I was thinking (if it could be done, this is all in theory) of some ideas to help get more people playing strategus and more people in game. What if on the next strategus round there were 6 static factions (or another number), and when you sign up it randomly assigns you to a faction. At the end of the strategus round (should hopefully be defined at the beginning of the round, like say 6 months) anyone on the winning faction (or maybe only those who participated, but that might be hard to quantify) gets XP awarded. And scale XP to the other teams based on how they ranked at the end of the round. I was thinking the XP award might be better than loom points because I think your level of char is more important than loom points. But also because it would scale easier to the non-winning teams (and would still encourage the scrub factions to fight til the end to get better rewards versus nothing/no incentive once they realize they're out of the race).
There's pros/cons to this, but I was thinking the Pros might be shaking up the meta of what people fight with others. We'd need voice comms added to the discord for each faction so we can coordinate better in game, but maybe we'd get more participating in voice comms for battles too this way. It would possibly get people more active as well since there are now rewards added. XP as an award vs Loom Points would also mean that someone can't work with the enemy and be promised loom points in return. XP can't be traded away.
Cons would be it's hard to account for people spying, or outright helping the enemy (by giving them equipment/gold/etc). Might be able to make it so you can no longer trade with people outside your faction, or once it's known that factions are at war, anyone who trades with the enemy gets punished. Or if your faction is being attacked, you can't sign up for the enemy team (doesn't even have to be hard coded, if you see it happen, someone reports it and the perp gets manually punished)
Thoughts?
