Faction - don't make it tedious

[Maroger]

<div>Now that faction is returning to the game (ugh) - don't make it so tedious that people get bored and quit. Remember how tedious faction was in Velious and in WoW -- you wasted litterally hundreds of hours to get faction -- that was not fun it was a timesink.</div><div> </div><div>I really don't like the sound of faction coming back as I remember all the timesinks that were faction in EQ1 and WoW. Do learn from their mistakes and if you can't make it fun instead of a timesink then don't put faction in the game.</div>

[Happyfunba]

<div>The tedium associated with Velious and Kunark (not to mention the Froglocks of Guk) is that you lost exorbinate amounts of faction for a negative hit but recieved in many cases only 1 point to the positive for "good" kills. The caps between the different cons were ridiculous in that regard. Plus, most quests in EQlive did not offer too much in the way of positive faction, not in terms of large positive numbers so it was hard to effect your faction without enduring hours upon hours of repetitive killing.</div><div> </div><div>EQ2 seems to have the right idea. Of all the newbie quests adding faction, they are offering significant number changes for completion. And EQ2 as a whole doesn't have an absorbinate amount of faction points between the different con stages. Even in DoF where you have to earn your way into the different courts thru faction, it's not nearly as tedious a process as what EQlive presented to us.</div><div> </div><div>Definitely understand where you're coming from though. Plowing thru giants for days on end to build Thurgadin and Dragon faction made me want to lose my mind. But I don't see EQ2 heading in that same marathon-like direction.</div>

[Sritt]

<div>At least when you take faction hits now if there's an opposing faction you get an equal raise in them. Also the new faction-awarding quests remove some of the tedium out of building faction in the city factions that award titles and gear to high faction. Before you really only had writs as an option, now theres quests that relate to your city and the faction's role within it, rather than just random kill tasks out in some zone. Also many of the new quests offer more faction award than you get per writ (a flat 150 faction no matter what level, only the status fluctuates). On live at level 57 I don't have a single faction over 1k yet for the starter city factions (I'm max ally with the Court of Truth and many out-of-city factions though). On test with no character over level 16 I've got 1-3 city factions in the 1k to 1.5k range.</div><div> </div><div>Another reason for teh factions for the cities playing more of a role is its hinted that these will play a role in betrayal in the future when they remove the level cap (the current quest was designed around the archetype class system and is going away). Who knows they might even decide to let you stay as an 'opposing' class at that point since its you're actions over time that show your nature, not the class you chose or how you answer a few questions and earn a hunter of title.</div>

[Qandor]

<div>It's really a question of degree. Make it too easy to raise faction and the rewards for doing so will, by necessity, have to be rather poor. I really don't mind how difficult faction raising might be provided that the rewards warrant the effort. It is optional after all so anyone uncomfortable with the degree of difficulty need not do them.</div><div> </div><div>Majdul seemed about right. Wasn't a big chore to raise a faction and the rewards were not really that significant. Raising all three compounded the task and raised the level of difficulty as it were and opened up the Ring of Fate quest. The ring seemed like reasonable compensation for having to do 3 factions as well as the ring quest itself. As a whole the quest series was interesting and I think they did a good job on average.</div><div> </div><div>Qeynos/Freeport factions might be a different matter. They aren't "expansion" based. They relate to the core game itself. Raising such factions should be more of a long term goal and therefore they should remain difficult to raise with rewards scaling to the effort involved along the way.</div><div> </div><div> </div>

[Atrix Wolfe]

<div></div><div>Freeport militia faction after helping a few people get their pally epic.  I had dreams of handing bottles over in erudin for months.  No wait, that was real life.  Stupid guards.  I don't even think I ever fixed it completely, I just gave up and stopped going to FP.  Whatever it was, it was most definitely not fun in the short run, and not fun in the long run either. </div><p>Message Edited by Atrix Wolfe on <span class="date_text">01-27-2006</span><span class="time_text">11:49 PM</span></p>

[ZadooEQ]

Mmmm. Faction. Getting my little halfling warrior to the point where she could walk the halls of Skyshrine was one of my happiest memories of EQ. And I was also very proud to be KOS to the Freeport Militia. For the roleplayers, especially, faction can be nearly as precious as loot. Thank-you!<div></div>

[Cuz]

<div><blockquote><hr>Qandor wrote:<div> </div><div>Majdul seemed about right. Wasn't a big chore to raise a faction and the rewards were not really that significant.</div><hr></blockquote>Not for crafters. The rewards are almost needed, and it's a huge coin sink. If they do something like that again I really hope they find away to include crafting as a viable way to move up.</div>

[TaleraRis]

<span><blockquote><hr>Happyfunball wrote:<div>The tedium associated with Velious and Kunark (not to mention the Froglocks of Guk) is that you lost exorbinate amounts of faction for a negative hit but recieved in many cases only 1 point to the positive for "good" kills. The caps between the different cons were ridiculous in that regard. Plus, most quests in EQlive did not offer too much in the way of positive faction, not in terms of large positive numbers so it was hard to effect your faction without enduring hours upon hours of repetitive killing.</div><div> </div><hr></blockquote>Or stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of muffins >.<Greedy dorf</span><div></div>

[Jgok]

<div></div>Personally, I did not find the factions in Velious to be tedious... I quite enjoyed working them up, killing in Kael, running the tradeskill and turn-in quests, etc. I had a sense of perseverance and accomplishment in that I worked my way to getting the Dwarfs and Dragons to like me, instead of buying 300 coins from someone and turning them in to an NPC.

[TaleraRis]

I too loved working on the Dwarf and Dragon factions in Velious. There were items like the helmets, toes and heads you could get in your usual hunting, plus that usual hunting also gave you faction hits in the first place. So I got good xp, was able to do some fun and interesting quests, and got items that helped me once my faction was high enough to boost the dragon's opinion of me.It was by far my favorite expansion.<div></div>

[Aedos]

Factions are great. They are definetly moving in the right direction <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><div></div>

[Maroger]

<div></div><blockquote><hr>TaleraRis wrote:I too loved working on the Dwarf and Dragon factions in Velious. There were items like the helmets, toes and heads you could get in your usual hunting, plus that usual hunting also gave you faction hits in the first place. So I got good xp, was able to do some fun and interesting quests, and got items that helped me once my faction was high enough to boost the dragon's opinion of me.It was by far my favorite expansion.<div></div><hr></blockquote>Everything is fun the first couple of times - but about time 10+ it becomes a grind and the fun is leeched out of it unless you are masochist.

[TaleraRis]

<span><blockquote><hr>Maroger wrote:<div></div><blockquote><hr>TaleraRis wrote:I too loved working on the Dwarf and Dragon factions in Velious. There were items like the helmets, toes and heads you could get in your usual hunting, plus that usual hunting also gave you faction hits in the first place. So I got good xp, was able to do some fun and interesting quests, and got items that helped me once my faction was high enough to boost the dragon's opinion of me.It was by far my favorite expansion.<div></div><hr></blockquote>Everything is fun the first couple of times - but about time 10+ it becomes a grind and the fun is leeched out of it unless you are masochist.<hr></blockquote>I got max faction with the dwarves on about 6 different characters I think it was, dubious CoV with 3 of those I think and 2 went to ally CoV. I had fun the whole time.</span><div></div>

[Aeroslin]

I'm liking the factions despite the tedium of doing the quests or attaining the kills.Just think of all the people that managed to get their Coldain Prayer Shawl fully completed in eq1.  Helluva item for the work you put in, great reward.<div></div>

[Escevan]

<div></div><div>Let them add some tedium for goodness sakes for the people who like this kind of thing.  If you dont want to do the tedious work, the answer is very simple,  dont do it... </div><div> </div><div>Give us something that takes days and weeks of tedious work... make it so its like +1 power +1 health to an equivalent item that someone who refuses to put the time in has and we will be happy. </div><div> </div><div>Does it really upset you all that much?  I believe you really can please hard-core (or "no-lifers" if you prefer) and the casuals in the same game.  As the old saying goes... You can't please all of the people all of the time, but you can please some of the people some of the time.</div><div> </div><div>And if they really are so casual... why would they even care that we have ever so slightly better stuff than them? They're casual right? Then they should be what they claim to be and be <em>casual </em>about it and chill with the <em>jealousy</em>.</div><p>Message Edited by Escevante on <span class="date_text">01-30-2006</span><span class="time_text">12:23 PM</span></p>

[Maroger]

<div></div><blockquote><hr>Escevante wrote:<div></div><div>Let them add some tedium for goodness sakes for the people who like this kind of thing.  If you dont want to do the tedious work, the answer is very simple,  dont do it... </div><div> </div><div>Give us something that takes days and weeks of tedious work... make it so its like +1 power +1 health to an equivalent item that someone who refuses to put the time in has and we will be happy. </div><div> </div><div>Does it really upset you all that much?  I believe you really can please hard-core (or "no-lifers" if you prefer) and the casuals in the same game.  As the old saying goes... You can't please all of the people all of the time, but you can please some of the people some of the time.</div><div> </div><div>And if they really are so casual... why would they even care that we have ever so slightly better stuff than them? They're casual right? Then they should be what they claim to be and be <em>casual </em>about it and chill with the <em>jealousy</em>.</div><p>Message Edited by Escevante on <span class="date_text">01-30-2006</span><span class="time_text">12:23 PM</span></p><hr></blockquote><p>I have news for you - this is a game - games are supposed to be fun not boring. If enough people are not having fun and are bored out of their mind then subscriptions vanish and ultimately so does the game.</p><p>This is not a casual vs hardcore issues -- it is about making the game fun for the majority of players so they will keep subscribing to the game. It is not about designing exclusively for a minority -- you know if you like boredom and grinding and tedium -- then just get out there and grind away on the same mob for several days ad nauseum -- they should give you the sense of superiority that you seem to desire.</p><p> </p>

[MabortKilmodar]

I think the concern is a real concern. At least for me and others like the OP and all of us that seem to agree with him.To address the people that liked the so called "tedious" (I'd prefer just to call it time consuming) faction raising style from EQlive and WoW: Is it the case that it was the sense of accomplishment through the actions involved or the substantial rewards that gave you that sense of accomplishment? More to the point, if it was the case that you had nothing to show for it other than a personal knowledge of accomplishment, then would it still be worth it to you? Being able to walk through a zone without getting nailed by normally agro mobs is great, but other than personal satisfaction, what benefits are gained? Items? Abilities? Titles? Faster passage? Access to otherwise unreachable zones? Bragging rights?Yes, I am coming to a point, which I hope is obvious. There needs to be, as Qandor pointed out, a risk/time-investment versus reward consideration. While I never experienced the faction gaining in EQlive, I would hope that the rewards for gaining this faction were extremely good – as it sounds like it took weeks if not months of grinding these mobs to gain faction so that you could get these rewards. If faction of this sort is implemented, I hope that the rewards are great.But then again that is a matter of perspective. Some people might believe that the rewards are worth it – people A. Others might not think the rewards are good enough – people B. And still there are others who believe that “time sinks” like these are not fun in the first place and would never do them, regardless of rewards – people C.Now I put up these labels as generalizations, that I don’t think are necessarily true, but it helps to contextualize this:People A – are most likely going to like anything that designers throw at them. The more time consuming and separating the tasks may be, the better. It probably gives them a sense of accomplishment, or of elitism. This mentality most likely appeals to role players and hardcore gamers.People B – have a strong sense of time management and risk evaluation. I would classify myself in this category. You weigh time and risk versus the reward gained. In the terms of factions, why would I get this faction if it takes me many, many hours to do that I could be using to do something that is anywhere near as good as the reward that I get from doing the faction? My answer would be, I wouldn’t, and I would do the other thing. But, if it was the case that the faction granted me something enormously better than anything else I could get by other means, then I would do the faction. I would guess that most people fall into this category.People C – have a strong belief in fun being the primary aspect of all gaming, MMOs not being exempt. I do not think that People B would view the process of gaining faction as fun, but would do it regardless if it was the case that it was the only way to gain that valuable of a reward. People C on the other hand, would view that any extraordinarily non-fun task is right out and never going to be done. So this EQlive style faction is not going to be done by these people no matter what the reward.Now even between all of these generalized categories of people it is still a matter of perspective (or subjective) – the fun that is. While someone might identify with being in the A crowd in one instance, they also might be more of a C person in another context. Is it the case that we can all be pleased by an aspect of the game? Probably not; in fact, evidence points to no. But I think there can be at least a neutral, if not happy, compromise between all involved parties.Going back to this notion of balance between time investment versus reward, I think there is another thing that should be taken into account. It should not be the case that any reward given from this aspect of game play should be unbalancing. While things should be worthwhile, it should not undermine the rest of the content in the game. Undermining can be done in many ways, most notably in a way that it offers a reward that seems legitimate for the time invested, but the time invested is such that it only appeals to a minute portion of the population. Bring those categories back in, People A might say that this is a good thing, it helps separate the loyal and determined from the rest. However, what if it becomes the case that the rewards gained from such an investment are required to do some other content of the game. If this content is important enough, most of People B will probably “slave” through the faction gaining so they can get to it – probably taking many times longer to complete than People A who enjoy the task, but People C will just be out of luck, no? So, in essence, the game designers have singled out a section of players from a section of game content. It is a two sided street, meaning that People C did CHOOSE to not do the actions, but it is important for others to realize the game designers’ role in making this inaccessible – and it is inaccessible because the designers knew before hand that People C were not going to do this.Now this analysis could probably be done with any aspect of the game. However, in terms of raising faction for some ultimate goal in mind, I think that the design of the gains and rewards needs to be kept in high regard for balance and appeal. Endless slaying of mobs appeals to a very small portion of the population, whereas interesting and involved quests appeal to almost everyone. Perhaps you could work it both ways. Some exp mobs might effect faction, so doing exp would raise/lower faction as desired, and to do it maybe in a shorter amount of time (doesn’t even have to be shorter, just less monotonous) there could be a few faction raising quests, especially ones that involve killing mobs that raise your faction (a two for one!). Overall I think this would appeal to both sides of the coin. You can make the quests really difficult, so if you don’t have the group or level to do them you can slay mobs for faction.There are many ideas that come up. Most of all I think the concern of fun needs to be addressed before adding something like this to the buffet of EQ2. Fun is a distinctly subjective matter, but it can be generalized and you can roughly account for the plurality of conceptions of fun and plan/design accordingly. Hopefully the designers realize this and we get something we can all enjoy.

[Jgok]

<div></div><div></div><blockquote><hr>MabortKilmodar wrote:People A – are most likely going to like anything that designers throw at them. The more time consuming and separating the tasks may be, the better. It probably gives them a sense of accomplishment, or of elitism. This mentality most likely appeals to role players and hardcore gamers.<hr></blockquote><p>I guess I fit into this category (the roleplaying half, with a little bit of hardcore mixed in)... I don't know about ANYTHING the designers throw at me, but I like long quests that give me a sense of accomplishment... And they also have to make sense for me. As an example, I could have gone Giant faction in Velious (in fact, some were trying to get me to do that), but I played a Froglok Shaman (Mith Marr worshipper), and Giant faction would have made no sense at all for the character. I very much enjoyed killing Giants and completing the turn-in quests, as they were a game-world representation of the effort I was putting out to help the Coldain dwarves.</p><p>However, I also think that almost everyone (even the roleplayers) innately has a desire to weight the risk/effort vs. reward involved. I probably would have done Dwarf/Dragon faction even if there had been little reward, but I certainly wouldn't have put as much effort into it.</p><p>Message Edited by Jgok on <span class="date_text">01-30-2006</span><span class="time_text">08:08 PM</span></p>

[MabortKilmodar]

<div></div><p>Not disagreeing with you Jgok. That is why I said:</p><p>Now I put up these labels as generalizations, <font color="#ff0000">that I don’t think are necessarily true</font>, but it helps to contextualize this</p>

[Kuulei]

I went from ally dragon, to ally giants, to ally dragon again.. now THAT was time-consuming! <span>:smileyvery-happy:I am happy to see factions being added to quests for cities, what I would like to see is some faction added to DoF quests.  While doing the Amulet of Ro, I noticed as I moved from one faction of the quest to another to complete, I never got any + faction with the NPC's I was doing quests for <span>:smileysad:</span></span><div></div>

[Jgok]

<div></div><blockquote><hr>MabortKilmodar wrote:<div></div><p>Not disagreeing with you Jgok. That is why I said:</p><p>Now I put up these labels as generalizations, <font color="#ff0000">that I don’t think are necessarily true</font>, but it helps to contextualize this</p><hr></blockquote><p>Heh, don't get me wrong, not saying you were disagreeing <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>I was just interested in seeing how I fit into those generalizations, and looking at the people I know, you came up with three good categories to classify them by. Everyone I know fits primarily into one of those categories, with a few tinges from the others. Good guidelines of how to look at the psychology of MMO players <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Bhagpuss]

<span><blockquote><hr>Maroger wrote:<div>Now that faction is returning to the game (ugh) - don't make it so tedious that people get bored and quit. Remember how tedious faction was in Velious and in WoW -- you wasted litterally hundreds of hours to get faction -- that was not fun it was a timesink.</div><div> </div><div>I really don't like the sound of faction coming back as I remember all the timesinks that were faction in EQ1 and WoW. Do learn from their mistakes and if you can't make it fun instead of a timesink then don't put faction in the game.</div><hr></blockquote>This is all a matter of opinion, though isn't it? Personally I absolutely loathe "epic" style quests and anything that involves me camping anything for a drop for more than a few minutes, but I can do faction work for hour after hour after hour - I just love it.You mention</span><span> Velious faction in EQ1.</span><span> At the moment, having spent so long killing in Upper Skyshrine that I bottomed out my CoV faction, I am working it back up again so I can go hunt in Western Wastes and maybe NToV. I have similarly, on other characters, had my Chardok Faction at Ally, then done repeated King raids and had to build it right back up again - I count that as an opportunity for fun gameplay, not a timesink, so I very much welcome any increase in the importance and frequency of faction in any game I play.I agree, though, that people who don't enjoy it shouldn't have it imposed on them. I am sure it should be possible to please players from both points of view.</span><div></div>

[Jgok]

<div></div><blockquote><hr>Bhagpuss wrote:<span>I have similarly, on other characters, had my Chardok Faction at Ally, then done repeated King raids and had to build it right back up again</span><hr></blockquote>Hehe... our main guild Monk had ally Chardok faction, and he always pulled for our King raids, then Fd'ed during the fight, so he wouldn't lose faction <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Aegori]

<div></div><p>I'll reflect my experiences with WoW, simply because they actually have a pretty meaningful faction system. I didnt mind the hundered hours of grinding to raise certain factions simply because the reward was worth it (epic quality gear/recipes). If i'm simply getting housing rights, optional titles and access to an instance or two... this isnt worth it to me. As long as they make the rewards worthwhile, making faction a bit tedious isnt a bad thing. It gives people something to work towards that really is worthwhile.</p><p>-Aeg</p>