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Besides the fact that Era is nothing more than a "nifty chat room" for most people these days, the reason, as far as I can tell, that nobody bothers with gangs is the fact that there's just no point.
These are the things that some people see as incentives for being in a gang:
Gang guns. (not much of an incentive if you're rich, which most of Era's gang members are.)
5 ECs at the end of the week. (if you're in the top gang.)
Gang events. (Doesn't preclude you from just joining a gang an hour before they start.)
Extra money from kills. (first legitimate incentive I could think of, although the dedicated jobs earn more money.)
Fun. (lets be honest, chasing runners around a gang base isn't that fun after the first hour.)
Gang hats. (Worthless, in my opinion, although some people like hats, so it's open to debate whether or not that's worthy of being called an incentive. Either way, you don't need to participate in a gang to wear the hat, you just have to be on the roster.)
Healing crates. (I do like healing crates. Bravo. Even though the more expensive ones aren't worth it. I mean come on. 10 points = 250hp, 20 points = 350hp, 30 points = 500hp? Why would you pay three times as much to get twice the health when you could just buy three small ones and get three times the health? )
Community. (You could argue people join gangs just so they have someone to play with. I, personally, like parties better.)
Raiding. (You don't really get big gunfights like you do in raids anywhere else on Era (besides events anyway), so you could argue that's also an incentive.)
Gang buffs. (I like most of the gang buffs. Kinda wish BB's gang buff applied, at least to a less degree, to gun shots as well as melee hits.)
Personally, these things would give me incentive to join a gang and actually participate:
Any sort of system to facilitate a sense of progression as a gang member.
I really liked the idea that was floating around just before Donut Squad was introduced of an automated gang that would rank people up based on the work they did for the gang.
It could be that sort of system, a leveling system, anything really. Just something to give you the sense that you've gotten somewhere for the work you put in. (that same system could also stymie gang hopping, if it was made to reset your progress when you switched gangs.)
Structured raiding system.
I think you would see more raids if you broke down some barriers that got in the way of setting one up. Having to mass out and get people to raid is kind of an archaic way of getting it done.
It would be so much easier to just press a button and start a raid that everyone else on a gang tag could then join by pressing a button at the top right of their screen. (think of it like an event system that was repurposed for raiding).
Organized crime.
The reason gangs exist in real life is to make money, be it selling drugs, prostitution, gambling, smuggling, robberies, etc. Without that tying them together, they're just a group of guys with guns with no real purpose.
Protection contracts.
Similar idea to PPA, without the structured business, complete with an owner who gets paid for doing nothing and employees who get paid $81 for a half hour's work.
Basically, anyone who needs assistance can put a protection contract into a queue for free. Anyone on a gang tag can choose to accept the next contract in the queue, and as long as they stay within a certain radius of their charge, they'll get 1 gang point every 30 seconds. (which would equate to $50 / 30 sec, $100 / min, or $6k / hour. assuming you stay in constant contact with your charge.)
on top of that, you could give bonus points for, say, each kill you or your charge gets while you're near them. You could lose a certain amount of points each time your charge dies.
This has the potential to start gang wars on the streets as one noob gets a gang member to guard them, and then the people they kill get a gang member to guard them. Eventually, it could escalate to a full-blown war.
Obviously, this has the potential for people to abuse it by guarding a noob and just sitting in the corner of the map to get free gang points, but, you know... I'm just spitballing here lol
But, yeah, that's what would get me participating in gangs. |