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Originally posted 14 Apr 2010 14:19:45 by James Nichols on the UO Herald:

Greetings!

We have been working hard on making some major updates to the Factions system, and we are now commencing public testing of these changes. They represent some significant changes to the Factions system. As such, we feel it is important to do extensive public testing and gather as much feedback as we can.

Later this afternoon we will open a Test Server named “Factions”. You are invited to jump in and playtest this early version of Factions system changes, which include new fortresses, an updated score and ranking system, and in-game leaderboards.

Details of the test have been posted on the Stratics forums here: http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=194079. The Factions test server is scheduled to open at 3:00 PM ETD on 14 April 2010.

We hope to see you there!

Originally posted 14 Apr 2010 by Phoenix_Mythic on the UO Stratics Test Center Forum:

(http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=194079)

Greetings!

We have been working hard on making some major updates to the Factions system, and we are now commencing public testing of these changes. They represent some significant changes to the Factions system. As such, we feel it is important to do extensive public testing and gather as much feedback as we can.

First and foremost, please be assured that we will make very sure these changes are as well tested and debugged as possible before publish. Even though these Factions system updates are now in testing, this does not by any means signal our intent to publish them with the next live update. In Publish 65, we added a new feature that allows us to patch out alternative maps for testing while leaving the Live versions untouched. This gives us the ability to keep the Factions changes in parallel development and hold off on publishing them to the live game for as long as needed.

You are invited to join the public playtest of the Factions system changes. You will find a test shard named "Factions" on the server list. This server is dedicated to testing the Factions changes, but it has all the normal test center features enabled. Please, create a character, join a faction, and come join the fight!

Please utilize this forum to offer feedback, report bugs, and discuss your experiences. I will be here frequently to take in the feedback and answer questions in depth.

Here is a quick rundown of the things you can expect to see:

1> There are now three factions. Their names (Crusaders of Virtue, Guardian’s Legion, and Free Tradesmen) are temporary placeholders, and deciding on the final names is one point we would very much like feedback on. The three factions’ philosophies are all opposed to each other – each faction can find evil in the purpose and deeds of the other two. They have updated blurbs on their recruitment stones.

2> Each of the three factions has a new stronghold. Two of the strongholds have been placed in newly-renovated mountainous areas. The former Minax stronghold is now the home of the Guardian’s Legion, but the base has been completely rebuilt. All of the bases are completely unique, including their layouts, architectural style, and furnishings. They are designed to present interesting choices for assault and defense.

3> The score system has been completely reworked. The new system scores players in combat based on the following actions: damaging enemies, healing allies, stealthing, revealing stealth, and fighting in the presence of of town sigils. These scores are designed not to accumulate continuously but instead to act as ongoing ratings that compare players against each other. This means that scores will fluctuate up and down over time based on ever-changing conditions. It is the intent that the new score system measure actual real-world player performance in combat, instead of being a value that accumulates over time. Score is now awarded for overall performance in battle rather than simply for scoring kills or corrupting sigils. As such, it is no longer possible to transfer points between players.

4> The ranking system has been altered. There are now only 8 ranks. Each rank has a unique name. The names of the lower four ranks are the same for all factions, and each faction has unique names for its higher four ranks. There is also a new Rank 0, named “Deserter”, which is reserved for those who join factions but never fight in a battle. Ranks have some minimum participation requirements in terms of time spent in Faction combat. Ranks are otherwise distributed based on overall player score, with only a very small percentage of players able to attain the highest rank. Assignment of ranks depends on active (i.e. non-Deserter) players in each Faction. A player may only be promoted or demoted one rank per day. The "punkte" speech command now opens a UI window that shows you your score breakdown and gives you a sense of how your performance relative to your faction mates may or may not merit you a promotion in rank.

5> Faction artifacts now have lower rank requirements, because it will be difficult to attain maximum rank. The highest tier of Faction artifacts will require Rank 5, which is sufficiently difficult to attain but not so difficult that only a handful of players will be able to use them.

6> There are now in-game leaderboards that update hourly. Each stronghold will have one set of leaderboards for its own faction, and a set of all-factions leaderboards. These will list players in order of overall score, the five sub-scores, and also by total kill count and kill ratio.

At this point I do not want to go into too much detail about the updates to the score system. In the near future I will begin offering more details about how it actually works. But for now, I just want you to play the system, form opinions about whether the new score system seems fair and accurate, and tell us what you think!

Happy playtesting! I’ll be joining in, anonymously of course, so I’ll probably see you there...



(note: the server is expected to go live at 3:00 PM EDT on 14 April)
__________________
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Mike Moore
Systems Designer

Originally posted 14 Apr 2010 by Phoenix_Mythic on the UO Stratics Test Center Forum:

(http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=194081)


Factions Test Known Issues

The following are known issues with the Factions system updates currently in testing as of 14 April 2010. Please see this post on this forum for details of Factions playtesting.

• Some faction items have no rank requirements. All faction items should at least require Rank 1, so they cannot be used by Deserters (Rank 0)
• There is some minor monster spawn in the Free Tradesmen stronghold
• Logging out on the elevators in the Guardian’s Legion stronghold will insta-log the player, assuming the player is not in combat
• Faction Guards’ names display the wrong faction
• Suicide by trapped box can be used to avoid giving Faction kill credit
• Duplicate faction vendor chests may appear in strongholds
• Faction warhorses do not work
• Leaderboards are missing information for non-guild players
__________________
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Mike Moore
Systems Designer

Originally posted 15 Apr 2010 by Phoenix_Mythic on the UO Stratics Test Center Forum:

(http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=194211)


Factions Statloss


On the subject of statloss, it is something we plan to change. Currently on the Factions test center, it is 5 minutes.

There are currently several ideas on the table:
1> Straight up eliminate it, or reduce it to anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. Or, make it incremental in strength and/or duration.
2> Make statloss shorter based on the number of towns your faction controls
3> Make it something you can buy off or partially reduce in duration and/or severity, with silver (e.g. a consumable you can purchase from the faction item / artifact vendor)
4> Shorten statloss, and eliminate it when the person who killed you dies

All of these ideas have merits and drawbacks, as well as different levels of time required to implement and test.

The purpose of statloss is to make it possible for one side in a Factions battle to create a definitive victory. It does this by weakening the losing side to the point where they have to just quit fighting for a while. The downside of it is it sucks to be weakened that much and for so long. The ability to gain control of territory comes at a cost of making players unable to enjoy their play.

So, the question to answer is, where is the balance?

On one side, UO PvP is fun while you’re fighting, but very un-fun when you lose. Insurance, item loss, having to get ressed and re-equip, etc., are all barriers that keep people from wanting to PvP. They also keep people from being able to learn PvP, without lots of support from other players. Factions adds statloss on top of all that.

Putting it another way, UO PvP is too hardcore. Those who have the know-how and the equipment just crush it. They kill a lot more often than they die, so it’s the un-skilled and underequipped who end up suffering the penalties more. With such harsh penalties, it is no wonder at all that people lose interest in playing Factions, or never seriously consider playing it in the first place.

One of the goals for this update to Factions is to make the system more appealing to more players. This doesn’t mean we want to make it into an easy game, or level the playing field, or make it so you can just respawn and run back in when you die. It does mean we want to look at various ways we can soften it up some so people can spent more time PvPing and less time dealing with downtime created by PvPing. We want to make it more fun, with larger and longer battles.

The other side of the balance issue is the need to be able to take enemies out of the fight in Factions. It just doesn’t work if you roll over a bunch of enemies and they just come in and roll you back in a couple minutes.

In addition to considering ideas about modifying statloss itself, I’d like to see some ideas of alternatives that achieve the needed effect but in some other way. For example, what if instead of statloss, you were simply not allowed to approach within a couple screens’ distance of the place where you died, for ten minutes?

Please discuss these things on this thread. Let’s talk about penalties for death, casual versus hardcore, and faction territory control.
__________________
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Mike Moore
Systems Designer