Faction Alignments

[The Crazy Animal]

I was doing some reading today about what other people thought needed to be fixed with the alignment system in mmud and a thought dawned on me that a good way to reinforce a more even view of alignment would be to have an underlying factional alignment.

To do this each major group in the game would be given a secondary alignment path they would use to determine if a PC or NPC was friend or foe. How this would work is that the actual alignment penalties would be dealt out by this factional alignment. This would make it so if you are an evil aligned player but on good terms with a particular group, they would ignore your misdeeds that don?t involve them. Similarly, a good aligned player with a history of transgressions against one group would be remembered by that group and treated as a criminal.

The example that gave me the idea was basically this: how many dark monks does an evil player have to kill before they realize that you are not their friend anymore.

Now there are a few things that would need to work differently with fractional alignment than general alignment.
1. Factional Alignment should not wear off automatically; however, it should be able to be removed via quests for that particular faction.
2. Factional alignment needs to be two sided and aware of general alignment.
3. Rewards for power quests should influence fraction alignments depending on their type.
4. Factional alignments should be capped but not restrict a player from performing deeds. My logic is if you kill 20 people of the fraction or 500 they are going to treat you the same at that point.
5. Factional alignments need to be able to be set both globally and locally on NPCs. Any information set locally on a NPC of a given fraction needs to override the global settings.
6. Each NPC would be given a fraction group or set to none.

I was thinking that making factional alignment aware of general alignment could be fairly easily done. The way this would be done is described below

Faction data:

Faction name: ?what ever the fraction is?
Alignment Friend: ?This would be a variable that is tested against for a PC or NPC and correlates to a general alignment score.? This can be a set for any alignment value.
Alignment Foe: ?This would be the number of faction evil points it takes to make the faction treat you as an enemy.?

These are just some base ideas of what should give or remove fraction points:

Getting Faction points:
Attacking a Faction member but not killing them
Killing a faction member when seen by another fraction member
Being seen by a faction member while committing a crime against a faction member
Completing a quest that goes against a factions interest

Removing Faction points:
Completing a quest that is in the interest of the faction
Killing NPCs that oppose the factions interest

I?m sure there?s probably a fair bit of stuff that I left out or didn?t think about but figured this was enough to get the general idea across.

TCA

[DeathCow]

i like it....i need rules thay work with scripting.

[The Crazy Animal]

I think if anything this would only have a minor effect on scripting like don't go to x town to use their bank because I just slaughtered 50 people of their fraction for no reason.

I was thinking a little more about this:

Lets say the point scale goes from 1 hated to 200 loved with 100 being the average neutral possition to a faction. This would allow people that have been long time friends of a group get away with a little more mischeif.

Now we know we need a system of point reduction or additions for some acts:

I think these things should be left to be defined in the faction data and globaly set across the faction. This would allow each fraction to act as an independant group.

Attacking a faction memeber = -x
Killing a faction member = -x
Killing a faction enemy = +x
Killing a faction friend = -x
Stealing from a faction member = -x
Picking/bashing faction door = -x

The basic rules are fairly simple if you are caught by a witness of the faction doing the action you get the points. If not you don't get any points. Now since factions can't be everywhere I was thinking it might be possible to link witnesses with other factions so if killing an enemy of the faction the both factions find out about it. Similary killing a friend of the faction would also be reported if the deed is seen.

For this to work there need to be two more fields in the faction data set:

Faction Enemies:
1: faction name
2: faction name

Faction Friends:
1: faction name
2: faction name

I was thinking about the alignment foe idea and thought it should be expanded a little to function more like a range of actions. Each faction should have variables for what actions are taken at what point. Each of these would get a value based on the desired fraction score for the action not all actions should be punishments.

Faction Actions:
Greet when seen: "faction members greet player, when they see the player"
Curse when Seen: "faction members curse player, when they see the player"
Protect: "faction member moves to protect a player when attacked"
All Attack Kill: "All faction members attempt to kill the player"
All Attack Drop: "All faction members attacks till dropped"
Guards Jail: "Faction guards attempt to jail the player"
Guards kill: "Faction guards attempt to kill the player"
Guards Drop: "Faction guards attempt to drop the player"
Deny Service: "Faction members Deny service to the player"
Fraction Flee: "Faction members other than guards flee from the player"

There should be a wide range of actions that a faction can do but not all of them should need to be defined. Turning them off should be done by setting the variable to 0.

Now there should allso be a way of giving points per particular kills above the normal amount this would be for bosses or quests. Maybe some type of textblock command like ModFactionAL "faction name" "value" or some such thing.

Each PC would also need to have a dynamic list of their faction alignments.

Hope you still like the idea if not just tell me what needs more work.

TCA

[Valentine]

I like it, but would recommend using the word 'faction' since we are speaking English and not German.

Or band, alliance...something that doesn't sound quite so modern.

[The Crazy Animal]

That was a big typo I didn't spot.. it was supposed to be faction.. heh I'll fix it.

[Valentine]

I'll take your word for it...I actually don't care a whole lot  ;) The word 'fractions' conjures up mental images of people screaming "I'm down with the one-fourth YO!!"

But I have an overactive imagination.

[The Crazy Animal]

grin sorry didn't get my typo till after I posted and you spotted the reply before I finished editing it..

I feel stupid I guess that makes us even for the exp ep bit :)

[The Crazy Animal]

Fixed it in both posts..

[Valentine]

HEE!! Ok that was the funniest thing ever.

[The Crazy Animal]

This wouldn't happen if word could just read my mind...