With the re-introduction to faction locks to Cyrodil, many voices has been made to why they´re needed, but also many voices to why it´s bad for PvP. This thread aims to add a solution that offers something for both those pro-faction lock, but also for those who oppose them. Before I go into the idea lets take a look at some of the arguments that people use for pro-faction lock and those against faction lock:
Pro-Faction lock:
- It reduces the amount of griefing, scroll trading and the opportunity to trade emperor in the faction locked campaigns.
- It makes the zone chats less "toxic" and reduces the amount of "spying"
- Give people a sense of faction loyalty which adds some immersion to the game.
- Prevents people from jumping/swap on the winning faction during the last few days of a campaign
Against faction locks:
- Limits the amount of playable characters in a specific campaign which also can limit which in-game friends you can play with on that campaign.
- It can create very noticable score- and population imbalances, since people can no longer swap to a "underdog" faction (if they want to)
- Doesn´t solve the problem of "griefing/scroll- and emp trading" since it´s still doable in practice
- Reduces the amount of transmute geodes you can get from the campaign rewards.
Now these arguments are the most common ones I see when these topics are discussed. Forgive me if I haven´t listed every single argument for either side. Now the suggestion I´m about to write up is a way to please both camps regarding this topic:
ROGUE FACTION:
With the fall of the Imperial empire the imperial army is divided and can be found in various smaller groups all over Cyrodil (rogue groups). The idea here is to give players to opportunity to play as such a group. You could also see this as a "4th faction" to a certain degree. Rogue groups will be considered as imperial outlaws, since it suits the immersion of Cyrodil the best in my opinion. Now how would this work:
* When selecting what campaign you want to use as your home campaign, the game will give you the option to play as "rogue". Accepting this request will strip your
account of the opportunity of playing as any of the other alliances on that specific campaign for the entire duration of the campaign. This means once you go "rogue" on a campaign, all of your characters will be considered "rogue" for that campaign.
* You can also decide to group up with other players/friends and queue as a "rogue group" for a campaign. If your group decides to queue as "rogue" all of your group members characters for their account will also be considered rogue for that campaign duration.
* Once the campaign has ended, your account will lose the rogue status and you´ll have to activily make a choice to play as a rogue once again if wanted to.
Now what are the features and limitations about rogue groups?
- A rogue group plays on the "free for all" aspect, where you can attack, and get attacked by everyone (including other rogue groups)
- A rogue group can´t exceed the group size of 8 players. This is to limit "ball-groups" to abuse this feature too much.
- As a rogue you can still earn "alliance points" but for obvious reasons there´s no leaderboard.
- Since the rogue faction is made out of Imperial outlaws, they can´t capture keeps in the inner emp-circle (since the imperials have no emperor to answer to anyway)
- Rogue groups can´t pick up scrolls, since they´ve no home keeps to place them in anyway.
- Rogue groups can capture reasources, outposts and non-emp keeps.
- Since rogue groups doesn´t answer to any alliance, they won´t be able to receive and rewards when the campaign has ended (aka no transmute geodes), however, you´ll still be able to get "Rewards of the Worthy" boxes as you gain AP.
- The Imperial NPC camps that are scattered all over Cyrodil will act as respawn points for rogue players/groups, and you´ll also have the feature to place similar camps (similar to respawn camps).
- The Rogue faction will have it´s own "Golden Vendor" and a similar base to all of the other alliances (see NPC camps)
As you can see, the option to play as a rogue group comes with features, but also some noticable trade-offs, such as missing out on the "End of the Campaign"-rewards and the opportunity to crown emperor. Let me know what you Think