Sigh, I can see this was a waste of time.
Do not let this get you down. I still believe influence is a beautiful concept that just still needs a lot of work. You are a developer, you should be used to people complaining and trying to press their interests.
TC used to be a great source of income for the strongest, and those people (noticably from a single gang) just refuse to let it go. When you guys nerfed stealing from NPC factions, were you worried about thieves complaining?
For starters, questing for influence is a beautiful concept, though it should not really replace the current system, more like add to it - benefits for the winners, penalties for the losers; while keeping the influence as it is intact; as i said many times before, this system is great, dragged down only by people not being able to grasping the concept. When i said that the only bug this system has is Rogues, i wasnt
just trolling. The fact is, once they are unable to keep this up (which is the reason for all this grief), it will become unleashed and should be working as it was supposed to.
It just takes a little time, thats it.
Call it unnatural selection.
1) influ questsNow, with that being said, imagine influ quests not giving set value of influence, but percentage of current one (in both benefits and penalties) for the gang that starts the event, directly influencing its difficulity - for example,
Gang A starting raiders event on influ 300 spawns 30 raiders, giving the winning faction 30 influ points, -30 to the one that looses, handout is distributed accordingly.
Gang B starting the same event on influ 20 spawns 2 raiders, giving winners 2 influ... well, you get it.
Now what this should do is to encourage participating on whatever influ for both sides, making it more difficult for the leading faction to sustain the city, giving insane boosts and loot to even absolutely new competitors, yet still keeping the original concept of the "city caretakers", if i may.
Decreasing influ as a penalty should equalize gaps before factions and keep the influ from reaching ungodly levels.
2) Influ gainPretty much stated above.
(Though it would be nice to see it not stopping at pure once-a-day events, getting tiny influ + and - by little thigs, either quests done by faction members in the city, sum of members rep there {which would cover not only any indecent behavior, but also trading rep gains, FA/Doc on npcs and so on}
- gang member does this and that for the city, gets xp for the quest, reward AND his gang gets 0,00005 influ.)
3) militiaIn my opinion, adding merc militia should not be cancelled. Getting a good merc militia means a lot of hard work, including caps and gear. Now with in which rate they are slaughtered (and will be after it means gaining influ) its just one of the insane things. If anyone wants to work that hard for something, let him have it. It will be gone, eventually. Another case of unnatural selection. Muties walking the streets are just a result of some gangs getting too much too easy. Working on this concept, it _will_ fix itself soon.
Same goes for militia numbers. If the 20 militiants are spread across the city, they still are not enough. (and spreading them is what this system actually needs), and i am not talking bonehead pvp not enough; im talking secure city not enough. Again, this should just be again achieved with another hard work. Starting the town at 10 militias, unlocking additional "special" quests - lets say - every 10th consequent won event. New dialogue at metzgers/sheriffs/whatevers opens up, where you can tell him you desperately need more guards, he tells you more people are actually willing to join in, as far as you provide capacities/enough food supplies for them.
For example,
Gang A (the fellas with 300 influ) won 10 consequent events, now there is an option to bring 500 iguanas, 500 nukas and blah blah blah, that opens aditional 5 militia spots. After another 10 won events, boss tells you that they dont have where to stay, but there is an abandoned gasstation/water purification plant/blahblah just outside of the city, that only needs to be cleared out of muties...
Now, opening these slots, having 20 militias in town, you could still continue getting more spots for reinforcements (much like protected cities have). This makes a good ground for long time rp town control.
If influ drops too low, or the gang looses 10 cons, those slots will be gone again.
In a nutshell, more hard work, better set-up city, harder to defend. Thats something pvp apes can do too.
Of course, we are talking player-run justice here, that WOULD be hard concept and WOULD include tons of controversials, like KoS lists and so.
Conclusion Truth be told, i feel bad for you guys getting so much s*it for something so good, seeing it not working and more. I do believe this concept is one of the best this server ever seen, and would deserve more understanding. As i stated many times before, we all know reasons for this system not working, and if we think hard about this we know that its just something that time will fix.
Im not going again into earning tc rewards by keeping the city prosper, as it seems that its out of the question. But seeing that another ways are considered that would put this system further towards hard work for players is just awesome.
What we see now is (some gang) not being able to keep up on all fronts and all approaches by newly rising competition. This will make bigger and bigger difference, until we will see warzones in 1-2 cities, where it stops. Now, this will come with time, this is no astrology, this is a way of progress. With more work required by the players, cities will be able to be divided between factions and provide variety much faster.
Keep up the good work,
your only fan.