Increase Fort Fighting participation by restricting barracks for non-fort fighters

[DeletedUser]

We've all been lamenting about the lack of participation in fort fights in some worlds and one of the factors is that there is no way currently in place to "force" a player to participate in fort defense. In the real west, if your town (fort) was attacked then you defended it or died ... period! In this game, defending a fort is "optional" so that all players can participate in the defense of their town/alliance assets (forts) if they choose to do so and there is nothing that a town leader or alliance leader can do short of kicking a player out of a town as a penalty for not participating in fort fighting. The issuance of bonds appears to have had limited effect in increasing the fort fighting participation so in light of that, I'm proposing the follow ability given to alliance and town founders and that is the ability to ban players from using the barracks if they do not participate in the fort fighting aspects of the game.

Proposal
Allow the alliance founders to restrict the use of fort barracks to temporarily exclude non-fort fighting players within that alliance. This restriction would only apply to members of their own alliance and not extend to members of any other alliance even when other alliances share forts through the "guest" town status in forts.

Current Workaround
None that I've seen or heard, in fact even the best efforts to increase fort fighting in the game has met with only limited success.

Details
The barracks are an amazing benefit to the players in the game but unfortunately a player is not required to protect the forts within their own alliance. Alliance founders should be given the ability to ban squatters from the fort barracks as an additional means to encourage members of an alliance to defend their own forts. This ban can be lifted by the player at any time by actually participating in a fort battle and when done, would prevent any further banning against that player for a period of 7 days (one week).

Abuse Prevention
A feature of this nature could be ripe for abuse by a tyrant if some safe guards were not also put in place.

A player can remove a ban placed on them by taking action: Alliance leaders could restrict every single player in their alliance but once a player has successfully signed up and is present for a battle, even if the player does not get in, they can not be "re banned" for at least one full week.

Bans are limited to the alliance: This ability can only by applied by the alliance leaders to members of their own alliance and not extend to players who have fort access via guest status in forts). IF you, as an alliance leader, ban "Player A" from forts then that ban also extends to any forts your alliance is a member of as well (so if you have access by being a guest in another alliance's fort system and your own alliance has banned you from using the barracks of your own fort then you're also banned from using other barracks as a guest - this ban comes from alliance who was given guest access and not by another alliance who has given the access). So to simplify this potential abuse, "The fort owner can not restrict guest town/alliance members but the guest town/alliance members can restrict their own members from using the 'guest status' privilege of another alliances forts"

Example:
Fort : Fort Jackson
Owners : FFA (restricts access to their members)
Guest town 1 : All Stars (restricts access to their members)
Guest town 2: Hunters (also restricts access to their members)
Guest town 3: Squatters (does not micro manage their members and allow residents to do whatever they want)
In this case, only participating members of FFA, All Stars and Hunters can use the fort but because Squatters alliance doesn't place that restriction on their members then the non-fort fighting members of the Squatters are free to use Fort Jackson even though it is owned by the restrictive FFA alliance and the owning alliance can not do anything to the Squatters alliance (short of kicking the town out of the fort) that would prevent the Squatters members from using the fort barracks.

Player Appeal or Removal of the Ban: The ban could be used to prevent or kick a player out of the barracks immediately so to prevent this, the ban will begin at the end of the following day (24-48 hours after being set by an alliance founder). During that time if a player participates in a fort battle then it's automatically lifted (even before taking effect). A player will receive a telegram when the ban is placed and that telegram will tell the player that their use of the fort barracks is restricted due to the players lack of participation in the attack/defense of forts on behalf of the alliance. It will also tell the player that the ban is automatically lifted as soon as they participate in the defense of attack of any fort. Furthermore, an alliance founder has the ability to remove a ban as well and once removed it can not be reissued for 7 days.

Not fort fighting alliance can't ban: If an alliance has not initiated an attack (dug) on a fort or had a fort defense in a full week (7 consecutive days) then all bans are lifted as it's not the players fault they can not participate in an alliance fort fight if none exist.

Visual Aids
If this idea has an "traction" then I'll do several mock ups including alliance member administration, rejection from fort barracks, ban message sent to member(s), lifting of the ban.

Summary
By limiting the use of barracks to the fort fighting players we can encourage more players to participate in the alliance fort fights

Administration
Does this idea meet the Ideas Guidelines & Criteria? Yes
Does this idea appear on any of the Previously Suggested Ideas List? No (not that I've been able to find in this form)

 

[DeletedUser]

Maybe we should restrict non-duelers or builders from hotels. I think I'd be more open to restricting entire towns without a single member active in fort battles than individual players.

 

[DeletedUser]

The reason it's important to allow selective restriction is because you can have non-participating fort fighters who still contribute to the fort fighting cause by crafting, etc. so if a player is making bayonets and graphite lubes or weapon chains or amulets or stomach medicines then that player is still assisting in the fort fighting efforts without actually fighting. If an alliance chooses to not implement any restrictions on their own residents then they don't have to use this "tool" for the residents of their alliance.

It may not make much of a difference even if this type of a feature were added because the barrack squatter would probably just move to an alliance that did not use feature.

 

[DeletedUser]

Maybe we should restrict non-duelers or builders from hotels. I think I'd be more open to restricting entire towns without a single member active in fort battles than individual players.

I guess if you were a town founder and wanted to restrict the "free" penthouse suite of your hotel then that should be your right as well but for what reasons and how to control abuse would be another topic.

 

[Bad Billy Jack]

This looks like a good idea at initial glance.

However, after thinking about it, it quickly becomes a logistical nightmare for alliance keeping track of all of this, not to mention the hundred of incoming telegrams.

 

[DeletedUser25847]

This is an awful idea

 

[DeletedUser34315]

I see the motivation behind the idea, but it would simply turn into petty power mad people and a lot of hurt feelings from those who were "banned".

 

[DeletedUser]

Just trying to think of anything that could be done to "cattle prod" people into getting to the forts for those alliances that want to focus around this concept of the game. Not my best idea but when you see 3-5% turnout from an alliance to fort fights then you need to do something to "motivate" the 90+% that are sitting idly by and watching the fort fall like Nero watching Rome burn.

An alliance can not kick out specific players, only hats in a town can do that, so this was the only thing I could think of that could be applied to individuals within an alliance at the alliance level. Some players don't use the fort barracks and won't be effected by this, some would just shift alliances to a more leniently administered alliance but for the alliances that chose to implement this policy over their members there would be very little administrative oversight necessary (tag everyone and those that participate get untagged automatically and can use barracks while those that don't fight/defend alliance forts merely would not have the luxury of a 6 hour sleep in the barracks of their choice).

The players can remove the ban themselves by participating in one fort battle per week (hardly a strenuous activity) and that participation can even be as an offline member as well (and if they don't get into the battle but they're at the fort and signed up for the battle then they still get credit for attempting to participate).

I considered the tyrant aspects of this before submitting it but with the controls against abuse in place that would not happen.

Just my 2 cents on how to prod more people to the forts and if anyone else has any other motivational ideas to increase participation then I'd sure love to hear them.

 

[DeletedUser]

This is an awful idea

Why? If it's awful at least give a reason. If you participate in fort fights then it won't effect you, if your alliance has sufficient turnout among your members then the alliance leaders won't need to use it either. If you're hiding/squatting in an alliance with a lot of forts so you can use the forts without helping to defend them then the alliance leaders might decide they don't need players like you in their alliance (the "you" does not refer to you personally lest you think it was meant as a personal attack, it wasn't ... just a figure of speech for sake of an example)

I don't mind people bashing an idea but at least give a reason (please) to demonstrate you've done more than flip a coin to make your decision ... I might even agree with your contrary view point after all if you explain "why".

 

[Bad Billy Jack]

How about making this idea much more simple.

Every FFer who participates in a battle already gets at least one bond. This one bond triggers a reset clock that lasts 7 days. Without the trigger, you cannot use any fort barracks.

 

[DeletedUser563]

you will reduce the pool of players in an alliance.

 

[WanderingStranger]

No. What if a town picks up a new player that wants to get their GG before getting active in fights?

You are forcing them into fights when their their time could be better spent. I cant see any "Large" fort fighting alliance using this.

 

[DeletedUser17649]

So lets go with the abuse.
What if the abused player tries to join but the there are enough players and the abuser(s) de-ranks the player. How do you get around this short of leaving the alliance.

 

[Bad Billy Jack]

My post was just help to make the idea workable, not that I approved.

However the solution to players not triggering the trigger is for more battles to be dug.

 

[DeletedUser]

This was just a "throw out any idea" to see if we can come up with something to increase motivation.

It would be a good or functional idea if all fort owning alliances in a world used this idea but as a practical solution it wouldn't work (yeah, shooting down my own idea here) because those non fort fighting players that were banned from the barracks and who wanted to use the barracks could merely switch to an alliance that did not elect to use this feature. It's only function would be to keep a pure FF alliance lean and mean and that wasn't my idea in bringing forth this suggestion.

Comments on the feedback thus far:

WanderingStranger : This feature would be administered so the admins of the alliance would have to actively flag a player and they most likely would not flag someone going for a GG, but even if they did the player could lift the ban for a week by merely attempting to participate in a FF.

Rannon : It wouldn't matter if the player was ranked, deranked or not. As long as the player signed up for ANY fort fight and was present at the beginning of the fort fight the ban would be lifted for a week (and once lifted the admins in the alliance would have to actively reban the player after a week had passed). This would apply even if the player did not get into the battle through no fault of their own (they sign up, they're there. It's not their fault if 120 other players are also there, they tried).

BBJ : The idea of using your one bond as a trigger makes this a passive idea so that all players would be banned from fort barracks even if an alliance chooses to not implement this feature ... in that event you'd have a lot more screaming and hollering but a lot less administration from the heads of an alliance too.

Gandalf : Petty power mad people? Isn't that what a fort fighting alliance is anyway? And quite frankly I don't think those petty power mad people care what the non fort fighters think in an alliance anyway.

In any event, this idea wouldn't achieve the desired goal to increase fort fighting for multiple reasons so it's time to engage the brain and see if we (or maybe just me ) can come up with another idea that might be a bit more productive and practical as well.