The specific math is a matter of tuning. I guess my point is that not all crimes (and honors) are equal, not just in terms of that specific act but in terms of an ongoing relationship with a faction. I also think you should be able to pay penance and restore your standing. I am not a fan of immediate drop to KOS situations if you were not already on the cusp. That's too easy to grief and mistakes happen.
The ability to change your standings with a faction, any faction, is something I very much support. Every faction that exists should have some benefit, some reward, that some player might look at (or hear about) and say "Yes, I want that so I will do all I can to be friends with that faction." This means, then, that every faction must have other factions with whom they are aligned and against whom they are opposed so that building your standings with that faction is possible.
What this requires is some NPC who is alligned with the faction with whom you want to gain standings to be willing to talk to you and offer you tasks to complete regardless of your standing with that faction. A faction must first be willing to consider letting you increase your faction with them before you go off mindlessly killing their opposition.
But building your faction standing should never just be possible through mindless killing of opposing faction NPCs. That is too simplistic. Instead, as you increase your standings, the difficulty and complexity of your efforts needs to increase to be commensurate with what you are trying to accomplish. Sure, going from KOS to Dubious would be a simple matter of mass-murder of that faction's opposition but to go from Kindly to Ally? That would require a truly significant, meaningful and impactful set of tasks. If, for example, you wanted to be ally with the orc faction in Avender's Pass, to get ally could require you to kill the entire royal household of Thronefast, steal the Scepter of Dawn from the Thronefast vaults and set the castle on fire...amongst other things.
All that said, at some point there should be a point of no return when it comes to ruining a faction. The example of becoming ally with the orcs in Avender's Pass requiring you to kill the Thronefast roya family should, forever and permanently, ruin any and all Thronefast factions. Why? Because you deliberately and with conscious thought, undertook actions which you knew would ruin that faction. You could have stopped before killing the royal family, found a Thronefast faction NPC still willing to talk to you so you could make amends, but you went that one step too far.
It should always be that losing faction is easier than gaining it. If you're in a position where you have 2 opposing factions and you're at the midpoint of one and KOS with the other, to switch those standings will result in you being KOS to both simultaneously for some period of time. The faction you are betraying should take great offense to your actions while the one with whom you are trying to build faction should be very wary, not trusting, your actual intentions.
I agree with the concept of harder tasks to progress faction above a certain amount and I do think there should be some form of natural detrimental feedback from the NPCs of factions you are getting worse in; so it is obvious that the more you progress down a route, that those NPCs will eventually become KOS and not suddenly do so. Maybe guards should be stopping you from going into loyalist areas of a city, or venders keep putting prices up or start refusing to deal with you all together. The reasons for this behaviour would have to be be obvious to the player though, so it should be accompanied by "We dont like those that help Orcs, hereabouts..." or some such helpful dialogue.
I think mindlessly killing to gain faction should be worth a lot less than doing tasks for the same faction.
Vandraad: It should always be that losing faction is easier than gaining it.
Agree. I also think you should gain faction much more slowly than losing it.
Vandraad: ... forever and permanently, ruin any and all Thronefast factions.
Agree, once you hit the ultimate limit of negative faction, there should be no way back. You got there for a reason, live with it. That final task that takes you over the edge of no return has to be obvious and has to tell the player that this will be the case though. Apart from that, I really do hope to see vibrant and meaningful factions and counter factions (above simple KOS) mechanics in Pantheon.
Love all the ideas for how faction might be more than a status/KOS flag in Pantheon. I think my original question and reason for posting though may have been lost in translation. The thing that's still on my mind is the idea that the RATE at which you earn/lost faction could be a variable in and of itself that could be manipulated by the quest system, task system, and/or perception system. In my limited experiences, faction was always somewhat static. You do thing A and you earn faction X. The idea that keeps coming to my mind is that doing thing A may earn you 80% of X or 110% of X depending on past behaviours. To me, that makes the faction system much more dynamic and enriching. Perhaps such a mechanic is just normal in modern MMOs with faction systems, but I wanted to put it out there and see if anyone knows games that do this with success.
The rate should be intuitively based on specific variables. You should be able to (sometimes) not have much of any faction hit at all, like an isolated attack with no witnesses. Witnesses and NPCs escaping should harm faction more.
I don't support irredeemable faction loss since it can be used for griefing (group member attacking something to give you negative faction) and because later additions to the game may block you from content that wasn't even a consideration when you first decided to get such a negative faction.
"I don't support irredeemable faction loss"
I agree that simply losing faction should not be permanent. On the other hand, reaching certain negative levels of faction can well have permanent consequences. If I do bad enough things maybe I shouldn't be permanently stuck at kill-on-sight but maybe I should never be able to get above "barely tolerated and certainly not trusted". I doubt if one or two efforts to grief you could get you to such a miserably low faction that it would have a permanent effect. And actions should have consequences - if you spend days or weeks or months getting a faction to truly hate you - it seems right to me to be forever barred from content requiring their favour. The developers simply shouldn't introduce anything like a whole new expansion that requires faction that some of their players won't have and can never get.
I think that faction loss should be impactful, and when hitting negative benchmarks you should feel that impact. Maybe you see this impact in the following ways
However, I don't think that faction loss should ever be irreversible or have a cap set on it by past actions. I think that implementing this hurts role play aspects. I think that if someone completely kills their faction with an area there should be a way to repair it, even get it to exalted status, however, this process should not be an easy one.
I understand that if you are attacking in the wilderness and loose faction with the local area, then that could be redeemable. However, if you are the sole cause of a successful orc attack on a city (for instance), then I don’t believe the provincial government would (or should) ever forgive you.
From a rp point of view, I would argue that you were rp-ing to get the highest level of faction loss, then you should rp with the consequences. It just doesnt feel right that you could cause the death of a prince and them become the queen's most loyal companion at a later point (unless she put you up to if of course). Maybe you could gain a little faction back by some in the locale, but you would never be trusted by those directly affected by your actions.
I still think there should be a threshold over which there is no return. Up to that point, yup, fine, gain it back with much work. But after that final step, live with it.
Vandraad said:The ability to change your standings with a faction, any faction, is something I very much support. Every faction that exists should have some benefit, some reward, that some player might look at (or hear about) and say "Yes, I want that so I will do all I can to be friends with that faction." This means, then, that every faction must have other factions with whom they are aligned and against whom they are opposed so that building your standings with that faction is possible.
Agreed.
In EQ1, I had a Iksar Necro that could walk amongst the Human Paladins in North Freeport because I killed so many East and West Freeport guards. :P
chenzeme said:I understand that if you are attacking in the wilderness and loose faction with the local area, then that could be redeemable. However, if you are the sole cause of a successful orc attack on a city (for instance), then I don’t believe the provincial government would (or should) ever forgive you.
From a rp point of view, I would argue that you were rp-ing to get the highest level of faction loss, then you should rp with the consequences. It just doesnt feel right that you could cause the death of a prince and them become the queen's most loyal companion at a later point (unless she put you up to if of course). Maybe you could gain a little faction back by some in the locale, but you would never be trusted by those directly affected by your actions.
I still think there should be a threshold over which there is no return. Up to that point, yup, fine, gain it back with much work. But after that final step, live with it.
Without knowing how itemization works, I'm just not for having a point of no return for reputation.
It's different if you knowingly make the choice to screw over an NPC. In those cases yeah... that NPC (or NPCs linked to that NPC) should probably not tolerate you. I would hope that if other itemization paths are tied to those NPCs there are other workarounds to get those items or comparable items from other places.
However, out in the open, if you botch your faction unknowingly and can't regain standing, that's just not decent game design. You have to consider how complicated factions are supposed to be in Pantheon. Joppa said that there could be multiple factions connected to an NPC or group of NPCs. If you look back at some of the past streams you can see multiple faction hits when killing bandits, and the ghosts in Halnir. If you accidentally screw your reputation up because your group kills something unknowingly or you kill too many things in an area, and there is something your class needs from that reputation, then there has to be a way to repair that rep.
chenzeme said:I understand that if you are attacking in the wilderness and loose faction with the local area, then that could be redeemable. However, if you are the sole cause of a successful orc attack on a city (for instance), then I don’t believe the provincial government would (or should) ever forgive you.
From a rp point of view, I would argue that you were rp-ing to get the highest level of faction loss, then you should rp with the consequences. It just doesnt feel right that you could cause the death of a prince and them become the queen's most loyal companion at a later point (unless she put you up to if of course). Maybe you could gain a little faction back by some in the locale, but you would never be trusted by those directly affected by your actions.
Your comment gave me an interesting idea. There could be different groups / types within a faction and they should have faction modifiers. Less reputable NPCs should require a lower score and can be your toe-hold that you use to build faction. Also, there should be a few different sub-factions and they could also be more or less favorable. They may actually view you more favorably if you only harm their enemies. For example, the Red Moon clan may be in charge and the Black Feather clan wants them gone. If you kill the Red Moon king (and not just slaughter everyone), that may help the Black Feather clan take over and your faction with the group as a whole changes.
This would be especially interesting if there were a few NPC races where our actions could cause a lasting change. Like a story arc where we can change the ruling group (at least until another group of adventures does the same). There could be a trading outpost that is only friendly to faction allies of the player group that last assisted in taking over, so if you want to trade there, you (or others from your race / city) needs to complete a quest to install your preferred sub-faction in charge. It's basically like a proxy-war we can engage in with other player factions.
Not in favor of a point of no return for most factions, maybe one or two one dimensional factions if needed. I'd hope at least that many/most factions aren't so one dimensional or bloodthirsty that they are pre-occupied and sated soley by the death and/or disgrace of some "enemy" faction.
I don't see the need for extreme examples of "loyalty" or anything to reach top tier faction for most. I really don't think toppling a city or killing leaders or other such point of no return things would be required by near anyone to "prove" they are worthy. When I think of those sorts of extremes I think of someone showing up at a faction that already hates or dislikes/distrusts them and so the faction offers them a near impossible task to prove themselves, not someone who is already in good standing/reputable.
Vandraad said:[...]The ability to change your standings with a faction, any faction, is something I very much support. Every faction that exists should have some benefit, some reward, that some player might look at (or hear about) . If, for example, you wanted to be ally with the orc faction in Avender's Pass, to get ally could require you to kill the entire royal household of Thronefast, steal the Scepter of Dawn from the Thronefast vaults and set the castle on fire...amongst other things.
[...]
I think the Orcs are trying to get over on you, just seems a bit *squinches face* much.