Factionalism and online game communities.

So, factions. Every online multiplayer game tries to have them nowadays. Usually there ends up being so little distinction that a choice is simply down to whose racials look cooler or perform better in gameplay. The other extreme is faction loyalty so intense that it leads to trash talking and griefing in and out of the game, possibly even spilling into Real Life.

How do you like a game to handle factions? Does your game do it in a satisfactory manner? How does your community (and maybe its admins as well) keep it relevant without letting it get too volatile? Members of singleplayer game communities can join this discussion as well.

I feel that the core aspect of making factions relevant in online games is giving faction dominance global effects - simultaneously giving rewards to the winner and punishments to the losers (or taking something from the latter to give to the former).

ONE LAST NOTE: This discussion does touch upon real psychology and the ins and outs of the human nature but to keep things civil I would appreciate if we keep Real Life academics and history out of this discussion as much as possible and focus on in-game or game related experiences.

edited 16th Dec '12 6:38:03 PM by Recon5

The biggest problem with this system is the snowball effect. One faction starts pulling ahead...and gets bonuses for pulling ahead, so it pulls further ahead...

Once more, once a faction starts winning in this way, players have a tendency to abandon ship and jump to that faction, which only intensifies the problem. Eventually you get a game world where you either join the winning faction or get caught under its steel boot.

The best ones I've seen are ones where the factions don't get any real bonuses for fighting each other (or at least any bonuses for fighting in faction wars; PvE bonuses are fine), or ones where said bonuses are reset every so often, like every week or so. And even then you have a tendency to get said problem where people always try to fight for the strongest side.

Most of the time, Faction systems are just more trouble than they're worth.

edited 16th Dec '12 6:52:52 PM by Deathonabun

The possibility of some factions pulling ahead also opens the way for upsets, coups and other entertaining stuff. Players of a losing faction can do some amazing things if they feel motivated enough and at the same time the strongest 'carrying' players in a faction may get bored and quit or defect, swinging the balance of power in someone else's direction.

Just from what I've noticed, it rarely works out in that way. A lot of players don't like having to work for their fun; they would rather join the winning team then try and improve the losing team.

And if the system offers a lot of perks for your faction doing well, then it's just plain painful to be on the losing team. Not only do you keep getting beaten down by the other side, you also are less powerful/get less content for being on the wrong side. Which tends to lower morale. Which means the losing side will often stay the losing side.

And admittedly, yes, if you're the underdog, victory is that much sweeter. But personally, I just don't think it's really worth it in the end.

Maybe tie bonuses to tactics. One team wins in frontal assaults, so it gets damage bonuses. The losing team suddenly finds a crowd control bonus in its possession, which is something they weren't excelling at before. Now the tactics have changed, maybe the balance can swing the other way.

^ The thing is generally losing team doesn't get bonus...on the other hand, your suggestion is pretty good...

Planet Side 2 has that, actually. On a server, the factions who don't have the largest populations get experience bonuses or something like that.

Only MMO I ever played that had factions was a fairly mediocre one called Neo Steam. A few of my guildies were genuinely resentful of the people from the other faction. I always thought they took things too seriously.

If anyone else knows the game, I was on the Elerd side. No idea how things were on the Rogwell end. It was ages ago anyway. I'm not sure that the game still exists.

edited 16th Dec '12 9:40:33 PM by SapphireBlue

The website says: "The North American service for Neo Steam has ended. Thank you for all the memories." Not sure if it's available anywhere else now, though.

I played NS for a short while and it did have some interesting concepts and mechanics. Unfortunately the lag and the clunkiness of the gameplay caused me to move on.

Where I ended up was Atlus USA's other MMO of the time and part of the reason I started this thread. It was a game called Pandora Saga and it's currently running on Steam (on the off chance that anyone still happens to be interested). Despite being nearly as clunky as NS (and brown to boot), ripping off almost everything from FFXI and having a severe Pay To Win element it was the first game that taught me how seriously people take virtual factions.

Many lauded TERA online for its promised (but still not delivered as of today) political system but PS already had lots of maneuvering going on. The betrayals, propaganda and smack talk were what I most remember, with each nation constantly trying its best to lure newbies from its rivals through the free world chat. It was the game that taught me you didn't have to be EVE Online or World Of Warcraft to have players singing the anthems of nonexistent nations.

No, no you don't. All you need is distinct cultures that the players can gravitate toward and connect with. Or else different enough workable styles of play that there's a clear divide between players. Nationalistic Jingoism is a big part of some peoples' psyches, I assure you. It's just a giant form of the cliques people get into at school and work.

You don't really need a sophisticated in-game system to have complicated group politics. I used to play Urban Dead, and even though the game itself was fairly simple, the group jockeying was insane, even between groups that were technically on the same side (i.e. non-PK, non-zombie human groups / non-ZK, non-human zombie groups).

I swear I spent ten times as much time on various group forums than I ever did on the game itself.