Crown Store - Alliance Change

Area51Visitor

blabafat wrote: »

I 100% hope they do NOT add alliance change. It would create so much imbalance between factions.
The major pvp guilds would just switch alliances to the least populated so they can farm more ap

It would be more realistic...the ability to trade factions, etc.

TheShadowScout

My opinion on this is the same as every other time the topic came up - I'd love to see an alliance change option, if done right.

Meaning, with a big questline taking you all over your starting alliance that becomes available after completing cadwells gold, with a "faction loyalty called in question" theme, and the choice to either prove your loyalty, or defect to another faction, which then will determine how the rest of the questline goes...

If people worry about PvP imbalances, that would be an easy one to fix, just give such "traitors" a permanent AP gain debuff. If they have to expect all AP gains to be havled if they switch, the hardcore PvPers would think twice or thrice before doing it...

And of course with the game as it is right now... it seems more likely if alliance change will come, it might come through the crown store. Though I'd love to see my quest idea... maybe remove the choice part, and make it a pure "defection" quest, initiated by using an scroll you have to buy in the crown store? I'd still make completion of cadwells a prerequesite, as that would at least sidestep the difficulty with quest line entanglements...

Enodoc

Cherryblossom wrote: »

How could you actually do that, what would happen the Quest you have already completed! Would you return to level 1 to start the process again.(may as well create an new Alt!)

The best way to implement it because of this issue, and my preferred way if it does ever turn up, would be to have the requirement of having completed both Cadwell's Silver and Gold.

While I don't think it should exist at all, here's a list of requirements/restrictions I think Alliance Change should have:

• Must have completed The Weight of Three Crowns, Cadwell's Silver, and Cadwell's Gold
• Alliance War Rank and Skills are reset
• Cooldown of 3-6 months
• 5000-8000 Crowns cost

F7sus4

Enodoc wrote: »

[*] Cooldown of 3-6 months[/list]

6-12 months, assuming that it should be allowed at all.

Flameheart

Enodoc wrote: »

Cherryblossom wrote: »

How could you actually do that, what would happen the Quest you have already completed! Would you return to level 1 to start the process again.(may as well create an new Alt!)

The best way to implement it because of this issue, and my preferred way if it does ever turn up, would be to have the requirement of having completed both Cadwell's Silver and Gold.

While I don't think it should exist at all, here's a list of requirements/restrictions I think Alliance Change should have:

• Must have completed The Weight of Three Crowns, Cadwell's Silver, and Cadwell's Gold
• Alliance War Rank and Skills are reset
• Cooldown of 3-6 months
• 5000-8000 Crowns cost

I am also tending to allow an alliance change and your restrictions look quite viable, because they have a harsher penalty for people who just want to change for PvP's sake. For PvEers who just want to join a guild for PvE stuff as a main reason, it's bearable.

Nhoxxx

The need to complete all Cadwells quest makes no sense at all.
If you wanna switch faction to play with a friend you should first spend 2 months alone finishing a quest line in a faction you don't want to be in anymore ?
The Aliance rank/skills i understand totally, the long cooldown and the crown store price too.

But asking ppl to first go through the game alone in order to join a friend, I don't get. (and again the pain comes from veteran rank not 1-50)

Jaxsun

+1 for alliance change

Titansteele

no thanks

Alcast

blabafat wrote: »

I 100% hope they do NOT add alliance change. It would create so much imbalance between factions.
The major pvp guilds would just switch alliances to the least populated so they can farm more ap

Will it bring them more money? > Yes

So they will add it sooner or later

Enodoc

Nhoxxx wrote: »

The need to complete all Cadwells quest makes no sense at all.
If you wanna switch faction to play with a friend you should first spend 2 months alone finishing a quest line in a faction you don't want to be in anymore ?
The Aliance rank/skills i understand totally, the long cooldown and the crown store price too.

But asking ppl to first go through the game alone in order to join a friend, I don't get. (and again the pain comes from veteran rank not 1-50)

The requirement to complete Cadwell's is there so the change in faction doesn't destroy alliance story progress. If you've completed all alliances' stories, story progress can't break.
What would happen if you tried to change faction from DC to EP at Level 27? You'd have completed two zones of the DC story and a bit of DC's third zone story, and then you'd be thrown right into the middle of EP's third zone story without any context, which makes no sense. Characters in EP would be referencing events which never happened, and the player wouldn't have a clue what was going on because they missed 2.5 zones of story.

Psychobunni

Nhoxxx wrote: »

The need to complete all Cadwells quest makes no sense at all.
If you wanna switch faction to play with a friend you should first spend 2 months alone finishing a quest line in a faction you don't want to be in anymore ?
The Aliance rank/skills i understand totally, the long cooldown and the crown store price too.

But asking ppl to first go through the game alone in order to join a friend, I don't get. (and again the pain comes from veteran rank not 1-50)

Aye. I would take complete PVP lockout with my toon if they let me trade her from AD to EP. She never needs to set foot in Cyrodiil at all, just let her play with friends.

Nerio

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Meaning, with a big questline taking you all over your starting alliance that becomes available after completing cadwells gold, with a "faction loyalty called in question" theme, and the choice to either prove your loyalty, or defect to another faction, which then will determine how the rest of the questline goes...

This sounds really cool, but it's completely impractical. This approach restricts the amount of people who can buy this to a tiny %. It would cost them 100s of man hours to implement an alliance change in such a way, and with so few people being able to buy it, there's no way they'd break even.

Rox83

I'd rather it be some sort of betrayal quest like they did in EQ2. It was a one way thing and irreversible. But i could see a Crown payment as a 3rd option for those who really need to switch again. But I would hope they'd have some sort of cooldown 30-60days?

Nhoxxx

Enodoc wrote: »

Nhoxxx wrote: »

The need to complete all Cadwells quest makes no sense at all.
If you wanna switch faction to play with a friend you should first spend 2 months alone finishing a quest line in a faction you don't want to be in anymore ?
The Aliance rank/skills i understand totally, the long cooldown and the crown store price too.

But asking ppl to first go through the game alone in order to join a friend, I don't get. (and again the pain comes from veteran rank not 1-50)

The requirement to complete Cadwell's is there so the change in faction doesn't destroy alliance story progress. If you've completed all alliances' stories, story progress can't break.
What would happen if you tried to change faction from DC to EP at Level 27? You'd have completed two zones of the DC story and a bit of DC's third zone story, and then you'd be thrown right into the middle of EP's third zone story without any context, which makes no sense. Characters in EP would be referencing events which never happened, and the player wouldn't have a clue what was going on because they missed 2.5 zones of story.

Or a simpler solution would be : you want to change faction, it resets your quests.
I don't see why changing faction should give you the quests you didn't do.
If you got to go to all vr rank (as they stand now) to change faction, might as well reroll ... The point of changing faction is to avoid rerolling and going through the vr alone

Enodoc

Nhoxxx wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

Nhoxxx wrote: »

The need to complete all Cadwells quest makes no sense at all.
If you wanna switch faction to play with a friend you should first spend 2 months alone finishing a quest line in a faction you don't want to be in anymore ?
The Aliance rank/skills i understand totally, the long cooldown and the crown store price too.

But asking ppl to first go through the game alone in order to join a friend, I don't get. (and again the pain comes from veteran rank not 1-50)

The requirement to complete Cadwell's is there so the change in faction doesn't destroy alliance story progress. If you've completed all alliances' stories, story progress can't break.
What would happen if you tried to change faction from DC to EP at Level 27? You'd have completed two zones of the DC story and a bit of DC's third zone story, and then you'd be thrown right into the middle of EP's third zone story without any context, which makes no sense. Characters in EP would be referencing events which never happened, and the player wouldn't have a clue what was going on because they missed 2.5 zones of story.

Or a simpler solution would be : you want to change faction, it resets your quests.
I don't see why changing faction should give you the quests you didn't do.
If you got to go to all vr rank (as they stand now) to change faction, might as well reroll ... The point of changing faction is to avoid rerolling and going through the vr alone

Resetting the quests could work, sure, but then you'd be Level 27 completing grey quests to catch up with the story, while getting no useful reward from them (aside from minimal completion XP), and when you get around to Cadwell's you'd be earning XP again for quests you'd already done before.

Seravi

There is no way they will ever do an alliance change in the Crown Store. It would be a coding nightmare dealing with the quests. Race changes would even be a huge issue. I would rather they offer more character slots. I don't like rolling new characters for sure but leveling does give me time to try out skills and find what works best for the build I am going for.

Sausage

Maybe they should allow players from popular alliance (EP most definitely in EU) to transfer to less popular alliance.

MornaBaine

I'd say 2,000 crowns per character to do the change and no level caps or other requirements. If you rolled AD, played awhile, left, came back because now your friends are playing but they all rolled DC, there's no logical reason for you to have to wait til you've hit vet levels before being able to join them. Nor should you have to waste the 20 or so levels and gear you've already acquired. A 2 month cool down before you can change again is perfectly reasonable. Again, this should apply per character.

BuggeX

Nhoxxx wrote: »

The need to complete all Cadwells quest makes no sense at all.
If you wanna switch faction to play with a friend you should first spend 2 months alone finishing a quest line in a faction you don't want to be in anymore ?
The Aliance rank/skills i understand totally, the long cooldown and the crown store price too.

But asking ppl to first go through the game alone in order to join a friend, I don't get. (and again the pain comes from veteran rank not 1-50)

If you still need 2 mounths to finish Gold, then you prob. lvl 5-10 and you can reroll also a alt in 15mins.....

Nhoxxx

BuggeX wrote: »

Nhoxxx wrote: »

The need to complete all Cadwells quest makes no sense at all.
If you wanna switch faction to play with a friend you should first spend 2 months alone finishing a quest line in a faction you don't want to be in anymore ?
The Aliance rank/skills i understand totally, the long cooldown and the crown store price too.

But asking ppl to first go through the game alone in order to join a friend, I don't get. (and again the pain comes from veteran rank not 1-50)

If you still need 2 mounths to finish Gold, then you prob. lvl 5-10 and you can reroll also a alt in 15mins.....

Sorry trying to find a meaning to this phrase but seems I can't.

Nhoxxx

MornaBaine wrote: »

I'd say 2,000 crowns per character to do the change and no level caps or other requirements. If you rolled AD, played awhile, left, came back because now your friends are playing but they all rolled DC, there's no logical reason for you to have to wait til you've hit vet levels before being able to join them. Nor should you have to waste the 20 or so levels and gear you've already acquired. A 2 month cool down before you can change again is perfectly reasonable. Again, this should apply per character.

Totally agree with you.
All the "you got to finish this or that before being able to change alliance" miss totally the point of changing alliance.
Same for being able to change to one alliance but not another.
People mainly want to change faction to play with friends, not to go the more or less populated faction.

Enodoc wrote: »

Resetting the quests could work, sure, but then you'd be Level 27 completing grey quests to catch up with the story, while getting no useful reward from them (aside from minimal completion XP), and when you get around to Cadwell's you'd be earning XP again for quests you'd already done before.

Quests are totally optionnal and you can see people grinding to level up without doing a single quest (except for the main one which they start around level 45).
Btw, quests actually give crappy reward so I don't know why it would bother ppl to get grey crappy stuff instead of green crappy stuff.
If having to redo the main quest is a downside to play with my friends, I'll gladly redo them.
I feel like people don't understand that it's not a pvp or pve problem but a social one.

Enodoc

Nhoxxx wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

Resetting the quests could work, sure, but then you'd be Level 27 completing grey quests to catch up with the story, while getting no useful reward from them (aside from minimal completion XP), and when you get around to Cadwell's you'd be earning XP again for quests you'd already done before.

Quests are totally optionnal and you can see people grinding to level up without doing a single quest (except for the main one which they start around level 45).
Btw, quests actually give crappy reward so I don't know why it would bother ppl to get grey crappy stuff instead of green crappy stuff.
If having to redo the main quest is a downside to play with my friends, I'll gladly redo them.
I feel like people don't understand that it's not a pvp or pve problem but a social one.

Sure, some people may not care about the quests, but that doesn't remove the fact that the system bases the quests on your alliance. For a DC player, the quest "A City in Black" is always a Level 37 quest, and will always provide, say, 2428 XP on completion. For an EP or AD player, the same quest is always Level 50/Vet 5 or Level 50/Vet 10, and always provides 4990 XP. If you changed alliances from DC to AD before doing this quest, you'd get twice as much XP if you then decided to do this quest after the transfer. This means that, if you grinded to 50 in DC without doing any quests, completed Silver (which is AD), then transferred to AD, you could then complete AD's Silver (which is EP) and AD's Gold (which is DC). This means you would have exploited the system and gained more XP from a set of quests than was intended (the DC set), as all of the quest rewards would be drawn from the Level 50/Vet reward sets rather than one of them being from the 1-50 reward set.

Ashtaris

Seravi wrote: »

There is no way they will ever do an alliance change in the Crown Store. It would be a coding nightmare dealing with the quests. Race changes would even be a huge issue. I would rather they offer more character slots. I don't like rolling new characters for sure but leveling does give me time to try out skills and find what works best for the build I am going for.

I'm not sure why you are saying that. If they offered it only to those who already have VR14 characters that have completed silver/gold then they already have most of the PVE quests in all the alliances anyway. For PVP, they could just reset all of the AP and quests for Cyrodiil for that character.

Currently I have a VR14 DK Imperial Tank that I would love to transfer over to the AD for Undaunted dungeon runs with my guildies. He was my original character and at the time didn't realize what alliance I would be most involved with. So having a alliance change option from the crown store would be a nice option other than completely re-rolling a new one.

Enodoc

Ashtaris wrote: »

Currently I have a VR14 DK Imperial Tank that I would love to transfer over to the AD for Undaunted dungeon runs with my guildies. He was my original character and at the time didn't realize what alliance I would be most involved with. So having a alliance change option from the crown store would be a nice option other than completely re-rolling a new one.

Sounds like something that may also assist you would be if Undaunted dungeons were cross-faction.

JD2013

This is one "convenience" too far. I say absolutely not. I would prefer faction locks so as to cut down on spies and the such in PVP.

TheShadowScout

Nhoxxx wrote: »

Or a simpler solution would be : you want to change faction, it resets your quests.

That would actually work I suppose... though it would be rather annoying for those who change after a decent time gaming, having to redo all that progress. On the other hand, it -would- gain them way more c-points... which can be a good thing, or not.

Personally I still think the whole thing should have the "completed cadwells gold" requirement... however...

There could be two options! One with retaining your progress that becomes available after cadwells gold, and another you can buy in the crown store at any time, which then would reset all your quest progress to "just left coldharbour" and lets you dig through however many grey quests you need until you get back to where you were...

Nerio wrote: »

This sounds really cool, but it's completely impractical. This approach restricts the amount of people who can buy this to a tiny %. It would cost them 100s of man hours to implement an alliance change in such a way, and with so few people being able to buy it, there's no way they'd break even.

Well, that's why my initial idea was to have the quest available for everyone after completing gold, and let those who like their faction keep their faction by taking the "proving your loyalty" path.. and only those who want to change go the other way... that way, everyone gets to play the questline, but only those who want to defect get the divergent path...

Seravi wrote: »

There is no way they will ever do an alliance change in the Crown Store. It would be a coding nightmare dealing with the quests. Race changes would even be a huge issue. I would rather they offer more character slots. I don't like rolling new characters for sure but leveling does give me time to try out skills and find what works best for the build I am going for.

Coding nightmares can be avoided by either resetting quests, or making finished cadwells an prerequesite.
Race changes are more of an issue, but... the explorers pack's "any race, any alliance" is already in the game, so... and just while the factionsare divided by their races homelands, if you walk through the quests with your eyes open, you will find that this is not entirely exclusive... there are "exiles" from their homelands all over tamriel, what's a few more?

daemonios

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Nhoxxx wrote: »

Or a simpler solution would be : you want to change faction, it resets your quests.

That would actually work I suppose... though it would be rather annoying for those who change after a decent time gaming, having to redo all that progress. On the other hand, it -would- gain them way more c-points... which can be a good thing, or not.

Personally I still think the whole thing should have the "completed cadwells gold" requirement... however...

There could be two options! One with retaining your progress that becomes available after cadwells gold, and another you can buy in the crown store at any time, which then would reset all your quest progress to "just left coldharbour" and lets you dig through however many grey quests you need until you get back to where you were...

I don't see why quests would need to be reset. Imagine you're a DC character. DC is your lvl 1-50 zone, AD is your VR1-5 zone, EP is your VR6-10 zone. If you've finished Cadwell's Silver and Gold, then no reset is necessary. If you haven't, and switch e.g. to EP, any quests you have there would be leveled to an EP character, i.e. they'd go from VR6-10 to lvl 1-50. Other quests would follow suit. It would mean a penalty to anyone switching factions before completing the quests, but I don't think someone who is willing to switch faction would care much. In any case, it would never result in an advantage, so all's good as far as I'm concerned.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Nerio wrote: »

This sounds really cool, but it's completely impractical. This approach restricts the amount of people who can buy this to a tiny %. It would cost them 100s of man hours to implement an alliance change in such a way, and with so few people being able to buy it, there's no way they'd break even.

Well, that's why my initial idea was to have the quest available for everyone after completing gold, and let those who like their faction keep their faction by taking the "proving your loyalty" path.. and only those who want to change go the other way... that way, everyone gets to play the questline, but only those who want to defect get the divergent path...

If you really want to change factions, you can breeze through Cadwell's Silver and Gold in a couple of days tops. These are solo quests that can be done by almost any VR character. You don't have to completely clear all areas to finish Cadwell's quests. While I'm not opposed to this being a requirement, I'm not sure it's necessary either, for the reasons detailed above.

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

There is no way they will ever do an alliance change in the Crown Store. It would be a coding nightmare dealing with the quests. Race changes would even be a huge issue. I would rather they offer more character slots. I don't like rolling new characters for sure but leveling does give me time to try out skills and find what works best for the build I am going for.

Coding nightmares can be avoided by either resetting quests, or making finished cadwells an prerequesite.
Race changes are more of an issue, but... the explorers pack's "any race, any alliance" is already in the game, so... and just while the factionsare divided by their races homelands, if you walk through the quests with your eyes open, you will find that this is not entirely exclusive... there are "exiles" from their homelands all over tamriel, what's a few more?

As stated above, I don't think it would be necessary to reset quests or require Cadwell's Silver and Gold completion. Simply re-level the quests to the appropriate level in the faction you've switched to. The only problem would be immersion, but that's a small trade-off for a huge feature which would be the possibility of bringing your character to where your friends are.

Enodoc

daemonios wrote: »

In any case, it would never result in an advantage, so all's good as far as I'm concerned.

It would result in an advantage in the situation I posed above.

Enodoc wrote: »

[...] if you grinded to 50 in DC without doing any quests, completed Silver (which is AD), then transferred to AD, you could then complete AD's Silver (which is EP) and AD's Gold (which is DC). This means you would have exploited the system and gained more XP from a set of quests than was intended (the DC set), as all of the quest rewards would be drawn from the Level 50/Vet reward sets rather than one of them being from the 1-50 reward set.

daemonios

Enodoc wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

In any case, it would never result in an advantage, so all's good as far as I'm concerned.

It would result in an advantage in the situation I posed above.

Enodoc wrote: »

[...] if you grinded to 50 in DC without doing any quests, completed Silver (which is AD), then transferred to AD, you could then complete AD's Silver (which is EP) and AD's Gold (which is DC). This means you would have exploited the system and gained more XP from a set of quests than was intended (the DC set), as all of the quest rewards would be drawn from the Level 50/Vet reward sets rather than one of them being from the 1-50 reward set.

I see your point. But does that even matter much? There is a finite number of non-repeatable quests that could be used this way. I don't think it would give anyone much of an XP boost, especially considering that questing is actually slower than grinding. If this really is a problem, then OK, make it a requirement that Cadwell's Silver and Gold be completed, but that wouldn't cover any side quests.

Cathexis

What they should do is allow alliance choice on a campaign basis and insentivise alliance choice in PvP with gold contracts from campaign to campaign and have them increase in value as more players are needed for specific factions.

Loyalty to a faction is such an intangible thing and realistically a lot of players have cross faction multis anyway.

Plus the game itself endorses playing different faction perspectives

The reality is if things stay the same you aren't going to balance factions anyway so why not open it up on a contract basis and just assume that all players are playing from a mercinary for hire perspective.

You could even make faction availability based on cadwells almanac completion.