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2 Factions vs 4 Factions
Topic Started: Jan 27 2015, 12:01 AM (1,467 Views)
Tofuology
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Nya Nya~
Ok, so browsing through this and I thought it'd be nice to bring some discussion to it. Basically, here's the what's going on.


Four factions is a pretty tried and true number. On the other hand, I find the idea of another two-faction arc somewhat appealing; we’d just have to time-limit it.

Two-faction arcs are nice in that it’s really easy to get matches going, and the story tends to be much clearer. Shon-Xan was a great arc in that it was easy to start matches and also easy to explain the story: “Noxus and Ionia are fighting over a piece of Ionian territory.” Hextech Revolution was also a great arc, but it was a bit more complicated.

I’m leaning in favor of four factions, but this warrants some discussion.

Would someone like to get a forum discussion going about how many factions people want to see next arc?



So this thread is just a discussion on what you guys would like to see yourselves for the next arc. Let's get to brainstorming/arguing!
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ShadowKnight1224
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Every day is Lissandra Appreciation Day
I don't much care about the faction number, I just want the Freljord to be part of it. Demacia has been part of almost every arc since Factions started, and I think it's high time the other factions got some spotlight too.
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Kaynunot
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Kuronan Estimare, Psionic Psion of House Estimare
I was in Shon-Xan and looking back on it, I don't like the idea of a Two-Faction arc. What Shon-Xan basically was, was Noxus won any Tournament, but Ionia had the power in everything else. Noxus barely clawed through that arc at times. Four factions is far more dynamic because if you lose against one Faction, you can fight two other ones. In Shon-Xan, if Noxus was having a bad time against Ionia, the BoP would suffer horribly for it and Noxus would have no alternative to fight.
Edited by Kaynunot, Jan 27 2015, 01:47 AM.
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drmigit2
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Magus
How about a three faction arc then? I think 4 factions might be too many here, though if we want to push it we could go Demacia, Azir, Icathia, Zaun all vying for control of Shurima itself. Demacia and Icathia could be removed as is convenient. I think honestly keeping Icathia as a neutral force which offers its help to the highest bidder could be interesting. Would make a three faction arc with the ability to court the favor of the void...if you have the guts to deal with the consequences.
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Kaynunot
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Kuronan Estimare, Psionic Psion of House Estimare
drmigit2
Jan 27 2015, 01:58 AM
How about a three faction arc then? I think 4 factions might be too many here, though if we want to push it we could go Demacia, Azir, Icathia, Zaun all vying for control of Shurima itself. Demacia and Icathia could be removed as is convenient. I think honestly keeping Icathia as a neutral force which offers its help to the highest bidder could be interesting. Would make a three faction arc with the ability to court the favor of the void... if you have the guts to deal with the consequences.
Three Faction Arc hasn't been done before, but the Tournaments would be weird... Like, how do we do it? I think in the New Format whoever wins some Featured Matches wins one of the spots in the Final Matches, and then the other two factions would do a Best Of Five for the other spot? Three Factions could be interesting to experiment with, hopefully we can iron out World Systems well enough to pull it off.
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ShadowKnight1224
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Every day is Lissandra Appreciation Day
Demacia needs to take some time out IMO. Shurima vs. Zaun vs. The Void is a feasible idea, though I personally am of the "the more the merrier" approach.
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Kaynunot
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Kuronan Estimare, Psionic Psion of House Estimare
ShadowKnight1224
Jan 27 2015, 02:14 AM
Demacia needs to take some time out IMO. Shurima vs. Zaun vs. The Void is a feasible idea, though I personally am of the "the more the merrier" approach.
I'm glad Demacia didn't come out much this arc, it was a refreshing change and I hope Demacia is less prominent in Future Arcs (read that as STOP SHOVING YOUR JUNK IN OUR FACES, WE DON'T WANT TO SEE IT!) Really, future arcs should have less "LOL, I HERD THERE WAS A PARTY, I'M HERE TO CRASH IT!" from every Faction. If Factions get involved, it should be done Organically (Demacia bombs Zaun? Hell yea Noxus is coming to bash in Demacia's head, this does not give Ionia a reason to come to Demacia's defense.)

From now on, all Interventions should be very well structured, not 'We do it because we can!' like what I feel happened with Shon-Xan (sure, Noxus did go to Ionia intending to go to War, but I feel like Demacia intervening was out of line, and the League would have stopped that shit quickly and then sanctioned Demacia.This is especially the case because Noxus won the Tournament and the League basically GAVE Noxus that Right, Demacia was never given such a right.)
Edited by Kaynunot, Jan 27 2015, 02:28 AM.
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ShadowKnight1224
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Every day is Lissandra Appreciation Day
I personally don't like rigorous structure, but I agree that some factions don't make much sense for some arcs and it feels like the players wanted those factions so CCT had to come up with a reason for them to get involved.

I would rather factions had a less flimsy reason for their involvement in the arcs, but I don't want to rule out the possibility of factions entering or leaving an arc, or intervening temporarily and so on. It adds life to what would otherwise be a stale and predictable outcome.
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XalkXolc
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Lightning Ball goes Boom
Personally, if we did have a 2 faction arc, I think it'd be cool for it to be Shurima vs. Void, but more importantly, the ease in making matches would be nice. However, I do find the concept of a 3 faction arc interesting, if we could make it work.
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AbiwonKenabi
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Sorcerer
I feel like Shurima vs Zaun is inevitable, and a 2-faction arc would make the most sense. Adding the Void is a good idea too--they are geographically close and they can act as sort of a neutral party that can help or hurt any side they please, a very fitting situation for the Void. It just feels like other factions getting involved would be totally random. Like I guess you could make an argument for Pilt or Demacia, but its a flimsy one at best. Shurima is a practically new nation, if Azir had any sense he wouldn't fight a war on several fronts.

I don't know, I like the idea of a very focused conflict where we can get more development and we hopefully won't have a punching bag faction with only 2, because that seems to happen when we have 4. Two factions gives each more time to shine, each individual champion has more time to shine, and the extended rosters can be potentially larger since there are only 2 factions involved (Noxus getting Zaun champions for example or vice versa. Or this arc, when the Freljord had a few Demacian allied champions available). And unlike random research reason champions, its sensible enough to say "Freljord and Demacia are allies, so they lent them some champions". I know one of the cool things about factions is using limited rosters, but I think it could be cool to have more varied strategies available to us.

I like the arcs with 4 factions too, but having a varied number of factions occasionally wouldn't be bad either. Its also a hell of a lot less workload for staff, because even if we have as many events as Nyroth, it would still be cut in half.
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501st Big Mike
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I reserve the right to be loudly opinionated on subjects I am completely ignorant of

When it comes to tournament format, I am confident I can sort everything out for it to work with whatever number of factions we use. Well... within reason (a 12 faction arc or something like that would get out of hand pretty quickly, obviously). A 4 faction arc was what I was basing the Split Format on, but I can make it flexible.

For example, a 2 faction arc would skip the Semi-Finals and only have the Preliminaries and the Finals. Preliminaries would be Silver and Bronze players, with Finals being HHGGG. Each would be a best of 5, and would have its own separate prize. Kinda like how in a tournament the 1st place and 2nd place faction both get pretty substantial prizes (of course 1st place gets the largest), but this would be like the Preliminaries is fighting for the 2nd place prize while the Finals are fighting for the 1st place prize.

In a 3 faction arc, there are a few variations we could take. The Finals would remain a best of 5 between the winners of the Preliminaries and the Semi-Finals. The Semi-Finals could be either a best of 3 or best of 5, and the Preliminaries has the most options. Since there are 3 factions, for every faction to play each other 1 time each requires just 3 games total. This could mean the preliminaries are shortened to just 1 day, or we have each faction play each other twice over the course of the normal 2 days. I am inclined to pick the latter option to give the factions more chances to rise to the top.

As for what I personally think about having 4 factions or some other number, I want to point out that this would make the 3rd arc in a row to have 4 factions involved. This would kinda set a 4 factions as the standard going on. Its something that happened with the tournament prizes. We had 3 tournaments in a row with the 1st place prize being an NPC. I strongly encouraged us to break from this pattern with the last Nyroth tournament because we were starting to make an NPC the standard tournament prize, thereby limiting how much we can vary tournaments. When we chose a non-NPC prize, there were people asking, "Wait, why isn't there an NPC for 1st place?" This shows that even if we don't make something an official rule, if we do the same thing enough times we lock it in as a standard that the community expects.

Now, a 4 faction standard isn't necessarily a bad thing. Its a tried and true number that works, going into 5-6 factions makes match creation very difficult, and lower numbers lacks some dynamics and diversity in the arc. While I was against creating a standard for the tournament prizes, as it really restricted what the tournaments could mean to the Factions' universe, I am not opposed to creating a 4 factions per arc standard.
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ShadowKnight1224
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Every day is Lissandra Appreciation Day
The problem with 2-faction arcs (as I see it, I wasn't around for Sho Xan), is that everything becomes drastically more binary. Imagine if we had cut out Ionia and Frel from last arc, and the factions had been Bilge vs. SI? It would have been a horrendously anticlimactic arc where the staff would have had to do some major heavy lifting to inject some drama and balance into the BoP and tournaments.
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theelkspeaks
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Initiate
I'm opposed to having fewer than 4 factions in an arc due to the above lack of diversity, and current playerbase probably makes it hard to go above it either. So while I'd like to see 5 or 6 faction arcs in the future (or more), I think 4 is the safest number for now.
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AbiwonKenabi
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Sorcerer
As Mike said, having a standard of 4 factions is not bad thing. It works well, giving both variety and few enough factions to make games.

That said, just because something is a standard doesn't mean other options can't be good. One problem I saw with Nyroth was the sheer amount of events and the detail of each. This can be a good thing, but CCT and staff were absolutely swamped with the amount of work this required. As a result, the Lore Events got pushed out early, weren't properly revised or given the love and care some if the most memorable events have had in the past.

Think of the characterization in some events. I felt we didn't have that as much in Nyroth with all the events and dicerolling they had to juggle. I like a lot of events; it increases strategy options for each faction and events are just plain fun. With fewer factions, we could plausibly have the same amount of events that could potentially be more detailed (combined with an improved world system, this could be really complex story- and character-wise)

Oh and just so I'm clear, the staff has done a great job with this arc. But I think Cupcake himself admitted there is clear room for improvement.
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Wizard996
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Random Silver Scrub
I personally believe 4 should be the standard. It is tried and true, and has proven to be effective at delivering all the drama we want.
That said, I can see the appeal of a 2 faction arc, as long as they are reasonably short. For example, if we had the inevitable Zaun vs Shurima as just that, then it couldn't be nearly as long as Hextech and Nyroth, simply because how much territory could the League really have to carve up even further?
Of course, imo, it would be less Zaun vs Shurima than Zaun vs Shurima vs Icathia. Not to mention it would give us time to play around with 3 factions, which hasn't been done before.
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ShadowKnight1224
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Every day is Lissandra Appreciation Day
The amount of work can be resolved when CCT hires more staff and works out proper procedures for them.

Personally, I would like some way to belong to a faction permanently instead of having to change every arc. I know 12-faction arcs are not feasible at all, but it's not impossible to have some "active" factions and some "supporting" factions that can either pledge their allegiance to one of the active ones, or just send summoners as delegates, or just hinder/support from the background.

I say this because frankly if there's a Shurima vs. Zaun vs. Void arc, I may have to just sit it out.
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CupcakeTrap
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ShadowKnight1224
Jan 27 2015, 12:43 PM
The amount of work can be resolved when CCT hires more staff and works out proper procedures for them.

Personally, I would like some way to belong to a faction permanently instead of having to change every arc. I know 12-faction arcs are not feasible at all, but it's not impossible to have some "active" factions and some "supporting" factions that can either pledge their allegiance to one of the active ones, or just send summoners as delegates, or just hinder/support from the background.

I say this because frankly if there's a Shurima vs. Zaun vs. Void arc, I may have to just sit it out.
Indeed, the problems that arose during Nyroth had much less to do with the overall number of factions (though of course there would have been less with only two) than it did with staffing and procedural issues. We started Nyroth when things were "mostly" ready. We learned how much of a difference there is between "mostly ready" and "ready", especially when the arc involved a dramatic expansion of World Systems. Not making that mistake again, that's for sure. (In the revised agenda I posted, I make hiring of staff a high priority. As Factions grows, I can no longer sustain the old way of "by default, CCT does everything, unless someone else is available that week". Part of the pre-launch plan for next arc has to be who does what when.)

It's funny; I was about to say "someone had a really good idea about Summoners having a permanent "primary faction" as well as a faction they're currently fighting for", when I decided to go remind myself who that was. Indeed, it was you.

I really like that idea. We'd need to talk more about it, but I think it would be neat if each Summoner selected one faction as their "home faction" or "primary faction" or whatever.
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ShadowKnight1224
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Every day is Lissandra Appreciation Day
CupcakeTrap
Jan 27 2015, 01:42 PM
It's funny; I was about to say "someone had a really good idea about Summoners having a permanent "primary faction" as well as a faction they're currently fighting for", when I decided to go remind myself who that was. Indeed, it was you.

I really like that idea. We'd need to talk more about it, but I think it would be neat if each Summoner selected one faction as their "home faction" or "primary faction" or whatever.
Much like Karthus, my ideas don't stay dead for long. ;)

I'm an ever-flowing spring of ideas, I just have been busy with work lately, but if you want different takes on primary factions, I can probably create a thread with a bunch of different ideas and a poll to see what the community likes best.
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Tofuology
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Nya Nya~
501st Big Mike
Jan 27 2015, 12:06 PM
When it comes to tournament format, I am confident I can sort everything out for it to work with whatever number of factions we use. Well... within reason (a 12 faction arc or something like that would get out of hand pretty quickly, obviously). A 4 faction arc was what I was basing the Split Format on, but I can make it flexible.

MAKE THIS HAPPEN!
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Crzymstrbkwrm876
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EVERY DAY IS A GOOD DAY TO TORTURE, MAIM, AND DESTROY
First of all; I do not want 2 factions. I know that I am relatively new to factions, and as such did not take place in the shin-xon arc,(or however it's spelled) but I have gone back and read over all of the old updates for every arc. I have to say; I like having multiple arcs more than having 2. I like the complexity of, will SI support our petition to ban Naut from Bildge? Are we going to help Ionia against SI, or will we just ignore them? I like the whole alliance/negotiating of the multiple factions system. By making it a 2 faction arc, I feel that you will have lost some of the excitement that you get by deciding who to help/trust/hate with a passion, and having to convince your alliance members that your right (thank you Liss for the lessons) that brought me to Factions in the first place.

2nd. I do like the idea of having permanent factions, and getting your faction, if its not in the arc, to align with another faction that is in the arc, send them delegates, etc. I think it would be a fun way to introduce each new arc; having a poll where each faction decides who they will help, a lore event that shows them all joining together. It would also be a fun first week thing-Ionia coercing Frel to help them in a new arc, the Void talking to Noxus about a peace treaty if they join them in this new arc, things like that. The summoners for each active faction would have to convince the summoners of the non-active faction to help them. There are lots of spins on this we can add/remove if we do decide to do it, but overall I think it would be a good idea.
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