Returning to Europe

[MrOsterman]

Suggestion:

Allow players to shelve a character (or all) and join a different nation on their server for a set minimum time, such as 14 days real time.

Explanation:

Right now I spend a few weeks leveling up to join into the PVP content. On some servers it looks like certain nations/ factions are going to simply dominate map after map. One way to keep this fresh is to let societies, and players switch factions to balance the game. If Spain wins the map a few times, perhaps some of the Spanish want to split off to see how they compete against their former team mates.

But to do this, people would need to delete all their characters on that server, and re-roll with a new nation. Once invested in ships, money, and property, why would anyone do this?

On the other hand, allowing someone to have multiple nationalities on one server means that they can do all kinds of underhanded things such as flipping ports, and then going to an alt to capitalize, spying etc.

So the options to players who want to compete seperately are really limited to switching to a new server, and moving away from their server community.

My suggestion then is to let a player visit an NPC in their nation's capital and "Return to Europe" for a set time, 14, 21 or 42 days real time. This will LOCK all of their characters of that nation and make them inaccesable for that period. They cannot be logged in. They are no longer in the Caribean; they are back in Europe living it up.

However what the player can do is to make a new character of a new faction. A Brit can try out being French for 2 weeks. They start at lvl 0, no money just like any other character.

When the holiday in Europe is ended, the player can "bring back" any character currently in Europe, but that immediately sends all of their characters from any other nation off to Europe for a pre-set time (2, 3, 6 weeks).

Once gone, they can NOT be returned early so that players cannot abuse this to "quick check" the other side, and then delete their new character and bring their main back.

I see a small problem in the inablity to players to self balance nations, and there being little incentive to do so. Most PVP games with teams require the teams to be balanced. At the very least an unbalanced team should have the OPTION of balancing if they want to pursue it.

Mr. O

[kazamx]

The first thing you must ask youself when coming up with an idea, is "is this a cool idea". The second thing you must ask your self is "Does it fit with the lore/theme of the game". I think your idea gets a yes for both questions.

The third question you must ask is how will this idea be exploited.

I would exploit your idea by doing a deal with my Society. I get 3-4 buddies together and we all send our mains off to Europe. I then take my brand new char and spend a day getting him up a few levels. I go see my Society mates who load me up with unrest bundles) I then find out what port the nation plans on flipping next (or I just watch the map until I see a map flip starts) I turn up with my 3-4 buddies and dump a whole load of bundles on the port. if its a low level port I will stick around and help grind some contention.

Port battle starts and we all accept our invites, say 3 of us get in. We all then enter the battle, getting shouted at for being noobs joining a PB at low level and quit the PB. now the attacking team is down to 21 players and stands a dam good chance of losing the PB. We could pretty much ruin there chances of winning a PB for the full 2 weeks.

[MrOsterman]

Originally Posted by kazamx The third question you must ask is how will this idea be exploited. I would exploit your idea by ....

Well crap.

Okay, now here's the question:

Is there a way to do this and plug the exploit hole? I'm on Antigua and while the forums are never truly indicitive of the server at large, I have a feeling that France will dominate the map for a while to come. Part of me says "okay, just switch to a better balanced server" but that only adds to the problem by contributing to the exodus. Part of me says "re-roll French". Again, doesn't help.

While the Underdog bonuses seem like they could help, I think a way to help players auto-balance without substantial penalty is a better solution to keep the game fun for everyone that wants to play to the PVP/ map flipping side of the game.

I guess there is really a fourth question to add to your criteria:

"Is this needed/ helpful?"

Cool, yes. Lore specific? yes. Free from exploits? Not yet....

But if it's not needed then there's no point in discussing it....

Mr. O

[Spinnaker Sam]

The people that would turn vacationing traitor are people that I don't think I would want on my team. They obviously have no loyalty towards any particular nation and so can't be trusted to have the same national interests. I imagine alot of people would just have these alts to cause trouble or to take advantage of the rewards.

I know that when they implement pirate pillaging, I'll probably have a pirate on a different server for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the pillaging opportuntities created by the regular pirates.

[Monique Duchamps]

Obviously, all your characters (on that server) would have to switch nationalities at the same time. I would also recommend making nationality switches possible only right after a map win.

Suggestions along these lines have been made before, particularly around the time of the server merge. As I recall, FLS simply isn't set up to do nationality changes like this. One big problem is that your quest info would change. You'd also have to find a way to resolve faction rep issues. You could get around some of the problems by simply swapping rep scores for the old nation and the new nation, but then you'd still have problems reconciling eurotrader company missions.

I do think it would be a very good thing for FLS to enable some kind of nationality switching, but it's really not a simple and easy thing for them to do.

[MrOsterman]

Originally Posted by Spinnaker Sam The people that would turn vacationing traitor are people that I don't think I would want on my team.

You're assuming that loyalty is not transferable. If a Pro Football team trades a good player to a team, does that new team assume he's not going to play hard for them?

Personally I think it's a good idea to give people the chance to help balance the servers otherwise it's quite possible that one nation will dominate the map and as other nations fail to close the gap will move to other servers with frustration.

I can see the exploits but personally I'm not at all opposed to having winners on my team.

Mr. O

[dogstar]

What would be interesting would be a means to permanently shift nationality, although it would have to be earned, and difficult.

Pirates for example who grind their way to a trusted* level with a national navy/trade body might be allowed to 'Take the Kings Pardon', and become NO/Privateers/Freetraders. Obvious the kings pardon should be called the Kings Respec.

Conversely Freetraders/NO and Privateers who gain Trusted* Brethren Status could become Pirates or Buccanners, respecing in the process.

In doing so, those characters would then obviously then gain massive losses to standing with those they have deserted (essentially meaning you could never go back).

Of course you're going to also end up tearing down your ecconomy (unless you spec up the right skills to compensate)...

[MrOsterman]

Originally Posted by dogstar What would be interesting would be a means to permanently shift nationality, although it would have to be earned, and difficult. ... Of course you're going to also end up tearing down your ecconomy (unless you spec up the right skills to compensate)...

That's why I didn't want to force those who want to balance the map to reroll. If it's permanent then we create another reason NOT to try out the other side to help find player balance.

I mean another solution is forced auto balancing.... when you join the server you are assigned a nation that needs more bodies, or you get some kind of incentive (faster leveling) for playing a less populated nation...

Mr. O

[Spinnaker Sam]

The football analogy doesn't work. They get paid to play football. It is their job and if they don't peform for their boss they get fired. So they have an incentive to play hard for whoever is paying them. That incentive does not exist in a recreational game. Just think how long a football player would remain on a team if he intentionally did something to cause his team to lose. Think what would happen if some PotBS player did something intentionally to cause his team to lose.

For this to work and not be exploited you need to provide an incentive for people to abandon their previous nation and work only for the good of their new nation. Which is something I don't think you can really program into a game.

[MrOsterman]

Originally Posted by Spinnaker Sam For this to work and not be exploited you need to provide an incentive for people to abandon their previous nation and work only for the good of their new nation. Which is something I don't think you can really program into a game.

This I will agree with, but I tend to think that a general sense of sportsmanship would be enough incentive to create loyalty. You're right that the pro football thing does fall though, but why not ameatur sports?

In the office softball league the same guys always win. So they agree to spread out among the other teams to make it competative. I'd never think to question if someone was throwing a game "for their old team" in that case, though I can see how in an MMO they might.

Which beggs the question: Are there maps where one nation always wins by a large margain and is that a problem?

Mr. O