My opinion @ gangs
 

We've been using the current system for years. Anyone thats been around for a while should see the pros and cons by now. Every so often, gangs will sporadically become active but the majority of the time, literally nothing is happening with them.

How much longer do we need to wait before we do something different? Up until now, gangs have always depended on a select few of gang leaders to remain competitive which is a huge problem.

The draft concept is designed to do the two most important things.
1) Create long lasting competition to gangs by constantly redistributing the most skilled active PKers.
2) Give incentives to the most skilled and active PKers.

This system is perfect for a small community like Era. Anyone complaining about not being able to pk with your friends 24/7, stop complaining. It's much more fun killing them instead.

I agree. I get huge satisfaction beyond any I gain from killing those laggers & noobs every time I gun this douche-bag down. Worth 100%.

Should've flashed bro.

Nicely said, Rams.

The reason I don't believe in this is because there is absolutely nothing with the current system that stops the best PKers from giving themselves competition by joining other gangs. They all join up into super gangs because it's easier, they're not active enough to lead a gang on their own, and they're too lazy to put individual effort into winning (they'd rather just get free ECs each week). The only reason raiding even exists today is that groups of friends get into some degree of rivalry with each other; like Cory and his friends always wanting to take out whatever gang the Souls are in. If people actually believe a more challenging raiding environment would be more stimulating, then why on earth doesn't half of Merc split off and try to start a new gang?

The draft system isn't going to make raiding or gang activity intrinsically more fun or rewarding. People are still gonna idle at unstick me and complain about how boring raiding is.

We could have implemented some kind of incentive system that made it so more people would want to work themselves to a higher rank within a gang. IE if only the top 3 members of the top gang got ECs; suddenly everyone would be just as concerned with being top 3 in their gang as they are with their gang being top 3 in Era. It would make it a lot less desirable to be in a super gang, because there's no chance you would get top 3 anyways.

We could have also revamped gang bases; done something like Slash talks about where you punish gangs for having their bases taken over. Maybe they can only get gang guns if they own their base, or maybe they lose points for every second someone else has control over it. That would actually fundamentally change raiding, and give people a reason to do something besides constantly raiding BH. And it would do so without completely ditching a functioning gang system and rebuilding a new one that may or may not even work from scratch.

All we're doing right now with the drafts system is shuffling people around constantly, destroying the entire idea of loyalty, and making everyone even less connected to their gangs/bases/etc. Whichever team is number 1 is going to be number 1 for that week, and everyone on the other teams will say "ah hell, what's it matter, I'll get on a better team next week" and spend the next 6 days idling at unstick me. They don't have to worry about their gang being deleted, and they don't really have to worry about their stats for the week (because everyone already knows who is a good PKer and who isn't; Wil could be offline for four weeks and sign on one day for drafts and he would be the first pick hands down).

In it's simplest terms, how does the draft system make anyone more interested in raiding? I really don't understand what anyone thinks this will change. I would assume that 9 out of 10 weeks, there will be a gang that is just flat-out better than the other three, and you'll just have a rotating Merc gang that makes everyone else lose interest in raiding by Tuesday of that week.

I don't know, I have done zero development for the new drafts system, and I don't really participate that much in gangs these days, so as far as I'm concerned you can have at it. I just personally think you're all shooting yourselves in the foot, and thought I would try to save you the time and effort of switching and then switching back. If you're all so sure you want to move forward with a brand new system without ever considering the implications and trying to identify the actual root of the problem, then be my guest. I've had a fair share of consulting experience in real life though, and I've seen plenty of these kinds of projects, and I can tell you with almost certainty where this is going.

This is going to be my last post on the matter - I'm pretty tired of trying to start constructive conversations just to be shot down with "We have to put the system in, and THEN we can worry about fixing the problems" and "At least we're doing SOMETHING!" I personally think the "something" we're doing is spinning in circles; but again, not my place to decide.

I'll try to stay out of this system now, and will also try to avoid the "I-told-you-so's" if I end up being right. Good luck to you all.

We need to keep in mind that most players don't post/view the forums. The in-game opinion could be completely different or identical.

1. Well I legit thought of this before your post tbh, after my last post in the other thread. Like I said over there, half of Merc is generally inactive every other week. Usually it's just 5-6 people doing work any given week. Splitting up would make the two gangs too activity based, and we would just end up with 2 of the top 3 gangs so only half of us get rewards. Why in the hell would we do that? Lol... it would cost money to do so in the first place.
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2. The players have always been the X-Factor. I noted this in my posts about the new and old system alike. I even made entire threads on the topic when I was GBA. If they simply don't want to participate, **** 'em.
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3. Ranks haven't meant anything in a long, very long time. Friends just join gangs and top/trusted players get full rights. Inner-gang competition wouldn't be much of an incentive with this system. Like I said, only 5-6 people do work any given week for the majority of our score... I don't care about 5ec personally, but hurting those 2 middle of the road players doesn't stop the gang from winning every time.
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4. I've wanted gang capturing to be changed for a bit myself. It should really take like 3 players to capture a base... having one random nub (EP) denying all base ownership is really obnoxious when we're trying to raid. Then u can do other stuff like having a locker in each base, and your gang can only get 1 gun from each base they own or something. Removing points though is a big no-no, especially for an objective based concept.
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5. Kinda why another of the goals for the new concept/system was simplicity. I really don't see it taking Tim (one person) months to complete. And it will tie right into the current gang basis, making the workload less.. and the simplicity of switching back miniscule.
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6. If you don't want to win individual rewards.. or have a chance to draft your own gang and win, sure go ahead and idle. I personally would try my best individually regardless of my team, so I get a shot at making my own team next week and breaking the cycle. This goes back to the players themselves though... we can't force them to play the game.
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7. There will be some different players signed up every week, and 3 new captains every week. We're taking about huge changes in leadership, rosters, and the general player pool every single time. I really doubt the same leader can roll out a streak longer than 3-4 weeks. And again, this is just a 'what-if' compared to the reality that we deal with this every week currently.
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8. I don't see the need for this rage, I thought you were all for trying new things.. you even helped me brainstorm this damn thing. All we can really do is try... things can't be much more stagnant than they currently are.
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Keep posting/caring though, I love writing long responses, and your ideas are generally respectable. :D

Do a poll noob.

Just want to clarify a few things; not adding anything new.

For point 7, I wasn't trying to say the same leader would be the best over and over. I think different leaders can be the best, there will just always be a best, and it'll become obvious by Tuesday of that week who the best is. The rest of the gangs (judging by the current state) would get discouraged and barely raid for the rest of the week.

For point 8, I really really am not raging, I promise. I'm a little frustrated, but like I was saying, this isn't going to change much of anything for me one way or the other. I would still contribute if I had something to contribute, I just think that I've already thrown a whole lot of things out there and most of it has been quickly discarded by people saying "let's just do something and we'll worry about that later." I don't like to do things that way personally, so it gets frustrating.

can you summarise this?

Not really, it's a lot of different points, not one main one. But, let's be real, if you have to ask for a summary, do you really care?

i don't really have 10 minutes to read the points of a player who has probably raided twice in his life, no offence

:oo:

Well here is my take on it all. I don't think the draft system will really get anyone up and want to move. And this will only create more complaints from the community. The polls I heard are pointing towards not implementing the draft system. I have some ideas of my own though...

• To give people a 'fun' sense of raiding kill streaks to me should be the main focus for staff to work on. I think through streaks players are to earn some type of weapon or tactic to use against others.
• For example, I think kill streaks up to '5' should benefit the player. Once you earn a two-kill streak you should earn two points(three-streak *three points*, four-streak *four points*) once you kill another enemy, so on and so on until you reach a five-kill streak. Once you reach five kills it will reset your points back to one.
• Secondly; I think Riot Squads and Watch Dogs could be implemented. Probably if you were to achieve at seven-kill streak a notification would pop up on the bottom right. Once you open it you can pick from riot squad (3npcs with riot shields & glocks), and Attack Dogs (npc dogs). Thirdly; twelve-kills streaks could award players with torrents. I've seen Tim working on torrents myself; so that project shouldn't be to hard.
• Basically, what I'm trying to get at is; its not gangs who need to be revamped, but the style of raiding. Raiding has now become a act of laming, placing p4s in entrances. These features will promote fun rewards for raiders. These assets will make gang members look forward to when raiding.

W...T...F...:confused:

I like where your head is at, but hasn't it been pretty well established that killstreaks just promote running?

(I think a good alternative to killstreaks would be keeping track of everyone's kills/hr (completely disregarding deaths) and reward people based on that instead of how many kills they can get in a row without dying, that way people are incentivized more to rush in and try to get kills as quickly as possible, rather than to play defensively and try not to die.)

Oh god do this please. Merc & I would get retarded amounts of points.

Just kidding ofc, the kill streaks are already pretty decent incentives, leading up to those supply drops that can actually give players tangible rewards. (crates could use a updating, they've been the same since I made them)

I never liked the NPCs on Era. Using projectiles vs Melee NPCs is just dumb (lol kiting Halloween event for 30 minutes). And projectile NPCs aren't well made and can easily be trapped/glitched/flakked/dodged. I don't see how this could work but I like the idea, especially using that turret concept we brainstormed about awhile back.

The one constant through every gang system though has been 'Raiding', or the practice of PKing inside a gang base in a team fashion. I'm not 100% on how you'd modify this to suddenly promote gang activity, you didn't even get into it.

P4s and bombs and **** have been discussed before, and basically the entire administration agreed with me on some glaring issues/exploitable behavior of these things. I reminded Zao/Blue on a few occasions during our usual conversation... but nothing ever changed.