Faction Change: Please Read and Comment

I may be a single man who thinks this, but I belive that faction is not as useful or rewarding as it could be. I, as a person with 4 RP characters, and therefore no PvP characters, unlock a whole slew of stuff, and that's just great. However it does occur to me that in order to actually benifit from the stuff i unlock, i would have to delete an RP character. That's not good .

Additionaly I've heard stories of people who have unlocked everything and have nothing further to spend their faction on. I'd hate for that to happen to me =/.

Now, what i propose is a change to the faction redemption system allowing characters to use faction for other purposes than unlocking stuff that might never be able to be used. I'm not saying that we should destroy the old system, but that we should add a new system.

I don't know how the guild wars team could handle this, got a few ideas though:

1) 10 Faction is tradable for 1 gold.
>This will promote PvP in RP characters
>This will allow the benifits of Faction to be given to RP characters
>This would allow an alternative source of money making aside from farming

2) Faction Traders
Items would be tradable for faction, like a collector for items.
>This will promote PvP in RP characters
>This will allow the benifits of Faction to be given to RP characters
>This would be a good chance to introduce different items to Guild Wars Players

3) 1 Skill point for 7,500 faction
>This will promote PvP in RP characters
>This will allow the benifits of Faction to be given to RP characters
>This will allow for characters to reach their full potential without having to grind on enemies



Some might say that RP characters do get experience from PvPing and that's enough. But lets see how much exp. we actually get...

For a flawless victory in Competition Arenas:
20 Faction x 4
25 Faction x 2

Total 130 exp.

For a victory in Competition Arenas:
20 Faction x 4 + 25

Total 105 exp.


So...
It now takes 15k exp to gain a skill point. (Which is way better than the 20k thing).

So. Doing the math for you:
Flawless Victories:

15000 / 130 =
About 115 Flawless victories to gain a skill point.

Victories:

15000 / 105 =
About 143 victories to gain a skill point.

That's alot.

I really would like to see the Guild Wars team do something to help promote RP PvPing. If you agree or disagree or anything at all, PLEASE, post here. I really want something done...

Sounds good!
I PvP a lot (just look at the GW Ladder) and I barley have a couple thousand gold in my storage.

faction was made pvp specific keep it that way.

if you want an rp reward rp for it.

Guild Wars isn't supposed to really have a big boundary between RP and PvP...

PvP Chars are just a feature that was put into the game for people to speed a character to full PvP potential.

If there was a boundary intended for PvPing and RPing, why in the world would there be arenas such as Ascalon Arena that can ONLY be attended by RP chars. If Guild Wars wants to keep PvPing for RP chars they really should do something.

/signed

Faction is indeed highly useless in it's present form after everything you want unlocked, is unlocked.

All the changes in the original post sound great.

that is not true as it does exactly what it was intended to do which is unlock everything by and for pvp and when everything is unlocked that is all for faction. it has done its job.

i may be wrong but i doubt that they will allow targeted pvp anything into PVE.

the main arguement will be the same as the failed attempt at the UAS button.

if you can get it fast in pvp why bother going to the effort of PVE at all?

I see no problems with this suggestion. It's a good idea, the reasoning is sound, and its benefits far outweight any potential or imagined negatives. The rate of return in this proposed Faction system doesn't undermine PvE at all; it merely provides an alternative with a similar rate of return.

/signed

/Signed

It'd really get me into PvP'ing more. At the moment, I have 3 level 20 PvE Chars; E/Mo --- R/E --- W/Mo, and a PvP Char slot, but I'm terribly bored and wanna make a Necro or Mesmer, but I want a PvP slot as I constantly delete it and make a new PvP character as I switch a lot, and if I got other reward benefits such as you stated, then I'd make all 4 my character slots to PvE.

Once again,

/Signed - Nice suggestion.

It is faction with the god of war, balthazar. Aesthetically, it should only be used for PvP-related things. Suggestions for faction spendable on PvE-related things surface fairly regularly, and I have to say, this time, I am against it. While it is true that I have maxed my faction, and I am left with nothing to spend it on. . .I think it should stay that way, both for the aesthetic reason and because those who win halls/gvg regulary would soon be ahead in gold and PvE items than the PvE players themselves.

this makes no since.

i make a character and take him out of pre at lvl 2. get ran to drok and buy armor. walk outside town and cap an easy elite. now go back to the ascalon arena and farm faction all day and buy ANY!!! elite i wanted to even the ones from the last mission on the game. since the faction is shared on the account i could have farmed the faction on another character and give my lvl 2 any and every elite on the game. that's just dumb.

if you want your rp character to compete in pvp then take the effort to get the stuff from the rp side. if you want to be serious about pvp then you have the faction you can use.

since all you really need to make an rp character competetive in pvp is a collector weapon with upgrades (the "good" upgrades are cheap, sundering is not good) and drok armor. that can be acheived in less than 1 day easy. there are builds that run absolutely no elites so they are not needed as most people think. i have a build right now that i don't even know what elite to use for it.

this idea should not pass and for good reason. pvp rewards pvp. rp rewards rp.

My suggestion is to not be a r00kie with 4 roleplay characters. Leave 1 open and unlock everything so it can be anything you need for pvp!

This makes no sense. How would you be giving your level 2 any and every elite in the game? You have to cap elites for PvE characters. He never said anything about changing that.

If it can bring more PvEers into PvP... I'm all for it. As long as it's reasonable and not too unbalanced.

Oh and ANet should have fixed the Ascalon Arena with Droknar armour problem a loooong time ago. I guess they're just blind or something and can't see the problem. I mean the solution is pretty simple, allow only level 11+ characters to wear the highest armor levels. Done.

there's a HUGE boundary between RP and pvp players, and its really hard to start playing pvp after playing pve all the time - catch 22 - u cant get in more or less organized team if u dont have rank and of cos u dont have this rank cos u was playing pve mostly... and never mind that in high-lvl areas pve teams are playing against same builds as pvp teams - yes pve teams are playing against ai not real ppl but instead of figting 8 smtimes quite disorganized teams u have to fight 12+ lvl 28 perfectly organized mobs so it is some sort or practice.

speaking about fractions - i think that there's no need to trade fraction for gold f/ex, or for items - as i can understand it (i have no pvp chars only rp) pvp chars are supposed to unlock all items they need and honestly good pve played dosnt need these gold from fractions - if u're not playing in good organized team it'll take loooong time to get enough fraction to trade for same amount of gold as u can get in 1-2 hours in FOW f/ex, and i'm not counting items dropped from mobs and chests. and how pvp chars can use this gold - they cant visit crafters to get armor, and they got 4 set of weapons alrdy so what they can do with this gold?

ummmm as a matter of fact he did

you dont have to cap if you can use faction on a RP character.

now do you see his complaint?

1. get a run to Droknar at lvl 2
2. learn Signet of Capture
3. get some guildies together who help you killing a boss
4. capture the elite skill
5. go back to Ascalon Arena and own everyone there.

Also the Droknar-armour would be a problem.

Perhaps using faction to buy skills for a pve character, like "1k and one skill point" or "5000 Faction".

Faction was created specifically for PvP. As if the ability to unlock skills, weapons mods, and runes across all your PvP characters wasn't powerful enough.

/unsigned

AS A SIDE NOTE FOR ALL THE PVP PEOPLE ITCHING TO UNLOAD FACTION BECAUSE THEY HAVE UNLOCKED EVERYTHING ASK HOW MANY PVE PEOPLE HAVE COME CLOSE TO UNLOCKING HALF OF WHAT YOU HAVE ALREADY.

NOT JUST UNSIGNED BUT /DOUBLE UNSIGNED

I agree that faction points isn't as useful as they should be. I've unlocked almost all the skills I want to test and right now, I am just buying whatever is left.... kinda pointless.

What's this Unsigned and Signed stuff at the end? I keep seeing that.

A few things that need to be said:

One, those harping on some "arena exploits" really need to re-read the OP's suggestion. Faction being redeemable for skill points was what he was saying, not Faction being redeemable for the actual skills themselves. PvE Faction-ers under this suggestion will still need to skill-cap for Elites, and from what I gather, still need to go through the usual methods for regular skill acquistion (i.e., quests, skill trainer, etc). There's no instant skill acquisition here.

Two, pointing to the low level arena exploiting going on as if that problem is directly the result of a suggestion like this is shortsighted and simplistic. The low level arena exploiting is solely due to Drok runs and twinked-out low-level characters, problems that have existed long before this suggestion. They should not have any bearing on this discussion for two reasons:

A, they're irrelevant to this topic.

B, the suggestion will not compound the problem, because there is no mention made of characters being able to acquire Elite skills through the proposed RP Faction system.

Low level arena exploiting is a separate issue entirely.

Three, this suggestion is to be used as an alternative to the current PvE system. Pointing to the ease of gold and item acquisition in FoW/UW/Grenth's Footprint/Sorrow, etc., is completely asinine in my view, because just consider for a moment the prices of Superior runes. Some of them are easily 80k. Prices for various upgrades are not exactly accessible, as well.

Some players prefer farming FoW or whatever to get good items. Others don't. It seems to me this suggestion will encourage the casual PvE/PvP hybrid player to experience both game modes:

"PvP with your RP character, gain Faction, and use that Faction to better equip your RP character, whether it be gaining more skill points, gold, whatever."

I'm not seeing how that's a bad thing. It's killing multiple birds with one stone.

Hell, I'd be keen on seeing an actual item acquisition for PvErs in PvP arenas, at an appropriate Faction amount, of course. Scale the amounts as necessary, restrict item acquisition to the "RPvP" characters (Insta-20s are restricted from zoning out, so clearly, it's possible to differentiate between the two types from a code standpoint), and one of the best options to minimize the low-level twinking?

In high-level arenas like Drok (and even the Comp Arenas at LA)...bar entrance if a character does not meet the level requirement. Level 2s can't get into the Level 15-20 arenas in Drok/LA, can't access the Priests to acquire items, gold, etc.

This is not difficult to figure out. lol

YOU CAN DO THAT NOW!!!!!

I belive it says skill point, does it not?

As for my suggestions, they are ONLY suggestions. GW team can handle this however they want, but i'd love it to be handled...

Once again... Why would the Guild Wars Designers put in arenas like Ascalon arena and Shiverpeak Arenas and EVEN MAKE YOUR RP CHARACTER DO A PVP EXPERIENCE IN ORDER TO PROCEED TO POST SEARING, if they intended to keep PvEing on the left and PvPing on the right.

I just don't understand...

And currently, they've changed the game with the current faction system. You don't even HAVE to make an RP character anymore... This isn't entirley bad, but RPing is becoming more and more dummed down because of less and less players RPing.

Why was that important at all...? Someone with an RP character actually has to put time into making their character, whereas PvPers just click a few buttons.

Sounds kinda obnoxious to me. And plenty of fault in it too. Here's my example:


I play a few different builds: Water Nuker, Interupter, Protector, Arrow Nuker, Status Spam, Damage Support, and Warder.
Why for instance, would I even need to unlock a rune of supirior absorbtion? I have never, and doubtfully will ever use a warrior. Does this make sense to you?
I'll reclarify. I don't need the things that I can unlock, so why would I unlock them? The answer is because THAT'S ALL I CAN DO. I'd like to see an alternative to this confinment... My soul yearns for the skies!



Edit:
Furthermore, the GW team keeps nerfing the game due to farmers. This would help to keep farming lower and would provide PvP as an alternative. More PvPers = Good.

It was already said once, but nobody really bothered to note it, faction right now is with Balthazar, the God of War and stuff like that. I don't really consider PvP a war, more of a slaughter. Anyways, maybe another type of faction will be added later, maybe Grenth for how many monsters you slaughter would be a better version of faction for PvE.

It's kind of like where you choose to sign a petition or not.
I don't know if ANet goes by numbers, but they do browse these forums.

I'd have no problem with people using faction for pve gains, as you wrote it. It certainly would be cool if it got more people into pvp. I just don't think unlockables should apply to PVE characters. Anything else(like trading faction for gold or skill points) is fine by me.

Something from the pvp side:
Let my pvp chars use their skill points somewhere... It takes 143 battles or something to get a skill point. Give me some way to redeem those.

I see your point.
The purpose of this idea was to meld PvP with PvE though. Making a seperate type of faction, wouldn't help much in this case. As for Bathazar being the god of war, I'm not sure 4 vs 4 battles are very war like... PvEing is way more battlefuryish than that. Killing swarms of the undead army is more like a war thing than "Get the $%^&ing Monk!"

I like the seperate faction though, if they make faction for all gods, it'd be cool.

/signed for it's subtle brilliance.

yay cause I want more lvl 17 W/Mos with swords in my CA groups.

meh, i like some of it but disagree with alot of it, i like the idea of using faction for redeeming items (only if they made the item worth 0 gold and have to cost a ton of faction, for balance purpouses), but faction shouldnt be so easy, i think buying faction is a dumb idea, rich people could just use a huge chunk of there money and unlock everything. i htink that keeping the faction system how it is would be best for guild wars.

Who cares if they do? A bad player, with all skills unlocked, is not going to add anything to a team. Good players will not party with him for more than one round, hence it's not like having all skills unlocked is going to benefit him in PVP.

The faction system was designed to allow a PvP ONLY player to obtain all skills and mods in a comparable amount of time as a PvE player. (The system is slower in obtaining all skills but MUCH faster in obtaining all mods.) The faction system does this well and IMO shouldn't be changed.

I'd much rather PvP with players who were PvP'ing for the sake of PvP'ing instead of PvP'ing for a potential PvE reward. Prior to the faction system, I similarly felt the same. I much rathered PvE with with players who were PvE'ing for the sake of PvE'ing instead of PvE'ing solely for the sake of unlocking skills/items for PvP.

/unsigned