Infected Covens (idea)

Nitromaniac

Builder
Making a bet with myself right now not to use any colored text for the duration of this forum post...

But with that out of the way, I introduce to you a concept that has been brought up in the past by many different people but now altered by me in a way that i think has potential to bring back the community feel of MCinfected. I introduce you to the idea of Infected Covens!

What is an Infected Coven?
Basically, Infected Covens are groups you can create and join in order to work together to take down the ever-approaching infected horde. Think factions. Every time a zombie apocalypse is represented in media, whether it be shows like the Walking Dead, or movies like World War Z, there are always clans of people that are working together to combat the horde, and I feel like there's room to fit this concept into MCI.

How would it work?
I have been thinking about it for about a week, and I think the best way to implement Infected Covens would be to make it into a competition between factions, called Coven Wars. More on that later.
For balancing purposes, there would most likely be a cap of about 10 members per Coven (this is subject to change after testing). After joining a Coven, some of your stats are merged and added to the Coven's overall stats, which is a combination of all the member's different stats in order to represent the prestige of the Coven.

Coven Stats/Info
In order to make the Coven features easy to use, there would be a witch NPC in the lobby called Coven Carl. When clicking on Coven Carl, you are prompted to a menu with a few different options, such as "Coven List", "Your Coven Stats", "Create a Coven". These buttons would do essentially what you imagine they would do. Coven List would bring up a GUI with all the different Covens players have created, and the option to see how many members they have, some stats, and the option to join the Coven (if it's public). Coven Stats would bring up your Coven's personal stats into chat or a menu GUI, with different info such as:
[Custom Coven Name]
Founder: Nitromaniac
Members: 6/10
Info: Public
Trophies: 2
Coven Reputation: 10000
Infected Killed: 245
Zombies Punched: 116 (more on this at a future date)
Some stuff there is pretty obvious, while others would be new. Coven Reputation is the reputation of all the members combined. Infected Killed would be total number of zombies killed by all members combined since joining the Coven, and Zombies Punched would be a new stat all players would have based off a concept from a new main lobby design I'll be getting some of the other builders to help me on.

What is Coven Wars?
So Coven Wars would be either weekly or monthly competitions on which Coven can kill the most infected in that time period. It would be a fun grindy competition to get different players playing the game more often. At the end of the Coven War, the 3 Covens with the most Infected Kills will all receive a cookie prize to split among the members, while the top Coven will win 1 trophy. Here is my ideas for the prizes for top 3:
3rd Place - 1000 cookie prize
(most likely split among 10 players, meaning 100 cookies per player. Just a small prize for playing the game)
2nd Place - 5000 cookie prize
(once again, split among 10 players most likely. I don't see a Coven winning 2nd without having a full team. This would mean 500 cookies per member.)
1st Place - 10000 cookie prize, 1 trophy
(10000 cookie prize would encourage all Covens to strive to be the best. This is a lot of cookies, but in the end, it's all to encourage people to play and want to grind to be the top Coven.)
The trophy that 1st place receives would just be for brownie points against other Covens, remaining in the Coven's stats until the Coven is disbanded.

Pros / Cons
I have designed this concept with the sole reason of bringing players back to the game and giving them a reason to grind again. I took inspiration from the Infected Kings and Queens from MCI 2.0, which giving it a new twist because I believe it'll take new stuff to bring the old player base back to the game. We've all played the same game for 5+ years and we need some changes to make it exciting again, which, IMO, a faction-based weekly/monthly competition may be able to achieve, at least partly.
Our current lobby is getting too small with all the NPCs and stuff to look at. It was always supposed to be a temporary lobby, but we've never been able to make a lobby that is more iconic than that one. I will try to work together with the builders to achieve something that fits the game-mode, while not straying too far off from what the player base wants. I've already started on a concept that revolves around a graveyard, I just need to get the other builders in on it.
One con I can think of it that players may just commander camp to farm kills and reputation for their Covens. There are lots of ways this can be combatted though, if it becomes a real problem. I just want the Coven Wars to be a bonus side thing, while the real fun just comes from being able to join factions and play with your friends, earning better stats together.

Future Updates

If Infected Covens are a popular addition among players, I see lots of room for updates and improvement, such as using trophies to prestige your Coven, adding group uniforms, just stuff to make the game more new and interesting.

If anyone has any further questions or concerns, please feel free to comment. I feel like this idea has the potential of changing the game for the better, if we work together to make it a cohesive plan that works.
 
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