They will display most of the factions to you, but as they said there may be hidden ones being moved. If you turn to the internet to make sure you do everything perfectly that is on you.
There will always be the risk of not knowing who else you are offending even when you are doing the right thing.
Factions should be messy and hard if not impossible to be liked by everyone. In eve if you didnt work at it you would become KIA to two of the 4 main factions by just doing missions.
Edit: bullet points are now real bullet points... in the text box at least...
Nuuk said:will it be safe to level with a group not knowing how killing mobs factions will effect your class/race/quest?
The Short Answer: NO!!! Not Safe. Until you know exactly what NPCs and their factions you're killing.
In EQ(original), one kill of the wrong NPC could ruin your faction (almost) permanantly. So the initial answer is NO it is not safe, But it's complicated.
The season for this, and you can see it in some of the most recent streams ( Dire Load Preview https://youtu.be/cxTAqcQ2K3Y?t=1278 ) .
The faction hits Perkins character takes as he kills Gadai are shown in the left text panel. The names (and values). At game release those values will be hidden. So you will have no idea how much negative(or positive) value of a faction hit you will get.
From the video, and this image, you can see the negative faction loss is much greater than the positive. So when you kill stuff, you go negative much faster than you go positive.
In the real game, those values will be hidden, so as in EQ, one kill could send you 1000's of faction points negative. Sometimes with no way to recover that faction and get back to a non-hated status.
But even a single (-1) faction point could be enough to take you from indifferent to hated towards a faction. Thus unable to travel in their lands without attack, use their vendors, do their quests and so forth.
In a perfect system, there might always be ways to "fix" faction, but it could be a dangerous gamble to assume so.
vjek said: I'm not sure punishing the paying customers for ignorance, by design, is the best path forward..
Some decisions made you will not see the consequences of it for some time. It's all part of learning the char's and game. You will make bad decisions which will affect your game play, but you need to take it on the chin and change what you want to do. Killing some mobs at level 10 might affect where you can go at level 50. You won't know until later on in the adventure. I remeber making a warrior and for a deity I took agnostic, then several years later in expansions there was armor related to deities. I couldn't wear any of it.
like if you piss off someone at school and in the future they end up being your boss and they hold a grudge.
You just have to adapt.
If nothing you did affected the story line, it would be a very boring game.
How do you adapt to something you can't change or fix until after you act in ignorance?
Hiding faction changes from paying customers is, by design, simply enabling the possibility of punishing them for their ignorance.
It's poor design followed by poor implementation, and your example from EQ1 only reinforces the idea.
There's a really good reason EQ1 stopped hiding faction changes. People got tired of being punished for ignorance.
It's one thing to say "educate yourself" but when that's, again, not possible by design, you're just giving people another reason to walk away, play less, or in some other way, have a negative interaction with the game.
Is the issue here the faction message itself (gets worse, gets better) or the inclusion/exclusion of the quantity of change (+5, -10)? EQ1 only hid the number, but not the broader message. But what good is the number if you don't know the scale from what that number is added or subtracted? Without any context, -20 could be huge, or could be very inconsequential. -20 on a scale of -100 (KOS) to +100 (Ally) is big, but if that scale is -1000 to +1000? Or even more? I think EQ1 bottomed out at -3500.
I'm not wanting to see the actual value of the faction increase/decrease. The vagueness of just the message is fine with me, but frankly I care little about faction as I'm willing to kill anything if I even think I could/would benefit from it.
Vandraad said:Is the issue here the faction message itself (gets worse, gets better) or the inclusion/exclusion of the quantity of change (+5, -10)? EQ1 only hid the number, but not the broader message. But what good is the number if you don't know the scale from what that number is added or subtracted? Without any context, -20 could be huge, or could be very inconsequential. -20 on a scale of -100 (KOS) to +100 (Ally) is big, but if that scale is -1000 to +1000? Or even more? I think EQ1 bottomed out at -3500.
I'm not wanting to see the actual value of the faction increase/decrease. The vagueness of just the message is fine with me, but frankly I care little about faction as I'm willing to kill anything if I even think I could/would benefit from it.
I recall quite clearly in EQ, some players became apoplectic over the fact they could not fix certain faction problems. Even becoming enraged and some may have quit after exhausting endless attempts at finding faction 'fixes'.
Some of it was specific to the well known Dwarf vs. Dragon faction war. Once you made a kill, your path was set and there was no fixing it.
Once guy I recall clearly had joined some PUG and they were getting "Great XP" killing some dwarves. Who knows how many he killed with the group, or how negative his faction went towards the Dwarves. I had heard from others that a single kill could do it.
Unfortunately for this guy, he had not considered faction when joining that PUG, and the dwarf vs. dragon content was so new many didn't understand it fully. His guild apparently decided to join with the Dwarves side in this "epic" war, which became a disaster for him as it was major end-game guild content at the time. He could not, no matter what he tried to do "fix" his faction. I think he left his guild eventually, or made a new character.
Did SoE ever fix it? I have no idea.
I doubt VR makes the same design error that ruined that guys guild career. But it remains a well-earned lesson for many, "Beware The Faction Hit!"
A faction system is pretty exciting and fun, if its done correctly. Overextended, grouping might become pretty complicated since everybody has to check, if the faction losses match their friendship plans :) However, done right it can open up paths for the player that will be worth the effort.
The difficult thing for me in EQ was, to find out which faction hit belongs to which mobs/NPCs. Without that, it is tough to consider, if faction losses will really be an issue.
The possibility that my character could be permanently prevented from participating in some content based on being on a team that killed one mob is absurd, especially when we won't necessarily know the consequences of our action (or even what faction the npc is) until after it's killed. That would create a need to only ever join teams that you knew and trusted, making many people much more reluctant to join PUGs, and thus harming the social aspect of the game. It would also mean that any time we fight something new, we would want to alt+tab to the Pantheon Wiki and read up on the mob's faction first (which is immersion-breaking and only serves to discourage exploration).
I would like to see faction being complicated and messy, but I don't want it to be unfixable. I'm not interested in seeing the exact values either, though perhaps some description of the rough level of faction change would be helpful.
"Your standing with Thronefast Military has slightly improved."
"Your standing with the Gadai Bandits has gotten much worse!" (please only use exclamation points for when the change is big https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSKn8RlD7Is).
vjek said: I'm not sure punishing the paying customers for ignorance, by design, is the best path forward..
Same thing happens in real life. You do a good deed and stop a terrible crime but it turns out that was the the chief of police's nephew. Sure the victim may be happy, but you unintentionally caused a massive problem for yourself.
So go stop those bandits and accidentally piss off their secret noble backer who uses them to shift the markets to his favor.
Counterfleche said:The possibility that my character could be permanently prevented from participating in some content based on being on a team that killed one mob is absurd, especially when we won't necessarily know the consequences of our action (or even what faction the npc is) until after it's killed. ... I would like to see faction being complicated and messy, but I don't want it to be unfixable. ...Agreed. Good points, Counterfleche.
Counterfleche said:That would create a need to only ever join teams that you knew and trusted, making many people much more reluctant to join PUGs, and thus harming the social aspect of the game.
I don't think that's a factor in why anyone wouldn't join a PUG. I think it has more to do with 95% of PUGs being trash.
As far the Faction system, the onus should be on the player to be informed of what they're killing, but it should also be expected that players (either individually or collectively as a group) will slip up, so I do agree with you that there should be some mechanism for "repairing" one's faction standing... whether it's just a grind, or some kind of turn-in or something.
vjek said: I'm not sure punishing the paying customers for ignorance, by design, is the best path forward..
...says the company that creates games to please everyone that no one really likes.
When you go to WalMart you are a paying customer but you still can only buy what they have on the shelf. If you don't like the selection, shop elsewhere.
This also gets into the argument of someone being a "paying customer" but having to put in work to unlock zones, or levels, or raids, or whatever. If you say because someone pays they automatically get everything off the bat with no downsides - that to me is a boring game that people would burn through in a month and move on.
Part of what makes a game a place you stay for years is that there is always something new to discover. Maybe you don't know what those factions do but at least it gives you something to find out about your character. You can always make new characters and start over. I don't understand the obsession some people have that they can only play character forever and that never start over. If you can pick up Mario Bros... and start over from world 1-1 each time, you have fun playing the game, what's the difference in an MMO if you have to start over once in a while?
zewtastic said:Vandraad said:Is the issue here the faction message itself (gets worse, gets better) or the inclusion/exclusion of the quantity of change (+5, -10)? EQ1 only hid the number, but not the broader message. But what good is the number if you don't know the scale from what that number is added or subtracted? Without any context, -20 could be huge, or could be very inconsequential. -20 on a scale of -100 (KOS) to +100 (Ally) is big, but if that scale is -1000 to +1000? Or even more? I think EQ1 bottomed out at -3500.
I'm not wanting to see the actual value of the faction increase/decrease. The vagueness of just the message is fine with me, but frankly I care little about faction as I'm willing to kill anything if I even think I could/would benefit from it.
I recall quite clearly in EQ, some players became apoplectic over the fact they could not fix certain faction problems. Even becoming enraged and some may have quit after exhausting endless attempts at finding faction 'fixes'.
Some of it was specific to the well known Dwarf vs. Dragon faction war. Once you made a kill, your path was set and there was no fixing it.
Did SoE ever fix it? I have no idea.
As a person who switched from Dwarf to Dragon to Giant and back to Dwarf during my times in Velious I can say that you could, with effort, fix any of the 3 main Velious factions.
I'm a supporter of every faction being adjustable by player action, provided an appropriate amount of effort is required. Given that factions will be this complex web of interconnectedness where a single action gives increases to one or more factions and decreases to one or more simultaneously, you may be able to fix some factions but ruin others in the process. You should not be able to be friendly with everyone. Someone will always not like you for the things you've done.
I would like to see specific opportunities available to raise a given faction with full fore knowledge that you will permanently ruin a different specific faction. Lets take the Orcs that we've seen in Avender's Pass. Yes, they hate everyone, especially the humans in Thronefast. What would be good would be a couple of Orc NPCs out in AP who aren't KOS and give you specific, ever increasingly difficult, tasks that when completed will raise your Orcs of Avender's Pass faction while significantly lowering your Thronefast factions. Eventually you will be friendly to the Orcs (or at least indifferent) and permanently KOS to Thronefast. The rewards for doing so should be commensurate with the difficulty of the process and the fact that you're now permanantly KOS to Thronefast.
At a minimum, through investigations into lore and the histories of the creatures and beings in Thronefast you should be able to learn, ahead of time, about most of the known factions in Terminus and the relationships between them. Something for Keeper's to do perhaps? Or just asking various NPCs in the cities of the world?
eunichron said:Counterfleche said:That would create a need to only ever join teams that you knew and trusted, making many people much more reluctant to join PUGs, and thus harming the social aspect of the game.I don't think that's a factor in why anyone wouldn't join a PUG. I think it has more to do with 95% of PUGs being trash.
As far the Faction system, the onus should be on the player to be informed of what they're killing, but it should also be expected that players (either individually or collectively as a group) will slip up, so I do agree with you that there should be some mechanism for "repairing" one's faction standing... whether it's just a grind, or some kind of turn-in or something.
It's a bad habit and dishonest to make up fake %'s just to fit your narrative.
In EQ grouping with PUGs was pretty common. And no, PUGs were not all trash, not even close to that made up %, and contrarily many could be very good.
And in many PUGs you might find out about guilds you were interested in, or tell others about your guild. Many PUGs were recruiting sessions.
It just came down to knowing the players in the world. Something you could not do as well on MMOs with instancing and non-persistent worlds.
In original EQ everyone came to know just everyone else. People reputations and skills led to regular grouping and sometimes new guilds. Or in some cases shunning.
You would even regularly seek out players you had good experiences with when looking for a PUG (even if they were in an opposing guild), as usually they would be around the same level, or maybe a complementary class.
zewtastic said:eunichron said:Counterfleche said:That would create a need to only ever join teams that you knew and trusted, making many people much more reluctant to join PUGs, and thus harming the social aspect of the game.I don't think that's a factor in why anyone wouldn't join a PUG. I think it has more to do with 95% of PUGs being trash.
As far the Faction system, the onus should be on the player to be informed of what they're killing, but it should also be expected that players (either individually or collectively as a group) will slip up, so I do agree with you that there should be some mechanism for "repairing" one's faction standing... whether it's just a grind, or some kind of turn-in or something.
Lots of text defending PUGs.
If 95% of PUGs are trash, and PUGs in EQ were generally successful, then that says more about the difficulty of EQ than it does about PUGs.
Besides, I find that 95% of players defending PUGs are themselves trash, and not able to get into a half-decent guild for one reason or another.
I agree with most of the posts indicating that a negative hit should have a general notice with a clue if you passed a threshold. Otherwise the way to tell was to find a person or monster on that faction and consider them from afar to see what message you got. If you were indifferent and killed a bunch and then went to dubious, you knew you had to hold back or had some room before it was completely trashed and could govern yourself accordingly.
I would like to see tight-rope faction, where opposing faction hits are made very clear (maybe a rock/paper/scissors logic? or the 3 cannibals and 3 missionaries and a boat puzzle? with the boat being the third faction?) and you have to keep a balance in order to proceed.
I'm also not a big fan of hidden faction except where it makes intuitive sense. Like killing Orcs affected indigo brotherhood, I didn't know that was a small part of Dark elf faction and that wasn't intuitive except that they are both blue skinned.
Counterfleche said: "The possibility that my character could be permanently prevented from participating in some content based on being on a team that killed one mob is absurd, especially when we won't necessarily know the consequences of our action (or even what faction the npc is) until after it's killed."
Vandraad said: "I'm a supporter of every faction being adjustable by player action, provided an appropriate amount of effort is required."
If I remember correctly, in Vanilla EQ1 any Faction that had any sort of Quest giver or a tie to content in some way had a way to 'Raise' your faction. But there were a few Factions that could only ever go down, for example: Death Fist Orcs had no way to increase your Faction with them. But this faction and others that similarly could only get Worse and not Better were never Factions that locked you out of content. The only benifit to having a higher Faction with them is the ability to move through their areas without getting attacked.
'Why would a Faction exist if it can only ever go down?' you may ask. Some of these exist because they are 'opposing' factions to groups that you may need to raise. These Deathfist Orcs were the direct opposition to Ashen Order (Freeport Monk guild) and Commons Residents and were the only NPCs you could kill that would 'Raise' your faction with those groups. Yet there were still some factions that, like I previously stated, only really mattered if you wanted to move past them without getting attacked. For example 'Dervish Cutthroats' were a Faction that could not be raised and didn't actually have any 'opposing' faction that would go up when you killed them. So if you happend to be Non-KOS to them when you first start out your character, the only reason to avoid killing them is if you really need to go sit at one of their campfires and not get attacked.
'What about Merchants?' you might ask. In Solusek's Eye (SolA) zone lived the Goblins of Fire Peak faction and this indeed was a Faction that could only go Down and had no way for you to increase it. But they had a Goblin Merchant who lived there who you could buy and sell from if your Faction was at a non-hostile level. But if you had been killing all these Goblins on your way down, you would be destroying your Faction and thus 'Why a Merchant if nobody is going to be Non-Hostile?'. The truth was that this Goblin Merchant was actually on the 'Grobb Merchants' faction which was the Troll home city Merchants. Thus anyone who was able to buy and sell from Grobb city Troll merchants would happily be welcomed by this Goblin in Solusek's Eye and given the great deals he was hocking his wares for. 'Grobb Merchants' was a Faction that you could raise and so if you wanted to happily buy/sell from this Goblin Merchant you could work the system and Gain faction with this Merchants group and one day become non-hostile. (** yes I do know about the sneak trick but this is a bypass and not really tied to an actual Faction level)
As far as I know, any NPC that acted as a Banker was non-KoS and could be used by any player no matter their Faction with the group that Banker was tied too. You might need to wade through the blood of the Bankers friends to get close to him though.
Vandraad said: "Given that factions will be this complex web of interconnectedness where a single action gives increases to one or more factions and decreases to one or more simultaneously, you may be able to fix some factions but ruin others in the process"
This is how I expect Pantheon will be too. If there is a Faction that you may need to have for some reason, then I expect there will some way to Raise that faction. Yet like Vandraad says, this will likely mean you may need to lose an opposing Faction in the process. Some Factions may be mutually exclusive in that you cannot be Liked by both groups at the same time. Although there may be some really obscure ways that could Raise factions without losing an opposing faction in the process.
When the Iksar race was introduced in EQ1 they started out KoS with lots of groups that they needed to raise for various major questlines and so there was some very deep research into ways they could raise their factions with those groups while not losing factions with other groups so they didn't need to Fix them again later. Sometimes it couldn't be done, but when you are dealing with a tedious task, people will often find a way to make it less tedious and some of those Factions did have quests that Raised factions without Lowering any others, so people eventually found them.
Vandraad said "Eventually you will be friendly to the Orcs (or at least indifferent) and permanently KOS to Thronefast. The rewards for doing so should be commensurate with the difficulty of the process and the fact that you're now permanantly KOS to Thronefast."
One point... your entire example was to explain that Factions are 'Fixable' but in your example you then suggest "permanently KOS" which is exactly the opposite of your point. In your example, you could raise your Faction with the Orcs while at the same time Losing Faction with Thronefast humans and thus becoming KOS. But if you ever change your mind, you should be able to reverse the process to regain Faction with Thronefast while at the same time Losing the faction with those Orcs you were once admired by. Nothing should be 'permanent' in your example.
In the end, we will need to wait and see what VR's vision is for Factions and if they want some Faction decisions to be permanent. They do say that they want your decisions to matter, but do they want some of those decisions to be permanent? I personally think (and hope) that they will choose to go with a non-permanent system where you can always go back and forth between factions, even if it may require lots of effort and have a give and take where you may lose in order to gain.
It's only safe when you're educating yourself about the area you're going to and the mobs you're going to kill.
I think, on Terminus, you'll need to take your current factions,race/class/quest into consideration when you go out to kill mobs. You also need to take into consideration how the opponents are connected in the world.
It's doubtfull that there are factions out there that have no way to get back on their good or bad side. Some might just be easier to influence than others.
Chosing who to join and where to go, is hopefully an intentional choice and a planned action by yourself and the rest of the group.
You or an other groupmember might be aware of the lore or other story behind your opponents or the area where you're going. And this could already aid you in the decision of; do we want to kill these or not?
In the case no one is aware of who their opponent is or what they stand for, it's part of willing to take that chance and find out the consequences. No one is forcing you to kill mobs without finding out more about your opponents prior to combat. The information provided by the game relating to factions, could be provided naturally through tales, npc's, books, banners but also by using environment and by how opponents' appearance/performance is perceived by a player. All this can inform you if this opponent is altering A faction if any. (not forgetting the /consider option, which might be in game).
In many games, we have our brains turned off and just tag and kill. If we however choose to investigate and adjust our character's behaviour, these unknown faction changes, are less hazardous then we expect it to.
Pantheon is not a game where you can just go out and kill mobs as you come across them. At least I hope so. Factions will matter, there will be ways to readjust your standings but that might take different methods and time. Again that's hoping. But it seems within reason.
How big that faction hit is after killing a foe, is a different matter altogether. But as I read it, not the initial question of the OP. Usually, a group doesn't stop killing mobs of the same type after defeating 1 mob. So purely based on that, the hitsize, doesn't really matter. It's the way back that matters. Like Vandraad mentioned, it's about perspective, how big is -20? How many mobs do I need to kill to get +20, how abundant are they and what are the requirements to encounter them?
A -1 / +1 mob ratio would be odd. So I'm hoping that would be rarely the case. So in the scenario where killing a mob results in an off balance faction change. How much would it influence the immediate actions of your group? Personally, I wouldn't like to see the numbers as it's just a matter of replacing the mob with a charactersize number. People will figure out the math behind it easy enough. In that sense there is no real need for an numeric indicator. Your character's faction window could already inform you if anything changes after killing 1 or several of a type of mob. That should already be enough for a person to understand if they want to continue killing the mobs or not.
If the factions remain hidden, eventhough mobs that influence that faction are being killed (or rescued). Do you really need numbers in the game at this stage, to tell you if you're doing something good or bad? It's back to the first point about learning your place in the world, understanding your environment and getting to know your foe. Or acting on your perceived 'hunch' about the type of mob your facing. If your uninformed group has slain wood elves for 2 hours. Do you really need numbers to inform you that you might have bad standings with wood elves or factions that appear to align themselves with woodelves? Would you be surprised to encounter a Treant faction in your next session, that has a bad faction towards you based on their relation with their cohabitants the wood elves, eventhough you haven't killed any Treants yourself? And would you be lost and out of ideas on how to gain faction with them, if you choose to later on in the game?
I welcome the fact that you should be aware that taking mobs may affect your game. We all know it from the outset, so if in doubt, dont kill it until you know better. So far, I havent seen anything that suggests that VR are going to put in non-fixable factions, so just because other games have, doesnt mean ProtF will.
You just (at this point) need to be aware that killing a mob will most probably affect multiple factions, both to your benefit and detriment. The whole ethos has been to adventure and discovery; this is a tool that is being employed from the outset to make players think first. If your grinding xp whole-heatedly, without thought, you should not expect to complain about losing faction after the fact. Faction messages will be shown, take notice of them.
I welcome it.