Maybe some analysis might help. I've pulled together various bits and pieces of information and present it below for your review!
To start with, the original notes for Publish 75 said:
- All faction scores will be reset to 0.
- All Faction members will return to Rank 1.
- Faction score now decays at a rate of 1% (rounded down) of score per day. Scores of 199 or below will decay 1 point per day. Scores of 200 to 299 lose 2 points per day, etc.
- Players with 0 Faction score will always be assigned Rank 1 and are no longer counted in Faction membership totals when determining the size of ranking brackets.
However, on Friday, March 16th, Bleak posted in the Test Center forum the following very important modifications that I'm not sure everyone is aware of yet:
- All faction scores will be scaled down instead of wiped.
- All faction members’ rankings will be updated to reflect the new scaled points.
- Faction score now decays at a rate of 1% (rounded down) of score per day. Scores of 99 or below will have a scaling chance to decay 1 point per day. The closer the score is to 0 the smaller the chance is of having point decay.
- Players with 0 Faction score will always be assigned Rank 1 and are no longer counted in Faction membership totals when determining the size of ranking brackets.
Assuming that nothing has changed from past years, the percentiles for determining faction rank are as shown below:
- Rank 1 - Below 20%
- Rank 2 - 20% to 39%
- Rank 3 - 40% to 49%
- Rank 4 - 50% to 59%
- Rank 5 - 60% to 69%
- Rank 6 - 70% to 79%
- Rank 7 - 80% to 89%
- Rank 8 - 90% to 94%
- Rank 9 - 95% to 99%
- Rank 10 - 99.1% to 100%
The various faction artifacts are listed below, showing which ranks can wear them and the property which makes them better than the non-faction version of the same artifact. (This is information from UOGuide, so I hope it's accurate. EA never provided any official list of the artifacts and their rank requirements in the notes for Publish 59. )
- Rank 10 only – Mace and Shield Reading Glasses (with 10% Damage Increase); Ornament of the Magician (with 3 Mana Regeneration); and Inquisitor’s Resolution (with resists of 10%, 10%, 20%, 10%, 10%).
- Ranks 9 and 10 – Clainin’s Spellbook (with 10% LMC); Crystalline Ring (with FCR 3); Folded Steel Reading Glasses (with 10% DCI); and Order Shield – Museum of Vesper Replica (with no -1 FC penalty).
- Ranks 7 through 10 – A Primer on Arms Damage Removal (with 10% HCI); Spirit of the Totem (with 20%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 10% resists); Tome of Lost Knowledge (with 3 Mana Regeneration); Wizard’s Crystal Reading Glasses (with resists of 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%).
- Ranks 4 through 10 -Crimson Cincture (with +5 Dexterity); Heart of the Lion (with 20%, 15%, 15%, 15%, 15% resists); Hunter’s Headdress (with 10%, 10%, 15%, 10%, 10% resists); Ring of the Vile (with 10% Hit Chance Increase).
- All Ranks – Fey Leggings (with 15%, 11%, 10%, 4%, 22% resists); Kasa of the Raj-In (with 10% DCI); Rune Beetle Carapace (with 8%, 6%, 17%, 6%, 17%); and Stormgrip (with 10% HCI).
Here are some other faction rank-related perks/privileges:
- Ranks 2 through 10 - Can ride a faction war horse.
- Ranks 6 through 10 - Can run for office in elections for the Commanding Lord of a faction.
I set up a spreadsheet on Google which includes the percentile and faction ranking calculations and scores for 50 fictional faction characters with faction scores of 1 or more.You can find it here:
Welcome to Google Docsfree to make your own copy of it and play around with the faction scores to see how percentile rankings work and how I think the faction ranking system works. Just make sure each faction score you add is 1 or more, since the updated method for calculating percentiles and faction ranks is going to EXCLUDE all characters who have a faction score of 0 or less. It's definitely interesting to see how the percentiles and ranks work out when you have the majority of characters with very low positive scores and a few large ones at the top.
Perhaps someone can ask Bleak how the scores for inactive characters are going to be included in the calculations, i.e., will they be scaled according to the new publish changes and included in the calculations if the character is on an account that has been closed for less than 90 days (or some other arbitrary period), and after that will they not be included in the calculations?Also, how and when will decay of points for these characters take place? It would also be nice if he or Jeff Skalski could tell players how soon we will once again be able to view current faction leaderboard information to see who is hogging all the points and makes a worthy target!(Just kidding!)
With the scaling of points in the upcoming publish versus wiping all of them, it would seem that there is still a good possibility for many faction characters who actually have any amount of faction points to still be able to wear more than just the basic faction artifacts, assuming points for inactive characters are appropriately included/excluded, scaled, and made subject to decay.Hopefully this change will spur those who want to use the artifacts to actually participate in faction PvP, instead of using some gimpy method to get their points and then rarely giving the whole subject of faction PvP and maintaining rank another thought again.
Edited to add info on rank requirements for riding a war horse and for running for office as CL.