Alliance Change Tokens - Why Dont They Exist?

Swordbreaker · September 2019

Perhaps ZOS have already addressed this, but why do Alliance Change Tokens not exist?

I've had the Imperial Edition of the game since ESO first launched, so i've never had to worry about my alliance. I'm also not a PvP player aside from occasional Battlegrounds matchers. Because of this, i often just ignored the alliance option when creating new characters, just leaving it on whatever it defaulted to.
Especially after One Tamriel, i'm aware that Alliance really doesnt matter for PvE players.

That said, i have several characters who's alliances dont make any sense from a lore perspective, and i have recently started to care about certain aspects of roleplay at least as far as my characters' backstories. For instance, a stamina-based sorcerer doesnt make much logical sense unless you remember what the Redguard Sword-Singers are. So i have a Redguard stamina Sorcerer who's supposed to be a sort of Sword-Singer character, but I didnt pay attention to the fact that they were part of the Dominion until recently, which doesnt make alot of sense, and the background on the character select screen is a very lush scene when it should be the desert scene of the Covenant. And i cant just delete the character and restart with a new one, cuz i have outfit slots that cost both real money to buy and gold to customize, and i dont want to go through leveling them to 50 again.

So why do Alliance-Change Tokens not exist? Is it a technical limitation of their servers or engine? A balance thing? I realize they dont want you changing factions for PvP competition, but that could easily be solved by just not allowing you to change factions if you've joined a PvP campaign within the last month or so.

But maybe im missing something or they've already addressed this. Please give me your thoughts.

peacenote · September 2019

I believe it was mentioned at one point by ZoS that it is a technical limitation / hurdle. I don't have a reference handy but if I find it I'll come back and post.

I too would like to see this happen. Even on an extremely low cooldown of say, six months! I just want all my characters to be on the same faction now that we have faction lock.

VaranisArano · September 2019

Because ZOS announced they arent planning on introducing them anytime soon, in the pre Elsweyr Q&A.

Practically, I suspect its because in addition to there being no Cadwell's Bronze, and the Silver/Gold order depends on your original alliance, alliance is also tied to a lot of small things. Like if you join the Dark Brotherhood at a low level, your black book quests are limited to your original faction zone(s) as you level.

I wish they'd make them though. I have some pre-One Tamriel toons who need to join the Pact with the rest of my characters.

Taleof2Cities · September 2019

VaranisArano wrote: »

Because ZOS announced they arent planning on introducing them anytime soon, in the pre Elsweyr Q&A.

^This.^

Keledus · September 2019

This should be a thing also think tokens to change your class should be a thing.

Katahdin · September 2019

It's never going to happen
I recently made another character to replace one I had in the "wrong" faction.

She's level 34 in about 10 hours of farming bosses and dolmens. Just faster to grind it out instead of asking for something that will never be.

redspecter23 · September 2019

Alliance change tokens don't exist because ZOS says it's too difficult. Probably not enough monetary returns for the time investment put into programming the feature is more likely.

There is no real game balancing reason why they can't exist from that point of view. They could put timers in place to prevent hot swapping factions over and over repeatedly if that would be broken.

Swordbreaker · September 2019

VaranisArano wrote: »

Because ZOS announced they arent planning on introducing them anytime soon, in the pre Elsweyr Q&A.

Practically, I suspect its because in addition to there being no Cadwell's Bronze, and the Silver/Gold order depends on your original alliance, alliance is also tied to a lot of small things. Like if you join the Dark Brotherhood at a low level, your black book quests are limited to your original faction zone(s) as you level.

I wish they'd make them though. I have some pre-One Tamriel toons who need to join the Pact with the rest of my characters.

Yeah that's what i figured. Alot of little things that rely on which faction you choose, like which Harborage it tells you to go to during the main story. Still, it would be nice if they could implement it but i do see why it would be difficult.

Swordbreaker · September 2019

Katahdin wrote: »

It's never going to happen
I recently made another character to replace one I had in the "wrong" faction.

She's level 34 in about 10 hours of farming bosses and dolmens. Just faster to grind it out instead of asking for something that will never be.

Yeah but no way in hell i'm doing that. I have 10 characters now, with 8/10 being level 50. Plus like i said, most of them have additional outfit slots that will be gone if i delete them, and that's ~$15 per slot that would be forever lost, so it's not worth it.

Swordbreaker · September 2019

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Because ZOS announced they arent planning on introducing them anytime soon, in the pre Elsweyr Q&A.

^This.^

That sucks. I figured they probably mentioned it somewhere but couldnt find anything. Shame. I'll just have to get over it.

Nordic__Knights · September 2019

redspecter23 wrote: »

Alliance change tokens don't exist because ZOS says it's too difficult. Probably not enough monetary returns for the time investment put into programming the feature is more likely.

There is no real game balancing reason why they can't exist from that point of view. They could put timers in place to prevent hot swapping factions over and over repeatedly if that would be broken.

Or make them $30 a pop like they did the skills

storm105 · September 2019

Swordbreaker wrote: »

Perhaps ZOS have already addressed this, but why do Alliance Change Tokens not exist?

I've had the Imperial Edition of the game since ESO first launched, so i've never had to worry about my alliance. I'm also not a PvP player aside from occasional Battlegrounds matchers. Because of this, i often just ignored the alliance option when creating new characters, just leaving it on whatever it defaulted to.
Especially after One Tamriel, i'm aware that Alliance really doesnt matter for PvE players.

That said, i have several characters who's alliances dont make any sense from a lore perspective, and i have recently started to care about certain aspects of roleplay at least as far as my characters' backstories. For instance, a stamina-based sorcerer doesnt make much logical sense unless you remember what the Redguard Sword-Singers are. So i have a Redguard stamina Sorcerer who's supposed to be a sort of Sword-Singer character, but I didnt pay attention to the fact that they were part of the Dominion until recently, which doesnt make alot of sense, and the background on the character select screen is a very lush scene when it should be the desert scene of the Covenant. And i cant just delete the character and restart with a new one, cuz i have outfit slots that cost both real money to buy and gold to customize, and i dont want to go through leveling them to 50 again.

So why do Alliance-Change Tokens not exist? Is it a technical limitation of their servers or engine? A balance thing? I realize they dont want you changing factions for PvP competition, but that could easily be solved by just not allowing you to change factions if you've joined a PvP campaign within the last month or so.

But maybe im missing something or they've already addressed this. Please give me your thoughts.

Except lorewise you are ignore that redguards have mages. The dislike of magic in Redguard culture is pretty exaggerated. It's less about hate and more about it being dishonorable. Redguard battlemages were present in both the ra gada invasion and during the Septim wars

Katahdin · September 2019

Swordbreaker wrote: »

Katahdin wrote: »

It's never going to happen
I recently made another character to replace one I had in the "wrong" faction.

She's level 34 in about 10 hours of farming bosses and dolmens. Just faster to grind it out instead of asking for something that will never be.

Yeah but no way in hell i'm doing that. I have 10 characters now, with 8/10 being level 50. Plus like i said, most of them have additional outfit slots that will be gone if i delete them, and that's ~$15 per slot that would be forever lost, so it's not worth it.

Then best be happy with your charcter in the faction that its in because we are probably never going to see alliance change tokens

SerasWhip · September 2019

They could easily add a one-time option after Cadwell's Gold questline where you are done with the whole other questlines. It also makes sense lore-wise to be given the option of changing your alliance for one last time AFTER experiencing what is actually going on in Tamriel by completing every quest to Cadwell's Gold.

Also;

With a one time change, devs wouldn't need to track the players so they don't frequently swap their alliances, messing with the faction balancing.

For the people saying everyone would flock to the stronger alliance, keep in mind that players can change their alliances by re-rolling anyways, personally I don't want to re-roll, not to mention I don't have time for leveling up my character another 180 levels. I just want the Alliance change lore-wise, don't really care about PvP.

RPGplayer13579 · September 2019

We should get Class Change Tokens first.

TheShadowScout · September 2019

Swordbreaker wrote: »

Perhaps ZOS have already addressed this, but why do Alliance Change Tokens not exist?

Well...

VaranisArano wrote: »

Because ZOS announced they arent planning on introducing them anytime soon...

...that.

VaranisArano wrote: »

I wish they'd make them though. I have some pre-One Tamriel toons who need to join the Pact with the rest of my characters.

While I applaud the sentiment of characters joining the great and glorious Ebonheart Pact... I still am against mere alliance change tokens and will state the same opinion as I had when this came up before:

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Though I still say, IF alliance change, then Done RIGHT!

And by that I don't mean some token that pops your character to a new alliance, I do indeed mean a whole guild-DLC sized questline with an cloak and dagger (Or since this is ESO, "hood and dagger", perhaps?) spycraft flavor and a "faction loyalty called in question" plot, where you get to make a big choice in the middle - stay loyal to your alliance and prove yourself, or turn your back on them and defect to greener pastures elsewhere...

With the second half (or two thirds, or whatever) of the questline being different depending on your choice - either uncovering the one who actually framed you, mobilize your old and trusted allies to gather support and track down the true conspiracy while dodging the agents sent to bring you in; or preparing your escape, dodging the agents sent to arrest you, courting your desired new friends while grabbing some juicy secrets on the way out to sweeten the deal, etc.

Such a story could have a neutral city as "spycraft" focal point (like vienna during the cold war, where spies and agents often went to spy hard between the two sides - for ESO it could be some place between the alliances, a former imperial town declared "free city" after the fall of the empire in northern nibenay, eastern colovia or western skyrim, perhaps, or even an post-anchorite-war isle of stirk...), but otherwise take you all over the old faction regions, possibly revisiting a few one-time-only maps with new mobs... and perhaps even meeting a few familiar faces (come on, wouldn't you love to slam a porticullis shut into Razum-dars face as you hop on a boat bound to Morrowind with thre adorable Naryu? )

Such a questline could even have special titles depending on what you choose... "[original faction] Loyalist" or "[original faction] Defector"... obviously it would be a one-time only event, thus making serial defectors that change alliance depending on which one is currently top in cyrodil that some people always fear when this topic comes up an impossibility.

And it also might have drawbacks for PvP, like... reduced AP gain for several months, since noone fully trusts a traitor... or maybe having to re-earn all the AP up to your current rank before you start progressing again, representing your efforts to convince your new allies of your trustworthyness... and definitely increased AP rewards if a member of your original faction takes you down, because...

(there could even be a daily "hunt traitor" mission, and defectors from your PvP-characters alliance in cyrodil getting an visual clue while that mission is active...)

Also, this could be a option to add new factions to PvP.
And yes, those could be "crown store unlocks"...
Like... have options to not just defect to one of the other two alliances, but also "go rogue" and join a new "Outlaw" faction (...black color and jolly roger flag, perhaps? Would be hostile to -every- other faction in cyrodil, and spawn at some new but unsecured base, thus very susceptible to enemy raids - trials of being an outlaw in the face of organized armies); or an "Imperial Remnant" faction (purple imperial diamond flag, spawning in some ill-secured legion base somewhere, possibly at the nibenay border, and also fighting everyone else, but turning all the "imperial" NPCs in cyrodil non-hostile?), or a "neutral" faction that is "yellow" to everyone (green flag and incapable of capturing locations, spawning at various random merchant camps and such...)
Might be too complicated, but would still be interesting!

wolfbone · September 2019

probably because players would just use them to change to the winning campaign alliance, so they would always be on the winning side, it would cause a lot of problems

SerasWhip · September 2019

wolfbone wrote: »

probably because players would just use them to change to the winning campaign alliance, so they would always be on the winning side, it would cause a lot of problems

As I've said before, they can still re-roll for the winning faction. Besides, Alliance change token should be a one-time-per-character thing, this would prevent PvP from breaking.