Content feed
Twitter
What if I told you an MMO game exists that takes factional warfare to a new level? Not only does it have two factions battling each other and struggling to maintain control, but a whopping total of six playable factions. Each of which having it’s own allies, enemies, and archenemies forming a six-faction wheel. Sounds fantastic, right?
I’m going to ask you to put a bit of thought into how it would actually work. Let’s say you’re doing a mission for your personal faction who we will call Faction X. It only makes sense that if you complete a mission for Faction X, your own personal faction, that you will be rewarded with some kind of points that increase your reputation or level of faction within Faction X. At least that’s how we’ve seen most MMOG’s design faction mechanics in the past.
Now, imagine you are sent on a mission for Faction X yet again. This time, the Faction X leader has called upon you to go to your archenemy faction town, we will call it Squareville for all practical purposes of this write-up. Once in Squareville, the Faction X leader has asked that you kill 25 non-player characters of your archenemy faction. You’re probably already expecting to lose some kind of reputation or faction points with this archenemy faction along with gaining something with your personal faction once you begin to slaughter your archenemy. It makes sense, right?
Let’s try another example. This time let’s imagine that you’re just bored at the keyboard. You are standing in the Faction X hometown, which is your personal faction, your personal hometown, and you decide to murder one of Faction X’s NPC guards or even another Faction X player!
What do you think should happen?
Is it:
-
A. Faction X guards kill you instantly
B. You lose 5,000 reputation or faction points
C. You are marked a murderer and cannot enter your hometown for 2 hours
D. All of the above
E. None of the above
What did you choose? Personally, I would think it could have been any of A through D. But the truth is, the answer is E.
The penalty is so minor, it’s not worth mentioning. There is no real incentive to make players not want to kill their own kind. Isn’t this a faction-based game? Doesn’t make a lot of sense now does it?
Fallen Earth boasts six factions, a faction wheel, all of which means absolutely nothing except for the loot and abilities you can buy from the factions that smile upon you. And once they’re smiling, they’ll keep smiling. Even if you murder a whole slew of them. As long as your faction level is at least tier 2 or 3, killing the handful of players of the same faction that you will run across in PvP probably won’t make you lose any sleep. It’s pretty ridiculous when you stand back and think about it.
Whether this is a mechanic that the developers never exactly decided how to deal with or it’s currently working as intended is unknown. All we do know is it made it into the game’s launch and in my opinion, stinks.
Recently, I was in the conflict town of Hollister Point. The town was under Enforcer control. This is good because I play an Enforcer character. The down-side? I was murdered twice by a group of other Enforcer players, in the Enforcer controlled conflict town, while playing my Enforcer character.
You want to know what the real kick to the groin is? The players mentioned above basically received squat for penalty and were actually rewarded with Death Toll points instead!
I love free-for-all PvP and I’m not asking them to take that away at all. It’s great that you can kill anyone at anytime. There are certain instances where killing someone of the same faction could be justified. But if you’re rewarded and penalized in every other scenario, why wouldn’t you be penalized when killing your own kind? Especially Enforcers, who are so Judge Dredd-like with their law and order way of life. I would think the Enforcer officials would mark those individuals as murderers and hang ‘em high.
The current form of factional warfare in Fallen Earth leaves the factions themselves meaningless. It means nothing to be a Vista, only that you can purchase items from their faction merchant or learn some of the Vista abilities. The idea of being a Vista itself means nothing.
Where do you stand?
11 Replies
Wait so then couldn’t you like stack factions? Just get to tier 3 on one then move onto another and work your way around, seeing as the penalty for killing your own faction is laughable?
Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
If you are tier 3 enforcer and you want to change over to chota, you cannot go directly to chota. you have to work your way around the wheel which is known as “spinning the wheel”.
so if they did implement a larger penalty of some kind for killing your own faction, it wouldn’t cause a problem for those looking to change factions, because you cannot move from your current faction to it’s archenemy faction directly anyway.
if you are tier 3 with enforcers, your chota faction is double that amount in the red (estimated). spinning the wheel is a pretty big time investment if you’re going very deep into each faction.
but spinning the wheel is another game mechanic that is controversial amongst players. personally i no have problem with wheel spinning.
my problem is that i believe there should be a hefty penalty for killing players of your own faction. without it, it makes factions nothing more than retail stores you unlock by getting in good with them. the faction itself means nothing and bears no integrity.
Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
What I meant was could you remain in Tier 3, or 2, of a faction while spinning the wheel. Like boost up in one of your neighbors to gain access to their stores while still having access to the enforcers stores? Seeing as killing your own faction barely removes reputation.
Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
If you are a Lightbearer, you have access to the Enforcer and Vista faction merchants.
Say if you’re doing Lightbearer missions that give Lightbearer faction points as a reward, when you turn the mission in it will give you for example, XXX LB faction, XX Enforcer faction, XX Vista faction, and at the same time you will lose XXX Traveler, XX CHoTA, and XX Tech faction.
So say you’re a tier 3 with Lightbearer, if you haven’t done anything to decrease it, your Enforcer and Vista faction is probably tier 2 or around there just by doing the LB faction missions.
Again, if you wanted to go from say Enforcer to CHoTA, you can’t just start killing your own faction and become a CHoTA. You have to work your way around the wheel.
Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
..]one another must read source of tips on this issueis ,lagwar.com,..]
Posted on November 27th, 2009 at 8:13 am
I completely agree. The endgame PvP seems to be dominated by players who have spent a good deal of time “wheel spinning” in both S2 and S3 to get more Advancement Points so their toons have better statistics and more diverse high powered mutations. This puts players who want to play Fallen Earth in-character, (and it is a role-playing game, isn’t it?) and stick with one faction at a distinct PvP disadvantage.
Non-MMO game example: each army in Warhammer and Warhammer 40k has a distinct flavor. Not unlike factions. If you like horses and knights, you play the Bretonnians. If you like guerrilla warfare and shooting bows and arrows, you play the Wood Elves. Each army has separate advantages and disadvantages. Similar to how the Faction Wheel in Fallen Earth is (IMHO) supposed to work. However, the mechanics of faction grind and wheel spinning are equivalent to playing Warhammer and picking the best units, the best advantages of each army and making your own custom power-gaming army. In fallen earth, nothing stops a Traveller from having the Empathic mutation (a healing ability that their arch-enemies teach) because they simply grinded thousands of Mobs to change their faction alignment.
Opinion section: There are certain clans that started this trend of, probably the same clans that committed fratricide on the author, forcing other clans power-game to keep up. Clans and players who wanted the immersion of factional warfare are forced to not play the game the way they wanted to because of a few individuals who exploited the game for their own personal gratification. This does not sound like the freedom of gameplay that Icarus intended. If I am pigeon-holed into something to be competitive, if the only way to win at high-level PvP is to power-game by playing the wheel, the system is clearly broken.
Fixes:Not sure. I like the ideas presented here, but think that 5,000 points is not a big enough penalty. I think that one whole faction rank would be more appropriate for making a PvP fratricide. Of course under the current system, that would make wheel spinning even easier. I hope Icarus can find a good solution.
In-Game: Arianna Flint
Posted on December 2nd, 2009 at 11:01 am
Where to begin without just resorting to rolling my eyes and writing people off as haters or inexperienced with FE game mechanics. That never helps.
Firstly the assumption that the cost of same faction killing is negligible is not accurate. The cost was feeble in beta and early release but the devs have made that cost more significant and the process to undo or offset the losses more difficult. This especially applies to players who are seeking capstones requiring maxed faction. Losing 10k faction in a half hour of skirmishing takes hours upon hours of grinding to rectify and many players understandably do not want to do this. As you progress you will notice the faction cost much much more trust me.
“Running the wheel” has less to do with AP (there is some more but not that much) and has more to do with getting access to mutation lines. It takes a lot of grinding to max out or adjust faction that gets much more difficult as you raise your faction. As the devs stated early in beta, you can access the mutation lines but won’t be able to get the end game skills without months of grinding. This is working as intended IMO. I make a distinction between “spinning the wheel” to get mutation lines and some extra AP (not that difficult) and “running the wheel” which is systematically maxing out faction to get all end game abilities (very difficult). But that’s me. I am always up fer semantics.
Same faction killing seems to really offend RP’ers and those hung-up on lore, but you have to understand two things. 1. Playing an omni clan in FE requires more work, more organization, more situational awareness, and more commitment from the players. It’s really not as easy as the haters make it sound. Yes it has some advantages in the field but they are balanced by disadvantages. 2. In a post-apocalyptic setting the idea of a clan being loyal to it’s own above and beyond faction actually makes more sense than faction based loyalty. Usually in most MMO’s players and guilds are forced into the traditional bi-polar good and evil scenario. It is so refreshing to have a more dynamic system. If a player in a clan wants to take the hit to their faction to kill another player then so be it. Just because a clan has members of the same faction does not necessarily make them your ally. It seems to me a clan is made up of individuals who have a faction standing. If a clan wants to put in the work to organize and manage those individuals as a group that puts clan above faction then let them. If they don’t, that’s fine as well.
I want to feel bad for the author who had such a hard time with being killed in a PvP zone, but I just can’t. Just because some clans don’t fit easy predefined categories, doesn’t mean they are exploiting or the system is broken. There are costs but they can be offset (by the pleasure of killing another player), worked around (by selectively engaging based on faction or grinding it off), and ignored (capped players or players who just don’t care about the loss). This is the case with any mechanic. You can have grief debuffs up to yer collarbone and still kill lowbies all day. This is and should remain the players choice .
To emphasize same faction killing as some game breaking situation is a misrepresentation by either new players who don’t really have a lot experience with end game or are just butthurt about being killed and would more likely be more happy playing WoW on a PvE server.
Possible solutions for the “victim”:
1. Stay out of PvP zones.
2. If there is a clan active in a conflict town, you might want to ask permission. Paying a toll is not unheard of but will get you access to what you so desperately seek if the clan is willing to barter.
3. Run away / rage log then post on forums to make yourself feel better.
3. Form up and fight back (there’s a concept!) This too is not unheard of but be careful you might to feel the sting of same faction killing that is said to be negligible.
4. If 3. isn’t possible, join a strong clan and endeavor to make it possible.
Please note, the Warhammer model applied to a MMO was pure uncut fail. Their balancing never worked and that’s why they are down to like 3.1 servers almost all consisting of 13 year old macro happy Bright Wizards. Hope the SWToR guys figure out how to avoid that pitfall.
The idea of being competitive to compete seems fine to me. Restricting clans to one faction or denying access to skills based on one faction and it’s allies, seems more like the proverbial pigeon hole than allowing individuals and groups to access faction rewards thru effort and teamwork.
So please don’t think me dismissive but it’s complaining like this that makes me wonder why players think in the wasteland it should be Red Team vs. Blue team. RL is not like that and I sure hope that FE doesn’t go that way either.
Survival is about the strong eating the weak or on a more transcendent level working together to cancel out individual weaknesses with the reciprocal strength of the group.
Just as I am a fan of a classless player system, I feel FE’s strength is found in a faction system that augments the game play but does not define it.
Posted on December 2nd, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Gonazz,
Thanks for your comments, and I’ve been playing FE for almost a year now, so no I’m not new to the game. And writing a post expressing my opinion is no more complaining than your comments are. Are we not allowed to have a voice?
It comes down to you like it one way, others like it another way. Neither are right or wrong. It’s a matter of taste. To me, Fallen Earth is torn, because the design is so faction intensive, but the execution seems hesitant. Yet another reason I feel the game was released several months too soon, but what MMOG wasn’t?
In regards to your solution of staying out of PVP zones, my complaint wasn’t that I was killed in a PvP zone, it was that I was killed in an Enforcer controlled town, by Enforcers, and I’m an Enforcer. If that’s the case, why have factions at all? Why don’t the Enforcer NPCs kill other Enforcers? Because they’re the same faction. If a CHotA had killed me, great, that’s PvP and that’s to be expected from an enemy faction.
The whole system is very contradictory in my opinion. If you don’t find it that way, then that’s fantastic, for you
Posted on December 2nd, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Gonazz,
My comparison to Warhammer was to the tabletop game, not the MMO, which IMHO was an EPIC FAIL. Hence the disclaimer of a non-mmo example. What I’m looking for is not a Red v Blue, but a Red v Blue v Green v three other colors, i.e. the six faction war this game seems to want to be.
I think there is room for both play styles in FE: the faction based warfare, PvE and PvP, and the playstyle of “kill-em-all” PvP. I’ve heard rumors of the devs expanding the outlaw-stlye play, where if you kill enough players you are flagged for PvP in non-PvP zones, or could voluntarily flag yourself for PvP. I could get behind such a system.
-Arianna
Posted on December 3rd, 2009 at 11:44 am
Where they made the biggest mistake was allowing clans to have all factions. If clans could only be of a single faction, you could put massive penalties on killing members of the same factions.
However, with multi-faction clans… you have to allow people to be able to kill members of all factions without serious repercussion. Why? Because if your an Enforcer, and your Chota clan-mate is getting railed on by another Enforcer… well you can’t just let your clan mate die. That’s stupid and would piss people off.
Now I doubt they are going to rescind the idea of multi-faction clans, mostly because it would just piss a bunch of people off now that the game is released… and also because I’m not sure how you deal with members who spin the wheel and become attached to a different faction(well I know how I would deal with it, but most people probably think its a bit harsh).
Overall I’m not really sure how you “fix” it. It is stupid that you can kill faction members w/ out serious repercussions. It’s also dumb that when you defend yourself against attack from another faction member that you lose faction points.
Ultimately factions are merely a tool for grinding rep and driving the quests and story-line. It’s too bad really, it could have been much better. I think the game’s PvP has pretty much been relegated to clan warfare, factions be-damned.
Posted on December 3rd, 2009 at 11:29 pm
[...] *Survival Buggy Giveaway! *LifeNet listener poll results *Fallen Earth: (De)Meaning of Factions [click to read] *Lee Hammock took some questions from players in-game *Join us December 12th when Fallen Earth [...]
Posted on December 4th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Leave A Frickin' Comment