Faction System: Broken, Pointless, Worthless?

LoL.

Well, the guild im part of has been part of the Alliance that had been dominating HzH for weeks now:: [oOo]. We had been with them since we were originally led by LUST, before we reformed. oOo (Komalis) Alliance has been rivaled with the WHOA Alliance (alliance formerly led by MAD) and therefore we had to Faction Farm (FF) nonstop. Our alliance was adament about holding house and keeping access to Urgoz open to the public. As such the alliance had became fairly well known. FFing for nearly 2 months has really worn down on so many, and the rivalry has boiled up lots of drama from guild backstabs to FF wars.

Today, the guild i am part of decided that FFing was a pointless struggle and was not really a worthy one at that, so we left the Alliance. Keeping Urgoz open to the public is fine with me, but after ALL that hard work we endured, the only benefit in the end is the same as any outpost, 20% discount at merchent and fireworks. Faction Farming 24/7 for JUST THAT is simply stupid. Toping 13 million faction and growing is no small feet, and in the end, we have nothing really to show for it. We are now concentrating back on GvG.

In fact, the rumor is that they will be making alternate access methods to Urgoz in the near future. GREAT! Even more incentive NOT to Faction Farm. As it is now, the Faction System is useless, pointless and worthless. If it doesnt change soon, and i mean REAL soon, then it will become obsolete all-together.

How many times have we heard from NCSoft and Anet that this game is all about skill and player knowledge of the game? So many it makes my head hurt. With the introduction of Guild Wars: Factions came a new form of non-stop GRIND! Faction farm, faction farm, faction farm, faction farm, faction farm. This system is SO INCREDIBLY HORRIBLE! Here we go...

1. The system has an auto TAXING system. Once per day it takes 10% faction away from your guild/alliance total. Can we say Grind focused?
   
2. There is no cap limit, there is not attainable reward for a certain amount of faction farmed, and there is no end.
   
3. The incentives for controling ANY outpost even House Zu Heltzer are laughable at BEST! Control of any outpost gives 20% discount at merchant and access to a fireworks npc. LOL ?
   
4. Reward for being top Faction Alliance and controlling HzH or Cavalon? Control of Elite mission access... oh ya and the typical 20% discount at merchants and fireworks npc access.
   
5. Most sensible Alliances who control the Elite missions give free rides anyway. So what reward is left?
   
6. A rumor of installing an alternate access method to the Elite missions to the public puts a nail in the coffin for the Faction System. It then becomes utterly pointless.
   
7. All "reward" aspects to Faction Farming HEAVILY and i mean HEAVILY outweigh the work required.

/End Rant

So. Please tell me, how in the world is the Faction System worth-while? Do you think there is a point to it anymore? Ever? Currently? Do i just sound bitter? And since it was rantish, my thoughts were as collected as i'd like them to be, so ask me to explain anything. Would you like to flame me?

I assure you that this is not outta bitterness. It is simply my opinions after having to do lots and lots and lots of FF with nothing to show for it, cept some measly title. (ok, maybe it is out of bitterness, but nothing against my former alliance mates...) So, i digress, and move on to better things...

We have just joined a PvP oriented Alliance. This means we will be able to practice in unranked GvG games quite easily and help eachother get in the top 100. A much more interesting effort IMHO...

Sorry for the rant. i had to unload it somewhere =D
enjoy.

well besides showing off and saying MY ALLIANCE OWNES HOSUE ZU HELTZER/CAVALON, i must admit there really ISNT much else you benefit from. right now, i dont think theres any need for other ways to get to elite missions since so many people alrdy ferry people for free. i think there should be more stuff in the exclusive area, more things the better the city gets, so we have some incentive, and more than just a cheap merchant or something. the capitols are no better than the other cities considering the benefits. theres the exact same thing in the exclusive areas. at first i thought this was gonna be a pointless thread, but after reading it, i realized you are completely right...

im still up for the "WE OWN CAVALON" thing though

EDIT 1: spelling errors
EDIT 2:
i cant agree more

Amen brother, see the light and you will be enlightened.

FF 24/7 to counter the 10% tax or concentrate on GvG to take a bid for the 10 thousand USD cash prize in the world championship. I wonder what those Korean guilds are doing...

I am surprised post like this havent shown up earilier.

what makes you think they haven't...

I don't think the system is broken at all. It was designed so that different guilds would have a chance to own the elite towns. oOo was going against that system by continuing to farm faction, until it can't keep up with itself. The benefit is just one of pride and showing-off-ness. I can see things falling apart, a new alliance grabbing control, but probably not for as long. Your relization that the system is 'worthless' is the act of it working. Its not that great of a thing.

Personally, I find the system is flawed that way, and is why XoO no longer controls a town. It was new toy syndrome at first. OFMG WE CAN OWN TOWNS HOW COOL IS THAT. Lawls. If one person in the alliance has been there, they can hit LEAVE GUILD HALL and taxi us there. Even if another alliance got HzuH it still wouldn't matter. We could sneak in anyway.

The town owning system is pointless, and they do need more incentives IMO. The Deep+Urgoz are fine and dandy... but pointless. The only reason I donate any faction now is out of boredom, scraps because I wanted to AB, or because I felt like working on my Friends title

The OP is right, the system was/is broken and has been from the start. Personally, I think very poorly planned as well. Perhaps AN didn't see the extent people would go to, to farm enough faction to control HzH, perhaps they didn't care. Maybe they didn't realize how frustrated alliances would become, with the manner in which people were able to return to the mission without being reinvited, or auto-booting back to hzh after game restart, thus eliminating the need to control the town to use the 'elite' area anyhow.

To sum it up, someone said to me, today, in fact;

"ahh shadowfell, remember when XoO actually held house, having all that free access to the elite, blah blah, weren't those the good ol days?"

To which I replied;

"ah yes, farming faction 8 hours a day, never actually getting to do the elite mission because at the end of the night I was too burned on gw to even type, let alone go through a mission for 2-4 hours. Now I do the elite mission once a day for free, I do not grind a drop of faction aside from what I need for my 6 characters 15k armors.. THESE are the good ol days!"

Everyone knows that due to the free access to the "elite" missions FFing is pointless.

Even if ANet did nothing to change the current way to get into the elite missions, opened it up for the masses (and closed the current loophole in the meantime) it is still pointless.

Years ago, I used to play a game called Air Warrior, a massively multiplayer online air combat simpulator, where the map was divided into three "sides" (A, B, and C).

Each side could attack any other side. Each side featured a main base that could never be captured (situated at the farthest point away from the "front") as well as about 8 forward bases. Each base could be attacked, and once it's defenses had been taken out sufficiently, you could "drop" paratroops to capture it. Once captured, you could use it to attack bases further back.

The design was simple, yet enormously fun.

The squadron I was in (similar to guilds in GW) would have weekly "squadron" attack evenings, where we'd team up with other squadrons to attack one opposing side or the other, coordinating our attacks to take enough bases to force one side all the way back to their main base. Nothing was more satisfying than completely dominating the map for the evening. It didn't matter in the long run, the servers would "reset" the map back to it's static lines every night anyway. And the next night, one other side would dominate our side.

The thrill wasn't in any rewards like money, extra goodies, it was all strictly bragging rights and self satisfaction. You had fun in the play, not in the end result.

So, in theory, Alliance battles sounds cool, to have allied guilds fighting for control of land - and to have the "front" change dynamically based on the wins and losses of each side.

But of course, the implementation was a joke.

If there was some sort of more direct cause/effect, and some point to it, it might work. As it is, faction farming is simply an abstract 2 degrees of separation.

What if there were 8v8 battles that could be gvg or organized teams (much like HA and favor) that actually was to gain control of a town? What if the losing side lost that territory, and could no longer progress further in the game until control was regained? What if the skill you wanted was now in enemy territory, and the only way to get access to the area was to win the town back?

Shrug, if there isn't any compelling reason to have a feature, then why bother having it?

I get the impression that the entire alliance and faction idea was brilliant in the beginning, but due to budget and time constraints massive cuts and changes were made, and what we're left with just plain sucks.

lol the only reason i go FF recently is to sell amber

no other reason

i think the whole fAction game is very underworked. seriously.

i feel like i payed 50$ for a white tiger and a new armor set. maby few skills, lik etriple chop....... but ya, FF for holding towns....... nah

When I was first reading of how you could control battles, I got confused and thought 12 vs 12 battles would be to gain control of a town, not to just donate faction so you could TRY to. Gosh, I hate the system.

Yea, they could focus on the Factions/battle/reward system.
Currently the wow contribution grind is far more advanced (and yet grindingly-simple) than this. This is a shame!
I like gw:factions, I wll continue to play it but I really hope that they will implent some major reworking in this stuff. Now we move the little border from the down side and ...that's all. What is the differene between different factions controling land? 10 npc and 4 shrines. YAY, In the villages some merchants wont trade to you. Well that is cool, but as a detail, the major benefit is missing. Also this faction town control thing. There are 5 towns and 100 alliances who...grind. Probably several more ways of convering the faction...
The idea is not to make the people stop the battleing, but to make them do it for the territorial difference, not farming faction lol

well yes its pointless. the alliance i'm in was holding the 3rd level town at some point last week, after we found out that we can farm 3k faction in less than 4 minutes with pretty little effort a little while ago
i dont think we hold a town anymore by now but it was fun while it lasted. and i got my friend of the kurzick, tier 2 treasure hunter and collector of wisdom titles in less than 2 weeks. but yes, it was a lot of grinding and we didnt even hit 4 million faction.
the ingame rewards are sort of pitiful, a merchant that sells common items 20% cheaper than the normal merchants. thats 120 gold discount on a key. but considering that an alliance has to donate 1 million+ faction each day to hold the top town (instead of getting amber), you'd have to buy a LOT of keys to make it worthwhile. (around 1000 per member guild).
the real reward is that you get the name of your alliance on the map. and if your guild tag is that same as that of the alliance holding house zu heltzer, you'll have people recognising you in town. one of the few ways to become 'famous'

considering how everyone knows how pointless it is to farm faction, one wonders why major towns sometimes require 10 million faction to own

Too bad Anet won't read this thread.

can't agree more.

You ppl are such whiners you know that?

I will explain what I mean:

First ppl start complaining cause they can't have acces to the deep because only a feww (the biggest faction farming guilds) control cavalon and hzh.

/start complaining

Now atm that almost everyone has free acces to the deep with ferry, you guys start complaining that controlling a town doesn't give enough special things... so you want more missions for only your alliance, maybe cooler items? maybe you want everything free, a free 15k kurzick/luxon set? ... geez

The purpose of this system is that not 1 specific alliance controls those towns but that many alliances control these towns, just to have the honor to say, look my alliance controlled that town etc..etc..

I actually love this system, but I don't think Anet tought that so many ppl would farm so much faction to have and keep those towns.

I will be very happy in lets say 1-2 months because I am sure that at that moment those alliances who can't FF the whole day can have a chance to control maybe a town or something.

imo controlling a town is a real honor, when I see ppl of XoO in game or oOo or any other alliance who controls a town, I think to myself, those must be pretty good (I know for FF you dont need to have skill but still thats what I think).

I hope you ppl understand what I am trying to say

I'm pretty sure they are.

I am:

- Currently in the alliance that owns Cavalon
- Not particularly impressed with the Deep
- Haven't touched the Deep except for ferries for the past month (and a half?)
- Still faction farm
- Am very very tired of faction farming (nearing second level Ally of the Luxons)
- Wish Anet would implement their new method of reaching the Deep/Warren soon
- Would like to see a bit of a better reward for second and third place, and once the new system has been implemented, something for Cavalon owners besides the very nice amount of publicity

The point of this thread is that the rewards you get for faction farming i.e. - 20%, fireworks, and elite mission are pointless when you are giving away all your faction that could be turned into amber/money and the guild is too busy farming faction to actually play the elite mission.
Fame is one thing, but if it has no effect on me, its sorta pointless. I see people winning halls and say -yeay-. I see someone owning Vasburg Armory and say -who cares-. It needs some serious reworking. Like the faction line - how about a giant wall comes down if you have dont have enough faction to cross it. How about not being able to even get into a town if you dont have enough. Make it something worth fighting for, and not bitter infighting within your faction. Its kurzick vs Kurzick, not kurzick vs. luxon.

I dont understand why anyone bothers tbh, every 1k kurzick faction donated is 1k gold lost, so to actually own a town that has cheaper keys costs way more than you will ever save from getting 20g off per key.

Owning HzH does get your alliance leader known, but to all the other guilds in it they are just giving the leader a free ride. It must be even worse for the alliances that dont own the capital, nobody really takes notice about who owns outposts other than the main one so they are in effect spending all their time and cash on a minute merchant discount.

Your spot on mate, faction farming, for what the chance to own jade and amber which in itself is a lost cause seing its only used for armour and nothing else. Like I have been telling everyone with the release of the next chapter which will be a standalone they will be wasting a idea which could of had alot of pertential but just lacked a extreme lot of gameplay and depth.

Endless alliance battles for what to move a line that does nothing not even change any story elements. I hope anet read this so they know that sometimes ideas need to be expanded that way they might attract people to the older chapters instead of trying to attract new players by the release of each new chapter.

instead of rushing out chapter after chapter.

this system was broke from start ...

first .. if u want a decent amount of Fpts .. u have to do some PvP since the pve reward there is such a crap ....

just cuz of that, i'm done with FF ..

here are the FF rewards

• amber/jade: at start they were worth something, now 1k-ish a piece .. means u have to afk/play Aspencrap for at least half an hour for ONE of those ? ridiculous ... just farm twice at Droks if u need a plat fast .. it ll take ya 5 mins tops.
• 15k sets: ok ... u ll need 80 a/j shards ...means either 80000 Fpts or 80-100k.. which way is the easy and fast way ? sorta easy guess i think
• Outpost: 24/7 of boring pvp FF just to get cheaper id kit and a few lights in the sky in an empty map ? sooo great, jeez awesome. Not mentionning u gotta have active guild/alliance (let's do it the Scifi way)
• Elites Mishs: what's the reward ? let's say u are lucky and got active guild/alliance etc and u can go in there at will (oh wait .. u can go in there at will with ferries now !!!! rofl !!! ) u can have, what ? green crap ? greens are already everywhere, poisoning economy for months... Zodiac stuff ? most of em are hideous and if u ant em, just buy them .. a few ks VS all that work to get there ? yummy i ll go for the shopping spree option.
• Titles: maxing it out requires 10.000.000 pts LAWLZ !!! want me to say something about that ? even with the low cost of A/J now if i had that much fpts, i d make cash with it

if a new way of getting in elites is implemented .. why bother with all that ?
just make it like UW/FOW with an 1k fee and it's done .... no way i ll do rewardless boring pvp for pve content ...

anyway .. i m sure Anet ll try to hold this system til new expansion is released with lil pointless fixes like they did with JQ.. then no one ll care about Fpts anymore.. Not mentionning the Pve missions that ll be dead for guilldless people, outposts emptier than now (ex: Unwaking Waters)

Oh dear god.

blah blah ?

When I first heard/read about Factions/Alliances/Elite missions, I was pretty worried. I’m in a small family guild and knew I had no chance of ever being in a big Alliance, would never hold any town or go on any Elite missions. Today, I’m happy as a pig in slop. Why? Because none of that matters now.

- I can grind faction at my leisure when I want or need amber. If I want to take time off from FF, like I have recently, I don’t have Alliance members bitching at me.
- My Faction will go toward something I see as more worthwhile (i.e. amber).
- If I want to do an Elite mission, I can get a ferry there (which I’ve yet to do because I don’t see it being as rewarding as say…FoW).

Hey, the system is working fine for me.

I haven't donated a scrap of Faction to my alliance since the FPE (you couldn't get amber then), since the whole concept is completely pointless.

so to make the Faction system actually rewarding to the alliance that holds it, they should not ferry. Since Elite missions are the biggest perks to holding HzH/Cavalon... yet when they don't ferry they are flamed.

So basically, the alliances that hold HzH/Cavalon are slaves to the public. They faction farm the majority of their time on GW just to hold the town and are pressured into giving away their only viable reward. Obviously members in the alliances are starting to grow disgruntled with it, how long can they be fooled or can fool themselves?

Sure, at first it feels good like to be the nice guy ferrying people (omg! people actually like me online!!) and getting the occassional tip, but i'm sure i'm not the only guy who's hiding a grin and thinking 'you're getting played' to the guy ferrying me.

So, it sux to be in a big alliance because you're a slave to factions farming to keep control of your town - leaving you with no time to enjoy the fruits of your labors, the elite missions! And the rewards of holding a town aren't good enough fo the work put into it.

And it sux to be in a small guild/alliance because you'll never get to enjoy the rewards of holding a town and you're dependant on the goodness of people's hearts for inexpensive (or free) ferrying to the elite missions. (Thank God the majority of the controlling alliances don't charge for it!)

Did I summarize that well enough?

As for me, I'm playing the game for fun. When it stops being fun and starts being work, it's time to move on to something else. I suspect that when chapter 3 is released, Cantha is going to become a collection of ghost towns.

Pointless indeed. The only practical use for FF is to get amber/jadeite for the 15k armors. Controlling a town is pointless cause even if your on top, you have to keep grinding or you'll lose to some other alliance. Not to mention you may not have the time to do the elite missions after all that hard work.

The only thing I'm happy about in factions, are the new weapon skins, scenary, new skills, some of the new armors, and of course new pets I think the game would've been far better w/o FF tbh. The elite missions could've been like FoW/UW with a 1k entrance fee when your region has favor. Here's hoping that Chapter 3 doesn't have FF nonesense like Factions.

I think everyone universally agrees on this point!

I do think ANET are reading, and have probably read all discussions like this.. but the truth is, what can they do?.. the only thing I can think of is an emote for which ever outpost you own. which then disapears if you lose it.

People farm HA and faction points JUST for the emote!..

At the moment our alliance is just happy with the fact that there are loads more players available to help with quests or to do HA< or help with gvg.. mass scrimmages, noone really cares about the faction points, except for the title!

theres just not enough carrots, and where are all the fish?

Original poster is spot-on in his assessment. Except for his supporting keeping ferrying free because it contradicts the very point he was making.

Why bother farming for faction constantly just so you can let every other player in the universe benefit from your farming whereas simultaneously denying any benefit to yourself and depriving yourself of thousands/hundreds of thousands in income that that faction could have got you?

What's the point of that?

What kind of mascochist would enjoy wasting his time day after day in servitude like that?

Yet the attitude of the "big alliances" is to "ferry everyone for free otherwise we will kick you out of our Guild".

Hence, in my view for those of us who are not a masochists there is no point whatsoever to holding an elite mission zone or any town.

I think the devs should make the game automatically funnel money into every member of a holding alliance's account. Then there might actually be some point to holding a town.

Faction Farming is just another addition that people can do if they want. It's called varity. you can sell it for jadeite/amber, help keep control territory boundries... over all it's not pointless on the flip side you shouldn't FF anymore than you want to because that's just silly. It's a game where the point is to have a good time.

i read the first word and thought it was just another zomg this sucks post..
i was positively suprised.. you have some good arguments, you really shouldn't have typed out the first word imo :/

as far as faction farming goes and risk/reward, or perhaps work/reward is more suitable..
People still do it to control a town, and people are still figting to keep control, i mean obviously someone thinks its worth it to work that much for it. else people simply wouldn't do it.

also. the 10% has to be there, else it would just be the first ones to get started that would just win it allways. and its self-balancing, because you can only famr so much before the 10% will be what you can achieve daily

edit:
also if you think about it. it doesn't make sense that your work your ass off to get a town and then don't have to keep doing something to own it. especially with a huge endless war going on

The "broken system" is a direct result of what has happened due to ferrying. If the elite missions were kept solely to the holding alliances then there WOULD be something to FF for and the GW market wouldn't be flooded with elite greens, zodiac items, and other elite mission drops. Seen the high-end forums lately? Not to mention those items would actually be worth more than your average rare drops from other areas. If elite mission items were actually rare, like they were intended to be, then the holding guilds would be making a fortune off elite drop sales which would give them good reason to hold the capitals.

You helped create this mess and now your complaining about it?

Additionally since everybody cried about not having access to the elite mission Anet has now given in and is going to provide an alternate means of getting into the mission area. Gives you nothing to FF for you say? Wow who'd'a thunk it?

Good: Being able to earn points (faction, whatever...) to trade for rare items. Love this, absolutely. I'd like to see faction be tradeable at the rare material trader in town for more than amber/jade, actually.

Less than good: The whole town owning thing. Too much work for too little reward. Shoot, I'm in a Kurzick guild that doesn't care about town ownership and currently running amok in the Jade Sea, getting Luxon faction in the process. Without the desire or care to own a town, things are more fun.

Bad: Being in a Kurzick guild won't let me fight for the Luxon in ABs. Like my guild, like the Luxons, hate the restriction. Ah well, maybe they'll see the light someday...

(off topic) I have to say though, it didnt take much!.. they seemed to bend pretty easily on this.

But other things which we have been furiously bitching and moaning about since the game came out has never, and probably will never be changed.

I wonder why they so easily gave in to this?.. maybe because of the overwhelming positive response from alliances offering free taxi service.

Well, we're being a little premature here. Anet hasn't given general access yet. I'm not saying they won't, but it's not there as of today.

IMO, this was the entire point of Factions in the first place, to push ppl
towards pvp, probably easier to make a game that focuses on pvp more
than pve. The pve portion of this game is hideously small and easy except
for a few missions, so what do we have to do, try and get titles or ff for
control of some obscure outpost that is devoid of life.
This also applies to the Deep, probably one reason they started giving free
rides was there was NOBODY there except them, I have been there twice,
what do I see, more Dredge, OMG your kidding me, I don't even consider
the elite missions part of the game anymore, I have pretty much written
them off, ppl get a good drop and Vamoosh they are gone to go sell there
precious item.
To address the original OP's question on whether it is worth spending your
hard earned faction for the Alliance, I say as long as everybody in the guild/
Alliance is in agreement and is working toward the goal then it is fine,
but it is very obvious that not everybody is donating there faction to the
Alliance and are hoarding it for themselves and piggy-backing off the
hard work of others. This has created some hostile arguements within
alliances and has guilds hopping around from Alliance to Alliance, not
a good thing to have in a game.

-Fallow dung.......

The reward for faction farming is either amber/jadite or temporary prestige.

Those who want temporary prestige badly can put forth the effort it takes to get it. I can't understand why people care about prestige so much, but that is their business.

But why is anything wrong with the system? Just because some people seem to overvalue city control doesn't mean the system is broken. It just means some people's judgement is questionable.

The rest of us can turn faction into gold or armor, and gold and armor are good.

The real reason for farming faction was to get into the elite mission, the ones who have messed up the faction system wasnt Anet, it was the alliances that opened the elite missions to everyone. They made it all really pointless. Back to HOH.

Well, if Anet decides to give an exclusive area to the controlling alliance, that won't be fair to the people who aren't in a large guild. Howbout maybe the people in a controlling alliance have like, +30 health and +5 energy, or something like that?

so... blame should be put on the alliance that started the trend of ferrying and the Scribe for subsequently heralding them as examples then?

majority of the playerbase now expects free ferries, as if it was their right, and alliances that hold the town are pressured into ferrying for free, if not they are labelled jerks and insert every negative thing here.