Tags
bad guys, factions, final fantasy xiv, good guys, groups, narrative, the secret world, tribes, warring, wildstar, world of warcraft
Today’s Daily Grind question on Massively Overpowered got me considering factions in MMO’ing. More specifically, how multifaceted factions are the more interesting than the flat black-versus-white sort that you see in some games. Even World of Warcraft had pretty much foregone its Orcs vs. Humans narrative on…well, pretty much every open opportunity, near as I can tell.
“World of OccasionallyWarCraft” just doesn’t sound as snappy.
One of my favorite aspects of a multifaceted faction is the belief in their noble purpose. The concept that they are truly right in their cause. Even those who would be painted with the Evil Brush can have sides that are actually something to look up to.
One of the things that The Old Republic does well is its class stories, and one of the best parts of those class stories is how you can honestly make something of a noble-leaning Sith Warrior. The things you do in the narrative (or at least as I’ve played it) are not exactly above board, but the rationale was something that I actually found myself kind of nodding my head in agreement with. And, of course, being able to taunt a Jedi with the knowledge that they are comfortable in their own skin was pretty much icing.
Parts of the Dominion in WildStar also struck that same vein. Here are a group of people who fully believe that they are touched by a grander purpose and that fate has led them to the planet Nexus…and while that has all the makings for a trite, overzealous faction, in reality they have as much curiosity and purpose as anyone on the Exiles side. There are those who want to learn. Those who want to explore. Those who want to get rich and/or famous. Those who want to test themselves.
…and then there are the Chua.
Someone in the comments for that article had very brilliantly brought up The Secret World, a game that just keeps on doing things righter than most. The factions in that game were almost a non-issue since they were all banding together to take down a much more severe threat while at the same time attempting to undermine each other or cover up their involvement. They all had their own way of doing things and why they were doing things, but ultimately the ends justified the means. It also made player characters come up with deeper ideas about why they chose the society they did–a sort of “What would you do in an apocalypse?” question answered by ideology and rationale expressed by your faction’s leadership.
Final Fantasy XIV has this “enemy of my enemy” thing as a large part of its narrative as well. The three factions of the Eorzean Alliance are an alliance in probably the loosest terns, as their inter-political jostling frays the binding ties frequently, but they each have their own sort of noble cause that a player can agree to. Even Ishgard, which first came to us as a supremely zealous and blind faction, revealed themselves to have a lot more going on–a fact that my character, Steel Wolf, has experienced first-hand as she follows the training of the Dark Knight. An order who apply pressure and force against those in Ishgard who would abuse their position to oppress the commoners of the city is precisely the kind of character I like to play as.
Also, they have pretty kickass equipment.
These are groups who usually are seen as villainous but have parts of them that appeal, which makes playing them–and especially roleplaying them–very engaging. The nuances of these groups make them beloved to me on a variety of levels. Since most roleplayers tend to whitewash the black away to make them grayer anyway, having that already written in makes it easier. In addition, being embroiled in the more appealing aspects of their causes just makes the gameplay much better.
Being evil for evil’s sake is boring as hell. I have written before about how most roleplayers are bad at being bad., but when an MMO’s writing team is just as bad, it chafes me. There has to be a convincing way to make the “red side” just as alluring as the “blue side” without resorting to touching on a power fantasy. For me, the best way of doing that is providing a sense of noble purpose. Of justice. Even if that justice is meted out with a huge level of force.
A noble purpose doesn’t have to be the exclusive domain of the good guys. A villain can have a sense of honor and justice just as easily as a knight can become seduced by power and prestige. Even Star Wars, for all of its Light versus Dark nonsense recognized this by making the Mandalorians a thing. The meshing of ideology should not just be written, but designed. Interplay between and within factions should be encouraged. Walling friends from each other because they found different faction ideologies appealing is not how MMO’s are meant to be fully experienced.
Basically, make each of your factions a diamond, not a sheet of paper.
Through Wolfy's Eyes 
Being flat out evil can be rather entertaining though.
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Oh I don’t refute that one bit. My husband delights in the spooky-fingers Something Something Dark Side part of TOR’s stories quite a lot.
Like…A LOT a lot. >.>;;
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Strange. From all you write, exactly one big contradiction strikes out for me. SWtoR. While in theory the class stories have the qualities you attribute to them, the 1-2-3-good-evil wheel evy much broke that to me. The decissions there very often were either naive and gullible (good) or pure psychopathic (evil) and the fact that some equipment was locked to your “alignment” (or however they called it) didn’t help, either.
A classical example on how one badly chosen mechanic can negatively influence the complete game.
Next to that, while i don’t have deep enough insight into all of the games you mention, i dare to agree on what you wrote. 🙂
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In resolution, yea, they did strike those black and white lines…but some of the conversation choices or pieces of rationale presented made things sound a bit more high-horsed. And when I faced off against that Jedi at the end of act 1, it was fun to unseat him from his assumptions about Sith, which ended up unbalancing him completely.
As I admitted in my writing, though, I didn’t exactly follow fully through on the story. There very likely were more of those same dark or light things later on down the line that would have made the whole thing feel not quite so fulfilling.
And you are right–the alignment lockdowns are…well, silly. But considering the gear that was light or dark-specific struck me as goofy anyways, I didn’t really bother to write that in. It is a fair point, though.
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The problem with the gear kind of connects to the community, which when i played the game was very much like WoW. When i healed in some of the dungeons (i think the name was flashpoints? ) and people died, they did not blame themselves for standing in bad spots for prolonged periods. No, they checked each others gear and noticed that while the healers (my) gear was top notch in all aspects, i had one slot free since i refused to play my character to be “all stupid” or “all psychopathic” so i could unlock and use that gear. Thus they concluded that standing in bad stuff for 10 seconds was not the reason for their death, it was that my gear was not enough to heal them through that and i was to be blamed for the wipes…
So badly designed conversations lead into bad choices on itemisations lead into a (forseeable) bad community lead into toxic results and me readily leaving the game.
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