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There are only two major flaws in my mind.
1.) The point system is totally ****ed up. You should not be able to see-saw it yourself with a couple accounts and get as many points as you want.
2.) There is no reason to own towns. They need to create an incentive to do so, otherwise the sigs will continue to go ignored by 95% of the player base.
1.) hmm... I see, some of the shard do have ridiculous amounts of points. Seems like I'm lucky that I play on a shard with "normal" amounts of points:
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2.) Again, no problem on Drachenfels - sigels are pretty contested. Sometimes it's days with the sigels getting stolen back and forth before someone manages to defend them for 10h. But that's probably because 10 points really go a far way of getting to rank 10.
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2.) Again, no problem on Drachenfels - sigels are pretty contested. Sometimes it's days with the sigels getting stolen back and forth before someone manages to defend them for 10h. But that's probably because 10 points really go a far way of getting to rank 10.
V
Vaelix
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1. Remove all the Free point generating bull#$%@. (When you have a system that basically creates free points out of nothing, OBVIOUSLY, its going to run into the millions eventually.. [ "Free Points" being their Double/Tripple system that they have/had in place | 10 points = 20 Points via "Hero/Evil Doubling" when killing someone of opposite alignment faction basically ])
2. Allow the Faction that controls the towns sigil the option to remove/disable guard zones for that town/moongate.
(I'd do Sigs if it meant I could remove the guardzone from Yew/Moongate, plus this would also be a slightly "Stealth Buff" to reds, allowing them the potential to fight in/around towns again and safely get xheals when needed)
All too often I fight a shard specific blue zerg who inevitably run up to the abbey clearing to make a stand so we can't cross heal.
I was part of the group that tested this and signed off on the changes. To this day I still do not remember ever hearing anything about more points being rewarded depending on location.
What we whole-heartedly signed off on was allowing points to be generated in matters not combat related (stealing, lots asked for healers in combat to have the ability to earn a point on the kill) So as far as I know while there were obviously changes made to cause it to work this way, no one but a dev ever thought it would be a good idea. We also signed off on the introduction of artifacts for factions to draw more people into the system. I think this was quite effective, but I don't know if it influenced the number of players willing to enter into PvP in the game, or simply made it necessary for those interested in PvP to faction. (actually it isn't necessary anymore what with imbuing, but people in general are resistant to change)
The group also actively wanted a reason for crafters to be included in the system once more. Some folks really want to play factions every time they log in. I have found that with me it is not the case. The design changes proposed, last year about this time, I think, were met with heavy heavy objection, some with very good reason, and not much willingness for discussion until light bulbs could go on in everyones head so we could all be on the same page.
Group battles are a lot of fun, and guarding sigils in corruption is still one of the best ways I know to make that happen. On Origin about this time last year we had very large groups of CoM and SL defending and raiding for that purpose. But in the end, the blues in CoM burned out long before the more diehard factioneers of old would have, largely for the reason that there was no purpose towards losing all your points, rep, gear. Not complaining, just stating. Actually, it was about the most fun I've had in the game in the past six years or so, and I was stuck playing a necro weaver mage that had shoddy gear.
The only thing I can say to the OP of any merit, if you are liking playing factions on Origin as of right now, it isn't really factions that you like. Its the gear or something else. Cause nothing is happening there.
I do like PvP, but have never been a PK. Nor do I use any hacks or scripts, so I contribute heavily to my own tendency to fail. I was hoping that arena fighting would give me some way to transition back.
I have to say, I'm fairly happy with factions at the moment, because we've all built our own game out of it, I.E, defending/raiding champ spawns with faction equipment,
Lynk is right in that the point system is broken, but that's a 5 second fix. Also you can cross heal other factioners, that's a 3 second fix.
There's not really any need for sigs, ok you get a horse: it bonds, it dies, you res it. No need to ever defend a faction base, even if there was a point, it's impossible with the way the stealthers are overpowered now.
If i had 50 people defending, i seriously doubt i could prevent 1 lone stealther from stealing sigils. Factions are nice and busy thanks to our own little game we've created.
Lynk is right in that the point system is broken, but that's a 5 second fix. Also you can cross heal other factioners, that's a 3 second fix.
There's not really any need for sigs, ok you get a horse: it bonds, it dies, you res it. No need to ever defend a faction base, even if there was a point, it's impossible with the way the stealthers are overpowered now.
If i had 50 people defending, i seriously doubt i could prevent 1 lone stealther from stealing sigils. Factions are nice and busy thanks to our own little game we've created.
Right?! but why faction? Couldn't this be chaos/order or something much less involved?
I don't want my guild to be on the same team as anyone, i like having 4 factions. The more the better, i like the faction arties, i like the faction war horses, all they have to change is a couple of minor bug fixes with points and cross faction healing.
Its pretty easy to prevent stealthers from getting in a base tbh. You can't shadow jump or teleport in faction bases. There is only one way in, and all bases have a decent choke now. All you really need to do is plant an elf anywhere in one of the 3 tile chokes, and a bunch of para fields after him.
Changes that really need to be made:
On all Shards:
1) Rank system needs to be reworked, instead of rank 10 being above 99% of the others that have 0 points (rank 10 only takes 1 kill to achieve...) it needs to split the active factionbase into ranks, top 10% over the past 30 days are rank 10, and so on down to rank 1.
2) Silver cost is too low, I know this is disagreed upon but for the items you get it's incredibly cheap, I have a faction character and it takes me all of maybe 2-3 hours to get enough silver to buy stormgrips stronger than the TOT versions, a heart of the lion with better resists than the normal one, AND fey leggings with enhanced resists...and this is on siege with 5x silver costs. Silver cost needs to at least be brought in line with the normal "non-faction" versions of the items.
3) kill system is screwy, points should not be able to increase like they currently do. Best to just do away with the system and make is straight "number of kills"
4) TB base needs to be moved OUTSIDE of the city.
5) Stat loss needs to become stat loss, not skill loss, the code is already there (dread horn) just apply that instead of the current "stat" effect...perhaps a bit stronger. This makes you significantly weaker but still able to do things.
6) Don't force the faction titles to show...some of us would like to show our guild or award titles :/
Specific to siege:
1) Lifeforce costs are kinda whacked, monster ignore should cost more, and summoning a horse less. Faction bless should cost a full 100 points....summon familiar is useless.
2) Monster ignore should NOT allow you to attack with summons or indirectly with a pet, while staying under the effect
3) Faction dye and "owned by" should not exist here, it makes the items useless to other people except as decor or food for the trash eating chest. (putting aside my feelings of us having faction artifacts in the first place)
4) debated on whether this is better for all shards or not...i could see this being bad on ATL though, where people would park blue detectors inside with passive detect. Faction bases need to allow non-faction people in, it's a bit of a pain that some have realized that to ensure a thief doesn't steal from you while pvping all you have to do is do it down in a faction base where the "magic wall" keeps us out
On all Shards:
1) Rank system needs to be reworked, instead of rank 10 being above 99% of the others that have 0 points (rank 10 only takes 1 kill to achieve...) it needs to split the active factionbase into ranks, top 10% over the past 30 days are rank 10, and so on down to rank 1.
2) Silver cost is too low, I know this is disagreed upon but for the items you get it's incredibly cheap, I have a faction character and it takes me all of maybe 2-3 hours to get enough silver to buy stormgrips stronger than the TOT versions, a heart of the lion with better resists than the normal one, AND fey leggings with enhanced resists...and this is on siege with 5x silver costs. Silver cost needs to at least be brought in line with the normal "non-faction" versions of the items.
3) kill system is screwy, points should not be able to increase like they currently do. Best to just do away with the system and make is straight "number of kills"
4) TB base needs to be moved OUTSIDE of the city.
5) Stat loss needs to become stat loss, not skill loss, the code is already there (dread horn) just apply that instead of the current "stat" effect...perhaps a bit stronger. This makes you significantly weaker but still able to do things.
6) Don't force the faction titles to show...some of us would like to show our guild or award titles :/
Specific to siege:
1) Lifeforce costs are kinda whacked, monster ignore should cost more, and summoning a horse less. Faction bless should cost a full 100 points....summon familiar is useless.
2) Monster ignore should NOT allow you to attack with summons or indirectly with a pet, while staying under the effect
3) Faction dye and "owned by" should not exist here, it makes the items useless to other people except as decor or food for the trash eating chest. (putting aside my feelings of us having faction artifacts in the first place)
4) debated on whether this is better for all shards or not...i could see this being bad on ATL though, where people would park blue detectors inside with passive detect. Faction bases need to allow non-faction people in, it's a bit of a pain that some have realized that to ensure a thief doesn't steal from you while pvping all you have to do is do it down in a faction base where the "magic wall" keeps us out
I only agree with #3 of Raptor, otherwise I couldn't disagree more.
As for the TB base, I think its fine where it is, just remove the guard zone and it will be fine.
I specifically do not want it to be more difficult to get and maintain the ability to wear faction armor. Faction armor is the biggest thing promoting PvP right now. It enables people to play across many shards without a huge investment. We want more PvP, not less.
As for the TB base, I think its fine where it is, just remove the guard zone and it will be fine.
I specifically do not want it to be more difficult to get and maintain the ability to wear faction armor. Faction armor is the biggest thing promoting PvP right now. It enables people to play across many shards without a huge investment. We want more PvP, not less.
And that really answers my question from above. Thanks Lynk.
J
[JD]
Guest
I like factions the way it is, but if changes are made, I agree keep it semi easy to get and keep the armor. Otherwise its really hard to crosshard.
One thing I would like to see done is all the point generation is based on the killshot. It doesn't matter that I outmanuvered someone and got them to 10% life, someone else gets the killshot and points. Lame. Or how about if I suck at PVP (and I do) but I crossheal like a madman, res people, put up fields and defend etc, but my contribution is nil. You should get points for contributing in other ways than the kill shot.
I dunno, maybe the whole point system needs to go away and you just get kill totals for bragging rights. Make it easy to keep armor. Doesn't seem fair TB base is in a guard zone, move it outside the city. Do something about the non-faction blue ganker idiots. Make there a reason to fight for towns other than horses. Once you get a few horses and they bond there is no more reason.
One thing I would like to see done is all the point generation is based on the killshot. It doesn't matter that I outmanuvered someone and got them to 10% life, someone else gets the killshot and points. Lame. Or how about if I suck at PVP (and I do) but I crossheal like a madman, res people, put up fields and defend etc, but my contribution is nil. You should get points for contributing in other ways than the kill shot.
I dunno, maybe the whole point system needs to go away and you just get kill totals for bragging rights. Make it easy to keep armor. Doesn't seem fair TB base is in a guard zone, move it outside the city. Do something about the non-faction blue ganker idiots. Make there a reason to fight for towns other than horses. Once you get a few horses and they bond there is no more reason.
hehe, and we are back to the bases again.
i was sad when they killed off the faction changes they had put out to test last year.
granted they were not all the best fixes, but at least it was somthing new to do.
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Faction armor also unbalances PvP when you are attacking Non-Faction people, who do not have access to that quality of equipment. I'm not going to get a single piece of equipment for the same slot that matches a Faction Crimmy for example.
I'm of the mind they should either limit PvP to Faction and Non-Faction meaning if you are in a faction you can only attack other faction folks, or if you are not in factions you can only attack non-faction folks. Or remove all bonus mods from Faction artifacts and make them simply a readily available supply of artifacts for PvP use. Or let anyone buy and them if they have the silver without them being tied to Factions requirement on them.
Now I'm not posting this to hate on Factions, I'd do factions again if it was a good system in it's current incarnation. But it's not there are severe flaws in it's design. TB and CoM have unusual bases that give some advantage, mainly in terms of approachability. The Point system is out of wack, the Artifact system imbalances PvP overall when you include out of faction fighting. And the entire system has no real place in current a current UO setting.
No, the faction artifacts do not unbalance PvP. The faction items are only slightly better than the nonfaction items. Your excuse is commonly used by those who are not good at PvP, typically coupled with cries of cheating.
Those added mods allow for players to hit the cap in mods, but don't give anyone an extraordinary advantage. You're saying 5 extra dex on the crimmy makes that big of a difference? The only faction arty even close to being "overpowered" would be the faction crystalline ring which adds 3 FCR eliminating the need for mage weapon mages to use inquisitors, thus freeing up a few mod slots.
Your first suggestion on limiting PvP is just stupid.
Your second suggestion on making faction arties exactly the same as normal ones would have been fine from the start, but I think it's a little late in the game to do that now.
The point system would be fine, if they would whipe the slate clean and remove the double point from 'evil/good' factions.
As for the bases, who cares what advantages they have. There is no benefit to owning towns anyways. Besides that - all bases now have multiple choke points so they are even in my eyes.
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They provide additional mods that non-faction player don't get basically for free. Those free up room for a Faction player to put other mods on other pieces that a Non-Faction player cannot. This is a distinct advantage in terms of flexibility in suit building and cost of outfitting. Not to mention you can farm silver quite easily and have basically a guaranteed supply of said artifacts.
That Faction Crimmy for example, that +5 dex allows me to toss on +5 intel somewhere or +5 Str or just accept the +5 Dex and add something completely different on a different piece of the suit. It gives more stamina which equates to a faster Swing Speed because of increased Stamina which yields more DPS.
Other pieces with extra DCI or HCI allow me to stack against HLD or HLA, these are free perks I don't have to replace and limit my options in suit building.
To say Faction Artifacts do not give an advantage in PvP to Faction players over Non-Faction players is a delusion. The ability to easily and efficiently build a top end suit alone provides that advantage.
Just curious, if controlling towns is pointless, and faction artifacts provide no real advantage, why does anyone even bother with factions?
Which makes it easier to spawn, or more likely raid, on any server. I have mixed feelings about this, but if that is the game some want to play then its not for me to say.
But I'm better than 99 percent certain that was not the intended purpose of the farties on introduction.
Now you're just arguing semantics. I said in a previous post that I like faction artifacts because it makes it easier to build suits across shards and promotes PvP.
I'm saying they don't provide any crazy advantage in PvP. Its not like the old days of 5/6 mage casting and no SDI cap. Every mod has a CAP.
I'm not going to sit here and have some stupid debate with you. It's quite simple and clear.
Faction artifacts promote PvP because it enables EVERYONE to get good suits, not just the wealthy.
And I am better than 99 percent sure that THAT was the intended purpose. Why so many simply will not participate in this aspect of the game is perplexing. In my mind it makes all other aspects of the game more engaging, because there becomes a reason to do whatever it is you are doing better, or with more purpose.
I do wish we could explore town control, and non active combatant participation in a much deeper way.
Some people don't participate because it makes towns completely unsafe, and 20 minutes of stat loss for those than only play a hour or two a day generally means go afk in your house and quit for the day. How can it be said that faction artifacts don't give an advantage either? If they didn't....why are you all wearing them? At 9 gold per current silver price (or just spending 15 minutes gathering silver myself) I can buy a pair of stormgrips or fey leggings with massive resists, a faction suit is significantly cheaper to make than a competitive imbued suit, so when you die and lose a faction suit, no problem, it doesn't take half your stock of gems and essence to rebuild. And this is on our shard, which is 5x silver cost of all other shards. (stormgrips are 5k silver here)
You're talking about Seige, and therefore your opinions are invalid when the rest of us are discussing production shards.
I don't play Seige, won't play Seige, and have no comments on whether your opinions are valid in that setting.
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Faction Artifacts make it easier to build a suit with more mods at or near cap.
That's an Advantage.
It allows everyone in Factions to get good suits, this provides a distinct disadvantage to those that don't participate in Factions.
Let me put it this way...
RBC
Crimmy
Primer on Arms
Crystalline Ring
Mace and Shields
That's 15000 silver or about 2-3 hours killing Demons for anyone not in SL
Now lets compare that to someone not in Factions, I'll use Chessy as an Example.....
RBC - 500k - 1 mil
Crimmy 14-15 Mil
Primer on Arms 1-2 mil
Crystalline Ring 20-22 Mil
Mace and Shields 8-10 mil
That's 43.5 - 50 mil and you still don't get the same weight in mods, it's also based on if these items are available for you to buy at any price. Trust me I'd love to make 50mil in a few hours farming demons, and that's not counting the price of the items I'd need to make up the rest of the suit, even if I could make up the rest of an equivalent suit with imbuing, not to mention scrolling up a character. This completely ignores the fact you could possibly buy 15000 silver for 1.5 mil at 100gp/1silver.
Trust me there are folks that would love to be able to run these cheap suits faction guys get, but don't because either A) They don't want to participate in Factions, B) They would, but their Guild won't and they don't desire to leave it.
Siege is valid to what I'm discussing, it exaggerates the issue. If at 5x the cost Faction Artifacts are so easy to get something is obviously wrong. The benefits of the equipment outweigh the cost greatly.
Then again Why argue you made my point people do factions because the artifacts make it easy and cheap to build good suits. That's an advantage in an of itself...
When factions were first revamped i had a great time with them. It Was about controlling the sigils to some extent at least. I made far more points stealing sigils than killing people.
Rank Ten Means Nothing anymore. I was actually proud of my rank ten (had about 300 points i think) while defending sigils, and killing the number one ranked player on the shard (another sigil thief like myself) helped alot.
Factions is basically just free armor, yes its good for new players who dont have gold, but it gives no reward (access to better levels of armor) for players that participate more, or simply win more battles.
Really all i would like to see is a total reset of points every few weeks, or decay of points increase exponentially to how many points a character has. Im sure this could be easily implemented.
Of course id also like to see more of a benefit to owning and defending towns, but a point revamp would be the quicker fix.
Another option would be Faction armor only be equipable in Fell; its pvp armor, you cant pvp in tram, so why should you be able to wear the armor there?
Rank Ten Means Nothing anymore. I was actually proud of my rank ten (had about 300 points i think) while defending sigils, and killing the number one ranked player on the shard (another sigil thief like myself) helped alot.
Factions is basically just free armor, yes its good for new players who dont have gold, but it gives no reward (access to better levels of armor) for players that participate more, or simply win more battles.
Really all i would like to see is a total reset of points every few weeks, or decay of points increase exponentially to how many points a character has. Im sure this could be easily implemented.
Of course id also like to see more of a benefit to owning and defending towns, but a point revamp would be the quicker fix.
Another option would be Faction armor only be equipable in Fell; its pvp armor, you cant pvp in tram, so why should you be able to wear the armor there?
Our guild is the top one on this list.
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I'm currently wearing (though i take it off while out training, i've been swapping from swords to archery, died a few times and pretty low on kills at the moment)...
Faction hunters headdress
Faction HOTL
Faction Stormgrips
Faction Fey leggings
Faction Primer on Arms
Faction Ring of the vile
this cost 55k silver, far cheaper than making a even halfway competitive suit compared to it.
We've also been fighting back and forth with tb for the sigils...the 10 hour wait timer is really annoying...
I hope they dont... Factions is broken. There is no reason to be in a faction except for the gear, or if you want more pvp without going red (to the devs... forged pardons... horrible idea imo) And... UO is a SKILL based game (lol?)
I admit i haven't really had fun with factions for a couple years, but i still play them.
You are right tho in that probably most of the people who keep up with stratics don't know what the point of factions is supposed to be, at least imo.
The Devs idea of how to "fix" factions with totally new bases is horrible. With everything else they should do, or are forced to do by EA, i would prefer just a couple minor changes that would vastly improve faction play to what used to make it fun and rewarding, at least for me.
K
Kylas
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In ~4 days factions will be 11 years old. If you can believe that. You had to have played factions during those first few years to understand what veteran players yearn for.
Sadly, those days are long gone and will never return. People are asking for changes to a system that was abandoned 9 years ago.
Dig
It is not a stupid question.
The reason many people want factions changed is they want more people to participate. When Factions first launched there were hundreds upon hundreds of people participating. It is supposed to be about mass warfare, but today you are lucky to have even 2 factions with a dozen people on each side.
Because its not being used how intended is why people want fixes to answer the original OP.
Now for my suggestions (more like wish list).
Cross faction healing should not be allowed clearly a bug.
Points system simply remove the double tripple bonus's.
For the more radical bit ....
Allow faction arties to be available reguardless of points. Maybe make it so your required to be in a faction for a certain period before being able to wear them maybe a week and once you've quit a faction the arties cannot be worn even though your still waiting to leave the faction.
However this can only occur if faction fighting in Trammel is sanctioned. Im a strong believer that if your a Blue in a faction there are NO reasons why you cannot fight another blue factioner in trammel. You've signed up to something which is a pvp system in principle therefore signing up and running to trammel cannot be tolerated. These items were for pvp use not pvm. Where ive no issues with these being used in trammel to create further solo farming (since when did uo become a mass solo mmorpg?) i think there should be a penalty.
Cheers for reading
PJay
[My ideas are not sanctioned by Mervyn]
Now for my suggestions (more like wish list).
Cross faction healing should not be allowed clearly a bug.
Points system simply remove the double tripple bonus's.
For the more radical bit ....
Allow faction arties to be available reguardless of points. Maybe make it so your required to be in a faction for a certain period before being able to wear them maybe a week and once you've quit a faction the arties cannot be worn even though your still waiting to leave the faction.
However this can only occur if faction fighting in Trammel is sanctioned. Im a strong believer that if your a Blue in a faction there are NO reasons why you cannot fight another blue factioner in trammel. You've signed up to something which is a pvp system in principle therefore signing up and running to trammel cannot be tolerated. These items were for pvp use not pvm. Where ive no issues with these being used in trammel to create further solo farming (since when did uo become a mass solo mmorpg?) i think there should be a penalty.
Cheers for reading
PJay
[My ideas are not sanctioned by Mervyn]
i think a lot of people have completely missed the point of factions in fel.
stat loss!!!!! isn't the biggest advantage of being in factions the fact that you can put an enemy char out of commision for 20minutes?
gone are the days when you would have a 4hour fight for a despise champ spawn where everybody just rezzed and got back to it. no.... now you either swap chars until you got none left, or your stood victorious.
and also this big whinge about faction armour.....im sorry i'll tell you the entire ethos of felucca.... 'RISK VS REWARD' if im in fel, and im also in factions i have 3x more chance of being killed than the average blue player, why? because i have 3 other factions baying for my blood, and if i do die, im out of commision for 20minutes of my game time, an average blue dies, he rezzes, heals and carries on.
the factions system is far from perfect, but i'd say its working. personally i would alter the ranking system to make ranks easier to achieve on bigger shards, but thats my opinion and is something minor in the scheme of things
stat loss!!!!! isn't the biggest advantage of being in factions the fact that you can put an enemy char out of commision for 20minutes?
gone are the days when you would have a 4hour fight for a despise champ spawn where everybody just rezzed and got back to it. no.... now you either swap chars until you got none left, or your stood victorious.
and also this big whinge about faction armour.....im sorry i'll tell you the entire ethos of felucca.... 'RISK VS REWARD' if im in fel, and im also in factions i have 3x more chance of being killed than the average blue player, why? because i have 3 other factions baying for my blood, and if i do die, im out of commision for 20minutes of my game time, an average blue dies, he rezzes, heals and carries on.
the factions system is far from perfect, but i'd say its working. personally i would alter the ranking system to make ranks easier to achieve on bigger shards, but thats my opinion and is something minor in the scheme of things