Posted 05 December 2018 - 09:22 PM

SFC174, on 05 December 2018 - 06:46 PM, said:



So if I don't play Faction Warfare I'll be at a disadvantage in SoloQP against guys who do? Trying to lure players into a crap mode with ever increasing bribes is not the way to build a player base. The day I'm forced to play Faction to be competitive in SoloQ is the day I uninstall the game.



He's correct that the reward for the higher time and effort investment required to really succeed in faction warfare is inadequate. That's a big part of -why- faction warfare participation stagnated in the first place; I know, I was there. But You're also correct that giving people a substantial, must-have advantage that can only be gotten from Faction Warfare would be a Very Bad Idea. On a number of levels.First, you'll almost certainly drive players away from the game if you succeed in boosting FW attendance this way. The very need for such a reward means that players don't enjoy faction warfare for whatever reason; adding more players via a gear incentive is probably not going to change the reasons they don't play the mode. So either the reward will be trivial, in which case most players won't care, or else it will be substantial to some extent. If it's substantial enough that players feel they have to play a game mode they dislike to get it? They're not going to be happy, and you'll see player participation in the game drop out of disgust, if nothing else.Also, you could divvy out this advantage in one of two general ways: You'd require a lot of investment in FW to get the upgrade, or you'd require only some investment. If it required a huge investment, you'll drive people away from the game mode because they feel (rightly) that they're being forced to play a mode they find less enjoyable just to keep up with the Joneses, as it were. But the other option, the trivial investment (possibly with a periodic reset requirement?) You have no idea. It will be hellish.Hang on to your hat for a bit, because it's Story Time. I must tell you about suffering; I must tell you of WoW.I must tell you of Children's Week.Every year, World of Warcraft has a charming event where you go to your faction capital and pick out an orphan to take sightseeing around Azeroth and beyond. You take him or her to see the sights, do certain activities - including capturing the central point in one of the game's battlegrounds. Once you have gotten all of the activities completed with your orphan tagging along, you get an achievement that, together with all the other "seasonal" achievements offered throughout the year, will grant you a unique riding mount.It. is. horrible. No, worse than that. You cannot understand unless you've lived it. I am not allowed on these forums to use language strong enough to even vaguely convey the horror - and in any case, a command of profanity built up more than two decades of military service has left me no words adequate to the task. It turns out that a lot of the people who collect achievements for mounts, and pretty princess ponies, and magical fairy costumes or what-have-you are carebears who hate PvP. They resent having to go capture that flag, and when they queue up they will ignore the battleground's intended strategies and mechanics to simply try to capture that flag. They will burn ten-minute cooldowns to force their "teammates" to drop said flag so that they can pick it up instead - and they will fail, over and over, because they suck at PvP and probably have no gear for it in the first place. Every time that battleground came up for the entire duration of the event, it was hell.That's what Faction Warfare will turn into if you force people who do not enjoy it to play. They will hate the mode, they will hate you, and they will use any build or strategy possible to circumvent the intent of that game mode and get through their required grind faster. Woe to you if you require some kind of performance standard to be met; they'll either quit or just faceroll gen rush with lights over and over and over until they happen to get people who are just as checked out as they are for that win.It won't work - and it will hurt if it's tried.

Edited by Void Angel, 05 December 2018 - 09:22 PM.