The wheel might be a bit broken but it doesn't need to be re-invented.
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
1) Choosing a Faction for Loyalty.
1.1) If a player chooses to be a Loyalist to a Faction, this selection should be persistent to the player's profile.
1.2) The selection of Faction will be done on the Faction Details (will need to rename this tab) pages which display information about all the factions available.
Why go to all this trouble when the functionality was already attached to the units.
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
[color=orange]2) Earning Loyalty Points (LP) After Pledging Loyalty[/color]
2.1) Faction players will earn LP in the same manner as previously with additional bonuses.
Dangling extra candy is merely a distraction if the system does not work.
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
3) Expanding LP Gains Outside of the Player's Faction's Conflicts
3.1) The Alliances
- The Inner Sphere Factions will be split into two Alliances.
So the idea here is instead of the one Inner Sphere side we had with the one bucket in Phase 4, there are now two.
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
- While alliances are not strictly lore,
So why do it. Is that not the opposite of what was discussed in the intro and goes against point 1.1 as the factions are part of an alliance and therefore will not have the focus on their faction in the majority of events.
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
for game purposes and keeping queue buckets to a minimum,
Clarify this point as if this suggests that faction play is going to be broken up into more than one bucket to allow all the alliances to fight at the same time, there is an immediate problem.
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
3.1.1) IS Alliance 1
3.1.2) IS Alliance 2
3.1.3) Clan Alliance 1
3.1.4) Clan Alliance 2
Lets be clear here that under no condition in the suggested change will any of the factions in one of these alliances be able to fight each other.
There will never be a situation where it will be "Liao vs Marik" or "Jade Falcon vs Smoke Jaguar". I hope everyone is understanding that as it is spelled out in this next bit:
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
3.2) How LP is rewarded when a Conflict is in play that does not include the player's pledged Faction.
- The Alliances outlined above will never be in a Conflict within themselves. (e.g. Steiner will never be in a Conflict with FRR)
Meaning that
if the only players that are online belong to both Steiner and the FRR, one lot of you will have to jump to the other side of the fence to allow a match and in the case of loyalists, well, you are out of luck there. You are not prevented from swapping sides but that is the point of this whole discussion isn't it? To represent your side in Faction Play? This goes against point 1.1
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
3.2.1) Case 1 - Steiner vs Marik
3.2.2) Case 2 - Kurita vs Clan Ghost Bear
So as a fanatical loyalist to say Liao in both of these examples and Marik in Case 1 and Kurita in Case 2 can go and rot, my only choice would be to jump to the opposite side if I wanted to stick the knife in or not participate at all and therefore earn no loyalty because of the alliance setup.
Again, goes against point 1.1
We actually had a pretty good reputation system at the start from memory where there was a varying degree of loss of reputation when we fought against particular factions.
Alliances get broken.
If we would truly like this system to cater for loyalists there needs to be a better and more engaging system for the players to get behind.
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
[color=orange]4) The Big Problem Areas[/color]
4.1) The Faction Selection for Loyalist is currently permanent in this proposed system.
Reinventing the wheel and moving the idea of the loyalist to the player account seems completely unnecessary given the function was there on the units and players can drop in and out of units as they please.
The hard core loyalists would remain regardless and it's their faction they want to have in the headlines 24/7.
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
4.2) When it comes to Section 3 above, there's a big blocker in place.
- If the Conflict is an IS vs IS Conflict, there is NO way that Clan Loyalists can earn LP.
- If the Conflict is Clan vs Clan, the same thing happens on the other side, meaning IS Loyalists cannot earn LP.
- One suggestion made internally was to just provide a base LP payout when these situations arise. For example, if the Conflict is IS vs IS and a Clan Loyalist plays in the Conflict, they will still earn a 25% LP gain from their Faction for doing so even though it contradicts the idea of a hard core Loyalist.
Does this not contradict the initial statement and ultimate goal of ensuring that:
loyalists should not have to switch factions to play FP (see comment below in 5 )
The suggestion of alliances is a nice idea but as pointed out in your own document, it does not work as it fails to address the primary issue that
loyalists will not change faction
Dangling shiny LP rewards and discussing what to do about them is merely a distraction at this point until the underlying issue of addressing:
How to get loyalists playing for their faction and only their faction 24/7 has not been resolved.
Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2019 - 05:54 PM, said:
5) Let's Do This
The main takeaways from this post are as follows:
- We want to make sure that Loyalists do not have to switch Factions to participate in FP
- We want to make LP gains consistent for all Factions.
- This design spec has NOT been through a tech review so there's no guarantees that everything is technically possible.
- This is a big change and will require quite a bit of development time to implement.
- This is not a straight up "this is happening and it's the only way", but it's the strongest candidate that some of you have already touched on in previous comments/suggestions as well. Strongest doesn't mean best/only plan.. it means it fits the majority of criteria with a give/take approach.
This is the FIRST post of a discussion that will be followed just like the other discussions we've had previously. I want to take the same tone as last time and keep it a discussion and not a corporate refined response system.
Looking forward to your thoughts on this spec and trying to finalize something soon so development can start on it ASAP.
-Paul
If there is a second completely different design document, please forward that in a second forum post for comparison.
Edited by 50 50, 28 May 2019 - 03:29 AM.