Kyrie, on 21 August 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:
If we cannot change the history and make our own in terms of faction wars, diplomacy and so on, there is little incentive to play a faction IMHO. If we are following the battles religiously based on the canon, there is no possibility of interesting strategic game play at the House level. If we limit conflict at the House level to a tiny set of planets along the border along a one-dimensional line, there is little incentive in my mind to being part of the faction military.
According to what is announced in the devblog, the plan is to isolate mercs and faction members on completely different classes of planets. And reading between the lines from Bryan's post back in May stating that faction is "passive" and mercs are "active", this makes a lot of sense. Mercs will get some kind of meaningful conquest system where as faction players will probably not. One of the main arguments that has been put forth to focus on mercs with a separate game field is in fact to stay clear of problems with the canon; something I disagree with entirely as noted in my previous post.
I think that even if only a few dozen planets along the borders between major houses are 'up for grabs' in faction play we can still have a lot of incentive and meaningful efforts by house players. For example:
1) Who doesn't like seeing their faction 'winning', or regaining previously lost ground? Or having a chance to go and take back a planet they you fought on and lost previously? No matter how inconsequential the planets may be in lore (and they would need to be, in order to be capturable, in my opinion) they can still be a point of pride for faction players.
2) There can be various boosts provided to the house that controls each planet. These need to be meaningful, but not game-breaking. Things like discounts to certain weapon costs, ammo reload costs, repair costs, etc - or boosts to XP, etc.
Just because players couldn't affect major canon / lore doesn't mean they won't still want to have their faction be the biggest, strongest, etc. There can even be rankings displayed about what faction has taken the most planets, or what the latest planet to change hands was, etc.
In a related vein, I would like to see many new mission / game modes introduced - and then used in progression during the battle to take a planet. For example, if House Davion was assaulting a Kuritan world:
- Early games in the campaign would largely focus on dropship landings, scouting, and some early attempts to capture advanced bases (by the Davions)
- If that went well, the map modes would switch to fighting over resource points and the Davions hunting down supply depots, convoys, etc.
- If things continue to go well, it would transition more to attack / defend missions with the Davions trying to capture major control points and bases, along with Davions trying to take out planetary leaders (escort missions).
If at some point the Davions started to lose heavily, things would slide back and the Kuritans would have missions to destroy or capture Davion footholds, and eventually to taking our Davion dropships as the Davions would be trying to retreat or escape.
With things like that in place, even a single campaign to take a given planet would have a neat incentive system built-in, encouraging players to fight for their factions (or whoever will pay them the most C-bills!). There could be in-game ISN updates as the progress in capturing a world proceeds, and maybe even mention there of players who make monumental contributions during the campaign. These things will all provide great non-tangible rewards and incentives