Developer Response Requested - 4th Empire

[Samurai]

Purpose of this Post
To have the developers publicly define their acceptance, nuetrality, or restriction of the 4th empire through action instead of words.

4th Empire Definition
Playing a character in one empire with the sole intent to aide another empire.

There are numerous ways to coordinate gameplay of the 4th Empire character without obtaining grief points, so I challenge the Developers to publicly define their stance, and most importantly take actions to allign restrictions with their stated stance.

Acceptance
Developers accept 4th Empire gameplay as a reflection of the real world. Espionage has existed since before Troy, and Planetside reflects many real world concepts in gameplay.

Nuetrality
The purpose of Planetside is to make money and provide fun gameplay for all its subscribers. In recognition that different children and adults have fun in different ways, 4th Empire is accepted by the Developers so long as it does not get out of hand and grief points are not accumulated.

Restriction
Developers did not anticipate the issue of 4th Empire, and over time addressed the issue by increasing grief points, and preventing friendly fire from damaging spawn tubes, terminals, and generators. Since there are numerous ways to play the 4th Empire without accumulating grief points, the Developers will restrict empire access to one empire selection per server so that if one server is "designated" by the player as TR, only TR characters can be played on that server. In order to play a VS character, the player will need to designate another server VS. Server re-designation should only be allowed once per month. Period.

Please remember that actions speak louder than words, and as entrusted Developers of Planetside their stance should be alligned with their actions.

[Electrofreak]

just FYI, I don't think I've ever seen a game dev post on these forums so I wouldn't expect a response here.

I have 2 high level characters of different empires on the Markov server. One is a TR I created and played after the game came out for about 8 months. Then I created an NC character I've played ever since. I rarely play the TR one but I have many friends on TR so I'd much rather keep that character so I can chill out with them from time to time.

I'm not an empire hopper, I havent played my TR in months, but nobody is taking that character away from me. It has a lot of sentimental value. I realize you want a fix to the 4th empire thing, as do I, but not allowing us to play our other characters at least from time to time isn't acceptable. If you can find a way to prevent empire hopping that doesn't restrict what characters we can play with I'm game.

Personally I think that if you switch empires to another character, you shouldn't gain any xp with that character for 12 hours. After that 12 hour period you can gain xp normally with either character you choose to play unless you decide to switch again. This should discourage people from hopping over and leveling up another character when their empire is doing badly. They won't benefit xp-wise from deciding to switch over and play on the opposing side.

[Jeffey]

one server, one empire

[Baneblade]

You have the definition of the 4th Empire off a bit. The 4th Empire doesn't give a shit about anything but being on the winning side.

[Jeffey]

I don't quite understand why they got the name 4th empire

[Firefly]

Because there are three empires, and the fourth empire consists of people who hop empires when their side is losing.

Electrofreak - I've seen Sporkfire post here a few times.

[Lonehunter]

There have been dev posts here

[steeldragon01]

I have 3 empires 2 servers for one reason. If the most people I know are on one char I play that one. Done.

[hex222]

but then i won't be able to have the experience of a TR during prime time if my main is VS on werner and my alt is an NC on emerald, unless if you expect me to stay up 'til 3 in the morning, and i wouldn't be doing that enough to get my char off BR5...

[Hamorad]

Yeah spork used to post here but as he no longer is a PS dev, i seriously doubt this will get a dev responce. Use the OF.

[mikkyT]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Restriction
Developers did not anticipate the issue of 4th Empire, and over time addressed the issue by increasing grief points, and preventing friendly fire from damaging spawn tubes, terminals, and generators. Since there are numerous ways to play the 4th Empire without accumulating grief points, the Developers will restrict empire access to one empire selection per server so that if one server is "designated" by the player as TR, only TR characters can be played on that server. In order to play a VS character, the player will need to designate another server VS. Server re-designation should only be allowed once per month. Period.

Please remember that actions speak louder than words, and as entrusted Developers of Planetside their stance should be alligned with their actions.

It was originally the case that you could only have 1 faction per server. If you wanted another faction, you chose another server for that faction. This was removed sometime after the game release so I doubt the devs would backtrack and re-instate it.