Greetings!
We have been working hard on making some major updates to the Factions system, and we are now commencing public testing of these changes. They represent some significant changes to the Factions system. As such, we feel it is important to do extensive public testing and gather as much feedback as we can.
First and foremost, please be assured that we will make very sure these changes are as well tested and debugged as possible before publish. Even though these Factions system updates are now in testing, this does not by any means signal our intent to publish them with the next live update. In Publish 65, we added a new feature that allows us to patch out alternative maps for testing while leaving the Live versions untouched. This gives us the ability to keep the Factions changes in parallel development and hold off on publishing them to the live game for as long as needed.
You are invited to join the public playtest of the Factions system changes. You will find a test shard named "Factions" on the server list. This server is dedicated to testing the Factions changes, but it has all the normal test center features enabled. Please, create a character, join a faction, and come join the fight!
Please utilize this forum to offer feedback, report bugs, and discuss your experiences. I will be here frequently to take in the feedback and answer questions in depth.
Here is a quick rundown of the things you can expect to see:
1> There are now three factions. Their names (Crusaders of Virtue, Guardian’s Legion, and Free Tradesmen) are temporary placeholders, and deciding on the final names is one point we would very much like feedback on. The three factions’ philosophies are all opposed to each other – each faction can find evil in the purpose and deeds of the other two. They have updated blurbs on their recruitment stones.
2> Each of the three factions has a new stronghold. Two of the strongholds have been placed in newly-renovated mountainous areas. The former Minax stronghold is now the home of the Guardian’s Legion, but the base has been completely rebuilt. All of the bases are completely unique, including their layouts, architectural style, and furnishings. They are designed to present interesting choices for assault and defense.
3> The score system has been completely reworked. The new system scores players in combat based on the following actions: damaging enemies, healing allies, stealthing, revealing stealth, and fighting in the presence of of town sigils. These scores are designed not to accumulate continuously but instead to act as ongoing ratings that compare players against each other. This means that scores will fluctuate up and down over time based on ever-changing conditions. It is the intent that the new score system measure actual real-world player performance in combat, instead of being a value that accumulates over time. Score is now awarded for overall performance in battle rather than simply for scoring kills or corrupting sigils. As such, it is no longer possible to transfer points between players.
4> The ranking system has been altered. There are now only 8 ranks. Each rank has a unique name. The names of the lower four ranks are the same for all factions, and each faction has unique names for its higher four ranks. There is also a new Rank 0, named “Deserter”, which is reserved for those who join factions but never fight in a battle. Ranks have some minimum participation requirements in terms of time spent in Faction combat. Ranks are otherwise distributed based on overall player score, with only a very small percentage of players able to attain the highest rank. Assignment of ranks depends on active (i.e. non-Deserter) players in each Faction. A player may only be promoted or demoted one rank per day. The "punkte" speech command now opens a UI window that shows you your score breakdown and gives you a sense of how your performance relative to your faction mates may or may not merit you a promotion in rank.
5> Faction artifacts now have lower rank requirements, because it will be difficult to attain maximum rank. The highest tier of Faction artifacts will require Rank 5, which is sufficiently difficult to attain but not so difficult that only a handful of players will be able to use them.
6> There are now in-game leaderboards that update hourly. Each stronghold will have one set of leaderboards for its own faction, and a set of all-factions leaderboards. These will list players in order of overall score, the five sub-scores, and also by total kill count and kill ratio.
At this point I do not want to go into too much detail about the updates to the score system. In the near future I will begin offering more details about how it actually works. But for now, I just want you to play the system, form opinions about whether the new score system seems fair and accurate, and tell us what you think!
Happy playtesting! I’ll be joining in, anonymously of course, so I’ll probably see you there...
(note: the server is expected to go live at 3:00 PM EDT on 14 April)
We have been working hard on making some major updates to the Factions system, and we are now commencing public testing of these changes. They represent some significant changes to the Factions system. As such, we feel it is important to do extensive public testing and gather as much feedback as we can.
First and foremost, please be assured that we will make very sure these changes are as well tested and debugged as possible before publish. Even though these Factions system updates are now in testing, this does not by any means signal our intent to publish them with the next live update. In Publish 65, we added a new feature that allows us to patch out alternative maps for testing while leaving the Live versions untouched. This gives us the ability to keep the Factions changes in parallel development and hold off on publishing them to the live game for as long as needed.
You are invited to join the public playtest of the Factions system changes. You will find a test shard named "Factions" on the server list. This server is dedicated to testing the Factions changes, but it has all the normal test center features enabled. Please, create a character, join a faction, and come join the fight!
Please utilize this forum to offer feedback, report bugs, and discuss your experiences. I will be here frequently to take in the feedback and answer questions in depth.
Here is a quick rundown of the things you can expect to see:
1> There are now three factions. Their names (Crusaders of Virtue, Guardian’s Legion, and Free Tradesmen) are temporary placeholders, and deciding on the final names is one point we would very much like feedback on. The three factions’ philosophies are all opposed to each other – each faction can find evil in the purpose and deeds of the other two. They have updated blurbs on their recruitment stones.
2> Each of the three factions has a new stronghold. Two of the strongholds have been placed in newly-renovated mountainous areas. The former Minax stronghold is now the home of the Guardian’s Legion, but the base has been completely rebuilt. All of the bases are completely unique, including their layouts, architectural style, and furnishings. They are designed to present interesting choices for assault and defense.
3> The score system has been completely reworked. The new system scores players in combat based on the following actions: damaging enemies, healing allies, stealthing, revealing stealth, and fighting in the presence of of town sigils. These scores are designed not to accumulate continuously but instead to act as ongoing ratings that compare players against each other. This means that scores will fluctuate up and down over time based on ever-changing conditions. It is the intent that the new score system measure actual real-world player performance in combat, instead of being a value that accumulates over time. Score is now awarded for overall performance in battle rather than simply for scoring kills or corrupting sigils. As such, it is no longer possible to transfer points between players.
4> The ranking system has been altered. There are now only 8 ranks. Each rank has a unique name. The names of the lower four ranks are the same for all factions, and each faction has unique names for its higher four ranks. There is also a new Rank 0, named “Deserter”, which is reserved for those who join factions but never fight in a battle. Ranks have some minimum participation requirements in terms of time spent in Faction combat. Ranks are otherwise distributed based on overall player score, with only a very small percentage of players able to attain the highest rank. Assignment of ranks depends on active (i.e. non-Deserter) players in each Faction. A player may only be promoted or demoted one rank per day. The "punkte" speech command now opens a UI window that shows you your score breakdown and gives you a sense of how your performance relative to your faction mates may or may not merit you a promotion in rank.
5> Faction artifacts now have lower rank requirements, because it will be difficult to attain maximum rank. The highest tier of Faction artifacts will require Rank 5, which is sufficiently difficult to attain but not so difficult that only a handful of players will be able to use them.
6> There are now in-game leaderboards that update hourly. Each stronghold will have one set of leaderboards for its own faction, and a set of all-factions leaderboards. These will list players in order of overall score, the five sub-scores, and also by total kill count and kill ratio.
At this point I do not want to go into too much detail about the updates to the score system. In the near future I will begin offering more details about how it actually works. But for now, I just want you to play the system, form opinions about whether the new score system seems fair and accurate, and tell us what you think!
Happy playtesting! I’ll be joining in, anonymously of course, so I’ll probably see you there...
(note: the server is expected to go live at 3:00 PM EDT on 14 April)
