A suggestion for factions.

[Omnius]

Here is my suggestion for factions. As it has become a growing problem that folks in trammel are abusing faction artifacts and the point system without engaging in the faction system as intended.

This is a problem because it raises the difficulty for players that are actively playing in the faction system to obtain faction ranks necessary to use better items and because it reduces the demand, amongst trammel players for trammel derived goods(Doom artifacts).

Because these "free-riders" abuse the faction system they are actually hurting their fellow non pvpers(economically) and pvpers(balance) alike.

Every time a factioner logs out in trammel they lose 1.0% of their points.
Every time a factioner logs in to trammel the lose 00.5% of their points
Every time a factioner logs out in a safe trammel location (camping, in a friended or better house or an inn) they lose an extra 1.0% of their points.

In otherwords, If you insist on absolute safety for your characters engaged in factions then you must accept increased difficulty in obtaining ranks.

This also has a few added benefits. Thieves will benefit from hanging around inns. Factioners can assume that most of their fellow factioners will be in felucca where they are actually engaging in the faction system actively and for the increased rewards that players derive from faction artifacts, they will face increased risks should they desire to preserve those rewards.


This would mean. If a factioner logs out in a trammel inn, house or campsite, he will effectively lose 2.0% of his faction rank +1 point for the day.

He will lose an added .5% for logging back in at that same location if when logging in, he is in a friended or better home or an inn. There will be no extra penalty for logging in at a former campsite as it is not a safe log in location.

a player with 10000 points will thus effectively lose 250 points for logging out in the luna inn. This would make it extremely difficult to maintain a high level of points and actively play this character without replenishing points regularly.

 

[Bardie]

or as stated in another thread....just make factions in all facets attackable by other factioneers...make em think twice to join or bank sit. and yes factions should be about pvp

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

This is most likely the best NEW idea I have seen regarding this matter and I do not really see anything wrong with this at all

 

[wee papa smurf]

I cant ever see factions being the way i used to remember it, its been broken that much i just dont see a way back,

 

[Lady Michelle]

Its not just the trammel players getting the points, and staying in trammel. It is also the ones who store the points by honoring them to a faction character they don't use to fight with. Something needs to be done about that maybe have a cap on how many points can be honored to a faction character.

 

[wee papa smurf]

People have been using mules for as long as i can remember, but the recent event made the points go through the roof, iv heard that on some shards you need 400+ points to be rank 10!

 

[Tina Small]

There's supposed to be some amount of point atrophy anyway but who knows anymore what the rate is. The rule used to be "Kill points atrophy at the rate of 10% per day (minimum 1 point per day), but atrophy only affects characters with at least 10 kill points. " The current information posted on the official website says the following:

"Player's kill points will atrophy in the morning time local to the shard. The atrophy amount is listed below.

Atrophy Works On A 10 Day Cycle:
Day 1: Players with 90 kill points or more lose 1 kill point
Day 2: Players with 80 kill points or more lose 1 kill point
Day 3: Players with 70 kill points or more lose 1 kill point
Day 4: Players with 60 kill points or more lose 1 kill point
Day 5: Players with 50 kill points or more lose 1 kill point
Day 6: Players with 40 kill points or more lose 1 kill point
Day 7: Players with 30 kill points or more lose 1 kill point
Day 8: Players with 20 kill points or more lose 1 kill point
Day 9: Players with 10 kill points or more lose 1 kill point "

So, I assume the Trammel-induced atrophy would be in addition to the normal atrophy rate (assuming it is still in effect)?

I guess what you suggest is an improvement over what we have now. However, I think it has a lot of gaping holes. Even more than the gaping holes some of you so kindly poked in my suggestion on the factions forum this morning that involved actually making people go to the faction towns and strongholds and actually engage in activities that you can only do in factions if you want to keep wearing your arties. I guess it's just too much work to actually do something that relates to factions and if you take off for a few days to have a few non-arty pieces of gear you can put on until you can get to the base and do something as quick and easy as touch a faction stone.

Whatever.

 

[Lady Michelle]

nothing wrong with having mules in factions the problem is storing the points by honoring them over so no one loses them. killing and getting the points is ok if you can get 1,000 and over on your character.

 

[Flutter]

Points don't mean anything right now with the farming that's going on anyways. Plus there's LOTS of bugged characters wearing armor they shouldn't be able to.

 

[Tina Small]

Listed below is what I suggested this morning in the factions forum. Probably too much work for people to bother with it because they'd have to keep some spare armor parts around and unappealing for folks who play in Fel and want the arties but don't really give a rats-tail about factions.

What do you think of having to satisfy any one of the following requirements within the previous 72 hour period in order to be able to equip any faction arty:

(1) Touch the stone in your faction's stronghold (i.e., the one in the sigil room).
(2) Touch your faction's sign-up stone.
(3) Steal a sigil.
(4) Carry a sigil.
(5) Remove an enemy faction's trap.
(6) Kill an enemy faction character inside his or her stronghold.
(7) Kill an enemy faction's NPC guard.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Of course, using Trammel rules facets isn't the only way people can log out safely.

Any Inn or Tavern in the game, regardless of facet, should log you out instantly unless certain other conditions, such as being battle-flagged, are present.

And then of course there's private houses, which are used not just for logging out safely but also for safety during an actual fight.

I'm not saying there aren't problems in the system as currently constituted. I have yet, however, to see an honest assessment of the problems. It's easier to just pretend that Trammel players who join Factions for the Faction Artifacts are the problem. Faction point farming is far, far from being a problem exclusive to Trammel players in Factions.

How about this.

• Limit non-earned points to a percentage of the character's total points. (I.e., say, only 10% to 50% of your points can be granted to you, the rest you have to get through actual Faction play.
  
• Faction Artifacts suffer some kind of penalty if your Faction owns no cities (thus giving every Faction player an incentive to make sure that their Faction owns at least one city). If this leads to "treaties" among Factions to ensure that all Factions own at least one city, then guess what? That's called politics.
  
• Have a maximum points rank table. Currently, to my limited understanding, Faction rank is determined by your points as a percentage of your Faction's total. (Do I have that right?) Max that out, such that your rank is determined by a %, but when the total points goes over a certain #, rank is determined by the absolute # of points you have, rather than your points as a %. On high-point shards, this will mean that Faction ranks will be very top-heavy, but who cares?

-Galen's player

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Tina while I had mentioned the "being away for to long" aspect of your idea, I also pointed out it is very easy to do the things you suggested and continue how things are now, while yes the same holes are present here (aka people can just log off in a house of a friend in fel, or w/e) but after my previous post showing how easy it is to get around most ideas, in fact all the perfectly reasonable ones you suggested in the thread there and repeated here, I just did not feel like repeating it as omnius had read it already. I assume you already read what I posted in the other thread since you referenced it, and the being away thing I personally did not care about only mentioned it as I had figured others would complain about it and it came to mind since I recently went through that (and had to go with out 3 pieces of my armor, one being an orni, while still fighting to get points. as I said there I do not care about being handicapped just others might) I like your idea, I thought it was much more thoughtful than anyone else but you also know it would not fix things, I feel this would not fix things either but the idea is still good, so don't feel bad about the pointing out of the holes in the system =\

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

or as stated in another thread....just make factions in all facets attackable by other factioneers...make em think twice to join or bank sit. and yes factions should be about pvp

As was stated in another thread, force the Factions people to stay in Felluca were they belong. As in protecting a Ghost Town because Faction Players want it to be a Convenience.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Of course, using Trammel rules facets isn't the only way people can log out safely.

Any Inn or Tavern in the game, regardless of facet, should log you out instantly unless certain other conditions, such as being battle-flagged, are present.

And then of course there's private houses, which are used not just for logging out safely but also for safety during an actual fight.

I'm not saying there aren't problems in the system as currently constituted. I have yet, however, to see an honest assessment of the problems. It's easier to just pretend that Trammel players who join Factions for the Faction Artifacts are the problem. Faction point farming is far, far from being a problem exclusive to Trammel players in Factions.

How about this.

• Limit non-earned points to a percentage of the character's total points. (I.e., say, only 10% to 50% of your points can be granted to you, the rest you have to get through actual Faction play.
  
• Faction Artifacts suffer some kind of penalty if your Faction owns no cities (thus giving every Faction player an incentive to make sure that their Faction owns at least one city). If this leads to "treaties" among Factions to ensure that all Factions own at least one city, then guess what? That's called politics.
  
• Have a maximum points rank table. Currently, to my limited understanding, Faction rank is determined by your points as a percentage of your Faction's total. (Do I have that right?) Max that out, such that your rank is determined by a %, but when the total points goes over a certain #, rank is determined by the absolute # of points you have, rather than your points as a %. On high-point shards, this will mean that Faction ranks will be very top-heavy, but who cares?

-Galen's player

But in fel you run the risk of actually seeing other faction players at an inn, and yes houses would be an issue. While point farming is an issue the bigger issue comes from the amount of players who do not participate in factions, think about it like this if you removed all the tram only faction players from factions, the points needed for rank 10 would drastically decrease. Because of the way the points are situated right now you have people gaining 250+ a kill so the people in tram have to keep up with this by farming the points with out actually participating in the faction fighting, so yes you can say its an issue across the board but it is easily put that people who do not participate should not be rewarded, kinda a simple idea but for some reason everyone does not understand how a "rewards" system works, ya? And I have voiced against setting the rank to a certain number as it does not promote activity in factions, it might solve the "problem" but the real problem is inactivity, don't join factions if you do not want to play. I do think allowing factions in all facets does solve the problem completely, but I understand not allowing it to (I do tend to afk alot) but I would just learn to log out in this case , but eh whatever can not please everyone, I still believe the majority of the UO player base is "tram only" so it is unlikely that this PVP SYSTEM <-- read people ITS FOR PVP, will ever be fixed as the majority of people (aka the tram only people) will be upset by anything that goes against what they like. *shrugs*

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

As was stated in another thread, force the Factions people to stay in Felluca were they belong.

An entire thread was closed solely because of you, stay out of things where you don't belong, you see the post I just made about tram people being upset by every little detail? ya, bye.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

An entire thread was closed solely because of you, stay out of things where you don't belong, you see the post I just made about tram people being upset by every little detail? ya, bye.

Oh I dont think I was what closed that thread. The more likely scenario is you and the posters like you that chose to break the RoC of Stratics, with personal attacks, trolling etc.

You might be well advised to stick to the topic and chose the threads you .... *caugh* reply to.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

I have yet, however, to see an honest assessment of the problems. It's easier to just pretend that Trammel players who join Factions for the Faction Artifacts are the problem....

There has been nothing as far as I have seen that states any negative affect on, what shall me call them less casual Faction players, by the alleged people that are perhaps just more casual than others about Factions.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Oh I dont think I was what closed that thread.

"I disagree with what you said"

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Listed below is what I suggested this morning in the factions forum. Probably too much work for people to bother with it because they'd have to keep some spare armor parts around and unappealing for folks who play in Fel and want the arties but don't really give a rats-tail about factions.

What do you think of having to satisfy any one of the following requirements within the previous 72 hour period in order to be able to equip any faction arty:

(1) Touch the stone in your faction's stronghold (i.e., the one in the sigil room).
(2) Touch your faction's sign-up stone.
(3) Steal a sigil.
(4) Carry a sigil.
(5) Remove an enemy faction's trap.
(6) Kill an enemy faction character inside his or her stronghold.
(7) Kill an enemy faction's NPC guard.

What about the most simple solution, that you must be present, as actually in your faction town, playing the Faction Rule Set to be a member of Factions.

No one has ever answered why that is such an unacceptable solution to the *cough* issue being raised.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

I did not break the RoC, I showed how your argument was void of any points, you may want to read it again and point to where I personally attacked anyone, and I did not bother to read every post in the thread but correct me if I am wrong, but had you not posted what you had to begin with (and then continually after) the thread would have never gotten to a point that it needed to be closed, your bad idea on this matter is simply going to cuase the same issue it did before. You would be better placed to just agree to having the faction items unusable in tram, rather than to portray your, wrong I might add, idea of how the game works. Read my post in the other thread and then try to keep your argument, Remember I will just ignore you if you can not bring a valid point, and you can not since logic was not the basis of your argument to begin with.

And I need not head your warning as it is ill places, but that seems typical of you the past few days and I do choose the threads I reply to, never out of place and I have never started an online riot, heh. Also please point to any trolling, personal attacks or any other breaking of the RoC.

The topic was stuck to, I replied more than once in this thread all relating to the topic, you posted something I objected, maybe you need to figure out what keeping to the topic means.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

...The topic was stuck to

An entire thread was closed solely because of you, stay out of things where you don't belong, you see the post I just made about tram people being upset by every little detail? ya, bye.

The above is the entire quote. Now, point out what part applies to the topic of this thread, vs being a personal attack, trolling (the directive to leave) etc.

This is as far as I am going to go with you on this

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

What about the most simple solution, that you must be present, as actually in your faction town, playing the Faction Rule Set to be a member of Factions.

No one has ever answered why that is such an unacceptable solution to the *cough* issue being raised.

It is unacceptable to force people who enjoy things other than pvp to be forced to pvp, ALL OF MY CHARS can both pvp and pvm, my Champ spawn char is in factions and goes to doom, is it acceptable to force me to open another account to make a new identical char just to go to doom or do peerlesses that are not offered in fel? I do not care if the items can not travel to tram, but forcing chars to stay in one facet is not a good answer. Unless you agree to make everything accessible, this would mean changing tokuno, malas, and ilsh to the Fel ruleset and having tram be the outcast.


Edit: you may want to learn the meaning of trolling, would be a good start. Secondly I did not tell you to leave, I told you not to concern yourself where you should not, big difference. And I did not personally attack you, I stated what had happen from your prior attempt at pushing that idea. And it applies to the topic as I stated, You said something, I objected. Just because you can not understand my object does not mean it is not present.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

It is unacceptable to force people who enjoy things other than pvp to be forced to pvp, ALL OF MY CHARS can both pvp and pvm, my Champ spawn char is in factions and goes to doom, is it acceptable to force me to open another account to make a new identical char just to go to doom or do peerlesses that are not offered in fel?...

Is not the Spirit of Factions to Defend a Felluca Town, its inhabitants etc? This Spirit does not speak of wandering off to other parts the land .... in many military situations this is called A.W.O.L. if not down right desertion.

Your in Factions, you should darn well be there defending your Sigil.

On the other hand are you saying that Faction Players are just part timers and what is being discussed is some vague difference about were the line is drawn between part timers and really part timers?

 

[Whinemaker]

Holy crap not this all over again.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

But in fel you run the risk of actually seeing other faction players at an inn, and yes houses would be an issue.

I see other Faction players at the Inn. I curse, rapidly recall out, and find another Inn.

While point farming is an issue the bigger issue comes from the amount of players who do not participate in factions

By this I assume you mean the Fellies who join for Faction Artifacts, then use them for champ spawning and rarely if ever do anything for their Faction?

How do non-participants in Factions get their points? From point farming. So if the idea is that non-participants are the issue, how does fixing point farming not fix them? It would fix them, by definition.

think about it like this if you removed all the tram only faction players from factions, the points needed for rank 10 would drastically decrease.

On LS, the "problem" of Trammel-only Faction players did not exist. It was a phantom, a solution in search of a problem. I've seen more of this on GL, however, than I did on LS. On LS the issue was clearly Fellies who point farmed, and used the artifacts for champ spawning and Yew Gate PvP.

GL does have Trammel-only Factioners, but then again it also has a lot more Faction activity, so the overall points would be higher here "naturally."

And even on GL, relative to the high level of honest Faction participation, the level of Trammel-only Factioners seems really low to me. I therefore find it very unlikely that Trammel-only Factioners can possibly be numerous enough to skew the points to any great degree.

Which brings back to point farming, not Trammel players, being the underlying issue.

Because of the way the points are situated right now you have people gaining 250+ a kill so the people in tram have to keep up with this by farming the points with out actually participating in the faction fighting, so yes you can say its an issue across the board but it is easily put that people who do not participate should not be rewarded, kinda a simple idea but for some reason everyone does not understand how a "rewards" system works, ya?

Again, your long sentence here does nothing except confirm that the underlying issue is point farming, not Trammel players.

And I have voiced against setting the rank to a certain number as it does not promote activity in factions, it might solve the "problem" but the real problem is inactivity,

In other words: Point farming, because as far as I can tell the only ways to get points in Factions are point farming or actual Faction activity, and the two aren't mutually exclusive.

don't join factions if you do not want to play. I do think allowing factions in all facets does solve the problem completely, but I understand not allowing it to (I do tend to afk alot) but I would just learn to log out in this case ,

The level of frustration I experience in Factions is such that unless I had a rest from it, it wouldn't be fun for me at all and I'd be unlikely to participate.

Thus, speaking only for myself, at the present moment (I could change my mind by the time the fight I'm going to go join when I'm out of loss is over), I for one would leave Factions. I think there are others who feel the same way, but I can't know for sure.

but eh whatever can not please everyone, I still believe the majority of the UO player base is "tram only" so it is unlikely that this PVP SYSTEM <-- read people ITS FOR PVP, will ever be fixed as the majority of people (aka the tram only people) will be upset by anything that goes against what they like. *shrugs*

Oh, how nice it'd be if this were true. Yes, the majority of players are Trammel-only, but if Trammel players were listened to more often, there would be power scrolls in Trammel; no double resources in Felucca; there would be no Fel-rules only areas or items in the new Stygian Abyss map; there would be no double Fame in Felucca; those changes to, for example, how Evasion or remove curse apples would never have been made; and AoS probably wouldn't have happened.

Now I might be wrong on this; it might be that more Trammel players than I think like the fact that, for example, power scrolls can only come from some exotic land they never visit.

Ah, out of loss....Time to see if that fight is still active.

-Galen's player

 

[Kaleb]

Oh I dont think I was what closed that thread.

I disagree 100% on that. now that you have posted here petra will have this thread locked first thing this am watch.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Is not the Spirit of Factions to Defend a Felluca Town, its inhabitants etc? This Spirit does not speak of wandering off to other parts the land .... in many military situations this is called A.W.O.L. if not down right desertion.

Your in Factions, you should darn well be there defending your Sigil.

On the other hand are you saying that Faction Players are just part timers and what is being discussed is some vague difference about were the line is drawn between part timers and really part timers?

Well, you could say that. But I think you are trying to force the "RP" part of this game on people, it is not meant to follow extremely STRICT rp rules but to have fun playing, and you do know in the military you also get LEAVE (you know the L part of A.W.O.L) also you do not have to be "on duty" 24/7, maybe your forced RP would work better if say someone from an apposing faction entered your faction city and a msg went out to alert faction players, that would be more realistic to your military situation. Most faction fighting does not even happen in the cities anyway =\ oh well, I enjoy all aspects of the game I do not see why you want to limit those who play different than yourself, I would never be able to do anything but sit in cities in fel is what you are trying to say, I play with a small group all of my chars are in the same guild in the same faction.

 

[EDA_GL]

http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?p=1026077#post1026077


Why do all of my ideas make too much sense? Just make whichever faction HAVE to control the towns in order to 'unlock' the UBER faction items. If they don't own the towns, they are still the equivalent of the traditional arty.

 

[UOKaiser]

I have a Better and easier Idea. Remove points for the ability to get faction item. Then just silver and being in a faction matters. Remmeber imbuing is coming. We able to make wonderful items with both faction and imbued items wearing out which will you choose?

 

[Viper09]

This thread can be a quite good discussion for bettering the faction system. So let's not destroy this thread by feeding the troll.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Galen, I am not going to go on a point by point debate right this moment, I agree fixing point farming would fix everything but I did not see a single thing in your post that would fix point farming, I agreed with you and also showed how "as is" the system would benefit from the removal of those who do not participate. Doing a champ spawn in factions is still participating, you can not recall away while you are in t2a or any other dungeon in fel thus you will lose your points quickly enough from dying so much. And it is not that they are solely listened to, my point was that anything that affects them greatly will be voiced about (apples and other things do not) powerscrolls is the only valid point on this that has not been listened to, but as I often try to point out, anything they introduce to bring people to fel more often would more than likely never be counter acted by them allowing it in tram, this includes power scrolls and double resources and anything else they have added to try and bring more people to fel. The artifacts were introduced to try and liven up Factions, I think it worked and also did not work, While you might not notice many tram players there are many on many shards that would like to disagree.

Taking breaks is fine, I agree with that, It is why I said I understand not letting it in the other facets. I do not wish them to do it I just know it would stop the non-participating also. I only stated it as a fact and also showed I would just deal with it either way it goes.

Getting 250+ points a kill is not exclusive to point farming, Kill some players in a city just while normal faction play will result in this. My grip with this is the double and triple points that can happen, wipe all the points get rid of the ridiculous system and it should balance itself out.

Meh I guess I did almost go point for point, oh well, as stated a few times I agree with point farming being the issue but if the non-removal of the current amount of points, and the way the system works as is continues then the things that have been suggested would help, while limited it is still helpful.

 

[Viper09]

My suggesting would be that either let factions fight in trammel or make it so faction artifacts cannot be equipped in tram.

Or perhaps some way to make it so points decay over time. Such as if you do not kill a worthy faction enemy in X amount of time a percentage of your points will decay. By worthy I mean someone who has a rank close to your own. So you can't gain points off someone who has 0 points.

So it will take real work to maintain a high rank. That way if you're doing nothing with that character it will decay all the way to the lowest rank and leave room for others who do the real work to actually get that rank.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?p=1026077#post1026077


Why do all of my ideas make too much sense? Just make whichever faction HAVE to control the towns in order to 'unlock' the UBER faction items. If they don't own the towns, they are still the equivalent of the traditional arty.

"to much sense"? hehe, not a bad proposal. Curious tho would everyone be ok with "everyone" being able to use the arties with out the special props activated? If so why not just make the additional parts of the artifacts only work in fel, would pretty much clear up the debate. Tho it is still an economical downfall, but I guess the market for silver would be just as good as selling the actual items?

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

My suggesting would be that either let factions fight in trammel or make it so faction artifacts cannot be equipped in tram.

Or perhaps some way to make it so points decay over time. Such as if you do not kill a worthy faction enemy in X amount of time a percentage of your points will decay. By worthy I mean someone who has a rank close to your own. So you can't gain points off someone who has 0 points.

Well this would be ok. But point farming usually involves killing someone with an exceptional amount of points so you can gain rank in one kill, not sure if it would fix the current situation with out taking away all the point factors that exist currently.

 

[Viper09]

Well this would be ok. But point farming usually involves killing someone with an exceptional amount of points so you can gain rank in one kill, not sure if it would fix the current situation with out taking away all the point factors that exist currently.

Well if there will be a big fix to the point system I think they might have to take away all the points and thus start anew.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Well if there will be a big fix to the point system I think they might have to take away all the points and thus start anew.

I completely agree with that, and I have voiced it to be done like that

 

[EDA_GL]

What about using my town-controlling idea along with:
A) All new artifacts have only 10 max durability, non powderable or repairable
B) Require a metric butt-ton of silver to purchase the items (EX 50x more silver to purchase whatever item)

Option A would continue the need for silver and for people to actively travel to a base to obtain a 'fresh' artifact, turning into faction related fighting.
Option B would open up the silver farming spots for faction related action.

 

[Tina Small]

What about the most simple solution, that you must be present, as actually in your faction town, playing the Faction Rule Set to be a member of Factions.

No one has ever answered why that is such an unacceptable solution to the *cough* issue being raised.

Enigma, I assume you realize that only TWO faction strongholds are actually located on the outskirts of what could be called a town (in Magincia's case, it's kind of hard to call it a town anymore as it lacks the typical NPC residents found in other towns). The other two faction strongholds are located far from any particular towne (Minax is inside a mountain range and is almost equally distant from Trinsic and Britain, and SL is NE of Yew in the Yew crypts).

Town sigils must be transported by walking or running them to your faction's stronghold in order to be corrupted. You get the sigils either from one of the eight faction towns or from an enemy faction's stronghold or by killing an enemy faction character that happens to be carrying one in his/her backpack.

Can you please elaborate on how you manage to be a faction member by being present in your faction town?

I'm not trying to be cute here, but on the face of it, your statement makes me believe you have forgotten these simple but important details about how a faction gains control of one or all of the eight faction towns, i.e., not everything that happens takes place within the boundaries of a town. In addition, there are eight faction towns and only four factions and no town has any special linkage that I'm aware of to a particular faction. Yes, TB prefers to control Brit so the enemy doesn't put up guards right in front of their stronghold and COM prefers to control Magincia for the same reason.

The most lengthy portion of the task of taking control of a faction town and the stage in the process that usually generates the most activity doesn't even happen inside of the town itself--it happens inside a faction stronghold when a faction holds onto a sigil long enough to "corrupt" it to their faction. Being an active factioneer and helping your faction gain town control means you might be visiting any one of eight towns, any one of four bases, and a whole lot of Fel countryside in between if that's what it takes to move sigils or find someone carrying a sigil or headed out on a raid.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

What about using my town-controlling idea along with:
A) All new artifacts have only 10 max durability, non powderable or repairable
B) Require a metric butt-ton of silver to purchase the items (EX 50x more silver to purchase whatever item)

Option A would continue the need for silver and for people to actively travel to a base to obtain a 'fresh' artifact, turning into faction related fighting.
Option B would open up the silver farming spots for faction related action.

No objections. Tho option B would be a pain lol.

 

[Tina Small]

My suggesting would be that either let factions fight in trammel or make it so faction artifacts cannot be equipped in tram.

Or perhaps some way to make it so points decay over time. Such as if you do not kill a worthy faction enemy in X amount of time a percentage of your points will decay. By worthy I mean someone who has a rank close to your own. So you can't gain points off someone who has 0 points.

So it will take real work to maintain a high rank. That way if you're doing nothing with that character it will decay all the way to the lowest rank and leave room for others who do the real work to actually get that rank.

The problem with this idea is that people can and do transfer kill points to a point holder. Haven't checked in a while, but for quite a few weeks at least the top point holder in the whole game was a crafter. And if you think a crafter managed to accumulate millions of kill points by killing honest-to-goodness enemies, there's a bridge in Brooklyn I'd love to sell you.

 

[jelinidas]

My suggesting would be that either let factions fight in trammel or make it so faction artifacts cannot be equipped in tram.

This is the clear answer.

 

[JC the Builder]

It is unacceptable to force people who enjoy things other than pvp to be forced to pvp,

If you don't want to PVP then don't join Factions. Factions is a 100% PVP system and if you join then you are expected to PVP to retain all the benefits of that system.

 

[northwoodschopper]

I think Faction points and rank should decay noticably while staying in Trammel. There should be a noticable penalty to points crossing into Trammel rulesets. This can easily be explained as a toll for amnesty crossing into the protection of Lord British's domain, and the factions aren't too fond of its members leaving the battlegrounds for extended periods of time. Having factions extended to Trammel would be inconsistent and fairly pointless; murderous faction members could not participate in any combat outside of Fel, there are no objectives on the Trammel rulesets.

I would like to see Factions have more exclusive content, which should stay in Fel. The arties I'm not too fond of, I'll admit, but I can see where there is more potential for better improvements. I would like to see factions battle for territory outside of towns too, where a faction's control of a territory would reward the owning faction with higher resource returns for faction prospectors, and increased passive regeneration for faction soldiers fighting in their territory.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

If you don't want to PVP then don't join Factions. Factions is a 100% PVP system and if you join then you are expected to PVP to retain all the benefits of that system.

If you read the entire context of what I said in reference to what he said, the point of the matter was forcing Faction members to spend all their time in fel as if they were red, I do pvp in factions I joined to pvp. I agree that to benefit you should have to be pvping, I have stated that I am for making the "benefits" of factions be only in fel, but I do not agree to forcing anyone in a faction to be restricted to the fel facet.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Galen, I am not going to go on a point by point debate right this moment,

Though as you point out at the end you did, which is fine.

I agree fixing point farming would fix everything but I did not see a single thing in your post that would fix point farming,

Then you did not actually read the post.

• Limit non-earned points to a percentage of the character's total points. (I.e., say, only 10% to 50% of your points can be granted to you, the rest you have to get through actual Faction play.

This would be of use with the farming issue by limiting the extent to which it could substitute for actual Faction play to acquire points.

• Faction Artifacts suffer some kind of penalty if your Faction owns no cities (thus giving every Faction player an incentive to make sure that their Faction owns at least one city). If this leads to "treaties" among Factions to ensure that all Factions own at least one city, then guess what? That's called politics.

This would deal with the issue by providing an incentive to actually participate in Factions, as opposed to point farming.

• Have a maximum points rank table. Currently, to my limited understanding, Faction rank is determined by your points as a percentage of your Faction's total. (Do I have that right?) Max that out, such that your rank is determined by a %, but when the total points goes over a certain #, rank is determined by the absolute # of points you have, rather than your points as a %. On high-point shards, this will mean that Faction ranks will be very top-heavy, but who cares?

This would deal with the issue by making it so that farmed points mean less, and making it somewhat easier to acquire enough points to matter through Faction play, by ensuring that there was a ceiling over which point farming would be of no particular use.

I agreed with you and also showed how "as is" the system would benefit from the removal of those who do not participate.

OK, here's where you start showing what you really feel, where you start to inadvertently admit that this post isn't really about participation, but about who participates.

Doing a champ spawn in factions is still participating,

Umm....No, it's not. Doing a champ spawn is doing a champ spawn.

When I was TB Commander on LS, I was warred to an RP guild for an event, and they also happened to be a Minax guild. I realized during the fight that I was getting Faction points, and Silver, from my kills.

Was I participating in Factions? Not in any meaningful way. I was doing an RP PvP event, and Factions happened to interfere.

Is a guild doing a champ spawn participating in Factions by virtue of doing a champ spawn? Not in any meaningful way. They were doing a champ spawn, Faction activity happened to interfere.

The only way you can term champing as participating in Factions is if you happen to be doing the Abyss spawn, because 1 monster there will give you silver. And that's stretching it, especially given that you seem to consider Factions to be an exclusive PvP system, despite the fact that it also involves thievery (which some consider PvP and some don't) and PvM (in the form of getting silver to place traps) and crafting (in the old days, Faction Runics were very important, and once in awhile you still see one).

you can not recall away while you are in t2a or any other dungeon in fel thus you will lose your points quickly enough from dying so much.

If your fellow Factioners happen to find you while you are doing something not directly related to Factions. Again, this is no different from warring a Faction guild and fighting in Trammel. I really doubt you'd call that participating.

You don't really care about participation in and of itself; this much is clear. You don't want Trammel players in Factions. You don't mind Fellies being in Factions and not directly doing Faction things, you said that very clearly above.

And it is not that they are solely listened to,

Here by "they" I assume you mean Trammel players whom you admit are the majority if players.

my point was that anything that affects them greatly will be voiced about

Yes. Trammel players, however, are nowhere near as loud on these boards, nor treated as leniently on average, as are Fellies. This is unfortunate as it skews popular perception.

(apples and other things do not)

Umm....Yes, they do. A fair amount of PvM-exclusive players who used Samurai-Paladins complained to me that the nerfing of apples and Evasion had a major impact on their playstyles, because they used those things to basically counteract the fact that there was no room for Resist on many PvM-exclusive Samurai-Paladin templates.

Interestingly, I told them they were exaggerating, that they were going to survive and adapt and still be able to easily solo things that they should not be able to solo.

I was correct.

But the point is that these changes, done to appease the PvP community, were done despite the protests of Trammel-exclusive players, whom you admit are the majority of the player base.

powerscrolls is the only valid point on this that has not been listened to,

No; see above. And, for that matter, see below!

but as I often try to point out, anything they introduce to bring people to fel more often would more than likely never be counter acted by them allowing it in tram, this includes power scrolls and double resources and anything else they have added to try and bring more people to fel.

I don't get the point of this sentence; I've tried. It's basically a list of things that work against your own argument, but I don't think you mean it that way.

The artifacts were introduced to try and liven up Factions, I think it worked and also did not work, While you might not notice many tram players there are many on many shards that would like to disagree.

Again, read my posts. I noticed virtually none of these on LS, have noticed more on GL, but on GL the greater faction participation rate appears to drown them out somewhat. I saw more Factioners at a raid I was at earlier than I see right now at the Luna Bank.

Having said that, I freely admit that my LS experience was clearly not extrapolable (is that even a word? I don't think so but I think you know what I mean) to other shards. I was 100% wrong to extrapolate, as here on GL Trammel-only Factioners do indeed seem to exist.

I find it frustrating, and pointless....Faction Artifacts are nice, but I've managed to build myself a nice suit without them. I look at these people at the Luna Bank and wonder why they bother...Not much showing off value, at least to me, because you are mostly showing that you need to near-exploit in order to build a good suit.

I can understand the existence of Trammel-exclusive Factioners, for RP purposes, but it seems like it should be a really rare thing. What I can't understand is seeing them in any great numbers.

-Galen's player

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

...
I'm not trying to be cute here, but on the face of it, your statement makes me believe you have forgotten ...

I admit it has been a lifetime since I was involved, but you have said nothing that contradicts what I said. But you do seem to be fond of lecturing so feel free....

I know that the point and purpose of building the Factions Rule Set was to facilitate people that wanted that form of stimulus as their Game Play Style.

I know the theory was to legitimize the Player Ran Town construct.

I know the intent and commitment was for the Faction Players to Build their Faction, Town, Strong hold, base power all of. To Dominate the field of play.

So I use the most simple form of the Spirit of what Factions was built to do to high lite what is not being done. So sue me for keeping it simple (K.I.S.S.)

As has been said, Factions was a Role Playing device. If the argument chooses to be "forcing" people to Role Play being a Factions member, then does this not seem like Pot's calling Kettle's Black? If the Pot objects to being forced to be a Factions Member, then is it not Hypocritical of the Pot to call the Kettle Names and "Force" the Kettle to be a Pot?

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Holy, long read. (and a long reply will follow )

Anyway, I suppose it depends on how you define participation, fighting other factions for control of any area is how I define it, but it is a matter of perspective it is true.

And I apologize for not re-reading your post as it does have a point to fixing the points.

I do consider thievery to be a more pvp system (altho it has been recently buffed to include a pvm aspect) but this again is a point of perspective.

I had said there are people on shards who would disagree, perhaps not where you have been playing, and honestly where I participate in factions I do not think this is a problem tho I have not really investigated it on one shard (atl) but on others I would say the population is more in tram at any time than in fel.

I am not particularly against people in tram, I have mentioned that I enjoy playing there as well. I also enjoy fighting in the bases, and I enjoy champing, and crafting as well. There is really nothing in game I do not enjoy doing, so I guess the real point would be to define where participation draws its lines. Obviously with things how they are right now it is a slightly different view but it can still be well placed I will give an example of what I mean.

The only real "faction event" is the sigils, once you steal the sigils, spend the small amount of time currently placed to corrupt the sigils and then place them back in town, what do you do for the 6 hour wait? Perhaps you just got on and this has just ended? (this use to be a much longer wait, which is how I based my original assessment on participation) You can not really "participate" during the wait time as there is nothing to attack or defend.

You brought up a point about fellow factioneers would treat you "normal" while you are not doing faction things, while this may hold true for you I have in many instances been killed way more during faction fighting by fellow factioneers than I had by opposing factioneers, so doing faction things does not change how others treat you, I could reference this to Napa (happens the most) and Atl evenly. While I have not had these things happen on some of the other shards, it is potentially a viable thing to occur.

I apologize for ending up going point for point in the last post when I said I would not, I thought I would have left before that would happen but it ended up we postponed the trip to the store.

I can only base my Opinions on what I experience and how I play. It is obvious things are different for you where you play and how you play, since the game we play is subject to change depending on where we play it is conceivable that ideas be different based on this fact alone, and not really based on feelings.

I honestly do not care if people stay in tram or not, but I offer my opinion on the matter based on the out cry of others, it does not affect me really. With or with out the arties I will play

 

[Kaleb]

Only fix is faction fighting being done throughout all the lands regardless of ruleset. this isnt about fel vs tram its about people exploiting the system and using faction gear w/o risk of of ever being attacked by a rival faction member. when the faction arties were put in it was meant as another means to stimulate pvp not a means to exploit a system for easy gear.

 

[Harb]

I remain confused as to the actual issue, it seems to vary by poster and thread. Emotions seem to become elevated once the Tram/ Fel divide is envoked, which occurs as rapidly as a new thread is posted. It seems that at the end of the day, it boils down to a debate about "buffed" items. The simpliest and most comprehensive recommendation I've seen, not original to me, is to unequip faction items when departing the Fel rules set, and not allowing them to be re-equipped until returning to Fel. Does that solve the issue?

 

[Bo Bo]

Dear Trammy Queens,

Blah Blah on trammel, Bo would like to see a faction turn in for other peoples faction arties and would love to be able to turn them in for say 1/2 the amount of silver they cost. Bo doesnt play where there is peaches and cream. Faction arties cost 5000 to 25000 silver per where The Bo plays. Bo isnt much of a pvmer, if Bo wanted to pvm Bo wouldnt play the shard Bo does and certianly wouldnt have joined factions. Please dont make Bo pvm for pvp.

Thanks

Bo