Community Warfare - Phase 2 - Update Oct 22
Hey folks, back again with some fairly big news about CW. As per discussed in the previous update, I'll organize the information as follows:
1) New Stuff/Updates
2) Changes (Actually included in New Stuff this week)
3) Questions
The big change is the way you will be able to align yourself to a Faction on a temporary or permanent basis.
1) New Stuff/Updates
Faction Selection by All Players
On day 1 of Community Warfare release, all player accounts will be reset to a neutral state. All Faction Units and players will be reset to Merc Units and Lone Wolves respectively. Clan Units and Dagger stars will also be returned to Merc Unit and Lone Wolf status respectively.
Following the reset, all Lone Wolf players and Merc Unit leaders (all players in a Unit will be aligned to the Unit leader's choice) will be presented with a new Faction Alignment flow when entering the Faction Tab.
The first part of this new flow will ask players to select a Faction. Lore information will be given to assist new players in their decision as to which Faction to join.
Upon selecting a Faction, the player is taken to a new screen which will display contracts offered by the selected Faction. These contracts will include the following:
[1] Month Alignment to a Faction
[2] Month Alignment to a Faction
[4] Month Alignment to a Faction
Permanent Alignment to a Faction
*Please note these time periods are purely for example purposes only.
Players can back out of this screen and look at other Faction options until they accept one of the contracts.
Let's look at this firstly from the perspective of a Faction loyalist player. Someone who never wants to change Faction. Any of these players can simply select the Permanent alignment to their chosen Faction. The same applies to a Unit that chooses the permanent alignment option. Upon CW going live, there will not be an in-game option to change Factions if you choose this path. We may look into a solution for changing a permanent alignment but that will not be included in CW Phase 2.
Next, the way Merc Units, Lone Wolves, Clan Units and Dagger Star players interact with this system. These players can choose to align themselves to a Faction for a specified amount of time. For example, a Merc Unit selects a [1] month alignment to House Steiner. For the next month, this Merc Unit can only participate in combat either defending Steiner territories or attacking in the name of Steiner in neighboring Faction territories. The Merc Unit can (like anyone in the game) participate in the Clan/IS border invasion conflicts. Lone Wolf players, Clan Units and Dagger Star players behave the exact same with with the exception that Clan Units and Dagger Star players will be aligning themselves with a Clan.
With this system, it IS possible for a Merc Unit to align to House Steiner for [1] month and at the end of that month, switch to a [1] month alignment to Clan Jade Falcon. Note that this will NOT bypass technology locks. When the Unit is aligned to Steiner, only IS 'Mechs can be used, and when aligned to Clan Jade Falcon, only Clan 'Mechs can be used.
This feature means that we can do away with the initially proposed "Season" system. However, we do reserve the right to reset the IS Map if we find major problems in the system.
We feel that this new system allows greater flexibility for players to be able to play for a given Faction for their choice of duration. Keep in mind, we do not want players to be flipping Factions between matches or every day for that matter. Taking a contract for a House/Clan means that players will be fighting for that Faction for a while. This system also allows the more hard-core Faction players to permanently align themselves to their favorite House/Clan.
Loyalty Points
First off, upon inclusion into the game, Loyalty Points (LP) will be rewarded with an initial, lump sum injection into player accounts who own the Phoenix Package: Loyalty Point booster. From that point on, all players will be rewarded LP based on their actions and their Faction alignment.
What can affect LP gains? Killing opponents of lore based enemies. For example, a Kurita player killing a Davion player will be rewarded Kurita LP. At the same time, that same Kurita player will be losing Davion LP for the same action. Faction LP totals will not drop below 0.
Another means of gaining additional LP is by winning CW Faction conflicts. From the above example, the Kurita player partakes in the Clan/IS conflict and the IS team wins, the Kurita player will earn Kurita LP.
A bigger means of gaining LP is by completing contracts for a Faction. For example, the Kurita player is on a [2] month contract with Kurita, Kurita will reward a large amount of LP at the end of the contract period. The longer the contract, the more LP rewarded.
Special case: If a Lone Wolf player (or any player for that matter) switches Factions after completing a contract, they will lose LP for the Faction they just left. Depending on which Faction the player switches to, this LP loss for a Faction would continue depending on the Factions involved. For example, if the Kurita player from above switches to Davion after the Kurita contract expired, all kills/wins/contracts with Davion will reward Davion LP but will also reduce the LP total they had with Kurita.
Any rewards gained through LP will be retained, but cannot be used unless the LP total for the Faction is at the reward's LP requirement. For example, if the Kurita player unlocked a rank 10 skin, that rank 10 skin is only usable if their Kurita LP is at rank 10 level. In the case of titles, let's assume the Kurita player earned the title of "Gunsho" at Rank 8. If the player has an LP total of Rank 8 requirements, then they can freely use the title "Gunsho". However, if the player switches to Davion for example, and they fight for Davion against Kurita and the player's Kurita LP total drops below Rank 8 requirements, they will no longer be able to set their title to "Gunsho" even if they switch back to Kurita. At this point (we're still debating this one) the player can select "Gunsho" as their title but it will be prepended with "Honorary". The title will become "Honorary Gunsho" until the player gets their LP total back to Rank 8 requirement.
Faction LP rewards can only be used if the player is aligned to the Faction that gave the reward. In the case above, the Kurita player who switched to Davion will not be able to use any of the Kurita rewards they've earned until they switch back to Kurita.
Some planned LP rewards include titles, Faction specific skins, Rank specific skins and other novelites. The full list of rewards will be listed once we have them ironed out with both the design and art teams. On a side note, we are investigating on locations where we can have titles appear in the game and not just on the website. More on this when I have more concrete information for you.
^^
