In my opinion, any player cap in conquest fights will be detrimental to the server since it will lead to massive carry alliances and new players not being able to warp to continental fights. Now, you say that "...the skilled players (Western Union) only banded together because of necessity... In order to stand a chance, they did what they had to do, and they asked all the main carries of the server to move to their alliance and lock" (Hypertotodile 10), but this is just false. Western Union did not have many carries move over to their alliance besides Tqmen, Dnnh, and Archersquid. In fact, they were missing many of their carries. The real reason carries move together is because they are friends. Creating a player cap in conquest fights would make alliances such as Western Union stronger than they already are. As of now, I cannot think of a single alliance that would be able to compete with Western Union if there were only 40v40s on the continent. Ascalon would be taken over for months. Even if Balak did not have these 40v40s, why wouldn't Western Union ping their log-on pvpers and recruits? The only people that would benefit from this suggestion would be Western Union and all of their carries.
We already talked on discord and pretty much came to agreement on most points. The only point we differ on is this: How likely is it for mega-alliances full of the best players on the server to form after the implementation of these ideas?
My answer to that is:
EXTREMELY unlikely.
Your answer to that is:
EXTREMELY likely.
Our premises are too different for us to come to agreement on just about anything you've said here. I will offer arguments in the spirit of fairness, but they will not change your mind, because if my paper failed to do so, then anything I write here is meaningless.
1. "The real reason carries move together is because they are friends." I already disagree with you because of the argument you cited prior, and nothing you wrote changed my mind, because I literally sat in WU VC with them in the writing of this paper, and they said that was the reason they all banded together against us this month.
They're even offering to split up into smaller alliances and spread out onto different continents. These actions are not in line with your argument that, "They're just banding together because they're all buddies.", because if that were the case, they would NEVER willingly split away from their friends to create SMALLER alliances on DIFFERENT continents from one another.
2. "Creating a player cap in conquest fights would make alliances such as Western Union stronger than they already are." This is self-evident. Fun fact: an alliance full of all the best carries on the server AND is reviving dead/inactive carries would, in fact, benefit greatly from my proposed changes. Their November roster ONLY EXISTED to try and defeat the big bad Bank Robbers, an alliance full of leadership who are known to recruit en masse and dupe hundreds of players.
I believe their fears were well-founded, because they lost the month due to my duping of hundreds of players. I see no reason for them to create such an alliance, or for the formation of a Sand Force-esque alliance, in a system of 40v40 continental fights. Who wants boring pvp with no competition?
The sentiment currently is pretty anti-recruitment wars for the playerbase as a whole, so I really doubt that if these changes were to be added, the immediate player response would be to ditch all their friends and shove all the best players into one mega-alliance to run down the entire server. Plus, they'd get FUCKED if Continent vs. Continent Balak was implemented, and such an alliance would stand NO CHANCE of winning World Capital. Their only victories (Continent & Rivina) would be meaningless because of how free they'd be, and their KDs would be ruined if they even considered warping to Balak fights.
3. "The only people that would benefit from this suggestion would be Western Union and all of their carries." As previously stated in Point 2, I disagree. By and large, my main motivator for the suggestion of 40v40s is actually
the new player experience. I would NEVER put forth these forums posts if I didn't believe that new players would enjoy their outcomes.
Not to brag, but to brag and be arrogant, I am one of the main mass-recruiters on LokaMC, and have been since January 2021. I present this, to you, Mr. Wxndernut: new players would LOVE 40v40s. Their pvp experience would be a lot more fun, they wouldn't feel like "just a number" or "just a statistic", and they'd be FAR MORE LIKELY to go on to become "Actual Loka players".
This might seem counterintuitive if you subscribe to 2 premises:
Premise #1: 40v40 fight cap primarily benefits carries.
Premise #2: New players will quit the server if they can't be warped to a Continental Fight via the Warp Selector.
I have nothing new to say in reply to Premise #2, because my reply to that has been turned into a sped-up gif, and I've already been memed to death by jovenshirepoop. But just to re-iterate, I believe that the fight cap
encourages people to split their alliances into smaller alliances. There's not even horrible consequences on the player side for doing so.
You'd still be able to warp to Balak even if your town broke off from the Capital Alliance of your Continent, and you'd still be able to fight alongside your former comrades on Balak against other Continents.
You'd be able to have less laggy fights on your continent, and your recruits will actually enjoy the wars because you get to give more time to teaching them how the server works.
The more time you spend with a new player, the more invested they become in the server, the more likely they are to stick around and become an "Actual Loka player". I really shouldn't have to spell this out for anybody, but with mega-alliances, almost
no time at all is dedicated to the teaching of new recruits, or getting them involved in our community at large.
In smaller alliances on smaller continents, though, this is NOT the case at all. Most people who come to the server via Kalros or Garama Conquest generally end up becoming "Actual Loka players", and I don't think this is a coincidence at all. dzne in an attempt to refute my claims about mass recruitment even told me, "But Hyper, all my recruits stay and are starting to main Loka!", and this just further proves my point.
I'm holding, AS A CORE PREMISE OF MY ARGUMENT, the following: mega-alliances are discouraged by the implementation of my proposed changes, there would be more alliances, and there would be smaller alliances. If we accept that a smaller alliance means it's easier to spend more time with each recruit, then it follows as a logical consequence that new players will NOT be more likely to quit the server just because they got taken off of the continental warp a few times.
What I think would happen instead is that alliances would splinter off into smaller ones once a given alliance gets too big. I can't prove it because these changes have yet to be implemented, but given how partial people are to just randomly doing /town a leave in order to have a "Rivi month", I don't think it's too far fetched to believe that a bunch of towns would randomly do /town a leave in order to make a new alliance of their own, should their home alliance grow too large for people to be able to warp for continent fights.