Fancy title for an intro paragraphI've seen a lot of suggestions on how to sort out the 4th factioning on alerts without affecting loyal players, some good, some not so much. What they all have in common is that they propose some reward design or some alert system that would discourage 4th factioning. I have a different idea. The alert system can be returned to what it was before, just implement a simple 4th faction check on a player. 4th faction isn't a hack, it's a game thing, the game could detect it. Simplified example of implementationif time played before alert on same server from same account, same IP, same MAC, same HWID, what ever you come up with > some time limit // was playing on another character for some time, not just logged on for a second to collect the day's passive certs. I do that and I don't consider that 4th factioning a slightest bit.and if exp received while playing > some exp limit // and actually received exp, was actually playing, it's not 4th factioning if you don't actually do anything for the other faction, he could be just standing afk after collecting passive certs for all you knowand switched characters after it was announced or during it or before it ended // 4th factioning detected!then punish the s**t out of that player. reward = 0 or reward = some smaller amount, or something among those lines. You can come up with something.Maybe if a player keeps repeating it display a warning that this behavior is not recommended and you will be punished, similar to the way when you hit a teammate.Alternative stricter implementationWhat would hopefully completely remove 4th factioning is to simply forbid the players from switching factions if those checks are positive and display a message why. Maybe olny if the player has been 4th factioning multiple times, similar to weapon locking due to teamkilling. I'm kind of on the borderline on this one as it limits the player's freedom and that's typically not what you want in a videogame. I think it could be done with the lock on faction swapping, but I'm just putting this out for consideration.
Any unique identifier that you could use, could and would be spoofed. They should make it beneficial to fourth faction instead. When you log into a character it checks the global population, for every one percent your faction is below the average of the other two you get a 10% bonus to exp gain (eg. 5% under pop, 50% experience bonus) that persists for one hour. Then, all the factions would always be really close... the fourth faction would make it so because it would be in their best interest.
Well then that could just be against ToS and be bannable upon detection Besides I doubt anyone would do that, if you go for that then you might as well just go hacking. And as we all know hacking barely exists in PS2, this kind of spoofing would barely exist either. People wouldn't want to risk their accounts for some cert gain
It's easier to encourage someone to help you, than punish someone for not helping you. If the issue is imbalance during alerts, this would fix that and everyone could play however they wanted to. The only real argument I hear against this idea is from people like me (that only play one faction) not wanting fourth factioners to be rewarded for playing in the manner that they prefer. Me, I just want fights to be 33/33/34. If there was a 5% imbalance, it would immediately be resolved by faction hoppers. Simple, elegant, effective.
I usually try to avoid discussing other suggestions, but did you know there is already an exp boost for being underpopulated? And it's not helping. Much, at least.
That's because it's tiny, and not persistent. The carrot is too small. If you want to convince someone that they should stop being on the winning side, steamrolling to victory... it's got to be in their best interest.
But why? I told you I didn't want to hijack your topic with my suggestion so I made a separate one. Just like the TimoWasTaken guy should do with his suggestion. It's quite annoying... You mean the title formating? Oh yeah, I totally violated that s**t >:-D
Yeah, I see what you did now lol. Ok so, as I mentioned in my thread to your post doing things based on some sort of IP basis is not a great plan, IP's change, for some people they can change on a daily basis. Person above made a good point in that if it's a punishment and inflexible people are going to end up feeling slighted in some way. Granted my suggestion is somewhat restrictive, it doesn't punish too harshly or make 4th factioning seem to be something that's inappropriate, just if you want to do it, the benefits are not immediate.
Alright, since you refuse to go over to another topic I'll simply point out a few things. First of all, what you're suggesting is already in the game. 1% underpopulation gives 3% additional exp or somewhere around that. And now the flaw of this - some 4th factioners want to farm certs at big fights, some people want to win alerts. Gven that the increased exp boos would balance the population, which is questionable in itself, here how alerts would go under your system: Alert starts, 4th factioners that want to win the alert jump on to the most prominent faction, just like they do now. This quickly makes population imbalance. The 4th factioners that want to grind certs see the change, and go to the two other factions. The population more or less evens out. Now one faction is full of people that want to win the alert, they get platoons, galaxies, start capturing whatever needs to be captured. The two other factions, on the other hand, are filled with 4th factioners that don't care about the alert, so they don't really bother to capture anything and just grind certs at biolab fights or whatever. The result is one faction dominating the other two, even with equal populations. This doesn't fix much at all. This situation is more or less happening at Woodman already. Vanu dominates other two factions every second alert, and regularly win every other one. And faction populations are more or less equal. Lastly, this encourages 4th factioning, which is bad in itself. Loyalty until death!
This is only achievable client side.. and client side can be hacked. Server side the use of different accounts will prevent much of this. And if SOE were to use a unique hardware identifier and transmit that over the internet, there WILL be a backlash due to privacy concerns. IP isn't dependable because of rotary assignment schemes from many ISPs.. and you can't you block IP (subnet) strategies because the potential for collision is too high. If you try to assign a unique id on the server and give it to the client.. that must be stored somewhere client side.. making THAT hackable. This is a sticky problem without an obvious solution.. Is it possible? Don't know without a LOT more thinking.
