quest, shop and pirate factions suggestion

[R_Artis]

Okay this one floated in my mind while I was on the server and I got really bored....

Shop faction Convoys- they would travel from shop to shop. they would have some basic protection on convoy itself and some wingman that would also protect the convoy. player would have different options to do: raid it, protect it from pirates or take taking a quest from it ( as convoy is moving players would be able to see its position on map if the player has taken a quest from it) One of the unique quests could be clearing its path from asteroids or pirates, or protecting it for a period of time or to all the way to its next control point (shop)...

Pirates- Maybe give us a way to go friendly with pirates ( if player goes friendly with pirate faction he cant buy or sell from shops but he would be able to buy parts of ship like blueprints of pre-made weapons thrusters and many other systems and maybe also half destroyed ships.)

Reputation system- (reputation could go in -100 and +100 points) new players would start as neutral to all. First for pirates and shop faction- if player or faction is friendly to shop faction he gets a small reputation bonus points to all factions that are friendly with shop and - reputation points with factions that are friendly with pirates ,and if player or faction is friendly with pirates he gets - reputation points to all factions that are friendly with shop but + reputation points with those who are friendly with pirates.
Now lets get a bit more complex- i will show it with a picture below how you would recive reputation if doing quests or if being allied with other faction

link for a bigger view: http://i.imgur.com/kfzaQ4d.jpg mistake made with pirates having - with black faction instead there should be +
Some explenations: green and brown faction has 3x- (forgot to add one -) because they are enemies to each other and green faction is friendly to shops. yellow faction and brown faction reputation is 3x- (forgot to put another - ) because yellow faction is enemy with pirates and allied with green faction and shops. yellow faction and green faction has 3x+ because they are allied (that could make 2x+) and that they have shops as friendly.
yellow and black faction has only 1x+ because black faction is an enemy to shops but still both factions are allied.
some tips: more quests you do for example green faction more + you will get with that reputation but in the same time more - with brown faction.
if you sabotage for example brown faction property you get more - reputation between brown faction but + reputation between green faction.

 

[jayman38]

Great ideas. I am sure the dev team is already deep into thinking about it.

Generally, I think of pirates as antisocial, so I would think you'd get a plus on their reputation meter any time you attacked almost anybody but them. Furthermore, I can imagine different pirate factions (think: street gangs), and if you attacked one, you would get a plus for their rival. Maybe.

I'm concerned about pirate-friendly late-game players. These are players that can afford huge ships, and want to keep their standing with pirate factions. They will have amassed immense resources and are basically big bad guys. Effectively, they become the server troll. There are plenty of players who will associate with pirates instead of more upstanding factions, so pirate reputation just seems to encourage discouraging behavior in the game. New players would get wiped out as soon as they arrive on the server. It seems like it would just be bad, unless a mechanic can be implemented that can "transform" the leading pirate faction into the new server "empire", so that they now are forced to provide some kind of stable, safe environment, or risk total destruction or some other punishment. Otherwise, the ultimate end-game environment for most servers would be a trollish hell. Relying on player-based self-stabilization won't work, because frustrated good guys and bored bad guys will simply abandon the game and go play something else.

If the pirate king player logs off as soon as he realizes that he has the server beat, that could effectively "reset" the balance of power. However, I've seen too many servers for other games get continually dominated by that one faction or one player for months on end, and it only ends when nobody plays and the entire server "universe" dies. Nobody is having fun anymore, and the server owner shuts down and does something else with his stuff.

One solution to pirate-friendly power-gamer players would be to lower pirate faction reputation no matter what, but that feels both extremely limiting and unfun, not to mention unfair for players who want to have the freedom to go the pirate route, so I'd like to hear of other ideas for countering such an unfun end-game scenario as domination boredom.

 

[BeefBacon]

I'm concerned about pirate-friendly late-game players. These are players that can afford huge ships, and want to keep their standing with pirate factions. They will have amassed immense resources and are basically big bad guys. Effectively, they become the server troll. There are plenty of players who will associate with pirates instead of more upstanding factions, so pirate reputation just seems to encourage discouraging behavior in the game. New players would get wiped out as soon as they arrive on the server. It seems like it would just be bad, unless a mechanic can be implemented that can "transform" the leading pirate faction into the new server "empire", so that they now are forced to provide some kind of stable, safe environment, or risk total destruction or some other punishment. Otherwise, the ultimate end-game environment for most servers would be a trollish hell. Relying on player-based self-stabilization won't work, because frustrated good guys and bored bad guys will simply abandon the game and go play something else.

Maybe make it so attacking neutral, non-faction players yield few rewards while attacking 'good' player that belongs to a large faction very rewarding.

I've been playing a lot of Mount and Blade recently, so I'll make an analogy using that. Attacking a small group of farmers will be less rewarding than attacking a caravan laden with goods. Similarly, attacking an enemy lord is even more rewarding. When it gets to the late game even caravans can be ignored because they provide so little benefit.

If anything it'd be more rewarding to allow new players to grow to the point where they could be considered a threat and then try and crush them, rather than smashing their starting ship and nicking 5 salvage beams for virtually no reputation points.


It's an interesting concept. Maybe pirate-friendly factions and players could hire pirate ships and buy cheap goods at pirate stations, while trader-friendly factions and players could hire trade guild ships and get a minor discount at shops in addition to augmenting their income by helping caravans and such. That would leave players that prefer to remain neutral in the dirt, however, so maybe that should be looked at.

 

[Criss]

Technically the trading guild already has convoys. It may have been removed or is in the process of changing.