Moving Forward with Gangs

[swift]

Hey all, swift here.

As recently being appointed the new Gang Admin, my priority is mainly figuring out new ways to encourage gang activity while giving proper incentive and reward (although it shouldn't even require incentive).

As we all know, for the past couple of months gangs have become so dry and boring due to the lack of constant gang activity. Competition between players doesn't really exist anymore.

This system would be recycling some old aspects of Era while introducing some fresh new ideas to the mix.

So lets get right down to it:


I want to open a new shop that would be located in Era Mafia with a
couple NPCs. The shop would be basically an underground hidden Gang Hideout with some mobster NPCs and a Crime Boss.

Gang players enter the hideout and speak to the boss and he would
give gang players daily Gang Missions.
My thoughts at the moment would total to about 3 daily gang missions to do the following:

1: Kill a set amount of gang players for the day (probably like 20-30
or so).
2: Be on gang tag in an active gang base for at least 1 hour.
3: Capture 3 active gang base nodes/locations for your gang.

Each of these missions would award 1 Gang Merit, and the merits
would be used to buy a lot of useful items and powerful weapons in
the shop.

=======
Here are some of my ideas / examples of these items:

- Unlimited Ammo for a week
- +10 HP for a week
- +5 Healing in beds for a week
- permanent NON-TRADABLE powerful to mid-grade gang weapons for individual players.
- MVP Coins used in current MVP gang shop (for a much higher exchange value)
- New Powerful Melee weapons
- New Unique gang hats for players
- And my final idea: A "Rare Rose" (about 100 merits)
=======

Now to conclude the basic idea for the shop, it would be something
that would add a new "grind" to gangs, and it would promote more
activity to gangs for the simple thought that people would need to be
an active gang member in order to achieve these rewards, which would promote raiding.

Players would only be able to earn 3 merits a day, making sure that
no one can farm this system for 2 weeks and be done with the shop.


================
Part 2:

Now, on to the "Rose" item.

The player would purchase the Rose (a lot of merits), and turn it into the Crime Boss. This would unlock a new gang quest that you could do with 3-5 other of your gang members.

This would be a 1 time daily quest where you can attempt to rob a
bank and earn some money for yourself, along with awarding a couple extra gang merits per day.

If you fail, then you lose your attempt for the day.
If you succeed, there would be a bit of a chance ratio along with how well you do in the actual quest to determine how much money you earn from the bank heist.

Ultimately this creates 2 new great features to encourage more
activity for gangs. This creates new content for gang players as well by being something to "daily grind" for new rewards.

As time goes on, the development staff in the future will have the option to work on more quests to add, and by simply adding a new buyable "gang relic" to offer to the Crime Boss this would unlock the newly added quests.
This could offer new rewards, or just increase the amount of daily merits you can earn each day.

This concludes my current idea for this system, and I am openly taking thoughts and ideas on this!

What could be added? What could be taken out? Please let me know!

[Godzilla]

Sounds great.

I feel like the only way we could release more guns, with better stats as an incentive for people to play in gangs is if everything became more easily access-able though.

Jobs paid more, Guns costed less, certain guns could only be obtained from stores via ECs, MVPs, Achievement Coins, Merit Points, Street Cred etc

[Demisis_P2P]

Giving a gang more of an advantage for already being the best gang (ammo + health + powerful melee) doesn't promote activity.
It discourages other people from competing beause they're already at a disdvantage.

Youre not going to improve the gang system by making people need to invest more in it.
The future of Era is in pick up and play.
And that's not entirely gang specific, it will probably take a server wide revamp to make everything more accessible and instantly gratifying/rewarding for taking part in gang PKing. Note: "Instantly", not at the end of the week, because I might not even play next week, and if I do I don't want to be fighting guys that have more health and heal faster than I do.

[swift]

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

Giving a gang more of an advantage for already being the best gang (ammo + health + powerful melee) doesn't promote activity.
It discourages other people from competing beause they're already at a disdvantage.

It won't be hard for every gang member (who plays on an active basis) to acquire all of these benefits.

What makes you think 1 gang will have all these benefits compared to everyone else?

[Supaman771]

Sounds complex and hardly gang related; short of having to be on gang-tag to complete the tasks... none of these things actually promote being apart of a gang, they almost sound like achievements.

So you want me to grind everyday, to unlock more things to grind, and in the end I might get some worthless money that I could've just ground for in the first place if it wasn't already just a useless measuring device for the value of all the items I already own. Right?

Think about this from the perspective of the player. @your concept
Does this make me a better player? @It doesn't.
Does this benefit/improve my gang? @It doesn't.
Does this provide me with something unique? @It doesn't.

So is it worth spending time on? @No.

[swift]

Not every other player has absurd amount of items and can pick a gun out of their glorious inventory of over powered weapons.

This is to provide something for new/newer players, give them hope into earning a better weapon without having to dig / mine / pick flowers for 3 weeks straight.

At the same time it introduces them to gangs, and has potential of rewarding them while actually playing the game instead of trying to have a job in a virtual world.

Originally Posted by Supaman771

Does this make me a better player? @It doesn't.

never has, never will. ez.


There's plenty of new players who would love to see something like this.
That perspective you described would be of the lazy rich Era players who already have everything.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by swift

Not every other player has absurd amount of items and can pick a gun out of their glorious inventory of over powered weapons.

This is to provide something for new/newer players, give them hope into earning a better weapon without having to dig / mine / pick flowers for 3 weeks straight.

Do This.

[Scoper]

Originally Posted by Supaman771

Do This.

I'd be willing to give up my stuff for this. It sounds way more fun than idling all day.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Zelot

So when the whole point of the staff team currently is to keep players playing and bring back old ones, you think doing something that's a direct 180 of what players want and decreasing the amount of Graal#s that are playing would bring back older players?
The game would die off even faster.

If it preserves and improve the server in the long run; yes.

Originally Posted by Scoper

I'd be willing to give up my stuff for this. It sounds way more fun than idling all day.

Agreed. It's not even all your stuff it's just a new approach to guns/the economy. People would only lose their weapons, and they could be given credit-points toward unlocking new gun-sets.

I was thinking it could be something like... 10 default sets. Then 5 you can unlock with pk points, 5 you can unlock with money, 2-3 EC sets, an MVP set, maybe even achievement sets.

More and more can be added, but they would all be balanced sets. And you could sell 'custom sets' for gelats... where people can choose 1 for each slot based on all the sets they have unlocked; to make a ultimate PK or Sparring set.

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by swift

This is to provide something for new/newer players, give them hope into earning a better weapon without having to dig / mine / pick flowers for 3 weeks straight.

Sounds like you've identified a problem and are creating a complicated system to work around it instead of addressing it directly.

Rogue's idea is good, but I think it's a bit too far in the one direction, and would remove every other aspect of the server apart from PKing (not necessarily a bad thing IMO). Without PKing itself being more interesting I can't see that providing a sustained boost though.

[swift]

You think the current players would just be okay with us taking all their guns/weapons away to implement a system like that?

Not a snowball's chance in hell.

That idea would require a full reset which seems completely impossible at this point. (unfortunately), and I would honestly love to play that version of Era myself.

We should focus on the current state of Era and it's playercount. I think there is a big misconception for a lot of people who post on these forums.
If we continue to make the game more and more exclusive by only tending to the older players (how it's always been) then the playercount will continue to deteriorate.

There's completely no chance of survival for ANY new players nowadays. The gap is far too wide, unless we add simplicity for newer players to get themselves started.

[Inari]

I kinda liked the old system, where there were gang mines and each gang had its own speciality, some had some special gun. Tachi had its potion thingy or what that was, etc. What happened to that? (Haven't really played Era much these days xD)

[Zelot]

I really like this idea, especially the quest that will make taking the node in the gangbase worth it. It should be "Capture an Active node for X Minutes" though. I feel like this would be a step in the right direction.

I do like Rogue's idea as well, but sadly as far as I know Era isn't reset-able.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by swift

You think the current players would just be okay with us taking all their guns/weapons away to implement a system like that?

Originally Posted by Zelot

I do like Rogue's idea as well, but sadly as far as I know Era isn't reset-able.

That's not their choice. Their account and all property on it is only a temporary rental from GraalOnline.

The player in-charge of the server and the management of its content is fully with-in his/her right to equally reset all items of a type (such as Guns/), or the server as a whole.

[Inari]

Originally Posted by Supaman771

That's not their choice. Their account and all property on it is only a temporary rental from GraalOnline.

The player in-charge of the server and the management of its content is fully with-in his/her right to equally reset all items of a type (such as Guns/), or the server as a whole.

Well it would be their choice to stop playing xD

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Inari

Well it would be their choice to stop playing xD

Correct.

[Zelot]

Originally Posted by Supaman771

That's not their choice. Their account and all property on it is only a temporary rental from GraalOnline.

So when the whole point of the staff team currently is to keep players playing and bring back old ones, you think doing something that's a direct 180 of what players want and decreasing the amount of Graal#s that are playing would bring back older players?
The game would die off even faster.

[Inari]

So it sounds like the issue is that moneymaking is just tedious instead of being in of itself a fun activity?

[shrimps]

Yes money making is very tedious.

[Inari]

But... what does that have to do with gangs?

[Fiberwyre_P2P]

Originally Posted by Inari

But... what does that have to do with gangs?

It's connected with gangs in that you have to have money to buy guns to compete with other people who have money and guns, which is basically the entirety of gang members.

On topic:
Grinding 3 missions a day for over a month to get a rose, and then getting nothing when you fail? That better be some score should you succeed.
Especially taking into account the exchange rate for MVP coins (which is supposedly going to be "high") and the value of MVP weapons.

[Venom_Fish]

I like the idea, but do not think it is going to have much of an impact with respect to the gang problem right now. The motivation behind it seems to be from a very narrow analysis of the era, or even graal playerbase problem.

In concurrence with Demisis, Era would only move beyond barely surviving by more or less turning into a pick-up shooter. If one recalls the server Sands of Glory, I think something of that nature is in want.

The old playerbase simply does not have the time, or interest to hang around era all day, and the new playerbase simply do not care for what the old playerbase cares for. However, this approach seems to be trying to service both groups by granting incentives for performances that neither appease the new playerbase sufficiently, nor the old playerbase, who for all intentions purposes, cannot be appeased with anything requiring them to over invest in Era.

To appease both parties sufficiently, new playerbase [gaining items and being in the thick of things], and old playerbase [keeping items, being in thick of things, without overcommitting] I think a pick-up shooter is best. In such a setting, you can sort of set the basis for guns to be used, without necessarily requiring labor, and also allow players to venture beyond on a basis of enjoyable activity, rather than tedious labor.

Remember: Era is sufficiently safe from the issue that SoG or Zone faced because, honestly, Era's most attractive feature is built-in to it. The characters, their speeds, the combination of weapons, the competitiveness in pk, etc. In totality, these are not things you necessarily need to change when designing a pick-up shooter scenario. Indeed, gang and other events prove this. The thing to be concerned about though is the gang aspect, since that has traditionally played a large role.

And so, the task here is really to figure out how to design a pick-up shooter while maintaining the gang-like elements that contributed to Era's proliferation for so long.
The solution? Who knows.

Perhaps having a pick-up shooter where people can make gangs/clans and while you can join in on non-gang/clans portions, there can also be gangs/clan portions which are separate, and these gangs/clans are ranked? But also, individuals are ranked separately. The ranking can specifically deal with wins v. losses, win to loss ratio, kills, deaths, etc.?

I don't know, just a shot in the dark. That's my two cents. Forgive the quick brushing over of points, if anyone asks about a specific point, I can elaborate. I did not feel the need just in case there is a wholesale resistance to it.

[Zelot]

@Wil

I was just talking to swift about SoG, that server brings back so many fun memories.

[Godzilla]

I feel like the only way to address our player-base problem is to take a stab in the dark with the ability to actually obtain items and wealth within the game.

With the way Era is now, you're essentially throwing a puppy into a dog fight and expecting it to survive.

I met a kid with 250 hours last night "Bandoo", within his 250 hours he managed to work himself up to 70k, a Gatling Gun and a few random items he has gotten from the mystery coin box from questing.

Essentially, he has nothing and can't defend himself against those who do.

I feel like the pay rate of jobs need to go up by 300% at the least.

I think once the game becomes more noob-friendly with pick up to play and how easy it is to obtain weapons of value through a solid days work will bring in new players and will encourage people to invite friends to play.

Now imagine this; You start a new game, within a day of playing you already have a gun that you see multiple people use, you are able to work and get a lot of money for a decent time exchange and you're also having fun; would you not want to continue to play?

Now look at Era.

I watch people from iEra log on and log off within 5 minutes of me showing them where to dig, pick flowers, mine, pick trash almost all of the ways to make money. The game isn't noob-friendly and without it being noob-friendly the only real good you're going to do with this gang system is let the 50 players who already play and compete in gangs have something else to do, which will only die out eventually for those remaining players.

This idea will create a lot of change, meaning; Guns worth $700,000+ in store will no longer be purchasable from store for cash, only MVP/EC coins.

and a lot of other brainstorming will have to be done for the idea to even become a viable idea but I feel like it's the change we need to take in order to have any hope of stealing away some of the iEra kids and interesting any other new ones we can get to log on.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

I feel like the pay rate of jobs need to go up by 300% at the least.

This seemed like the core of your suggestion focused on helping newbies; so I will focus on this.
I feel a better approach would be to just halve/quarter the prices of items, and here's why.

There's already too much money in the economy. So much so that there is hundreds of millions 'unspent' and sitting in banks of the players who already have these items (which is why I frequently say money is worthless). The economy is already monitored and flushing more cash into it wouldn't solve anything; however making the items easier/cheaper to obtain would help those players in the same fashion without inflating the server more-so.

This is the problem past regimes had; they would buff jobs and add kill-money and such which just inflates the players who already have the items (which is why $ goes up, and not down). But they never really changed the scope of it; new players still see the gun they want and go 'wow this costs a million dollars' before they ever have a chance to master the ways of making money (bouquet levels, mining levels, good pker, etc.)

Overall, increasing the money would benefit us more than them. The oldbie with 100 mining who knows the best cave and has worker potions would make the max money 300% faster; while the newb would make exponentially less 300% faster.

[Godzilla]

The whole idea is based off of the influx of players that could potentially join us, although I like the idea of halving gun prices I feel like a money increase for jobs would still be needed.

Now, heres how I see it; the economy is already in the **** and will always be since there won't be a reset, so why don't we say **** the economy, **** trying to make it better and start saying; hey new fella, heres a gun, heres a shovel, heres 5 hours of your life to get a Desert Raven then you can learn to play and understand later down the track just how amazing of a time you started to play.

You're right about the older players who will have better outcome of increasing pay etc but who the **** cares? I don't, I don't think Wil would, I don't think any of the top-tier players or even mid tier or ANYONE would care that you could make ex amount of money per hour because simply put; more players > no players.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

who the **** cares?

If this is the mindset Era takes then why not just Zone it up like my idea or Wil's idea where we make it pick-up and play from the beginning; and add extras you can get as you progress.

I thought this wasn't going to be the stance of Era, given the response to our ideas being less than stellar.

[Tim_Rocks]

I agree with the cat in the hat.

[swift]

Originally Posted by Tim_Rocks

I agree with the cat in the hat.

Second.


Like Tim told me: we could make Era more arcade style to where you can hop right into the action, earn rewards / upgrades and the next day they're gone and you start over.

What if events had pre-set guns you could use? Just so new players can actually win events to earn the better items. Ishmael already released a few decent guns in the EC shop and I think that's the right idea.

If we had some free hand out guns for anyone to use in events that were mid-tier at least, they'd have a chance or at least would log on to participate in Events. These guns would obviously only be usable in events.

We also took away free gang guns for anyone who joins a gang which is kind of a disadvantage for the new players, especially since we don't have Era Police anymore.

[Zongui]

gang points have been up the last two weeks. the top gang is close to 2k or over it now (haven't checked yet). second place is over 1k too i think. gang activity has been high it seems. new stuff always draws a lot of people though. we will see how long this can last.

[Tim_Rocks]

Originally Posted by Zongui

gang points have been up the last two weeks. the top gang is close to 2k or over it now (haven't checked yet). second place is over 1k too i think. gang activity has been high it seems. new stuff always draws a lot of people though. we will see how long this can last.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Zongui

gang activity has been high it seems.

2k is insanely low, that's about what the gangs should be obtaining daily... elite players per week used to get over 2,000 on their own. The gang point incentive system doesn't even begin until 5,000 weekly points, and goes all the way to 25,000. I used to get like 800-1,000 a week playing only on weekends.

[Zongui]

yeah it is still low compared to the points that were accumulated back in the day. i was comparing the current points to previous recent ones though (like two months ago). for the longest time gangs weren't even cracking 1k points. this new gang stuff has sparked up interests again, though. just wondering if it will last or if will it eventually go back to no gang reaching 1k points.