Kyrie,
I had started developing a long post similar to yours that had a lot of the same concepts contained in it.
A main issue I have thought about is that many games could have benefited from better community systems to maintain interest but before the Free-to-Play (F2P) model, there was less incentive to keep the players connected to the game once they paid up front. Now that the F2P model is more established, studios would stand to gain much more from people immersing themselves in games and wanting to spend money to improve their experience.
F2P follows the same model as life itself. What a studio is doing is saying “Look, you can live in our universe instead of reality, but you are going to be limited to what you can do, just like real life.” F2P spans the boundary between games and real life. You work and gain money in real life and then rather than buy a pair of shoes, you might buy your in game character some clothes or upgrades instead.
But so many games are no fun to “live in.” Generally, there is an "action" or "game time" portion of a game and then a more leisurely time where one would work on their character stats, items, configurations, etc. In MWO we have the menus before drop. Obviously they already intend to have factions play a part in the factions menu which has yet to be implemented but I hate to see games where the only incentive to spend money or to stay connected to the game is just new titles, new skins, and tournaments.
We need something to be connected to, something to feel a part of.
You've laid out a lot of the basics and I think a lot of this should be considered. As long as they can make the game fun for the average non BT canon crowd, there is no harm in adding on a top layer for the more in depth players.
I think that political positions should have certain term limits and new elections can be held to refill them on a certain time basis. Also if anyone goes away from the game for a certain period of time, their position can be open for an option to impeach and re-elect someone more active.
My own vision for the political positions would be a mix of things. Your stats have a rating, you can gain support petition style, etc. There would basically be a wittling down method to work to a useable amount of candidates. It wouldn't completely eliminate less skilled players stat wise from the race but those things would be available to voters for consideration.
I think that political positions in the houses should have house skill trees that affect player bonuses and things like availability of supplies.
People have often speculated about the effect of clantech coming into the game. What if clantech, which providing certain high powered benefits, is offset by huge prices and availability restrictions. Perhaps it would take a house most of their focus militarily and supply wise to acquire clantech at a price that could be reasonable to use. The downside of course is that other houses that have spread out their resources in a more balanced way will be able to create variants of all sorts and styles, including access to high powered/tonnage mechs.
So House #1 might choose a tree that focuses on clan tech but their mechs are not as varied and their prices for different technologies are greatly inflated for both purchase and repair. They might also incur shortages at times that only allow partial reloading of things like gauss/LRM/AC based on an ongoing supply/demand market. Since clanntech is about aquiring tech, they might also gain bonuses on that tree from salvage.
House #2 might be able to drop with higher tonnage in each battle and easily supply various variants at reasonable prices. Gauss/AC/missiles would be easier to purchase and restock because they have not focused so much on advanced technology but instead having a strong trade economy. They will not need to count on salvage to affect their access to goods, instead their house economy handles that aspect. They will however be limited to access to clantech because they are not focused on advanced systems. This would mean little availability and huge prices.
Users in each house can fill out polls daily if they wish that helps the leaders know how happy or unhappy they are with current decisions and leadership. More indepth discussions can be had on the forums outside of game.
I think this is probably already on the table in most people's ideas for the metagame but I think that supply and demand should work like a stock market. Over the entire IS there is a certain market that fluctuates in terms of pricing for different goods. This can be adjusted artificially by the Devs to go long with canon stories/events and it will lead to people using different variants during different weeks because of price changes to their equipment for purchase and restock.
This market could be influenced internally by house skill trees allowing them to have backstock that other houses do not possess, and it also would allow people to buy up certain commodities and resell them at later times, adding yet another layer to the metagame where people can make money by trading.
I would compare this to something like the rotation of classes in the game Bloodline champions. F2P users have their available classes rotated so that they have a chance to try different things. This could certainly be done with mechs but it would be interesting if it was more focused on the type of variant than the mech itself.
If you are really unhappy with how your house is run? Defect. These numbers would also be available to political leaders so they know how many people are leaving because they are unhappy.
If you really don't want to be involved in all this mess? Join a merc unit. You would have more control over your own finances and mechs because there would be less hierarchy bogging down your purchase decisions. Also salvage would play a huge part since mercs would be more likely to take everything they can get since supplies are much more restricted than houses. They can work out their own deals with different houses to get supplies so in effect they can operate more akin to a game without factions being implemented. They are just limited mostly by the available funds they have and somewhat by the bonuses their unit has acquired. But if in a mercs unit a person can afford a decked out atlas, who is to stop them from using it as long as they have their own money to keep it running.
Also, with each end of a political term, skill trees can be reset and a certain number of standard points are available to reallocate, and more to be earned. Perhaps there might be a way to allow bonuses to working systems that allow the allocation to remain in place but with some offset so that houses can not get too OP by continuing down one path for many terms.
Edited by Mantiis, 01 September 2012 - 12:56 PM.
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