Get Yer Faction Here!

[seekeronos]

Up above is a poll about ways to improve faction awards (hopefully).

And hopefully, a developer might take notice~.

[Zyrith Skye]

I like the contraband idea... neato!

I don't think getting the faction should be easier, just more paths available to gain faction.

[Mimir[IS]]

I don’t do polls unless they are put up by one of the Dev or staff, that being said, the whole faction thing is getting way out of hand imo. First the 2nd Tzu mission was removed (gave 2K +RD faction), 2nd the gates were set to faction; mobs are spawning all over the place except where they are anchored? And insult on top of injury, the mob quantity has been decreased. So the net effect is faction is almost not worth bothering with.

These opinions are mine and do not represent those of management nor their sponsors.

[seekeronos]

I'd like to see more and more powerful mobs to gain RD faction, and the more frequently respawning hulk fields with space suits (as well as placing them OUTSIDE of the faction-gated zones).

I wouldn't mind killing some L50+ lawful factioned mobs, or having the chance to kill L50+ Chavez where my non-factioned toons can get to them....

[Vinzent Zeppelin[IS]]

If memory serves, the "contraband delivery" jobs are/were in consideration for future updates.

[Klyde]

I hated doing the faction grind, and have only done it on two of my toons with no plans on doing the others.

The worst part of the grind was the bonkers spawn of the Chavez in Rag, not to mention the slow respawn of all the higher level mobs.

Jobs that would give faction rewards would be awesome! Not so much of a reward that in a days time you get there, but a couple weeks of casual play maybe.

[Kyp [LDEV]]

Mimir and others: Please do vote, and get everyone you know to vote. This will be helpful because I plan to have a look at this (faction system game-wide) as one of the next two major things I'm doing.

[GenghisBob]

Getting RD faction should not be easy. Alternate methods would be nice, like multi-step missions, etc. It should be hard enough that everyone does not think it is worth doing. If absolutely everyone is will to do what is necessary to get into BBW, then why bother with having it factioned at all.

[Terrell [BT]]

My thoughts on Faction:

1. Faction should work as follows. -2000 or worse mob considers you an enemy to be attacked on sight (though some mobs may be smart enough not to engage in suicide attacks), -1999 to +1999 Neutral (leaves you alone so long as you leave them alone), +2000 (Mob is friendly, mob may cast buffs on your depending on mob's alturism, may even attack things that are attacking you if they like you enough). If you're considered an enemy you're also barred from landing on their base. In some cases gates are locked.

2. Faction should affect the price for manufacturing, analyzing, refining, and purchasing from vendors at all stations. Should also affect prices received on itms sold to vendors. All toons get this small adjustment. Toons with the Negotiate skill get this adjustment on top of the benefits of the Negotiate skill.

3. No player, regardless of class should start with faction lower than -6000 for any faction. -2000 is enough for mobs that should be hostile to you to attack on sight, -6000 should be enough to require some work to get your faction up.

4. RD: Everyone start at -5000 plus or minus 500 depening on the degree of hostility between the RD and your faction. -1 faction or lower denies BBW and Paramis gate access, +1999 or lower denies access to all stations in Smuggler's Run.

5. V'rix everyone starts neutral when they first appear, and as the storyline progresses towards war with them adjust everyone's faction accordingly. Say an adjustment of -3000 to -3500 to everyone, from the point where war is declared. (this means that when they appear it's possible to get in good with them, and when war stars, and your faction lowers some, you're better off than those who didn't do anything to get in good with them)

6. Make sure that when a player earns faction there isn't any server hiccup that resets their faction. Especially with some of the best RD missions being non-repeatable. My JE had got his RD to neutral just and done all the missions just to have it reset to -7K, My JT had hers up to around -4000 or so (having started at -9K) only to have it reset. Faction resets make people not want to do the work to adjust their faction, and are very frustrating. Especially if you can't get it reset back to where you worked it up to.

7. Job Terminals on all stations outside of Smuggler's Run system. All stations with job terminals offering at least 2 levels of jobs.

8. All Jobs give faction rewards with mission sponsor, regardless of whether it's Combat, Trade, or Exploration.

9. Aragoth Station, Net-7 Sol, all Highport Stations, and all stations in Beta Hydri should be free for all w/r/t job sponsorship. Any and all factions can have jobs there in roughly equal abundance.

10. Most other stations have jobs from 3 factions in abundance. They will also allow jobs sponsored from all factions but are less likely to have jobs from factions hostile to stations ownership. (Jenquai bases would be less likely to have Progen jobs, Progen bases less likely to have Jenquai jobs, and of course Collegia & Sabine jobs would be less common at the other's stations)

11. Sharim stations would have GETCo jobs in abundance comparable to Sharim jobs, Hyperia stations would also have GETCo jobs in abundance similiar to Hyperia jobs, given GETCo's influence in both factions. The station on Dahin Planet would mostly have Sha'ha'dem & GETCo jobs given the stations dual ownership.

12. All factions have some chance of appearing at all job terminals, but some factions more likely at some bases than others.

14. At least 1 base where outlaw factions like Anseria, RD, Chavez are more likely to appear. Charon Cloister one candidate for such a station.

15. All missions done as a favor to a faction give a positive faction reward with the faction offering the mission. Missions to learn skills, however, do not give faction rewards.

16. Implement all the things Seeker mentions in the last poll as means to work on faction so players can choose which means works best for them. Just don't make it too easy, give players choices on how to do it, but it should still take a while to get the faction up.

17. Some risk/reward missions say to smuggle something for the RD into EarthCorps space, if you succeed without detection you get +RD faction, if you're caught you get negative EarthCorps faction. (this can apply to other factions too, not intending to pick on the Enforcers)

Edit: These missions would require you to deliver to an RD NPC hiding somewhere in the sector, (you're given the sector the NPC is in and a general clue as to where, he's hiding within the sector you'll have to search) other places in the sector you're more likely to be caught. The gates would be safe zones, since you have to use the gate to get in or out. Things that makes it harder for mobs to see you, also make it harder for you to get caught. Such missions should reward Explore XP, and maybe a little trade. Perhaps there should be some devices that make scanning your cargo hold from a distance more difficult, but if the ship scanning you gets too close, you still get caught.

18. When grinding mobs for faction, the class of the player should not matter on the faction adjustment. Killing an EarthCorps ship should please their enemies and anger their friends (angering EC the most), but your race & class should not have an affect, on your faction adjustment.

[Mimir[IS]]

Mimir and others: Please do vote, and get everyone you know to vote. This will be helpful because I plan to have a look at this (faction system game-wide) as one of the next two major things I'm doing.

Voted.

There was no choice for just roll back the TZU mission. That mission (2nd part) was enough to get the bar off the pegged negative and make me think it was possible to get it to the +.

Without that added incentive, and decrease in mob quantity (chavez included) faction to me isn’t worth messing with.

Also a mob that gives +10 each for RD faction, should not be behind a factioned gate:) Well unless they are there just to top off the faction.

[Terrell [BT]]

Make sure that the rewards for grinding RD faction are worth the effort to get into the stations & sectors. Paramis Station & Queen Anne's Revenge should offer better selection of items in their vendors, and some NPCs should offer missions. Said missions should be profession-tailored, since warriors, explorers, and traders have different strengths and weaknesses. There should also be some really nice spots for hunting, or mining. The Controller raid being in BBW is a good thing.

A PW and a JE would not, and should not, be equally proficent in the same type of mission. Imagine a JE trying to do a mission that requires him to do plenty of combat against very tough mobs with good speed and scan, or a PW trying to do the Balm Run from live since they can't prospect, refine, build devices or wormhole. (balm runs required you to prospect particular ores, refine some, make devices, and travel from Paren Station to the Mondara Maelstrom in Tarsis and back)

[Orga1]

# EPIC, huge, Byakhee-ish 30-step missions with HUGE faction adjustments (+1000 to +2000 rep)

# Trade rare mined or looted items to RD or Chavez or other "outlaw" NPCs (existing example: space suits)

# Running contraband for outlaw factions (doing so will temporary flag you as an enemy to lawful factions that detect you with the contraband in your hold)....

Those there could only came form a mad man ROFLOL

the 1st Is torturous, the 2nd is questionable, Why not the contraband be booze and vodka Sense it already drops sorta?

the 3rd reminds me a lot of EvE Online, I'll hide if Concord gets resurrected in this game for stealing contraband!!!

I recall in Live the faction grinding wasn't as tough as it is currently in the emulator. Wither you kill your own faction or the Chavez for RD faction. The bigger the mob the more gain in faction you get say (100+) for cl 50 mob. The smaller the mob the less faction you get so (15-25+) for cl 10 mob. I believe there to be a "mathematical scale" for faction gaining between the lvls of mobs and made it simple back in LIVE. Your grinding but at least you know the score is higher for the bigger mobs then the smaller ones. It's just my suggest but even if that wasn't how exactly they setup faction gains in live you can least try that method or use it in a suggestion.

Edited November 21, 2010 by Orga2

[Terrell [BT]]

If memory serves, the "contraband delivery" jobs are/were in consideration for future updates.

There were also contraband delivery trade runs in Live. One of them was from Chernevog Station to Paren Station. They worked like a regular trade run, except that you bought the items from an RD NPC on Chernevog Station, and took it to Paren Station and sold it to the trade goods vendor there. In order to get the RD NPC to sell to you, you needed sufficent faction to use Smuggler's Run (+2000).

[jockpants]

My playing style is almost exclusively as a JE. I do have a PW for those few occasions I feel the need for a little mindless violence but those times are few and far between. For me personally given the class I like to play grinding faction purely through combat is just unnacceptable tbh. Strange as it may seem I'm quite happy to sit in a bunch of ore/gas fields all day sucking the life out of them while dodging the big nasties than sitting at a nav point blasting the s**t out of some poor unsuspecting bunch of pixels 30 or 40 CLs below me. The first is a challenge the second is sanity sapping tedium. I'll shoot stuff like that if I have to but it'll take me a year of Sundays to get any kind of faction change at all.

Having terminal jobs that give out faction for RD, etc. as they do now is very nice but they appear far too infrequently and are of such low faction value for that low frequency to be a viable alternative to the combat grind.

There does need to be alternative paths such as missions and prospect only hand-ins but those in and of themselves can and probably will be as tedious a grind and demoralising (in my view, not necessarily in the view of others) as the current combat only grind.

We can currently get XP from combat, missions, trade runs, mining and job terminals all of which are modified by class and/or skill level as appropriate. Each method is also balanced in such a way that to concentrate singuly on one way of xp gain hugely frustrating and takes a prohibitively long time.

I personally would like to see alternative paths available to those currently in game but I would also like to see them done in a complimentary way so that no single method of faction gain is ultimately superior over another method. Say some combat/prospecting/terminal grind to open up missions which then open up trade runs. If a player wants to just continue gaining faction combat/prospect grinding then bully for them but let that grind be a means to open up other ways of faction gain rather than a means unto itself as the grind currently is.

EDIT: I suppose I'd best put some figures in here. As we're talking specifically about RD faction grind for access to Smugglers Run here Starting faction is between -7000 and -9500 depending on race/class I believe. So, combat/prospect/job terminal grind up to -5000 to open up missions. Some moderate/difficult (still bad faction here) none repeatable missions plus some more grinding to get to -3000. At that stage trade runs open up that give faction only (and maybe cash) rewards, no Txp gain for these trade runs by the way. Still bad rep and slowly proving your worth. Smugglers Run gates open up at something between +500 and +2000 faction depending on race/class. after all, if - according to their story line - RD's REALLY hate terrans enough that they're starting rep is -9500 said terrans are going to have to be REALLY liked for the RD's to let them in to their home system

Edited December 5, 2010 by Jerioca

[Kyp [LDEV]]

Thought I'd give you all an update, I promised to look at faction a couple of months ago. Its about 2 more items down my list, I thought I'd let you know. I will be heavily analyzing and seeing what we can do to seriously improve faction so keep those votes coming.

[Whitelighter]

I'd like to see faction-choice have more of an impact on the game. Not really sure what all should be done with it, just more indepth. perhaps high faction with the 'old' factions (Progen, Sabine, Terran, Jenquai) opens up really nice new quests or something?

[GenghisBob]

I hope faction doesn't get too easy to get. It should be hard enough that 1/2 to 2/3rds of the people don't think it is worth the trouble. I don't think we ever want 100% of the players to have Smugglers Run access. What would be a "good" percentage? Not sure, but it should not be "worth the effort" to everyone.

[Himmelweiss]

A little bit "easier" would be fine. Wether with jobs, missions and what not.

But please do not turn E&B into a "casual, carebear, everything is so easy game".

[Hexersup[IS]]

Hmm, you know all how it was in live? That was pure grinding and often some weeks.

Here you can do this in mid-level range(about CL 20-25) in something like 3-4 days, 7 hours per day, to get access.

If less hours a bit more time.

So i would say it is already a fair amount of time to get access if wanted. And there is another way to get some RD faction(no, i don't give a hint ok, i just say items ).

And maybe if the 2 missions from Tzu come back in i would think it is fairly easy(for me too easy, just my opinion ).

greets

Hexergirl

[Terrell [BT]]

Hmm, you know all how it was in live? That was pure grinding and often some weeks.

Here you can do this in mid-level range(about CL 20-25) in something like 3-4 days, 7 hours per day, to get access.

If less hours a bit more time.

So i would say it is already a fair amount of time to get access if wanted. And there is another way to get some RD faction(no, i don't give a hint ok, i just say items ).

And maybe if the 2 missions from Tzu come back in i would think it is fairly easy(for me too easy, just my opinion ).

greets

Hexergirl

With the Tzu missions if it's too easy, could it be rectified by giving a smaller faction reward than the 2K it used to give, or perhaps making the mission more time consuming, or both?

[Kyp [LDEV]]

We could let Byakhee go to town with it? (That might make it worth 2k faction)

[Terrell [BT]]

We could let Byakhee go to town with it? (That might make it worth 2k faction)

Having plenty of steps works pretty well; however, since it needs to be doable by all 9 classes, the mobs need to be something that can be killed by a member of any class with the right tactics & enough patience. So whatever kills we need to make to complete the mission should take the nature of the mob, (aggressiveness, alturism, bravery, & scan range) vs the player into account. I don't mind taking 20 minutes to kill something with a JE/JT, so long as it's doable. I don't mind doing 20 step missions, that are challenging, so long as they're not overwhelming.

I don't think a JT is going to be able to kill a bunch of L55 Tengu because it's very hard to get 1 on 1 fights against them. They're pretty aggressive, have good scan range, skills, and are willing to work together. In Antares I had no problem killing one of the Voltoi bosses with my JT because none of the other voltoi were willing to jump into the fight on his behalf. She would have had a much tougher time trying to solo said boss, if the other voltoi were willing to help the boss.

[nimr0dbbow[IS]]

Mutter.