What if we embraced the prison yard politics of FL and made joining a cabal part of character creation?
Pros
A reminder that you should expect early PK and justification for early PK (makes the qrace kill requirements easier to embrace).
You might actually have useful cabal skills by the time you need them (at 50 soloing against 3 enemies who are experienced in their roles).
As is, it feels like you're given a job to do but not the tools to do it.
You'll have the skills.
You'll have practiced the skills.
You might even understand how to use the skills.
An automatic support team for newbies and lowbies.
More likely to pull newbies and lowbies into higher level RP.
Cons
Might be hard to code / might interfere with other hard coded functions that are difficult to change.
Loose some of the mystique of joining a cabal - if you view that as a negative.
Cabal skill levels might have to be adjusted.
Might have to make it so you can't lead armies until you're > 45 or something like that to prevent abuse.
I know there's more to this than I've covered (like do you attach level requirements to cabal rank). But it's a good enough place to start.
To one of your points, I don’t think you can train armies, only conscript, before 40 or 45 or something like that.
Otherwise I kinda like it. Maybe have it be char creation or join at 15? There are people who prefer not to join, or maybe they aren’t sure when they roll up if or what they want to join.
Not a fan at all, cabal is end game content, a character has to prove themselves worthy to be joining these. There is also number limits in cabals for a reason.
Joining a cabal, especially one with a vendetta is accepting you will be in forced PK situations. I can see a lot of people floating around lower ranks to avoid the conflict at 50 which will hinder the flow of cabal warfare.
It works that way with clans. Cabals could work very similar to clan induction. You just 'graduate' into the cabal at level 50 with the flag and skills. Before then, you are invisible and not even on the roll call.
How is that different than rping w/ people in your clan and they leave? Or if they're not in your organization and they leave? Why will people joining right away and deleting right away be more damaging than people taking forever to join and then deleting right away? I get that you don't like it, but I don't see how it's different.
59 minutes ago, Chief said:
cabal is end game content
And the bulk of cabal stuff would still be end game content. But this way, people might actually know what their skills do before getting dumped into open warfare outgunned and outnumbered.
1 hour ago, Chief said:
There is also number limits in cabals for a reason.
What's the reason?
1 hour ago, Chief said:
Joining a cabal, especially one with a vendetta is accepting you will be in forced PK situations.
Playing the game means you will get forced into PK situations. And there's no reason this would have to be mandatory.
1 hour ago, Chief said:
I can see a lot of people floating around lower ranks to avoid the conflict at 50 which will hinder the flow of cabal warfare.
I see people floating around lower ranks to avoid conflict at 50 as is. This would give those people a team to help get them to 50 (unless there are no players in their timezone).
I don’t see how this is an issue. Does anybody think all 10 of them will make it to pinn and play regularly? It seems Like the more full a cabal gets, the more likely players move to a new underdog.
How would you control cabal numbers? What if 10 chars in a row select Knight?
I don't know. Could we just keep people in the bottom tier of cabals that get over-strength? Limit what they can do (referring to cabal specific stuff)? Then it wouldn't matter how many they are or if they delete, right? There are still gates, but on the inside instead of the outside.
The problem I see with this is that currently the game is set up to 'limit' skills due to them being less 'prevalent'. Meaning, it is alright for a neutral to have protection from evil and good because that neutral is limited to being a Watcher. With this scenario in mind, a re-balancing would have to happen to cabal skills.
With this scenario in mind, a re-balancing would have to happen to cabal skills.
I disagree. If you looked at all active pfiles, caballed characters are certainly in the minority. But they're the majority at certain times. Earlier today, I think the breakdown was 6 caballed characters and 3-4 non-caballed characters. No one is calling for rebalancing in regards to that.
What I meant is some skills were not meant to be had earlier. Skills like Vortex tap aren't really gonna make a difference. Skills like Mold chaos and forms are DEFINITELY going to make a difference. I am not talking about in just PK. That difference will be felt all across the board. People will solo caverns quicker with less downtime. The pentegram will be a breeze for some classes.