Factions - Redux~

[Fatalist]

U.

Right, here’s my proposed idea for a new factions system – please criticise as much as possible, it’s obviously still early and lots will need to be worked out. Some of the ideas are a bit vague but I am trying to offer an overall view of some of the key considerations.

The aim of this system is to make factions a much more integral part of the community, socially and economically rather than just for PvPers. The system, if balanced and supported, could and should be the backbone to all activity regardless of profession. It should provide purpose into the play of groups or individual, for short or long periods of time, and promote a sense of belonging, and a devotion to the cause you fight for. I also wanted to move conflict away from towns and into dungeons/overland for regular play, and town based fighting will be specifically for defences and raids rather than skirmishing.

I’ve tried to design everything without the need to implement new items/code completely new complex systems etc, this is unavoidable in part but the idea is to put small incentives to promote natural synergy and collaboration on behalf of your ‘side’.

Another consideration is to remove the necessity to go red if you wanted a high number of targets, and to reinstate murderers as a real renegade choice. One of the arguments against many of the systems I have suggested is that the PvMers/Thunters etc will be at too much risk of being found and killed, but this was always a risk because pretty much everyone had a PK as almost a formality.

One thing important to note is that stuff here is SPECIFIC to faction membership. So I’m not covering things like how champions could be changed, or what we could add to dungeons in general, or what other cool features crafting can have in general, for example, this is just to highlight specific differences in systems, or perks for being in factions rather than being independent.

Factions as we knew them – predominantly a system designed to promote essentially 4-way conflict, with minimal implications for the loser, or reward for the winner, besides status. They generated lots of ad-hoc action, and particularly some intense huge battles in faction bases. However, ultimately it was quite a detached system that had no influence or impact, and had limited appeal for anyone who didn’t want to solely PvP.

The new system
The idea of this proposal is to make factions a truly integrated system at the core of the shard’s function. It should be viable to have every single character in factions, with tangible benefits for membership, achievement and success. Everyone should feel like they are ‘part of something’ and are ‘fighting for a cause’, be it against monsters or players. Input should be recognised and rewarded, there should be incentives for non-typical faction characters (PvMers, pos AoS crafters etc) to take part.

Like a powerful medieval kingdom, a successful faction must have more than an army.

(I’ve re-written this next part over and over, and I just can’t figure out the best format, so what I’ve decided to do is break down various aspects of the game and how faction membership would impact it – that should give an overall impression of key changes that need to be developed. This just means that some parts will refer to mechanics which maybe aren’t explained until later in the post so do try to make your way through the epic wall of text)


What areas of the UO lands are affected?

Towns
Largely unchanged, maintain or enhance standard sigil system and look at timers according to activity. Add some pixel crack around towns, signs and banners, town criers all paying homage to the current faction commander etc, to add a little bit of atmosphere according to who owns it.

Access to hiring of various levels of town guards, depending on silver earned, ranks 1-4 for example with varying strength (rank 4 could have artifacts and proper PvP modifiers). Zole’s faction monster idea also works but might just be a bit sloppy.

Link towns to dungeons, not a straight ‘twin’ for example, but say you can only own 1 dungeon for every town you own. This gives more incentive to take over towns, since in this model and our general shard concept, dungeons are key, towns could easily fall out of favour since they don’t offer much of benefit.

Only allow access to NPCs if you are a member of the controlling faction, increased prices for non-faction members and no access at all for enemy faction members. No access to NPC tools (forge, loom, etc) for any outside the controlling faction’s membership.


Dungeons
The key to promoting shard-wide conflict. With dungeon changes we have in place there should be more activity and conflict in dungeons than around towns/gates.

+5% damage dealt and/or -5% damage received (to mobs and enemy faction players) whilst in a dungeon your faction owns. Reversed stats (or maybe just reduced damage) for being in enemy dungeons. Numbers are obviously negotiable. Maybe even +10% gold on mobs, or +20% quantity of items dropped on corpses. Make it a real benefit to own a dungeon.

Dungeon Masters – similar to town sheriffs. Something for PvMers to aim for as an equivalent.

Notifications broadcast ‘an enemy is spotted’ when opposing faction players farm your dungeon or attack your faction members there. This should require the use of a high end craftable item which ‘dungeon masters’ can place at various locations.

Allow traps to be placed in dungeons, similar rules to towns, ie. make sure they can’t be triggered by mobs or neutral players.

Decorative banners/flags which change colour and message depending on dungeon/town owner, both outside the dungeon and key spots throughout. This should promote a sense of belonging. Perhaps these could in some way be used to broadcast messages to faction when enemies are spotted etc.

Faction bases
Again mostly unchanged. Allow traps. I’d really like to see a second entrance to these bases to avoid as much choke PvP, though I don’t think this would necessarily be popular.

I’d like to keep the CoM/TB bases in towns as default, I know Clx isn’t keen but it makes sense to have the ‘good’ factions in ‘good’ towns,

Overland
Perhaps some of the key overland spawns (think Cyclops valley, yew liches etc) could be included in a system similar to the dungeons?

Keen to not include traditional RP places namely orc fort but I wonder if these might even fit in.

So what’s the appeal to different professions?
PvPers
First and foremost, regular fighting, this ‘profession’ will probably carry on mostly as normal. However, rather than just fighting other roaming bands of PvPers, and occasionally taking part in sigil defences/town sieges, there would be a more all-encompassing responsibility to help secure resources for new players, through taking a lead role in dungeon control, protecting PvMers, seeking out PvMers farming for other factions for example. Due to the nature of the typical freeshard player base, and requirements of an ongoing conflict, PvPers will always make up the majority of active players, so let’s give them more to do than borderline meaningless fighting.

I don’t think any particular changes need to be made to encourage PvPers to assume more ‘responsibility’, they should be naturally inclined to go wherever there’s a chance of a fight, whether that’s defending their PvMers from enemy PvPers, or raiding enemy dungeons to take out their PvMers etc.

PvMers
This, with crafters for me is the biggest and most important mechanics change.

I think PvMers should be the foundation of the faction economy. A re-work of the silver system is necessary. Silver should be generated from killing any monster in a dungeon controlled by your faction, or designated ‘enemy faction’ monsters (as default I think). Silver is then donated to the faction to create a central ‘account’ of money which is used for any number of things by commanders, sheriffs etc.

PvMers will of course have all the benefits of farming mobs as standard as if they weren’t in a faction, loot, gold etc, but there will be incentives to farm on behalf of a faction. Including but not limited to

- protection from PvPers, and premade groups to take out tougher monsters for players who aren’t part of a bigger guild
- bonus damage output/reduced damage taken against/from monsters when in a dungeon controlled by your faction
- access to reward items and resources based on the amount of silver donated (this needs thought to stop people muling silver for example)
- a visable progress/scoring system to incentivise PvMers who do it more for the glory than the pixel crack, similar to the Punkte system for PvPers. Possibly based on amount of silver donated or number of champions/bosses slain

Crafters
A similar situation as PvMers really, they will be able to do everything normally, but with incentives for joining.

- increased rate of return on resource gathering in faction owned dungeons/zones, mining, skinning etc.
- access to a wider range of faction craftables, think re-worked traps for more than just towns (well particularly for dungeon) and new defence items such as ‘Walls’ (can be placed to create choke points, for faction defences or PvMers to protect themselves etc, high HP item that can be destroyed by attacking them) maybe advanced items could offer a higher skill gain chance at 115+ for example.
- Also obvious faction weapons/armor that serves specific purpose, mini artifact, non repairable/time based items, for example a tinker could create a 200 luck ring with special items that PvMers might come across, a tailor could make a 7-day +3 to all resists robe with magical mystery cloth which can be bought by faction commanders with silver, and also requires an alchemist to make a potion of dasprotektor which is mixed with the cloth on crafting.

You get the idea; special items come in through various non-crafting related play styles, and promote natural interaction with trusted crafters to turn them into something useful.

If successful, there would be a small number of well known high level crafters, and competition to have them serve your faction would be fierce due to the benefits they can provide to defences, special items etc.

Tamers
I suppose a branch of PvMer really with PvP utility in the right situation. How about offering unique faction tameables? Or even for example, you couldn’t tame dragons in Destard without being part of the faction that owns Destard, though you could still tame them elsewhere.

Warhorses perhaps need to be tamed first rather than just bought straight out. Taming and resurrecting faction pets/mobs in dungeons your faction owns has a skill gain bonus.

Remainder of the benefits are in line with those outlined in the PvMers section.

Thieves
Obviously still important for stealing sigils for towns and dungeons, and will naturally have more targets when you consider the potential increased dungeon activity and the nature of loot generated that can’t be insured etc.

Perhaps a system where they can steal silver from enemy faction reserves, during a siege for example.

I really don’t know enough about thieves, and how they were used effectively other than stealing sigils and disarm/stealing weapons, advice welcome!

T-Hunters/Fishermen etc
Probably the least applicable class to include. But some ideas may be:

Unique items spawn in chests when dug up by faction t-hunters/fishers, items used in crafting unique items, ‘faction’ t-chests also spawn with silver. Maybe have an additional 1-3 items per level as a bonus to Factioners?

Chests in dungeons/towns can only be opened if you belong to the faction who owns the dungeon/town.

Faction shovels crafted by faction smiths yield +1 range to dig up chests, fishing rods crafted by faction carpenters/tinkers(?) have a 3% increased chance to fish up an MIB.

Again the PvM perks apply.

Faction Heirarchy and politics
I don’t think there’s much wrong with the standard one, but some of the responsibilities of the faction commander need to be dispersed to town sherrifs, dungeon masters and finance ministers.

I can’t remember how the voting system worked, but definitely have an ongoing democracy where a leader (any leader) can be overthrown at any time by voting, or can be forcibly removed. Perhaps tie in a renegade/rebel sub faction, led by warring guilds. Say for example I-C could be Minax faction which is being led by EEV, I-C don’t like the EEV GM who is Faction Commaner, so war against EEV under pre-determined rules, or a bespoke system, if I-C are victorious, the GM of that guild becomes commander. Other guilds/members in the faction can opt to join the rebels or jump to the defence of their illustrious leader. Inevitably this will mean people move around factions a bit, but will spice up the politics, ensuring that actions have consequences, and there is another element of Risk vs Reward.

I love the idea of a renegade sub-faction system [Minax Rebels] for example. They would still have to fight against all 3 other factions but were publicly and actively making a bid for leadership of their faction. If the rebels win, the war finishes and there are no ongoing consequences other than the leadership changes and ‘out of game’ political tensions between guilds who can then either join another faction to seek revenge or form their own rebellion after a set time. Part of leadership will therefore need to be minimising the chance of rebellions.

This system would need a lot of thought and is obviously risky, but interesting, and ensures everyone is included in the politics and has a say, rather than just the controlling minority.

Core faction economics
Lots of purchasable items for factioneers depending on rank, input (silver donated) etc.

Purchasable features, special vendors can be placed to sell rare services/items to your faction team mates, for maybe a day at a time. This could include things like neon hair, the usual resources, etc.

Towns cost money to maintain. Land tax, utilities whatever, not a huge amount or something that becomes a burden, just enough to ensure that PvMers are encouraged and protected enough to generate income. Maybe set a ‘membership fee’ or something. I don’t want players to have to be personally funding it, but there needs to be a time sink and maintaining town ownership needs to be more detailed than just winning a 2 hour fight once a fortnight for example. This can be tied in to the reward system somehow.

Core faction event mechanics
Harrowers can only be summoned by dungeon masters, but can still spawn in any random dungeon. There’s a chance it could obviously spawn in an enemy dungeon giving them the advantage, therefore would factions actively fight to control as many dungeons as possible to safely do harrowers at tactical times?

I need advice on things like sigil timers and stuff for dungeons/towns.

How does this system apply to new/veteran players?

New players – first 0-3 weeks - Getting set up with absolute basics, working towards first suit, core supplies, a house..)
The idea is these guys can start PvMing in groups faster, which means access to higher level mobs/loot even if you don’t have a godly suit. They would also have access to low level rewards to help them along their way.

Mid game - 1-3 months - will have a near finished character, possibly with some scrolls, a decent suit and set of items, financially self-sufficient, but plenty of room for improvement, more scrolls, better items, arti’s etc)
An expansion of newer players, but again upping the typical PvM to champions and real end-game monsters to help them finish off suits and generate wealth. Probably when people will be looking to take part in more PvP activities and factioneers will have a network of friendly-casual connections to hang out with.

End game vets 3-6+ months? – have pretty much everything they need, a high end suit, arti’s, scrolled character, plenty of money/resources.
For these it’s all about the power struggle, continued efforts to achieve score/power, fight for glory and work towards achieving the higher end faction rewards, rares, etc. A reason to fight and regular access and influence in shard-changing dynamics.

Key concerns/problems with the system or things I am struggling with:
How many dungeons do we make faction ‘ownable’ it’s maybe a bit overkill to make them all ownable, but since there are no penalties as such for farming here without being faction affiliated, is it really an issue?

The main one for me is how do we make it safe(ish) for non PvP characters, (particularly crafters more than anything else) to go about their non-faction related business, presumably they will still want to sit at forges to do repairs and crafting for randoms, and even enemy faction members. Is a proximity based safe zone (if crafting skills>300 for example) an acceptable solution?

Is the rebellion feature even viable? Is it potentially open to griefers who faction hop/how is this addressed?

Can you include traditional RPers (thinking orcs etc) into this system?

Are the new features I’ve suggested within our ability to develop?

[Calix]

Really really really impressive mate. Made me pretty hard, more than you usually do.

Will respond to each part in order soon as I get chance, but this bit in particular stands out as genius to me:

PvMers
This, with crafters for me is the biggest and most important mechanics change.

I think PvMers should be the foundation of the faction economy. A re-work of the silver system is necessary. Silver should be generated from killing any monster in a dungeon controlled by your faction, or designated ‘enemy faction’ monsters (as default I think). Silver is then donated to the faction to create a central ‘account’ of money which is used for any number of things by commanders, sheriffs etc.

PvMers will of course have all the benefits of farming mobs as standard as if they weren’t in a faction, loot, gold etc, but there will be incentives to farm on behalf of a faction. Including but not limited to

- protection from PvPers, and premade groups to take out tougher monsters for players who aren’t part of a bigger guild
- bonus damage output/reduced damage taken against/from monsters when in a dungeon controlled by your faction
- access to reward items and resources based on the amount of silver donated (this needs thought to stop people muling silver for example)
- a visable progress/scoring system to incentivise PvMers who do it more for the glory than the pixel crack, similar to the Punkte system for PvPers. Possibly based on amount of silver donated or number of champions/bosses slain

[zole]

HOLY MOLEY!

Some real good ideas. Especially liked dungeon traps, harrower spawning and PVM ideas.

You have gained 0.1 skill in growing a brain.

[Superfast Oz]

Pretty good, only thing I didn't like was the ghost cam feature as I said in irc.

Need to sit and plot this into clear objectives so it can be coded. Hopefully I'll have time to look at it soon.

[Fatalist]

I think you mean these parts?

Notifications broadcast ‘an enemy is spotted’ when opposing faction players farm your dungeon or attack your faction members there. This should require the use of a high end craftable item which ‘dungeon masters’ can place at various locations.

Decorative banners/flags which change colour and message depending on dungeon/town owner, both outside the dungeon and key spots throughout. This should promote a sense of belonging. Perhaps these could in some way be used to broadcast messages to faction when enemies are spotted etc.

I see your point. There shouldn't be an auto-notification, but I think a player activated one would be good. Much like shouting it on IRC or UOAM, but keeping as much as possible in game. Got an image in my head where players are ganked and whilst trying to lose the attackers stop for a split second to activate a switch on the wall or something. They could be time based (used every 20 mins max say) and also give off a message on screen so the gankers can see that help has been called. Just a rough idea but could be nice.

So a high end craftable item, that can be created by Tinkers, cost faction money to maintain, maybe can be temporarily disabled by thieves etc.

[Joe]

not sure about only allowing harrowers to be summoned by the dungeon masters, only having one person like that to be able to do it could be an issue I think, anyone needs to be able to do it I think but yes totally agree to the bonus/negative for being in your/enemy dungeon.

[Calix]

The new system
The idea of this proposal is to make factions a truly integrated system at the core of the shard’s function. It should be viable to have every single character in factions, with tangible benefits for membership, achievement and success. Everyone should feel like they are ‘part of something’ and are ‘fighting for a cause’, be it against monsters or players. Input should be recognised and rewarded, there should be incentives for non-typical faction characters (PvMers, pos AoS crafters etc) to take part.

Like a powerful medieval kingdom, a successful faction must have more than an army.

This is spot on, and what we should really be aiming for. I'd probably even list it 3rd in the list of importance for the shard: AOS, Felucca only, ENHANCED FACTION SYSTEM FOR ALL PLAYSTYLES.

What areas of the UO lands are affected?

Towns
Largely unchanged, maintain or enhance standard sigil system and look at timers according to activity. Add some pixel crack around towns, signs and banners, town criers all paying homage to the current faction commander etc, to add a little bit of atmosphere according to who owns it.

Access to hiring of various levels of town guards, depending on silver earned, ranks 1-4 for example with varying strength (rank 4 could have artifacts and proper PvP modifiers). Zole’s faction monster idea also works but might just be a bit sloppy.

Link towns to dungeons, not a straight ‘twin’ for example, but say you can only own 1 dungeon for every town you own. This gives more incentive to take over towns, since in this model and our general shard concept, dungeons are key, towns could easily fall out of favour since they don’t offer much of benefit.

Only allow access to NPCs if you are a member of the controlling faction, increased prices for non-faction members and no access at all for enemy faction members. No access to NPC tools (forge, loom, etc) for any outside the controlling faction’s membership.

Agree with all of that, obviously lots of detail to be gone into, but yeah, basic premise is faction town = purely faction town, nothing else.

Dungeons
The key to promoting shard-wide conflict. With dungeon changes we have in place there should be more activity and conflict in dungeons than around towns/gates.

+5% damage dealt and/or -5% damage received (to mobs and enemy faction players) whilst in a dungeon your faction owns. Reversed stats (or maybe just reduced damage) for being in enemy dungeons. Numbers are obviously negotiable. Maybe even +10% gold on mobs, or +20% quantity of items dropped on corpses. Make it a real benefit to own a dungeon.

Dungeon Masters – similar to town sheriffs. Something for PvMers to aim for as an equivalent.

Notifications broadcast ‘an enemy is spotted’ when opposing faction players farm your dungeon or attack your faction members there. This should require the use of a high end craftable item which ‘dungeon masters’ can place at various locations.

Allow traps to be placed in dungeons, similar rules to towns, ie. make sure they can’t be triggered by mobs or neutral players.

Decorative banners/flags which change colour and message depending on dungeon/town owner, both outside the dungeon and key spots throughout. This should promote a sense of belonging. Perhaps these could in some way be used to broadcast messages to faction when enemies are spotted etc.

I think any dmg % modifiers should be PvM only personally, but agree with the general principle.

Traps I'm not certain about just because dungeons have way too many natural choke points.

Like the idea of craftable items giving a warning, or something similar, and of having something similar to the town sheriff.

The banners, flags, maybe even statues(of the Shadowlords, for example) is a fantastic idea, really like that.

Faction bases
Again mostly unchanged. Allow traps. I’d really like to see a second entrance to these bases to avoid as much choke PvP, though I don’t think this would necessarily be popular.

I’d like to keep the CoM/TB bases in towns as default, I know Clx isn’t keen but it makes sense to have the ‘good’ factions in ‘good’ towns,

IMO, a proper faction system would have faction guards only in faction towns(no normal town guards), in which case having the TB/COM bases in towns isn't even an issue, my problem was always with reds being highly disadvantaged in town fights, which wouldn't be a problem under proposed idea.

Overland
Perhaps some of the key overland spawns (think Cyclops valley, yew liches etc) could be included in a system similar to the dungeons?

Keen to not include traditional RP places namely orc fort but I wonder if these might even fit in.

Unsure - perhaps might be better to leave a few non-faction PvM hospots.

So what’s the appeal to different professions?
PvPers
First and foremost, regular fighting, this ‘profession’ will probably carry on mostly as normal. However, rather than just fighting other roaming bands of PvPers, and occasionally taking part in sigil defences/town sieges, there would be a more all-encompassing responsibility to help secure resources for new players, through taking a lead role in dungeon control, protecting PvMers, seeking out PvMers farming for other factions for example. Due to the nature of the typical freeshard player base, and requirements of an ongoing conflict, PvPers will always make up the majority of active players, so let’s give them more to do than borderline meaningless fighting.

I don’t think any particular changes need to be made to encourage PvPers to assume more ‘responsibility’, they should be naturally inclined to go wherever there’s a chance of a fight, whether that’s defending their PvMers from enemy PvPers, or raiding enemy dungeons to take out their PvMers etc.

PvMers
This, with crafters for me is the biggest and most important mechanics change.

I think PvMers should be the foundation of the faction economy. A re-work of the silver system is necessary. Silver should be generated from killing any monster in a dungeon controlled by your faction, or designated ‘enemy faction’ monsters (as default I think). Silver is then donated to the faction to create a central ‘account’ of money which is used for any number of things by commanders, sheriffs etc.

PvMers will of course have all the benefits of farming mobs as standard as if they weren’t in a faction, loot, gold etc, but there will be incentives to farm on behalf of a faction. Including but not limited to

- protection from PvPers, and premade groups to take out tougher monsters for players who aren’t part of a bigger guild
- bonus damage output/reduced damage taken against/from monsters when in a dungeon controlled by your faction
- access to reward items and resources based on the amount of silver donated (this needs thought to stop people muling silver for example)
- a visable progress/scoring system to incentivise PvMers who do it more for the glory than the pixel crack, similar to the Punkte system for PvPers. Possibly based on amount of silver donated or number of champions/bosses slain

This is all the centre of the system IMO. If you make PvMers valued and rewarded, the system will work as something to bind the shard together, if not, there's no point. Reckon you've pretty much nailed it. I'll come back to it in some more detail.

Crafters
A similar situation as PvMers really, they will be able to do everything normally, but with incentives for joining.

- increased rate of return on resource gathering in faction owned dungeons/zones, mining, skinning etc.
- access to a wider range of faction craftables, think re-worked traps for more than just towns (well particularly for dungeon) and new defence items such as ‘Walls’ (can be placed to create choke points, for faction defences or PvMers to protect themselves etc, high HP item that can be destroyed by attacking them) maybe advanced items could offer a higher skill gain chance at 115+ for example.
- Also obvious faction weapons/armor that serves specific purpose, mini artifact, non repairable/time based items, for example a tinker could create a 200 luck ring with special items that PvMers might come across, a tailor could make a 7-day +3 to all resists robe with magical mystery cloth which can be bought by faction commanders with silver, and also requires an alchemist to make a potion of dasprotektor which is mixed with the cloth on crafting.

You get the idea; special items come in through various non-crafting related play styles, and promote natural interaction with trusted crafters to turn them into something useful.

If successful, there would be a small number of well known high level crafters, and competition to have them serve your faction would be fierce due to the benefits they can provide to defences, special items etc.

Agree with all of that 100%, just obviously lots of detail to look at.

Tamers
I suppose a branch of PvMer really with PvP utility in the right situation. How about offering unique faction tameables? Or even for example, you couldn’t tame dragons in Destard without being part of the faction that owns Destard, though you could still tame them elsewhere.

Warhorses perhaps need to be tamed first rather than just bought straight out. Taming and resurrecting faction pets/mobs in dungeons your faction owns has a skill gain bonus.

Remainder of the benefits are in line with those outlined in the PvMers section.

I would 100% support certain monsters only being tameable by faction players - and only if said faction controls the dungeon that monster is in, say if you tied Ice Dungeon into factions, WW's would only be tameable by players of whichever faction controlled the dungeon. I'd also say yeah, when you purchase a warhorse it could be 'wild' and in need of taming. I'm not against bonding or self-ressing if the tamer has to be involved at the actual purchase time.

Thieves
Obviously still important for stealing sigils for towns and dungeons, and will naturally have more targets when you consider the potential increased dungeon activity and the nature of loot generated that can’t be insured etc.

Perhaps a system where they can steal silver from enemy faction reserves, during a siege for example.

I really don’t know enough about thieves, and how they were used effectively other than stealing sigils and disarm/stealing weapons, advice welcome!

We're planning on putting the Doom Stealable artifacts into a dungeon or dungeons anyway - only stealable by players in the controlling faction? Being able to steal certain %'s of a faction treasury would be a possibility as well - the treasuries aren't represented graphically atm, just on the faction interface - if they were to be graphically integrated there could perhaps be a series of puzzles or something to get through to steal from them?

T-Hunters/Fishermen etc
Probably the least applicable class to include. But some ideas may be:

Unique items spawn in chests when dug up by faction t-hunters/fishers, items used in crafting unique items, ‘faction’ t-chests also spawn with silver. Maybe have an additional 1-3 items per level as a bonus to Factioners?

Chests in dungeons/towns can only be opened if you belong to the faction who owns the dungeon/town.

Faction shovels crafted by faction smiths yield +1 range to dig up chests, fishing rods crafted by faction carpenters/tinkers(?) have a 3% increased chance to fish up an MIB.

Again the PvM perks apply.

Yeah nothing to add.

Faction Heirarchy and politics
I don’t think there’s much wrong with the standard one, but some of the responsibilities of the faction commander need to be dispersed to town sherrifs, dungeon masters and finance ministers.

I can’t remember how the voting system worked, but definitely have an ongoing democracy where a leader (any leader) can be overthrown at any time by voting, or can be forcibly removed. Perhaps tie in a renegade/rebel sub faction, led by warring guilds. Say for example I-C could be Minax faction which is being led by EEV, I-C don’t like the EEV GM who is Faction Commaner, so war against EEV under pre-determined rules, or a bespoke system, if I-C are victorious, the GM of that guild becomes commander. Other guilds/members in the faction can opt to join the rebels or jump to the defence of their illustrious leader. Inevitably this will mean people move around factions a bit, but will spice up the politics, ensuring that actions have consequences, and there is another element of Risk vs Reward.

I love the idea of a renegade sub-faction system [Minax Rebels] for example. They would still have to fight against all 3 other factions but were publicly and actively making a bid for leadership of their faction. If the rebels win, the war finishes and there are no ongoing consequences other than the leadership changes and ‘out of game’ political tensions between guilds who can then either join another faction to seek revenge or form their own rebellion after a set time. Part of leadership will therefore need to be minimising the chance of rebellions.

This system would need a lot of thought and is obviously risky, but interesting, and ensures everyone is included in the politics and has a say, rather than just the controlling minority.

You know I'm a big fan of this system as well, but in reality it might just be better/easier and less 'scripted' to allow inter faction warring and for new elections to be called if a sufficient number of members express their lack of confidence in the current leadership @ faction stone.

Core faction economics
Lots of purchasable items for factioneers depending on rank, input (silver donated) etc.

Purchasable features, special vendors can be placed to sell rare services/items to your faction team mates, for maybe a day at a time. This could include things like neon hair, the usual resources, etc.

Towns cost money to maintain. Land tax, utilities whatever, not a huge amount or something that becomes a burden, just enough to ensure that PvMers are encouraged and protected enough to generate income. Maybe set a ‘membership fee’ or something. I don’t want players to have to be personally funding it, but there needs to be a time sink and maintaining town ownership needs to be more detailed than just winning a 2 hour fight once a fortnight for example. This can be tied in to the reward system somehow.

Yeah. Vendors placeable in town for faction players, etc etc.

Core faction event mechanics
Harrowers can only be summoned by dungeon masters, but can still spawn in any random dungeon. There’s a chance it could obviously spawn in an enemy dungeon giving them the advantage, therefore would factions actively fight to control as many dungeons as possible to safely do harrowers at tactical times?

I need advice on things like sigil timers and stuff for dungeons/towns.

Really like the idea.

How does this system apply to new/veteran players?

New players – first 0-3 weeks - Getting set up with absolute basics, working towards first suit, core supplies, a house..)
The idea is these guys can start PvMing in groups faster, which means access to higher level mobs/loot even if you don’t have a godly suit. They would also have access to low level rewards to help them along their way.

Mid game - 1-3 months - will have a near finished character, possibly with some scrolls, a decent suit and set of items, financially self-sufficient, but plenty of room for improvement, more scrolls, better items, arti’s etc)
An expansion of newer players, but again upping the typical PvM to champions and real end-game monsters to help them finish off suits and generate wealth. Probably when people will be looking to take part in more PvP activities and factioneers will have a network of friendly-casual connections to hang out with.

End game vets 3-6+ months? – have pretty much everything they need, a high end suit, arti’s, scrolled character, plenty of money/resources.
For these it’s all about the power struggle, continued efforts to achieve score/power, fight for glory and work towards achieving the higher end faction rewards, rares, etc. A reason to fight and regular access and influence in shard-changing dynamics.

Yeah. There have to be advantages/reasons for vet players to encourage newer players into their faction, hence enmeshing them in the shard community immedietely so they become more 'involved' instead of the usual 'macro-get bored' cycle of freeshards.

Key concerns/problems with the system or things I am struggling with:
How many dungeons do we make faction ‘ownable’ it’s maybe a bit overkill to make them all ownable, but since there are no penalties as such for farming here without being faction affiliated, is it really an issue?

Dungeons with spawns/special mobs only IMO.

The main one for me is how do we make it safe(ish) for non PvP characters, (particularly crafters more than anything else) to go about their non-faction related business, presumably they will still want to sit at forges to do repairs and crafting for randoms, and even enemy faction members. Is a proximity based safe zone (if crafting skills>300 for example) an acceptable solution?

I think this is where you make non-faction towns come into play - they become a complete safe zone - no faction combat allowed of any kind. They could become places for truces to be arranged, deals to be made, inter-faction trading, etc etc.

Is the rebellion feature even viable? Is it potentially open to griefers who faction hop/how is this addressed?

I love the idea with all my heartz but I think a more simplistic way to achieve the same thing is just to allow inter-faction warring and the ability for a certain number of votes against a CL to trigger a snap election.

Can you include traditional RPers (thinking orcs etc) into this system?

Are the new features I’ve suggested within our ability to develop?

Thinking!

[Fatalist]

cheers Christopharrrrrr.

Just going to skip through randomly on a few thoughts based on your comments-

Agree @ Rebellion function actually, just allow warring, and introduce either more frequent voting or an equivalent system.

Also agree at dungeon traps, maybe just allow the poison/spike/fire traps that are already in dungeons, and don't allow them to be placed within 2 tiles of another trap and/or limit total amount of placed traps to say 10 in any given dungeon. Can skip them entirely but I think it would be a nice touch.

Fairly easy going when it comes to the damage modifiers, I think the 5% modifiers is a decent amount to be noticable in pvm, can increase it to 10% on bosses. I can see how the PvP bonuses might prove to be OP, and if you scaled it down to say 3% it would be pretty much pointless. Overall I see negatives to PvP bonuses but none at all to PvM, so I would actually vote to stick with that.

Warhorses - need to be tamed but not guardwhackable. Can we make them spawn in faction owned dungeons or make a way so they don't get whacked in town if a grey one is bought from a stablemaster?

Faction NPC Stablemasters can res pets for a significant silver cost perhaps?

I don't know about the thieving of silver - puzzles are difficult to implement without making them easily releated and exploitable or something. I'd suggest that simply the act of stealthing through a whole town and avoiding detection, then attempting to steal from the faction shrine or something, deserves a reward in its own right. There should be a chance of failure associated, and you shouldn't be able to rinse a faction out just because they don't have someone online for a few hours, but it can add some additional goals for thieves.

I think the dungeons are key to this system, why don't we start working on them?

Possible coding objectives include

- Make dungeons capturable, add a sigil stone on the lowest level of applicable dungeons (clx to confirm) and figure out how the ownership system works
- Look at damage modifiers, for now lets go with +5% dealt -5% taken to/from any spawnable monster within each dungeon when a controlling faction player.
- Add silver to backpack when killing a mob in a dungeon you own, say something like 1-2 silver for a slime, 3-5 for a ratman 6-8 for an earth ele 14-16 for a dragon, blood ele, etc? Keep the numbers fairly low, we can factor prices of things bought with silver later so lower numbers are easier to work with, and these numbers for now don't really matter as they dont need to be balanced against anything
- Look at adding a heirarchy for dungeons, maybe dungeon master (one per faction) and dungeon keeper (one per dungeon)? we can look at roles these can perform later.
- Add banners, flags and other decoratives (things like house signs would be good) which can automatically change colour and message ('this dungeon is yet to be claimed...' or 'the shadowlords control this dungeon') automatically depending on who controls

I think those are some good starting points.

[Belgarion]

So yeah, I was thinking. Is the goal here to make it so that everyone has to join a faction?

If not, how do you predict all these changes affecting players who do not want to join a faction for whatever reason.

While I am bang alongside the idea that you should encourage team play, which a lot of these new ideas do, I still maintain that solo play should not be penalized.
Do you see any problems with the suggested systems that would put a severe penalty on solo play?
As in, "I want to do this, but my faction doesnt/hasnt X, so I cant"

Are there safetymeasures that would prevent a given faction from just putting the shard on lockdown at their pleasure?

[Fatalist]

Nope, there's no measure in place which stops players doing anything they would normally do if not in a faction. You can still farm in all the dungeons, shop in all the towns (except for faction specific vendors) etc. It's just there are bonuses to joining factions.

Do you have a specific scenario or playstyle in mind that you think could be affected? If so please do go into detail because it is possible i've overlooked something, but my aim was to provide benefits to factioneers and promote faction play, but not penalise solo players as such, they just miss out on potential benefits by choice.

Worst case scenario is that say, minax are the dominating faction. They own all towns and dungeons.

Enemy faction players are disadvantaged in these dungeons because they do less/take more damage to/from monsters. Solo players can PvM etc as if factions didn't exist, they just don't get potential bonuses.

We'd obviously have to have a kind of limit where a faction could only have x number of players, %wise, so for example no faction can have more than 30/35% (rough number) of total faction members at any one time.

[Joe]

i see where your concern comes from belg and do agree you don't want to hinder the solo playstyle, or for that matter the pure PVM guild such as EK for example (which I think that harrower change would do)

I guess so long as your not stopped from doing anything but rather given that slight nudge and bonus when you are in factions instead is best so you still have the option to not join

[Belgarion]

Oh I wasnt really disagreeing with anything, just throwing stuff out there to make sure we got all bases covered.

Will have a re-read and think about it over the weekend. See if anything stands out.

[Nixon]

I like a lot of the points you've mentioned, especially making the towns a lot more interactive.

[KoKane]

Great ideas there.


I would be careful in how its all implemented though.. factions tends to end up like this seperate game within a server that, if you dont join it, it means fuck all and life goes on just as good and the arguements between those who are playing factions and those who arent, about which is the best, become purely subjective.

Be sure aswell that the use for silver, its demand and purpose etc, dont clash with gold or make gold become useless.

I do love the idea though that people might actually start asking for silver for stuff, instead of gold. I just hope that doesnt overtake gold.

I guess with insurance though, gold is always wanted. Houses, customization.... Should be ok I suppose.
Definitely test the fucking shit out of everything and long play this stuff when its implemented, if its implemented.


I've been forgetting about PvM'rs as a class lately aswell. I've been thinking about crafters being good and worthwhile..
It would be great if every style of play had its sole purpose and its own value in teamplay and fights.

Like a dexxer is a pure fighting class that can do a little pvm
A mage is a pure fighter class that can do a little pvm, a little more than a dexxer to an extent.
A tamer is a pure pvm that can do a little pvp but as part of a team at best
If you could make every style valuble in its field and capable in others, people wont feel limited with the 2 char rule and wont be able to do things all alone either, requiring others.

Making crafters viable, thieves, etc.. all good in what they do but having a use in factions or group play away from their workstation, makes their lives interesting and meaningful aswell as the pure pvprs needing their utility.

[Calix]

So what’s the appeal to different professions?
PvPers
First and foremost, regular fighting, this ‘profession’ will probably carry on mostly as normal. However, rather than just fighting other roaming bands of PvPers, and occasionally taking part in sigil defences/town sieges, there would be a more all-encompassing responsibility to help secure resources for new players, through taking a lead role in dungeon control, protecting PvMers, seeking out PvMers farming for other factions for example. Due to the nature of the typical freeshard player base, and requirements of an ongoing conflict, PvPers will always make up the majority of active players, so let’s give them more to do than borderline meaningless fighting.

I don’t think any particular changes need to be made to encourage PvPers to assume more ‘responsibility’, they should be naturally inclined to go wherever there’s a chance of a fight, whether that’s defending their PvMers from enemy PvPers, or raiding enemy dungeons to take out their PvMers etc.

PvMers
This, with crafters for me is the biggest and most important mechanics change.

I think PvMers should be the foundation of the faction economy. A re-work of the silver system is necessary. Silver should be generated from killing any monster in a dungeon controlled by your faction, or designated ‘enemy faction’ monsters (as default I think). Silver is then donated to the faction to create a central ‘account’ of money which is used for any number of things by commanders, sheriffs etc.

PvMers will of course have all the benefits of farming mobs as standard as if they weren’t in a faction, loot, gold etc, but there will be incentives to farm on behalf of a faction. Including but not limited to

- protection from PvPers, and premade groups to take out tougher monsters for players who aren’t part of a bigger guild
- bonus damage output/reduced damage taken against/from monsters when in a dungeon controlled by your faction
- access to reward items and resources based on the amount of silver donated (this needs thought to stop people muling silver for example)
- a visable progress/scoring system to incentivise PvMers who do it more for the glory than the pixel crack, similar to the Punkte system for PvPers. Possibly based on amount of silver donated or number of champions/bosses slain

K. Going back to this part, which is the real heart of the system.

Generally, a succesful PvPer/PvP guild leader would be the faction CL on OSI. This could and should change here, with the system being 'inviting' enough to encourage say an EK type guild to want to be in factions - the kind of guild with the numbers and organisation to control a successful faction, without having many 'recognised' PvPers. Any system that has encouraged these type of guilds/players to be involved = a winner.

So how do you encourage and motivate them to get involved?

Obviously you've got the RP element, which many people underestimate. A big pull for me about early UO was the thought of being part of a struggle for the future of my shard, good vs evil, etc. This is still true for a lot of people, if you can give them a bit of immersion in a developing shard storyline rather than just being involved for nice items or points, you've got a good start. These people aren't even necessarily RPers, they just like the story and immersion. I was/am def. one of those. That bit of lore I wrote on the other forum is a start, and if you can build on that with quests/events...

Beyond that, being able to make meaningful and worthwhile contributions to your faction in other ways than PvP is massive. Obviously the main thing is to make PvM contribute to the faction 'cause'.

So you've got silver from PvM - it shouldn't even be limited to certain faction monsters. All forms of PvM should contribute at least slightly to the faction cause.

Champ Spawns and especially Harrowers should offer the largest rewards, giving faction points AND silver. They should offer the largest reward because they are really the only form of PvM that requires proper team work to complete, and obviously as we're trying to use the faction system as a vehicle for giving new/solo players a group to play with...

Special faction titles should also be considered for PvM achievements, these players should feel at least as valuable as the PvPers.

What should be done with all the silver being earnt? Faction vendors and guards mean relatively little, control of the towns is temporary, and all your hard work is undone with one missed sigil defense, or whatever. Perhaps players should be able to trade in faction silver for 'rewards' from their faction masters? Special clothing, house deco, etc?

How do you make faction CL's 'responsible' for their faction, rather than just using it for personal/guild advancement? Ideally a faction leadership should be encouraging new players, organising faction events(harrowers, spawns, etc). How do you make it worth their while to encourage new players to their faction, and then help them once they join?

How do you make PvMers valuable enough that PvPers will be forced to defend their non-PvP members for their faction to succeed?