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.

Now you're just asking for too much Rogue.

j/k

I love this idea, as I stated earlier in this week to you and on forums. This is would be taking an immense step in the right direction. This type of system alongside noobie friendly incentives would no doubt in my mind boost the playercount in the long term AND bring back that bragging rights that oldbies so desire.

Yeah, I'm in favor of that.

That could possibly be the last gang system Era would need.

Fiber, I like the ideas here and I support making them. How should this look though? I wanna avoid making another "ugly" GUI.

:)

i'm glad to see wil is finally accomplishing something now that i don't have time to raid or play gang events anymore

what a good example for all those b folks who are strugglin' in the corners out there

Lets force everyone to join a gang they don't want to be in, clearly that would boost raiding activity. :rolleyes:

It would be just like hosting events, your teams are randomly picked for you. Seems like the same players usually when anyway. We'd just be giving everyone a fair chance of winning at least once, which may cause the players that don't typically win to want to raid more often to win again.

Besides, I thought you guys liked being forced to use new stuff?? :)

I could draw you a mockup when I'm off work later if you want :P
(and then later make the actual theme if you like it)

Would really appreciate it. Being able to visually see a product's potential helps me out big time.

Edit:
To expand on what Rogue said; We'd have drafts to sign up for the gang registrations, great. Now how the leaders are chosen, could do something along the lines of a vote system that recruited members can use to vote for anyone including himself/herself. Wait, couldn't this cause a draw? Probably, we could also have a backup system that could choose the leader based on highest rank through kills after the first day of being assigned a gang. Preferably you'd want to get the votes out of the way as quickly as possible to have first picks for the gang gun.

I was thinking of a cool way to give leaders more purpose, getting rid of lockers and once the gang gun is chosen, the leader would actually get all 5* guns to start with and can choose who receives the guns by dropping them. Could even create a GUI to allow leaders to remove a gang gun from an individual who could be offline for a gang event. Essentially members wouldn't lose their gun anymore on login this way.

All I was able to brainstorm for now.

You're not forced to do anything, if you choose to sign up you know what you're getting into.

I'm sure you'll know at least one of the 4 captains, and can encourage them to choose you based on your performances. If you can't handle this, take matters into your own hands and try to put yourself in position to be a captain by giving a good performance that week, then you can choose all the people you want.

If you still want 100% exact teams, form a party with your friends and raid using skype. But that would be the kind of behavior we don't want to encourage. Everyone should try and give it their all, and when you're in a mass of players trying to win for their team or for their own placement, I'm sure you'll do the same.

Can you just not create anything even resembling my concepts? That would be wonderful.

I'd rather make it myself and take twice as long than be forced to use something 10 miles away from the point that's poorly made and requires 10 chat commands a minute to function.

Funny, I thought the whole point of the discussion was to create something everyone would enjoy regardless of whose idea it was. You're not staff at the moment, so I don't see how you'd implement your ideas anyway. I'm here to help, and to do that I'm looking for ideas that everyone would enjoy being implemented. I'm not going to come up with my own ideas because I'd rather get ideas from the players who actually pk and raid everyday.