Championing - Aka Have Your Clan Mates Do Alerts For You.

[Kinperor]

Problem: With the way the current alert system works, several player has resorted to giving their account information to friends, family or dogs. That is both very tempting and very forbidden, because we all sleep, work, go to school, have hobbies, etc etc. But the players do it anyway, because they really want that potato or Forma. This entail legal and account security problems for both the players and DE (support has to deal with the "Lost access to my account because I gave access to my 'friend'!" tickets). 

 

Solution: Give the players an accessible channel to claim alerts in a balanced way. 

 

What I'm suggesting is basically to make it so that through a special alert room in the dojo, players can see who in the clan is missing an alert, and basically go "Yo Lotus, I know xXx720NOSCOPEWTFBBQHAXxXx very well, and I can totally complete the alert for him". 

 

That's the idea in a nutshell. However, my spider-sense is tingling, and I can already sense the coming of white knights that don't like the idea because everyone and their mother will get everything from the alerts so long as a clan as more than 2 members and they are organized a minimum, and that will lower DE's sales. It's a valid complaint to a point, but here's some balancing to keep it from being completely broken.

 

How to balance it so that alerts doesn't become trivial: Firstly (and most easily): put a cap on how many alerts people can complete for you. With this limit, my good friend, xX720NOSCOPEWTFBBQHAXxXx, cannot complete more than say 3 alerts per months/weeks/days/whatever. That means either he collects for me 3 alerts of Nano Spores (and get expelled from the clan for some unknown reasons) or he has too choose between getting me a new season 3 helmet (my favorite!) or a potato (I want one on Bo!). 

 

Secondly: Another limit could be that in order to champion an alert for someone else, you need first to play with him a couple of matches. This is trivial really for smaller clans, but this ensure that my nemesis or else cannot claim 3 useless alerts for me. It also keeps the Moon clans from having 2-3 guys who get the alerts for EVERYONE. That would be really nice, and those guys would be popular beyond reason, but there would be so many rare items that would be gotten by any Moon clans that you might as well do 24 hour long alerts all the time. 

 

TL;DR: Make it so that clan mates can complete alerts for you. You finally don't need to give your credentials to someone else in order to get stuff from alerts and clans gets yet another benefit.

 

PS: To those that wants to say that it makes clans too important: Well, uh, that's the point. DE encourages us to form clans. That's why there are incentives. I mean, you can disagree with the idea, that's cool, but don't complain that it makes clans too important when clans are meant to be advantageous for players. That's the whole point of getting bonus from clans.

 

So. Whatcha guys think?  

[Casardis]

So. Whatcha guys think?  

 

I'm thinking of a way not to run out of +1 to give to you.

[Stormandreas]

Solution, don't give your details to someone else. DE just has to say, its your fault for losing your account not ours, because you gave someone else your login details.

Its not DE's fault, its the players, so DE isn't responsible for it, and so ignore all support tickets like that.

[RedDirtTrooper]

I don't like it, mostly because I don't like the idea of anyone being rewarded for not playing the game.

[Kinperor]

Solution, don't give your details to someone else. DE just has to say, its your fault for losing your account not ours, because you gave someone else your login details.

Its not DE's fault, its the players, so DE isn't responsible for it, and so ignore all support tickets like that.

 

There is still a want for it in the community. Saying "Don't do this extremely rewarding thing" won't stop anyone from doing it. DE already said it and it didn't help obviously. 

 

I don't like it, mostly because I don't like the idea of anyone being rewarded for not playing the game.

 

That can be easily fixed by having the player complete a test or else to compensate for the alert he didn't play. Besides, going at it from the other perspective, you are being penalized because you are sleeping/working/walking the dog/shopping/doing anything that isn't Warframe. 

[blahdenoma]

I don't like it, mostly because I don't like the idea of anyone being rewarded for not playing the game.

 

You already share the benefits of a clan dojo, with access to weapons that had to be researched with massive amounts of resources, that most players in the clan probably contributed very minimally to, if at all.  This isn't much of a stretch, really.

 

This idea basically will be subsumed by a trading system.  It's a tiny piece of what a robust trading system would offer.

[noneuklid]

This idea basically will be subsumed by a trading system.  It's a tiny piece of what a robust trading system would offer.

 

I'm sympathetic to the OP because it's taking a surprisingly long time to see that robust trading system implemented, but I agree -- we already have something announced that will allow the end goal.  Developing another system to implement as a stop-gap only requires more time now and more maintenence down the line.

 

That being said, the idea of clan-level Alerts is pretty cool, where enough clan members doing it (or I guess the same clan members doing it enough times?) rewards the clan with something that benefits the whole thing.

Edited October 7, 2013 by noneuklid

[Kinperor]

Well, trading could help to an extent it's true, but I think don't people will be able to trade helmet or potatoes. As far as we know from Grineeer's workshop, the answer is no, but maybe in the future.

 

One mustn't forget either that there are resources alerts too. While they aren't worth it most of the time (that's a problem with the reward balance really), they still exist, and I know a couple of people would who've liked getting the Orokin Cells alert from earlier today. 

 

A trading system could give you a cell in exchange of another rare, but an alert can give you a cell for nothing. I think there's room for both Championing and Trading really, but that's DE's call. If they want Championing at all that is. 

[Phatose]

I'm fairly certain a large part of the reason the alert system exists is to keep players engaged even when they're not actively playing.  Yeah, it sucks when an alert comes up for something you want when you can't play.  The idea is that there are times when you could be playing, but aren't.  Say I've gotten nearly everything I want save that one helmet.  I decide to go spend my time playing Bioshock Infinite, or whatever, the alert system means I'm at least still keeping Warframe in the back of my mind, checking alerts just in case.

 

This setup would largely kill that.  I suspect DE would much prefer that in those cases, your clanmate just emails/texts/calls/smoke signals you to get your butt in game.  And in the cases where you aren't available to play - well, in case it's not obvious, they rather clearly intend for you to not get rewards for alerts when you can't actually play them.   If that wasn't acceptable, the system would function very differently.

 

Thus, this seems counter to the purpose of alerts, and really - it seems like an awful lot of run around to accomplish what amounts to legitimatizing cheaters.

[Bennyworld]

'Problem: With the way the current alert system works, several player has resorted to giving their account information to friends, family or dogs. That is both very tempting and very forbidden, because we all sleep, work, go to school, have hobbies, etc etc. But the players do it anyway, because they really want that potato or Forma. This entail legal and account security problems for both the players and DE (support has to deal with the "Lost access to my account because I gave access to my 'friend'!" tickets). '

What about cats ?

:P

[Kinperor]

I'm fairly certain a large part of the reason the alert system exists is to keep players engaged even when they're not actively playing.  Yeah, it sucks when an alert comes up for something you want when you can't play.  The idea is that there are times when you could be playing, but aren't.  Say I've gotten nearly everything I want save that one helmet.  I decide to go spend my time playing Bioshock Infinite, or whatever, the alert system means I'm at least still keeping Warframe in the back of my mind, checking alerts just in case.

 

This setup would largely kill that.  I suspect DE would much prefer that in those cases, your clanmate just emails/texts/calls/smoke signals you to get your butt in game.  And in the cases where you aren't available to play - well, in case it's not obvious, they rather clearly intend for you to not get rewards for alerts when you can't actually play them.   If that wasn't acceptable, the system would function very differently.

 

Thus, this seems counter to the purpose of alerts, and really - it seems like an awful lot of run around to accomplish what amounts to legitimatizing cheaters.

 

Well, with the limitations I put in place you still have to keep Warframe in mind: Your clan mates can't get EVERYTHING for you, they just can't, and for them to get you anything at all, you need to play every so often with your clan mates. This again, is engaging the player (play with your clan or you get nothing anyway). And obviously, the people need to be playing to care at all about the alerts, because otherwise what's the point? 

 

And I don't think it's really cheating if there's an official way to get it. You just need new criterias instead of "being available at this moment". 

 

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^ Cats are even worse, they can't be trusted. Hence why we dont get any catframe.