122337-mixed-factions-in-pve-servers

== Content ==
			In the  PvE servers the two factions should be able to group together and be in the same guild, it's silly to have people divided into two factions when it is a PvE server and more in a game with relatively low population.	
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The lore answer is: the dominion and exiles are at war
 
BUT
 
The first question you need to ask before you get into anything else is if the game engine can even support different faction grouping/guild ups.  If it cannot be done no matter what, then none of what you/we have to propose makes any difference.  If it can be done with a little or a lot of work then yay! we can have a discussion about why we want it to happen. Assuming it can even be done i think i would be for it.  If PVE content is going to be designed around both factions putting aside their differences to fight the greater threat then might as well do it.  In SWTOR the first dungeon on release was themed for each faction.  You board the enemy ship but as a Republic player you board an Imperial ship and fight Imperial soldiers.  As an Imperial you board a republic ship and fight republic soldiers.  The ship layouts and bosses are even different but the overall theme is the same.  But look at how content is designed in SWTOR now...both factions working together to fight a greater evil.  And of all the video game faction rivalry i think Star Wars is the worst because they hate each others guts.  Cooperation on a small scale between small units might make sense, but for both factions at a high level of government cooperating? yah i dont know about that.  Allow dom and exiles to group up for dungeons and raids, maybe even allow doms and exiles to be in the same guild.  Change the lore reason from "at war" to "are in an uneasy peace". For PVP you can explain that away too and say that instead of a war or battle they are now just conducting war games or war exercises and they practice on each other.  Star Trek Online has no trinity system and it allows you to do 5mans with the other faction. If their content wasnt so stale/old it would be the best system to go with imo. They've actually done away with the Federation and Klingon war now, though they havent really done anything to explain why they still fight each other in PVP.	
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IMHO:
 
No on both counts.
 
Grouping: We already have the open hit on mobs and help each other out in the cross faction areas.
 
Guilding: This would cause all kinds of issues. PvP would be worse than it is now, exploits could happen in PvP, not to mention the issue of having a guildmate on the opposite team that is friendly towards you, lore would be wrecked (RPers and lore hounds would not like this), etc.	
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Yeah, the only way I see this happening is if there's a huge lore change that makes factions switchable (or not relevant anymore) at a certain level, PVP goes entirely factionless, and world PVP becomes essentially a FFA.
 
Which, you never know, may happen.  But that's a tall order.	
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I havent played SWTOR in a looooong time but isnt this how their Huttball pvp matches work? you can battle against teams that are the opposite or even same faction as you.  Its a pvp match but its disguised as a "game" within a game, kinda like a basketball match or something.  How does the lore fit? well Hutts are a neutral party.  The Wildstar equivalent of a Huttball pvp match would like be a dodgeball game hosted by the Lopp or Protostar...hey they could call it Loppball!!! It is a pvp matched that works like a regular game.  As far as if this kind of PVP will be exploited...arent people already doing win trading without this?
 
 
People will talk about lore this lore that how it wont make sense lore-wise.  But Star Trek is a major IP, and their game early on revolved a lot around faction vs faction conflict.  But they've gone F2P and just like SWTOR they can no longer sustain faction specific content.  They've pretty much said screw lore and have gone with shared content and put in some weak explanation as to why two faction (even two factions that HATE each other) would be working together. Even WoW who is not F2P does this in a lot of their content.  Molten Core, Black Temple, Ulduar, i-dont-care-about-cata, Siege of Orgrimar.  There were very few dungeons and raids that were faction specific or would change depending on what faction did it.  There was the Trial of the Grand Crusader raid in WOTLK which was faction specific.  If you were an alliance raid the encounter would consist of horde npcs.  But if you did that exact same raid as a bunch of horde players that specific encounter would instead be made up of alliance npcs (but with the same exact abilities for both npc groups).
 
 
Faction vs faction is good for PVP, but not so much for PVE.  In a game where pve and pvp exist faction imbalance makes one better and the other worse i think.  For dominion if they are low pop that should make pvp queues pop faster but pve queues pop slower.  For exiles the opposite is true if they are high pop.  PVE queues take dont take a long time but PVP queues take forever.  In most other games from my observation that is how it usually goes.  Like i said in another thread fun > lore, and i also think that survival of the game > lore.  If this move would make the overall game health better i say go for it. WS isnt based off of some already established IP that has a ton of lore.  They can just make up lore as they go along. 	
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But Star Trek is a major IP, and their game early on revolved a lot around faction vs faction conflict.  But they've gone F2P and just like SWTOR they can no longer sustain faction specific content.  They've pretty much said screw lore and have gone with shared content and put in some weak explanation as to why two faction (even two factions that HATE each other) would be working together. Even WoW who is not F2P does this in a lot of their content. 
 
 
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No MMO, not even WoW has solved the faction imbalance problem.  I'm constantly amazed that MMO designers continue to rely on the hard factioning crutch.  I have yet to hear of any other MMO that has successfully pulled it off without implementing mixed faction groups. Regardless, there have been dev posts to the effect that the changes needed for WildStar to support mixed faction groups requires significant engineering resources.  IMO the faster they get away from hard factions the healthier it would be for the game. 
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Guilding: This would cause all kinds of issues. PvP would be worse than it is now, exploits could happen in PvP, not to mention the issue of having a guildmate on the opposite team that is friendly towards you, lore would be wrecked (RPers and lore hounds would not like this), etc.
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			Rift have cross-faction pvp battleground but not sure about pve	
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Rift have cross-faction pvp battleground but not sure about pve
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Rift have cross-faction PvE, PvP and Guilds. 
 
And in the lore the 2 factions are at war. I think that Gameplay > Lore
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These are all games that have been out for a while. WildStar is new and not F2P or B2P. Big difference.
 
And to be completely honest and blunt; I don't care what other games did or why they did them or if they went F2P/B2P.
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I think it is a good idea to allow the factions to group together on PVE servers. make it player choice and it DOESN'T even need any major lore changes. It doesn't even need any minor lore changes.
 
There is already a faction in game that has put aside all conflict to work together for the benefit of science. allow the player to become a member and then pop an option into the group finder or something that allows you to work with the oppposite faction "for science"
 
The dominion is really struggling for population and being able to choose to group with the other faction would really help them out. It also opens up more roleplaying options for all the RPer's out there	
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It doesn't matter what the lore says, it doesn't matter what people's feelings are on the matter, what does stand is that WildStar is not big enough in population to support a dual faction system, and it more than likely never will be.
 
Dual factions are a very poor idea in pretty much any game that can't reach a generally large population size, and as such IMO, WildStar needs to be leading a direction towards breaking this faction wall down.
 
It would vastly improve the quality of life for WildStar.
Especially in Structured PVP.
 
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There is already a faction in game that has put aside all conflict to work together for the benefit of science.
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The dominion is really struggling for population
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Guilding: This would cause all kinds of issues. PvP would be worse than it is now, exploits could happen in PvP, not to mention the issue of having a guildmate on the opposite team that is friendly towards you, lore would be wrecked (RPers and lore hounds would not like this), etc.
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No MMO, not even WoW has solved the faction imbalance problem.  I'm constantly amazed that MMO designers continue to rely on the hard factioning crutch.  I have yet to hear of any other MMO that has successfully pulled it off without implementing mixed faction groups.
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Guilding: This would cause all kinds of issues. PvP would be worse than it is now, exploits could happen in PvP, not to mention the issue of having a guildmate on the opposite team that is friendly towards you, lore would be wrecked (RPers and lore hounds would not like this), etc.
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EQ did it fabulously, you had the ability to build or destroy faction with all races, you could learn to speak the language of any race. Pretty sure if is was possible 16 years ago it's possible today, this is just lazy game design, and frankly I blame WoW for it.
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All the quests, maps and lore is based on 2 factions.
If you want 1 faction then the whole leveling system needs to be redesigned.	
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All the quests, maps and lore is based on 2 factions.
If you want 1 faction then the whole leveling system needs to be redesigned.
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All the quests, maps and lore is based on 2 factions.
If you want 1 faction then the whole leveling system needs to be redesigned.
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All the quests, maps and lore is based on 2 factions.
If you want 1 faction then the whole leveling system needs to be redesigned.
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Bahahahaha!
 
I'm sorry. The maps are based around two factions? Really? You mean they are mirrored. Everything after the Lopp village in Whitevale becomes the same for both factions. Visit the same areas, do the same quests, solve the same problems in the same way as the other faction. Whatever your faction is, the levelling experience is a reskin of the other. There's a couple of notable exceptions (the start of Wilderrun, for instance), but otherwise? If the Exiles kill a bunch of Osun, the Dominion will go kill the same bunch of Osun. They will even use the same methods. Only real difference besides some characters is that the other side has a base a few meters away from yours.
 
Heck, it even happens in dungeons: if the Dominion's story for Kel Voreth is that you must stop the Osun from forging exanite...guess what the Exile story there will be? Stop the Osun from forging exanite. Though at least with dungeons you can argue that it's a matter of balancing and not giving either side an advantage on the most challenging content. 
The excuse for doing it in the open world quests and storylines? Time and lazyness. There's no other excuse. But that's how it is. Both factions are meaningless from a gameplay perspective.
 
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Want a lore reason? 2 different factions face a common enemy and decide to work together to defeat it (IE any dungeon). They don't have to like each other to do it. Quite simple.
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Not that I particularly have a horse in this race (I don't actually care how factions get handled in this game, I don't think they're that detrimental, but I'm not dying defending that hill if it's really an issue).  However, I think it poignant to stress a few things:
 
-There will need to be a huge core revamp to the game for this to happen, because of how intricately factions are tied into the system.  They determine so much and are deeply ingrained in the system.
 
-This revamp may be relatively easy and can use much of the existing architecture if they simply input a way to switch factions.  They'll still need to use combining dungeon queues and the like (otherwise, what's the point), but that may save them the time of going completely factionless.  The other option is just to have a sliding reputation so you can go one way or the other, turning one hostile and one friendly, to both neutral, to the reverse of the first.
 
-There does not need to be a significant shift in the lore, really.  You could, feasibly, simply call yourself a "mercenary" that has no ties to either faction and the factions do not seem particularly concerned with what race does their dirty work as long as they can count on it getting done.  That jumps a lot of lore loopholes.	
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Not that I particularly have a horse in this race (I don't actually care how factions get handled in this game, I don't think they're that detrimental, but I'm not dying defending that hill if it's really an issue).  However, I think it poignant to stress a few things:
 
-There will need to be a huge core revamp to the game for this to happen, because of how intricately factions are tied into the system.  They determine so much and are deeply ingrained in the system.
 
-This revamp may be relatively easy and can use much of the existing architecture if they simply input a way to switch factions.  They'll still need to use combining dungeon queues and the like (otherwise, what's the point), but that may save them the time of going completely factionless.  The other option is just to have a sliding reputation so you can go one way or the other, turning one hostile and one friendly, to both neutral, to the reverse of the first.
 
-There does not need to be a significant shift in the lore, really.  You could, feasibly, simply call yourself a "mercenary" that has no ties to either faction and the factions do not seem particularly concerned with what race does their dirty work as long as they can count on it getting done.  That jumps a lot of lore loopholes.
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IMO if they choose to make this happen they shouldnt get too carried away.  K.I.S.S., and just make it so that Dom and Exiles can chat to each other in /say and /map (maybe), allow them to group up, do dungeons and do raids together.  Grouping up outside of instances may not make sense.  There are some quests that have you killing the same number of mobs, but quest names will be different so it might be a bit confusing.  Allowing people to guild together? that may not even be needed if they allow people to group in dungeons and raids.  But it would be nice to allow Dom and Exiles to guild together just to make coordination easier.
 
Everything else ike making lore or quests make sense? i would consider that optional.  I would be happy with just one quest chain for each faction right before Whitevale that somehow explains why Dom and Exile are now not at war anymore or how tensions have relaxed a bit.  The story can be as strong or as weak as they want it to be.  Have Mondo come out and yell "lets have peace FOR SCIENCE" or have a story where they discover one Eldan in stasis or Drusera threatens to blow up the whole planet if people dont start to behave.  Like someone mentioned  how they dont really care what other game companies do. But again, look at WoW and look at what happened when they tried to rework level 1-60 content during Cata. That is a game with a sub that i assume has the money, manpower and resources to pull off major tasks but they fell short (even they admitted it).  That is why i say dont get too carried away with the lore explanation or the mechanical part of it.  If they put more resources then they need to into this then other content development in WS might suffer.
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It wouldn't take any lore changes to put the players themselves on neutral footing either way and have them choose a side only if they want to.
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Yah but doing a change like this and allowing new players to come in and roll a Draken or Chua Exile might confuse them even further.  Especially when all the commercials and ads and some of the starter quests are still themed Dominion vs Exile.  Allowing them to group up later in the game would be better imo.  With an explanation/questline anytime after Auroria/Galeras/Celestion/the-other-place, that explains why they are at peace now.  That would allow them to not alter quests that are Dom vs Exile.  But gives them a convenient way to explain it all away. Even with games that have done this people are still confused, but i think they wouldnt be as confused.  If they do something similar to what you mentioned then they need to do some ads and maybe a few minor quests on the Ark ship or the 1-7 zones to explain why a Chua is in the Exile zone or an Aurin in Levian bay and so on.
 
I dont think i've ever seen a game, at least not one i've played that went from a 2 or 3 faction system at launch to one that joins or is able to group up.  Star Trek Online maybe, but their grouping may have been that way from launch day.  If it wasnt however and it was added a few weeks or months after launch then it would be the same thing i am requesting that WS does. Because in STO the formal peace treaty between the Fed and Klingons didnt get added into the Story until...i dont even know the Chapter name but it was a few years after the game launched i know that much.
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