@Gothix said in [Poll] City Reputation System:

Each player could have reputation tied to any particular city, better reputation with particular city, he would have some discount at NPCs, and some extra options becoming available to him at certain reputation thresholds.

There could be several ways to increase (and decrease) base reputation with specific city. Base Reputation would then get additionally increased or decreased by temporary factors like... is player member of guild that's currently ruling the city, what is players karma, is player currently citizen of that city, and so on.

Players would have different base reputation tied to each different city.

Does this idea sound appealing or not?

If cities were NPCs, this would make sense to me, but cities will be humans. As a governor, everyone who interacts with my town will have a reputation with -me-.

What I'll want is not a reputation system, but tools to deal with individuals, such as a "kill player X on sight" order to guards (which is something Wurm Online had), or, give player Y a discount in my shops, and player Z access to my crafting stations.

Would also be nice if I could set rules based simply on karma.

When I played World of Tanks a couple years ago, it had exactly what I see you all arguing for:

• No alliances
• Friendly fire
• Collisions
• Restricted guild sizes (100)
• Equal-sized forces
• The clan wars maps would reset periodically, to give everyone an equal chance of getting on the map

Was it the nirvana you describe? Nope. All the best players flocked to a few guilds (clans), who then dominated the best territories, divided it up, stopped fighting each other, and only defended themselves from the lesser guilds who tried to attack.

New guilds/players had very little opportunity to play with top-tier players in a clan setting and thus learn how to improve. I was once able to arrange getting one of the professional e-sports players to shotcall a battle for my clan, and the difference was stark, but it was something that simply didn't happen much.

Limited battle sizes meant it was impossible to include everyone in my clan who wanted to fight in clan wars, and I continually had to put eager people on the bench, which caused all kinds of drama.

Now I'm seeing you all argue for something I already know from experience doesn't work.

I don't think you all can truly understand how awesome the zerg meta is for me in Albion, having first experienced World of Tanks! Zergs include everyone, and the lack of alliance limits (and the disabling of friendly fire) mean that the best alliances still want new people, giving those new people a chance to play with very good players and thus learn.

I very much want to see that in Fractured.

@Bardikens said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

I think alliances in Fractured should be a prominent, but difficult to maintain force. There should be alliances, and they should have some representation in the UI. However, I think that it must stop in the UI. Other than perhaps noting who is in your alliance as you see them, there really shouldn’t be any in game benefit to having an alliance member standing right next to you.

If there's no in-game functionality to alliances, I see no reason to have a pretty alliance UI that does nothing. I want in-game alliances to matter, and I agree with Albion's approach of not allowing allies to attack each other.

Having said that, I agree that the flat nature of Albion alliances (one leader, many members) is less than ideal (although clearly simpler to code and support). I'd rather see alliances be made individually, guild-to-guild.

That provides the following possible scenario which can't exist in Albion:

• Guilds A and B are allied
• Guilds B and C are allied
• Guilds A and C are not allied
• Guilds A and C are at war
• Tension develops between guilds A and B

That would tend to increase the pressure on the human factors of alliances, making sustaining a huge alliance that much more difficult (not to mention the extra paperwork of adding a new ally to every guild already in the alliance! ).

That would also be more true to life, rather like the Byzantine web of alliances that existed before WWI.

One more thing: I could see Tartaros being as you say, with no real alliances at all. That fits its free-for-all nature. I think forcing that on Syndesia, however, would be a grave error.

A few more things:

• This is a massive multiplayer online game. Zergs are a consequence of the massive nature of such a game. If you don't like zergs, why are you playing an MMO?
• Human factors are an effective limit to alliance sizes: personalities, drama, reward distributions, misunderstandings, and the panoply of human entropy weaken alliances the larger they get. Holding a huge alliance together requires a great deal of effort, all game mechanics aside.
• In the unlikely event that everyone decides to make one game-spanning alliance, the players will effectively be saying they don't like PvP, and they just want to play PvE. Instead, then, of trying to force something unwanted on customers via artificial limitations, I'd ask myself what is it about my PvP implementation that the customers dislike so much?

@Gothix said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

@Roccandil said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

Hmm. I don't think friendly fire would reduce zerging (see below), nor is that my goal.

Your goal is not to reduce zerging? Well... i guess that explains a lot... lol

Personally i prefer where skills determine the outcome of the battles and not who brings 1000 players vs 150.

Bringing 1000 players requires more skill than bringing 150. Logistics, coordination, communication are all vital, and make managing 1000 players much harder.

@Jairone said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

@Roccandil I disagree with the dominant group thing. Most games not only have them with numerical advantages (which is easy to see, and historically accurate, but makes for a terrible balance in games like this) but offer increased rewards for the results often further skewing the next results.

Put on a level field, things often change. Where some of the players might indeed be very good, the same is likely true of those who they were dominating with those advantages. In fact, those who were being dominated are likely as good or better on average, because they have faced hardships forcing them to attempt to improve.

That all is an aside to the entire debate on zergs otherwise, though. Creating good systems that don't punish players within games due to such advantages is a tough thing. At least for games with less vertical power curve we have more limited imbalances to address.

Unlimited alliance size is already a level playing field. The truth is that equal opportunity almost never ends in equal outcome. In order to guarantee equal outcome, you must punish the best players.

If the rules are equally applied to all players, the best players will dominate. If you restrict alliance/guild sizes, the best players will concentrate, to the exclusion of other players (see World of Tanks).

And if you think that somehow helps newer players learn, well, see World of Tanks. To aid learning, it's far better to spread out the best players through a population, instead of keeping them all together.

@Alexian said in The Shadow Empire:

The empire’s leadership is experienced, their ambitions significant, and their vision absolute.

Now that sounds like something said in LoTR.

As to limiting zerg sizes, one effective mitigation I haven't seen described yet is an anti-scheduling PvP philosophy.

For example, a huge part of assembling a zerg in Albion is knowing when to assemble it. Key PvP activities always happen at certain times that everyone knows in advance, thus maximizing attendance (everyone's ready for it).

For PvP activities that are -not- on a schedule (say, enemy mage raiders or gergs), it's much harder to assemble a zerg to counter the enemy. No one's prepared for it, fewer people are online, and those who are online are out doing other stuff already.

So, if you want to limit zerg sizes, one means of accomplishing that is to avoid creating in-game PvP schedules. (Of course, this really only limits response sizes; those on offense can schedule activities whenever they want. But, then that can be spied on. )

I'm increasingly persuaded much of the anti-alliance, anti-zerg sentiments I see here and elsewhere (Albion) are merely attempts to defeat dominance by changing the rules.

The problem is that dominant guilds and alliances tend to be dominant, not because of the rules, but because they're simply that good. As long the rulesets you throw their way apply equally to everyone, they're going to be the best. (Of course, it's standard human behavior not to like admitting that.)

As such, the only real way to cut them down to size is to get good. (Of course, you could always try a Harrison Bergeron, but I'll be heartily opposed to that!)

@Gothix said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

@Roccandil we didn't say "eliminate zerging". But they would certainly reduce it. And then in addition of some other mechanics, zerg can become more trouble then what it's worth.

And that is the goal.

Hmm. I don't think friendly fire would reduce zerging (see below), nor is that my goal.

@Jetah said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

@Roccandil

combat will/should have a first contact, first damage. it was mentioned in the KS that a tank could intercept damage destined for other players. IF that system system is setup and the friendly fire has a limited amount of friendlies (lets just say it caps at 5 players in a party) then any other 'friendly' will get hit by said abilities.

when you bowl you can't hit the back center-pin first. you have to hit the front row first, either center or left or right. by these assumptions, it's logical that a group of 200+ can't attack a single wall or player. they'll have to attack the closest object which will be their own guild/alliance members. we may see more small group fights than zerg fights.

when i say abilities i also mean spells. i just didn't want to type it every time.

Some ranged abilities (like magic missile), appear to rise over whatever is in front of you, Also, it would be silly if you couldn't do the same with archery.

Even so, all a larger group has to do is fire front-line to front-line. They will almost certainly have a bigger semi-circle, be able to focus fire better, and easily obliterate the smaller group (that's exactly how it works in World of Tanks, which has both collisions and friendly fire).

And unlike World of Tanks, where sides are actually even, a zerg will be able to cycle replacements into their line.

@Specter

Ya, I like it!