Factions Testing Commencement

Feel free to continue, but that doesn't seem to make much sense. Do you realize I could use the same arguments you are using here to argue that support personnel in an army should not be paid?

Also, I could use those same arguments to argue that pvpers should not receive any rewards either:

"because that is what fighting personnel do...
because it is what loyal faction mates do...
because it is what needs to be done to reach the objective... (control of towns)
because my faction appreciates what I do and they let me know it...
because allegiance to a cause and a group is more important than points or goodies...."

What's the difference?

There is no difference but since I am not a pvper I didn't feel I could speak for them. Strictly from my perspective as a support person in factions, I don't feel we do it for the recognition or what we will be given.

I don't support, protect and go to bat for my guildies for what I can get out of it - I do it because that's what guild leaders do. But damn, it would be nice if those folks who do the support thing could get a little nod every now and then. Fighters or their support, each is equally important in fights, and that should be recognised. The way the fighters get all the nods in terms of points etc makes it seem that the support bods are considered second class, which they most certainly are not.

And, no, I don't play factions, nor do I PvP, but I do play support at times and we do hunt in Fel too. And I take the baby PvP'ers out in Fel ruleset champs, to get them started on the long learning road. I could give a list of reasons why I don't PvP but I'm not going to - I'm simply trying to show that I do have a reasonable understanding of PvP, not least because I'm married to a guy who does.

Agreed, it is nice to be noticed but I don't think you get the most loyal or dedicated when you "tempt" them into factions for what they can get out of it. You just get players that expect to get more and more ... and as always that is from my experience and my opinion.

True enough, if you're looking at things from the 'tempt em in' perspective. I wasn't. More that since there's an over haul going on anyway, it would be very nice if those who don't get equal status got bumped a bit! And since I don't play factions myself, I, personally, gain nothing from this.

Well, there is always the other alternative: scrap the ranks, leaving only the deserter and soldier ranks. Deserters can't use arties, soldiers can (or just remove the arties). Then leave a pure kill point system, to be used only for bragging rights and nothing else.

In this way pvpers keep their bragging rights, but support roles are not kept as second rate citizens.

We need solutions not bickering back in forth i want or i dont want is not helping. hear is my idea for the point system.
it could be done like this.
pvpers get kill points (2 points)
thieves get sigil stealing points (2 points)
support players get healing points (1 point)
Only way to get healing points is
1. being in your own base or an enemy base. anywhere else no points
2. healing a pvp in your faction who was attacked by a enemy faction. no points for healing someone who is not fighting.
3. you heal one pvp in your faction to get more points from that person you will have to heal 10 or more players to get more points off of that first pvper.
4. you only get 1 point per heal, or a point per every 4th person you heal.

whatever the score system is, keep it less than thousands of points.

it just look dumb running around with 1503423 points
or 2317 points for that matter

Transfer points to other chars is a nono.

And make a system that dont require points for crafters and thieves.
One thing for sure, you wont see my smith/tailor/imbuer do any pvp anytime soon. And please, without the title "deserter".

what would be funny (not reliable) would be a list of names who gave you the points,
as an extra feature for the lolz. Not that it matters in ganks, raids/defending though.

mission more important than points.

But thieves do (or at least they are involved in it), and trust me good equipment helps them as much as any pvper.

WOW... three really thoughtful posts in a row.. I would seriously love to get you guys in vent for a discussion sometime... Michelle, I already got you

Simple and clean....

Agreed on the bickering ... thanks for the scolding and I shall control my scorpio....

Very interesting possibilities ... personally, you know me, I don't need or want points for my thief but I do enjoy recognition now and then so I can support a reasonable "reward" system for thieves and this one has merit.

Healers, imo, healers are as valuable as pvpers and they do deserve to gain from their work. They put themselves on the line in the middle of the battle and heal others before themselves. I like the heal in bases to gain points, the other items about how many points, exactly how they should gain. I need to think about that.

Agreed, support players must not receive the title deserter just because they may not pvp/heal/steal or somehow fit into the new scoring system. That might be very interesting to separate a real deserter from a contributing craftsman.

Transfering points, at the moment, is the only way for you to honor a faction member. I would like to see the ability to honor another deserving player preserved but make it really mean something. The what I have yet to think of...

The big numbers ... I thought it was terrible when my thief got to 400 points... *sigh* ... so I am in complete agreement. Tone down the numbers.

Interesting about the list... would solve a few general chat disputes about who killed who ... I know someone, a thief, that keeps a list of the people that have managed to kill him one on one as well as a pictorial accounting of the kills he has made. This list idea might be very well received.

Mission more important than points ....

How about the satisfaction and the right to gloat that your 4 players outsmarted a team of 9 players and achieved victory wether in a base, dungeon or in the overworld field? There's a LOT more "incentive" to being other than a stealth archer & getting a killshot wether players want to believe it or not.

If you're looking to reward & give players incentive for participating in factions apply it to a part of the system that is neglected & meaningless with the exception of warhorses... Sigil corruption & town ownership.

The point system isn't bad, but it has issues obviously. I don't think we need a score for all the things there are... like stealthing/healing... A healing score actually exists indirectly in a sense. If you don't heal yourself/others, they simply die, and their score goes down. Why should it be seperate?

Remove the ability to honor points to other players & you fix the issue with complaints of players joining but not participating & "supporting" their faction.

Scale point distribution/loss based on the odds/players you're fightning against. If you're out fightning against 2:1 odds you should be rewarded more points/score for killing against those odds, and lose less for losing against those odds. The same goes for fightning 1:2 odds but obviously backwards. I know it's been mentioned from a development member that they had that in mind, but It's always been a opinion I've agreed on.

Now let's say you're "fightning" 4:1 odds but you're "only a stealth archer" and "waiting" for the killshot. Take in consideration the amount of damage you applied to the player who died and when that damage was dealt and apply point distribution. If you didn't attack the player until they were at 20% health, then you shouldn't recieve points. If you attacked that player from "the start" but you only dealt 12% of the damage while another player or two dealt the other 88% damage than scale it accordingly. Then there's a reason to be more than just a killshot stealth archer...

What I understand, from the stated fact that transfer of points will not be available in this system is that you are able to obtain your own faction ranking through, healing and cross healing, scouting, actively observing, stealing, and damaging opponent oranges without relying on the benefaction of those making kill shots. Thus "earning" your own rewards based on an arbitrary score that is compiled and tracked through a scoring system that tracks individual achievement and allows for more accountability for earning of individual rewards, in addition to whatever rewards any group might earn in the category of town control.

Okay, so lets put this shoe on the other foot and see if we can address something that concerns everyone.

If the above illustration is correct, how does that effect the system if we have say, several less scrupulous players on my shard and they have four accounts each. If from the time they go to work, until the time they get home they are "busy" earning points for damaging, healing, stealthing, etc through manipulation of the system by staging a battle between characters in opposing factions or what have you, where will they stand in ranking as opposed to say, someone who logs in after work every day, and does not find actual pvp in the towns or bases, or how would they fare in point accumulation say to someone who sits next to sigils they stole and guarded in stealth waiting for their friends to come home?

What would happen if they moved their point generation machine to my faction?

Would they bump me down a few notches in rank. It was said no points are accumulated within a house. How bout a castle courtyard?

It was also said that anyone killing a member of their own faction would take a hit in rank and on score. Would that hit be sufficient enough to deter us from tracking down and putting an end to any point generation bots we might be able to locate?

Castle Courtyards, I assume you mean the player owned castles, count as part of the house. So it should be that they can not gain there.

The other question have not really been answered, except maybe they said that fighting a friend all day and night should not yield as much of a reward as just going out and fighting normally. I also think they need to modify the assisting code, Currently you can not assist enemy faction members if you are flagged, but when you are not you can, this should not be. You should not be able to assist an enemy faction at all. (pretty sure its just buggy, but you get the point...fix it.)

I was always under the impression that this coding existed because two or more factions might want to have a temporary informal "alliance" or "truce" for the purpose of defeating another faction.

I have fond memories from when I first got started in factions of a certain enemy faction character who had a dead pet (not a war horse) he had been dragging around with him for about a week. This was back at the time when you couldn't get a pet rez from a NPC or from nonfaction characters, regardless of which facet you were in. I finally took pity on him and rezzed his pet in Luna with my faction tamer. I just couldn't stand the sight of that ghostly pet any longer! He was also the guy that killed me the first time in factions, so I guess he had some special status as far as I was concerned. LOL

Don't get me wrong, The original ideas are not completely wasted, but "today" things are not that simplistic. Faction a is fighting Faction b Faction A has x friends In Faction b so x Friends help Faction A to defeat Faction b. This is the current state of things, Loyalty has been an issue for awhile now. I know its not always like this, and Sometimes you would like to help the opposing faction to fight faction D, but the problem is still there for faction b to help faction a beat faction b.

Also, If I am not mistaken, the ability to help the opposing faction members is not completely intended but was a "flaw" that was.....Fitting? We could say.

No disagreement, but...The issue with pvp mostly is the Attitude of the players. A good deal of them have a horrible attitude. Do you know how many times they have adjusted the server side setting for speed? and still people cry speed. I sometimes wonder if people can even speed (hard for me to tell lately being as how I ping at 100, everyone is faster than me. generally). How would you have them handle the .mul files? I really do not see a way for them to do this, honestly....They can try and try but people are pretty good about getting around most anything.

your second point....is somewhat....I dunno, not comprehensible. Non-Faction members can attack faction members but faction members can not attack non-faction members? This would not make any sense. And then the other option is to separate them completely not allowing either to attack either. This creates more of a void in our pvp situations than we have already, so most likely would not work either. Lots of arguments against how the faction gear is not all that great, but You make a good point about it being easily replaceable, but then I do not know many people who are losing their items, Faction or other wise (Do you play on siege? cause then....We are just barking up the wrong trees no matter how you look at it, prodo and siege can not be held to the same accord).

I do not want to give people ideas on how to get around your hash table suggestion, but seeing as how you have enough knowledge to present an idea I assume you also know it is not perfect and would not take to much time once presented for someone to actually get around it. That of course is assuming anyone would take the time, most of the people who made the cheats of old do not even play anymore.

I agree with you on the items being easily replaceable, and I agree those accidents do happen. I do not agree to them being superior in a way that skews the faction/non-faction system. I also feel that new players would benefit from these "easily" obtainable items, so long as they found a guild willing to help them. In the current system (granted with the changes the method of doing this will change, possibly for the worse in regards to new players trying to get into pvp) if a newer player, or even an older player with less access to funds, wanted to pvp they could find a faction guild willing to help them, the guild could award them enough points to be able to use the faction items and then go out and get the silver. This gives them access to easy items, but it will in no way make them better than those who have the equipment and are not in factions.

You might want to read this June 19, 2009 FoF: http://www.uoherald.com/fof/?fofId=160. Interpret Draconi's response however you want, I guess. Mistake? Deliberate? Who knows.

is the factions shard down?

I know about his post, but he did not code it to be this way. He just allowed it to continue. I did say this already, they did nothing about it because they thought it the same way draconi posted it. His response is exactly as it says, that does not mean I have to agree with him. Specially given the example that I did.

I know what you were suggesting, And we can both agree its not perfect, and agree that the majority of the cheaters would not be able to get around it, it is the distro that becomes the problem.

As for the EA blizzard thing.....blizzard still has cheats, quite a bit in fact. In some ways I feel the lawsuit was wrong, but I also am of the opinion of "what ever works" so, if it takes that to fix our cheating problem then so be it.

the factions server has been gone for a few days now....

As a person whose only real exposure to factions is pkers armed to the teeth with godly faction artifacts, I'd like to make the following suggestion.
If you're killed in faction warfare, 20 mins stat loss, or whatever those who play factions feel is fair.
If you're killed by nonfaction players, 2 hours stat loss, or hell, 24 hours stat loss. Provide some incentive to keep factions preying on the nonfaction players.
This isn't a "I wanna play in fel too" trammie attitude. Just a call to stop the "over-arming" of players against the general populace.
Just a thought, flaming to follow.
Jobi (Catskills)

Well I got to test for two days before the shard vanished, its not really the direction I hoped it'd be going in, but then my idea of factions would involve pushing more toward arena type fights that I don't think would necessarily work in UO.

Such as 3 bases/castles/forts connected to a large open field that could also have traps and terretories to be captured to indicate progression. Bases could be captured but only temporarily. Faction gear and horses would be given to everyone but you would be required to participate for a set amount of time in the arena each week to continue to use it. This probably wouldn't work too well in UO as it would take players away from other areas but, well the idea is more based on how spread out the towns are, right now if Minax owns Minoc and I go to Minoc on a TB character so what? It means nothing that they own it.

Other than that I agree with most of the early posts, the bases look lived in, not fought in, not sure who is going to sit there with Imbuing materials on them in a faction base. The points system isn't really what I'd like - though again, what I'd like probably isn't possible in UO - a non exploitable way to track legitimate (non res kill) kills/deaths that isn't tied to your items. I see factions as sort of armies if you join an army they should equip you to fight.

The base with the elevators makes it really easy for someone to run away from you, could it be made so you can fall on to them when they're going down? It's only one floor falling off the Demon Temple is higher. The layout is confusing. Personally I'd prefer bases to have a mix of narrow and open parts to allow both open field and choke point fighting in a straight forward line to the sig room.

Its funny - if they just added a big ass open field with 3 bases nearby to res and bank at, it would likely be the place I spent the majority of my time. Im sure an underpaid writer could find a way to lore it up - then just provide some repeatable incentive to fight for.

Question: I don't play WoW but from what I Heard there are no exploits in that game.

Is this true? if so, why cant EA implement something similar?

Even more free games have better anti cheat mechanisms than UO does. Figure that one out.

I know this is off topic, but it goes to the heart of PvP, which in turn affects factions:

yesterday i was standing at yew gate when a red attacks me. We fight for about 5 minutes, a couple of times i had to run into a house, because he was better than i was, when he finally dies cause a couple of other blues ganked in on him.


He gets ressed and proceeds to attack me again, don't forget that I never flagged him, but this time I was in flee of battle. Can anyone explain how this happens?

I have no reflect phys on my suit yet I was in flee. It is inconsistencies like this in PvP that keep people from participating.

So as much as we appreciate the effort being put into revamping factions, we would sure love some effort put into "bugs" like I just mentioned. When they are fixed, and also hoping tht the exploits are fixed, it will be at that point that you see more people participating in PvP activities, factions and all.

Which in turn would increase the subscription rate for UO, bringing back players who gave up on PvP.

It is not true, cheating is not as rampant, but then Blizzard pays its gms...I think EA is just holding a bunch of people hostage and forcing them to click a button for canned responses. Blizzards games all have cheats, they do however have better anti-cheating. Of course they are newer games and have "better" available tech, but I don't wish to get into the hows and whys but rather Blizzard has cheating and exploits, every game will so long as people want to cheat/exploit it will happen.

I can not be sure why you were in flee, but I would assume it was not a bug but rather a set of events that are "supposed" to cause it. Would most likely have to ask a Dev, hell I am not even personally sure of all the reasons you go into a flagged state. Perhaps the person you were hiding from did not physically attack you for a period of 5 minute while you attacked him? i.e casting or clicking on the person, if he did neither of these but you did then he would un-flag and you would flag. Just a thought.

after reading most of these post im not surprised they took down the faction server. i wouldnt be surprised if they said **** there factions all together. yall are a bunch of ****ing cry babies. you guys should be giving suggestions in a positive form to help the devs out in return helps us out. all i see are the SAME ****ing posts repeating over and over about the same stupid ****ing ****. THE BASE IS TO BIG! Hey STFU.. the poeple who REALLY pvp/faction dont give two ****s about the base. we would have been just as happy if they left the guards out of mag/brit. well they shouldnt be in any town or fel anyways.

.....breath.

They took the shard down to fix the points....

the people who REALLY do factions care about the bases because the base defense is currently the main aspect of factions....lets consider the faction system as it is instead of "just pvp" its a bit more than pvp, while sure when im out and about just pvping the bases don't matter but when I am defending, the current bases are going to be difficult to do so (although unlike the others I somewhat like the challenge presented, might be a bit to much though but not enough testing to be sure )

Over all though, I agree with you. People should be giving positive responses, even if it is "make the bases smaller" instead of saying "who ever designed this sucks" or....like some others have done, make suggestions on how to make defending these bases more interactive, such as the ability to create "gates" that you need lockpicking to get through, and only be able to place them in x number of entrances, but not all of them.

For me the most fun fights were those where you had a good stand off, I don't know if its possible, but I think there needs to be more incentive to fight for your faction and not just for yourself. Pre AOS faction fights on TC you would end up teaming up with people just because they were in the same faction that doesn't seem to happen anymore. You would fight along side faction guards instead of just dumping them at a location to be killed off when someone else has time, and faction weapons automatically poisoned. (not saying that should be brought back just that it happened...)

Another thing I liked was when they once had a TC with fel rule set (think it was just after AOS) and people set up houses like fortresses to fight each other from.

Ideally I'd like something that was a combination of both of those, but with towns its too far spread out for the number of players per shard, hence the arena comment, I don't know what arena PvP is in other games though so that might be a bad reference.

It just seemed more like if you turned up on your own then you could still participate where as now you just get ganked by all sides including your own.

I wish you were correct but this timeline is 100% for sure:

Red attacks me, we fight for about 5 minutes. Red finally get ganked by other blues and dies.

I am looting his body when another red resses him. He gets his leftover items and immediately cast a spell on me to attack me. it was from this point on that I was in flee.

I usually have a good handle of what the flagging system is, but I've seen this happen to me a lot. I would say that at least 3 times a day I end up in flee when I am not the aggressor.

I agree with you on the best parts of what faction fighting was or should be.

I also agree about getting ganked by other factions + your faction, hence why I think we need to come up with a way to prevent same side fighting, not remove it but ya know incentive not to do it.

Are we sure there is no chance looting a live body may make you the aggressor? I do not really have a house around any major pvp area's, they are all round and about in various places, so I can not test it much, but it is a thought.

I don't think there is an issue with flagging for looting a red corpse but who knows.

I mainly pvp at places like yew gate and have looted my fair share of red corpses.

But the one thing I would say is that if for some reason looting the red made me gray, i would have probably been ganked by everyone ;-)

Not "gray" but flagged. Just offering possible answers in the wake of a Developer reading this and saying "oh this happens because" or "oh that sounds like a bug we will look into it".

There is so many words being posted. Plus the developer comments. It is a full time job to read it all. I missed this from the first page:

I hope enough support has been provided thus far.

Forum Topic
Faction Testing Commencement - 389 Replies
Faction Stat Loss - 164 Replies
New Scoring System - Intentions and Details - 41 Replies
Hey Mr. Dev, While you are at the Factions Fix: - 102 Replies
Lets Put an End to This - Thieves Are Not Important - 75 Replies
About new FACTION setup! - 112 Replies

Those 6 topics alone are made up of 883 replies. And it was only on Test Center for about 1 day. There hasn't been this much discussion about a change to UO in a long time.

Who cares? I'll have five or ten multiboxed accounts all beating on each other and healing themselves 24/7 using scripts. Heck maybe I'll just have them all stealth circles around each other in my house.

Well *I* won't, but I guarantee someone will.

I think you might be taking my comment out of context. I was explaining how the fact that we don't put caps on the number of people who can join a faction isn't going to unbalance factions. In any team, organization, army, whatever, you have 20% of the people doing 80% of the work. It's an old cliche and it is old because it is true. My point is that if the 20% who do 80% of the work stay reasonably distributed among the factions then the 80% that only do 20% of the work can do whatever they want and the system will still balance. I have no interest in labelling individual people. Perhaps "crappy" was a poor choice of words, perhaps I should have said "people who don't really help the cause in any measurable way."

I think the new scoring system will actually give some overdue credit to your members who help with healing and stealthing. We obviously don't devalue these services to the faction because we are now giving them points for it.

Anyway, I hear those people who say they want to get together on the test shard and show me specific problems with the keeps. I will be glad to get together with you in a few weeks and you can show me. As I said in the beginning I am not able to spend much time on this, I am currently working on pub 66 stuff and I have deadlines for that. Once I get my pub 66 stuff done I can get involved with factions again. That's how it has been since last November when we started this project.

Until then, Shade out.

The problem is definitions. "people who don't really help the cause in any measurable way". Some say thieves don't help in a measurable way, some say scouts, etc., you get the idea. What is to be measured and how much to be good? Crappy is slang meaning a lack of quality. What is quality? To me it is desire and dedication. Maybe they do only 20% of the work but they are 200% there when they do it. *shrugs* The written word can be as deadly as a greater dragon sometimes.

So most of us that heal and steal and scout don't do it for the points. The abusers of the faciton system, imo, are the ones with 10 kazillion points. I appreciate your wanting to acknowledge the "quiet" contributors but rather than points, a few fixes would be more appreciated.

Understandable and thank you for being willing to talk to us. Please insist that you have a nice cross section of faction players.

Ok someone enlighten me... I am old... "shade out"? Sounds a little like he just told me to lighten up or go away or something... ;P

Sarcasm again tink?

I am not sure but it would seem that adding healing in the point system would be less geared towards helping fight the exploiters, and more just to reward those who do it. Not that I know, but still would seem like it to me. *shrugs*

No sarcasm at all... I truly would like to know what "Shade out" means and yes, I have the same concern about points for healers and stealthers since, at this moment, there seems to bee a lot of ways to exploit it.

HAH! I found a definition ... Shade Out ... to leave party or function when no one is paying attention and without saying goodbye (Urban Dictionary)....see I told you it was because I am old...Maybe I just need to keep various assorted dictionaries handy to decipher what is meant...

I had not even thought about that definition when he said it. Hmm see now it could mean what you just posted, or it could be what I was thinking.

Like his call tag is "shade" and he was saying he is "out" Sort of like how Mike is known as Phoenix, be the same as him saying "Phoenix out". But yours could be correct also, now I am wondering which one he meant.

Ut Oh! Remember the last time we didn't know what the word in slang meant Tinkz !

These things are part of the long-term plan. These plans are still in the design phase. As such, I'm interested in getting some feedback.

Here's a nebulous overview of where we'd like to go with town control:

Basically, we'd like to change the way it works such that each of the 8 controllable towns would come up for grabs in a continuously rotating schedule of approximately three hours. The schedule would work in such a way that the window to take a town shift by a few minutes each day, and from the perspective of someone who plays at the same time every day then each day a different town is up for grabs.

So, instead of being a constantly ongoing battle open for potentially all towns, the game instead would be a series of concentrated battles for single town at a time. At any given time, all online players would be able to tell what town's capture window is open. The idea is to capture that town's sigil, hold it for a short time to corrupt it, then successfully return it to the town. Failure of any faction to do so means the town goes uncontrolled until it comes up for capture again the next day.

I'd like to see responses discussing the pros and cons of a system such as this. This feedback is important because it will help shape a possible future Factions change. Again, this is something we are considering for future development, not something we have solid plans right now to implement and publish.