For most of us, it has been a long time since we were exposed to the concept of faction standings that you could gain or lose in an MMO. Most games since 2005 have not really leveraged the mechanic, apart from predefined racial selections where you would choose at character creation to join one of two or three opposing factions. Pantheon, however, promises a return to a more organic style of NPC factions, one where your actions in-game determine how NPCs you encounter react to you.
This is a great idea, and something that I am looking forward to in Pantheon. However, I also think it is something that needs to evolve from the systems we saw in EverQuest and other games of that era. As a refresh, in EverQuest, you modified faction standings primarily by choosing which enemies to fight. If you wanted to raise your faction with the giants, you fought the dwarves. If you wanted to raise your faction with the dwarves, you fought the giants. In this way you could manipulate your faction standings over time, going from a kill-on-sight (KOS) status to neutral to well-liked, and then back again if you chose to do so.
While this system worked well for the time, it did not take long for players to figure out the most efficient ways to game their faction standing to acquire desired items or complete quests. If someone wanted the armor set from the giants, there were guides available on what to kill to get your faction up. If that person then decided they wanted to switch factions, there were guides on how to do that too. In today’s player culture of rapid information sharing via YouTube videos, twitch streams, and discord servers, what that means is that any simple system added to Pantheon will be reverse-engineered by players in a matter of weeks, if not sooner, and the mystery and discovery – and ultimately, the meaningfulness of it, will be significantly reduced.
If we want faction to really stay meaningful in Pantheon long-term, then there needs to be more to gaining faction than simply killing things to move your numbers up. Adventuring should be a part of the process for sure, but mindless slaughter should only get you so far. Thus, I wanted to propose the following basic system for gaining faction within Pantheon.
Killing only gets you so far.
When you are just starting to earn standing with a particular faction, killing is a viable strategy – but only to a point. Slaughtering someone’s enemies might get them to start talking to you, but it will not make them trust you on its own.
What have you done for me lately?
If you want to keep building your standing with a faction, you will have to undertake tasks for that faction. At first, these might be simple things – after all, nobody trusts you with anything that is actually important – but as your standing gets higher, you have to take on greater challenges to keep proving yourself and raising that standing.
Prove your allegiance
At some point, the faction you are working with is going to ask you to really prove yourself – and it probably will not be easy. They may send you to wipe out a hated enemy, or recover a precious item, or do something else. Whatever it is, be assured that the risk will be extremely high, as well as the consequences you may face with other factions for doing it. Choose wisely, because the faction giving you the task may not even expect you to succeed – but if you do, perhaps they will finally trust you as one of their own.
The point I am trying to get at is that the game should be treating factions as more than simply numerical values. If an NPC group is important enough to have a faction standing, then they should have goals they are seeking to fulfill within Terminus, and those goals should be more strategic than simply slaughtering groups they do not like. If players want to earn their trust, they are going to have to work their way up, taking on greater challenges and helping the faction fulfill its ultimate goals as they go.
Doing this helps prevent faction from being something that is easily gamed and makes it a more meaningful part of the game’s content. Now, it is not just about mindlessly slaughtering one thing to raise your standing with another, or vice versa. It is about becoming an agent for that group and performing rites of passage – some potentially with severe consequences – to earn their trust. Changing your factions becomes a much more meaningful choice and a more important part of your character’s personal journey through the game than it would have been otherwise.
Yes to 1/2, but I'm not sold on 3. Here's why:
That architecture do not fit a standing with a faction, but a progression in an order. Faction is something semi passive. It's how you're perceived by others throught your actions (yet simple), but not throught what they asked you to do. I allways felt strange you could grab freely "faction quests" in games (in the form of dailies usually) because I don't see anyone out there asking people to do things so they would see them better. It does feel disarticulated in the sense it's not something you would do to increase your standing towards people, but something you would do to rank up in some sort of order/architectural process.
The closest examples here would be either military or diploma, rankings are steps you take to progress but it doesn't make others accept you better, it's just a virtual and human scale of how important you are.
in short : Factions wen't wrong the moment they started beeing quest based.
Faction is supposed to reflect your behaviour towards a given community.
I agree with you : Killing zillions of coldains doesn't make you in any way a frost giant friend. It only proves you are either an orc or an elf :)
So basically, the mechanisms behind faction should reflect your overall behaviour, and not on:y your local behaviour.
Instead of designing a faction as a silo-ed ranking where increase/decrease is made of specific actions, I would suggest to make faction related to morale values. After all why is a thronefast guard killing a dire lord ?
Probably because he believes that any dire lord is, by default, someone who uses the power of fear and believes in cruel motivations.
Would bringing back pristine wolf pelts or crushbone belts convince him you are in fact a trusting and friendly person ?
What is gonna make him change his mind ?
Every quest and some killings should be morale traits oriented. Each NPCs could flavor certain levels of morale traits and despise other traits. Using pendragon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendragon_(role-playing_game) as an example, we could imagine that a thronefast guard may be inclined towards "honest (12), merciful (8) and trusting (14)" and despise either opposite traits (deceitful (8), cruel (12) and suspicious(6)).
If a quest requests you to find a disappeared husband, you could have the choice of :
1- Killng and robbing this husband, bringing back sad news to his widow. Which would increase your deceitful and cruel rankings.
2- Aborting your search which would increase your lazy and deceitful values.
3- Bring back the dead corpse you found or the alive peasant, increasing your Trusting and Just values.
Each kill could follow the same pattern depending on the context. Slaughtering orcs by zillions doesn't prove much, except you are a zealous psychopath. But killing their chief might be seen as a act of Justice (because of the raids he organizes), killing their priest might be seen as a act of Faith,....
Therefore, it removes the vertical aspect of factions that makes guildline so easy to write (kill 12452 coldains to move from KOS to neutral)and to follow. It creates many more complex patterns where one action has a impact on differents traits (and therefore factions).
Beside, the system should provide a way to give you an hint why you are so KOS or friend :
Just before he engages you, the guard could shout : We hate the sinful bastards who behave so cruely !!
Temple's priests could provide a glimpse of how close your traits are towards their God's values,...
I am looking forward to the faction effects in Pantheon. How they are adjusted does matter in my book.
If I ask you to do something for me and you do a good job, then you will be looked upon more favourable by myself and anyone I choose to tell. However, that doesnt mean that every other human would or even should feel the same. I might eventually introduce you to a friend who may offer you a task to do for him and so the cycle goes. One faction opens the door to other factions.
Simply killing for faction just shows you are blood-thirsty and why would that help you with a "healers" faction for instance? I think there could be multiple ways of starting faction gains and grind killing should be very minimal part of that. If you are a kind Samaritan to a needy soul on a remote road, then this could provide you with the introduction to the healers faction.
If you release a Ogre from a prison cell, then he might not kill you on sight. If you offer him food, then he might even speak to you. This might lead to a task to retrieve a family heirloom that then introduces you to the Ogre's clan and further chances of progression with their other factions. A meaningful path that naturally leads to faction improvements. But every gain should also have a cost; the Ogre's captors for instance would obviously not take too kindly to you releasing their prized prisoner. Whoever held the heirloom before you retrieved it would want it back. They would certainly both inform the local authorities.
I think the killing side of factions should be kept to a minimum and the deeds that are undertaken be the things that progress your level in the various societies and factions. As long as there are lots of interwoven factions then I can see this being a very interesting system to get involved with.
Essentially I agree with everything Nephele said.
I also think, in keeping with my general preference that actions should have consequences, that some things should be irreversible. You shouldn't ever be able to fully recover from causing a faction to truly hate you (people being what they are going from love to hate tends to be far easier). Maybe you can raise "hate" to "mistrust" so you aren't kill-on-sight but no further. No one truly trusts, or loves, a traitor even if it is their faction the traitor has benefitted.
What about a flag at (levels x y z) of faction standing for negative actions upon (faction x y z) that cause permanent standing.
Thus ensuring a faction never forgives your past actions and adds a consequence for your true path through the world.
If you want to try and play both sides you better be slippery and never go too far in either direction.
It works for positive faction build too. :Nothing stings like the betrayal of a trusted individual. If you had built up a positive faction standing of high rank and then turned on them, your rate to negative is very fast and can become permanently negative early.
Risk is high that someone becomes an outcast in large parts of the world, but think of that as playing with a high difficulty setting.
I would like to see faction being somewhat far reaching among NPC's of a common race, insofar as artifacts or perhaps quested faction modifiers done ages ago are recognized or at least midly acknowledged by the distant orc kin. " that looks like orcish make! " old-school planet of the apes "can you make a human doll that talks!" kind of reveal is embedded in our psyche and will be intuitively embraced. Orcs that turn into undead at full moon- of course in their undead state they wont give a crap about faction, but when they turn back to normal, like cats to cat-nip they will sense a something.
And because they are orcs, the devs wont have to re-create a new model but can plop existing models with a touch up and use the old stuff to create a rich and enduring lore story even if they get a new dev who is seeing it for the first time and the game is maturing to do it.
and players wont have to grind their teeth having to re-work on faction. They will already have a smidge of faction, not enough for an advantage but maybe enough for a perceptioin ping or two.
So, I am all for hanging on to that Orcish doll of bondage from a quest you did 5 or 10 levels ago, just to be able to walk in the door. Feels good to have something pay off after all that time, Better if I need to turn it in. provided the off-set is simple for thoise thhat didnt do the quest, like a simple task.
*added after reading some posts*
What are some of the mechanics you all would like to see outside of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? I think this is what Neph is trying to get at, and I think this is the mechanic that most factioning in MMO's has been based to date.
I also liked what Emlar added and Iksar's points. I interpreted Emlars post (although wonderfully complex) as referring to a kind of gated factioning, similar to the extra faction you needed in EQ velious to get to the Dain, Himself- for the coveted Ring. Or Wenglehawks, for wenglehawks manly purse, or Skyshrine for the pitted iron ring or katana. To get to those factions you not only needed high faction with the people but also specific high end monster kills of opposing faction to be able to even talk to those bosses. Being a part of one group/raid to help someone often ruined your faction with the higher end of another. You could keep your high faction with the coldain, but if you helped kill the Dain, himself- for a warrior that needed his head for a giant quest, you could never get Dain, Himself- faction back high enough but you would still retain your high coldain faction.
Taking Emlar's points, that could almost be a game in itself which reminds me a bit of the Diplomacy mechanic in Vanguard. I would be interested to see how factioning as we know it, could be combined with diplomacy as it was in Vanguard where you would play certain "cards" to influence NPC behavior, namely: open quest dialogue, open perception hints (alternative to those who do not want to be "keepers" or who want to troll about having "keeper-ness" thrust upon them), even as mundane as having merchants open their stores to show more wares, secret wares! (I think that would be cool to a newbie, rogue or otherwise). Changing faction to one player race NPC on a one time temporary basis like a no-fail chanter alliance buff so you can talk to them once.
Instead of an inventory space taking faction modifier item, maybe the vanguard diplomacy storing card slot. Considering Pantheon's acclimation tab, how hard would it be to copy that tab and re-label it for faction? This would allow it to become as complex as Emlar envisions: instead of body slots, label them as his characteristics (sinister, kindly, whatever he said) each with a coressponding number that goes up or down; instead of atmospheres, label them as the various factions.
The proposal doesn't change anything. There will still be guides about the most efficient way to gain faction.
The problem is in thinking that guides are bad. Sharing information within the community is a good thing.
Trying to hinder the spread of information is a problem and a bad mindset to have. You can't stop it anyway and trying to is foolish.
I agree with Nephele mostly. Gaining faction should be more dynamic than what existed in EQI. And I would prefer an approach via varied attainment methods.
In addition, I would really like to see a more robust faction system; an intricate web that was multi-layered (Ooooo just had an earthquake) and it would affect many things and different things in different parts of the world. So human player A's experience in Skyhold would be uniquely different than human Player B's experience in Skyhold because of the differences in their faction standing (vendor pricing, NPC responses, guard's prevailence to assist/help, available quests, etc.). I would also love to see faction tied into crafting as well as any bonuses one might receive from said faction.
Whilst I would like to see more varied ways of attaining faction (crafting for them, diplomatic journeys, etc) I don't see a problem with the 'usual' killing and questing.
For good or ill, MMORPGs are, at their core, combat-based and high fantasy almost always comes down to some conflict or other providing mortal danger.
In such a world it's completely natural for a faction to see you in a better light if you are known to have killed their enemies and to even ask you to 'prove' your allegiance by killing those you claim to share a 'hatred' of.
Being impressed by other displays of allegience, too, would be cool, though. I would also like to see quite complex layers, relationships and weightings in factions. Class, race, level, where you've been, even your attributes and skills might effect faction in subtle ways. You may have killed some deep dwarves, but if you are a dwarf and a skilled smith with high charisma who has visited their holy shrine, perhaps you'll still be popular with them?
And maybe faction doesn't just mean kill-on-site or not. Maybe you could have bad faction, but be feared more than hated, so *won't* be attacked on sight. Maybe your faction will cause less chance of attack, but greater chance of an Alarmist or Berzerk disposition if you attack them?...
Killings mobs of a certain faction without reason (other than your own bloodthirsty fancy) just makes you a sword for hire. I wouldn’t count that as reason to gain faction. (although this is the mechanic in games most of the time) You can gain profit; coin or other. But their standing towards you is not influenced by this. You're just considered to be a hireling.
While a task or other assignment coming from an npc to take out specific foes in a certain region, could turn out positive if you return with favourable news. How you ended up with the result shouldn’t matter. Only handing in the success influences the faction. This makes shifting factions a longer process and you really need to be sure you want to invest the time in this. If you're not sure of yourself, you probably will not see much result coming from it in short term. (the time it takes to turn factions around, is not specified so it might take you years)
If you are not of the same race as the faction (if they are restricted to 1 race), you should never be able to gain full faction. This allows a window for replay ability.
A faction of mixed races, could allow a greater faction standing however, you might not get as many or the same perks as another faction with only 1 race. (if that makes sense)
I like the addition of disposalist there. A bad faction could make npc’s shy away from you and restrain them from sharing information. The best result of a good faction, might just be: You are tolerated to walk the streets. But nothing more. This may sound very weird, but it could add a lot of depth and again, it leaves options for replayability.
Barin999 said:Killings mobs of a certain faction without reason (other than your own bloodthirsty fancy) just makes you a sword for hire. I wouldn’t count that as reason to gain faction. (although this is the mechanic in games most of the time) You can gain profit; coin or other. But their standing towards you is not influenced by this. You're just considered to be a hireling.
I still find this a very odd take. Even if this were applied to Earth, let alone a world full of very different and dangerous beasts/monsters/races that are very much a threat and responsible for many problems/woes of any given society.
Imagine you lived in a village somewhere and your village was plagued by lions poaching livestock, bandits assailing people along the roads, and rumors of bands of monsters slaughtering farmers on the outskirts. Are you telling me some adventurer coming by and solving or at least doing massive work toward solving these problems would be met with disgust as some kind of bloodthirsty person or considered some lowly hireling? Not a chance. Who do you think most people would give more favor to: the person who drove off the lions, bandits, and "monsters" OR the guy who found old Maybelle's lost locket at the bottom of the lake and ran some errands here and there for a few other townsfolk? People tend to value safety and security above all things.
We have plenty of movie/show plots about this very type of thing even in our entirely human world.
The idea is that a faction which has a specific drive or purpose would likely want ever increasing proof of your intentions. Take the Orcs in AP. While they would appreciate you killing Thronefast guards, they really want all of Thronefast wiped out. They have a long term vision for their future So to get your faction above, say, indifferent, could require ever more serious effort..not just killing more guard, but named NPCs in Thronefast. Perhaps even the King.
Your villagers only want to survive, so sure, someone killing a lot of bandits and lions would easy gain their favor. Their vision is short term, wanting someone to solve the immediate problem.
Sure, maybe races that don't engage outside of their own as well as smaller or more specific factions might take more effort. They might not be as moved by general killing of common threats and could cap out some point around dubious, requiring more direct aid toward their specific causes.
But player/civilized races existing in the world would likely not have such requirements for most of their general/access to city granting factions. The civilians/guards/knights etc would more than likely be thrilled with the player who saved some villages ensuring safer roads making their jobs much safer/easier and ensuring secure transport of food and lines of trade along the countryside. I would imagine this would ripple up the chain to higher government to some degree as well, as it makes the leaders jobs easier as well.
Is it an ongoing threat? Or is it a case of; clear all lions and none will return?
Also, how many of these arriving heroes come and go, but don't really stay? There is a lot of passage of player characters, the threat (in most cases) keeps coming back. The players don't stay for too long before taking off and leaving that village to survive on their own or by the mercy of hopefully another traveling hero passing by.
It can depend on what kind of lore /story is being written for that village.
Living in a world with continious fights, war and threat is one thing. But at the same time (at least in our fantasy world) there is a stream of self proclaimed heroes that kill a few (as it's never ending) nearby foes. And temporarily have silenced the most eminent dangers.
To me, it makes more sense that if a hero stays around the village to clear lions not one time or a hoard of them, but is also looking for the lion's den, the reason why lions attack the village and possibly take out a feral evil druid. That person would be one of those heroes that is remembered (at least for a longer period then most) by the villagers.
This is all written very storylike, but just read through it with factions in mind and you'll see how that plays out.
If a random hero stays outside the village for 4 weeks and kills 100 lions, then decides to pop in to town. It's not a given that the villagers will recognise the efforts of the hero, nor will they understand that those were intentional killingsprees by that hero in order to gain faction of that village. At least the connection between opposing foes and the village'faction could be made. And not just by a raw means of datacollecting and mathematical equation.
How far is that hero willing to go to help out those villagers? Is he sticking to the easy and obvious tasks of clearing mobs? Or are they actually investigating the town and interrogating villagers about the circumstances and history of the village and how the enemies formed around them? It could play into how faction is gained.
There is no shame of being a sell sword. You can build up esteem and faction (perhaps not full city faction) as just that. Building a carrier like that doesn't have to be equal to gaining faction with the village. It could allow for certain benefits. The standing of the village might still differ, depending on the ID of specific villagers themselves. The village might think favourably towards those sell swords, but only to a degree entrust them with tasks, information or access to, no matter how many kills they claim to have done for the village.
I would also suggest that if faction was built from killing multiple mobs, then the faction you are working to would only see you as fit for killing more mobs. Why would they trust you with anything important or where intelligence is required. To that faction, you would simply be cannon fodder or a reliable sort to put in the front lines of the next battle.
For me, faction gain above the bare minimum (just to get noticed) has to be done through meaningful actions. Yes an immediate threat can be dealt with by stopping what ever actor is causing an issue, but what caused it in the first place?
If it is protecting a village from goblins, then yes you may be popular with them for a time, but that deed would soon be forgotten when you are not around and the threat has vanished and presumably a loss of faction gained with them.
I would think that the local law enforcement would hear about your acts and might approach you to get to the bottom of why there was an increase in the goblins number and "request" that you go and check that out... there you go, a task to do!
I still think that faction grinding from mob killing is not in keeping with the adventurous journey that PRotF is wanting to deliver to us. Meaningful tasks leading on from one another must be the best way to gain faction.
Barin999 said:Is it an ongoing threat? Or is it a case of; clear all lions and none will return?
Also, how many of these arriving heroes come and go, but don't really stay? There is a lot of passage of player characters, the threat (in most cases) keeps coming back. The players don't stay for too long before taking off and leaving that village to survive on their own or by the mercy of hopefully another traveling hero passing by.
It can depend on what kind of lore /story is being written for that village.
Living in a world with continious fights, war and threat is one thing. But at the same time (at least in our fantasy world) there is a stream of self proclaimed heroes that kill a few (as it's never ending) nearby foes. And temporarily have silenced the most eminent dangers.
To me, it makes more sense that if a hero stays around the village to clear lions not one time or a hoard of them, but is also looking for the lion's den, the reason why lions attack the village and possibly take out a feral evil druid. That person would be one of those heroes that is remembered (at least for a longer period then most) by the villagers.
This is all written very storylike, but just read through it with factions in mind and you'll see how that plays out.
If a random hero stays outside the village for 4 weeks and kills 100 lions, then decides to pop in to town. It's not a given that the villagers will recognise the efforts of the hero, nor will they understand that those were intentional killingsprees by that hero in order to gain faction of that village. At least the connection between opposing foes and the village'faction could be made. And not just by a raw means of datacollecting and mathematical equation.
How far is that hero willing to go to help out those villagers? Is he sticking to the easy and obvious tasks of clearing mobs? Or are they actually investigating the town and interrogating villagers about the circumstances and history of the village and how the enemies formed around them? It could play into how faction is gained.
There is no shame of being a sell sword. You can build up esteem and faction (perhaps not full city faction) as just that. Building a carrier like that doesn't have to be equal to gaining faction with the village. It could allow for certain benefits. The standing of the village might still differ, depending on the ID of specific villagers themselves. The village might think favourably towards those sell swords, but only to a degree entrust them with tasks, information or access to, no matter how many kills they claim to have done for the village.
That is breaking the game down from very much a game and trying to cram that as a reality. The "reality" of this world isn't that it is swarming with adventurers/heroes or that monsters are all respawning within minutes.
Quests and factions are more or less a personal story, ignoring all other players as if they don't exist at all.
chenzeme said:If it is protecting a village from goblins, then yes you may be popular with them for a time, but that deed would soon be forgotten when you are not around and the threat has vanished and presumably a loss of faction gained with them.
What have you done for me lately is a very poor way to manage relationships. /shrug
Vandraad said:The idea is that a faction which has a specific drive or purpose would likely want ever increasing proof of your intentions. Take the Orcs in AP. While they would appreciate you killing Thronefast guards, they really want all of Thronefast wiped out. They have a long term vision for their future So to get your faction above, say, indifferent, could require ever more serious effort..not just killing more guard, but named NPCs in Thronefast. Perhaps even the King.
Your villagers only want to survive, so sure, someone killing a lot of bandits and lions would easy gain their favor. Their vision is short term, wanting someone to solve the immediate problem.
Good point there. It would be good to see important factions be limited in different ways and, yes, to be able to gain perfect faction with a complex society simply by killing one million of their lowliest enemy was always a weird thing in Everquest. There should be limited return from some faction gaining activities.
Much like you can't keep killing level one monsters to get to level 50, you shouldn't be able to keep killing low faction monsters to get to the highest levels of regard.
chenzeme said:If it is protecting a village from goblins, then yes you may be popular with them for a time, but that deed would soon be forgotten when you are not around and the threat has vanished and presumably a loss of faction gained with them.
Iksar: What have you done for me lately is a very poor way to manage relationships. /shrug
Mmm.. that is exactly what faction building is about, I do something for you, you put in a good word for me. Also, why would I remember someone who killed 20 wolves, five years ago? Memories fade. People move out. New people who have never met you move in. Faction should be a fleeting forever evolving thing.
Grinding is the least interesting method of play but it does have its place in terms of time spent being the only true currency players can spend.
That being said I would also like to see factions be much more than just grinding enough enemy mobs.
Increasing a faction should be an active choice that you pursue. The process of going from kill on sight to ally should be a very drawn out process of ever increasing difficulty rather than ever increasing time spent.
The faction journey could be as follows:
1) Make peace. Though working with an intermediary NPC you go on a quest to make peace with a faction that currently has you as KoS. This quest is nearly as hard as becoming a full ally. On completion you are no longer KoS but you gain almost nothing else than access you faction gain quests. Making peace though could set you at war with factions that otherwise tolerate you but have a blood feud with said faction.
2) Gain their trust. Going from “Distrusted” to “Tolerated” is where the common grind should come in. The grind could be kill counters, bounty quests, harvest or crafting turn ins. This takes time and effort but eventually opens up the quests and economy of the new faction.
3) Become accepted. Once you are tolerated by a group you need to start doing more extraordinary things to make a name for yourself. Now the grind quests will require elite mobs, rare bounties, and rare goods.
4) Become a Hero. Pushing all the way to hero faction should require truly heroic deeds. This step may not be as time consuming as making peace but it will be much harder to achieve.
There can be sub levels within these tiers in order to make progression slightly smoother and to tier rewards in a reasonable manor.
For interest sake I think it would be a good idea to limit the number of factions you can be a hero to down to possibly just one faction that your character really belongs to. This is in terms of racial factions, sub groups within the factions can then have their own independent scales that can be worked on but they all abide by the make peace quest.