I understand what you're saying. I just don't see the... I don't see why having more members should mean you get fucked. Isn't the point to make a large and prosperous town with many members in order to conquer others or defend your bases?
The party cap right now is 5, yes? (Perhaps 10? I Googled and found both referenced, I can't remember from in-game) So with town FF on, they're going to have to quickly and efficiently get into a group to defend correctly (Or raid, or engage in world PvP battles). People logging on are going to be spamming in chat (or yelling in TS) to get into the parties, and party leaders are going to need to have their attention divided between attacking/casting, movement, watching the field, and now reading and typing to add players to their party. With the possibility of being locked up in commands between multiple invites (which I have been before, it's really fucking annoying) in regards to 20+ member defenses and the potential of invite abuse by clever opposition...not to mention the fact they're still going to kill each other even with the parties...it's just a huge headache.
Spammers are going to spam, clickers are going to click, shots are going to go astray, and town members/allies are going to hurt, and even kill, each other. Even if FF was on for the whole game, party or not, it wouldn't stop people from using those abilities and I don't feel like the penalty for using them should be fucking each other over.
I don't think large towns, raids, groups, etc should have to enact 'no AoE' policies or purposefully exclude members and create favoritism within their town where only certain players are allowed to go out for raids and such because more than that just means they'll end up killing each other.
I also don't like the idea of limiting large-scale fights.
Soooooo...Solution! Raids!
Just allow small parties to 'connect' into larger 'raids' and be FF off. Raids would have a reduction in skill efficiency, limited or no exp gain, and a maximum cap of 50 members.
That levels the playing field, yes? Raids of 30 players attacking 5 players, or defending against them, would have to work harder, yet still be able to include their whole town in the fun! It would hinder quantity over quality towns stuffing themselves full of meat shields with the broad town tag FF off, and also of course the killing each other part. There's still the downside of actually inviting the players, but oh well.
Conquest points could actually become world-PvP hubs with people joining in on the raids, too, and not having to be limited to only their town members, etc.
Raids have been suggested before and shot down, so I assume that will remain the case...
All that being said...if there is in fact a full, PvP on, FF on experience where only small parties or even raids have FF off... Is the rule for killing town members and allies going to be lifted? (Let's pretend I'm good at PvP) If I log on and see a stranger near me, I'm going to kill their face in. I don't want to get banned or penalized because they're actually town members/allies and I just wasn't there when they were invited. Or, ya know, cleaving my friends to death in a dungeon that has PvP on. (If I read the New Era post correctly, it said a 'few' dungeons will be PvP-off) Or Conquest. Or anything.
I also hope this is taken in the context of the idea that the server is going to be highly populated and very active.
Side-note, with everyone so far saying yes to nations, I wonder if, should town FF be off, that would carry over to all allies within a nation?
