Faction Changes!

Check out the below details on upcoming Faction changes from Lead Designer Marie "Aro Sei" Croall:

We’ve been working on putting in more features to give factions something to fight over with Global Territory Control and related systems. In addition to these features, we wanted to put in some long needed changes to the faction mechanic itself. These improvements are designed to make identifying your enemies clearer and allow players more freedom in their choices while still highlighting conflict in a post-apocalyptic environment.

Chosen Faction:

With the introduction of Global Territory Control, a system that combines the recently introduced Faction Territory Control keep mechanics with conflict towns and allows players to capture territory to contribute towards a global advantage for their faction, we also want to make sure it is clear to all players who they are fighting for and who they are against. Currently the situation can exist where Player A can be allied with Enforcer and Lightbearer while player B is allied with Lightbearer and Vista. Player B can be hostile to Player A but will appear friendly due to the shared Lightbearer faction. It can get kind of messy, and not knowing who will attack you can really put people off of PVP. FE has a bit of a learning curve and this is one of the places where we feel we can soften that without dumbing it down.

In order to accomplish this we will be removing the shoulder factions. Players will need to pick a chosen faction, this is the faction they will be loyal to and earn points in. When they earn points with Lightbearer they will lose points with Traveler. No other factions will be affected.

Players will be able to take missions from any three factions they want, but they will only be in one chosen faction, which will control their access to PvP objectives, certain merchants and missions, and faction channels. You can choose to be in any faction you have a positive reputation with, and it doesn’t have to be your highest faction. You can only leave a chosen faction if your reputation with that faction goes below zero. At that point you can choose a new faction. New missions will be available to assist with this process, but it is not intended to be quick or easy to change faction in this way.

Faction Friendly Fire

In addition to creating a chosen faction we will be eliminating Faction Friendly Fire except in cases of Clan Wars, Bloodsports, and dueling. This change is aimed at reducing same-faction griefing, hopefully contributing to a less jarring PvP experience in Fallen Earth.

January State of the Game

January SOTG from Marie below!

Happy New Year! This month we’re focusing on improvements to existing systems and areas while we lay the foundation for some major new systems that will make their debut later on this year.

Current Projects:

In January we will be releasing the much requested bomb mechanic for use in Territory Control which will give players another method of taking down the keep doors and allowing for some new strategies and tactics. Post January we will be adding Territory Control to all sectors to give players more ways to capture towns and areas for their factions. In the coming weeks Affa and Neverender will be giving you a behind the scenes look at how we will be taking the concept of a limited area Territory control system and applying it to the world, how it impacts existing control mechanics and what’s improved from the original design and where we are going with faction mechanics.

Kaibab Forest will be getting a little more love with some new level 30 -35 missions that focus a bit more on LifeNet and its “capabilities”. As we move forward with more dynamic systems we will also be working to expand the lore and getting back into the rich history of the plateau and the people responsible for it. We’ve also started cleaning up some of the flow in the starter zones addressing some continuity issues and working on overall improvements to the sector one missions.

Systems has been adding improved rare treasure drops to our Master, World, Scavenger and instance bosses, as well as some of the harvesters and nodes, giving players a chance at all of the rare components and other goodies available in FE.

As for art - based on the feedback we received with the Embry reworking, the art team has jumped in to a slightly more ambitious project – revamping and improving Haven. In addition to fixing the frame rate issues around the town we wanted to pull the Lightbearer aesthetic more in line with a post-fall world while also improving the gameplay and flow of Haven.

The future!

Since the world is coming to an end in December (trust me, I know some Mayans) that doesn’t give us much time, so we’d better get moving on some of those big important systems we’ve had in the pipeline for way too long. The augmentation system is first up, giving players a way to customize and improve weapons and gear. Maenad will be speaking more on this shortly as we finalize the design and move into production.

This month we’re also breaking ground on one of the biggest systems we’ve ever done. It’s still too early to really get into details on but we’ll make sure this one was worth waiting for.

On that admittedly cryptic note…

…see you in the Wasteland

M