new feature Factions

[PurpleYouko]

So I have mentioned faction a few times in the last day or two. I suppose I had better elaborate on my meaning a bit.

What I propose is a kind of reputation system with certain monsters. Not necessarily all monster types but certainly a few of the major ones.

Imagine this scenario. Jelly Beans and those little Golems don't like each other so when they meet in the wild they might fight each other. Players can take sides in their war by choosing a faction to support. If you choose to support the Jellys then they will appear friendly to you (friendlier as your reputation with them increases) Killing a Jelly decreases your reputation (it can become negative) This reputation can be read and used via AIP to change the aggression level that these factions feel towards you. If you spend your life murdering every jelly bean that you meet then they will begin to attack you on sight whereas if you avoid killing them, take part in quests to build your reputation, sign onto their faction and kill their enemies (the golems) then even the most aggressive Jelly will view you as a friend and will not attack even if you go right up to them.

This is just a concept but from reading the client source I see definite hints that this kind of thing was initially intended by the designers.

I think this kind of thing might be well worth exploring further.

The Down side:

In order for rival monster types to actually fight each other there needs to be a complete overhaul of the way that teams are designated. Currently all monsters are designated as being on the same team so they cannot fight each other. Except for summons who are automatically assigned to the team that their owner is a part of. In most cases that is just "player" except in PVP zones.

My proposal would mean a rewrite of this whole mechanism. It's not all that hard to achieve though. Just needs a decent manager class to be written so that it can spool up new "team ids" for any team in the game. Parties, Clans, monster factions and other potential groups would all need unique identifiers. Since the current party code is rather horrible, something like this could simplify the entire system and bring it all under one central umbrella.

Well those are my thoughts anyway.