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Warhammer 40K, 2 factions can it work?
demarc01
Member UncommonPosts: 429
I posted this in responce to one of the 40K vid links.
"They could make a 2 faction system work if they had multiple races with-in each faction and the ability for races to individually change sides.
For Example, Have 2 factions with 3 "races" each. Each race would have its own starting area and low level PvE zone. Higher level PvE zones would be interlinked based on the races current alleigance (Destruction or Order)
PvP would be an RvR type affair (See DAoC - Frontiers) with races fighting out there for control of resources.
If one side was out numbering the others the Devs could (by using a races ruling NPC (King Warlord etc) Swap a races alignment to balance the sides. Ie you'd now have a 4 races Vs 2 races situation. This would be explained in game via announcements to each side ("The Eldar have shown thier true colours and fled to Destructions side" .... "The Loyal Eldar have returned to the fold" etc)
Races could switch sides even on balanced servers with two races switching sides at the same time. This would provide a unique dynamic within the game as former friends now became enemies etc.
Of course your "core" races would never switch (SM on order and CSM on destruction) but the other races could switch as required to maintain balance or just to switch up the sides.
Some players may get upset when thier side "switches" but its a historical fact that armys switch sides in War and you sux it up."
Do you think a system like this could work to balance a 2 faction PvP game?
Personally I think its a decent dynamic that would allow Devs to balance to games by swapping racial alliances and keep the game interesting as the could swap races on balanced servers also just to "shake things up".
Of course you'd need safeguards in play for example logging out in an "Order" PvE zone and having your race switch sides would mean that there would have to be a system in play to remove that character to your races home city or new faction city / base etc. Since they have these systems in place in older games (ie DAoC - logging out in a keep that flips) it would'ent be so hard.
Opinions?
Comments
One thing ... People are gonna argue class balance right away.
Class balance would be a case of Balance between the key stone races (ie those that wont change sides - SM and CSM) all other class balance would have to be between the four (or however many) more "flexible" races. IE no "Key class" would be assigned to a flexible race and not to a key stone race.
I'm sure other points will be made .. lets see how the topic develops though
[mod edit] please keep it on topic - Soliloquy
Three is a magic number,
Yes it is, it's a magic number.
Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity
You get three as a magic number.
The past and the present and the future.
Faith and Hope and Charity,
The heart and the brain and the body
Give you three as a magic number.
It takes three legs to make a tri-pod
Or to make a table stand.
It takes three wheels to make a ve-hicle
Called a tricycle.
Every triangle has three corners,
Every triangle has three sides,
No more, no less.
You don't have to guess.
When it's three you can see
It's a magic number.
A man and a woman had a little baby,
Yes, they did.
They had three in the family,
And that's a magic number.
3-6-9, 12-15-18, 21-24-27, 30.
3-6-9, 12-15-18, 21-24-27, 30.
Multiply backwards from three times ten:
Three time ten is (30), three times nine is (27),
Three times eight is (24), three times seven is (21),
Three times six is (18), three times five is (15),
Three times four is twelve,
And three times three is nine, and three times two is six,
And three times one is three of course.
Now take the pattern once more:
Three! . . .3-6-9
Twelve! . . .12-15-18
Twenty-one!. . .21-24-27. . .30
Now multiply from 10 backwards:
Three time ten is (30 - Keep going), three times nine is (27),
Three times eight is (24), three times seven is (21),
Three times six is (18), three times five is (15),
Three times four is twelve,
And three times three is nine, and three times two is six,
And three times one...
What is it?!
Three!
Yeah, That's a magic number.
A man and a woman had a little baby.
Yes, they did.
They had three in the family.
That's a magic number.
Can 2 factions work...
No
I believe a system like this which allows switching of sides to keep balance would work bette rthan a straight 2 static faction system. Though personally, if we were going to go this route, I would prefer sort fo a 2 main factions + 1 or 2 Mercenary type factions thing. A system which would allow you as an individual (rathe rthan being controled by dev decisions) to pick which side you're going to play with on a daily basis, or simply stay "neutral" until you have some reason to pick 1 over the other. Or in the guild situation, guild leaders & officers could control which side your guild is playing for whenever they like.
I think the system I mentioned would make things more interesting. You could have people acting as sort of double agents & spies selling information to the opposing factions, or some really great players acting as sellswords and whoring themselves out to whoever gives them the best offer to get some additional power on their side for a big battle, and all kinds of stuf fthat would keep things more interesting among the playerbase.
You could have your standard faction chats, but also have a seperate chat for the main factions to communicate with the mercenary factions in order to work together or try to win them over to their side.
Anyway, don't know much of the 40k lore myself, so not sure how this would fit into it at all, but i think it would be very interesting gameplay wise.
Will 2 factions work...
Yes
Glad you actually bothered to read the post and comment on it instead of just the the post header. Gratz on your poor reading skills, and from a blue poster, that speaks volumes? The mind just boggles.
Read the actual post and comment on it, you'd notice if you actually bothered to read that although there are two factions fighting each other at any one time (As generally is the case in any given conflict) the "sides" are somewhat fluid and change depending on the actions of the players. It would be based on a server responce so each severs "sides" would end up looking different depending on population spreads etc.
If your not gonna bother to actual read and comment on the post then keep your opnions to yourself, your basically trolling and thats SAD comming from a supposed Mod, with Mods posting like that its no wonder alot of the general posters feel they can get away with it too.
I dont think people who are playing the interchangeable races would enjoy being flip flopped around according to which side is strongest.
In some cases it would make spying easier as well.
Its a hard IP to divy up when it comes to factions in some cases,but if theyre going to do it anywhere close to "right" there has to be more than 2 IMO.
Will it be as fun as three factions?
No
--
"Any free people have the right to choose how it wants to be govern thats the essence of democracy. It's sad when America has chosen for the stability and consistency of a dictatorship and doing it democratically" -utnow
No one even know how big much of a factor massive pvp is in this game.
It might be more like wow/aion than daoc/warhammer where massive pvp's isn't even the focus of the game.
So it's all speculation at this point. I'm quite disappointed to be honest though. It's kind of developers way of saying their too lazy/cheap to make area/content for 3 faction.
The game looks promising, however I'm cautiously optimistic.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
I thought about that but then it presents more problems than solutions. Guilds or Merc companys joining the larger "side" does nothing to address the population imbalances. It would be nice if we could rely on the players to stimulate a challenging environment by picking to allie with the underdog (I've done it myself by re-rolling to the underdog side in DAoC and other game) but its not something you can bank on.
Balancing is basically something that the Devs have to deal with and have to design a way to regulate. ATM the way most games do that is to offer "incentives" to the losing side .. more XP, more Coin, etc. Having the Devs have the ability to change the "flexible" races alliance based on a "storyline" that would be developed for that server is a much more intuitive solution IMO. Armys change sides in battle for any number of reasons, its a given in MMO's that the major players (kings, warlords, etc) are NPC and the decision to change side would be thiers not the players.
Loyalty would be to your RACE alone, allies would be just that .. allies "for now" which to me is an acurate view point for the 40K system. Armys allie and disband based on current needs .. why not use that as a foundation game mechanic to ensure some type of balance in a faction based PvP system?
So is there actually any information that this game will strictly be an RvR focused game? I mean 2 factions can work perfectly fine in a pve style game with a pvp on the side. Until it is actually known that this game is going to be heavily focused on player vs. player combat and nothing more then there's really no reason to complain unles you're being a turbo nerd about the lore.
The whole universe of the IP revolves heavily around pvp or faction vs faction.
I think they'd REALLY be shooting themselves in the foot if it werent heavily PVP oriented.I wouldnt be surprised if it turned alot of people off if that were the case.
Flip-flopping would not happen.
Players would chose a race per server (not a faction) Thier loyalty would be to that race not to that "side" (Unless they were a key-stone race - SM or CSM)
It would be upto the devs to make good decisions on when to swap a races faction. It would be based on populations, so unless there was a massive influxs of new players to a specific race on a specific server (I'm making the assumption its a server based game here - maby its not) there would be no flip-flopping of races.
As for people being uphappy about it, as I've said your loyalty would be to your race first not your alliance. In war sides change, soliders obey orders bottom line. Since no one is gonna be playing the ruling bodies those decisions are out of thier hands. I'm sure most players would accept a side change rather than an unbalanced game that results in one side quitting out right in frustraightion no?
People are making the assumption sides will change frequently, thats not what I am driving at. Each race would in of itself be self sufficient (meaning classes etc) and a side swap would be for one of two reasons, #1 to balance populations. or very infrequently #2 a duel swap (one race for each side) just to mixs things up somewhat! Hell #2 could be at player request through forum or in-game vote.
It seems a more dynamic system to me, you use the races to ensure that the game is balances population wise .. and from then you can use it to invigorate the player base with new allies and foes! The devs would always have this form of population control in thier back pockets to keep the game interesting and balanced. Win Win.
It could well encourage people to play on more than one server too ... server A where races A and B are in a war with C D E and F ... and server B where races A and D are fighting B C E and F ... just to mixs things up !
Sigh...thanks for replying with the obvious. Again if anyone knows for sure that this game is going to be heavily focused on RvR please show your source.
Games 2+ years away from Gold .. pretty much all speculation here I'm afraid. They have hinted at a 2-faction system (On thier website) but nothing is set in stone yet. They have confirmed there will be PvP but not to the extent of its role. Its just assumed (and rightly so IMO) by fans of the IP that conflict between the factions will be the major drive of the game.
3 factions or bust. Calls em as I sees em.
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
If they want to cater to as many people as possible, they won't make it focused around PvP or at least not open world PvP. Most people get intimidated by forced PvP. Only more hardcore gamers like competing against other players in that manner. And I am speaking in general terms here.
But we shall see, maybe they won't take the casual route, even though I doubt it. There is more money in catering to casual gamers.
Ouch...well excuse me their sir..
all anyone can do is speculate at this point,so I gave u my opinion on the subject.
If you know the obvious answer,then why bother asking the question?
Responces like this make no sense.
Validate your responce with some type of explination with refrence to my OP please.
Why do you think a 3-faction system is the only way to make this type of game work?
The 40K system has all races pretty much fighting each other, so even a 3 faction system would be "lore-breaking" (Unless each faction was limited to one and only one army) A 2 faction system with interchangable sides seem to me, to be much more in line with the lore of the game. Any given conflict was 2 sides (factions) fighting each other. After said conflict sides could change and often did. The attraction of the game is that anyone can fight anyone and, Except in a few specific cases, most races could allie with other races for a single conflict of campaign until thier individual objectives were met.
Ideally we'd have as many factions as there are races and sides would constantly be in flux. This is'ent really achieveable though. In order to maintain a balanced playing environment we have to give the game devs some way to achieve population control. Look to WAR, one of its biggest failings (not to say its only failing) was that Devs had no way to control populations. Bonus XP and Coin just dont cut it.
The Devs have to see the big picture and be able to move sides around in order to maintain some sort of balance. This IP has a great "out" in the lore that sides switch as they see fit ... Devs could therefore switch races/armys sides to maintain balance and still adhear to the spirit of the game.
Is it realistic? Not really, if the Orcs (for example) were weak all races would prob seek to destroy them once and for all. Would that be "fun" though? (Remember its a game - fun is the objective) Not at all, would'ent be fun for the orcs (who likely quit or re-roll and long term it would'ent be fun for the others who'd lose opposition to play against.) Realistically the races would be destroyed in order of weakest first and on ... we want to play a game though so having the Dev's "fudge" a reason for an alliance with in game context (They offer a mining planet for an alliance, they offer new tech etc - whatever) we all win with a more stable and fun game.
I guess I am asking people to read my OP and comment on that version of a 2-faction system. Yes it is 2 factions at its heart but its not a traditional static faction system and people need to understand that before commenting "2 factions dont work its gotta be 3"
Wow you're dumb.
and youre not being talked to,so stfu
Problem is, you're expecting people to actually read. Some of us can read just fine and do it quite frequently while others get headaches, nose bleeds, begin drooling on themselves, and have seizures when asked to read more than 1 line of text.
If you expect some of the latter to bother reading and replying to anything you're better off titling the thread something like "OOOOOOH SHINY!!!!" and just saying "2 main factions with some of the races able to switch factions" and just leave it at that. But then the rest of us get shafted :-( Guess you're better off just ignoring the people who cant be bothered to actually read anything on a forum.
As long as both factions are equally appealing then it works. Perfect example of how it does not work is Guild Wars : Factions. They made Kurzick so much cooler than Luxon and when they released Factions more than 3/4ths of the population chose Kurzick because they all loved the goth look. Same thing happene sin Warhammer Online. They made Destruction so much cooler and Order was so crappy looking.
This is my thoughts pretty much. Basically if they are looking for the money they will go the WoW route which a 2 faction would work just fine and dandy. Shallow and same old but it would work. However from the trailer there wasn't much of anything exciting at all except that it's 40k art.
If they go the fan route and do this glorious RvR game 2 factions may work. Shallow and lame but it could work. Despite what people say about WAR failing because of a 2 faction system I really don't think that was the culprit of its downfall. It was just a godawful game, mechanics, bugs, controls etc. So far we've had WAR and Aion do a 2 faction RvR system and both games failed due to other reasons in my opinion. So it could work if the rest of the game is actually done correctly. Though I would like to see a 3-4 faction system just to get away from (choose good or evil); then again I'd like to see the whole damn MMO industry flipped upside down but that's not happening.