How DOES faction work?

[dafier]

I hope this is in the correct area of the forum.

Speaking about Velious faction specifically and going to use giants as an example.

My questions are simple and of course this is open to the general public but I would like to get feedback on how this actually works from staff if possible.

1. Does the level of the giant determine how much faction is given or taken away?

2. Do named giants, such as Bekerak Coldbones in GD give more faction than the non named giants? (same with other zones with named giants)

3. When killing any giants does it give a bigger negative hit to giant faction than it does positive hits to either CoV or Coldain, or are they equal hits?

4. When are the faction hits on Vindi and others going to reflect more close to classic, if at all? If this is not ever going to change, saying that would be helpful.

Thank you for your time,

[Kekephee]

1. No. The "status" of the giant usually does- Tormax is a more "important" giant than a frost giant commoner. And the "status" of the giant is often an indicator that they will be a higher level, due to being more important. But it's not about level.

2. Depends on the named giant. Some giants that should be a bigger faction hit according to their level and status are not. Some giants are a surprisingly large hit.

3. Bigger negative. You're usually looking at like a 10:1 ratio. You'll go from max ally to KOS a whole hell of a lot faster than the other way around. This is to prevent people from just grinding one faction to max, then dropping it and gaining another faction, grinding it more, in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back scheme. Which I tried back on live.

4. Only the devs know, if anyone.



The best advice I can give you is this: don't try to meta-game faction. You'll go insane and it will slowly kill you like Mozart. Just grind it.

[dafier]

I am not playing the 'meta-game' faction thing, and I do just grind it out. I have my own factioning experience in game and I'm not sharing here because people can figure it out on their own.

My main goal is to get a response from staff who know the answers to the questions I am asking, if those questions aren't going to give away too much, so to speak.

You say 'No' to my first quesiton, but do you have a packet capture proving this? You better not, hence why I am hoping a Dev/Staff response with answers.

Your answers are helpful to the general public, but I am already aware of what you responded with. Thanks much though. I am not trying to debase you.

[kuuky]

I have my own factioning experience in game and I'm not sharing here because people can figure it out on their own.

Treat me like I'm dumb (for all you know I am) and please do share!!!

[dafier]

Treat me like I'm dumb (for all you know I am) and please do share!!!

I apologize. That was poorly expressed. I have suspicions. I don't want to start rumors. I'd rather get answers.

[Kekephee]

I am not playing the 'meta-game' faction thing, and I do just grind it out. I have my own factioning experience in game and I'm not sharing here because people can figure it out on their own.

My main goal is to get a response from staff who know the answers to the questions I am asking, if those questions aren't going to give away too much, so to speak.

You say 'No' to my first quesiton, but do you have a packet capture proving this? You better not, hence why I am hoping a Dev/Staff response with answers.

Your answers are helpful to the general public, but I am already aware of what you responded with. Thanks much though. I am not trying to debase you.


How do you think people know enough about the faction hits to put them on the wiki? Information provided by devs, along with rigorous testing, theorycrafting, retesting, parsing and number crunching. People have calculated the exact faction levels for mobs that they weren't explicitly informed on by the devs. It's not hard to do. Kill as many of one giant as it takes to get max ally, calculate how many faction points per kill. People did it. You don't need packet pictures.


Always remember, this is a game for nerds, and nerds will always do the mathy shit.

[Swish]

Let me do a number crunch real quick...

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

32.333, repeating of course

[Pyrocat]

1. Does the level of the giant determine how much faction is given or taken away?

2. Do named giants, such as Bekerak Coldbones in GD give more faction than the non named giants? (same with other zones with named giants)

3. When killing any giants does it give a bigger negative hit to giant faction than it does positive hits to either CoV or Coldain, or are they equal hits?

4. When are the faction hits on Vindi and others going to reflect more close to classic, if at all? If this is not ever going to change, saying that would be helpful.


1. No. It's incredibly efficient to grind out lower level mobs because of this. If you're doing +Coldain +CoV the best place (even better than plate cycle imo) is outside of Kael in WL, the low level giants guarding the wall.

2. Yes, some do. I'm not sure which ones. I've heard this from word of mouth, no proof.

3. Bigger negative. I've heard that all Kromriff (frost, bearded) give more +Coldain than they do +CoV, and all Kromzek (storm, armored) only give +CoV. Regardless, point #1 stands.

4. dunno

and people are getting the values from live, where the UI actually tells you the exact + and - values for each hit. Devs heavily took from live as a source when setting up faction on this server, check the bug forums.

[Zaela]

but do you have a packet capture proving this?

There are no packets for faction changes in any case. It's all server-side.

Edit: nothing with specific values, I mean -- obviously there's packets for the "Your faction standing with..." messages. Server decides when something proxy aggros you; server decides what happens when you interact with a quest mob; every con is a round trip to the server. Nothing the client needs to know about specific values.

[jolanar]

I hope this is in the correct area of the forum.

Speaking about Velious faction specifically and going to use giants as an example.

My questions are simple and of course this is open to the general public but I would like to get feedback on how this actually works from staff if possible.

1. Does the level of the giant determine how much faction is given or taken away?

2. Do named giants, such as Bekerak Coldbones in GD give more faction than the non named giants? (same with other zones with named giants)

3. When killing any giants does it give a bigger negative hit to giant faction than it does positive hits to either CoV or Coldain, or are they equal hits?

4. When are the faction hits on Vindi and others going to reflect more close to classic, if at all? If this is not ever going to change, saying that would be helpful.

Thank you for your time,

If it works the same as live, which there is no reason it shouldn't, Then Yes but the status answer already given, Yes, Yes, n/a.

If you want exact faction hits, go to live and kill each mob in Kael and figure out which ones give the highest for the least amount of work.

[Thiefboy777]

4. When are the faction hits on Vindi and others going to reflect more close to classic, if at all? If this is not ever going to change, saying that would be helpful.


I'm going to go with never. I suppose for the same reasons Velious raid mobs drop less loot then they classically should, Fellspine and his duo obtainable 34% haste belt is MIA, flurry drakes and certain buffed mobs: to not trivialize the endgame. Which is all probably a good idea because this is all we get.