the 3 new factions?

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[Mark_Mythic]

New fiction will be coming out soon to give backstory to the change to 3 factions and what kind of "personality" they will have.

I think we are going to give some kind of legacy title to the players who are in the current factions whenever we finally retire them... something like, "True Britannian Loyalist" or "Reputed Shadowlord Worshiper" or whatever. Just to memorialize the old system.

The old system has some stuff in it that is just broke. Like, for example, the faction silver system. We couldn't put enough stuff to buy in the game to soak up all that silver. We are making some pretty big changes to the way things worked and we felt like it would be easier to swallow if players felt like it was a whole new ball game.

Also, we talked to EMs and some other testers and the general consensus was that we are going to make someone feel singled out if we just hit the D button on one of the factions. If we just make 3 new factions it is more fair.

The good news is... you get to try it today on a TC.

 

[Mark_Mythic]

This would be highly appropriate, thank you for thinking of it. Hopefully you'll approach the actual titles with a tad less glibness than the "or whatever" would suggest.



Personally I think points are way more broken that silver could ever hope to be.

*shrugs*

Points are something you should consider fixing for the new system.



Fiction is good.
----------------

Well I'm glad I joined the soon-to-be-old Faction system when I did, to be part of its waning days. I've been in Factions on 3 or 4 separate occasions throughout my UO career. I missed out on its dawn, but can now honestly say I was there for its twilight.

I can say honestly that I was in on the last gasp of the old system, fought at some of the last big defenses and raids, ran cover for some of the best Faction thieves at some of their last runs, assisted in keeping TB in good hands in one of the last attempts to rig a TB election.

I even wore some Faction Artifacts, though I discovered something interesting....I played a lot better without them. A lot better.

Even if the overhaul is months away from going live, it's clear that this is the twilight of the old system. There may be some action yet to be had, but a limited amount at best.

And I am glad I was there for this.

I'd urge you to not have Faction fighting outside of Felucca. Though new fiction could easily provide a realistic fictional reason for global fighting, I think global fighting would severely limit the appeal of the system. There is, I strongly feel, a necessity to rest and enjoy other aspects of the game environment. One of the reasons Felucca largely failed, even when it was the only game in town, is that it denied folks that opportunity, and forced PvP upon them at virtually every turn.

Even more importantly, though, I would urge you to retain the role of thieves in the new system...From the dialogues that people uncovered it sounds like you are, and this is, I feel, to your credit.

Contrary to what many will tell you, Factions was never actually about the fighting. The fighting was the means to an end. Factions was about controlling the towns and that's what the thieves did.

It has been a privilege to assist Tinkz, Gracie, and the other thieves in that effort, to be part of Factions during its twilight hours.

-Galen's player

Didn't mean to be insensitive, I said, "or whatever," because I've seen a bit of backlash on our working names of the factions and I didn't want the post greeted with "it's a terrible title for a former TB" when I had spent all of 2 seconds considering it.

All I can say is, I really hope you all try what we put on the test center. We would love your feedback. The most helpful feedback is from people who actually try it. Our intent is to improve the system not break it, which is why we are putting it up incrementally on a seperate shard and going to test the heck out of it.

Currently, everything that we haven't explicitly said we have changed is exactly as it is on live shards so the whole thing should feel familiar.

As for the point system being broken, we agree... that is why it was changed in the first phase.

There is no plan to have faction fighting in Trammel. However, there is intent to let a non PVP character be associated with a faction... like a rebel sympathizer or something. It will probably use a variation of the loyalty system we added in Stygian Abyss.