Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Crafter's Roundtable: Crafting and Factions

    • 1785 posts
    August 28, 2018 8:44 AM PDT

    Hi everyone! It's time for a new Crafter's Roundtable discussion! Each week, the staff of Pantheon Crafters posts a topic about crafting and Pantheon that we think you might have an opinion on. Make sure you take time out to make your voice heard.

    This week, let's talk about factions - those different sub-groups of NPCs that you might encounter while you're out in the game world. Historically, factions have been an adventuring thing for the most part. Kill the ogres and the humans like you. Slaughter the humans and the ogres like you. A few games had crafting-specific factions, but they weren't the same ones as the adventuring factions.

    When it comes to crafting and factions, what should Pantheon do? Should crafters be able to raise and lower faction standing through crafting? Should factions offer unique recipes or quests to crafters?

    Let us know what you think!  And don't forget to check out the discussion thread on Pantheon Crafters as well.

    • 16 posts
    August 28, 2018 10:54 AM PDT

    I really like the idea of racial recipes, so having an option to raise your faction with opposing races through crafting to access their recipes would be really cool.  It would probably be a huge time/resource sink, but for some it would be something else to pursue / be proud of once accomplished.

    I believe that the idea of achievements or an achievement system has been raised during some of the streams and the team isn't against it, so one "epic" achievement might be gaining access to all the racial recipes in your chosen profession.  

    One big problem with this might be the extensive work required by the Art / Crafting team(s) to fill out such a massive amount of item/recipe variations.  But I think I remember them talking about how the Lore and Art teams were working together on things like iconography and architecture, so maybe if they're doing some of this type of work already, it isn't as big of an ask as it might otherwise be.  

    Either way, I like the idea of crafting factions and faction recipes and hope we see some sort of iteration, if not by launch maybe shortly thereafter.

    • 57 posts
    August 28, 2018 10:54 AM PDT

    I like the quest approach. When you're trying to level up in a particular craft you do not need 100 leather bracers, iron daggers, etc. those get taken to a merchant and sold. By doing quests you can get a little experience, dump off those extra items you do not need, and recoup some of the monies you spent on materials. It would follow that if you're helping to supply the Thronefast militia by giving them an endless supply of bracers your human faction should increase while rival factions decrease. I like the idea that your faction could dictate how the armor you craft appears but its also just one more complexity to the game that I wish was released yesterday (Later update? That'd be cool). It will be interesting to see what VR has up their [sleeves]. 

    • 31 posts
    August 28, 2018 12:23 PM PDT

      Honeslty the best example of this question I can draw from my past would be Daggerfall.  Each of the tradeskills had a guild (we could say this is equal to faction standing).  To get access to more advanced devices to do certain recipies was completely based on guild standing.  Guild standing was advanced by completing masters quests, crafting items on request and providing items to other guild members in the world.  This was really really tedious but yielded in some proud moments.  The one that I most readily recall was the summoners guild.  This advancement required crafting soul stones, quests threwout the world.  The end result was access to their summoning chamber.  In this chamber you were actually required to have several conditions meet.  Soul stone of proper quality, Exact time of time, day, month, year to summon souls. 

      OMG the one sucked.. I went to summon chamber summoned a spirit who gave me a quest to get the right to capture him.  Needless to say after 6 months in game time... I was excited to go back and summon him again with items in hand.  He reappeared ask me to give him the items I collected for him.  He then laughed and said "you would think I would let the likes of you command me? You are a fool" and disappeared.  BOOOOO. Sorry got side tracked but example of how guild faction controlled quest line.

      Everquest did impliment some faction based quests.  Notably the fish roll quests for halflings.  Basically was just crafting fish rolls aquired threw fishing and baking.  Turn in resulted in faction improvement and a very small amount of experience.

      I do believe they can add faction oriented crafting if crafting table is not automatic.  In some games as you advanced in crafting.. simply advancing it opened more recipies in crafting screen.  If this was done in a manner were base crafting was added but race specific or faction specific crafting yeilded a recipie to learn.  I have seen this done as well where crafting recipies were added by completing the crafted item once to permentaly add to table.  They also further enhanced this idea by locating specific crafting unique devices where race, affiliation were required to access it.  These specific devices were the only means to access the aquired recipie.

    • 2419 posts
    September 4, 2018 11:04 AM PDT

    Nephele said:

    When it comes to crafting and factions, what should Pantheon do? Should crafters be able to raise and lower faction standing through crafting? Should factions offer unique recipes or quests to crafters?

    While I would disagree with crafting able to modify the full spread of factions of a given city (think ThroneFast Guard, ThroneFast Merchants, etc), what I would instead support would necessitate having black markets in the various towns and cities where races KOS to the host city could still access some vendors/merchants but at higher prices.  You could start at a faction level where these black market merchants wouldn't attack you, but wouldn't necessarily sell to you either.  There would be, however, at least one broker who would.  By doing work for that broker your standings with the black market merchants would increase.  When you are sufficiently well liked to buy from them, prices would be high, much higher than if you were not KOS to the host city.  But as your standing increases those prices would come down.

    I think that the only way you should be able to build faction so that the guards would not kill you is through hunting NPCs who are in opposition to those guard factions.

    • 18 posts
    September 5, 2018 7:37 AM PDT

    I enjoyed how vanguard did crafting in just about every aspect.  The factions were one of those aspects.  Having continental recipes that required you to have enough faction with that continent by doing crafting and eventually with enough faction allowing you to do the quest to learn that particular style of crafting was very immersive and great content

    • 29 posts
    November 3, 2018 7:03 PM PDT

         Crafting Factions are a great way to add more depth and specialization to crafting and Pantheon as a whole. Factions will add new quests, storyline, special recipes, and further specialization to professions. For example, a daily quest could be to gather a certain amount of wood for your faction located within an area that has a lot of trees. Over time these quests will grant you a better standing with said faction. With good standing, the faction merchants would provide special recipes for woodworking and a discounted price. these decisions will make the player choose wisely as to which faction they want to commit their time too. It is also important that players have access to other factions recipes using a system that allows you to gain standing with multiple, but not all factions. The key here is to not have the ability to gain all factions; however, if you have the correct combination of reputation, one could have the ability to unlock specialized recipes.