improving op fights

[Cursed Shadow]

I was thinking more along the lines of a 4-5 op hard limit where if you choose to attack another op when you already have 5 then one of your existing ops will go neutral, freeing up space on the map.

Now I completely back your suggestion.

[Divide]

As a former (and one of, if not, the first) mega clan leaders, I'm going to say something a little out there.

Faid touches on a key point that is so focal to these types of arguments (number of ops owned/being outnumbered) and so overwhelmingly ignored-

<TLDR>
Clan size is everything. The actual fix for this is limit the number of runners that can be in one clan (and hope the community buys in). Professional teams of any sport have a limited roster. Pro-gaming clans don't have 50 members. For all intents and purposes opwars are sport, which I hope anyone who has felt compelled to read this thread agrees.
</TLDR>

I started New Dawn on Saturn by merging 3 existing, successful, op-owning clans together. For those who can remember NC1 in those days, it was NAT (ala Rizzy, Ste-X), MiG (Crize, uhhh...), and Blood Brothers (Element, Gh0st, Rage-Mage) all merged into one big mostly happy family. Before we merged, every clan was just fine on their own, considered each other 'frenemies' and owned some portion of the map.

The day we formed, we seized the entirety of the wastes and held it, untouched, for several weeks. We had at least 15 players on at all times, peaking around 35 during prime time. There was some attrition due to personality conflicts, a few departures because players were bored of the game; but for a considerable amount of time, we held an extremely high player count and were able to defend everything we owned-- even when there were multiple different attacks.

We eventually decided (thanks to Ste-X) to allow a certain number of small clans to own ops, and not attack them, as a way to appease a number of detractors who said we were killing the server. Those ops changed hands frequently and the battles for them were typically on a very small scale (6v6 or below).

Meanwhile, we were defending our ops from Saturn's larger clans, united against us. We would fight 4 or more distinctly different clans/factions in the larger fights. Everyone wanted to own Soliko so badly. We probably fought there (2^32)-1 times for crying out loud. Those fights were huge-- probably the largest I have ever been lucky enough to be present for.
We held our grip on the wastes for quite some time. Sure some ops changed hands, but it was only when we started to splinter (Black Cartel formed, and was lead by runners from New Dawn) and saw more and more players go inactive or totally leave the game altogether that we lost control of what we took.

The Black Cartel went on to bolster their numbers and repeated exactly what we did.

Granted, I'll argue with anyone any day of the week that ND and BC had the best pvpers ever to grace this game.

However, I don't believe these clans were the power houses they were purely due to the raw skill. There were fights that should have been overwhelming that we had enough players online to handle. We were able to keep the entire server at bay because we were always ready to take whatever was thrown at us. We were able to do that because our clan's online count dwarfed any other clan's numbers.

<TLDR>
If there was a limit on the number of accounts (or less preferentially, runners) that could belong to a clan, it could do great things. Clans would become more privilege than commodity, more distinct, and more competitive. 20 total accounts (per say) can't hold the entire map.
</TLDR>

[Doc Holliday]

nice ego post above. so how does it help todays game?

[Torg]

i'd rather say Divide has a valid opinion on the way, op fights should be: like a sports league. my opinion is different here, i believe we should tweak game mechanics so that a maximum number of players can take part. two different concepts.

[Divide]

nice ego post above. so how does it help todays game?

Anecdotal evidence of my point. Thanks for reading kekekekekeke^^

i'd rather say Divide has a valid opinion on the way, op fights should be: like a sports league. my opinion is different here, i believe we should tweak game mechanics so that a maximum number of players can take part. two different concepts.

That can keep individual opfights from being massively overstacked, but it wouldn't resolve (I don't imagine, anyway) the 'super-massive clan owns too much of the wastes' issue.

[William Antrim]

Nc op fights have become like raids in wow. Too much organising and waiting for too little fun.


Ops need to be taken easier and quicker for more fights and more fun. Nc1 op fighting had that simplicity.

[Divide]

I hate to admit it, but I haven't been in once since I've been back. GMT-7 is a sad timezone to live in for this game from what I have observed. I've been silently concerned how the hacknet layer plays into the process.

[Agent L]

Make the owning clan declare a window during which the OP is vulnerable. So the time of day with most members online can be chosen. Maybe even every clan should declare ONE window for ALL of it's OPs - this will make holding whole map more difficult, because it'd sync it's enemies and require fighting multiple battles at the same time.

Or maybe make the windows declared by GMs, so ppl from different timezones would fight for different OPs.
This aims to prevent ninjaing and increase participants count by synchronizing ppl.