Lowering the Flag cost of high end parish buildings is important. In the current political environment (new servers are dominated by outside the game power blocks) it is unlikely that a parish will acquire the needed flags to purchase a Balista factory or Church. Also the flag cost of barracks means that during the first age player armies will exceed parish defense, and that leads to whichever power block can threaten war can flag raid with impunity.Lord Alacrity wrote:I came across this thread while searching for feedback about the Era system in general and was disappointed to see the pervasive view that we are committed to making players miserable. We are very open to changing certain elements of the Era system, but we need consensus from a broad base of players as to what specific changes are needed. While we can't ban a group of players you don't like or give you a million crowns, we are actively looking for constructive feedback.
From what I have read on the forums, we will most likely be making changes to:
[*]Increase the honor cost and the rank at which ransack research unlocks
[*]Decrease the rank required to raze
These were the most salient points and seemed to have the broadest support. We are still very eager to hear constructive arguments for any changes that players think are needed to the Era system and while I can't reply to every post I do read them.
The lowering of players and factions per house has not reduced the size of power blocks. Rather than have a massive 800 player house, the power blocks now lock up multiple 60 player houses. When USA-4 launched there was a 5-house power block, a 4-house power block and a pair of 3 house power blocks. This occupied 15 of 20 houses and left players outside the power blocks without a house and made them a target.
Not opening all counties did not increase combat, it actually decreased combat. The off server power blocks were able to "claim" most of the sheriff seats in the game. If all the zones were open it would actually make it more difficult for the power blocks to control all the sheriff seats.
Ransacking was annoying, but only in the early game. Since Raze was not available, and since Ransack was, that was the tactic that could be deployed. Bullies will be bullies, and mart effective players will utilize whatever tools are available. You cannot legislate morality. These power blocks are doing what is in their best interest, and modifying the rule set will not eliminate their behavior, just change the techniques they use.
Most concerning for me is the perception that ERA rules are an "evolution" of the AGE rule set and that Firefly is never going back to AGE rules. I have been playing since the first age of UK-1 and have never seen Firefly admit that they made a mistake and roll back a rules change with the exception of Bronze prizes.
In my opinion, the way to dilute the power blocks is to open more worlds and close them very quickly. The power blocks are limited in the number of servers they can monitor 24/7/365. If you announce the opening a server and closing it after the end of the first glory round WITHOUT REWARDS will give the low end subset of your players an environment to play the game. I doubt that the power blocks will be willing to dedicate staffing resources to these servers if they end quickly with no rewards.
So, this brings me to my final point. Why do all servers have to have the same rule set? The maps are different, why can't the rule set be different? Some servers have AGE rules, some have ERA rules, why does the next server have to have the ERA rule set?
- Deke