Canno said:Cromulent said:streeg said:I like the idea of factions in regards to not letting an evil Skar race enter an Elf city or something like that. Faction grinding can also be a route available if you really wanted to. What I don't want to see is faction affecting player interactions. Basically, I want to make sure that anyone in a guild can play whatever race they want and not have to worry if the Guild is on the same faction.
I also like the idea of factions as it was handled in EQ. There were so many different factions that you had to worry about over time that you really started to think about how your character was going to be seen by other NPCs and you ended up caring an awful lot about faction hits. Coming back to a system like that would be awesome.
I also agree that guilds shouldn't be on a given faction and that players should be able to join a guild no matter what race or faction they were on and they should be able to play with other guild members. But as that was the case in EQ I don't think Brad is likely to change that particular mechanic. I hated in WoW that you had to pick a faction and could never play with players on the other faction. It just made the game world feel so much smaller.
So yeah if the faction system is like EQ or Vanguard I'd be happy.
In WoW it made sense and was necessary though. WoW had a decent PVP system (at one point) and having separate factions that never mingled created a very important us vs them mentality. If you allow the sides to play together, etc, it degrades that feel and lessens the PVP experience. Look at sports, people tend to support their team and "hate" other teams, no different than factions.
I agree here. I want to say around the BC and WothLK was the best time for faction based gaming. PVP was an intense experience. You traveled in groups and stayed away from the gank zones.
In PVE you had to be careful. Sure there were tons of mobs to just go up to and thrash but ones you were not expecting to hunt you due to faction would surprise you.
I remember in EQ this was the case. You gave a wide berth to areas or you would get your butt handed to you in seconds.
I am curious to see what gets deployed.
Ox
I like faction influence on game play. If I'm a good oriented person and go to a new city or town that is also good aligned, they would let me in, but I would have to do things to garner more freedom in the town. Likewise to a evil oriented town I would not be able to, so easily.
But what i like is layerd factions where the good and evil are blurred somewhat and you are not sure when you can cross the line- the bloodsabres in qeynos for instance.
The thing is, once the faction "work" is done- your good forever unless you intentionally work to destroy it which makes factioning a "one-and-done" kind of experience. I would like to see it more dynamic, but not rely on repetiton or regular visits to keep the memory of you fresh by killing a few goblins every...5 months or so (game time) because after 6 months they would forget you and you would have to start over- if your reputation faded in memory.
I dont have any ideas right away as to how to make it dynamic, but since "situational gear" has been mentioned, I think gear with faction modifiers would be cool.- unless the towns themselves were dynamic and with the new "Lord" or usurping of the old Lord by the Lords son. You would be remembered, but- would have to show fealty anew with a new set of different events/quests.
Certain changes in leadership might be serverwide broadcast worthy- or on a smaller scale- newsworthy (like in Oblivion where the courier has a newspaper). "The King is dead! (long live the king!)". It would make me concerned if the town I was alligned with suddenly changed its political culture (diplomacy skill oportunity?)
And maybe- like the shareable buff- if one person has current faction and others dont., by grouping with that person all the group are seen as being "with soandso" and so they must be alright. Maybe not get the best merchant prices, but can still sell. Maybe not get the choice quest prompts but a hint, unless the person with the actual faction asks, who gets the full choice quest prompts.
Manouk said:I like faction influence on game play. If I'm a good oriented person and go to a new city or town that is also good aligned, they would let me in, but I would have to do things to garner more freedom in the town. Likewise to a evil oriented town I would not be able to, so easily.
But what i like is layerd factions where the good and evil are blurred somewhat and you are not sure when you can cross the line- the bloodsabres in qeynos for instance.
The thing is, once the faction "work" is done- your good forever unless you intentionally work to destroy it which makes factioning a "one-and-done" kind of experience. I would like to see it more dynamic, but not rely on repetiton or regular visits to keep the memory of you fresh by killing a few goblins every...5 months or so (game time) because after 6 months they would forget you and you would have to start over- if your reputation faded in memory.
I dont have any ideas right away as to how to make it dynamic, but since "situational gear" has been mentioned, I think gear with faction modifiers would be cool.- unless the towns themselves were dynamic and with the new "Lord" or usurping of the old Lord by the Lords son. You would be remembered, but- would have to show fealty anew with a new set of different events/quests.
Certain changes in leadership might be serverwide broadcast worthy- or on a smaller scale- newsworthy (like in Oblivion where the courier has a newspaper). "The King is dead! (long live the king!)". It would make me concerned if the town I was alligned with suddenly changed its political culture (diplomacy skill oportunity?)
And maybe- like the shareable buff- if one person has current faction and others dont., by grouping with that person all the group are seen as being "with soandso" and so they must be alright. Maybe not get the best merchant prices, but can still sell. Maybe not get the choice quest prompts but a hint, unless the person with the actual faction asks, who gets the full choice quest prompts.
Interesting post! I agree the lines get blurred so there needs to be a solution for that and bonuses for those that have faction points where needed. That opens a few other ideas too.
The idea if someone attacks a mob and it does deals some sort of impact to your faction what should it be? I have expereinced you can say kill mobs for days without real issues popping up. I am in favore of a more heavy handed approach there.
maybe quest chains to redeem that faction could be thrown in. I can see an enter faction based quest line for that.
I may have to think more on this one..
Good post!
Ox
I was talking about innovation the other day, and a comment about factions got me thinking:
I approach the merchant (his smile dissapears as I am a 'mere' human : Racial_faction -15).
He notes my clothing (a sneer forms as he greets me coldly : Rich_faction -35)
I greet him cordially (he is shocked by my fluency in High-Elven: Language_faction +60)
I ask for his best price on Elven Inlaid Pine (He offers a slighly reduced price: Add all factions for effect)
Factions are a good thing... better still if they are LAYERED. Getting an audience with the Dwarf King means talking to his aide. Not being able to speak Dwarven (bad), being dressed shabbily (bad), being the hero who saved a dawrf village (good), offerring a bribe (good or bad) all add together to give an idea of whether the aide will allow access to the King.
So it really isn't about 'how many factions' as it is about 'how many LAYERS of factions' go into any interaction.
THIS way, an illusion to LOOK like a gnome will only go so far for faction if you cannot speak gnomish!
THIS way, wearing (obviously) expensive clothes and a glowey sword WILL get you attacked by bandits...
THIS way, using that (obvious) Orc-slayer sword will (in some) cause fear and (in others) cause affection or rage!
NOW we have an answer to the 1st part of the 'consider' that is done...
... WILL he attack you? If not, how friendly does he really seem?
Evoras said:So it really isn't about 'how many factions' as it is about 'how many LAYERS of factions' go into any interaction.
Great thought. Hopefully the faction system will be complex. If it is, you could really do some awesome stuff with it.
It would be cool if there were factions for general ideas and political/idealogical movements as well. i.e.... world unification under "good", chaos, order, nature, religious or cult factions, political powers, rebelions, conspiracys (think assassination, or overthrow), wild-ling or savages, Freedom! (shout it out like Braveheart), cultural orders, cultural shifts, the Trolls that root for the winner of last years "Troll of the year award", Trolls that root for the one they think is going to win this years "Troll of the year award".
You can come up an almost unlimited amount of these, with better names than the ones I listed. The idea is: factions that are not just based on a geographic location or race, but a political movement or ideology. You could have NPCs and/or players that are mortal enemies, but belong to the same faction. Want to add depth to the game?
Amsai said:Feyshtey said:Amsai said:I like it as long as it doesnt get out of hand. A dozen or so factions or hell 20 is fine. But 40 or 80 or 100 is crazy town.
I kinda disagree. I think it's important that each race, playable or not, have a definable personality and with that a measurable and predictable reaction to a particular character, the character's race, and the character's personal history. Just because the gnomes like me doesnt mean that the elves should, or the halfings should, or the ogres should, etc. Considering only the playable races you've exceeded the dozen-or-so threshold. Now consider whether a dragon should think differently of me than the orcs, and those differently that the lizarmen, and those differently than the sirens.
My collective actions should be reflected if the world is to be more believable. Otherwise you fall into scenarios in which the humans appear to be wholly unfazed by your apparent attempt at genocide toward dwarves. You also preclude really interesting choices of gameplay that have far reaching consequences for what else will be easily accessible to you. The choice between the Coldain and the Kromzek in Velious is an EQ example. I loved that there was a choice and a consequence. It gave your actions meaning.
You make a good argument. My biggest problem would be making it too confusing. But I definitely love depth! Maybe keep it to 20 or so factions but really really flesh them out with high detail on every possible interaction?
I'm not so sure 20 will be enough. Likewise, you don't want to over saturate the game with too many factions; their influence will dilute. But they should be administered with authenticity, depth, and should (as Hieromonk states, "The sense of the world being much bigger than you...") be one of the components that really makes the game appear alive and dense and vast.
Shea said: I always thought EQ factions totally made my game play far more enjoyable and interesting ..
Agreed - here's a link. I believe this is all the factions from Launch, Kunark, Velious now - 241 listed, although, admittedly, some were nearly meaningless:
http://wiki.project1999.com/index.php?title=Category:Factions&pageuntil=Songweavers#mw-pages
It's another hard-core-how-far-do-we-go issue. Yes, factions add excellent depth to the game, even when you fall foul of them, but I do think you can go 'too far' when the number and interactions are beyond understanding.
In EQ you could collect and hand-in gnoll fangs to get XP and faction with the 'good' guards in Qeynos. There was a faction loss with the 'evil/bad' guards, but they were in a different part of town.
I did that quest a lot whilst grouping in and later soloing in Black Burrow (monk epic quest drops took an age to get).
One time I go back to my monk training dojo in QEynos and am smashed into the ground by a bad faction guard who happens to wander the good faction area! More than one time, actually...
Now... am I *wholly* against that experience? Well, no - it certainly taught me a lesson about factions and made it more 'exciting' getting to my trainers, but the upshot was I moved to Freeport because, researching the faction, it turns out to recover the faction would have been a long and boring grind of out-levelled enemies.
Also, I felt I had no warning really that that might happen - you can't tell that guard's faction by looking and I had no idea that killing gnolls a mile away would upset him. Also I felt doubly aggrieved as the half-a-dozen nearby good faction guards who I was ally with just stood there and let me take a beating.
With every monster I kill, am I expected to research the faction hits I see in case continued killing will effectively oust me from my home town? (with some EQ monsters, you kill one and you are instantly ostracised from that society).
Is it very immersive to know that killing a gnoll a mile out of town will have that faction hit with the Qeynos guards?
Is it very weird that somehow that guard instantly knows I ws killing those gnolls? (I left no witnesses hehe!)
For me there's a lot of 'issues' that are undesirable with EQ's faction system.
The example above is, of course, not the only faction pain I've felt (pick the dwarf faction because role-playing-wise they are a better fit for your character only to find that the eventual faction gear you get is *much* less powerful than the opposing giant/dragon factions and to 'change' faction would be a massive grind never mind immersion/role-playing madness?).
No, I'm not sure how to resolve them and I'm broadly in favour of faction systems, but they are a mechanic in serious need of modernising (relative to their use in EQ1 anyway).
Maybe more transparency would be good. We somehow know what faction a creature belonged to when we kill it, but how about faction information be available on a special /consider command? How about cross-faction-interaction related information be available from faction leaders as standard?
This is, I feel, an area when we can innovate to move from EQ1 factions slightly further forwards.
Setup (hopefully layered) factoins, having mobs (esp intelligent ones) having multiple factions.
Now we extend the 'consider' system with perhaps 'perception' (some viable skill with stats attached) or 'research'.
As you kill mobs, you 'learn about the mob'. This may entail learning about 'strengths', 'weaknesses' etc which makes your (initially) fuzzy or innaccurate 'consider' more and more accurate over time (for that mob type at least). Included in this learning (eventually) would be a partial (incrementally heading towards full) faction-tree for the mob/class-of-mob.
(PS allow the player to switch output for consider/kill reports from 'terse' -> 'normal' -> verbose -> complete-details')
This would allow players to eventually come to understand how some of these faction affect them. It may be useful later, in towns, for them to be able to spot (in advance) how an unknown faction was being reduced each time they did another faction quest...
perhaps doing all the 'FrostFall_Guards' faction gains has cost you 'FrostFall_Inkeepers_Alliance' faction since they have to pay bribes to the guards.
prerhaps raising your 'FrostFall_Guards' faction has cost you access to the 'FrostFall_Secret_Hooker_Palace' since they are tying to replace the guards with amoral Gnome_Artificers.
perhaps raising your 'FrostFall_Merchants' faction (but only for the one with the Gnome assistant) also raises your 'Gnomish_Artificer' faction *and* will eventually get you access to the palace_quest! Assuming you manage to get the quest items (2 AAA batteries) and hand in correctly, you also gain 'FrostFall_Secret_Hooker_Palace' faction.... but lower your 'FrostFall_Guards' faction sicne they thing gnomeys are 'dodgy' characters that should be locked up on principle!
What a tangled web we weave....
... when we enter FrostFall and errr... grieve ..err steve .... err ...
Evoras said:This is, I feel, an area when we can innovate to move from EQ1 factions slightly further forwards.
Setup (hopefully layered) factoins, having mobs (esp intelligent ones) having multiple factions.
Now we extend the 'consider' system with perhaps 'perception' (some viable skill with stats attached) or 'research'.
As you kill mobs, you 'learn about the mob'. This may entail learning about 'strengths', 'weaknesses' etc which makes your (initially) fuzzy or innaccurate 'consider' more and more accurate over time (for that mob type at least). Included in this learning (eventually) would be a partial (incrementally heading towards full) faction-tree for the mob/class-of-mob.
(PS allow the player to switch output for consider/kill reports from 'terse' -> 'normal' -> verbose -> complete-details')
...
We have talked about this a bit. I think it would be great to have a journal that includes information you learn about mobs and factions. Things like languages, factional affiliations, mob resistances and then also record of personal conversations. It may be something as short as "Orc smash, orc kill" to a quest dialog full of clues.
Disclaimer. I haven't read every post in the thread.
For me, it's not so much about the number of factions as it is about the complexity of the factions. The simplest example:
Faction A and Faction B like each other.
Faction B and Faction C like each other
Faction A and Faction C hate each other.
Another simple example from EQ:
Faction A liked me... right up until I showed up in wolf form. At which point they expressed their displeasure by killing me.
You don't need 5000 factions to do that... and 5000 factions that had no complexity at all would end up being not much more than annoying.
Factions? yes
LOTS of factions? indifferent, not just for the sake of having factions... but if needed for the lore the yes.
Factions with no possability of repairing them. For me this scares me off of doing some things. Make it HARD to repair if need be but nothing should be perminant.
Evoras said:I was talking about innovation the other day, and a comment about factions got me thinking:
I approach the merchant (his smile dissapears as I am a 'mere' human : Racial_faction -15).
He notes my clothing (a sneer forms as he greets me coldly : Rich_faction -35)
I greet him cordially (he is shocked by my fluency in High-Elven: Language_faction +60)
I ask for his best price on Elven Inlaid Pine (He offers a slighly reduced price: Add all factions for effect)
Factions are a good thing... better still if they are LAYERED. Getting an audience with the Dwarf King means talking to his aide. Not being able to speak Dwarven (bad), being dressed shabbily (bad), being the hero who saved a dawrf village (good), offerring a bribe (good or bad) all add together to give an idea of whether the aide will allow access to the King.
So it really isn't about 'how many factions' as it is about 'how many LAYERS of factions' go into any interaction.
THIS way, an illusion to LOOK like a gnome will only go so far for faction if you cannot speak gnomish!
THIS way, wearing (obviously) expensive clothes and a glowey sword WILL get you attacked by bandits...
THIS way, using that (obvious) Orc-slayer sword will (in some) cause fear and (in others) cause affection or rage!
NOW we have an answer to the 1st part of the 'consider' that is done...
... WILL he attack you? If not, how friendly does he really seem?
I really like this idea a lot. Multi-layering can add tremedous depth. I really think factions have been underrated and overlooked as a gaming device overall. And I really hope VR elaborates on the faction element to underscore the game's development in breaking new ground.
Like I said before, I want actions to have consequences and factions be meaningful. One way of doing this would be to not have every particular race/class combo "born" into a specific faction.
Suppose most classes have a couple factions they could work their way into. I could imagine a starting warrior having to choose between the certain faction in power in a city versus a rebel faction seeking to seize power. Both factions would have equal access to trainers and a unique but comparable line of quests. This would allow each player to develop their characters to their choosing.
I realise that this would require s good deal of work to flesh out but would add a great deal of depth to the game.
I'm also a big fan of gear giving faction modifiers.
I see this post is very old, however i am terrible at keeping up to date on forums. That being out of the way, i read alot of people saying that too many factions is "bad" ( to simplify). This being said, both WoW and EQ had ALOT of faction, however they were excellently mitigated into "groups". I feel like even if you had 100 factions. So long as they were banded into 20 or so "tribes" it would seem alot less daunting. So if you kill a NPC, it would change the faction of an entire tribe. So as to not be too grindy.
However, i feel like blanket rep grind should only go so far. Like if you went to the high elves, and you had slain thousands of goblins. They would treat you well since you are respected to the group. But you've done nothing peronally for them, and their unique faction. So if you wanted deals, or to be rewarded with the reward of being able to purchase fine elven armor, you would need to find a way to specifically please the High elves, not just the Tribe as a whole.
This way you can earn enough rep to enter a city, if you wanted to become friendly with most races, but if you wanted the prestige that comes with a rep grind for a specific faciton it would feel rewarding as not everyone would be willing to grind the individual rep, and might just stop at the Tribe reps.
Just my 2 bits, i'll be it a little late. :)
Wandidar said:For me, it's not so much about the number of factions as it is about the complexity of the factions. The simplest example:
Faction A and Faction B like each other.
Faction B and Faction C like each other
Faction A and Faction C hate each other.
Another simple example from EQ:
Faction A liked me... right up until I showed up in wolf form. At which point they expressed their displeasure by killing me.
You don't need 5000 factions to do that... and 5000 factions that had no complexity at all would end up being not much more than annoying.
There were several mentions along these lines. Using this one for simplicity. Factions, imo, are beliefs and desires in NPCs. It makes sense that some guards in Qeynos (as alluded to in an earlier post) would love you for killing gnolls and others would love you less. Maybe the 'evil' guards were using the gnolls to bring chaos because they were unhappy with part of the city's leadership. Neriak was like that, as well. Each faction had its own agenda within the greater agenda of the city as a whole. Perhaps in Pantheon, the Black Rose came into being because of a similar scenario to the 'evil' Qeynos guards. From the lore:
Yet a treacherous mystery befell this hero of street children and career soldiers, and in one infamous night Karos was caught in the act of treason and fled like a common thief. Or perhaps he was innocent of all charges, betrayed by a jealous rival and hunted down like a rabid animal. The tale, like fate, has changed swiftly over the last seven years.
Sounds to me like the complexity will be there. The fun will be unravelling the mystery in the story.
Evoras said:Factions are a good thing... better still if they are LAYERED. Getting an audience with the Dwarf King means talking to his aide. Not being able to speak Dwarven (bad), being dressed shabbily (bad), being the hero who saved a dawrf village (good), offerring a bribe (good or bad) all add together to give an idea of whether the aide will allow access to the King.
So it really isn't about 'how many factions' as it is about 'how many LAYERS of factions' go into any interaction.
I agree with your view of layered factions being a far more interesting approach than just having lots of factions out there. How someone or something views you should depend upon a host of different factors. That said, actions should still speak louder that words or clothing thus what things you have done either for or against a faction needs to have the greatest weight in the faction equation. The other factors, race, religion, clothing, language can only go so far to modify what your actions have wrought.
So if I were to order them from greatest effect to least, it would be Actions, Race, Religion, Class, Language, Clothing.