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Would you like to see factions make an appearance in Diablo 3?
Brief summary of factions (rephrasing the obvious): Factions are a group of persons with a common goal or disposition who get together to form a cohesive unit working together to further their cause. In the context of diablo the mortals in the world of sanctuary would be split into either the good or evil faction/stratosphere. Heaven and Hell would then joust over the faith of both worlds by recruiting as many mortal heroes to their respective side.
Before you vote, note that the addition of factions does not necessitate a complete overhaul of the diablo gaming structure. Quite the contrary very little needs to be changed. I used to think it could only be done in an MMO framework, but now I am more confident that factions can be included without making any major altercations to the game. I also think that if we put our minds together we can develop something that could enable us to easily integrate factions into the game.
Let me know what your thoughts are or if you have suggestions of your own.
How it would fit into the storyline:
To my knowledge all mortals in the World of Sanctuary are Nephalem, as pointed out in this excerpt taken from the Diablo wiki website:
Quote:
“The Nephalem, being born of Angels and Demon, were found to be quite powerful. Lilith planned to use their power to build an army, but Inarius fought against her and used the Worldstone to nerf the human's powers, so that each successive generation became less and less powerful. He wanted control over them, not anyone else."
Having been born from parents that occupy polar moral mindsets, mortals are trapped in a state of moral uncertainty. Mortals are born neutral, so during the course of their lives they struggle with the dilemma of having to choose the type of moral fiber they wish to be defined by. Should they act recklessly, incontinent, be inconsiderate, villainous and relish in atrocities? Or should they act with prudence, self restraint, justice, and good will?
Quote:
The Council made a pact with the oldest of the Prime Evils, Mephisto, that he would leave Sanctuary untouched in exchange for the traitor Inarius (who created Sanctuary, an act forbidden by the Council). Sanctuary was then left in the hands of the humans, with their memories wiped, allowing them to grow from the beginning. Each individual is left to decide either to live by the light or the dark.
Gaining the allegiance of mortals "is seen as the ultimate means to gain the upper hand over the forces of Heaven (or Hell) and win the Great Conflict". This is the grand goal for both factions... the entire story will revolve around this theme.
And now that the WorldStone is destroyed and the two worlds seek to capitalize off humans, now is a pivotal and crucial time for humans to decide which side to join.
This is why I think the diablo series lays out the perfect setting for the inclusion of factions in diablo 3.
Below you will find a list of suggestions for factions:
Quote:
NOTE: When i first posted this back in 2007 I expected diablo 3 to become slightly more of an MMO, something between d2 and WoW. I was also pretty certain that diablo 3 would give your character the option to choose between either joining the hell or heaven faction. This led me to write the following suggestions on the premise that D3 would support factions and that blizzard would turn diablo 3's online mode into something more than just co-opt."
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Here's what I had originally written:
Suggestion for D3:
I think factions should be decided later on in the game, instead of at the very beginning. Otherwise the possibility to choose a faction would just be an option akin to race and class selection (not much innovation there).
You know those comic books that change stories depending on which pages you decide to pursue reading. I believe this genre first started with the popular gamebook series called "Choose Your Own Adventure". Well depending on the types of quests you choose to follow, you're character might either take the path of imperturbable goodness or gradually sink into a state of evil and betrayal.
Story:
Much like Nithalak's conversion from good to evil, key NPC’s will be tempted to join the evil side either by their own volition or by having their bodies infiltrated, occupied and controlled by evil spirits against their will. This causes the World of Sanctuary to lose order within the ranks as confusion, distrust and gossip increase. The corrupt NPC’s will spread rumors, and perhaps even sabotage their own encampment to increase disorder. Eventually they might also surreptitiously open the gates and allow monsters to enter.
This is when your character enters. S/he is asked to go and fight the invading monsters that have breached the gates. At the beginning of the game every player does the same quests and fights the invading monsters accordingly until around level 25-30. But before you reach level 25-30 you'll hear a lot of gossip and name calling; one NPC saying another NPC is not trustworthy or up to something mischievous etc.
From there on there will be two story lines/two paths you can choose from. All determined by your quest selection. So evil quests will be assigned by corrupt NPC’s and vice versa. Quest will not be indicated as being either good or evil. However evil quests will be somewhat obviously suspicious or evil in nature (so choose your quests wisely, pay attention to what they say and observe how the NPC's behave themselves). You will have been warned to be on guard for evil NPC's.
The more evil quests you do versus good quests will point you in the direction of either the good faction or evil faction. From around level 50-59 you'll no longer be able to take on good quests if the majority of your completed quests were evil and vice versa. Therefore the quests that follow will inevitably lead you further into the evil world or vice versa. At this stage you are either amongst the forces of good or evil.
Eventually as the game progresses, people's factions will be officially decided, depending on whether or not they were honorable enough not to be swayed by the forces of evil. This might occur at around level 65 assuming there’s a total of 99 levels.
Once you’ve entered a faction that's when the "real" fun begins. It's when you get to use mounts and use holy versus unholy equipment. It will be an all out faction versus faction onslaught.
You'll be able to reach higher ranks within the factions based on your loyal deeds and achievements, not necessarily based on you're level. (such deeds may include killing so many opponent faction leaders (actual players from opposing factions), You get more points by killing an opponent faction general than you do a captain and so forth.) And there will be quests in which you'll be given specific task to hurt the enemy faction, like set traps, kill a certain angel or demon etc.
There could be a total of 15 to 20 ranks for each faction. the first 10 or 15 may be obtained by accomplishing tasks, while the last 5 ranks will be determined by your ladder rank. The higher you are in the ladder the higher your rank becomes. Perhaps you're kill to death ratio of opponent faction players could influence your ladder rank. So that rank isn't only about grinding but also skills.
Equipment:
I also think that white and black gear should be made available later on in the game until your fate is decided as either good or bad. Perhaps you will gain the power to wear black items only once you prove your absolute allegiance to your faction, once your officially inducted into a particular faction. After you've demonstrated your honor, they’ll outfit you with your first black suit/or white suite, and instill in you the power to enchant any item into either holy or unholy depending on which faction you’re in.
Or maybe once an items is enchanted it can never be converted into the opposing faction side as there will be an unbreakable/permanent spell attached. This means all items enchanted with either the holy or unholy aura will permanently be for either the heaven or hell faction respectively. So that unholy gear cannot be worn by members of the heaven faction and vice versa.
-The items don't necessarily need to be either all black or white, they may remain very colorful but some sort of pattern is necessary to help differentiate the two factions while at the same time giving each players a sense of uniqueness- (We wouldn't want every hell players and heaven players to look identical).
Another must have feature is special modifiers to attach to weapons once they're enchanted. These mods will differ significantly between heaven and hell enchantments. This way a paladin from the heaven faction may differ greatly from a paladin decked out with hell equipment. This will increase replayability since people will want to try out the different outfits even on identical builds.
Quests that revolve around the faction duality:
Initiation / right of passage quest:
For entry into hell: you’d be presented with a list of currently active/online heaven faction players the same level as you. Or maybe up to 10 levels below your own. Next to their names would be indicated their current location. Your task would be to seek and defeat one (or more than one) such character so as to show hell that you are truly on its side and would even battle your own kind/race in order to gain entrance into hell’s headquarters.
For entry into Heaven:
I’ve yet to come up with an idea.
Perhaps heaven will take extra caution with their initiation process to ensure that no infiltrators make it pass the gates.
From level 60-99 the game will become a sort of capture the flag battle royal between the two factions. In the last act there will be heaven's headquarters on one end, and Hell's domain on the other. In between will be a bunch of terrains/waypoints to get through from one end to the other as you near either end the terrain will look more and more bright or dark depending in which direction you're going. In this vast territory separating both worlds, both factions will do quests, and sometimes opponent factions will cross one another and PvP will ensue.
Of course at one point the good guys will eventually need to win, I just don’t know how to incorporate this into the story, what will happen to the evil faction .
The interesting feature that this brings is that two very different stories might evolve even though they both revolve around the same overall storyline. Perhaps Tyreal will only be seen as good on the heaven side. While he might make a few appearance in hell in which his character and loyalty might change. So the story could only be seen from every angle only once the player plays both factions. Maybe he's trying to infiltrate hell's faction or maybe he's truly lost his wits.
The game shouldn't have factions until the last act. The last act (which will be let's say act5) is where factions will play themselves out. The last act will be divided into two main bases, heaven's outpost and hell's outpost. These two starting locations will serve as the encampment for the heaven and hell factions. The two locations are seperated by a vast territory. Most of the territory dividing the two bases will be designated for only one faction. This will help prevent the opposing factions from crossing one another's path too often, which is undesirable if all your after is loot and leveling. So each faction will have their own quests in places that won't be accessible by the opponent faction. However there will be areas and quests in which factions will be able to meet and duke it out. This will only represent a small fraction of the quests. But these quest may be repeated indefinitely allowing players to capitalize off of the faction duality as much as possible if they may so choose to.
In between both the heaven and hell domain will be a bunch of waypoints to get through from one end to the other as you near either end the terrain will look more and more bright or dark depending in which direction you're going. Until on one end the hell factions will face the angelic council, while on the other the heaven faction will meet Diablo and his most fierce minions.
How to deal with the shortage of players per game:
I think that instead of having to go back to the battle.net lobby, you could access it in the middle of your game and either join or post games in it without having to return to the lobby. So you could press a key lets say G for "game" and a window will pop up with plenty of features, for game types.
In this window you could look at all the games people have made which ask for a specific quest or challenge, one which might involve a faction vs faction duel.
There would be plenty of features for you to make very specific games. For example if you want to make a room only to trade, there would be a series of game type tabs, and your game would be listed under the trade tab. This would help sparse a lot of the clutter trading games from the actual questing games.
While faction oriented game would have their own tab.
Diablo never had a solid pvp framework. The blizzard community had to find it's own dueling ground so we dueled just outside of the rogue encampment... There was no designated area to duel. It was sorta “makeshift”, left to the players to improvise and figure out on their own.
Will this be another game you can breeze through in a few days, or will it be drawn out longer? Yes, the random loot and dungeons extends the replay value and life of the game well beyond that, but will we be left feeling empty after defeating Diablo with no true goal other than to level up your character? Once we finish the game what can will look forward to? I think factions will help fill this hole.
Why wouldn't you want it to be the standard gameplay mode? I would not want to have diablo 3 be an identical replica of diablo 2 with just a different story and a normal nightmare and hell mode in which you revist the same content three times over.
I'd prefer a story filled with a captivating and long enough story line to keep you interested throughout all the levels up to level 90. To do this you need twist and turns in the story. Debating between good and evil, becoming inducted into a faction (knighted), and playing a significant role in either faction. And a final battle that will truly test player's skills and teamwork.
And I don't know any better to do this then to really make the players play a significant role in the story line, Being Captains and Generals in the game, and being Diablo's bodyguard. Or maybe even be given the status of arch angel on the heaven faction.
What better way to bring closure to the diablo series then to play such a pivotal role in the game on either side.
This is very interesting. I just have a problem with being contolled towards the end of the game. You mentioned that if a character does so many deeds (good or bad with more of one side than the other) by a certain level the character's allegience is decided by the game. Humans are born neutral, which means they are neither good or evil. More importantly they have the power to choose. Now this power should not be taken away regardless of the past choices that were made in the game. They should be able to switch sides at any time. Just my thoughts.
Well perhaps cementing one's allegiance to either faction could take place further down the line at about level 70 (assuming there are at least 90 levels). Because one's decision should not be arbitrary. Mortals might be born neutral but over time once they are bended to either side it would be unfeasible to revert back and alter a person's entire way of life. You also take an oath upon entering a faction which permanently binds you to their will. And I doubt a faction would induct a person that was formally a member of their enemies. They would see you as a spy.
I also thought that there could be a moral meter in your character's statistics window. This meter would indicate how your character is behaving and whether he is turning good or evil. You'd have to be 75% good or evil to join either faction. But as long as you don't formally join a faction you can always restore it back to 0 by doing quests and actions that correspond with an opposite type of behavior.
Also diablo is a game designed so that players get to level up quickly. In diablo 2 lod for example I probably made over 4 paladins, and 2 or 3 characters of the other classes. It isn't difficult to level up quickly so it shouldn't be much of a pain to create two paladins, one for either faction.
If you don't like the idea of making multiple characters then advocating things like respecting your skill points will be much more practical.
I like the concept of duality, but can't see it being implemented in DIII. You play the Diablo franchise from a standpoint of enlightened self interest, with the end goal of destroying a great evil.
For example, in DIII, the Necromancer could work with magics that verged on the creepy and malicious, but worked towards the same goals as the others. Admittedly the game would be less linear if there wasn't one fixed ending, but your system of good/evil only adds one other option imo.
I think that the differing temperaments of chars in DII and the sometimes selfish motivations that appear to drive them are more than enough of a sideline without having to introduce an overly forced good/evil system.
I suspect that there will be a lot of players who want to be baaaad in DIII
Linear Mode
