thoughts

[Sliekz]

I'd like to begin by thanking those responsible for the progress made since last year.

We've seen:

• Fort Knox
• Gang point system
• Gang reward system
• PK "tag" upon running into safe zones
• Diversity in healing items
• The chance to earn money for player killing
• A large amount of gun releases, effectively keeping the economy at bay.

These new features are a step forward in most respect, but I've a few concerns to address, as well as suggestions that may compliment the recent changes to era.

i. Gang points

The idea looks wonderful on paper and it's given gangs incentive to raid, no doubt. However, without other necessary components and a few adjustments, the point system serves as a tremendous blow to gang PKing.

I've seen players removed from gangs because they had negative points, I've seen perfect raiders run at 20 HP in fear of going negative when they had easily dropped me from 80 to 0 a year ago. I see old players who just like to pk dip into large negatives while lesser pkers that run at half health skyrocket into double digit positives. Kill stealing has become a sport within gangs.


ii. Gang rewards

Again this is nice, but it only caters to a single gang at the end of each week. As of recently Black Holst has been that gang, boasting an all-star team of players that dominates events and raids. Anybody who wants to "win" can easily join BH and reap the rewards.

This often leaves other gangs demoralized and creates an overall negative atmosphere when they receive nothing for their efforts.

iv. Money

Originally Posted by Sliekz

In the current state of game, do you think players will want to work over 10 hours for a Mp40? (while it's inadequate in comparison to what the other 20% have?)

Furthermore, do you think these same players are willing to work 400 hours for a rare/powerful gun? (assuming they're making a consistent $2000/hour for a gun that costs $800,000)

This alone turns many potential players away from era. What needs to be available is not accessible through a rational time frame.

________________________

v. Suggestion / points

The first suggestion is simple enough. Make all gang points collective to each individual player with no point reduction on death. This will hopefully eliminate the instinct for players to run due to point loss as well as encourage players to fight to zero HP. Overall it will generate a far less negative mood when it comes to dying.

v. Suggestion / assists

My second suggestion is an "assist" system. It would work somewhat in conjunction with the first suggestion, regarding the encouragement of more "engaging" fighting.

For example, lets say a member of an opposing gang takes off 70% of my HP and his buddy rushes in and finishes me off to get the point. That would leave the main damage dealer pointless, right? With the assist system, the person who damaged 70% of my HP would recieve an assist for his efforts and after x assists (i.e. 3), he would generate a point. Assists visible in profile if possible.

These two components alone would help lift gang pking from its current state. However there is still little incentive unless you are the top gang, which brings me to my next suggestion.

v. Suggestion / salary

My third suggestion is aimed to:

• Reward gang leaders
• Balance out gangs, prevent stacking
• Give purpose to raid, regardless of top gang
• Make for interesting gang politics
• Allow gangs to be somewhat exclusive, yet still active
• Make the most redeeming quality of era a means to generate money
• Compliment the recent release of NPC sold guns while jumpstarting gang activity simultaneously
  

Main focus

Gang leaders would receive weekly funds that go directly to the gang bank with a fixed base for proficiently running their gang. (i.e. $20,000)

Points earned by the gang would increase that base by x amount. (i.e. $20/point)

Members would receive a weekly salary automatically from the gang bank with a fixed minimum (i.e. $500), adjustable by the leader.

Technicalities

Salaries would be adjustable at the start of each new week (saturday afternoon) and locked after x hours.

Members that join midweek would earn the minimum salary.

Members that are fired would receive their salary automatically and become a free agent.

Members that leave a gang forfeit their salary and become a free agent.

Member salary, if possible, would be paid from lowest to highest so that negligent gang leaders would be hurting their best members.

Gang leaders would be able to deposit and withdraw from the gang bank.

All gangs would have a salary cap of $100,000.

v. Suggestion / money

Last small suggestion -- increase cash earned from pking from $1-10 to $20-$25 when it's gang related, anything at all that pushes gangs to raid would be nice.

[ghost_face_killa]

Thats a complete gang systsem. Which makes a lot more sense then the one Chris Vimes said do be coming out with. Gangs do need some type of money flow going their way.

After staff made the current point system, and seen how many complaints and suggestions they got such as the on in this thread, they simply where just to inactive to apply changes like the ones mentioned here, changes ide like to call
'Simple Patches'.

Era need staff who actually play era might i add.

[Glock]

I like.

[Andre2006]

I agree on parts where the points cause people to run at low health or have the whole team block up an entire doorway so the person who walks in is dead in matter of a second with no resistance what so ever.

The guns they released is a step forward but the guns are still very expensive for an ordinary person who has pretty much nothing. I've managed to be able to obtain 5,000 per hour from mining/digging. Unless you're 30-35+ mining, it wouldn't be much of a difference.

It's still a lot of time consuming, no person in their right mind would be able to come up with 500,000 money that they have earned themselves, unless they have been working for it for an extremely long time. The weapons aren't that balanced in price either. I'd go with the fnmark anyday over the ove glove, and the difference in price is big.
The ove glove has too little freeze for my liking, I need something thats there to stop me from walking into bullets (the freeze), but not too much freeze either.

Anyways I also agree that when you die you should not lose a point. Unless the whole gang lose a point when you lose your point it wouldn't make a difference for the gang. Other than the leaders wont know how bad you are, or well how many times you die. But that doesn't mean you're bad, you could be the damage dealer while dying a lot just so your team can finish them off.

I don't know how the salary system would work from what you've written, but I do agree on (most) parts.

[cbk1994]

Thanks for organizing your points well, usually it's really hard to respond to these kind of threads.

Originally Posted by Sliekz

The idea looks wonderful on paper and it's given gangs incentive to raid, no doubt. However, without other necessary components and a few adjustments, the point system serves as a tremendous blow to gang PKing.

I've seen players removed from gangs because they had negative points, I've seen perfect raiders run at 20 HP in fear of going negative when they had easily dropped me from 80 to 0 a year ago. I see old players who just like to pk dip into large negatives while lesser pkers that run at half health skyrocket into double digit positives. Kill stealing has become a sport within gangs.

Gangs don't lose points upon death. If a BB member kills a BH member, BB gains one point. BH loses none.

When I redid the points system I made sure that gangs wouldn't be penalized directly for dying (although if another gang gains a point they are effectively penalized anyway). The problem was that some people were abusing the system. A BB member would quit BB and join BH, and then let his BB friends kill him over and over at 3 AM when no one was online.

Because of this, gang leaders were asking us to add a "deaths" count so that they could see which members were allowing the other gangs to kill them repeatedly. We added this, and made it "subtract" deaths from kills to show their net score, or how much they helped the gang.

For this reason, it's hard to remove deaths and still prevent abuse of the points system. Even if we remove the net points, it wouldn't solve the problem unless we stopped showing deaths.

I don't like this problem either and I tried to solve it a while back, but failed. If you have any suggestions, I'm listening.

ii. Gang rewards

Again this is nice, but it only caters to a single gang at the end of each week. As of recently Black Holst has been that gang, boasting an all-star team of players that dominates events and raids. Anybody who wants to "win" can easily join BH and reap the rewards.

This often leaves other gangs demoralized and creates an overall negative atmosphere when they receive nothing for their efforts.

We intended to expand the point rewards to work based on the number of points you had rather than if you were winning. We did this to an extent in the gun rack by making it so that certain slots were locked until your gang reached 500 or 1000 points that week. This way it encourages the gang to get points, even if they don't win.

If you have any suggestions for more rewards which can be added, or a better way to do rewards, feel free to make a list and I'll see about adding them.

iv. Money

I agree, which is why we're starting to make it easier to get guns by placing most of them in shops and giving money for kills, which helps to promote PKing and prevent grinding.

v. Suggestion / assists

My second suggestion is an "assist" system. It would work somewhat in conjunction with the first suggestion, regarding the encouragement of more "engaging" fighting.

For example, lets say a member of an opposing gang takes off 70% of my HP and his buddy rushes in and finishes me off to get the point. That would leave the main damage dealer pointless, right? With the assist system, the person who damaged 70% of my HP would recieve an assist for his efforts and after x assists (i.e. 3), he would generate a point. Assists visible in profile if possible.

These two components alone would help lift gang pking from its current state. However there is still little incentive unless you are the top gang, which brings me to my next suggestion.

The gang points system originally calculated kills/deaths based on the amount of damage a player did rather than actual kills and deaths (like in Sales' KOTH), but gang leaders were against this idea when I was developing it so we switched to actual kills/deaths. If there is consensus for this to be done now it would be a fairly easy addition. I think it would be simpler than the assist system you recommended.

v. Suggestion / salary

My third suggestion is aimed to:

(...)

I'll let Sales comment on this. I know his gang system has been in the works for a while now but it's looking very nice as of recently, and I'm helping a bit with it too. I think he has some plans for earning money via gangs.

v. Suggestion / money

Last small suggestion -- increase cash earned from pking from $1-10 to $20-$25 when it's gang related, anything at all that pushes gangs to raid would be nice.

Gang kills give $5-25 now. I don't want to increase it too much to prevent rapid inflation; we have already spawned $161,506 via death money (although the new gun shops have removed more than $5m so it's not noticeable right now).

[Herb_P2P]

I like.

[Andre2006]

If you leave your gang you shouldn't be able to re join another gang right away, it should also notify the leaders about it. So if someone asks to join a gang right after they have left their current gang, it should let the leaders that try to add him know at least that he has recently left a gang.

So they are able to ask him the question "Why exactly did you leave?", if you join a gang shouldn't it be with the intent to stick around? I see people jumping from gang to gang every day with no reason at all, just because they want to get into the better one, then they realize it might be the wrong decision and jump right back.


EDIT: I voted "Yes" on the new poll, without realizing that bombs is going to be a BIG issue. IF it's a matter of damage you deal rather than kills, then kills won't mean anything. Best way to win this would be to stack up on bombs which deal more than half their health.

[cbk1994]

Originally Posted by Andre2006

EDIT: I voted "Yes" on the new poll, without realizing that bombs is going to be a BIG issue. IF it's a matter of damage you deal rather than kills, then kills won't mean anything. Best way to win this would be to stack up on bombs which deal more than half their health.

It would probably be best to make damage determine kills for a player, but gang points only increase for actual kills. If a gang holds a base for an hour, it doesn't really matter how much damage they take as long as enough of them stay alive to defend the base.

[Sliekz]

Originally Posted by cbk1994

For this reason, it's hard to remove deaths and still prevent abuse of the points system. Even if we remove the net points, it wouldn't solve the problem unless we stopped showing deaths.

I don't like this problem either and I tried to solve it a while back, but failed. If you have any suggestions, I'm listening.

Points in profile could add up with no reduction on death, but the "/points account" command could remain the same to check for abuse?

I understand that the thought process behind running is mostly to prevent the other gang from gaining points, but there is also a large amount of negativity centralized around the thought of "losing" points too. Kinda like a giant blemish in your profile -- which would make running away and laming the metaphoric proactiv so to speak.

Originally Posted by cbk1994

If you have any suggestions for more rewards which can be added, or a better way to do rewards, feel free to make a list and I'll see about adding them.

Anything at all that gives gangs continuous incentive to raid would be great. Right now, the largest amount of competition only occurs during the first couple days of a new week. Once a winner is apparent, gang activity drops drastically.

Originally Posted by cbk1994

I agree, which is why we're starting to make it easier to get guns by placing most of them in shops and giving money for kills, which helps to promote PKing and prevent grinding.

A new player would have to get over 10,000 kills at an average of $5/kill to be able to afford a middle-tier gun, and over 115,000 kills to be able to afford something like the tommy gun.

While it does promote pking and make era more fun -- grinding, digging, and mining is the still the most efficient way to generate money. Efficient is still gruelingly.. painfully slow.

Now that the staff team is releasing a variety of viable guns with capped prices, you'll no longer have to worry about the economy fluxing out of control. This would be a wonderful time to introduce new, adjusted, and/or creative ways of earning money at a more reasonable pace.

Originally Posted by cbk1994

The gang points system originally calculated kills/deaths based on the amount of damage a player did rather than actual kills and deaths (like in Sales' KOTH), but gang leaders were against this idea when I was developing it so we switched to actual kills/deaths. If there is consensus for this to be done now it would be a fairly easy addition. I think it would be simpler than the assist system you recommended.

I'd buy lots of armor, lots of bombs, and raid in groups of 3 if that happened.

Originally Posted by cbk1994

Gang kills give $5-25 now. I don't want to increase it too much to prevent rapid inflation; we have already spawned $161,506 via death money (although the new gun shops have removed more than $5m so it's not noticeable right now).

very cool.

[bloodykiller]

why is the an abyss between BH and the other gangs?
cuz im in BH

oh and a good suggestion would be not giving gang points from bomb explosions since smoke and sliekz seem to only use bombs when it comes to raiding in order to supplement their poor raiding/leading skills

and the funny thing is that they spend 10k if not more a raid to use bombs and still manage to lose EVERY week
maybe gangs would be more active if LC and BB started the week with a point advantage? cuz giving them gang guns which r good pking guns (unlike the bher) obviously wasnt enough

[Dnegel]

This is a very rare thread which one does not easily find on the Graal forums, well written and deadly accurate.

[ghost_face_killa]

I see that bloodykiller is still clouded by the fact that they are the only gang base thats ever raided. BH has the greatest home base advantage. I have yet to see BH get ontag and spark a raid themselves by raiding BB or LC, because they know this, and abuse it like prideless little boys. That is why i support this thread to the fullest.

They only raid when they are raided, simply because of this incomplete gang system, they abuse the fact that they have 2 exits.

Now the reason Slikez and I use mines. Is to kill you after you hop in your base, swing your light saber at my guy thats trying to block all BH from always running.

[WillaWonka]

I like to idolize snk for breaking the strict boring laws to the server, and begin the balling rolling towards more productiveness. SNK broke the "no" law, which when he asked to do something interesting and was turned down, he did it anyway. Woohoo!

[salesman]

I don't like the points based on damage thing. You shouldn't get gang points for doing 50 damage on someone, dying, and then doing another 50 damage -- especially since the people you damage are just going to go heal.

I like the assist idea though (as suggested in the OP)

[bloodykiller]

yeah damage based pts is kinda dumb
the only thing era's gang system needs is 5-10 gang events per day (2 bad swift, name etc r 2 lazy to host gang events on a regular basis)
zeus came up with the great idea of making a sort of gang eventbot, where a gang sets the terms and "invites" the other gang(s) to the event..the specifics of this systemn must be discusses/tried out in order to prevent BB and LC from allying as they do when they realise that they don't stand a chance against BH
talking about eventbot...where's the new eventbot sales? it's months it's been started and this old eventbot is so dull..starting from the fact that instead of ULMS there is PK arena which is basically noobs running/hiding, other than the fact that the pk arena is glitched since most times you die ur not revived at max hp (it's years this glitch exists and no staff member has yet managed to fix it...)