Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

How do you make faction choices in the games you play?

    • 3852 posts
    September 10, 2021 6:35 AM PDT

    I typically go with a faction that feels more "good" than "evil" unless I am given a strong reason to do otherwise. Where this doesn't apply, as in DAOC where none of the three factions were particularly good or evil, just normal people with competing objectives, I will try for characters in each. If it is an important faction affecting much of the game. If there are 100 zones and each has three factions I will not try for 300 characters.

    • 64 posts
    September 10, 2021 4:03 PM PDT
    I will usually pick the faction the works best rp wise for what I am playing. I don't usually look at perks or rewards because I don't like them to influence my final decision. And once I pick a faction and start working on it I will usually stay loyal unless I find through gameplay/questing that the faction I am working on is doing something my character would absolutely disagree with. My Dwarven enchanter and human dire lord would probably go in completely different directions where factions are concerned. I've even started to think about trying to build up faction with Black Rose Keep with my dire lord....they may be the type of people he could hang with. Not sure how possible it would be but I figure if faction can go down it can go up.
    • 83 posts
    September 15, 2021 2:16 AM PDT

    Nephele said:

    Hi everyone,

    I wanted to throw a topic out there for the community to discuss.  It's been a while since I've done one of these, so standard disclaimers apply:  This is really just something that I am curious about and I would like to see how you all feel about it.  It is *not* going to radically alter or influence any design decisions we are making.  So please just treat this as what it is - a community discussion :)

    When it comes to NPC faction choices in the games you have played, where you have to choose to side with one group of NPCs or another, how do you approach them?  What factors influence your decision?  Once you've chosen a faction to support or oppose, how likely are you to try to change that later and what motivates you to change (if you do)?

    There's no wrong answer here - I'm just interested in how everyone approaches these kinds of choices.  Looking forward to reading all of your responses!

    Excellent initiative, thank you Neph for that :-) I hope my answer won't be interpretated as too cynical though...

    I would say, globally, that my faction decisions in games are purely utilitarian and have nothing to do with lore or epic/symbolic thoughts. Let's face it, MMO players talk a lot about ethics, esthetics and history/lore on the forums but when it comes to gameplay, they base their decisions on less romantic factors - such as access to loot and zones.

    As an example for that, let me use EQ and the Velious expansion. Every player had to choose between Dwarf, Giant or Dragon faction and to side with the corresponding city : Thurgadin, Kael Drakkel or Skyshrine.

    When Velious opened, I was in a small casual guild which was not able to raid high-level content. Therefore I choosed to side with Dwarfs because the quest armor pieces (the access to quest armor was directly tied to the faction you opted for) were dropping in Kael's arena which could be done with one or two groups. Of course, the dwarf armor (the rewards were given in Thurgadin) was the lower tier armor from the three factions.

    During Velious, I got a transfer to the european AB server and joined a larger guild who was able to raid Hall of tests in Temple of Veeshan. I changed my faction to dragon faction to get access to Skyshrine quest armor.

    Later on, that guild started to raid North Temple of Veeshan which ruined dragon faction but we didn't care anymore because loot was way better than Skyshrine quest armor...

    And so on...

    I am aware the EQ example is only an example but in my opinion it reveals the player's psychology. It is extremely rare to base gameplay decisions such as faction choices on symbolic elements. The roleplaying aspect of MMORPGs vanishes as soon practical things like access and loot have to been dealt with.

    Just my 2 cp, feel free to disagree of course.

    • 21 posts
    September 20, 2021 5:46 PM PDT

    Racial Attributes = Class

    • 52 posts
    September 21, 2021 11:35 AM PDT

    For me, it has to do with the back story of the faction, in Wow I started as Alliance and a dwarf.  I just like the environment, and the race, but later switched to horde, I like the over all story and the faction leaders and their individual stories better.

    • 7 posts
    September 22, 2021 5:49 PM PDT

    Nephele said:

    Hi everyone,

    I wanted to throw a topic out there for the community to discuss.  It's been a while since I've done one of these, so standard disclaimers apply:  This is really just something that I am curious about and I would like to see how you all feel about it.  It is *not* going to radically alter or influence any design decisions we are making.  So please just treat this as what it is - a community discussion :)

    When it comes to NPC faction choices in the games you have played, where you have to choose to side with one group of NPCs or another, how do you approach them?  What factors influence your decision?  Once you've chosen a faction to support or oppose, how likely are you to try to change that later and what motivates you to change (if you do)?

    There's no wrong answer here - I'm just interested in how everyone approaches these kinds of choices.  Looking forward to reading all of your responses!

    The lore of the faction, items they provide (and the look of them) and how they fit into the persona of my character. As someone who is drawn to lore and history I tend to gravitate towards factions that offer that as their backstory. 

    I would only change factions if it fit what was going on with my character in game at the time, not to be part of the flavor of the month.

    • 32 posts
    September 25, 2021 12:06 AM PDT

    If it's just mid game content, min-maxing for my wife and I. If it's end game, min-maxing for whatever guild I'm in. If it just flavor and doesn't matter, I will align with whatever my wife likes.