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I will admit I have only played a little of it but one thing I dislike about PFS is the faction system. You have 5 choices that you MUST choose from and you have no option to disregard this.
My problems with this are as follows.
1) Potential source of conflict: For a game that is not about PvP there is this whopping great elephant in the room of competing factions. If I am supporting one faction then it stands to reason that I am against all the others. By extension this means I am against everybody on the table who does not follow my faction. I think this creates unecessary conflict. Not that I can do anything about this however, which leads me to:
2) What's the point? You can't stop anyone else from completing their mission due to the lack of PvP so what's the point? PFS have created a set of factions that are engineered to generate friction with no way of resolving that conflict. In order to not be a jerk I turn a blind eye to people doing their faction mission because OOC that's the cool thing to do. If I were to step in to smash the magic football that (say) Taldor had been sent to find that would make me a jerk. However, IC that could be the logical thing to do because the other faction is my political enemy. What the faction system does is creates a disconnect between what a character should do and what a player should do. The result is that faction missions are only usually failed because a player misses it or objects on moral grounds as everyone doesn't want to be a jerk.
3) They take on too much importance: Buying power as a reflection of TPA? Why exactly? I live in Absolom! You know the biggest trade city in the world? I know for a fact that you can find all sorts of cool stuff there but for some reason I can't browse the markets or employ enchanters no matter how much money I have. Instead I have to work through a quasi legal political affiliation. Why? That makes no sense! Spending PA to get boons and gear that's fine but TPA governing your purchasing power is just odd...
4) They take too much time: 10 seperate quests (soon to be 20) often distract from the actual reason why we are on a mission. Due to it's importance to your buying power, raising your TPA is the most vital thing to do when you are adventuring. As a result the actual quest you are on can become secondary. Once I've ticked the PA boxes that's when I'll concentrate on the mission when really the PA quests should be a minor thing. In 4 hours the sheer number of faction quests can easily become a distraction from the main plot.
5) Work, work, work OK, minor gripe this one and I do see the necessity of it, but it seems every hole in Golarion is the resting place of the lost ring of so and so or the broken scimitar of whassisname which your faction desperately wants back. It would be nice to have a mission where the players discover something and off their own backs realise that this information or item could be useful to their faction (i.e. getting the faction quest halfway through the adventure).
6) Compulsory recruitment As this thread discusses you have to have a faction. I for one would like to see them as an optional (but advantageous) extra. I want to play a Pathfinder, not an Andoran, but the system as it stands does not allow for this. With the current setup I feel that your faction is more important than your status as a Pathfinder and I can't say I agree with that.
In conclusion I think that the factions are fun but they have too high an importance in PFS as a whole and things should be balanced so that faction and general mission are equally important. I would also like to see a "none of the above" option for generic Pathfinders and the removal of TPA as your purchase limit.
Be aware that these are minor gripes and they won't make me stop playing PFS as I am having too much of a good time. These are merely observations that I have made. Also bear in mind these are merely the ramblings of someone who has played at a couple of conventions rather than someone who has played dozens of times so if I am incorrect about my assertions then I apologise.
Whatever. Agree? Disagree? What do you think?
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Whatever. Agree? Disagree? What do you think?
I haven't even had my coffee yet this morning, but kudos for making your points pretty clear and on target.
To some extent I agree with many of them, especially not being able to basically use your TPA through the Society. As a Pathfinder you are already working with the group who probably has the best access to magical items in Golarion. As for faction conflict, while true to an extent remember one of the Pathfinder rules is cooperate. I may not be happy about the agents of Cheliax doing their infernal work, but I know that I'm doing my best to promote freedom throughout the Inner Sea and at the end of the day we can both retire to the Lodge for an ale :)
Hopefully the Season 3 changes will help appeal to you, and those who feel similarly. There is some cool stuff on the horizon!
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I'll have to chime in with Mark here, and agree with many of your points.
There has been recent discussion among local players about your point 3) TPA governing purchasing power.
I feel there are many aspects of organised play that strive to keep players of the same character level balanced with regards to each other - eg, a common point buy, simplified level progression, chronicle access to items, the few character options that are removed from play on the Additional Resources page, etc.
However, tying purchasing power to TPA immediately creates an imbalance between some characters of the same level. It could be that your home GM is lenient with faction missions, whereas the GM at the gamestore down the street has a much stricter interpretation, so when players from different groups meet at a convention once-per-year, some players have greater item access than others.
I think faction missions are great, and they should be interesting enough that completing them should be their own incentive. There should be other in-character benefits to TPA, but I think tying them to item access is too much. My personal opinion: purchasing power should be tied to character level to keep things balanced, not TPA.
Otherwise, keep checking the Monday PFS Blogs each week between now and the launch of Season 3. I think you'll like what you see.
Cheers,
DarkWhite
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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As the first non-VC to post here, I agree with most of your points. Factions were one of the big turn-offs to me about PFS. Because of them, I might not had ever joined PFS except for my home game GM really wanting to start it up.
As it is, probably the only reason I have as many PA's as I do is two others in my home game are from the same faction. I didn't choose that on purpose, but its worked well so far for me. :)
Most of the skill checks for our missions I would never have a chance at succeeding at, its just how I built my character. And I could care less about most of my faction's goals, I just picked it because that's what country I was from.
I'm hoping some of the new factions will fit my character better, then I might actually care.
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I'm no Venture Captain, but I do feel that there are some over-complications in the faction system. I do like the factions. They are flavor and they give each character a stronger connection to role-playing in Golarion. I am ok with some degree of conflict caused by factions (as long as it doesn't get silly).
PFS is an organised play campaign where you are a Pathfinder and a Faction member. That's what the campaign is, so to my thinking you design a character who has a connection with both PFS and Faction. Not so hard.
TPA having a connection to max GP purchase of item seems a bit silly to me. I can't really say that I think this helps anything and perhaps it encourages an over-focus on faction missions. It would be nice if they were somewhat incidental and subtle instead of requiring an off-reservation search to ensure that maximum benefit is gained. I don't really want to care about maximum benefit, but it seems like if you don't, your purchases at higher levels are limited.
The missions do sometimes take extra time which can be frustrating particularly if you aren't of the relevant faction who are delaying the main mission. And yes how many times do you end up searching for an off-mission irrelevancy invented to satisfy some faction's mission.
So to sum up, I love factions in the game, but not the TPA connection and not the way many missions seem to have no relevance to the PFS mission.
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Good points
I totally agree.
I think the best idea I've seen so far came from "Kyle Baird".
One prestige point should come from completing the PF mission. So the common goal of teamwork and finishing the scenario becomes important again.
One prestige point (the challenging one) should come from completing your faction mission.
Using this method, we can have 10 faction missions, all of them somewhat meaningful, without mission bloat.