Gun distribution
 

I want to bring this discussion to it's own topic. any comments, ideas, suggestions, and criticism are welcome! I want to hear what people think about this kind of system.

I've already talked this over with a couple of people and did some quick brain storming. Here's the issues with your idea:
-How on earth do we compensate players?
-What's wrong with the gun stats anyway? I thought they were already balanced.
-The only thing rich players would be able to have if this is implemented is basically a business or a house. There's not a lot of other options after that.

Aside from what can go wrong, I also went around asking players what would make them interested in raiding or pking. I got a lot of mixed answers, which is normal... It seems like players want fast kills, and something they have that no one else has. Which leads me to believe that there's got to be something I can make for Era that could get players active. I have no idea what that is at the moment. One thing I can do though, is I do know how to make kills faster. And I was thinking making raids more event like. Faster re-spawns; Allow whoever is in control over the base to re-spawn in the base. Also, making multiple capture points so bases are a little more challenging than just waiting in a ring for 45 seconds. Players also told me they want locked down areas so players don't have far to run.. Lastly, make it so the only place you can go once you leave the base is the surrounding outside levels until the raid is over or you die.

Pick away at the ideas, kids!

Now, just so I'm clear though.. This is not an attack on you; I like your idea, I just don't think players would react well to it.

nope

OK!

Why would you need to? The only thing you'd be inclined to compensate are potions because they were purchased with gelats, but you could just leave them alone since they don't impact game play as such.

They were. Then they weren't. Sometimes they are, most of the time they aren't. Honestly don't know anymore, though as soon as someone modifies one stat or adds one gun to the public after an established 'balance', it's essentially gone... Picture a scale, both sides set to an exact standard, any modification thus unbalances said scale.

The thing I don't see, is how rich is defined? Every player on the server has an equivalent set of multiple accessible inlets of theoretically infinite resources (in this case 'Money'). Coupled with the same accessibility of outlets to spend said resource (every gun, item, etc.) at set marks.
The only way I see fit to define rich, is whom can commit the most time to actively playing the game at any given point. Thus giving that player the highest rate of resource attainment.

So they want to be lazy and feel special. A type of behavior that shouldn't be encouraged.

Just about everyone was in agreement that those 'BHPK' events made raiding redundant and pointless. Giving unskilled players free advantages to encourage them to not train/get better. One of the few things management actually agreed with us on (those events are now limited to be hosted).

Can't beat the players defending the control point?
Having difficulty staying alive while trying to attain advantages you don't deserve?
Never fear! There's now multiple circles so you can capture bases, while you don't actually capture bases!

Just 3 easy payments of $19.95! + S&H

Links are already pk-mode disabled. Pk timers make hiding in unstick unavailable. Everything is child-proof to be easy as pie... though chasing and/or killing is a skill-required endeavor, if you can't do it... go practice instead of crying about it.

tl;dr
Nope

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As for the OP, I only read the bold statements. And it sounds like you need to type Zone into the 'Servername' bar.

didn't zone do something similar? I remember that server. it died pretty fast. edit: i don't remember much about zone, but wasn't it purely a pk server? you got weapons from getting kills and all that. i don't think money was involved. anyone confirm?

and that other topic with 101 posts is closed, but i wanted to bring up some stuff in that topic. since this topic is related to what was being talked about in that closed topic, i will bring up my stuff in this topic.

people in the closed topic were talking about era not being noob friendly and all that, and how that is why people aren't having fun anymore. you guys were talking about doing different things to change all of that, but how about giving era police access to the "create a custom gang gun" option?

anyone can join era police and all the noobs who play era for the first time will be able to join era police and pick up their very own "OP" gang gun that the top 8 or whatever gangs on era already have. that way all the noobs will be on equal footing with these veteran players that have had time to become more experienced on era. i am sure those noobs will have fun.

wasn't making era more fun the premise of your guys' argument for wanting to change era?

I personally love the idea, I would play a server that was like this.

I support this.

It's comments like these that result in nothing getting done. Players wanting fast kills isn't something that Era started doing. It's games like Call of Duty or other mainstream shooter games that encouraged an entire generation of kids to want things "RIGHT NOW". I remember when I had to drive all the way to Wal-Mart to buy a game, now I got a nephew buying games straight to his console without ever leaving his room. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that if players want fast kills, then shouldn't we make the game a little faster paced?

Side note, give Era Police their own gang gun. Just make limits so there can only be 4 or 5 active guns at one point.

Frankie's weapon loadout scheme is probably the best idea I've heard in a VERY long time, It's near flawless in my opinion, especially if everyone keeps crying about gun balancing, wanting the game to be more PK focused and skill based.

Why do you need to compensate the rich when most of the rich are the ones asking for the game to be PK focused.

In my opinion; 5 sets of 3 gun loadouts all being a primary, secondary and third(ary), making them all balanced with each other but result in a skill-ful debate/player preference.

When players get bored you can cycle in new loadouts and cycle out the old until another 3-6 months to cycle them back in, you wouldn't even need to delete the guns on Era just the ID so no one owns guns anymore, thus being able to cycle through the 60+ weapons on Era.

i think 10 active guns only would be good since the member limit for real gangs is 10.

i just think this change is too radical. i really don't think it is necessary.

Tertiary is the word you're looking for not thirdary haha.
Anyways rogue is right the server would kind of just turn into zone. which died.

Hahaha, I knew I was wrong but I wasn't ready to go ahead and start googling it.

I don't think Era would turn into Zone at all or die, if anything the server would bloom off of the update but It would be a big game-changing update so I understand the scared-ness of failure hanging over the Staff Teams head.

In all honesty, the server isn't in too bad of a position, it's just the terrible community and spiteful staff team that make the game not so fun.

you guys seem to be missing a very important piece to my whole argument

in my opinion, the current economy makes it impossible for players to reasonably achieve enough assets to play this game fairly. I stress the word reasonably because realistically one could grind a job for hours and hours to make a lot of money, but who the **** wants to do that? nobody.

you log into the game and you're at unstick me. you see all these players with fancy weapons and you see people pking around you and you want to jump in on the action? too bad. grab a drill and start mining your life away. sure you can mine for a little while and buy an ak47 for $1000, but as a new player you're going to get mowed down easily.

some people will argue "well you have to practice and get better. stats don't matter you can acquire skill and stand a chance!" wrong. lets be ****ing real here, that's not happening. players who have been playing for months/years with weapons that FAR out-class the starter weapon shop weapons will always have an advantage. always!

so here's where the gun load out system comes in. everyone weapon-wise is on an even playing field. the skilled players will still be able to out gun others, but this time they aren't hiding behind a 500k weapon that other people don't have. if you get destroyed by someone using an mp40, you can pick up an mp40 and start practicing with that weapon and hold a better chance against them. it's fair and it's 100% skill based. I feel like people who are denying this type of system are scared that they are just going to suck horribly at the game. it really puts into perspective how much expensive and over powered weapons influence someone's "skill."

it's just an idea. it has flaws, it has concerns, it has disagreements. if you enjoy this game how it is right now, that's great. you are well within perfect reasoning to disagree with my proposal. can we all at least agree that there's something broken about this game that needs to be fixed so we can attract new players and increase the player count and player activity? but I feel like everyone tries to pin point the lack of player activity behind gangs and raiding and I really think we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. gang and raid content is not the reason why people don't want to play. don't be so close-minded. your over powered weapons aren't going to do you any good on a server that nobody wants to play.

again, in my opinion.

"you log into the game and you're at unstick me. you see all these players with fancy weapons and you see people pking around you and you want to jump in on the action? too bad. grab a drill and start mining your life away. sure you can mine for a little while and buy an ak47 for $1000, but as a new player you're going to get mowed down easily."

those noobs can join EP and get their own fancy gun from the EP locker. the new gang admin just needs to add that create a gun option for EP. then they will be stylin' with their fancy .05 freeze gun or whatever. everyone will be having fun.

i am actually against putting a limit on the number of weapons out for EP members, but if it must be done, then i'll stick by that 10.

Again, I have argued the same point Frankie is arguing, the load-out idea not only boosts the pick-up and play aspect of Era but with that will boost the player count.

In all honesty, the idea is near flawless in my opinion, the only people who will get upset with it is the people who have acquired a large amount of wealth over the years but they shouldn't of been able to, Era used to get reset every 2 years but because of stupid potions we were unable to do it.

You need to think of the bigger picture, do you want an excelling server or a playercount of Valkoria?

it's a step in the right direction but I feel like that's not enough.

glad to see someone agrees with me and I'm not just crazy.

era won't die like zone did simply because of similar gun systems. you're forgetting that the actual game play mechanics behind each server are completely different.

movement is slower, bullets are faster, and you can shoot in diagonal directions. these are qualities that change the feel of the game drastically and probably make zone less enjoyable to play compared to era. a spar on zone is not the same as a spar on era. just because there would be similar weapon distribution systems doesn't mean they are the same server and will share the same fate.

era's main focus is pking. that's why the majority of people play this server (I would even argue that's not even true these days but the main focus SHOULD be pking) unfortunately, the enjoyment is reserved to people who have been playing the economy for years and can afford all of the good weapons. do you guys really not see the flaw here? era is pretty much a giant circle jerk and if you're new you can **** off. that seems to be the attitude.

edit:


just saw this on the graalians.com forums:


there you have it. the exact reason why new players are turning down the PC version.

zone was honestly the best server hands down PK wise.
the ONLY reason it died was because it was a Gold server and there were a lot of restrictions, a lot of classic accounts quit zone because they needed Gold just to change their heads and get the good classes (commando grenadier, light infantry...etc)
other than those reasons zone would still be here today THRIVING. I wouldnt of even logged on era a single time


directing era towards the zone route would be a great idea since its a classic server. THEN skill will actually be a factor and not just the gun you use because right now since ive gotten .05 freeze guns i can keep up with a lot of you guys

i rather have Zone back than having another server trying to be Zone.

Just because this system was on Zone doesn't make Era "trying to be Zone".

Era is NOTHING like Zone and the way I'm imagining this system on Era it would again be NOTHING like Zone.

Hate Frankie's idea of killing the entire economic aspect to the game. One of the best parts about Era, in my humble opinion, has always been disparities and inequalities. I think an era without this would be boring (similar to zone as someone else pointed out).

As for the pace of raiding/pking, I think it's too quick as it currently is. Gang raids should be about attack and defence. The attacking gang is already at a disadvantage, and even if they do manage to overthrow the defenders they don't have enough time to heal and regroup before the other gang is fully healed and upon them again. Once a gang is defeated in a single round of a raid, it only takes 10 seconds before they unstick and a couple more seconds before they're right back in the fight again. Gang raids become a blur of madness. What little gang strategy used to exist has been replace with 1) Unstick 2) Rush 3) die 4) repeat. I think the problem is the decline in gang raids in total, and the number of players involved in such raids. In the past, gang raids were huge and lasted hours. Figure out how to bring that back, not simply speed up the process of spawning, killing and dying.

The only thing I'm certain of is that no matter what I do you will all complain about something.

That is the truth sir.

well people will always complain. nothing will change that at least. not saying complaining is always a bad thing though.

anyways, I think most people agree that frankie's idea(s) aren't necessary for era. they might work or they might not, but they aren't needed; the change is too drastic.

there are plenty of noobs that have worked hard and have been able to get to the promised land. and the negative talk on players having a lot of weapons and money is nonsense, especially since those players worked hard to get those items. why are we punishing people for hard work? when I started playing era again I only had an fn2k (that I got from the quests), then worked myself up to a souizen. it feels good.

I am also in EP, but I have been invited to other gangs. there are people in EP that have moved up as well. one guy specifically, lazergraal or whatever, is in phantom troupe now. I remember when he didn't have any good weapons, but he kept doing the quests and now I see him trying to buy a bar.

also, era still gets a high player count and is still on average the most played server out of the classic playerworlds. you guys have to remember that graal has been out since 1998 (?) and era has been out since 2002 (?), so it is only natural that graal in general loses players over that long period of time.

as I type this era has 98 players on right now and zodiac, which is in 2nd place, has 61.

dont get us wrong guys, there will still be a currency but you can only buy from NPCs and sell only to NPCs no more trading with other players. You can still work your way to a souizen but itll take a few hundred kills thats all.
We're all "skillful" right so it shouldnt be a problem

it is not just about being skillful. just because some of us are skillful doesn't mean that we should all have np with it.

so what exactly is the problem? Money? That was going to lead to problems to begin with. Getting rid of money? that would only get rid of problems sir, no need to compensate, compensate what exactly, putting everyone on a balanced playing field? oh. sorry for actually thinking balance.

because era doesn't need a drastic change like that. there is no problem on era that requires a big change like mentioned by you guys.

why did you guys even start pushing for this idea again? because era was low on player count? because that isn't necessarily true at all. compared to other playerworlds, era is doing fine. like I mentioned earlier, era has been out since 2002 and graal a lot longer. servers in general have lost players.

was it because there are too many lame guns on era? I first started playing era in 2002, and lame guns have pretty much always existed. once upon a time only the uzi, shotgun, and handgun existed. then the ak came out and then the metal storm became the weapon to have. people wanted more weapons though, and so era continued to feed the masses.

the flak cannon came out under chrisz's management and it was even more lame back then, yet people still had fun. PI had the lamest version of p2ks and ap7s. not to mention the masil g which literally had zero freeze. you could run around your opponent while spraying him. the pl-9 shotgun came out under chrisz's management too, but I don't know how that gun compares to the current pl-9 shotgun or aa12. can't forget about the GG as well. there is no gun on era that is too lame. actually, probably the flak cannon is.

venom_fish actually did a good job in balancing the guns, but he mentioned that someone changed some of the stats and that gang guns have messed up the balance, but you don't need to completely change era to fix that.

the point is that "lame" guns have always existed. people love the different variety of weapons.

was it because noobs aren't having fun? because they don't have access to tier 1 weapons right off the bat? well I proposed giving era police access to the create a custom gun option, so that era police can create their own tier 1 weapon and noobs can have access to that. that is an idea that doesn't completely change era. it isn't drastic. you already have a .05 freeze gun too, which was what you were talking about when you talked about things being unfair or something, so now you are on equal footing with other elite players right? noobs will get that chance too once they get their very own tier 1 weapon.

revamping a server like era is risky. i am not saying your ideas will flop, but i am not sure if they will succeed.

also wanna add that the servers are crap. some people can't even play because they lag too much. noobs come on and move like 1 mph because either their computers are too bad or graal is too bad for their computers. I went on iera before though and got off after a min.

This.

Despite denying everything Tim said earlier, I'm all for doing something totally crazy and trying this load-out thing.

To be 100% honest, all you'd have to do is temporarily disable the gun classes, and then make a rugged gui to allow players to select one of a couple premade 'sets' of guns when they login. I'm sure Alfonso or even Tim could do this in an afternoon.

Make them function like gangguns where they're untradable and poof if u logoff. Copy/paste a working gun class to this set of guns along with some balanced stats (you'd only need like 25-30 guns, it wouldn't take more than an hour to make them). Just like "Guns2/Mp5 Navy", all you'd change is some stats if anything should the sets have inherent balance. Any monkey with an NC can handle this.

Try it out for a month and see where it goes, bring the new year in with some bang.

Doesn't work out? Toggle which gun classes are enabled... ~60 seconds.

Sounds like fun.

I feel like with your approval/backing of the idea this might actually get somewhere, now I would love if we started having some stat combinations/set of weapons thrown down.

In my opinion; (Weapon set one)
Mp5 Navy (0.05 freeze doing 14 damage, spread near nill and reload medium) (forgot fire rate; fast)
M3 Shotgun (0.1 freeze doing 16 damage, bullet spread normal and reload medium) (forgot fire rate; medium
Glock18 (0.1 freeze doing 14 damage, spread near nill and reload medium) (forgot fire rate; medium)

In my opinion; (Weapon set two)
Ak47 (0.1 freeze doing 22 damage, bullet spread medium and reload high) (forgot fire rate; medium)
PBP Shotgun (0.15 freeze doing 19 damage, bullet spread normal and reload high) (forgot fire rate; slow)
Luger (0.15 freeze doing 20 damage, bullet spread near nill and reload high) (forgot fire rate; slow)

I like to think that the way you have to play Era will change, you will use your complete set and use it wisely and learn to use it in all positions, now is the time for change, so if you're a bit off about the two different sets I listed feel free to adjust them with your own opinions but I think something along these lines is smart.

i am for it if you wanna test it out. never said it was a bad idea. just don't think it is needed. as long as we are just testing it out for a while then i am fine with it. i am just one player though.

just need someone that is actually good at balancing weapons. don't forget about hp. not everyone has the same hp level.

all i know is, if we continue to keep money in the game, at least make expensive weapons worth it *cough* ove *cough* p90 *cough* k180s *cough*

Dude, good idea. Let's make more OP'd guns!

not op'd just worth the money we spend.

Can you just stop posting ikki? You have nothing good to say and everything you say makes me want to eat glass.

Ok? Go eat glass then no one is stopping you.

Gun distribution change will be quite the shift. I'm not sure how effective it will be though.
Last night I witnessed 3 players in a 10ish player ulms constantly say "leave" and rejoin instead of taking a death. This among other things (running, laming, shotgun spamming, etc) leads me to believe that the lack of fun many of us get from gameplay isn't from how things are set up gun wise, it's more of a player mentality problem. People want to get the most kills while getting the least deaths at any cost. Far behind us are the days when running was incredibly shameful, as some have brought up. Some things that have only made this problem worse and provided more incentive to run are the killstreak and new bounty system. Who wouldn't want to keep juggernaut forever when it can make you nigh unkillable and what reason other than "honor" would someone fight to the death and accept their loss when they're at 14 kills and almost have a supply drop? There is none.

I'm skeptical to think that changing the system to be based around guns will change the gameplay. To make money you kill people and you lose none when you die, so why would people want to regain the past perception of honor? I feel like incentives would need to be put in place to counteract the change in mindset since that seems to be the true problem here, not stats or wealth or the gun system (even though they all contribute a bit)

What's the difference between normal and medium spread?
And why does a pump action shotgun (M3) have the same rate of fire as a machine pistol (Glock 18)?


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