THE PROBLEM

We're constantly spammed by people in ESD who want people to join their faux fleet then leave so they can have the extra bank slots. It's a probably because of the zone chat spam and because it rewards players with something equal to the players that are actually working with other players. Fleet have a positive impact on a player's experience and Cryptic should encourage and foster them because they help tie players to the game because they're social. Faux "personal" fleets are not social. They're basically an exploit.

THE SOLUTION

It would be nice if every once a while the server ran a cron job that would prune (delete for tidyness) any fleet with less than 5 user accounts in their membership. Only players actually participating in actual fleets should have access to fleet banks.

WHAT'S IN IT FOR CRYPTIC

Eliminating faux fleets could entice players to buy more bank and/or inventory slots on the C-store. It could also push some players to join real fleets where they can make friends and run STFs, PVP, etc with them, which results in people enjoying the game more and staying around longer.

I play with a group of four people who created a fleet with a casual fifth player who left the game. We don't spam the zone chat looking for members. We're just a small group of friends who wanted a way to share resources amongst ourselves without having to trade every time we wanted to do so.

I've already bought my own bank and inventory expansions for my own use (bound items, pets, gear for boffs, etc...) so Cryptic has made money. By your reasoning, my three other fleetmates and I would be kicked out of our own fleet for doing nothing wrong.

I've been for this for a long time...I think I ignore / report fleet spammers virtually all the time when I'm online...I've honestly had to have a couple hundred or so on my ignore list for this reason.

People are just in it to take advantage of bank space. And that's unfortunate.

You guys did nothing wrong, but others ruined it for you. Pretty much sums up the situation, and many others in real life. Whether it's free-riders, or others taking advantage of a system, everyone else gets the pushinment. Happens all the time, trust me, but yeah, sorry to hear that you would fall under this, but I'm still 100% for this idea.

And this is exactly why blanket policies fail.

No. I would very much like to create a fleet for my wife, daughter, and myself, which would include all of our alts.

One of my characters is already the fleet crafter. Having the fleet bank would be a wonderful way for me to craft, drop it off at the bank, and then any of our characters could go in and retrieve items as needed. They could also drop off crafting materials. It would also stop the constant spam invites from other fleets.

Personally, I think they should remove the restrictions for fleet creation. In CoH, I can have a solo supergroup if I so choose. In LOTRO, we can have a kinship created with two players as long as there are at least 8 characters in the kinship (not 8 players). So the notion of solo/small group bases is by no means unprecedented and does no harm to anyone else.

STO has talked about removing the restriction and having fleet banks and such scale to the size of the fleet. This would be a good compromise.

THE SOLUTION: Create a chat channel LFG/FLEET. Posting in the regular zone chat will considered spamming, posting in the looking for... chat is fine. Problem solved.

I'm not in a fleet, but if I just would like to play in a fleet with my brother and a friend I wouldn't want that be taken away. You cannot people FORCE to cooperate if they dont want to. And those who want do it already

A Prune Fleet would help one to boldly go, no?

And this right here is exactly why the OP's idea is a bad idea. It would screw-over legitimate fleets. Blanket policies are never a good idea unless they are constructed in such a way that they will ONLY target offenders. But the OP's policy is almost as broad as SOPA.

Couldn't two guys create free accounts to artificially bloat their fleet to five people? Theres no need to spam in my opinion.

They should take away the create fleet button from people, and make it so that you have to apply and make a case for your would be fleet.

S*D