The meaning of owning towns in Factions

[GalenKnighthawke]

This post began as part of this thread, but the discussion has moved beyond the narrow topic of the thread, into the more general issue of the meaning of owning the Faction Cities.

Factions is so screwed up at this point, I don't care what they do. At one point I had 4 of my 5 characters in factions. This was on Siege... i kept one account out just because it is a house holder. Long story... that account was meant to be temporary... Just testing the rumor that advanced character tokens sneaked into to Siege. They did for a while...

I digress... *chuckles*

It is hard to define role playing. Some of my happiest days in UO was playing my "role" in the faction gang I was in. I was not the fiercest warrior. I was not the best mage nor the best theif... In fact my mage earned the nick name 'wrong way' when it came to fields. *chuckles*

Now to my point. It does not matter what Bioware/Mythic (or what ever the name is these days...) The only point to factions is artifacts. Owning towns means next to nothing. Defending a base means next to nothing.

Set the timer to whatever...

Factions is a peculiar system.

Owning the towns means winning. And for the most part, owning the towns, and hence winning, means little save for the meaning player ascribe to it.

When you assign meaning to in-game things that have no in-game consequence apart from that which exists in your mind as a player, I consider that roleplaying, by definition.

Various means have been done over the years to grant in-game meaning to owning the towns. All have ultimately failed to varying degrees. (As a quick aside, at first I thought Faction Artifacts wouldn't be available, or wouldn't able to be repaired, unless your Faction owned at least one town...Obviously this would've been a powerful incentive.) There's many reasons for this failure, but the most under-rated one, to me, is that the system is at part a roleplaying system. Ultimately, no in-game meaning assigned by the developers to owning one or more towns will ever be as powerful as the RP meanings assigned by us players, that have no game mechanics consequence.

One of the things I like most about the new proposed system is that they imagined an RP logic first and tried to hang a system around it, instead of the other way around. (Or that's what it seems like they did anyway.)

And one of the things I like least is that I find the RP logic they use to be flawed.

-Galen's player

 

[Smoot]

Easy way to bring back original faction play - not being able to use faction artifacts unless your faction holds at least 1 town, having the higher end artifacts for more towns, and to prevent everyone from just joining the dominant faction, perhaps limit specific faction arties to specific factions. Ornament of the majician to Council of mages for example.

I only say this because the faction revamp has been in the works for a while now, and doesnt look like itll be coming out any time soon.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Easy way to bring back original faction play - not being able to use faction artifacts unless your faction holds at least 1 town, having the higher end artifacts for more towns, and to prevent everyone from just joining the dominant faction, perhaps limit specific faction arties to specific factions. Ornament of the majician to Council of mages for example.

I only say this because the faction revamp has been in the works for a while now, and doesnt look like itll be coming out any time soon.

It would have worked had the system begun this way, but it didn't.

I should also add, would have worked were there not an exploit/but combination that makes the Shadowlord base un-raidable, but there is.

-Galen's player

 

[JC the Builder]

All the rewards for owning a town have been taken out of the game one by one over the years until we reach today, when there is nothing left.

Crafting Blessed Faction Armor/Weapons - Replaced by item insurance
Faction War Horses - You never lose them now with bonding, plus lots of other live creatures which are better such as the swamp dragon
Resource Vendors - You can now buy unlimited ingots from vendors, mages no longer need reagents for casting, macro scripters further kill the need for vendors
Faction Guards - were never upgraded for Age of Shadows. They are insanely easy to kill compared to how they were Pre-AOS. It used to take a dozen people to kill one guard, now one person can kill a dozen guards.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

All the rewards for owning a town have been taken out of the game one by one over the years until we reach today, when there is nothing left.

Crafting Blessed Faction Armor/Weapons - Replaced by item insurance
Faction War Horses - You never lose them now with bonding, plus lots of other live creatures which are better such as the swamp dragon
Resource Vendors - You can now buy unlimited ingots from vendors, mages no longer need reagents for casting, macro scripters further kill the need for vendors
Faction Guards - were never upgraded for Age of Shadows. They are insanely easy to kill compared to how they were Pre-AOS. It used to take a dozen people to kill one guard, now one person can kill a dozen guards.

Hence the point of my post.

Various means have been done over the years to grant in-game meaning to owning the towns. All have ultimately failed to varying degrees. (As a quick aside, at first I thought Faction Artifacts wouldn't be available, or wouldn't able to be repaired, unless your Faction owned at least one town...Obviously this would've been a powerful incentive.) There's many reasons for this failure, but the most under-rated one, to me, is that the system is at part a roleplaying system. Ultimately, no in-game meaning assigned by the developers to owning one or more towns will ever be as powerful as the RP meanings assigned by us players, that have no game mechanics consequence.

-Galen's player