YES! ;)
The ability, to kill (or attack, if you fail to kill it, hehe) any NPC/Mob, even if they are Merchants or Questgivers, is the true way! Like back in EQ, you could engage a fight against any NPC/Mob, you like and also get a faction-hit, if you killed it. Faction is a important thing in a RPG! If you kill NPCs in CityX, you also maybe earn bad factions with friends of the murdered NPCs in CityZ, cause they are in the same Guild or Familyclan. Also Faction seams to me important, for quests and dialogs. If the NPC dont like you, he wont talk to you (or kill you) (we all know, how this work'd, back then, in EQ, hehe).
Also important is, its not becoming trivial, like in WoW (not sure, is there new content, that has faction in it, that is important in any way?) or current EQ2. Faction need to be hard earned! And "hard earned" im not talking about daily-quests or ****, im talking about the dirty, classic way... KILLING! Yah, killing! thousends of thousends... RAAAAW! ;)
Yeah, absolutely man, I really liked that if you accidently attacked a guard, you would get your butt handed to you "usually" but if you killed one or a friendly NPC you would take a huge faction hit that was painful to rectify, that was, at least, the case in VG which was similar to EQs faction system :)
NPC Factions are OK but not really necessary for me. They are more funny when i do not need to grind reputation for them. Reputation grind is boring in most cases and pure timesink.
What i hate are player factions like in WoW horde and alliance. It lowers the perceived player base dramatically because it separates the players.
I like NPC factions but I would like to see a different way to adjust your standing with those factions than has been done previously. I always felt grinding factions was tedious and from an immersion aspect, how does a random elf in Kelethin know I killed 3000 orcs in a small cave in Crushbone? I like the concept of factions and the options it opens for gameplay, I would just like to see some new ways to alter your standing with those factions.
And I totally agree with Larirawiel, splitting the player base up between factions is a terrible gameplay mechanic that unfortunately other games have copied from WoW. It serves no purpose but to divide the player base artificially.
Eh ... theyre fine for PvP I guess, otherwise they dont really bring much to the table for me. Maybe the ones ive experienced so far, which basically peaked at the Steamwheedle vs Bloodsail Pirates, werent very good. Maybe there are better examples out there but I dont see how much that could improve enough to really catch my interest outside of gaining rep for some item. Maybe if its made to have a bigger impact than just being able to buy a hat itd be more fun. Throw in some tough moral decisions, or housing opportunity, mounts, maybe some changes in how a storyline plays out, etc? I dont know. Oh and im not a fan of being able to switch back and forth... kinda unrealistic.
"Hey that guy killed 10000 of our people a couple months ago... but its ok, he killed liked 30000 of theirs over the last few weeks, we can completely trust him with anything!"
Yes, NPC factions I like because they can affect how the player is perceived in the world by the game's inhabitants. My memory is hazy as to which game it was but after raising my faction with the shopkeeper, I was allowed into the backroom to purchase black market items such as lockpicks and poisons. I thought that was cool. Player factions, not so much.
I love factions that have impact on theplayer-NPC world. I’m not necessarily talking about today’s MMOs, where faction = unlocking quests. My first faction experience was with EQ. I started playing just as Kunark opened up, and I played an Iksar, and I had no idea what I was doing. I was playing a completely different game than my RL buddies. Open world travel wasn’t EASY for me. Taking the boat in The Overthere was a game unto itself (I remember getting the smack-down by those damn dark elves while by buddies looked on in amusement). I absolutely loved the fact that I could change my faction with cities, guards, guilds, etc, and I began the long quest to become non-KoS in the cities in which I found myself during my adventures.
It’s not just a feeling of putting in the extra work, or just not doing things the easy way, or, perhaps, the satisfaction of doing things the hard way. It adds a dimension to the game when you need to sneak around guards, when you need to find “secret” entrances, when you need to find a merchant willing to sell to you. I do like factions, I like the dynamic they cause a player within the game, and I like being able to selectively change that faction to a greater or lesser extent – on my own choosing.
Kayo said:"Hey that guy killed 10000 of our people a couple months ago... but its ok, he killed liked 30000 of theirs over the last few weeks, we can completely trust him with anything!"
This actually made me chuckle, irl. That exact thought has gone through my head when flipping factions in the past. Despite that, I think that factions add a level of realism to the game world, so I hope they play a significant role in Pantheon.
On a PVP server I love player factions. Nothign was better then Invading Freeport and smacking down the player base on there home turf for 3 or 4 hours.
For PVE im mixed. On one hand faction based can add a factor of crazy hard content because you wouldnt have all the classes. But then again some raids might not be possible without all the classes that would suck
I like factions, I think they are necessary for the environment to work. I think that if you are trying to go into an ancient racial enemies territory you should be KOS and NPCs should be distrusting of you and the merchants should increase prices/buy items from you at a lower price. I think that does make it necessary to be able to alter faction. I think we have talked about ways it might be better implemented in the past. I personally don't have an issue with the concept of you killed X amount of whatever, maybe it makes more sense if you were turning in a bounty to gain faction but killing something could loose faction but I think a reputation can be a real thing.
As far as the best game to do it, I am not really sure. EQ's faction system was the most memorable to me but that is probably because I played it the longest.
People go on and on about faction grinding, and I guess I never played long enough for it to matter to me. I guess we swapped velious factions one time, but that was a change over time for the whole guild and didn't feel like a chore, it was just something that changed as we changed where we fought. Otherwise factions are fantastic and add a level of depth, danger, and complexity to the world that is really cool. Having to learn the "underground" in a city as an evil race/class provides unique gameplay. Having to keep your head on a swivel as you travel through what would otherwise be a safe zone adds a lot to the gameplay experience. Factions make the world seem more alive and more connected.
Faction as done in EQ was near perfect in my opinion. Why should an NPC help you if he doesnt know you or if you have no reputation with his faction? I was a dark elf rogue and i'm not welcome in Neriak...reason being, me and some friends killed guards in commons for xp and plat. Knowing this, why wouldnt the city put a reward on my head?
Currently in EQ1 there are 263 different factions.
Beyond just the huge quantity of factions was the varied starting points you could have to a faction. Most started off indifferent and many were naturally hostile but you could still come across some faction that, for no reason you could see, just liked you from the start.
What I truly liked about factions in EQ was how broad they were. A given faction might have multiple other factions tied to it on both sides. So altering one could affect multiple others in either direction. What I'd like to see in Pantheon is that next step: the ripple effect. You have Faction A who is liked by Faction B and, unbeknowns to you, Faction C is a really really good friend of Faction B. You start performing actions that, naturally, lowers your standings with A and B but also C. To keep from things getting way out of hand, as the ripples spread out their effect dinishes. After, say, the 4th or so linked faction the effect is minimal.
I consider obtaining high, broad factions like a mini-game.
I like to be able to walk into most cities and interact in the city, even if everyone is apprehensive with few known residents being KOS as most cities are hubs into other areas. Factioning for me, forces me to take in the culture of the area and understand their ways.
It would be a cool mechanic that if you understood the culture, then you could decipher certain quest hints. Like, you walk by a NPC and they always say " see you later, alligator!" and then being in the culture or factioning you learn a phrase " In a while, crocodile!", and the next time you pass that NPC, when you say that phrase and only in response if the NPC says it (maybe the NPC does not say it all the time, maybe only when you cross a walk-bridge or something that you dont know at first), then it triggers an additional response that leads somewhere or opens up information about something.
I liked having bloodsabres faction , because I could take the evil shortcuts through towns if I wanted and it prevented Collier the rogue in the inn in erudin from ganking me every time I stopped by the desk to sell! Seriously I would open the door to the inn and he woud start running down to get me. I was also proud of getting Ogre faction- slim ogre faction, enough to speak to the chef and bartender, I wanted to be able to quest steins. scary, but doable. and it as the only place near that part of the world to merchant stuff tat was not too hard to get slim faciton,too. I also liked getting foreign quarter factio in Dark elf city, for the same reason and it just looked cool.
I like the idea of factions. I specifically played a Goblin Blood Mage in Vanguard because they were KoS everywhere and that made them one of the harder races to play. Of course SoE watered down the faction system after a little while in that game so the choice of race didn't matter so much.
I'd like to see something similar in Pantheon and from reading the race lore it seems that the Skar are going to be KoS everywhere this time around. As long as they allow the right classes that I want to play I'll probably end up playing a Skar.
Having complex factions helps players do things that other players can't and I like that. You could have quests available only to players who put in a lot of factioning work and some of those quests could have some quite interesting rewards. That would be pretty cool.
I like factions. But they should mean something to the player. In other words, there should be a reason(s) for someone to pursue a particular faction (gear, recipes, quests,etc). I especially like it when factions are intertwined. For instance, if you pursue one then there is an opposing faction that goes negative although both offered something to the player. They've had to make a choice about which one meant more to them.
Senseless grinding for faction is abysmal. Gaining faction should mostly be a natural result of playing the game anyway, not doing something you don't enjoy for hours and hours on end.
Kilsin said:Do you like factions? Do you have a favourite faction in an MMORPG and if so, which one and why? :)
Factions are essential in a MMORPG. They are what makes a living and breathing world so big and wonderous, and bigger than ourselves. It enables a true Player verse Environment.
Ohhh... the apprehension One has, when encountering a new species, or being... and if you get to close how will they react...? (priceless)
On a bigger scale... the endless Nations of beings... that either like, dislike, or have not a fart care of who you are... all alive and doing their own thing.
That type of open ended backdrop & societal structure, is something I want to discuss in earnest when we graduate to the new forums. Factions also makes for some fun moments when traveling with an odd-ball group of friends and you enter a town... and 20s later some in your group are scattering because they are not liked..
pro tip: Druid Rings are the best spot for PvE faction hits & giggles... lol.
I love faction in an MMO, especially the 'Old World Faction System of Everquest 1'. It adds a lot of color and depth to the gaming world and if done similar to the way it used to be done in Everquest 1, it can also be almost a game in and of itself. Religion and racial modifiers also add an additional interesting layer. Of course Everquest 1 abandoned their fantastic faction system years ago and replaced it with a so called faction system where NpC factions would basically only move in one direction. The simplification and dumb down of the Everquest faction system, was one of the primary reasons I quit playing.
I totally love layers and layers of different systems within an MMO. Maybe you just spent 4 hours in a dungeon crawl or in camping a rare named spawn and now your group is breaking up and you feel like working on something completly different. Things like resource gathering, crafting, factioning, buying and selling goods, ect... are all very interesting systems that really help to create a gaming world where there is always something fun to work on and a way to gain a competitive advantage.
Finally, for a PvP server, faction also adds another very interesting layer to PvP battles. I remember on the Sullon Zek server, an evil aligned character zoned into Northern Felwithe and attacked me, at which point an NpC nearby, of whom I had good faction with, assisted me, and helped me to defeat the player killer. Was funny, because the NpC was fishing and whacked him for the kill shot with her fishing rod.
So much fun and such great memories!