Random leaders is the number one problem right now. It's woefully inadequate for the task at-hand and I'm pretty much done following people who I don't know at this point.
The quality seems to deteriorate as the server population increases. I think the issue is really central to gameplay and particularly important in a game like this because such close order teamwork is required and you need quality leadership to rise in the top for that. Just as important is giving players confidence in their leaders. I have literally no confidence when I see someone with stripes or bars without making many judgments of my own first. Rank means precisely nothing because they didn't earn it in the first place.
Previously I thought some sort of game-wide rating system or server-appointment system would be best but I think there's one good solution which would work in all situations.
The best way to do that is a kind of measured election system. Where players can choose to associate with a given leader through the spawning system and therefore empower him to put on stripes and bars or taking them from him by picking someone else and disassociating with him. So you go to pick your role and instead you're choosing a person to follow as a private or volunteering to lead yourself and seeking followers. The more people who associate with a given player, the more rank he gains - to the point he can even hand out lesser ranks to his subordinates. This is fluid throughout the round and can be altered while a player is still alive, new ranks taking effect on respawn. Player name is then color-coded based on your organization. When you see stripes or bars you know the player has followers, you can visually tell who belongs with who and that can give you
some measure of confidence.
The need of a short, no-pressure planning phase at the start of the round is a mostly unrelated matter but also one that would help leader votes settle out by restarting the game round when the round goes live and spawning people in as their present role/rank.
I've got a video pinned in my signature where I pitch the type of election system I'd like to see and I'm also working on one right now to more smoothly bring that to life. I'd be done by now but on a routine checkup of mousetraps yesterday morning I came face to face with a sewer rat the size of a cinder block in my basement and that shifted my priorities.
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Thanks for the update, Nostradamus.