EQ Chronicles: Factioned
The intricacies of character interaction with other entities, surrounding paradigms, and different politics and cultures is perhaps the hardest thing to reproduce in any work of fiction. Heck, it’s hard to fathom in real life. I’ve actually written a poem about it… *ahem* but I’ll spare you.
Computer simulations have always lagged far behind in the simulation of personality interraction. Those that manage to introduce even a smidgen of realism and novelty are big business (The Sims). I remember when devouring text adventures like comic books during my teens that this was the thing most lacking in ingame dialogue. With few exceptions interaction always felt mechanically limited and shallow, and the mechanisms used to approximate it were jarringly artificial. More modern RPGs have introduced drop down lists of reply options, which are no less contrived (and unsatisfying). The problem is communication involves infinite and subtle complexity. Computers are only good at dealing with finites.
EverQuest has opted for a hard-core roleplaying approach, which isn’t a bad one. Enter factions. Factions are a simple way of approaching a complex problem. They shoehorn NPC (non-player character, ie. computer “personality”) response into one of several different possibilities. If an NPC is “amiable” to you, you are as close to family with it as you are going to get. It will sell things at the best price to you if it is a merchant, and it will help you in any way it has been programmed to help. This includes granting quests (tasks performed for reward, usually a needed item).
At the other end of the scale is “ready to attack”. If such an NPC so much as smells you (and you are not so far above it in level that it knows it would be useless), it will attack you and beat you until one of you is dead. This is called KOS: “kill on sight”. There is a graduation of possible responses between these two extremes.
Player faction is determined by race and more importantly, player actions. You can build up your faction with one group of NPC’s so that they will talk to you (or at least not kill you) so that you can complete a quest of some sort. Inevitably that process will involve you lowering your regard with another opposing faction group, or quite likely more than one. All of which creates a rather complex structure of interraction, as some NPC actions are only triggered when player faction is at a certain level with them.
Why did I just explain all that? Because I died. Rather brutally actually.
Faction has never bothered me much, and I have slain as I’ve seen fit so far. Higher level characters have warned me about getting “bad faction” with particular groups, and people talk about it all the time, but it hasn’t come into my thinking too much. Being a Tolkien disciple, I hate orcs. Can’t help it, it’s part of my internal wiring. My Bard is a Half-Elf, and so wouldn’t be fond of them either. So I’ve slaughtered them mercilessly. But they’re nasty and attack me on sight anyway so who cares? The guards in evil zones, that’s who. And guards are level 55 or more and hit like sledge hammers.
So I’m minding my own business as usual in an evil occupied zone called “The Overthere” (which is a great name for a zone: “Where are you?” “Overthere.”) Sure I’d heard stories of the local guards or “goons” as they are called, and many times read shouts of “Goons to zone!”, which meant someone was being chased by them and was running to the zone line to escape them. Once a player “zones” into another area of the map they are safe, as no monster will follow them. But I had never seen one myself and didn’t know what they looked like. I was with a good group making better than decent experience, and enjoying myself.
“Goons!” someone typed in aqua group chat text, which was immediately alarming as it meant someone in my group had seen them and so they were very, very close. I turned to run in a blind panic, but things almost always attack singing bards before anything else. *CRUNCH*, 127 hitpoints of damage (the maximum possible by the way) and I’m stunned so I can’t move. *CRUNCH* *CRUNCH* *CRUNCH* *CRUNCH*
LOADING. PLEASE WAIT…
I didn’t even see them. They hated me you see because my Bard is “good” and they are the guardians of an evil zone. Someone had trained them - lured them - over to us in a panic themselves and were no doubt glad they disliked me more than them. It was probably all those dead orcs. None of which made it any easier to swallow my loss of experience (you lose experience when you die).
But I was taught the importance of faction. I understand now. It was the third 127 hitpoint hammering crunch that drove the comprehension home. So I’m off to Lower Guk on a quest to get a mask of illusion which only Bards and Rogues can wear that makes me look like a Dark Elf, and magically raises faction with evil NPCs.
Which is why the game is well named.
posted by monty · at 11:18 pm · filed under EQ Chronicles