Trading points Has to be stopped, or submitted to huge diminishing returns. There are entire tram guilds fed faction artifacts from One player. Some people even buy punkte. Of course this wouldnt be an issue if faction gear couldnt be worn unless you were in fellucca (anywhere on siege of course)
And if you have 20 pvp characters that all need points gear, well, seems like you kinda dug your own grave there. If you took the time to make all of those characters than im sure you can take the time to gear them all.
I like alot of the things about the new proposed system, but agree there shouldnt be a bank (you can buy faction items like bandages as it is already, so the necessities are there) and i just dont get how stealthing should get you points. I can just see 20 people all stealthing around for hours just to get points. Maybe certain actions could only get you to a certain rank.
I enjoy playing pvp and factions so I have created many different templates for factions since faction have allowed multiple chars per account to join. End up I have over 20 chars playing in the factions nowadays.
Anyways, my point is that faction afs have given me the freedom to customize my armor and weapon and get on the field immediately without much set up.
The point is that, the current faction af I am wearing probably still cannot compete with some people who spend majority of their time customizing or imbuing their sets. However, faction afs did help me reduce my time. As my goal for setting up my pvp suits probably be different than some other people.
say I only require 40 lmc, 65-70 resists on most part, high dci for mage
and 40lmc, 65-70 resists on most part, 45 hci, 45+ dci, 100di for warrior/archers.
So if in your point of view, you're just trying to tell that I shouldn't have 20 chars playing in factions. You're telling me to just customize the majority of my chars armors/items with other goods and not faction afs..
Then again, what's the point of joining faction if you cannot use those faction afs?
Again, this is reducing participation and not really helping.
What would you do if your faction armor drops in bag after you finish customizing your set on last night? Log off or answer the help call in UOAM with your 5x resist across the board or fc 0 fcr 0 (cuz i am assuming the most easy to drop in bag item would be orna + inquistor)?
Moreover, not everyone are good at pvp. They die and lose pts and may not be getting higher rank. Do you mean that we should kick those people out of factions as well? Because they probably cannot get the faction afs either way and they get stat loss every 20mins after battling for 1 minute.
Fun? I don't think so.
This is why I think not many new people will be participating in factions unless there's some changes that could caught the majority attention. You will just see the same group of people battling over and over until it gets bored again.
To improve factions, new content/events must be made. Barrier to the access of faction afs must totally be eliminated. Kill points to be removed. The idea is to encourage everyone in the community to enjoy the new content with affordable and competitive items grading.
EXAMPLE. If EA tomorrow says, faction changes:-
Monday to Saturday (8:00pm-10:00pm local shard time);
-random event will be occuring in each faction's town.
-You will have chance to get UOSA/doom/stealable rares etc.. artifacts (tangle, etc...) for completing the objectives.
-Random reward are given to highest point participants (1person) (in the winning faction; who have completed the objective).
-The winning participatant points will then be resetted.
-Other participants of the winning factions will have their points stored and stack for future events.
-Participants who can begin the objectives are only limited to faction players.
-The faction who controls the town can place faction guards to their aid.
In this case, do you think people will be more willing to come over and try their luck? Do you think players will be getting more involved in guarding and stealing sigils? Because during the events, they will have the benefit to place guards to aid to acheive their objectives easier.
Moreover, you can't have one bad arse pvper using high end suits, whilst the other newbies are carrying trash to fight. This is just discouraging people in the end.
Even further, having armor dropped in bag is just a very bad idea ever implemented.
A repeat system will always fail the interest of people.