Recap : Alliance/Clan systems in PBBGs
This is the second half of my polls idea is to do recaps after a few days of voting and comments, where I discuss what I've been thinking after reading the comments and poll results and try to explain how my thoughts on the subject relate with the polls/comments or how I differ from them.
Most of the poll results and the two comments lean towards allowing players being able to create their own groups, and if they are forced into factions be allowed to smaller groups. And I would have to say I agree. I like the idea of players being put into factions and then allowing them to form smaller groups where they can play with their friends.
Something I'm still up in the air about is allowing players to pick their 'faction' though. This can quickly lead to unbalanced teams and screw up the game. One of my favorite solutions that I've seen is how StarKingdoms handles joining the game. When you join you can automatically assigned your position but you can reserve three positions in your area so when your friends sign up you give them your code and they are now in your area. But for a system like this to properly work both sides have to be identical in what they offer to a player. If one side has mechs and one side has dinosaurs, you should let your user pick what they want, but if it's just two sides of the same coin, then forcing them into teams with options to ensure their friends can join is a good path.
This is of course you want users to be forced into teams which I think works best for position based strategy games. What I mean by position based strategy games is that your available actions depend on your location on the game board/world. To get from point a to c you need to go through b. These games use area and benefit from players close to each other teaming up.
In a game where position in the world has no limitations on the players movements or actions (like Earth 2025) allowing players to form their now teams and factions makes the most sense to me.
As I'm sure you've noticed, I've referenced strategy games each time I tried to described the differences. That's because for RPG's I don't really see the same problems. Players should be able to form their own groups. Sure you may have race's or different sides (like WoW) but the focus of the game isn't really on the warring between both sides which means worrying about balanced numbers of players on each side isn't as big an issue as for strategy games.
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