I have stated before that I would love to see more content that allows me to align with other factions beside my starting faction. If I want to join ranks with Black Rose Keep or the Gadai or Wos Che lycandrells, should I "have to" be punished by taking away this content or could I have other content opened up to me because of it?
In the creation of the great starting cities for the races, I wonder if the devs are creating those not just as hubs, but also considering camping and mob content as well. If I hate ogres or elves, shouldn't I be able to get a group together and go camp Broken Maw or Faerthale City, with the same depth of content given to Black Rose Keep? In Everquest 1, there are many places that an opposite faction could camp and pull mobs of guards, named NPCs, and even other mobs in the sewers and the hidden places.
We have been told that they are working on subterranean content for Thronefast, which is a step, but nothing else has ever been addressed. Could we get a sentence or something about this from CP or someone?
Hmm. I can't recall any specific comment, though I have a vague recollection of them acknowledging this kind of 'content' in games like EQ and not being negative about it. Hmm. can't be sure.
Yeah I hope there is some scope for that too, without it being too abusable and 'griefy'. In many games, including EQ, it was very annoying to have players killing NPCs you needed to trade or do quests or guards that would ordinarily be protecting noobs in their starter zone.
As long as VR do their thing, ie. using their combined decades of MMORPG playing history to fold in stuff they know was 'fun' in old school games, but modernise and mitigate the bad aspects along the way, then that could be very cool.
Would also be nice to see things like if you raised your Black Rose Keep faction somehow it would make an NPC there into a trader/vendor, though that sort of thing should be rare, I would think.
disposalist said:Yeah I hope there is some scope for that too, without it being too abusable and 'griefy'. In many games, including EQ, it was very annoying to have players killing NPCs you needed to trade or do quests or guards that would ordinarily be protecting noobs in their starter zone.
This may sound a little sappy, but I found it a bit endearing when people were killing mobs I needed. In High Keep, the guard that you turned goblin ears into was always going down from folks inside killing guards. It was annoying sometimes, but looking back, it made me interact with those people, have conversations that usually were more than just "Hey stop killing this mob" and you can socialize a bit. Plus, it's the same as folks killing bandits in High Keep when I needed to do rogue turn=ins. Obviously it should be less, though, to your point.
Benonai said:disposalist said:Yeah I hope there is some scope for that too, without it being too abusable and 'griefy'. In many games, including EQ, it was very annoying to have players killing NPCs you needed to trade or do quests or guards that would ordinarily be protecting noobs in their starter zone.
This may sound a little sappy, but I found it a bit endearing when people were killing mobs I needed. In High Keep, the guard that you turned goblin ears into was always going down from folks inside killing guards. It was annoying sometimes, but looking back, it made me interact with those people, have conversations that usually were more than just "Hey stop killing this mob" and you can socialize a bit. Plus, it's the same as folks killing bandits in High Keep when I needed to do rogue turn=ins. Obviously it should be less, though, to your point.
Hehe yeah it's another one of those tricky lines for VR to walk. 'Social' gaming includes stuff that isn't always wholly 'positive' or maybe positive is the wrong word... it doesn't have to always be 'sanitised' or 'safe'. Avoiding any posible conflict, aside from being impossible, might well throw out an interesting social 'baby with the bathwater'.
As you say, the opportunity to chat with folks killing an NPC you need could just as well lead to some role-playing fun or a 'positive' outcome where they agree to let you interact before they start killing again and you get to know that person or think about starting an 'evil' character, etc etc.
I'm not too interested in using social solutions to fix toxic behavior. The world has changed since 1st generation MMOs and there's a lot more people who delight in the misery of others. I want there to be systems in place to minimize this kind of grief. For example, the NPC should respawn quickly and each time it does, it gets 1 more guard to spawn with it (and each time they're 1 level higher). This would make it difficult for players to keep a crucial NPC dead for very long.
Do you really- REALLY- have to kill the quest NPC? *scoff* But seriously before I put you on ignore...
I understand the need. I experienced walking into an elven town and there was a troll SK camping...under a bridge...killing the elven guards for exp much to the dismay and consternation of the elven newbie players.
As a solution I am not adverse to a known PITA mechanic that is built into the game. There are two examples I can recall in EQ, the hollowshade moor war (grimlings, olwbears, sonicwolves) and Grimling forest where in each case, were enough of one type was killed in a certain amount of time, they would be replaced by another type. In grimling forest this opened up a continuation of a quest if you got the Vah Shir to replace the grimlings. In Hollowshade this caused some annoyance as the shout "Who left the owlbears/sonic wolves up!?"could sometimes be heard but was often rectified. Crafters appreciated this as they also dropped tradeskill items. likewise in maidens eye in the rockhopper/goranga caves. If an idiot kiled all the rockhoppers the goranga would take over and they were a ton harder and didn't have the potential to drop the uncommon/rare flawless hides to boost tailoring so all good stewards knew to leave one or two rockhoppers up to maintain the population so they could harvest hides.
If someone were to kill all the quest NPC's I would not be adverse to knowing or learning that the NPC's took refuge in a keep somewhere awkward and hard to get to, OR I had to deal with the nefarious criminal element of said city resulting in higher merchant prices, lower re-sell prices, faction issues and perhaps added requirements to a quest I thought I already completed. <- which would mean: I could scream and go out and do the dirty part of the added quest bits for the nefarious NPC. However, only to come back and find the town set back to rights and the hefarious NPC is not to be found but the regular NPC is there and so I now have two choices: I could turn in the regular quest stuff for the reward and have the tainted quest stuff taking up bag space(or used in something else?- OR- wait for the town to get overrun again by that person I put on ignore earlier to get the nefarious NPC up and do the turn in with the regular quest stuff and the additional tainted items for the "other" reward. I may take that person off ignore and ask/tempt them to come back and kill them off again- I mean- since their faction is garbage anyways...just to see what the "other" reward might be. Bless-ed Bastard sword or something maybe. problem: Definite itemization issue on nefarious item vs regular item. It would have to be a hard choice for the player while at the same time punishing the idea of killing regular quest NPC but also rewarding the extra time taken to do nefarious things. like regular turn in reward is really good; like group AC buff short term clicky and small self heal proc, but nefarous reward is not so great but has a little something extra; like higher damage ratio, some weird high resist on an odd thing, longer term but smaller group AC buff clicky and small Group DoT proc that also converts end to str (so you're hurt, but can press on) <- so nifty, but if the weilder uses it and is any good at weapons that thing can be procing like crazy and everyone will be constantly dotted, but will have more str so- start swinging casters.
Killing NPCs that players need for trade, training, quests and the like? Simple answer - no. This is 99% griefing and done in low level areas gives new players a terrible first impression.
Player-interaction NPCs should be non-attackable and not subject to area effect damage in areas intended as hubs for players to congregate and get services.
This comment is limited to pve servers and to major hubs. If VR wants to create special areas where things are more ...flexible .... no problem at all.
FFA killing of quest/trade/training NPCs is a hard no.
But as to the OP's original point, it should be possible for any player of any class to change a given faction through an appropriate amount of effort. If someone really wants to be friendly with the Orcs in Hanggore, there should be a path available to do that. There should be some Orc NPC out there willing to talk to anyone and for it to offer quests that would change that players' faction.
As your standings with a given faction improve, the effort needed to increase that faction to higher tiers should be more involved, more dangerous. Becoming ally should not be something you can earn just through mass killing of low level NPCs that are opposed to that faction ala EQ1. That's just lazy programming.
Also, adjust one faction upwards is a slower process than lowering its opposing faction. So if you''re a human from Thronefast and you really want to be friends with those Orcs, you'll quickly get to a point where the humans in Thronefast will hate you long before the Orcs will trust you.
I agree with Vandraad. And I think there should be a couple different ways to earn faction. One option should be to buy it via bribes and donations. This won't get you great faction, but it would be enough to not be Kill On Sight, allowing you to improve it further. This option is realistic to real world behavior and also works as a money sink.
Mass murder of enemy NPCs should only be one method, and not necessarily the most effective. Helping to defend an outpost, bringing in needed supplies, repairing infrastructure, escorting convoys, providing intelligence on enemies, and other methods should also be useful. Plus, there really needs to be a charisma option where you're basically a snake oil salesman / cult leader and you get high faction from a small minority while the rest distrust you.
Counterfleche said:Mass murder of enemy NPCs should only be one method, and not necessarily the most effective.
Such a thing should only ever get you so far, like just enough to not be KOS. But to truly gain their trust (warmly or higher) you really have to prove you are dedicated to their side of things. To obtain high levels of faction must mean you undertake ever more difficult, dangerous and involved tasks. Sure, killing a few guards would get you out of KOS into dubious, but then continued killing of guards doesn't gain you any benefit. To go up another level you might need to kill some important, named, NPCs in Thronefast. Further up the faction latter could include killing very strong, named, NPCs like the king and/or queen (if one existed).
The point of all this is that gaining faction must involve something other than just mass murder of NPCs. That's a boring and outdated approach. We deserve something better.
I think an interesting discussion revolves around whether you should have to lose faction with one side in order to gain faction with another. Granted, if you start killing guards in one town in order to gain faction with another side, then obviously you're going to lose faction with the guards you're killing. But that wouldn't necessarily be the case if there was something like an introductory faction NPC that offered you other means, like collection turn ins or quests. And once you are no longer kill on sight, it could possibly open up additional quests inside the town you're working towards to further increase your faction. How dead set are people against the idea of being liked by all factions if you work at it hard enough?
Eolair said:I think an interesting discussion revolves around whether you should have to lose faction with one side in order to gain faction with another. Granted, if you start killing guards in one town in order to gain faction with another side, then obviously you're going to lose faction with the guards you're killing. But that wouldn't necessarily be the case if there was something like an introductory faction NPC that offered you other means, like collection turn ins or quests. And once you are no longer kill on sight, it could possibly open up additional quests inside the town you're working towards to further increase your faction. How dead set are people against the idea of being liked by all factions if you work at it hard enough?
Faction is, as we've been told, going to a web with factions linked to (potentially) other factions. It should be impossible to be on non-KOS standings to every faction when a given faction is diametrically opposed to another faction. If one goes up, the other must go down. And faction standings going down must go down faster than faction standings going up as it is much more difficult to prove your trustworthyness than it is to prove your disloyalty. People, and by extension factions, are much more likely to react negatively to a perceived slight than they are to some attempt by you to appear better in their eyes.
I hope the faction lost when gaining faction in an enemy depends on how you gain faction. If you take great care to not harm a faction, becoming friendly with its opposing faction should not automatically cause you to drop significantly. Faction changes really should be weighted by the action that caused it. I don't want to see us be net positive with all, but it shouldn't always be a binary choice.
Eolair said:I think an interesting discussion revolves around whether you should have to lose faction with one side in order to gain faction with another. Granted, if you start killing guards in one town in order to gain faction with another side, then obviously you're going to lose faction with the guards you're killing. But that wouldn't necessarily be the case if there was something like an introductory faction NPC that offered you other means, like collection turn ins or quests. And once you are no longer kill on sight, it could possibly open up additional quests inside the town you're working towards to further increase your faction. How dead set are people against the idea of being liked by all factions if you work at it hard enough?
I don't see why there shouldn't be a neutral position, even if it is difficult to attain.
I do think, though, that you should ever be able to become 'loved' or whatever, or maybe not even become 'liked' if you are also popular with an opposed faction.
A faction is never going to see you without some suspicion if you are popular with their enemies.
As in so many things - details matter.
Suppose faction X and faction y are both being attacked by orcs. Suppose I do nothing to help either faction against the other - I limit myself to nothing but killing orcs. Suppose I do this really well and wipe out every orc (obvious exaggeration here, of course). Suppose I still have never even spoken to either faction x or faction y because I don't want to get involved in their disputes.
Seems entirely likely that I may have pretty good status with both of them at that point in time. If they sell unique goods I may be able to buy from both on a very favorable basis unless the mere fact of buying from a vendor of one faction reduces my reputation with the other. Which is possible but it doesn't normally work that way in other games.
I get the logical argument of how the friend of my enemy can never achieve complete trustworthiness, and that aspect can create some cool content. I'm thinking Dain Frostreaver and King Tormax quest lines from the EQ Velious expansion, for example, I really enjoyed that. (I spent an entire night, with my alarm going off every 15 minutes, sitting in front of King Tormax's spawn point so I could beat the guilds waiting to kill him and do my Dain head turn in. Ahhh memories). But I question whether that's the best way to go when it comes to more central factions. The type that perhaps an entire main town in based off of. Just because I started the game as an Elf, does that mean I'll never be able to enter a town that hates elves unless I also become hated by elves in order to gain their trust? Then lose access to my primary starting city?
Personally I have always felt that most games just kind of throw faction into a game as additional content, but few have ever really explored all there is to offer there. I agree with you that I also think simply being able to max out every faction may not be the best solution either. But I would love to see a game really explore what faction has to offer, and perhaps have it work different depending on why the faction exists, and how important it is to gameplay. Even stand-alone type factions with start off distrusting EVERYONE (outsiders!), but that you don't have to sacrifice another action to gain trust with. And opening up that faction could be used to access sidequests and additional content.
dorotea said:As in so many things - details matter.
Suppose faction X and faction y are both being attacked by orcs. Suppose I do nothing to help either faction against the other - I limit myself to nothing but killing orcs. Suppose I do this really well and wipe out every orc (obvious exaggeration here, of course). Suppose I still have never even spoken to either faction x or faction y because I don't want to get involved in their disputes.
Seems entirely likely that I may have pretty good status with both of them at that point in time. If they sell unique goods I may be able to buy from both on a very favorable basis unless the mere fact of buying from a vendor of one faction reduces my reputation with the other. Which is possible but it doesn't normally work that way in other games.
The nuance here is how X and Y relate to the Orcs and relate to each other which could affect how your standings actually change. For simplicity sake lets ignore any tertiary variables like race, class and religion and just focus on a single, primary, variable..that of action.
1. If X and Y are friendly to each other and equally in full opposition to the Orcs it would stand to reason that your actions would increase your standings with both X and Y equally.
2. If X and Y are diametrically opposed to each other but also equal in opposition to the Orcs, your actions could be seen by one as helping one of their enemies thus negating any benefit. Your faction standings barely change.
3. If X and Y are only somewhat opposed to each other and still in equal opposition to the Orcs, your standings with the faction most opposed to the Orc could increase faster than the faction who is more ambivalent to those same Orcs.
As you say, details are important.
EDIT: What really irks me is that faction changes are instantaneous even when the factions involved are physically far apart from each other. I would love to see faction changes act like ripples on a pond. Your actions at one point take time to propogate across the world with the further a faction is from another the longer time it takes for reports of your actions to get there.
Vandraad said:... factions involved are physically far apart from each other. I would love to see faction changes act like ripples on a pond. Your actions at one point take time to propogate across the world with the further a faction is from another the longer time it takes for reports of your actions to get there.
That's fun. Imagine talking with an NPC and another NPC walks up and whispers in it's ear. Then the first NPC "He did WHAT!". Pulls his sword and kills you. Fun stuff.
Vamdraad - if we want realism then my killing orcs would not affect my status with anyone - other than the orcs - unless they have some way of finding out about it.
Sure I can ride into town and tell them - no more orc problems - I just wiped out the tribe - but if no one saw me do it the response could easily be ...sceptical. Though my bag of holding might help - the one with 3,000 orc ears in it. On the third hand - anyone can carry around orc ears they aren't necessarily from the orcs that were a local problem.
dorotea said:Vamdraad - if we want realism then my killing orcs would not affect my status with anyone - other than the orcs - unless they have some way of finding out about it.
Sure I can ride into town and tell them - no more orc problems - I just wiped out the tribe - but if no one saw me do it the response could easily be ...sceptical. Though my bag of holding might help - the one with 3,000 orc ears in it. On the third hand - anyone can carry around orc ears they aren't necessarily from the orcs that were a local problem.
Well, if we wanted realism we wouldn't have magic, unlimited running, swimming while wearing full plate, climbing using only your bare hands (and while wearing full plate, etc). Its a necessary mechanic that if you want faction and you want actions to have consequences that those actions are tele-magically transmitted to the parties in question. My point was that it would be interesting to see a delay in that transmission based upon distance.
I'm of the opinion of "no" on any interaction with Quest NPCs/vendors/bankers etc. other than their designed interaction... even on PvP servers. They should be completely immune to damage and not even respond to interactions they aren't specifically designed for... players would otherwise kite an NPC just to grief other players.
I would also like to see a typed command to interact with NPCs (like /interact or /rightclick) so that as long as I'm in range, I don't need to mouse click the target to initiate the transaction (this would circumvent pig-piles on NPCs). The /target command with a range limitation would also be good for this reason.
StoneFish said:That's fun. Imagine talking with an NPC and another NPC walks up and whispers in it's ear. Then the first NPC "He did WHAT!". Pulls his sword and kills you. Fun stuff.
That's the funniest thing I've heard in a while. Joppa, make it happen!
Disposalist said:A faction is never going to see you without some suspicion if you are popular with their enemies.
Eolair said:I get the logical argument of how the friend of my enemy can never achieve complete trustworthiness
I don't see why this has to be the case. Mother Teresa was generally liked and respected by groups who are diametrically opposed to each other. Catholic's from both Democrats and Rebuplicans seem to both love and respect the Pope.
I don't see why Factions in Terminus need to be so absolute that you can't be liked by 2 groups who are opposed/hate to each other.
Obviously if you kill someone from group A to increase factions with group B this will lower your faction with group A. But if you simply do quests for group B that do not intrinsically bother group A there shouldn't be a reason that completing such quests lowers your faction with group A.
I would love to see that. The community will be niche anyway, won't at all be the usual modern group of griefers. The social element and "cool" aesthetic element of seeing a troll SK killing guards is part of the magic spice that makes these games extra special. Depart from the standard boring safety-locked individual experiences of modern MMOs, bring back the realism of living in a dangerous fantasy world. Those experiences, while temporarily annoying maybe, give life to the world. The messy realism is a huge reason why EQ was fun for so damn long.
I have no problem with NPC guards being killed, but I can see your point about quest-givers...
Not sure what to be done about that but when I was a SK in EQ and people were killing the Dark elf guards in the front of the entrance to the city It made me want to be higher lvl and stronger to do it to there guards.