Official Faction Discussion / Planned Changes Thread

My biggest concern is that factions is a gold and time sink at the moment. I really would like to see people make a living out of fighting. Maybe make a point system where we could see who won at the end of each month. Players and teams could be awarded with plats, gold, thropies according to their points.

First of all thank you @Chris for putting factions on your radar and opening it to discussion.

RFC #7-9: Perhaps a system similar to murder count can be in place, active members would need to maintain a high short amount to participate in management, long term counts can still be used for bragging rights and titles/items vs.

RFC #14: Pet training is very simple with overnight macros so I am not sure if this is much of a nerf. I think a more direct combat nerf like dragons doing less damage to players or something more fundamental is necessary. I am super biased on this topic so I might not make healthy suggestions.

RFC #14b(there are 2 14s): In regards to town control and management duties, perhaps the person returning the sigil to a town should be automatically granted sherif of that town. That way people who put in the effort to capture a sigil can be rewarded and the commander doesn't need to be on all the time to micro manage.

RFC1 - Good idea, but I think if we better offer death shrouds to every factioners its gonna take more attention cuz people like DS... Since All factions has 2 different colors with faction points and silver secondry color DS can be purchaseable even maybe which can give -2 - 3 armor extra like the defensive robe...

RFC2 - Very nice idea

RFC6 - If character A is commanding lord in Faction B and leaves that faction( if he has enough points and people following him) he can literally be the commanding lord of the opposed faction. Which can end up in drama... So I dont support retaining points in that sens....

RFC7 - Balgami's idea about short long term counts on Faction points would be usefull I think. I support it

RFC8 - 24 hours election period is too short. With points decaying there shouldn't be a problem and I think Commander voting can even be done every week or month so people can actually gather points and be competitive...

RFC9 - I strickly believe that factions points should be gathered through: Killing opposing factioners - killing opposing faction guards, killing opposing faction pets(tames), faction monsters and capturing (stealing) sigils. (So that a thief - tamer etc can also rank up and challange the commander) It will also attract different type of players to join factions.

RFC10 - Big problem about traps is that once you put a trap - you can not remove it. You need an opposing factioner to remove it so this should be fixed...

RFC11 - Faction guards shouldn't be summoned while being in combat (suporting this one) Factin guards should also drop silver as loot, so killing them means something other than clearing path for sigils... (This will also make opposing factioners not spamm guards which will make other factions silver rich)

RFC14 -(Faction Pet Statloss) (There are 2 RFC14 btw) Tamers should be a part of the faction world in the name of base defenses if not base defenses are literally field fighting... COM and TB has guards advantages as town factions... So guards would be usefull for them, to be able to fight against it Tamers are most of the time the only chance and if you lower the damage on Pets vs factioners and give guards higher damage against pets its gonna be imbalanced I think.. Higher statloss is acceptable if it can be balanced with guards making less damage on players too.

RFC14 - Town Control - Its not about trammel but what is weird is faction vendor mage's prices are same with regular vendors which IMO is not logical... And there is no benefit putting him there...So reg prices should be different IMO. Flags are a nice tat (supporting that idea)

RFC 15 - I am still in favor of putting all faction fights in and arround couple of towns..And Getting all bases around Brit for example. But If thats not happening - Get all bases outside of GZ. No vendors - non factioners - guards around bases. Fix the walls so people won't be able to sail through walls. Fix the targetting issues. Fix the teleport problems... Well there are a lot to fix in bases. Trying to create own bases idea is super amazing but I think there would be some problems with some other bugs - exploits once we started creating our own bases.

RFC 16 - IMO, All towns sigils should be stealable in a different day so there would be competition in all days.(This should be set up by the GM's for spesific days and times, some would be stealable in EU time zones, some in EST some in PST, all of the sigils days should be fixed prior. Lets say Saturday is Britain's day, But there had been a lot of fights so TB managed to corrupt it on Monday. The town should be again capturable on next Saturday so there wont be a certain period of time for secure town sigils ) The corruption period should be fairly short(1 hour maybe 2) so it gives chance to all factions from zergs to low numbered a chance with the correct planning...

GL with the patch @Chris if you can make it its gonna be awesome

RFC #14 : Pets should die or immediately go into stat when their owner dies.

RFC #1 : New Faction Rank Item - Faction Shrouds
RFC #2 : New Faction Rank Item - Faction Ethereals
RFC #3 : Additional Faction Based Rank Items

Eh, okay. These things will pretty much only affect Pax Romain (which by reading this list, I think he's been a main contributor), most everyone else dies enough that their ranks don't climb high. I mean congrats to Pax for some shinies.

I don't think factions need PvM-style progression to encourage participation. These awards should be available to everyone who has the silver to buy them. With this system I think everyone will just spend all their time running away because they don't wanna die and risk losing rank. That's not a great incentive for all out combat.

RFC #4 : Guild Functionality
RFC #5 : Faction Join / Leave Functionality
RFC #6 : Faction Points - Leave / Join Faction

I'm not sure how I feel about encouraging faction switching. At least in the current Faction environment I don't see anyone doing that. If things really blow up, then maybe. As it stands, there's pretty much a guild per faction.

RFC #9 : Faction Points

This could use some work. In the current system even if you participated in the dump, it seems only one or two players will credit for the kill. Also I think that it could encourage people to cross heal if healers could get credit as well. If the guy you recently healed (within 30-45 seconds?) makes a kill, you share in the credit.

RFC #11 : Faction Guards

A lot of these changes will be helpful, but I think the biggest thing that isn't being addressed is the big blue elephant in the room. Prevent guards from being able to go inside the bases of the two factions who are based in towns (Brit and CoM). An idea I was discussing with POTHEAD last night is a combination of tethering (which you mention here) and a restriction on how close they can be placed to the CoM/Brit faction bridges. Terminate the tether a few tiles short of the faction bridge. This will end the need for blue walls to block guards from running into bases.

RFC #14 : Faction Pet Stat Loss

Why are we penalizing a build, exactly?? Are you going to penalize mages and dexxers as well to make them less effective after each death? I know some vets are salty about the use of tamers in Factions but I think many others would strongly disagree with this move. This pretty much flies in the face of "play as you want" and "play within the limitations of the world". If anything at all, give them the same duration stat loss as the tamer, and it restores on the same timer.

The tamers are mostly useful in sieges. In open field, they are hamstringed by the pet because if they run to fast (and in most cases, you're hauling ass all over the map) they lose the pet. I don't think any serious changes are required, I think the benefits of the tamer and the disadvantages balance out.

RFC #15 : Faction Bases

Letting players design a base is a slippery slope and could lead to all kinds of balance issues. I don't think that's a good idea.

Existing bases just need small adjustments. Brit castle is fine, it's certainly more secure than Minax and CoM bases. The only thing it needs are the same water blockers that CoM base now has (this may have been implemented already) and the same buffer that I suggested above on guards. I think the rest of CoM would agree that the only thing it could use is maybe a few more faction-colored barricades in the hallway leading to our sigil posts to add some chokepoints since we currently have the "open cafe" design. Yew Crypts is fine. I don't know what Minax could use if anything, they can probably advise better on that.

RFC #16 : Faction Sigil Mechanics

1) 5 hour timer on capture would be a nice compromise between the US players and the EU players.
2) I don't understand the value of having to have a "thief" remove a sigil from it's post (it's just sitting there, why do I need to be an experienced thief to pull it off?) I think all that it needs is that anyone can pull it down but there's a brief timer to pull it down. IE: Factioner double clicks the sigil, 10-15 second timer starts, if he isn't hit during that timer, the sigil moves to his pack. If he's hit, he has to restart the timer.

Also this is more a wishlist thing that a pertinent change, but if there was a way to spread out the days that sigils become capturable it would be nice. For people like me who have inconsistent work schedules, I may or may not be able to play on the one day a week that's super hype because all the sigils are in play. Sigils are also the biggest stimuli for fights so having an objective daily would make for fights more regularly.


All that said, we sincerely appreciate you taking an interest in helping factions. Faction drama aside, we all want factions to be successful and thriving and it's awesome you want to help us. Thanks Chris!

RFC1 : shrouds should be available to all factioners to boost morale. Make a darker hue available to the commander.
Cost 1000 silver for a life span of 1 week.


RFC4: If a guild wishes to leave their current faction to join another there should be a cool down period to join the other faction.
Duration: 3-7 days
Otherwise guilds can join another faction, and if they have enough members, they could try to take it over just so the faction they left from could win and/or benefit from it.

RFC11: Let pets/summons attack faction guards

RFC14 - Faction pet stat loss:
A factions pets should receive a temporary stat loss just like a factioner does now. Stats on the pets who recieve the stat loss could be HP/Strength/Int/magery(if the pet has it) at a 25% decrease for a duration of 5 minutes in order to make it so that they cannot enter right back into the heat of battle as soon as they get back up.

RFC15: Faction bases

I think the bases how they are now are fine honestly. Creating whole new bases could lead into more problems and possible exploits to the certain base later down the road.
Could make some adjustments on the current basses now regarding the guards, being able to get through the walls via boat, and being able to capture a sigil from a base where the sigils are on the second floor and are able to be captureable from the 1st floor.

RFC16: the capture period for sigils should be reduced from 7 hours to 3-3.5 hours. This will allow people to not have to wait around long periods of time to defend a sigil. Alot of people cannot be on the long duration of time that it is at now.

Thanks @Chris for creating an official thread and I think your key points to discuss are spot on.

RFC#1: I agree with @Lnomer standard faction hue death shrouds for all members and I think a special hue for the Commanding Lord only would be awesome.

RFC#2: Love the idea of ethereal faction mounts but wouldn't have a problem if they were permanent items just you would have to maintain a certain rank to mount them.

RFC#8: Decrease the amount of points you need to run for election. With the current size and activity of factions it's a long progress to obtain the amount to run for the election.

RFC#11: 100% Let pets/summons attack faction guards.

RFC#14: I don't have a problem with pet damage or ability to use them in factions because everyone has the fair opportunity to use them. They create great siege/defense weapons and makes those battles interesting. Although I wouldn't have a problem with some sort of a harsher punishment for using pets though like you stated dealing with their skill loss or some kind of disabled period of time to get them back in the fight.

RFC#15: Move TBs base to Lord British's castle where it belongs.

RFC#16: Town capture time duration cut to at least half - 3.5 hours.

Also would a scheduled live discussion via IRC/Discord with you @Chris and anyone interested in factions be a possibility? Mainly to discuss the urgency of what needs done asap and what can be implemented over time.

guilds being in faction and in o/c in the same time!

@Chris you have (2) RFC#14's

RFC #14 : Faction Town Control
I still believe that the faction controlling the town should have the ability to control the taxes on ALL goods sold in that town.

"Benefits that could be provided that would not affect non faction players in a confusing or negative way"
All new players generally start in Ocllo, where there is no factions. Along with Cove, Bucs, T2A & Hidden Valley. There are plenty of non faction towns they can utilize. There is no reason the factions shouldn't have complete control over taxes for the town they control. That's what should be at the heart of all of this, control. As far as confusion, 99% of people either use the forums or IRC. They will get the answers they are seeking.

Maybe if it is possible, make faction pets deal reduced damage in the same manner that instanced events do.

@Chris I know we talked about future adjustments to tamers in the sense of pvp. Will those adjustments equate close to this?

Making changes to tamers isn’t fixing factions, it’s forming combat into the image a specific group has of what it should be like.

If tamers were overpowered, everyone would be playing one. But you almost never see them in the field. What do you see? Stun scribes, stun scribes everywhere.

They aren’t practical for fighting outside a base. A fight will start in East Brit and a minute later you’re fighting in the Graveyard. It’s impossible to keep up leading pets around.

The ones saying nerf tamers are the same ones who will walk around Guard zergs (and are the same ones who usually hold the towns).

Tamers are like Animists back on Dark Age of Camelot. Turrets specializing in defense but are useless in the field. Add the same stat loss that the faction tamer gets and call it a day.

I would be against harsher penalties for tamers in factions for example having harsher statloss penalties. I have a feeling some kind of bug would be introduced for people who just enjoy pvm

Would it be possible Chris just to not allow people with the skill animal taming animal lore to join factions

I joined factions to pvp, if I wanted to pvm I would get on my tamers and hit a dungeon.

I have 3 tamers and could easily join up all 3 and just sit in the sigil room tripple boxing.

I was addressing Valrick, Ahir and Balgami’s suggested dps nerfs or Scuba’s suggestion tamers be barred all together.

I agree that the same faction stat loss a player gets would be more than fair and I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise. But punitive measures like permanent stat loss, nerfs, or barring them from participating isn’t reasonable at all.

If it’s not your playstyle then don’t do it, but your playstyle shouldn’t affect other people’s playstyle. If you wanna be on a diet, good for you. But that don’t mean I shouldn’t be allowed to eat my donut because you don’t want to eat donuts

Dragons are quite OP dude. Even my stun punch tamer melts almost everything on stun punch.

I am against the nerf just because of unforeseen things that may happen to pvmers I would just rather have them barred from factions all together.

If this is possible Chris I think anyone with the skills animal taming animal lore should be barred from joining a faction if you feel like you NEED to have a tamer chaos and order is still available