What is the definition of a faction, and how will the faction system become in Planetary Annihilation? The Definition of a faction is: 1. A group of persons forming a cohesive, usually contentious minority within a larger group. 2. Conflict within an organization or nation; internal dissension So how will Uber Ent. add this to the game? Jon mavor said at the PCgamer interview that: So every player will have their own Faction to begin with. And you can invite people into you own faction as you go along. If it becomes customizeable clans with symbols and colour schemes it would become a interesting and a very awesome part of PA. As he said, this decision on clans/factions is not yet decided. They will consider ours (the fans) opinions regarding this matter! So lets start Discussing! What do you want in the game? Explanation of poll option: Basic: Normal, non-customizeable Clans/Factions Fully Customizeable: Large array of customizeable Cosmetics for factions/clans Somewhere Inbetween: Minor customization of Clans/Factions A few factions that you can choose from: Like UEF,Aeon,Cybran as a example Other: Whatever you have in mind, comment and tell! Link to the entire interview: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/15/plane ... interview/ :mrgreen:
I was thinking perhaps factions as per Total Annihilation. Where most of the units are identical, but a few of the basic and elite units have slightly different projectile firing or rate of fire that distinguishes them from the equivalent of the other faction. The main differences between the Core and Arm factions in TA was that the Core had slow yet slightly stronger units(more health and more damage per projectile but slower movement and rate of fire) while Arm had faster moving units, with a very fast rate of fire and different projectile. Factions don't necesserily mean you need to have EVERYTHING completely different, perhaps just a few unique units and obviously visual differences such as unit models and building models.
I can understand both arguments for either side. But from what I can understand of the 'current' lore of PA, there are no factions because everyone uses the best of the best. Just like in Chess however, there can be the black side, and the white side. Game play wise the are the same however. SO I feel any gameplay differences should be excluded from the factions, leaving the devs to decide how far to take the rest of the differences, if there are any at all.
All units will be identical, but there wont be like... " pick one of these 3 units " thing going on? What kind of system would you prefer Mike?
Just like I described, give the players the same options, just make sure there are lots of options. Mike
If by faction, I mean paint job and nothing else, do I pick Other? Because actual different unit pools, ala TA and SupCom are cool and all, but I actually want to see how a single pool of units goes now.
I chose other because A i don't reall care and B shame on you for using a multi-option poll and C I am looking forward to the one faction approach.
The trick with factions/clans in PA is to what level will they have an effect. The conventional clan today is a clan tag and voice chat. In PA depending on size and number of factions large Galactic wars could have interesting uses for factions. Something akin to Eve online’s faction warfare where they fight for control over a Galaxy could be cool, with new players selecting a game made faction to join and fight for. However apart from maybe a different commander skin there would be no gameplay difference between factions, as stated in many places and many times so far.
A word of warning about Eve's clan system (at least the Factional Warfare system) is that it is nothing more than a tag next to your name and a chat channel to plot and scheme in. Ships and weapons are still open ended; I could fly a squid ship and be fighting against squids. And the squids are probably flying Winmatar ships. The us-versus-them, and the plotting and scheming created by people playing is what makes it fun. Oh, and the pew-pew. *deliberate use of player created colloquialisms are well intended. [PS:] The Caldari, who make the blue coloured ships, and are deridingly called squids by the people who make green coloured ships are bad at FW. They recently lost all their ground to the green FW players.
Only went on an EvE break about a month ago... Caldari must have got the **** kicked out of them in that time because it was pretty much even when I last played. The Gallente had better individual fighters but the Caldari could bring numbers the Gallente could only dream about. Anyway I picked something in between and i'm thinking of the basic customisations like those in Dawn of War 2, where the more you played depended on how your your units looked, but not drastic enough to make it so you couldn't tell unit between unit. Make it by choice though, for instance if I win so many games and I earn a cosmetic unlock for the PeeWee type mech, let me choose if I apply that "Look" and if I apply it I want to be able to swap it out and back in again in the future. For those insisting on a Lore reason as to why AIs would care about changing the already perfect think of it like EDI in Mass Effect 3 (I apologise to all the people still having palpitations about the ending) the longer she spend unshackled the more Human-like she became. Now i'm not asking for our Robots to turn Emo about all the devastation they've caused, but just to slightly adapt the units based off growing "preferences".
I think what the entire faction thing boils down to is identity and identity only. even the "different units" stuff is a case of identity. We love "us versus them". When we fight people we demonize them and praise our own warriors. When we went to Vietnam the enemy consisted of medioce apes that did not deserve anything but napalm. When we fought the Nazis they were called Jerries and dehumanized. Now we go to Afghanistan and the enemies are bearded men with bombs strapped to their chests. It's human nature to try and distinguish the enemy from us, make them different and especially make them LOOK different. This is why quite a few here seem to be adamant for choosable factions and stuff. But what i hated is the typical faction gameplay. I really want to have a broader palette of units and pick what I want My option for factions would be Other. I am not sure what kind of aesthetic differences there would be, but i can think of a few. -Primary color: Player. -Secondary color: Faction -Tertiary color: unit-specific details. -Bullets: *Faction 1 direct fire: rockets. Faction 2 direct fire: lasers. Faction 3 direct fire: Railguns. *Faction 1 indirect fire: Shells. Faction 2 Indirect fire: plasma bolts. Faction 3 indirect fire: * Facton 1 missile (etc) It might not be the greatest example, but simply changing the look of the bullet fired could do miracles. One faction shoots rockets, the other shoots lasers (Or generic beam-weapons), the third shoots railgun shots (which could look plasma-like). What i'm saying is: there can be MANY ways to differentiate factions, i think Uber just needs to be a bit creative with this (and i have confidence in them)
I think if they do a " few major factions " this can be a good way to run about it. if certain factions have different primary weapons like Missiles/Lasers/Projectile weaponry. It would definetly make factions easier to distinguish in big battles where overview might not become the easiest thing in the world in PA. (Global war) Also modeling the units slightly wont be a big deal at all, as it is merely the same unit with a different mounted weapon. I would approve of this, ( just sayin, love missiles, so i'd go for those if those were to appear )
Well, Uber not only used the Single Unit pool as a feature to help sell the game, but also the fact it's being included also more or less renders factions as you describe as too impractical, even if you ignore the different weapon profiles and how they function very differently from each other. Mike
Many ways to do this, but ill stick to whatever Uber said atm. single unit pool and i think i heard "Every commander will be its own faction ". Although i dont remember where and when, and if its speculation or not. would be happy to hear from one of the devs about this. But regarding the game, which topic about it would we not like to hear?
