SilentScreamer, on 15 June 2019 - 06:58 AM, said:
This is an example of why it might be a better design to heavily guide majority of players to Mercenary or Freelancer career rather than Loyalist.
A true Loyalist is like a sports fan (short for fanatic):
- If your team is playing, you never root/bet against them.
- If your team's rival is playing, you always root/bet against them. (allowing for "Enemy of my enemy..." exception).
- As long as your team doesn't move, change names or disolve; they are your team. You NEVER switch.
The whole concept of having to be a Loyalist in order to reap full rewards of Faction Play means players who are more interested in maximizing profit (reward wise) switch from Loyalist faction to Loyalist faction.
Avoid this behavior by:
- Eliminating Faction choices from Freelancers and Mercenaries. Select Career only.
- Mercenaries and Freelancers would automatically be put in the queue for whichever side has less players actually in queue for a match at that moment.
- Loyalists queue for their Faction Loyalty, be it the actual Faction or the alliances you [Paul] outlined earlier.
- Changing the Reward system so everyone receives full Faction Point Rewards at all times:
a) Loyalist earn Loyalty points for only their Loyalist Faction, regardless of who they queue for.
b) Freelancers and Mercs earn Loyalty Points for whichever Faction they are fighting for that match.
Paul Inouye, on 17 June 2019 - 12:21 PM, said:
Still filling out the design spec. Would estimate about 75% done.
When it came to my last post about jumping sides for a match to kick a match off... original intent was not to allow Loyalist players to play for Factions outside of their Faction/Alliance/Clan vs IS Faction. e.g. Conflict is Kurita vs Davion. You are loyal to Kurita. If the current queue is 23/9 for Kurita, you would not be able to switch to balance the queue. This would lead to queue balancing being in the hands of Mercenaries and Freelancers. The reason I asked that last question is, there were a few voices here saying you should be able to swap to balance the MM queue. To me and a few others, this isn't something a Loyalist should be doing. But at the same time, there's a valid point to kicking off a match so at least something is happening.
Another thing that I see in some posts and definitely needs clarification... Freelancers and Mercenary Units do NOT earn LP. Not sure where that notion came from or if it was just a miscommunication on the poster's part. Freelancers earn extra XP, Merc Units earn CB and RP (Reputation Points for their ranks).
Hi Paul, I can't speak for other's posts, but the intent of my post was not to imply that Freelancers and Mercenary Units do or will earn Loyalty Points as part of your redesigmed alliance conflict system.
Rather, the point was to suggest that Freelancers/Mercenaries/Loyalists all SHOULD be earning at the same rate per match to avoid players switching Faction or Career in-between matches just to maximize rewards.
Switching Faction or Career to balance the match queue is a different but related issue. From my experience in CW beta 2 and Faction Play since Invasiin Wave 3 was released players can't be trusted to balance the queue themselves. The playerbase tends to dogpile on one side.