Should organisational benefits be implemented?

It would make the game a bit more interesting don't you think? I mean as it is, it doesn't matter what organisation you work for, as all you get are slightly different attitudes from operators (Tyndall's honest and dedicated, Gray's typically indifferent but sometimes thankful, and Flood's just smarmy). Everyone is privy to to basically the same information in critical missions, and one way or another all organisations are always working toward the same goal. If there were some kind of incentive to join a particular organisation as opposed to just making all 3 essentially the same, it'd be a lot better. One of the reasons the servers are so overpopulated with Zion isn't because that many people want to "fight the good fight", it's mainly because you start out as one, and when Gray and Flood contact you, they don't actually offer anything that make their respective organisations worth joining.

I joined the Merovingian as soon as I could way back when, and since then I've seen absolutely nothing besides one party just after Morpheus' death that's been exclusive, let alone beneficial to me. It certainly makes a big difference on a pvp server, but generally I'm just attacked because I have a red nametag, as opposed to Zion hating me for aiding in Morpheus' death (well I'd like to think I did ). As for other organisations, the killcode did essentially nothing.

One thing that's always puzzled me is why agents attack Machinist redpills. Maybe they could be given certain access node locations when they opted to go Machine or something. If it was worked into the story that Gray can't stop these agents (the level 255s) as they are automated, built into the Matrix's core security system, and would attack any redpill or even unauthorised machines themselves if they tried to go there without sufficient access rights, but giving their redpills knowledge would give them a headstart and they'd only have themselves to blame if they got attacked. Not just "Agents attack here" or whatever generic message is given.

I'm trying to think of organisation based perks that would be subtle enough to not make everyone go "*CENSORED* look what they get I'm going *Org name*", but not so subtle as that they're barely noticeable (e.g. cake, which wasn't even exclusive last time!), but it's pretty difficult. Perhaps Merovingian redpills (as they would be of the money/power orientated ilk) can get extra XP and/or info for doing missions (to prevent abuse, you'd have to be a member of the organisation for 30 days or 50 missions, and the increase would happen every 5 or so missions after that), Machines would be immune to player attacks in Archives thanks to an exclusion program (one with a time limit to prevent major camping and abuse), and Zion could escape the Death Effect thanks to their strong will and battle hardened psyches.

Or even more drastically, there could be an irreversible option to permanently join one organisation, and these abilities wouldn't be available until you did. Though in this case I'd want hostile 2 person emotes to be re-enabled, as there's certain Zionites I can't live without slapping Probably wouldn't work, but I know I'd like to see some kind of reward for being dedicated to one particular cause, rather than just a different operator.

Any thoughts or ideas on this?

   Hmm?  I'd like to point out that information on Morpheus' past was split into three in the 1.3 missions.  Zion got information about his early days, the Machines got information about a person that Morpheus thought was the One, and the Merovingian players got information about Morpheus' time in a relaxation construct following the events of the first movie.

   I didn't know the flit guns existed until the 2.2 missions, despite the fact that the Machine players were assembling them in the 2.1 missions.

   Also, the Zion and Merovingian 3.1 missions involved the Effectuator and the Dire Lupines, while the Machine 3.1 missions had the Colonel, an Exile commando who was linked to a bomb set in the battery towers.  They had to figure out a way to kill him without detonating the bomb and killing who knows how many bluepills.  Plus, the first Machine 3.1 mission involved Cryptos' boxes, while the Zion and Merovingian missions didn't touch on this subject until 3.2.

Well there is another way to difference the orgs without unbalancing the game. For instance by making rare or unique clothes look different between orgs. I know that the devs will have to create a lot of new items (because as they said multiple times, the clothing's buffs, look and sex are all stored in a single 'tuple'), but there are not so many unique or rare items (i'm not considering collectors' items - just Pandora's Box items and boss drops.)

Or, whenever changing the look of our RSIs becomes possible, adding a new set of organizational tatoos. That shouldn't have a great impact on lag because:
-the information sent by the server would remain unchanged: suppose that the current set of tatoos are stored in 4 bits (16 possible tatoos): adding 32 more tatoos do not need necessarily need any additional bits to be added to the RSI apparel record, because we already have a field in which the org information for the player is stored (supposed that this informations are also sent every in every packet,as I think).
-the memory cost wouldn't be prohibitive: tatoos can be stored in low res greyscale images wich don't take up so much memory.

Well I like the idea of making org "benefits" a little more subtle. All we need on Vector is Zion (which I think is safe to say at 90% of the population now) getting a benefit, like no DE and +5 belief. (I can see the M&M's getting +5 reason and 2 % VR lol) I think the storyline will pull people into different orgs if it is interesting enough. Hopefully that will balance thigns a bit on it's own and more of the M&M players who left will come back. Of course we need to get the story line rolling...