...Just Because I'm Bored....

Delgado

I use to play a game called Face of Mankind from now on known as FoM. It's a good game filled wth grade school kids. And I'm talking about 10 year olds.

I see similarities in both FoM and Fallen Earth from now on known as FE. These similarities are as follows:

Both games have multiple factions.

Freedom Defence Corps FDC and Law Enforcement Department: Enforcer equivlent of FE.

Mercenaries of Blood: Chota equivlent of FE

Brotherhood of Shadows: Travellers equivlent of FE

All Corporate Factions of FoM: Techs equivlent of FE

FoM works like this. Each faction has it's own heirarchy/ranks with a regular player as an overall leader. Each faction is pretty much more or less a country in the respects that they more or less answer to no one but them selfs. The world and story is pretty much completely player run.

This results in the He said she said bullshit of flames. Where on the forums your meant to be IC, everyone uses IC and current ingame events to grief and be plain ignorant lying assholes. Pretty much, 10 year olds running their mouths off.

This way it works is a total disaster and makes the game pretty much a civilized anarchy world of mass gankings. The game is also completely FPS PVP friendly and you can kill anywhere you like.       ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How does one aviod this from happening? How do you keep it enjoyable to the point that every action taken ingame isn't a result of griefers or the basic Red vs. Blue?

Which brings me to my question concerning FE:

How should the Gods at Icarus develope factions? Should it be somewhere similiar to FoM? Should factions be simply a way to express the type of player you are? Should factions have advantages and disadvantages of joining, ie: pros and cons?

Or should the Gods make each faction run by a small Story GM team that works together to set events into motion? How should the Gods deal with the factions? Players making clans... Will a clan have to be strictly faction only or can it mingle and mix different factions together?

So... Plz post your thoughts on the matter about what YOU think is best for the game.

 

 

Cthulhuvong

I think the best way to do it is a mix of what you mentioned. First off, the devs (Gods lol) should have a story GM team running the higher-ups of each faction. If they're working on minimal crew, I'd say you could have a few (1-3) people running each faction. The players should be able to join the factions after showing their worth to the faction (doing missions, bribes, etc). They should be able to hold lower positions of power, but shouldn't be in charge of more than a small building owned by the faction (think the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 2) and maybe a few underlings (PC and/or NPC). The higher up the players go, the more they become a "company man" and are given more assignments.

As you have stated, FoM's way became just a gank fest. What should happen is that as the game progresses, players should be able to reach higher and higher positions in the factions. But this would basically make them a one faction person, where as initiates (people at the lowest level) of one faction could also be initiates of another, if their goals aren't opposing (Enforcers and CHOTA for example). If you get higher in an organization, you might log in and find 3 jobs on your desk that need to be finished in 3 hours. Which means you either have to be a superman, or you have to delegate to your underlings.

As for the clan/guild/player association/group thing, you shouldn't need to align your clan. You should be able to have people who work in every faction.

Radzik

I think FoM's mistake was the game revolves around factions. For one, you HAVE to join one at character creation. No standing neutral in this game. So as soon as you step into the world, you have enemies from opposing factions who want you dead, simply because of a choice you made during char creation. Then you have faction-mates, who dont want to help you, because all you had to do to join their faction, was click a choice at char creation. So one thing I think should be a solid NO for FE is factions being mandatory.

I think factions should just be for noobs. Why? Because it will be a well known group who will accept noobs trying to start out. Once you get yourself some friends and some gear, you should move on to the less accepting, harder to get into, player guilds(Or start your own).

Senuven

You all remember everquest factions? That kinda has the risk reward theme to it. Starting out is always hard in ANY game. Lineage just introduced a newbie love kinda thing with guides etc in game who will buff you and you also have the ability to trade in your weapons and armor towards newer stuff, instead of waiting to sell it.

So if you kill a guard of one city, should all the guards of that city not like you?

Sorry at work talking and typing at the same time.

Senuven

Another side note on this. Anarchy has a GREAT concept, with poor execution. Using some of the things they did and making them better is not a bad thing. Here is something I liked alot about the game.

It supported role players. Some people do it, some dont, some are considered RP lite (sometimes in sometimes out of character)

Omni Tek hated the clans

Clans hated Omni Tek

Neither liked the neutrals much.

But from that you chose your path. With shadow lands, you got different factions for killing monsters, and your faction determined if you could use some weapons armor ad travel to certain areas. You COULD change your factions in game by using bought in game items and switching sides. The balance on that was that depending on your level, you had to spend X hours IN GAME time before you could switch back. Anyway, Back to work for me