Assume for a moment that factions are here to stay.
Would you change: timers, points, armor, etc?
Would you change: timers, points, armor, etc?
I think this are all good ideas as wellI once offered some suggestions here:
http://stratics.com/community/threads/faction-artifacts-point-exploits-and-the-point-system.195267/
I'll now repeat some of the more obviously relevant ones.
• Restore the base 1 point per one kill shot, adjusted for the points of the character.
• Keep leadership honoring. In this way, healers and fielders can be rewarded by the Faction itself. If the Faction itself never honors leadership for those on whom it depends, hopefully they'll abandon the effort and the hard-core types will learn how much they depend on the others. If people choose to keep helping even if they aren't appreciated, it really isn't your place as designers to force appreciation on them.
• Tone down the high-level Faction Artifacts. (The Faction Ornament would still own if it had a mere MR 1.)
• Retain all Faction Artifacts available for all ranks, higher end ones cost more Silver.
• Overall prices down from now, up from initial implementation.
• Make Faction Artifacts way easier to break, and unable to be repaired. This way you keep having to participate in order to keep them, even if "participation" is just making yourself available to be killed to farm silver (or whatever the currency is going to be). OR have them able to be repaired only in a Faction City that your Faction owns and have then lose durability faster.
• Keep points for sigil stealing but make it more-analogous to a couple of kills.
• Have a deserter rank that applies to someone who has not been in Felucca in a certain time frame, and have all Faction Artifacts drop off that deserter, and a Faction Warhorse cannot be mounted by him or her. Getting a Faction Kill, or dying to a Faction enemy, removes deserter status.
However let's face it. This is a dead system, past the point of no return. Factions at heart was an RP system. Once the Faction Artifacts brought in a hard core PvP crowd that didn't care about the RP aspect (a result I feel rather stupid for not anticipating), Factions was doomed.
-Galen's player
You make good points. How do you build a Faction player population to apply it all toward? Do changes need to be made in the game to aid implementation of the rules you outlined? Can it simply be done with the existing game structure?I think this are all good ideas as well
I do disagree factions is a dead system, but it takes a special effort to revive them. The steps are prob so opposite what anyone thinks creates active factions that its rarely done...
This is how I go about it [I rp an Order Knight so I support the "good" side, if your character is a mage or has evil designs you would start with fiction themed in that direction]
1) Start with Fiction - Set the stage with what occurs when an evil factions control towns, paint a picture of the hardships the people in the town are endurin, kidnapped children in slave camps, beatings and murders in the street, depending on your audience you can have more adult themes but I tend to make my rp fiction for general all age consumption. Challenge the morality of the audience, living a safe life, attending parties, playing hero by fighitng in dungeons against creatures in there own home that are not threatening anyone while citizens of their own kingdom suffer at the hands of...[ Minax /SL/ Com].
This will ususally get you a response of guilds and people interested in factions..... most are not pvpers. They tend to be rpers and players with rp theme ideals... not playing a character but playing to a theme of good...
2) Set a IC and OC standard of conduct... From an OC perspective set a non toleratance rule for cheats/exploits of any kind. Let people know from the begining that they may encounter people who use "cheats" and they may be tempted to use them or try them. You can't stop them from doing it or prevent them from being in the faction but if they are found using them or telling people "how to do it" in vent, chat or icq - they will instantly be removed from the guild/alliance.
IC If you are TB we will be acting like Knights in the service of Britannia... We will not attack or kill innocent Britannian citizens...We will seek to aid and protect citizens of Britannia. If attacked you can defend yourself if attacked but then they are actually grey or red not blue. The priority for the True Britannians is the protection of the towns and its citizens... if they are secure, the focus can shift to removing criminals from the gates, dungeons, etc but this is secondary to the primarly mission.
3) Train them in Tram. Not just in pvp but in what it will be like... People drop out of factions because they have an idea of the glory of battle and when they face really good *Cough* totally legit pvpers, and get completely destroyed in a way they never imagined it can be disheartening. You have to not only train them to fight but shoulder the psychologcal blow of not meeting their expections. Nothing can really prepare someone for the level of pvp coming from a non pvp or dueling with friends background. Prepare them to die, die and die and learn from those deaths.
4) Train them to return to battle in stat loss, train them to fight in stat. Demonstrate that it can be done and that by doing so you continue to aid the Faction effort. As long as there are people fighting and sigils in the base, everyone res's and returns to battle. The team and team success is what't important.
5) If the Sigls are not stealable, the Faction gives everyone leave.... Three full days to hunt, craft, and do all the things outside of factions you desire. Factions is intense and hard, people need a mental break both after a successful defense or a failed attempt to take the cities.
5) Value all faction members.... Most factions undervalue the non pvp aspects when those are your backbone to success. You need a core group of pvp types who can attack and defend as well as a strong non pvp oriented group who can steal, make/remove traps, etc.
There are those who excel at both but if your group is small you are usually losing an attacker/defender that you need when they are on the non pvper.
6) Set a code of conduct for your faction. Do not res kill- If an enemy dies and wishes to leave the battlefield allow them to res and go... The only time res killing is appropriate is if they attempt to gain access to castle, let the enemy know they can leave in peace but any attempts to enter the castle will be met with deadly force.
Treat your enemies with respect, no trash talking (regardless of what they say).
If something valuable drops from an enemy, return it. We loot only consumables for defense purposes to stock pile supplies behind our lines, we are not interested in taking people's things for the purpose of griefing or profit.
--- You might be asking what all these conduct rules have to do with building factions.... People can prob comment whether this is true or not but my enemies ususally like and respect me as much as my allies because they can trust that if something is not "legit" I will get to the bottom of it and fix it. Part of building factions is creating an atmosphere where enemies want particiapate and engage you in battle.
If you really want to create a faction guild/alliance and have people attack and defend sigils this is the basic outline. All the talk about bases, artifacts, stat loss and timers can help spark interest in factions but if you are talking about how factions are now, and how to get interest in them, these are the methods I used to build factions on GL from completely non-existent to a thriving faction shard for many years. Moving to the West Coast in RL and just life changes in general with family and career have made it so my playing time is limited to a few hours a week and only in the dead of night (l1:00am PST). I am not in a position to put this type of work into factions and so I am hoping that someone with time and desire reads this, adapts what they find useful and creates a thriving faction community somewhere so people can experience what a great aspect of UO factions can be.
-Lore's Player
Yes, it can be done in the current game structure but it rerquiers so much effort and work on the part of the players to make up for the lack of faction support, its not done often.You make good points. How do you build a Faction player population to apply it all toward? Do changes need to be made in the game to aid implementation of the rules you outlined? Can it simply be done with the existing game structure?
I think this are all good ideas as well
I do disagree factions is a dead system, but it takes a special effort to revive them. The steps are prob so opposite what anyone thinks creates active factions that its rarely done...
This is how I go about it [I rp an Order Knight so I support the "good" side, if your character is a mage or has evil designs you would start with fiction themed in that direction]
1) Start with Fiction - Set the stage with what occurs when an evil factions control towns, paint a picture of the hardships the people in the town are endurin, kidnapped children in slave camps, beatings and murders in the street, depending on your audience you can have more adult themes but I tend to make my rp fiction for general all age consumption. Challenge the morality of the audience, living a safe life, attending parties, playing hero by fighitng in dungeons against creatures in there own home that are not threatening anyone while citizens of their own kingdom suffer at the hands of...[ Minax /SL/ Com].
This will ususally get you a response of guilds and people interested in factions..... most are not pvpers. They tend to be rpers and players with rp theme ideals... not playing a character but playing to a theme of good...
2) Set a IC and OC standard of conduct... From an OC perspective set a non toleratance rule for cheats/exploits of any kind. Let people know from the begining that they may encounter people who use "cheats" and they may be tempted to use them or try them. You can't stop them from doing it or prevent them from being in the faction but if they are found using them or telling people "how to do it" in vent, chat or icq - they will instantly be removed from the guild/alliance.
IC If you are TB we will be acting like Knights in the service of Britannia... We will not attack or kill innocent Britannian citizens...We will seek to aid and protect citizens of Britannia. If attacked you can defend yourself if attacked but then they are actually grey or red not blue. The priority for the True Britannians is the protection of the towns and its citizens... if they are secure, the focus can shift to removing criminals from the gates, dungeons, etc but this is secondary to the primarly mission.
3) Train them in Tram. Not just in pvp but in what it will be like... People drop out of factions because they have an idea of the glory of battle and when they face really good *Cough* totally legit pvpers, and get completely destroyed in a way they never imagined it can be disheartening. You have to not only train them to fight but shoulder the psychologcal blow of not meeting their expections. Nothing can really prepare someone for the level of pvp coming from a non pvp or dueling with friends background. Prepare them to die, die and die and learn from those deaths.
4) Train them to return to battle in stat loss, train them to fight in stat. Demonstrate that it can be done and that by doing so you continue to aid the Faction effort. As long as there are people fighting and sigils in the base, everyone res's and returns to battle. The team and team success is what't important.
5) If the Sigls are not stealable, the Faction gives everyone leave.... Three full days to hunt, craft, and do all the things outside of factions you desire. Factions is intense and hard, people need a mental break both after a successful defense or a failed attempt to take the cities.
5) Value all faction members.... Most factions undervalue the non pvp aspects when those are your backbone to success. You need a core group of pvp types who can attack and defend as well as a strong non pvp oriented group who can steal, make/remove traps, etc.
There are those who excel at both but if your group is small you are usually losing an attacker/defender that you need when they are on the non pvper.
6) Set a code of conduct for your faction. Do not res kill- If an enemy dies and wishes to leave the battlefield allow them to res and go... The only time res killing is appropriate is if they attempt to gain access to castle, let the enemy know they can leave in peace but any attempts to enter the castle will be met with deadly force.
Treat your enemies with respect, no trash talking (regardless of what they say).
If something valuable drops from an enemy, return it. We loot only consumables for defense purposes to stock pile supplies behind our lines, we are not interested in taking people's things for the purpose of griefing or profit.
--- You might be asking what all these conduct rules have to do with building factions.... People can prob comment whether this is true or not but my enemies ususally like and respect me as much as my allies because they can trust that if something is not "legit" I will get to the bottom of it and fix it. Part of building factions is creating an atmosphere where enemies want particiapate and engage you in battle.
If you really want to create a faction guild/alliance and have people attack and defend sigils this is the basic outline. All the talk about bases, artifacts, stat loss and timers can help spark interest in factions but if you are talking about how factions are now, and how to get interest in them, these are the methods I used to build factions on GL from completely non-existent to a thriving faction shard for many years. Moving to the West Coast in RL and just life changes in general with family and career have made it so my playing time is limited to a few hours a week and only in the dead of night (l1:00am PST). I am not in a position to put this type of work into factions and so I am hoping that someone with time and desire reads this, adapts what they find useful and creates a thriving faction community somewhere so people can experience what a great aspect of UO factions can be.
-Lore's Player
Entirely correct as far as I can tell.--- Basically people who claim factions is pvp really have no idea how it was, or intened to be and only vaguely understand how it works today.
I have a complete faction reform design developed from the feedback of players balanced and intergrated into a whole that addresses fiction, pvp, pvm, crafting thieving/scouting/ town control and rp with a few bug fixes that have yet to be addressed. I have to update the fiction and the three or four ingame events I designed to re-introduce factions to the players (as it was written with Dawn as the Queen of Britannia).You suggestions appear to be aimed at reviving interest among players, given current systems.
I never put rules or standards on anyone outside my guild/alliance.... Enemies can loot us, cheat as much or as little as they are willing to risk but if you want to participate in the TB alliance I create, be in our vent, etc. this are the rules of conduct. You can even be in TB and I have no issue with you being a complete trash player because its out of my control, but I can't add you to the alliance unless you go legit and agree to our standards. [The only time we authorize attacking or TB (blue or red) is if they are undermining the defense of sigils in which case they will not be allowed to pass our defense lines]One thing I have noticed, one of the several inconvenient facts about Felucca, is that rules and standards really are best for those who break rules and standards. If you have a "no looting" rule you will sooner or later falter in the face of folks who do not respect that rule.
If you have a "no speed hack" rule you will sooner or later falter to those who use speed hacks.
And so forth.
Hardcore pvpers lose interest much sooner because they don't want to be put in fighting situations that put them at risk of dying to a "bunch of newbs" and many advantages they enjoy in a large open Yew gate field fight are nullified when attacking or defending sigils.I submit that, similarly, those who join Factions and follow an out-of-character code of conduct will sooner or later falter to those who do not respect any such codes. And when they falter consistently, when they realize that the system has been taken over by hard-core PvPers who do not care about the multi-layered nature of Factions, they will, I submit, lose interest.
Even in Faction forums you will get a group of people who pvp at the gate with faction artifacts who will explain to you "How it really is". My fear is that the game has continued to progress (regress) to the point where their statements are more and more true and our version of Factions is more like the stories we hear about "When it was just Felucca, before AOS, etc"Entirely correct as far as I can tell.
Usually, though, when I point this out in a general interest forum such as U-Hall I get insulted.
-Galen's player
Although we disagree on the subject of stat loss, if doesn't mean I am right. If from now until the end of UO no changes to factions are made to fix the issues that exist and faction base fighting never returns as a result, there would be no reason to keep stat loss because you are right, removing it would increase the number of participants in factions.Lets keep it simple people. Factions has all of the risk and reward It really needs for now. We do not need to do this all at once. But what we do need to do is get rid of the #1 reason why people DO NOT join factions (STAT LOSS) Lets look at this. Stat Loss was added specifically for one reason. It was to give the side attacking a stronghold time to get the sigils out after they finally penetrated the defenders defenses. It was meant to keep the defenders from rushing right back in and not giving the attackers time to recapture the sigils.
WITH THAT SAID: We do not have that issue now as there aren't even faction fights let alone people defending. Lets face it, the majority of us still in love with factions are an older generation. We have jobs, kids and other responsibilities now and we arent going to be sitting up for 2-3 days at a time defending a faction stronghold ever again (MAN WAS HAT FUN HAHA)
Our Risk vs Reward system is already in place. It always has been.
REWARD: Faction Artifacts (This is enough to lure people because you can build better suits using them)
RISK: You are able to be attacked anywhere in Felucca no guardzone (We can discuss Trammel later. Lets simplify this for now. Lets get something going then build off of it)
Stat Loss was never added as some sort of risk or punishment people. It was added for the reason I mentioned above. And now with that not being an issue it is the main thing thats keeping factions from progressing. We need to just remove it for now and build off of it. Then at a later date revisit what else we can add to factions to make it better and I promise you that there will be a whole lot more people interested in joining.
I've always agreed supported this idea and would add that the crafting recipes for the artifacts should be found as rares on the opposing faction creatures. The creation of the faction artifact would require the recipe, the base artifact, silver and could only craftable in a faction town which your faction currently controls.I would get rid of vending machine artifacts. I would make some of these same "limited" artifacts available to be made by faction crafters made in a city controlled by the faction with silver farmed and earned by the faction. That is just a start...
Good!Ha and I told Galen I wouldn't be posting faction reform ideas and here I am posting away.
-Lore's Player
That is sad.Factions are only dead because uo is dead, theres not really much wrong with it i still play factions. Noone complained back in the day about it and even if it changed it would still be dead because game lacks the players on each shard except atl.
But partially true unfortunately.That is sad.
Apparently they are looking at a fundamental change. I'm surprised there hasn't been anything on here or Uhall about this, but please see the thread I posted on the Siege forum yesterday.What is sad is people still hoping for faction changes 10+ years later. No interest = No budget = No change.
Dig