So there has been a lot chatter about factions in Pantheon, and I am hugely in favor of a faction system. I would like to propose and expansion the faction system that I have not ever seen in any games i've played.
Allow us to join forces with whoever we please and make it just as feasible and rewarding (possibly with different perks) as being a part of any other faction.
Lets say I feel sympathetic to the cause of the Reckless Magician and I want to aid him in his blunderings. Allow me to prove myself worthy to his faction and provide quests to aid his cause with unique rewards specific to their faction. Maybe one day they will look so kindly upon my they will bestow something from the Reckless Magician's loot table :)
This is something i've always wished was part of RPGs; why should we have to KILL someone to obtain something they possess (save for scalps/skins/toes/etc)?
What are the pro/cons of a system like this?
Interesting idea. The first con (or question) I have is where do you draw the line? Are there certain factions that you'd like to see available, or just everything out there? At level 5 if you're out collecting wolf fur for someone and you start to feel bad about killing wolves could you change your behavior to start earning good standing with wolves?
I know that Joppa talked about this in one interview but I can't quote him directly. Something like "you'll be earning or losing faction for something you didn't even know existed, then one day you'll learn more about that faction..." So it sounds like they have some pretty in-depth plans for factions.
Ranarius said:Interesting idea. The first con (or question) I have is where do you draw the line? Are there certain factions that you'd like to see available, or just everything out there? At level 5 if you're out collecting wolf fur for someone and you start to feel bad about killing wolves could you change your behavior to start earning good standing with wolves?
The line can be drawn at the creators imagination! ... although i'm sure there are some things that just cannot be imagined such as becoming friends with the undead as an elven paladin. What I mean to say is, so long as the creators can take logical steps of why the faction would end up liking you and vise-versa then there is a story to be made!
Sure, why not be able to defend the wolves from preying lions or bandits (or whatever preys on wolves) and eventually get to a point of trust with the wolves that they share their lair with you. Obviously the immediate benefits here would only be intrisic, but maybe down the road you wouldn't have to fight through that hord of wolves to collect the rare dung beetle balls that are only deposited in their caves. The joy about a system like this is, it is expandable to a degree limited only by the imagination! To me, it would also make the world feel so alive and give the users a great since of personalition to their character.
((although i'm sure there are some things that just cannot be imagined such as becoming friends with the undead as an elven paladin. ))
Undead is such a slanted and biased term, reflecting your deathophobia. Perhaps if we called them "livingly challenged" or "formerly living entities" there wouldn't be such hateful and irrational hostility.
Why shouldn't a paladin seek to perform mighty deeds for the Light? Such as becoming friends with the livingly challenged to better understand why they are in such a position and what their legitimate needs are. Maybe they are enslaved by an evil necromancer, in which case the right thing to do is to slay the slaver rather than to blame and shame and harass the innocent victims. Maybe the formerly living entities were required to remain after death to accomplish some purpose set by the Gods. Surely the most evil thing to do would be to kill them and prevent the will of the Gods from being fulfilled. Better by far to befriend them, learn what is required, and assist in its accomplishment. Or, if the Gods in question are evil, oppose them. But neither is possible without knowledge best obtained from the instrumentalities chosen to act for them on Terminus.
I agree with dorotea, and it reminds me of a quote from Faramir in the Lord of the Rings movies while looking down at an "Enemy" they had just slain..
“His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is… where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there… n peace. War will make corpses of us all.”
I would like to see ALL factions being fully interchangeable. Of course many could have dire consequences and some be Incredibly hard, but no hard limit's, and nothing that can't be corrected.
For a historical example of "good" faction design I would point to the Velious factions in EverQuest - the Coldain dwarves, the Kael giants, and the Skyshrine dragons. Players are first introduced to the Coldain and may align with them by fighting orcs and giants. However the true war going on in Velious is between the giants and the dragons. While gaining dragon faction didn't necessarily make the dwarves hate you, they were two different groups. And aligning with the giants of course made you the enemy of the dwarves for the most part. However, as a player, each choice was viable.
The key aspects that made it work were:
- Each faction was fully fleshed out with a home area, NPCs, quests, and comparable rewards available to players who sided with them.
- From a lore perspective each faction made sense as a "civilization" on the continent of Velious.
I think that both of these considerations are important. For example, if you give someone the ability to raise faction with the orcs - well, what's the benefit of doing that? Why might someone *want* to raise faction with the orcs, both from a lore perspective as well as from a gameplay/content perspective? How do you balance it against raising faction with, say, the humans of Thronefast - who aren't the biggest fans of the orcs?
Even within broad racial groups, each faction should represent a viable choice. For example, within Thronefast, maybe you can raise faction with the merchants, the guards, the thieves, the nobles, and the Black Rose. There should be benefits of some kind associated with each of them. However, there should also be trade-offs. Assist the thieves and the guards and merchants may not like you much. Assist the merchants and the nobles and thieves won't like you much. Assist the nobles and the Black Rose and the thieves won't really appreciate it. And so on.
All of this is to say I'm in favor of allowing players to raise faction when it really makes sense for there to *be* a faction. If there's never any reason to want your wraith faction very high, does it make sense for them to have a faction? That sort of thing.
Also - at some point we should talk about *how* people raise faction. Mindlessly slaughtering dozens of a faction's enemies makes sense if you're dealing with two factions that are at war or that represent military organizations or something. But there should be other ways - and sometimes killing some other NPC should actually NOT be an option.
dorotea said:Undead is such a slanted and biased term, reflecting your deathophobia. Perhaps if we called them "livingly challenged" or "formerly living entities" there wouldn't be such hateful and irrational hostility.
Why shouldn't a paladin seek to perform mighty deeds for the Light? Such as becoming friends with the livingly challenged to better understand why they are in such a position and what their legitimate needs are. Maybe they are enslaved by an evil necromancer, in which case the right thing to do is to slay the slaver rather than to blame and shame and harass the innocent victims. Maybe the formerly living entities were required to remain after death to accomplish some purpose set by the Gods. Surely the most evil thing to do would be to kill them and prevent the will of the Gods from being fulfilled. Better by far to befriend them, learn what is required, and assist in its accomplishment. Or, if the Gods in question are evil, oppose them. But neither is possible without knowledge best obtained from the instrumentalities chosen to act for them on Terminus.
See! shinying examples of it only being limited to the creators imagination! anything could happen.
Obviously one hurdy to cover would be how faction gaining of such a system would work.. obviously cant just blindly kill NPCs over the hill and expect someone who hates me to believe i'm helping them out.. Since i found faction farming by just killing certain mobs over and over was very boring and didn't make a lot of since, I was thinking something like this:
when there's a battle containing 2 factions and a player assists one of the factions, if the faction being assisted wins the battle and has not been otherwise provoked by the player, the NPC (KOS or not) will stand battle ready, but not attack unless attacked first for a duration of time. After that duration the NPC will deem the player as a 'help' and you get a faction gain with that faction. I thought it would be a very easy and lightweight script to write and could be applied across the board.
I think small things could be added- and I mean coded when I say added- that can provide more immersion/faction bang for the coding-time buck. For instance, a simple mechanic such as a skunkscent gland. held in inventory and not in a bag- over time ratchets down the charisma. If ignored, even your own merchants wont sell to you because you stink! but oddly the really hard skeletons wont attack you- maybe because you smell rotten or their aggro trigger code is coindcidentally based on a cha check? Nothing game breaking but a small "ah HA!" Good to know that you can walk unmolested among the undead (kith at night) if you stink?- yes. Not "faction" per se but faction-like and in line with acclimation maybe a nice in-game introduction to acclimation and levels of acclimation. Only time-sink like element is you have to let the skunk sent gland "air" a bit so it wafts over you- it takes time for it to ratchet down the cha, likewise it takes time for the scent to leave you.
Speaking of acclimation, maybe you did some cutsey, save the baby beasty werewolf from a trap or pitchfork-n-torch mob of humans for whatever reason, maybe it was those uber werewolves we saw earlier and maybe when you returned the baby you got trounced but got your quest item and a scar. You have no cold acclimation and never will. Levels later you're in amberfaet but you find that if you get near wolves, they sense the scar and dogpile and keep you warm, one of the pack kind of thing.
consistently saying prayers or posting honorifics in a temple to ancestors/lovedones/general evil nefariousness centers mind and gives a coolness (meditation?) in raging hot areas.
Even linked to milestones in skill- I see from the muscles in your forearms you are blacksmith! (blacksmithing 100+), or allowed in places others are not via perception -(singing 50+) you! come quickly!we need a ballad! the rest of you- stay out!.
Something that I liked that sort of fits in is that I liked in EQ how some areas with enemies had bankers/vendors that you could buy from.
But yeah I think it's neat about building faction with an enemy then doing quest for them. Velious had the factions where you could build up faction with giants and lower with dwarfs. Once you had the faction with the giants you could do quest for them.
Ranarius said:I know that Joppa talked about this in one interview but I can't quote him directly. Something like "you'll be earning or losing faction for something you didn't even know existed, then one day you'll learn more about that faction..." So it sounds like they have some pretty in-depth plans for factions.
It was the video newsletter from 01/16/20 at about 25:33
