at least 2-3 times every other night by different people.

Also this proves that gangs are #1 on era if it's the 'most joined event' surely? Can we now stop with the gangs aren't the most played thing on era? A staff member has just answered it for u, thank you.

Also, BHPK... Why does it have to be an event and if it's the most played 'event' then surely the level has something to do with it. Why not make the BH level they currently raid the BHPK level? Not only that but have a warper that open up in it at a certain time every night and you can only warp by through the warper so many times before it stops. The purpose of this is to kick start raids.

We don't need gang events and we certainly shouldn't have to rely on them for points. Without BHPK the gang system would be a mess, don't believe me? Remove it and see how many points each gang has by the end of the week.

We need gang raids not gang events. We got gang events at the weekend.

You took my comment way out of context, I never said anything about gangs. Players enjoy BHPK, why remove it? Of course it gives points to gangs, but after the event it also (usually) leads to a raid.

And there is limitations put in place so it can't be hosted 5 times in a row, it can't even be hosted 2 times in a row...

The current BHPK level was the BH base when we created the gmap styled bases. Players wanted it changed, so it got changed back to the old levels and BHPK was created.

It can be hosted 5 time in a row if the ETA did it, just like i said? So you're wrong.

Just because people play it doesn't necessarily mean they enjoy it. Goes back to my point that it's the only option they have to get points and it's the truth. You're talking to somebody who lead gangs and raided everyday. I know how they feel about it, trust me.

Sometimes it leads to raids after but they don't usually last very long because they just spent the last 15 minutes battling it out so they've got bored and tired already. Imagine all that kaos in gang raids... Now were talking...

Lets just make an NPC gang that pk's Wil style. Then we'll make another NPC gang with similar skills to TK (hint: bad) and force them to raid all day.

Or we could just focus on how to get people to raid. Kind of annoying having these debates over and over and over. If only i had the rights i would of been straight to work. BHPK is a lazy and un-needed event.

People join BHPK because there is no raids and they need points. This tells you that people WANT points. Why do they want points? Because it gives them money and shows their gang that they raid. Cool so instead of it making you warp to event, make it open the warper in the bases themselves and it let's you warp back each time you die for only 5 times and after that your limits up and let the raids begin. Let these warpers open every 2 hours of every single day. Or code them so they begin at a certain time and end at a certain time at peak times.

Unlimited raids/battles. This means that more points will be generated so we give them bigger challenges prizes to aim for and nerf the money on the points as we wouldn't want this to mess the economy up even more than it already is.

Now instead of sitting here talking about it, if you're staff whoever is reading this and can do it then go and do it. If it works then it works and if it doesn't then it doesn't..

We will never know until we try these ideas.. And by trying new things it will also keep people entertained.. something new..

Try it.. No harm done.

Clearly no one around here appreciates a joke. Why not just open a warp to simulation raid every now and then, the beauty of this event is once the warp is gone the raid can still continue seamlessly. We could do a challenge system with it. Just enter the base with three or more members and hold it for a few minutes to send the challenge which opens the warp.

Could even rotate the bases that are used with this event.

Thoughts?

My brother had a really good idea about raiding, I can't remember exactly but it went along the lines of;

"When you PK someone you get money for it right? Say $9-$15 most of the time, when a gang raid is going on and people are killing each other NO one gets the money that they killed for whilst they kill people inside of a gang base, instead it goes towards a gang safe they must protect bla bla bla causing people to continue raiding until they really couldn't care who gets the money bla bla bla, the person who lasts 30 minutes without someone grabbing the safe bla bla bla gets the cash"

You get the idea, thought I would share it since you kids debate day in and day out without any decent ideas.

I like it.

you all suck

koho is right, people join BH PK just to get gang points and therefore gang money. it's not particularly enjoyable since it's just like ULMS except you get money out of it and you don't get kicked from your gang since you got your weekly points.

i don't have time to play lately but the last times a decent raid was going on some ET started hosting BH PK and everything got ****ed up.

a nice thing to do on era would be to host PK events when no raid is going on and non-PK events or no events at all when there is a raid.

Why not make BH PK give .25 points per kill? That'll help the point inflation. Do this and watch how few points are earned compared to normal.

or no points at all. BH PK points cover up the non gang activity. 2-3 years ago the weekly top gang used to reach 10,000 points almost every week (not to talk about summer months) and there was no BH PK or bs like that.

the problem isn't only BH PK but it's that there are too many gangs, no real leadership and the bases are disgusting. maybe they look pretty but they're not functional to raiding.

As someone who actively raids (whether I'm good or not) I agree with a lot of everyones points here but I have some things I'd like to share.

1) The playercount is low, but Era is about choice, and in my opinion, this current gang system is doing its job. What I do not like is there is no rewards to raiding. A long time ago bragging rights about who stomped who in BB base was good enough to satisfy us all, but we've always yearned for more. The gang point/money exchange system is nice but its not enough in my opinion to make people want to get out there and PK.

I think the loyalty point system is great, but how many average graal players (age 12-18) have the free time to actually rack up 350 gang points in a week? My idea would be altering this system slightly by adding tiers. Any of these items should have no weight so there will be no complaints from anyone who doesnt want them.

50 pts: Pistol
100: Shotgun
150: SMG
200: Assault rifle
300: Current RNG'd loyalty weapons

What would make this better would be a wide range of weapons that are RNG per tier.
None of them should be god mode per se but they should all be viable guns to use.

2) There is a clear lack of Event Team participation in Gangs. BHPK is fun because we get a fairly huge level to PK in, but it is flawed severely as we all agree on.

I believe that we should have more than one series of gang events per week. Gang events bring a massive enjoyment not only to myself, but every gang member, so why restrict them to one day? I understand that a majority of staff members and the ETA have fulltime jobs and/or college and that time is an issue but myself and I'm sure others would be glad to help host these events.

and my last point

3) Level design. Everyone raids BH because by far it is the most comfortable, lameable, and nearest option to unstick me. Our GMAP is massive and players do not want to waste the time to walk anywhere but BH base.

My idea: Update the LC level from a GMAP format back to its original or edited levels.
Replace the unused bank with BB base. Move the Parking Garage Over to the empty lot, and place MF base there. Whether or not they will be raided as much as BH will is undetermined but their accessibility will be greatly increased.

tl;dr i suck dont listen 2 me

The system is doing it's job, for a time.

Switching systems always boosts activity for a short time frame as everyone likes to 'try it out' or what have you. But the inherent flaw in every gang system we've tried is in fact the player choice you talked about.

Every time, based on free choice, we end up with one utterly dominant gang that everyone wants to join for free rewards.. and because that gang is usually ours -- it is very limited and all the rejects try (and fail) to form their own groups.

This leads to absurdly high amounts of anti-fun game play such as laming, nukes, bombs, and the like just so these rejects can close the gap on the elite guild. But when it comes down to it, they don't stand a chance when prizes are on the line in events, and they fall apart every few weeks.
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I like this loyalty idea, to keep players interested with interval rewards rather than a due or die for the full 350 points.
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Gang events have taken obscene amounts of time to host as of late, there tends to always be a group of people in charge of it rather than one single knowledgeable person. There usually ends up being a ton of tension and issues, such as uncooperative players. 5-6 events shouldn't take 4 hours to host, and some events even take 45 minutes just to start.

When I was in charge of it, we tried having 2 sets of events a week I believe for a little while. Koho was ETA and would run a set during the week, and I would run a set on the weekend. None of these sets of events ever took more than 2-2.5 hours, and I would host many more events (teamspar, tts, full ctf/spar tournaments) that aren't even considered nowadays.

I don't know why some people are just totally incompetent when it comes to these things, but the team surely has known how to find them in recent administrations.
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Lastly, players choice strikes again.

I don't understand the fetish with BH base, being 'more lameable' doesn't seem like a good thing, but to maintain that much attention for that long is really odd.

The base was moved, and still kept the love it has. The new LC base is in the old spot, and no one seems to care.

BB, TF, and EP are all in generally the same proximity of either unstick or the hospital as BH and LC.. surely distance isn't that much of an issue. The only one out of this loop is MF base, and I created a custom respawn right on the docks for that base -- thus making it actually have the shortest respawn to entrance distance of any base on Era. Talk about fast paced?

We had all the bases as single level; and people complained.
We had all the bases as gmaps; and still people complained.
Now there is a solid array of selection for players to choose from, one of the times I would encourage your choice mechanic... and the player base completely ignores it.

:asleep:

sorry about tl;dr

Thanks for the reply Rogue, but since Im half retarded i dont think I got to into the gang system itself, just focused on raiding incentives.

Its completely obvious to everyone that the current playercount doesnt support 12 gangs. I know a lot of people want to push for 4 gangs, but we know they wont revamp the system currently, so maybe we can try to alter it slightly.

Instead of 12, set the limit to 8, therefore every gang has a chance to participate in gang events. Lower the initial cost to create a gang and if a gang falls below a certain amount of points for say 2 weeks, that gang is deleted, and the next pending gang gets uploaded.

p.s. inorite, but everyone needs meatshields.

Enough with this; "The player count is ****, bla bla bla bla" in all actuality, at the end of the day, no matter anyones argument ever, the current management is at fault, always, this time more than ever.

They have let the server run down to the **** it is now, I remember being apart of Era and seeing a constant 70 people to 110 people online, now I log onto UN (being banned on era lol) and I see it at 30-50 people.

tl;dr pogo monopoly was the most exciting thing about the old staff team and we did great, fix this **** plz

I think it's tougher to get to the true root of the problems with gangs than anyone expects. A lot of players have a lot of very contradictory ideas. I think if we want to make gangs better, we have to figure out what they all have in common.

From talking to random players on Era, what I've picked up is that a significant majority of players will immediately blame the gang problems on Merc (including most of the members of Merc). Players outside of Merc say that they have too many of the good players, and the players who are left get scattered across the remaining gangs (rather than teaming up to make another super-gang). Players within Merc complain that they are usually only faced with intense competition from one other gang at each set of gang events. When asked why they don't leave the gang to start their own, most of the Souls will say it's because they always play with their friends, and most of the others will say "why would we give up easy, free, plentiful ECs that we're guaranteed to get at the same time each week?"

It seems to be that during and right after Gang Wars every Sunday, the raiding seriously intensifies. Some players have just gotten so used to logging on for Sunday gang events, getting their ECs, and then logging off or idling for the next 7 days that gang activity completely ceases during the week.

In addition, gangs don't seem to care about rank anymore. People who have been leaders of gangs in the old system are more than happy to be a recruit in Mercenary with no rights in the new system; it doesn't matter because there is no gang base, gang guns are free, and almost every gang is constantly at capacity. Being the leader or a high ranking member of gang doesn't benefit you at all, and means that you can't be a part of an already established gang like Merc.

Like Chorch, my personal opinion is that the true root of the gang problem is that the incentive system is completely out of whack. Era unknowingly incentivizes the behavior we're trying to prevent.

If I were to try to fix gangs, I would start by adding a series of gang-only events that a normal ET can host, which would reward a little better than a regular event (maybe 2ecs per player and an MVP coin to the top kills), but have similar restrictions to BHPK and ULMS (can only be hosted once per every x other events).

The next thing I would do is to make gang bases much more important again. Maybe each week, the top 3 gangs get bases, the next 3 gangs get to stay, and the rest of the gangs get deleted. You can only get a gun by owning a base. Only x number of that gun can be out at a time, but this can be upgraded. You can also upgrade rate of fire, freeze, spread, damage, etc. If another gang takes over your base, not only do they gain x points per second, but you lose x points per second (maybe per player online), and this gang can steal some of your guns (not permanently, but they'll be able to use the gun, meaning one fewer of your members can use it until they log off).

It also makes sense to incentivize gang leadership and loyalty (I know we have various types of loyalty prizes, but they clearly haven't been effective so far). Maybe have a system where the top three ranking members of the second best gang are actually rewarded better than the bottom three members of the best gang. There needs to be a reason to work your way up in a gang again, and actually have some sense of ownership over that gang. I think this would quickly put an end to Merc. Edit: (I want to make it clear that I don't mean "put an end to Merc" as in completely get rid of Merc, just put an end to the current problem with Merc)

I would also try to make some more strategic gang events. Things like racing to finish a quest, or something like Benny's old gang island idea. It would be cool to have a gang event that you can win without necessarily being 12 of the best PKers on the server.

Finally, I would add some things to the point shop (both for gangs and individual). Give more incentive to raid, even if it's stupid. Some random noob will die a thousand times getting the 20 points he needs for a ridiculous hat, or a random aura/smoke effect. The players who are capable of getting thousands of points aren't the ones who need an incentive to raid; they're already doing it anyways. We need some lower point things that individuals and gangs would want. A gang vehicle, or gang power-ups (maybe you can buy a 5 point health upgrade for all members on tag).

Does anyone else have additional thoughts? I encourage everyone to try to dig even deeper into the problem if possible; try asking yourself and others "why" repeatedly. "Why do gangs suck?" "Because there are too many gangs." "Why is there too many gangs?" "Because all of the best players are spread out, except for one gang with 12 of them." "Why do all the good players except 12 split up?" "Because they want to be leaders of their own gangs." "Why doesn't Merc want to split up too then?" "Because they enjoy getting guaranteed ECs every Sunday." --I think you see where I'm going with this, but there's always the next "why?"

I don't think gang inactivity has anything to do with the lack of incentives. I believe the most rewarding thing for the majority of players left on Era are the bragging rights.

Gang activity is mirrored by the amount of competition. After a 'super gang' is created - the competition is destroyed - and activity goes down.

I think everyones taking Merc's role in this way to high. They only raid for about 20 minutes whenever Wil gets on.

When I talk of incentives, I'm not thinking of us oldbies, I'm thinking of getting the new players interested in raiding. Era's only advertisement is thru word of mouth and we need to just spice things up a bit so new players tell their friends about the game, the same way we did back in the day day.

One thing I liked that I don't see a lot of anymore was seeing players group up in numbers in the skate shop to rush a base.

I think you're taking it too lightly. He hasn't exactly played in 2 weeks due to finals.. and we still win literally everything. I don't remember any time not seeing the juggernaut skull pass around whichever randoms we have online. Raiding for 20 minutes and being the top gang more or less just proves the point.

Last weekends gang events Ryan and Cyclone had to leave and I just invited random players off my skype list so we could get 5, and we won a majority of the events, to the point where we made other gangs quit during them. The contacts on our gangs waiting list are better than the top players in any other gang...

Good times.

The best strategy we see nowadays is 'Whose gonna nuke next?'.

Eh, Rogue its a matter of personal opinion. I dont think Merc has a huge effect on getting noobies to raid and you do. So theres no point discussing it.

I would just like to see noobies pick up their guns and join raids, and I think we can all agree on that.

So lets discuss that instead of who and who is better at this and why we all suck.

Can always disable nukes inside bases if it's not already.

I side with Rams when I say that bragging rights need to be a focal point. Nowadays, people could not care less when they died because they respawn in seconds (a fact that also accounts for the lack of regroupings, Tim). I have no clue how to make these the focal point besides telling you that Merc owns everyone and it's not even close. If another gang posed a threat to our owning everyone, we rise up and own them, not for the points, or the prizes, but just to let them know we own them. The points and prizes are nice too though.

Lately though, we've been getting bored because no one poses a threat whatsoever. Whenever we raid, we kill everyone a million times over but there's no joy in it. No gang go talk trash to because this stupid system isn't designed to allow for that. There are so many gangs at once that you can't really target your efforts or your bragging at any one.

Based on these two very eloquent premises, I say make it 4 large gangs again, and we will own the other three and brag at them. The only wack part is that era players have no spine and instead of getting better or competing harder, the other three might ragequit in gang events for one to come close to beating us yet still lose.

Summary:

Yeah, Merc owns, and it's boring because there's no one we can brag about this to since there's so many gangs. Make it less gangs so we can brag more for the summer. This sounds like its stated jokingly, but I'm serious. I just don't feel like presenting a great argument because that'd require me to stop typing and think about stuff. I don't feel like it, so just do what I say, I'm right.

- Wil Soul Out

after talking to rogue and reading the plan for a Draft style gang system, I REALLY WANT THAT IN PLACE PLEASE DO IT ERA THANKS

One possible solution to the problem of having one gang that destroys everyone else is to just have a small number (3-4) gangs and instead of letting people join whatever gang they want, or letting gang leader recruit whoever they want, make it so that the only way to join a gang is to join one randomly.

And to expand on that idea maybe have a system along the line of this:
At a certain time, (like every monday at midnight) everyone on the server gets put into a random gang. You're stuck in whichever gang you get into for a week, after which everyone gets shuffled again.

I think it could be fun to be with a different group of people every week.

You could serendipetously get into a gang with your friends and wreck **** for a week, then next week, maybe you'll be with people you don't really know, but will get to know over the week.

If that random gang thing was done, you'd have to make it so you can't leave gangs then either, since you could just keep leaving to get into the gang you want.

Pretty sure I covered that in my post

Oh, I skimmed it, missed the "stuck in" part lol. My bad

I think that we all focus too much on how to fix raiding for oldbies and need to focus on how to entice noobies to raid.

Like I really like a tiered loyalty point system, but thats just one way we can do it. Im sure we can all brainstorm other incentives.

Graal has no advertisements, it runs on word of mouth, and if we can make raiding fun for noobies again theoretically they will be our advertising system and our playercount will raise.


Pretty much everyone I know thats played this game knew someone who played it. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing technique.

Eh, I already typed some tl;dr posts this week so I might as well 'present' the concept we had. It's actually fairly similar to Fiber's idea but much more structured than 'random placement!'.

Basically, this idea was brainstormed by some of the best pkers/leaders on Era; including Ishmael, Rams, Amsel, and Myself mainly... with some ideas thrown in by the people I asked about it. SM liked the idea so it is definitely an option, Amsel helped with it and I'm Rogue so... it could definitely get created. Being that the idea itself is actually very simple compared to the huge system we currently have -- that took me like 2 hours just to add a line of code to display K/D, it wouldn't take a year after getting the go-ahead.
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It would be structured around a basic 4 gang system, there would be 'leader' roles that fluctuate quite often. The difference is there is no recruiting or gang stacking. The gangs (outside of these 'leader' or captain roles) would be structured through a basic draft model. I'm sure everyone that watches a professional sport understands this, but if not I'll get into details at that time.

This would start off with a simple little NPC, preferably shaped like a blue cat. This NPC would sit at unstick me and any person from Wil "KFC" Soul to Graal800k (no pcs) can grab him and listen to what he says. What he says are gonna be terms and conditions for all the rules of the gang system. After you press the OK button at the bottom, your soul is stored in a little SQL swimming pool waiting for the next draft.

After the first week, and everyone signs up, the draft takes place. I don't know/care how the first 4 captains are chosen, possibly the top 4 gang leaders from the current system. But every week after that the #1 captain (of the week) retains his spot and the top 3 players of the week (excluding the 3 losing captains, and players offline/unable to draft at the time) get the other 3 captain spots. Bam boom, draft day. This occurs after gang events are completed, insuring the GBA/Admin is available. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to set up the captains, you should theoretically just have to add them the captain tool/right.

Draft goes on, shouldn't take upwards of an hour depending on the number of sign-ups for that week. First the captains get to name their gang for the week and choose nickname colors with one of those RGB tables. Then they each choose one of the 10 gang-guns (in reverse draft order, 4th picker gets 1st gun, etc.)
The captains alternate choosing players from the list (generated from the swimming pool, and listing information in lines very simply as: Community (Account) - Points Prev. Week - Last Online). They just double-click the line of the player they want, and weewoo that players data is thrown to the gang SQL under that gang. Every single player that signed up would be drafted.

That's it. Really Rogue??!? Yes, the whole thing shouldn't take upwards of a week for a single developer to create.
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After the draft, players just play. Everyone is encouraged to fight for the top spots for their chance to be a captain and form their own gang. I'm sure the gang house wouldn't take long to be filled with statues of the best Captains (longest streak, most overall points, most wins in general, etc.). There could even be a little gui where you can view the draft results. Imagine the bragging rights coming with being drafted first, or confidence of newbies working your way up from 50 to 5.

Every week it would be fresh and new, as everyone is asking for. Every week would hopefully support the most active player count, being that the draft's swimming pool is reset after each draft, so it would only display people who were recently active to sign-up that week.

If there are down/bad weeks, we don't need to go on a witch-hunt and remove gang leaders or punish people... which has always been the downfall of past systems. If a leader is bad or inactive, they won't be around long enough for us to figure it out, cause next week is a whole new draft.

There will be no gang hopping or stacked gangs (for long term at least). If a player is breaking rules/refusing to raid then leaders only can remove them... but they have to fill out a comment box with a reason, or they could face punishment for abusing their role.

This is a ultimately long-term/permanent solution to gang issues. There is no leader moderation or GBA intervention. In case of a bad week, just wait 5 days. In case of a great week.. sign up for the next one and challenge whoever won. 40 players or 100 players... this would work either way.

Sorry :asleep:
I keep tl;dring -- brain doesn't stop when it comes to ideas.