So What Happens If

You make the players only get RP’s when they have protected a resource carrier all the way to either a WC or keep. Of course that would mean that the player has to be within a specific range for a certain % of the resource carriers travel time (Say 80%). Allowing a little bit of leeway for distractions of course. The goal would be that people actually get involved in the whole “resource” process.

The problem is, of which there are many, is that I honestly believe that most people wouldn’t even leave their toilet seat for the amounts of RPs that we currently get. It especially wouldn’t go down well compared to what is currently being accrued under the present scheme.

Okay, so lets bump each resource carriers RP’s up to 250 - 500 (* AAO) per successful journey, dependant on the distance travelled, duplicating the RP sliding scale we have at the moment. Now remember you’re not going to get any RP’s from the other resource carriers anymore, because you haven’t been involved in protecting their pixellated arses. Now that sounds better, doesn’t it? Obviously people will want to stick with their resource carriers all the way home, yeah /follow will do the job marvelously. So everything is fine, or are there maybe a few nagging doubts beginning to creep in? 

Mmmmm, now there are a few areas of concern.

The first is that everyone just latches onto a BO, just going back and forth between points, earning 250 - 500 RP’s a time, and because now you’re actually moving all the time, you avoid being flagged as being obviously AFK (I’d run people purposely through the bushes). I could easily imagine Destro taking 2, Order taking 2 and never the twain shall meet, until the keeps are rank 4 and it’s hammer time. I’m sure there’d be exceptions, but I wouldn’t bet the family savings on it.

Of course you would have to reward people for staying to guard the BO, otherwise no one would bother to stay and you’d just have a zerg flowing back and forwards. Now because of that, we have another perfect location to go AFK at, especially if /follow was a little bit to taxing to type out. We’ve just moved the problem from place to another that’s all. It looks like we’re going to need that AFK code regardless.

Those people who play at unsociable hours would have a field day. They’d drop off a resource carrier and by the time they get back to the BO, it’s ready to go again. Cha ching to the sound of an RP cash register.

The second would be, does this actually make the possibility of action any greater?  Would you actually go and take a BO, if you were already presented with a steady stream of RP’s by merely going back a forth like a yo-yo, or standing on a BO, like a lemon? If you would, take a look around and ask yourself, would the majority of the other players?

Also ask yourself, if you had this manner of RP gain, why bother going to fight over a BO, far away and probably near your enemies WC. You’re not going to gain anything from it and you’re merely going to put yourself in a position where you’re not gaining any rps, because you’re no longer protecting a carrier. Oh it doesn’t matter, I’ll be rewarded for guarding the BO, now where’s that Robert Jordan book I was reading?

You see, the current system actually frees you up from being tied down, so whatever you do within that zone you will be rewarded, but not by going AFK.

You see I thought this whole protect the carrier was a good idea a while back, when I was talking about it on this blog during beta, but the problem was and playing 1.4 has helped clarify my thinking on it, I hadn’t thought through the consequences of such a scheme.

We all think we are mini developers in our hearts, because heh don’t we play the game and don’t we know what’s best, but most of our idea’s wouldn’t make it past first base, because the full ramifications haven’t been clearly thought through. 

You see when you have a “Good” idea, it’s not what you do that’s the issue, it’s what ever one else is going to do, because if there’s even the slightest hole in your thinking, the player base will be through it with the speed and accuracy of a cruise missile.

One final thought on the timings on the AFK debuff. So what’s the big deal if you get debuffed down to 0 because you are AFK for 5 minutes and get ported to the Warcamp, because realistically how long does it take to get to a keep in any of the realms? If you’ve sufficiently contributed to the keep attack or other objectives you’ll get the keep attack bonus once you’ve travelled that huge distance back into the ORvR zone, and if you haven’t contributed then what have you got to complain about? You’ve done sod all, so you get sod all back in return. Just remember not to AWOL when the inner doors on 10%.

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