2001-11-27: Adrick on the Faction System
Adrick on the Faction System
Nov 27 2001 4:34PM
This was originally posted to Development at uo.com.[1]
Factions, Factions, Factions...
In this team comments I’d like to focus on Player vs. Player combat, specifically within the context of the UO Faction System.
When I first joined the team in June of 2000, one of my initial big challenges was to get up to speed on the faction system. This system had already been coded and was in QA’s hands when Evocare and I were challenged with getting it released as part of the Renaissance upgrade. After spending about a week researching what was there and writing up documentation, we decided to expand on the system to include a broader audience. We spent about three weeks writing documents and coding additions. I wrote faction traps, redid the gumps, and worked a lot on the craftables. Evocare wrote the enhanced faction guard AI, added faction silver and faction allied monsters. We wanted the system to include more than just hard core PvPers, while making it fun and challenging for all. We wanted to include crafters and PvMers, as well as provide some political context to offices.
After the initial release, Evocare and Vex worked on factions up until February of this year. They fixed several bugs and added trap removal kits, and a few other balance issues were addressed.
In March, the task of addressing some of the remaining bugs in the system began. In publish 14 (which was publish 13 for a while), approximately 30 annoying bugs with the system, as well as some balance issues, were resolved. You can find complete information on the faction fixes that are being implemented in Publish 14 by clicking here.
Moving forward, we plan on addressing some balance issues with the strongholds, and working on removing ways blues can interfere in faction fights. Our goal is to have all bugs and major balance concerns addressed once Publish 15 is live, so that any future work on factions will focus more on enhancements.
I know many of you will have strong opinions on future faction changes, so I’d like to throw out some ideas for the future. These things are not currently scheduled, and may not be implemented at all, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on the following possibilities.
1] Lowering the corruption times down to about 8 hours or so to allow more fast-paced conflict and create less of a chance that off-hour, low peak hours will determine the fate of a faction.
2] Allowing guilds to form new factions, possibly as part of an alliance system.
3] Expanding the control factions have over Felucca by looking into dynamic spawns of monsters and resources.
4] Adding more political elements to the leadership of a faction beyond simply voting. This would include putting in some checks and balances to ensure that the commander and those who he appoints are doing a good job in the eyes of a majority of the faction. Also, as part of this, allowing players to vote to remove other players considered a spy by a majority of the faction.
5] Allowing factions to have control over both the town and surrounding area (follow up to item #3). An idea here is that all resource gathering could be taxed by the controlling faction.
All of these, and more, are only ideas we are currently discussing as possible enhancements, and we welcome feedback on these or other enhancements. Please feel free to talk about these on our boards, or email suggestions to me at [email protected].
Take care,
Pete "Adrick" Warner Designer – UO Live
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