12 member gang limit?

[bloodykiller]

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.

[Chorchizcool]

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

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Chorchizcool

1) The playercount is low, but Era is about choice, and in my opinion, this current gang system is doing its job.
---
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.
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I believe that we should have more than one series of gang events per week.
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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.

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.
---

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.



sorry about tl;dr

[Chorchizcool]

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.

[Godzilla]

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

[Spikedude]

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?"

[Ramsfan]

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.

[Chorchizcool]

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.

[Tim_Rocks]

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.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Chorchizcool

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

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...

Originally Posted by Tim_Rocks

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.

Good times.

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

[Chorchizcool]

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.

[Tim_Rocks]

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

[Venom_Fish]

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

[Chorchizcool]

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

[Fiberwyre_P2P]

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.