One of my goals this Month was to become a Faction Boss.
This is a very hard task, as there can be only one Boss in every faction.
As we chose Snakes at the TDUDT Monthly Poll, that was the target faction.
The road to Boss was hard and eventful. I have met a lot of people in The Crew, made some new friends along the way and spent a lot of time in the game. Serious quality time. As to become Boss, you have to do just a little bit more than the rest. This involves time, a lot of time. Time i not always have. So i had to manage my play time very effectively.
Unfortunately this also involved some sacrifices. I had to turn down some fun cruises, skipped most random Crew invites and also seriously messed up my PvP ranking by staying in lobbies i should have left.
It is also important to get as many achievements done as they provide a bonus. I managed to get to 28%. More is unlikely, until stats updates are fixed.
And don't forget to apply the proper Perks to boost the scores.
Playing this much also shows some strong points and weak points of The Crew.
The idea behind the Faction Wars is brilliant. The execution is not. There is little to none motivation to switch Factions each month, no reward, no special races and no targeted events.
In fact, it pays off to stay with the biggest Faction, Wolves now, as they get the Bonus missions at the end of the Month, just like last Month. So that part needs some attention. Just give everybody 10.000 CC for switching from Faction once a Month. And add more Faction specific races in each region.
The new missions that were introduced this month were a lot of fun and i wish there would be at least twice as much new routes and races each Month to spice things up a little.
To keep my long run to Boss interesting, i mixed up doing Faction runs, mostly the shorter and medium distance ones and switched between PvP lobbies around the map. Usually until they ended.
And i did send friends en-route a couple of times a day.
I like to thank some cool players who helped me achieve this goal, by staying in the Lobby and keeping me motivated. Especially Bear304 and Lunytrickz as they will "never" rat out, unlike a lot of other players.
But i have to admit that it is probably not very motivating if you lose a couple of races in a row. Some simply don't care and stayed anyway. I even saw players park their car and use the spectator mode. Clever way of getting to know a track, by following the leading drivers.
I also met a few racers that were pretty good and had some great races with them.
There is a big difference in race lobbies sometimes. One lobby is full of rammers, wallriders, nitro-cheaters and lamers and another consist of mostly HC/SP players with higher rankings. I had some fair and good races with most of the latter. Just a different breed of players i suppose
Even after all those races there are probably still better and faster ways to get around each track. I have seen a lot of creative driving. Sometimes ending in tears, but also some interesting escapes.
I don't use the race line perks, maybe they reveal a bit more of the hidden secrets of the PvP matrix.
Key to set a lobby to your hand is to win as fast as possible, so you will be able to switch collisions off. I did have some fair races with collisions on. But those are seldom. And as soon® as ram n00bs enter the lobby, you already know that you will be a target as they pick the high ranked players first
It actually is kind of rewarding when you manage to enter an existing lobby with collisions "ON" and fight your way to the leading position. And turn that lobby around.
There are also a few things that can be improved in PvP.
When a newbie enters a lobby, you can not select certain races, like Raid or Circuit, because they have not unlocked those yet.
Why not provide them with a prepped car, like Omar does in Las Vegas during the Storyline mission?
That would give the new players an opportunity to try a new spec and the rest of the PvP lobby the freedom to choose the race they want.
I also think it does not make sense to place very low ranked players with L300 cars against high ranked players with L1200+ cars. No fun for the newbies and no sport for the higher ranked players. Maybe make 50.000 rank the threshold.
I have seen them all. Players who block, reverse, drive different routes or against the track to attack others and even work in teams to let their buddies win. They all failed on most occasions.
And than there are the cheaters; some easy to regognize with their pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft nitro-cheats, some harder to see, but still cheats. There was even a lobby where my race result was hacked away. Hope Ivory Tower deals with these idiot n00bs soon®.
Unintentional contact is sometimes hard to avoid with players lagging in a race. But overall the connections were pretty stable and you can see there has been made a lot of progress in connectivity and hookup of the PvP lobbies.
Usually you can enter a "public and free for all" race lobby within minutes. Even instant join on occasion.
So after a month of hard driving, lots of PvP and Faction runs, i did finally make it to Boss a couple of days back. And after i reached that goal i did put in some more effort to stay there and end the Month as Faction Boss. Getting there is one, staying a lot harder. You know others are targeting that spot. Especially those who were Boss earlier this month.
If you are ever planning to do something similar, this is what you are up against:
You can also see that the Perks don't work properly on the South bonus.
And as the Achievements are still bugged, due to the Stats not updating properly, i came only to 28% bonus and not 30%.
So maybe i will try this again when those are fixed.
Until then, i will enjoy the Game and do some of the longer Faction runs. And a change of pace is more than welcome after all these races.
Plenty of 4 Crew achievements to do and finally time for those long cruises that make The Crew special.
MadManCK
