Goblin Squad Member
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Give me your thoughts people. Should we have NPCs giving faction items out like a vendor or should we simply be the faction and let us determin who else is as well.
Well to an extent we do know 2 factions that will exist, the knights of immodae and the hellknights, now as to if you join them, or just can earn reputation etc.. with them is unknown.
Personally I'm not a huge fan of going to deep with existing factions in a game like this, due to the bad taste I have from other games such as WoW, and Pardus. Namely that IMO NPC factions have a bad habit of taking the story control out of the players hands. "Oh by the way, you hate these guys now, kill them on sight!". Personally I think people should have to have actually done something and earn their notoriety, conflicts etc... rather than the conflicts etc... being handed out. Pardus handled it decently (Players at the top ranks of a faction had voting power of who or what they went to war with), WoW did it IMO in a rediculous way (OK so we're in an eternal war of which both sides are... just trying to moderately inconvinience eachother with no ryme, reason, goals or any way for the war to ever change status or work towards peace.
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Goblin Squad Member
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At the same time, if it is left entirely up to the player base to create factions from the ground up, there need to be measures taken so we don't end up with hundreds of "pathf11nder s0sieti". Essentially they'd be no different than any other chartered company but have a cooler name. If the devs allow players to take on the role of lore based factions, they should take precautions to keep them true to said lore.
Ideally, I'd prefer an NPC based faction with significant prerequisites that allows greater control to players who advance further in it. So maybe to join one faction you have to be living in a certain area, playing one of several classes with only good alignments and revere a specific pantheon or deity. Then you need to gain enough reputation to be eligible for membership. You'd join through an npc, but the day to day decisions of the faction would be decided or at least influenced by the players within. hundreds of different ways you could implement this.
This also begs the question of entry into prestige classes, especially the ones that require the approval, or training from an existing member. It presents an interesting opportunity to create more factions, prestige classes, and influential groups.
It *MIGHT* be cool if to join a few prestige classes you had to find a PLAYER of that prestige class to teach you or initiate you into the order.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This also begs the question of entry into prestige classes, especially the ones that require the approval, or training from an existing member. It presents an interesting opportunity to create more factions, prestige classes, and influential groups.
It *MIGHT* be cool if to join a few prestige classes you had to find a PLAYER of that prestige class to teach you or initiate you into the order.
I've seen that happen before in games... namely an old game called nexus was known very strongly for doing that, different paths got too much power, too many things went wrong, of which IMO there's only 2 ways that it can go and both are horrendus.
1. PRC faction winds up having corruption in leadership, eventually the qualifications wind up slowly but surely twisting to ensure that the leaders friends get in, others don't.
2. To protect from 1. mechanics allow for the PRC to be overtaken, to which point it just winds up as more of a battleground and chaos.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of factions being player controlled, but I believe abilities cannot be tied to an exclusive player faction. (Now if it is possible for a new player to make a similar faction that offers the same ability doing the same work as the first faction did, then this complaint voided).
If a faction is the exclusive path to a PRC, I think it must be NPC and that NPC reputation should be earnable to all who qualify. (Now everyone should have to jump through hoops for this NPC faction, do quests, donate stuff, whatever seems appropriate to gain good reputation with said faction).
I did actually just now come up with a 3rd option that could work.
The NPC faction has fairly high obnoxious qualifications for entery into the faction under the NPC's permission, Reaching an insanely high rank within the NPC faction allows one to become a representative (The bar needs to be set high here, the option must remain available to all, but the bar for entry needs to be high enough that only people who are crazy serious about said faction would even consider it). Said representative, could make a subchapter of said faction and his vouching could say half the reputation requirement for someone to qualify for the PRCs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This also begs the question of entry into prestige classes, especially the ones that require the approval, or training from an existing member. It presents an interesting opportunity to create more factions, prestige classes, and influential groups.
It *MIGHT* be cool if to join a few prestige classes you had to find a PLAYER of that prestige class to teach you or initiate you into the order.
That's a REALLY good question, doubly so since the south of the starting area actually will have Hellknights in it, and the special requirement for Hellknight recruitment is defeating an demon in the presence of a Hellknight.
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Goblin Squad Member
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glad to hear a divercity of answers and a well balanced view of seperate ideas so heres another chip of the cookie i thought of. in factions that offer archatypes or prestiege classes, will the skills be considered a sperate class altogether and null our chances of cpastone abilities or will they double as lvls of original skills. I know it is well away to early to answer this question but it is interesting to consider it if you are planning a cross class or single class avatar...
Capstones are supposed to be a benefit for people that stick to a single class.
A PrC, assuming that such things exist, offers it's own rewards, much like taking the more conventional multiclassing route.
Arguably, PrCs are the most common form of multiclassing, and much of the dipping that occurs does so to facilitate a character qualifying for a PrC.
Providing a capstone reward on top of the 'already better than the regular class advancement rewards' wouldn't fit the bill of what capstones are even there for.