New Faction Proposal....

[Nexus]

I've looked it over, I've discussed it with a lot of people but we all agree, "What's the Point". Right now Factions are broken, true enough. They don't have a focus or purpose outside Faction Arties, they don't have any other reason to really be in a Faction.

Reducing Factions from 4 to 3 and redoing the scoring concept will not change this, you just wind up shifting numbers around.

Me and some friends have brought up an alternate proposal I'd like to share.

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To start off you have to realize that the current Factions are out dated, UO Fiction has pretty much removed all the major players behind the scenes. Magincia the home of CoM has been destroyed, the Shadow Lords have been banished (for the Time Being), a new leader for Britannia has been appointed in Queen Dawn, Minax well she's lurking around and we all know she's about to try and pull something but for years she was a non-factor. That leaves us with who in the realms is powerful enough to attempt to seize total control and dominance over Felucca?

Barracoon, Neira the Necromancer, Mephitis, Rikktor, Lord Oaks, and Semidar, that's who. Best of all each already has a set location.


Give each Champ a Faction. Each Champ carries his Sigil, to obtain it an opposing Faction has to work the spawn (Random Spawns do not count, only fixed Spawns), and a Faction Thief has to steal the Sigil from that Champion. To recover a Sigil a Faction Thief must sneak into the holding factions base, steal and return the Sigil to his Champion by double clicking the sigil and targeting the alter.

Each Faction would have a Base accessible only from inside it's respective Dungeon, or in the case of Oaks his base would be accessed from T2A. No Easy access to bases, no Recall near by and run in, you work your way in from a Non-Recall area, and must work your way back out the same way. No Monster that spawns from your Champs Spawn will attack you. You gain faction currency for killing Mobs at opposing spawns and opposed faction members.

Here's the beauty.. The Only way to summon a Harrower is for your faction to control Every Single Sigil, all 6 (5 opposing plus your own retained by your Champ). Once summoned the Harrower is fair game for anyone.


Pros:
Give Factions Purpose they become necessary to summon the Harrower
Gives more choice to players
Spreads PvP out more, Factions aligned to a Champ will be guarding their Champ and trying to defeat all the opposing ones.
Frees up All Feluccian Towns for Community involvement again because Guard Zones would Return.
Most of the necessary components are already in place.
Helps minimize the gaps between PvM and PvP, you will have to fight Mobs to accomplish anything for your faction.
Players will care about defending their Champ, so as to try and summon and pull of a Harrower without being caught. Unlike now where people get their arties and then just fight at Yew Gate often times.

Cons:

This is where I want the Community to step in, point out flaws....

 

[Cardell]

I've looked it over, I've discussed it with a lot of people but we all agree, "What's the Point". Right now Factions are broken, true enough. They don't have a focus or purpose outside Faction Arties, they don't have any other reason to really be in a Faction.

Reducing Factions from 4 to 3 and redoing the scoring concept will not change this, you just wind up shifting numbers around.

Me and some friends have brought up an alternate proposal I'd like to share.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

To start off you have to realize that the current Factions are out dated, UO Fiction has pretty much removed all the major players behind the scenes. Magincia the home of CoM has been destroyed, the Shadow Lords have been banished (for the Time Being), a new leader for Britannia has been appointed in Queen Dawn, Minax well she's lurking around and we all know she's about to try and pull something but for years she was a non-factor. That leaves us with who in the realms is powerful enough to attempt to seize total control and dominance over Felucca?

Barracoon, Neira the Necromancer, Mephitis, Rikktor, Lord Oaks, and Semidar, that's who. Best of all each already has a set location.


Give each Champ a Faction. Each Champ carries his Sigil, to obtain it an opposing Faction has to work the spawn (Random Spawns do not count, only fixed Spawns), and a Faction Thief has to steal the Sigil from that Champion. To recover a Sigil a Faction Thief must sneak into the holding factions base, steal and return the Sigil to his Champion by double clicking the sigil and targeting the alter.

Each Faction would have a Base accessible only from inside it's respective Dungeon, or in the case of Oaks his base would be accessed from T2A. No Easy access to bases, no Recall near by and run in, you work your way in from a Non-Recall area, and must work your way back out the same way. No Monster that spawns from your Champs Spawn will attack you. You gain faction currency for killing Mobs at opposing spawns and opposed faction members.

Here's the beauty.. The Only way to summon a Harrower is for your faction to control Every Single Sigil, all 6 (5 opposing plus your own retained by your Champ). Once summoned the Harrower is fair game for anyone.


Pros:
Give Factions Purpose they become necessary to summon the Harrower
Gives more choice to players
Spreads PvP out more, Factions aligned to a Champ will be guarding their Champ and trying to defeat all the opposing ones.
Frees up All Feluccian Towns for Community involvement again because Guard Zones would Return.
Most of the necessary components are already in place.
Helps minimize the gaps between PvM and PvP, you will have to fight Mobs to accomplish anything for your faction.
Players will care about defending their Champ, so as to try and summon and pull of a Harrower without being caught. Unlike now where people get their arties and then just fight at Yew Gate often times.

Cons:

This is where I want the Community to step in, point out flaws....

Incorporating the 2 systems isn't all that bad of an idea. To be honest it wouldn't be my first choice but anything is better than the crap they just had on that faction test center.

PVM shouldn't be a necessity. Working spawn isn't part of factions and I completely dislike that part of your suggestion. Its just not what factions is about. If you want to incorporate the 2 by requiring dominance over the factions to get harrowers than thats all good, but spawning shouldn't be a part of raiding or defending the citys for ownership.

Having each of the dungeons a faction base isn't all that bad of an idea either but then you run into the whole spawning garbage while raiding and defending. It pretty much takes small guilds out of contention for the sigs because not only do they have to fight outnumbered by they have to fight off the spawn as well. That would be dumb. The portals that link the dungeons would also have to be taken out.. It makes traveling between the bases way to easy.. Or at least make it so you cannot travel through the portals with sigs.. Either way they have to make sure logging in and logging out of the dungeons/bases would be completely impossible... which is a huge problem for the current system.

I think the logic in your suggestions is there but you seem to be gearing the factions more toward PVM to give it new relevance instead of fixing the factions by fixing its relevance. The bottom line is the factions were a battle for resources when they first came out as well as your normal pvp bragging rights. It supplied people with things they absolutely needed for both PVP and PVM. Regs, bottles, wood, ingots. The factions also supplied the options of factions mounts and armor as well. The problem was/is these resources/bonuses are irrelevant for the most part now. Most people that pvp do not need regs anymore,, lrc removed regs from the pvp aspect of the game of course with the exception of potions. Back in the day it was a competition to get regs sometimes from normal vendors and it was the same way with bottles sometimes as well. Wood and Iron obviously made things a lot easier for crafters and pvpers because crafters were able to make more items and supply them to the pvpers.

Currently iron and wood are only good for filling BODS and training characters.

So the vendors that were one of the main attractions are now jack ****. As for the bonuses... faction crafted armor is disabled and even if it wasn't, it would be useless since insurance ruined the benefits of blessed armor.

Faction mounts are still pretty useful. Although I think their should be no remount penalty for them like they were at first. Dismounting is basically the reason so many people get pissed at the factions. They get dismounted by 1 stealth archer and then 3 oranges run in on screen and jack him/her and then bam, out of commission for 20 minutes. The 20 minute timer isn't all that bad if you aren't getting jacked by talentless stealth archers.

I still think fixing the factions needs to be done through fixing the pvp.. Stealth archers need to be looked at.. all dismounting needs to be looked at.. Mysticism needs to be looked at, apples need to be looked at, weapon speed needs to be looked at, game speed needs to be capped. The bottom line is pvp is pure stats and weapons. Everyone has max speed, max dmg, max everything.. Its all way to fast... It was much better when pvp was based off good timing instead of good weapons and armor. Speed weapons could be used just as effectively as dmg weapons, and the same with spells.

Seriously the game is just jacked up.

Devs don't know it because they don't pvp..

I could go on and on about it but its not really worth the time.. Nothing I just said hasn't been said a billion times before.

Good suggestion bro but it wont help anything with jacked up pvp. Factions is a pvp system.. Remember that plz.. There should be nothing obtainable through pvm that pvp cannot get you.. Having pvm aspects is all gravey but to focus a part, especially an important part like sigil exchange off pvm is not what factions are about. Not at all.

 

[Lynk]

There was a time when a sync dump was the most effective offense.

Now, on a bush/ninja/mystic stealther I can dish out 180 damage in under three seconds.

An archer can hit me for 33 dmg plus two hit spells on the run (and they are faster than me).

Someone can cast spell plague, and harm me three times and I'm redlined.

 

[Cardell]

Yeah. As the game was developed the Devs for some reason thought the only way to make new things worth using is to make stronger, faster weapons, pets and/or spells. Unfortunately thats not good for a balanced system. As we see today,, with the outrageous skills and pets that they have been bringing out since AOS. When ever a new skill comes out or they bring in a new pet they have to make changes to them over the next x patches because they didn't balance the skills through pvp. Its just amateur.. and annoying..

:gun:

 

[Nexus]

Good suggestion bro but it wont help anything with jacked up pvp. Factions is a pvp system.. Remember that plz.. There should be nothing obtainable through pvm that pvp cannot get you.. Having pvm aspects is all gravey but to focus a part, especially an important part like sigil exchange off pvm is not what factions are about. Not at all.

If all one wanted was to PvP then why bother with Factions? They are not necessary to PvP, the point of tying it closer to PvM namely Champ Spawns was to give it purpose. Right now outside a BS Score card and Faction Arties there is really zero justification for the effort involved in developing the entire system, you simply can get the same level of PvP interaction without Factions if they and all faction arties were removed.

By tying PvP to a PvM system and not just any PvM type system but one that has become pretty much a necessity in todays UO due to Scrolls you bring purpose and open avenues. Say if they did it where if a Spawn was worked up to just before the Champ Popped, and you were part of that faction and defended the spawn til it completely reverted you got scrolls would that be a justification? Right now there is little reward in defending a base, town control is pointless because anyone can buy off a faction vendor with the exception of Warhorses. I'm just looking for a more interactive system that provides more depth than "Kills all Oranges"... If I wanted to just do that I'd go and change the flagging colors in the Client and just beat on anyone that crossed my path.

 

[Cardell]

Why bother with factions if you want to pvp? Structured pvp that has nothing to do with pvm aspect of the game...

 

[Nexus]

Why bother with factions if you want to pvp? Structured pvp that has nothing to do with pvm aspect of the game...

Tell you what take the field naked and tell me PvP doesn't rely on PvM in some way.....

Those hides used to make Leather armor = PvM

You won't make a good suit 100% out of faction arties, so somewhere someone has had to engage in PvM to either create to supply the items you use for your suit, that is if you didn't engage in PvM directly to create it.

Face it PvP is already Dependant on PvM to some extent, that's something the Felucca Chucklehead Club never understood, and probably never will.

 

[Cardell]

Tell you what take the field naked and tell me PvP doesn't rely on PvM in some way.....

Those hides used to make Leather armor = PvM

You won't make a good suit 100% out of faction arties, so somewhere someone has had to engage in PvM to either create to supply the items you use for your suit, that is if you didn't engage in PvM directly to create it.

Face it PvP is already Dependant on PvM to some extent, that's something the Felucca Chucklehead Club never understood, and probably never will.

Theres a differance between needing to play the other parts of the game in order to play the end game and having to pvm while you end game..

 

[kelmo]

This is where diversity and inclusion come into play. Think about that...

 

[Nexus]

Theres a differance between needing to play the other parts of the game in order to play the end game and having to pvm while you end game..

Since when is there actually any "End Game" to UO? You are basing your comments on a personal value or opinion not on reasoned thought.

Tying a PvP to a PvM system, one that is so closely associated with PvP already, isn't a bad idea. The biggest problem with PvP outside Speedhacks and Pot chugging scripts how impossible it is to balance thanks to the vast ability to diversify templates. Tying PvP and PvM together helps, some templates good for PvP would totally get trashed in PvM, doing this would weaken and event them out more.

 

[Sergul'zan_SP]

IMO this just adds to the problem in general PvP. Too much dependency on PvM.

If PvP were simple like it used to be and you didn't have to PvM your life away or spend millions to obtain the proper gear, I bet we'd have a lot more people doing factions to begin with.

Proposed Fixes:

*True Brittanians become loyal to Dawn. Their stronghold is moved to a strategic defensible position outside of the city limits. ( Who really liked LB anyways? )

*CoM is eliminated. This reduces the total number of factions to three. ( It pains me to do this...if it's possible to keep them then it should be done. )

*Sigils have an 18 hour corruption time. If corrupted and placed on a monolith, they are safe for a full 24 hours. The 18 hour time is designed to allow people like me who work 12 hours a day to enjoy the system as well as those avid gamers who play all the time.

*Sigil reset time should be 20 minutes. That 20 minutes, however, should be required to be on an opposing faction monolith. Time of possession not on a monolith should not count towards reset time, but it should also not count as corruption time.

*Updated fiction should be generated for the Shadowlords, Minax, and the True Brittanians.

*A "Spar" option should be created so that members of the same faction could spar. Attacking somebody without sparring authorization would result in traitor status, reduction to -10000 points (penalty...obviously balanced to point accumulation), and inability to accumulate points for 7 days.

*Characters inactive for more than 21 days (3 weeks) receive deserter status. They no longer count against faction statistics until they login again.

*Bases should be enhanced to have multiple entrances, a secret escape route, a limited supply location for resource storage, and decor.

*House placement should be forbidden within 3 screens of any faction base.

*Each faction rank should give you additional benefits that *do not* aid in combat.

*Faction crafters crafting in a town should be able to create artifact quality armor and weapons assuming they have collected required faction specific resources for those artifacts. These could be collected from quests associated with the factions that are only available from a town controlled by that faction.

*Faction "score" should be determined based on enemy kills. You should not lose any points from being killed yourself, but the opponent should get points based on your rank. A rank should require a certain number of kill points per week to be maintained. If you didn't achieve this number of kills, your rank would be reduced by 1. Rank Decay should be more rapid at higher ranks.

*Thieves should have a seperate ranking system. Stealth should not be included, only the number of sigils stolen and number of towns taken. There should be special rewards for thieves based on their rank.

*Persons in stat loss should not be able to use any type of items (jewelry, weapons, etc...) to increase their penalized skills.

*All bugs within the bases should be fixed. Any bugs resulting from the above changes should be fixed rapidly.

 

[Cardell]

Since when is there actually any "End Game" to UO? You are basing your comments on a personal value or opinion not on reasoned thought.

Tying a PvP to a PvM system, one that is so closely associated with PvP already, isn't a bad idea. The biggest problem with PvP outside Speedhacks and Pot chugging scripts how impossible it is to balance thanks to the vast ability to diversify templates. Tying PvP and PvM together helps, some templates good for PvP would totally get trashed in PvM, doing this would weaken and event them out more.

dude pvp is end game.. You need a complete character and get a good suit to pvp..... thats end game...

 

[Nexus]

dude pvp is end game.. You need a complete character and get a good suit to pvp..... thats end game...

***Shakes Head****

No that's a personal observation and preference, I for example run a totally gimped out thief in Fel with less than 3mil invested in a suit and make the people you just described look silly, highest skill is hiding, in 3 years I've been killed by a player twice, once because I thought he was a bot and he wasn't, other because of the stupid change to flagging where animal form makes you grey and I didn't realize it. Yet, you have to have a good suit and maxed out toon to compete in your ideal of "End Game"?

There's a difference, if you want to make a rational logical arguments to a topic set outside and set your personal views toward what you feel makes the game great to the side and look at the big picture.

Tomorrow or next week a Dev could alter half a dozen lines of code and your concept of "End Game" would be turned on it's head, the same as any play style. No one game play style or template, is more valid, important, or necessary to UO than any other, all of them work together to form the larger scope of the game, any ideas otherwise are simply personal opinions and beliefs. I've said it before the biggest problem with PvP is the attitudes of those who regularly engage in it, not the game mechanics or the system, it's the players.

 

[Cardell]

***Shakes Head****

No that's a personal observation and preference, I for example run a totally gimped out thief in Fel with less than 3mil invested in a suit and make the people you just described look silly, highest skill is hiding, in 3 years I've been killed by a player twice, once because I thought he was a bot and he wasn't, other because of the stupid change to flagging where animal form makes you grey and I didn't realize it. Yet, you have to have a good suit and maxed out toon to compete in your ideal of "End Game"?

There's a difference, if you want to make a rational logical arguments to a topic set outside and set your personal views toward what you feel makes the game great to the side and look at the big picture.

Tomorrow or next week a Dev could alter half a dozen lines of code and your concept of "End Game" would be turned on it's head, the same as any play style. No one game play style or template, is more valid, important, or necessary to UO than any other, all of them work together to form the larger scope of the game, any ideas otherwise are simply personal opinions and beliefs. I've said it before the biggest problem with PvP is the attitudes of those who regularly engage in it, not the game mechanics or the system, it's the players.

dude i can't spoon feed you this..

Factions is a pvp system and pvp is end game...

like seriously wtf... if you want to go wither spam **** go ahead.. leave that **** out of factions..