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Over time this was one of those things that got buried in disgust.

To me it seemed realistic and with hidden complications--for example, if I go up as Vulmane, then I would never be able to do the Griffon diplo with the elves (or was it a dwarf in the elf city?). You had choices; as an orc, I could rebel from my clan and join the dwarves. I thought it would be the one useful reward for mentoring. As for the mounts you could get, they would probably be more appealing if there were no easy sources for flyers. With the armor set, it was roughly what, swamp armor strength? And of course that leaves nothing useful to earn once you get to the 50s. Would some kind of mega city items be appropriate once you reach high level and gain that pocket full of platinum with nothing to spend it on? Is this a system with a lot of potential, a useless waste of time, or maybe a sidebar that's neither a "must-have" nor a pile of junk? Could there be some kind of adventure in killing other factions, or was that just the irrelevant infamy?

The Platinum City Coins idea was a decent one in concept but unfortunately the implementation of it ruined racial faction completely.

I'm all for giving a progressive tiering of faction that enables you access to bigger and better toys as you level if you want to pursue it so long as it doesn't take away from the depth of the setting. Racial biases and hate are there for a reason and it's because the different races have stuff in their lore that gives them pretty good reason to be wary of the people they are. For example, anyone who knows anything about the Kurashasa knows to be wary as heck around them because they're multiverse spanning warriors that decimate worlds. They're not good people by and large.

I think the armour and faction coins should probably be left in but should be tweaked to be a aprt of the reality of the original faction. Something you can take part of for your racial faction or after you've done enough grinding for another faction to get into good standing with them.

The armour was actually a bit better than Swamp in some cases it was near on par with APW. It could serve to be rebalanced, or it's acquisition adjusted to make it a decent side grade at appropriate levels.

Part of the issue with the power of the gear (and the availability of the high end mounts) was that at a low (and comparatively safe) level you could farm certain mobs for the coins. Perhaps if the coin requirements were tiered out so that to get to highest rewards you needed a different kind of coin then you could get at the lower level it would make it more suitable as something you could get to augment your other options. Vanguard always seemed to be a game of choices instead of a game of Best In Slot (this of course until 50+ where power inflation and lack of side-grade content made it more and more a case of "this is the best and you need it").

You could farm coins at low levels, but there wasn't much you could use at that level. The low-level mounts were level 30, and they were equivalent to the unicorn/hound mounts that you could get mid-upper 20s. The high-level mounts were the same as the store-bought T5 horse. The armor was level 48, I think, to equip, and my level 50s that did faction typically were only wearing a couple pieces at most. IMO, it was more useful at filling out your weak spots than anything else. Also it took a long time to earn enough faction coins to get your faction high enough to earn either the armor or the pegasus.

IIRC, the pegaus was only level 10 to use (though it did require a buttload of faction). Also, you could sell/trade at least the copper and silver coins. Those are the things I would like to see changed. Really, the pegasus and an odd piece of armor were the only reasons to do the faction quests (well, and mount appearance).

I mostly spent my faction plat coins on the potions of damage. I never bought the armor or the pegasus. The armor was never better than what I had, and I found it easier to do the gryphon quest and get a real flier than to try to get the coins for the pegasus (Honestly, it was easier to get the gryphon if you had guild support). (And I'm not talking about my uber decked out rogue. I'm talking about all my shitty alts with crap rot gear).

The real annoying thing with the faction plat was how much you got at the upper end of the game, and then had nothing to spend them on. I had about 5 stacks of 500 coins each when sunset was announced. After they ruined the clickies, potions of damage were just not feasible to use (They had a 1hr timer that caused things with a 5 minute timer to suddenly have a 1hr timer). So then those of us at end game had *nothing* to use them on, but we were constantly getting them.

It really did get to a point that I threw them out.

A side effect of the plat coins also became plat coin farming where people would camp ALL CAPS MOBS, some of which were required for quest updates. I had to report MANY players for bitching at us for killing "their mob" when we were there for the quest. It was ridiculously stupid. (This is one of the reasons the lyceum mobs on the floating islands no longer gave plat coins, cuz they were constantly camped for farming).

It's one thing to compete with another group to get a named. It's another entirely when some asshole is just farming coins and camping the dude.

I know exactly what you mean, Jakkal. And it was actually much easier to get the coins at a lower level and save them then it was to get the coins when the equipment was level appropriate.

A major set of NAMED were in Kusaravi Gulch (I think, I may be utterly misremember the name... It's the zone with the temporary wyvern quest in the twenties). There were, I believe, three NAMED in pretty close proximity with a very short respawn timer that could be easily killed by a duo. It only took a few hours of farming these guys to have enough coins to get anything you wanted once you were of appropriate level.

That's something I'd like to make sure we don't repeat.

I knew a fair amount of players who would level lock and farm nameds in the Gulch and Three Rivers; in fact, they did it all day, only, for like a week to get the pegasus. Or however long it was.

You have to bear in mind that now, we know the reputation of what most of our player base will be. I personally remember quite a few from both the official forum and in-game. I don't expect we're going on Steam or anything, and won't be luring new players who might have been interested in, some of the changes SOE made, and followed that general playstyle. I don't farm that way much, but for the most part, if you found me blocking some mob, I'm totally the type of person to let someone else have a turn, and I expect most of the others are all reasonable people that we're all more or less friends with. I recall a few of the guilds would coordinate their raid targets so everyone could get a shot.

You could have some "cheap" awards like appearance gear from your team. Especially at low levels a lot of the armor was kind of ugly. I'd be fine with a level 50 release where you were going for a mix of RI, Swamp, and City stuff. It might make sense to tie off the Platinum rewards there and then go to diamonds and pearls from APW and stuff like that. Working on partial gear sets or loot from multiple places at a time, always rules over one path. But in my experience, I bought the cheapest piece of city armor and never went back. I could kill some guys in Leth Nurae but it didn't accomplish anything. I know that leans toward pvp which starts making it a different issue. City raiding could be fun, and I might enjoy mentoring if it wasn't OP and was worth doing for named kills.

Found this goodie about city faction.

https://www.graffes.com/forums/showthre ... ide-(Long)