I believe there is a way to satisfy the PvP community we have, while simultaneously addressing the concern for player against player griefing/abuse. IMO, the biggest reason the vast majority of our current community spends as much time as they do seeking out, and hunting other players, is because they are simply not satisfied with what is alternatively available for PvP options. So, here is what I propose: 1. As it stands, factions are divided into 4 different factions. In addition to, we also have a chaos/order system in place. The reality is, there simply is not enough players to go around to create an 'even divide' amongst these options. What I have noticed, is that you ultimately end up with one faction with far more players than the other 3, and it deters groups from wanting to compete. On top of that, we have a chaos/order sect, that simply is a non-factor on the field. There's zero incentive, and it accounts for a small % of the actual pvp activity that occurs. My proposal is to completely overhaul the faction system. I propose reducing the factions from 4, down to 2. Instead of having Minax, COM, SL, and TB, focus both aspects on only two. Perhaps True Brits and Shadow Lords. Kinda like a light vs dark (Britain vs Blackthorne) type of deal. Right now, we have too much 'spread' across the server, and it would be far better to have both "faction" bases located in Britain. Considering the main focal point of new player involvement is in Occlo, Britain is primed with the grounds for hosting TWO bases for this change. I would suggest making Lord British's castle the True Brit faction base, and Lord Blackthorne's castle being the Shadow Lord faction base. Second, I would remove all town sigils, and only have competing bases fight over 4-6 sigils which would be located in the 'virtue' room located just East of the Brit Inn. Here's how this would work: - Faction base A & B would be located at both main castes (British and Blackthorne). - Factions would fight a localized battle over sigils which are reset to the sigil area in the virtue room - After one faction controls the area for the alloted time, the sigils reset to their timers 2. Sigil timers / Guarding timers - Right now, once a faction defends their sigils for 7 hours, they obtain control over said towns. With the new system, I would recommend reducing this hold timer from 7 hours, to 3 hours. It simply is not feasible for the vast majority of us to stand guard over sigils for 7 hours. Ultimately what this will do, is help to encourage players to actually take part in capturing and defending the sigils, since it is now more manageable. Which brings me to my next point.. 3. Town control turnover - Currently, once a town is captured and controlled for the time limit, players have to wait 3 days (I think) until they are available to steal again. I would reduce this timer to 24 hours. Effectively, I believe this will drastically increase the time it takes to turnover possession of control, and will further aid in occupying the time of the pvp playerbase. Currently, from what I have heard and experienced first hand, players simply don't have the incentive, and therefore the desire, to stand around for 3 days idling their time waiting for the sigils to become available. This needs to be reduced so that there is a more or less constant turnover rate which will inherently occupy the time of these players on a daily basis. 4. Faction traps / War horses - Faction traps should remain the same as they are, and function the same as they are. I would recommend (since there will only be two factions) to make the 'Chaos' faction have the Minax colored 'red' horses, and the 'Order' faction have the CoM colored 'blue' horses. Ifso facto - red vs blue. 5. Faction Incentive - To be honest with you, the incentive for pvper's is much less about acquiring items or trophies as it is with the PvM crowd. Our desire is about having something to do. PvPers simply want to fight. Under our current system there is far too much downtime to accommodate for this thirst. Players simply don't have the time to sit around for hours anymore, and want action on demand; this is the nature of the game now. I strongly believe this plan has the chance to alleviate a lot of this frustration, and will give players something to occupy their time due to the high turnover rate of fighting over town control on a daily basis in a centralized location. I would suggest to keep all current faction control/purchase options the same (silver). (i.e. keep the same system for purchasing war horses, placing vendors, traps, guards, etc.).
I back everything you said, factions is a lot of fun. UOG: Hybrid had a hero/evil system on top of factions. TB and Com were hero and SL and Minax evil. With the greater factions points you had the further you could track the opposing side without tracking skill within town. Both hero and evil had their own hue you could dye clothing with by killing orange creatures and using a command.
Clearly there's some major support from the entire server on Factions changes I think the real question is how long would a system like this take to get patched in. I fully support what Mandevu said and I think every PvPer can agree we do it for the fun not for the pixels. Of course pixels are always a bonus when your having fun PvPing and definitely gives people an incentive to do something like that. I wonder how much it would take if we donate towards the server to get this rolling sooner then later.
Each faction absorbs the shields so: True Order and Chaos Lords No looting, just extend skill loss timer after each subsequent death.
my original suggestion was to just make it a “chaos” vs “order” type of faction system and do away with the 4 faction names. Either way, that’s kind of secondary to the real meat of the content change.
I tried factions a few days but not in time to play it.. I started just before its last extinction(because of people using dragons, using the system to take advantages in lots of kinds of ways and getting butt hurt after subsequent failures). I think before talk about "what telamon could change to make factions happen) people should discuss openly "what to change in themselves" to make it happen in a healthy way. I want to believe that with some system tunes would be possible to avoid past failures and improve the playability in a sustainable way. To finish, just a suggestion: in the past, i supported to resume factions in the order/chaos system(as simple as better), but looking to the recent shard increase of players, this would cut out the possibility of a 3rd group to shake the scene.
I like your suggestions. i'd like to see order/chaos absorbed into factions and guild wars serve some function too somehow. No guilds declare war right now because of the ability to just give counts instead (LAME) to the opposition.
