Given the replies about those who play multiple shards, they are saying you have a to play a lot of different shards to even find a fight if they're lucky. And in order to do so, they need the faction equipment readily available.
Right now very little people actually participate in factions. I hear they do still some on LS but from what i understand the majority of "faction" fighting is champ grinds and gate fights. However simple math will tell you that if you condense the pvp populace over a couple shards instead of say 8 for example, there is going to be more fights. But this isn't likely, so we're left trying to appease the carebears so they can keep their faction gear in hopes we ocassionaly see them come to fel once in awhile.
And this patch wasn't my solution. If it had been, you'd have no points and you'd be actually having to participate to get the gear. The decay rate would have been still 10% and I would have left the rank determination alone.
You'd still have those crying about losing the equipment, but they've been crying ever since they mentioned wiping the points.
It's wierd. Like I said, the solution to improve participation in Felucca isn't to restrict people from wearing faction artifacts. This WILL not bring factions participations back alive nor improve pvp in Felucca. Whether you have faction artifacts or not, if people have the will or intention to come over to Felucca, they would. What pvper have in mind is very simple, they just log on, look for fights, either die or kill for the fun of it. That's it. Their intention is not to care about whether your trammie carebear who is using artifacts or not.
What faction artifacts really help is that it could boost the participations rate, subscriptions of extra accounts. Because faction artifacts actually provide a head start to players on customizing their new armour and templates. With not able to maintain faction artifacts, people would just choose to focus only 2-3 chars in their gaming experience. Take me as an example, I had 30 chars before Pub 75, now I am actually only using 1 pvm, 3 pvp chars, total of 4 characters out of the 30. The other 30 characters, I just leave them in ZZZzzZ mode and never log on anymore. I still don't have the time to take out the items from one acc. to another. Once I am done on this, I will be closing down more accounts.
The main point is, everyone nowadays have the similar items on their body. Everyone only got one purpose for their templates:-
Such as:-
an archer would have
45 hci
45 dci+
40 lmc
25 hit point
70/70/70/70/70
mana increase
stamina increase
mana regeneration
a parry mage would have
70 dci
40 lmc
100 lrc
70/70/70/70/70
25 hit point
mana regeneration
mana increase
2/6 casting
Basically, by imbue + reforge, already could make the above basic requirement. What faction artifacts do is just a substitute to accomplish the above with some pieces that have VERY little bonus such as the ornament of magician.
So in my proposal, I say that, everyone should have the opportunities to wear faction artifacts as a FIRST INCENTIVE to get people into the system.
Then we put the SECOND INCENTIVE to get people to play under a fun, long lasting random event systems within factions to involve into pvm, more into pvp, crafting, pvp tutorial etc... which I am not gonna list out the idea right now again.
Honestly, by allowing every single players to wear the faction artifacts, I really couldn't find the unfairness in it. Could anyone lighten me up please?
1. I am wearing faction artifact to bash on a balron, you're wearing the same, you could do the same, where is the unfairness?
2. I am wearing faction artifact to fight you, you're wearing the same to fight me back, where is the unfairness?
3. I am wearing faction artifact (Rank 10) because I am top pvper + top nerd, and I kill you everyday where your pvp skill limited is still going to die to me under (Rank 1) artifact. So I should continue to enjoy and kick your butt until you quit factions one day. This is called fair?
Well, I got nothing to say honestly, and have no idea what the HECK you guys have in mind. Everyone wearing the same craps will have problem.
So you guys in RL whine that, it is not fair because rich is more rich, poor is more poor. What's the difference with your logic and reason that you DISAGREE of people wearing all the same in UO? Ironic more please?