Faction System: Broken, Pointless, Worthless?

Small guilds can have just as much say as large ones...when Keys joined the TC alliance, they were 3 people with 500k faction. Similarly a guild that recently joined Keys had 11 people and 900k faction. The leader of Keys as well as myself have been an Ally of the luxons for about a month, almost to steward...

My suggestion would be a Titles

"Ex citizen of ", permantly given the alliance members who manage to own a town or outpost

"citizen of" given to the alliance members who currently own a town or outpost
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and vip items available at the Vip Merchants

non tradable custimised party gear/armors/hats
nontradable consumables -similar to the holyday items -mostly fun useless trinkets
-

I still feel that something is lacking in the current system, that would motivate the effort of donating hard earned faction points

If you give anything special (non-tradable hats/gear/etc) to Guilds who hold towns, I can guarentee they will just charge Xthousand to join temp into the guild. Theres no fair way to give anything special to town owners without someone abusing it.

Well, sir. I come from the very opposite end of the spectrum as compared to you. As a quick introduction, I am an admin on GuildWiki, so you can guess I am a BIG time advocate of free and open access and sharing between all involved. I, by design, do not like people who keep "secret builds" and limit access to anything.

First of all, I am an officer in oOo's alliance, so I sure as heck know what it's like to form parties in the Deep and Urgoz. In fact, my guild's groups in Urgoz were one of the very first to figure out how to beat the old tree. It's a pain, especially with time differences (oOo are French, most of my guild is East Coast, I am West Coast, ...).

My alliance, my guild and I have a unified vision in terms of leadership of a capital and it's 180 degrees opposite of yours. We know that closing the deep off will only lead to vicious competition, ill-feelings and a general spread of nastiness and greed among players. It will also (obviously) give other alliances more reasons to try and beat us.

We believe in honorable stewardship of HzH. We give everyone access to the elite as it makes the game more open, more fun, makes the rare skins more accessible to everyone. Does not encourage people to go buy gold off e-bay to afford these obscenly expensive skins. We just take (in my opinion) a much more responsible view of our role in the overall game world.

I am actually very proud in the fact that the "good guys" (our alliance) was able to surpasse and then defeat the "materialistic guys" who wanted to charge and/or limit access to Urgoz.

Bascially, we have amassed a whopping 16 million faction, something your alliance will probably never even see, and all for maintianing HzH sane and open for all. We certainly get little kick-back if anything from it. My main motivation personally (and I know different people in our alliance have different views), is that as an ardent PvE guy, I HATED being on the outside looking in. Not having access to either Urgoz or the Deep. Having to listen to rumors and gossip about how hard and terrible they were.

I waited for days and weeks for the mission articles for the Deep and Urgoz on the wiki to be filled up with exciting details, but little came through. The first thing I did when I got in to either, is I took screen shots and then basically rewrote the mission articles for both. Because I believe the game does not benefit from a collection of uninformed, rumor mongering, mass that is waiting for "the build" to be posted on some forum so that they would all blindly follow it (ans most likley still fail). I believe you give people as much information about the challenge as you can, and most of them will figure it out, and they will even amaze you with the solutions they come up with.

As for the money, after buying 4 FoW sets for each of your characters and equipping each one with 3 Zodiac weapons, how is your legacy different than that of an e-bayer who bought a ton of gold and ectos for $50?

Kudos, Karlos...I see you on the wiki and i value your response. You inspired me to donate yet another 5k to my guild (Siege Turtles) who are currently in the Keys alliance, holding Cavalon with similar ideals.

Wooo...Ally of the Luxon should be mine within the week...

OMG this thread is hilarious. The faction system is broken, pointless, or worthless just because an alliance can't control the elite missions forever by continous faction farming? Actually, it sounds like the faction system is just getting to the point where Anet intended in the first place. Where is that is you might ask?

Well, since Anet praised TC in the Scribe for ferrying to the Deep, and there is talk of providing an alternative way into elite missions it's, unlikely that Anet orginally intended for a small group of alliances to control them for long periods of time. And wasn't this the talk of the community at the beginning of Factions? That too few would be able to gain ownership?

So, it appears that people in these FEW alliances are finally finding that it isn't worth the effort to maintian the level of faction needed for continous ownership, great, it's about time! Looks like the system is only beginning to work. At some point, it will finally get to where a great deal LESS faction will be needed to have a shot at owning the elite missions, ownership will turn over more frequently, and huge alliances won't be needed to have a shot at owning an outpost (alibet for a much shorter time).

Personally, I don't think Anet is going to listen to rants like this and are unlikely to give more incentives for continuous control of elite missions. I also think it's great to see this thread because it shows that people in these few initial alliances that wanted so desparately to keep control of outposts are starting to realize that it's time to move on an let other's have their turn.

I agree,

but atm I see oOo with 16 mil faction, so I guess it will take a bit longer, but it will come and then the system will be like it is intended:

No farming, but just different alliances trying to get a shot at HzH or cavalon for maybe a day or 2 days.

I love this alliance system, yes offcourse they could implement alot more etc... but the problem is that the players ruined it.

self-promotion ftw.

so Karlos, are you happy with the current Factions system (because that's what this thread was about)?
or would you prefer it be accessible to the public already like UW/FoW is

http://www.avault.com/articles/getar...ame=gwfactions

i replied to this thread because it's apparent that there are guilds in the holding alliances that have finally realised there's no real point to this mindless FFing! OK, so depending on how long ANet's 'on the verge' is, keep on slaving away for us meanwhile, thanks!

now if only ANet could develop some system to con PvE farmers gave me all their drops

Faction farming is pointless, especially since the amber price dropped...
But worst : PVE faction farming is enslavement ! No fun at all. Normal farming is boring but at least you get gold...

Why can not we pvp battle for moving the frontier, control town, have fun and access to elite mission ??? For instance Kurzick people have to move the frontier and conquier Cavalon to acces Urgoz AND the Deep. If Cavalon is owned by kurzick, luxons couldn't access to the deep ...

Why not to make competitive PVE/PVP mission, like aspenwood or jade carrier but with more PVE content, I mean monsters... For example a sort of vizuna mission, you have to defeat a lot of mob and at the end you have to defeat a team of eight players in a duel match (if they survived) ? And this should move the frontier too...

And in each controlled enemy town, why not to make a one time loot coffin for every player who won ? The quality drop should be according to the distance : the farthest town the better drop... First coffins : blue items, farthest gold ones... All random. A small symbolic reward, but a motivating one.

When buying faction I was expecting this kind of things.

What do you think about them ?

I am not happy with how "drole" and boring the PVE side is. FF runs on the Kurzick side are boredom manifested. It's actually good that they nerfed that Luxon running quest, because FFing onthe Kurzick side is as zzzzz as that.

I like the changes to AB. Now an hour doing ABs could land me between 4K and 7K in faction. That's pretty close to FF runs without the snoring involved.

I am a PvE at heart however, and I am critical of the current matching system in AB that could get a well-organized group with two other groups of utter-morons. So, I would actually LOVE if they installed the same tiny faction morsels in Urgoz and the Deep. i.e. each foe you kill in an elite mission gives you 1 Faction with the nation of that mission. (Semantically, it also makes sense, since supposedly, the elite mission is about saving that nation from this very dangerous threat.)

A full Urgoz run would then give great dividend in terms of faction farming, alliance members won't have to feel dirty cause they are doing Urgoz while their friends are slaving away at FF runs. they can even ice it with making killing Urgoz give you 1000 faction or something. So that a full Urgoz run can just about fill your faction tank, fulfill your PvE lust and maybe even make you rich.

That would be my suggestion. and I am fine with the current system of 10% cuts and having to work hard to hold the town, and I am even fine with the burn-out. It's a part of the game as I mentioned in my first reply with the HoH example.

I agree with the OP that the Faction system is not the most incredibly perfect thing that every happened to online gaming.

Personally I consider AB and the competitive missions like Aspenwood to be a fun and profitable diversion from all the other fun and profitable diversions in GW.

AB is a great, pre-structured way to test new Builds in a relatively unpredictable format (you never know what type of Builds you will be facing) and you also get Faction points to spend on armor crafting components or to donate to your Alliance.

Faction is merely another thing you can get in GW which allows you to accomplish goals linked to attaining and spending it.

I like to mix it up on a regular basis...I farm items/cash for a while then do a mish with one of my toons then farm some Faction to donate or buy Jade with, etc.

There are lots of things to do in GW now that dont involve faction farming but FF in moderation is a fun and rewarding facet of the PvP side of GW.

I am also confident that ANet will improve the Faction system in ways that fit their original and persisting vision of online gaming.

That message, "You have been playing for XXX hours, please take a break." is there for a reason. It is the same reason that most rewards/attainable elements in GW are essentially superficial and cosmetic, usually adding little practical improvement to a characters power level in the game. They don't want you to play 16 hours a day, 7 days a week...it's unhealthy and stupid to spend that much time on something that offers no tangible, real world rewards.

I love GW.

I play a few hours a day..sometimes more because I enjoy the way the game works. I dont think its perfect or perfectly balanced but it's a heck of a lot of fun...you just have to mix it up and do different things on a regular basis imho.

Tzu

No point whatsoever, other than annoying the PvE player base at random intervals when they find that after returning to the zone they just left from, the line has changed and the merchants won't talk to them anymore. Yay.

Yup, you are right... when will people realize they are being fools by FF... as for alliances not ferrying I think there are a lot of alliance players who think everyone should have access to the elite missions. Not every player is a jerk or plays this game to hoard everything.

Nothing wrong in an opposite point of view
America is capitalist, there's people happy with that
China is communist, there's people happy with that
Opposite views, both work
And it's not our fault we want the Deep to be alliance only *when we're controlling it* That's how the system was initially designed. People complain about everything, we weren't going to change because someone else wanted us to. They should complain about the system, not our policy, as they say "Don't hate the player, hate the game"
TC wanted to implement a new policy, and it was successful as we see the current situation with the ultra-rare Zodiac drops and they're incredibly high prices...right?
What I don't get is how people complain that the faction system favors grinders > skilled players, when all the faction system does is allow you to a place which is full of grinding to get the things you want...so skill leads to grind?
Anyways, I don't think where we're at will go any farther in either direction until Anet makes the changes that they proposed
BTW I wasn't in the first group that successfully beat the Deep, one of our alliance members said the reason why they didn't tell the strategy was because they thought that beating the Deep gives you 10k faction...Truth or lie, but personally I don't care if everyone knows the Deep build, I use builds posted by others for farming, I probably would have done the same

If the opposing faction of which you are owns the town Unwalking Waters (or any other explorable area): merchants wont speak to you and the outside area is treated as "dungeon". Aka: If your whole party dies, you are resurrected back in town.
If the same faction of which you are owns the town Unwalking Waters (or any other explorable area): merchants will speak to you and the outside area is treated as a "zone". Aka : If your whole party dies, you are resurrected at the closest shrine near you.
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On "no ferries" attitude : So you guys slave and slave to have ownership of the town and dont want to let anyone in because its yours yours yours. Fine by me. You have the right to do as you wish with your reward (apparently Im the only one who still smiles when I see fireworks). Not releasing "The Build" for The Deep. Fine by me (in my opinion FOTM Builds ruin party making anyway *cough*b/p tombs*cough*). I just hope, in turn, when another alliance holds Urgoz (thanks oOo & allied guilds! got me a bow today ^^) and The Deep (no more ferries?) the new ruling alliance treats the last owning alliance like they treated everyone them. Fair enough? Probably wouldnt think too much about ferrying it if you didnt spend 6 hours a day FFing to keep the damn town. Your alliance members might not like being locked out after you lose the town either (I worked so hard to get it, and hardly got to play, now we dont have it anymore and I cant play it!). Heh. Good to know if you are closing The Deep (or is it closed already? gonna miss those squishy onis), Ill get myself two characters that i dont play often ferried there asap!
PS : Even tho the ferries to Urgoz/Deep are/were free, I ALWAYS tip. Thanks for sharing, Id like to share with you too (heres 5k, can you PLEASE gimme some fireworks? weee!).

I agree completely with the OP.

I mean, controlling HzH or Cavalon is like turning your alliance into a civil-service-ferry-force.

Yo, I'm one of the people in the alliance controlling HzH atm.

Reason I like to help hold HzH is so that I can help ferry people over to Urgoz for free, simply because a max of 1000 people can normally get in there without ferrying.

Plus, we do it for free and intend access to be kept free (not like other guilds in our alliance who wanted to charge and joined WHOA.........look how long that lasted )

Not like you're going to believe it, but we didn't "slave" anybody to earn faction, we barely even forced people to farm, atleast my guild...you answered your point about releasing build so no reason to defend it, and the only people who FF 6 hours a day are the people who *want* to (Yeah I think they're crazy too)
As for getting ferries, I do get them from other guilds
Look at it this way, when we did a Private Deep it included only our Alliance, subset of the guilds in it...
When other guilds to Public Deep it includes anyone...even Kurzicks So technically speaking, barring our alliance isn't part of the policy since you're supposed to let everyone in. Besides it wasn't my decision to lock off deep...and btw there's people from these alliances that ferry that have players and sometimes guilds who believe in a Private Deep
Ferry policy doesn't make everybody happy...
And if I were Anet, I would have made Deep/Warren a new elite area similar to FoW and UW where everyone of the respective faction could join. I would find different rewards for owning towns...

I don't understand why people say such ridiculous stuff as "oh, alliances holding towns are being played for fools!"

I "want" to hold HzH. I want to get people in for free. I want to set an example for other players of this game that you can be one of the best in the game and not use it to hoard more ectos and buy more FoW suits and rare skins for characters you don't even play.

I am not FFing as a public service to the other players, I am not even doing them a favor. I know we get our share of benefit too. Many players make a lot of money off of tips and obviously we get our share of bragging rights and neener-neener-neener moves.

I do agree that the "reward" is not anywhere near equal to the amount of "work" and I illustrated that this is true for any other part of the game.

However, we are not doing it for the reward, we want to be in charge of the house, and define how the house is run. Because frankly, many others "STUNK" at it. The process is self-correcting. When we had materialistic guilds/leaders in our alliance, there was unrest. They split and made their own thing and we are still doing our thing, everyone is happy and working for their vision.

Most likely, if House ownership comes down to just the discount merchant and the fireworks, we will lose interest. As it stands now, we are proud to be the Defenders of the Free Elite Mission.

Praise your word Karlos. Free Free free how it should be. Keep up the good work. And when you guys get bored holding the house hopefully your words spread to other alliances and they do the same good deed.

So why is it even tied to holding the Capitals?
Karlos-Well atleast you enjoy that unlike people who only ferry to "farm" publicity...

what i meant was free access to elite mission invovling the ferrying.

I meant that also...

well since the members from the alliance say they do it to keep HzH/Cavalon free for the masses, then we can only hope ANet hurries up with that 'alternative access' they mention. (and save the alliance members their time too!)

Heres what i say, get rid of the ferrying, allow access to the deep and whatever the other one is, for a price, not just 1k but maybe 5k or something higher. I think then people will be fighting over the towns more.

I have not read the whole post but IMO, this part of Ch2 is going to die once Ch3 is out.
I mean most of the people are farming faction for:

1- armor.
2- control a town.

For the armor part, its an easy one: everyone gets their armor then they will stop farming for faction. I farmed jade and amber and now I have most of the armors I want for my characters. Also friends I know do not farm anymore because they got their armor.

For the town control part: people want to control to get to the elite missions.
I've been to these missions and IMO they are boring as hell. Its exciting at the beggining but really boring after a while. Endless mobs of the same monster. And 4-5 hours to get to the end for maybe or maybe not you get an elite green. And now everyone gets to these missions that the price of the greens that drop there is going down fast.

Nothing beats FoW. GW is been out for more than a year now and FoW is still exciting as the first time you got in it.

Ch3 is out, people will abandon Ch2 faction part.

Nobody in your guild was making sure you FF'd. You don't even have to FF in an alliance that huge, trust me. I have been in Komalis Protector for a while, and I have donated a total of 50k faction. Seriously, I am hardly contributing and we are still growing. YOU don't have to FF.

Exactly, and people say the holding guilds FF 6 hours a day...
I could chose not to FF, but that's a little dishonest. I don't go to the lengths of 6 hours when I do FF though

best reward i have think of is to put a NPC so that the other player not in the alliance pay 100g or etc and that money should be distributed among all the member in the alliance that is not hard to do.

Pretty much the same as charging for entrance to deep, which gets the "deserving" public angry. Not only that 100gp is nothing, maybe 1k because it's about 1k faction per alliance member which counters faction decay.

After being in TC alliance from think beginning (befor we got Cavalon) and after that moving to Keys alliance i must say we really got bored to faction farming. It really didnt only affect alliance battles it also got to everything.
When we realized it we desided to leave Keys alliance and give room for guild who still wants to do that.

I know faction farming is fun but to do that everytime you log on it becomes boring.
Now i see Keys has like 15mil faction which makes me think that we really did right. I dont think many people want to FF all day just to keep up with degen.

I dont think this was good way to keep people playing GW. I did wait much more from factions (maybe thats why am disapointed)

I've been stressing this for ages, When bringing out each and every new chapter stop isolating them from each other. Otherwise people will just flock to the next game and dump the old chapter into the ground and so on.

Mix the chapters into each other more.

i was afraid for this to happen and it did, my guild was also in an allience that came close of HzH but it just made the guild a bad place to play in... it just all was about FF, now we just came back to the basic GvG's and having fun, FF's are worthless... 20% sucks and fireworks are as almost all things in GW a gold sink

one thing that bothers me to no end -
I've done the 10k friend quests on both sides

I STILL have to play the 'waaah you have either the same (possibly 0) faction or more faction than the other side so you can't merchant, get the benefit of allied rez shrines blah blah' - ARGGGGGHHHHHHH

It's a lot of fun working areas and playing that 'how do I lose 236 faction' game or 'well guess I have to win a couple pvp sessions or pve farm here before I join a guild group or join a pug so I don't go insane without merchant ability here'. *If we're friends to a side already, knock that crap off PLEASE*