The same comments also indicated that separating faction from character selection is harder than it seems.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/465498/eso-zos-q-a-information-london-elsweyr-press-event-info/p1
"Alliance Change and Separating Alliances
Discussing the new faction locked campaigns with Rob we spoke about how ZOS wanted to keep the accessibility of people playing with any of their friends but also bring back something to encourage team and faction loyalty.
I spoke with Rob about breaking alliance choice away from character creation (something I’ve wanted to see in ESO for a long time), we spoke about how there are technical issues (which is why they don’t and won’t offer faction changes) and whilst these could be overcome with a large investment of time ZOS needs to balance between if these would be good use of that time vs other things they could be working on."

No, just let us pvp on our characters the way we have for the last 5 YEARS

I think there's a lot of design/coding choices from before One Tamriel that'll complicate a faction change.

They might be able to simplify it by giving you two faction values, one that's used for PvP and for your character title, and one that's used for all the PvE questing logic such as Cadwell's gold/silver. The faction change would only change your PvP faction, and without the risk of breaking the main quest or Cadwell's.

If they get that change working, making your PvP faction independent of your starting/quest faction, I think it ought to be unlockable via quest achievements, without a crown purchase. Starting Cadwell's Silver should unlock a one-time change to the 2nd faction. Starting Gold should unlock the 3rd faction. If you want to change factions again, or without questing, you'd have to buy a token.

None of my RL friends owned Any Race Any Alliance until recently (when it was at sale). As a result, characters are spread across all factions, since everyone wanted to play their favourite races. It makes me sad that some can not play their favourite character when we go to PVP together. They're all not overly faction loyal, so I don't think they would mind changing to another faction if we're all able to play together with our favourite chars then.
I'd be totally ok with alliance chance tokens to be only usable once only for every character or perhaps once every year (just in case you find new friends). I don't know about you, but playing with RL friends is the most fun part of playing ESO for me, even more fun than any guild or fixed group.

Enkil wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Jules wrote: »

No, just let us pvp on our characters the way we have for the last 5 YEARS

I agree. Alliance selection is also something you don't just do because it's fashionable. There's lore, community, and gameplay reasons to select your faction, something you don't have to worry about with class selection.

Offering faction tokens would cheapen that selection process and water down the game's lore in a way. If you need to play with friends, raise an alt (which should be easier if your already at CP and they will be offering skyshard in the crownstore so even easier to be combat ready).

However, being locked to a faction for life is super unrealistic and detracts from immersion. In reality, people defect and change sides. The allies would never have won world war 2 had the German scientists been forced to remain loyal to, and work for the axis powers.

If the devs were to invest the time into making this, I would def hope to see a very long cooldown or even a lifetime limit of 1-2 alliance switches per character.

The notion of splitting the alliance choice into starting (character creation) and defecting (PvP) might be a potential route for easier coding. Let’s hope the dev’s chime in on this issue in light of the upcoming changes and locks.

Good thing this isn't reality.

Enkil wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Jules wrote: »

No, just let us pvp on our characters the way we have for the last 5 YEARS

I agree. Alliance selection is also something you don't just do because it's fashionable. There's lore, community, and gameplay reasons to select your faction, something you don't have to worry about with class selection.

Offering faction tokens would cheapen that selection process and water down the game's lore in a way. If you need to play with friends, raise an alt (which should be easier if your already at CP and they will be offering skyshard in the crownstore so even easier to be combat ready).

However, being locked to a faction for life is super unrealistic and detracts from immersion. In reality, people defect and change sides. The allies would never have won world war 2 had the German scientists been forced to remain loyal to, and work for the axis powers.

If the devs were to invest the time into making this, I would def hope to see a very long cooldown or even a lifetime limit of 1-2 alliance switches per character.

The notion of splitting the alliance choice into starting (character creation) and defecting (PvP) might be a potential route for easier coding. Let’s hope the dev’s and @ZOS_BrianWheeler chime in on this issue in light of the upcoming changes and locks.

Well this is Tamriel and the world we started off with is still this 3-faction war. Even the rulers had specific reasons for you to choose them (assuming you read that part before starting your first character.)

I don't think they need to offer a crown store escape here; faction selection is one of the fundamental constants for the game and helps create the core identity for your character.

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The same comments also indicated that separating faction from character selection is harder than it seems.

Their reply to all changes is that they are harder than they seem. At some point the reply needs to change from being "oh ok" to something a bit less forgiving. Eso could be a great game but the reluctance to make changes which are hard and pander to the clueless is just making the game worse every patch.

It's a matter of project time. Would you rather them spend time developing ANOTHER item for the crown store or fixing bugs and improving the back end code?

What I would prefer is for them to actually consider the bigger picture of changes or ask for help if they are incapable of doing so. I would rather changes actually go in with supported other features to not just worsen issues.
Unfortunately none of that will happen so yet again another band aid fix is required.