Joining Factions idea

I posted a similar idea a couple of years ago.

Basically, the idea went like this: Each faction would have a contact in each zone in their level range. The contact in the lowest level applicable zone would have an "initiation arc." Completing this arc would grant you a membership badge. Along with this badge would come an inherent power which would grant you Stalker level stealth to that faction that suppressed if you were in an instanced mission or you attacked them on the street.

Each faction had a story arc or two in each level range that you could only receive if you had the membership badge. These story arcs would delve into the lore of the faction and advance the faction's goals in the city.

If you ever join another faction (exception: Nemesis), your membership badge would be replaced with a "betrayer" badge which would generate a large ambush of that faction and send it after you (and you would lose your stealth to that faction), and from that point you could not receive missions from that faction's contacts any more.

Hero factions would be more forgiving, allowing you to keep simultaneous memberships, but there would be fewer of them. The net result giving villains more potential and varied content.

And why was that???

Because this isn't World of Conan's War hammer Crafting?

Probably because it didn't make sense and there was no reason to change the entire hero side of the game as that was already out for 5 issues before villians were brought in.

What is "EAT"? (Besides what you do w/ food I mean, lol)

Epic ArcheType

Thanks, I guess I should have spelled it out to begin with.

Depends on who you ask.

From a practical point of view, Cryptic had no long term plans for City of Heroes. Cryptic basically kicked this game into maintenance mode after the Marvel Lawsuit resulted in Cryptic building Marvel Universe Online. Cryptic's lack of long term plans, or resources to put those plans into action, are why things like a "true end-game" and "power-customization" are only arriving years after the launch of the game.

From a developer said point of view, I do not believe any official explanation was ever given. However, I do know that Going Rogue does shed some light on the potential problems of writing and implementing such content or capabilities.

One of the new upgrades in Going Rogue was the yellow reticule target enemies. Outside of an attack, these enemies will ignore the player. These yellow-box enemies were used to populate the Praetorian World with NPC's that were still enemies, but not enemies. Almost immediately players began complaining that these same enemies weren't yellow boxed outside of specific areas. These boards, and the beta / test chats were filled with players questioning why their Loyalist was getting shot at by Cole's troops, and why their Resistance members were getting shot at by Resistance Groups.

The simple fact is... THE ENGINE DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT.

There is no system in place to determine whether or not an enemy should attack a player based on player faction. Adding a system to enable the combat system to flag enemies to attack or ignore players based on faction would add extensive computational and network bandwidth requirements.

How bad could that system be? Well, go grab a character with super-speed, or use a dual-build or a triple-build slot to make a character with super-speed. Drop by Vidiot Maps and look for a location badge somewhere that you haven't gotten. I suggest

Now, as a super-speeder, run over that badge and keep on running.

Notice anything about the difference in time from when you ran over that location badge till you were awarded that location badge? That is the lag issue when doing a database look up.

As far as we are aware, the yellow-box target in Praetoria is a bit of a cheat. We believe that the enemies are given a power suppressing perception to 0ft, and that attacking de-suppresses the power. The behavior seems to be an inverse of the hide system used by Stalkers.


So that's one of the technical limitations of enabling players to join factions. The game system and network really can't handle keeping up with players combat options based on faction flags.

there is also the Story limitation. Both Going Rogue and City of Villains shed some more light on the underlying problems.

In City of Villains players are given the opportunity to openly fight against the Arachnos. Most of the fights come down to two rationals. The first rational is that the player is participating in Arachnos in-fighting. The second rational is that the player has successfully broken away from Project Destiny and is an equal to Lord Recluse (unlocking the Lord Recluse Strike Force). Even after achieving this high position, players are still introduced to contacts like they were mere bugs, not fit for the tasks the contact has to offer.

This shows one of the first limitations: there was no system in the game to change the content that the player experiences based on the things the player has done.

in Going Rogue players can participate in story arcs involving the Loyalists and the Resistance. These stories were able to address one of the limitations from City of Villains. Actions taken by the player could have a direct effect on the text and storyline progression of the player. However, there still is the limitation to this upgrade that the changes in text and conditional behavior still have to be written and entered into the system.

These stories also had to work around other limitations, such as the inability to flag enemies based on faction. Ergo, the stories were written to place characters as operating outside the normal chain of command. Placing all of the players under Praetor White's Powers Division gave a convenient rational for why Resistance players would be relatively welcomed through various Praetorian locations. The solution also gave a convenient rational for Loyalists attacking Cole's own forces, as the players would appear to be working undercover.


As evidenced there are major technical and content creation hurdles that prevent the developers from integrating players as Part of an Enemy NPC Group. Even assuming the developers were able to deal with the technical issues without having to increase network bandwidth requirements as well as processing requirements, the content-creation itself is a formidable barrier.

There are other limitations, such as what is referred to as immersion. Even if the developers went ahead and implemented systems for players to join enemy NPC groups, there still is the massive problem that stories are written without the player as a member of that group in mind.

Imagine for a second that you join the Trolls. You get your 'Dine from the Family. Why would you, as a Troll, fight the family?

Or imagine for a second that you join the Cabal. They don't hate anybody but the Red Caps. In the Croatoa storyline they attack you because they think you are working for the Red Caps. Even then, by the time you complete Katie Hannon Task Force, you have ostensibly made peace with the Witches and are now one of them... So why would a Cabal witch go and attack Rularuu?

Sure, to many players such questions aren't a big deal. To others, it is a huge-game-breaking cliff.

This is, why I think, the developers ultimately just left such concepts up to the players to implement as a role-play. Rather than dumping resources into making systems to make players part of one group or another, the players are given the freedom to pretend they are from one group or another, and make their own justification up for what they do.

Is that really why the developers backed down?

Again, there has never been an official explanation that I'm aware of. That does not mean there wasn't one. It just means I'm not aware of one.

Uh, Cryptic wasn't hired to make the Marvel Online Game until after CoV came out. They didn't make this a "starter" game as practice for the licensed one.