I think it is safe to assume that there will be NPC factions in FOOL. Groups like the Brotherhood of Steel, the followers of Harold and so forth. Assuming FOOL follows a patter anywhere similar to the previous games in the series, I would also expect players to be able to align themselves with certain factions in-game depending on their decisions.

What remains to be seen of course is whether the players themselves will be able to create their own factions in-game, or exert any kind of influence and control over pre-existing factions once they join their ranks.

Existing Factions: Rising from Initiate to Leader?
In a hypothetical situation, let us say some player ends up impressing and joining the Brotherhood of Steel. Should that player be able to rise through the ranks of the BoS and, eventually, have more of a commanding role in the organization? Or should players be stuck at the grunt levels, doing missions and generally doing the bidding of their NPC masters?

Player Factions: Carving a Niche or Earning Respect
Player-created factions may have to face an uphill battle to come into existence, assuming they could be created at all. After all not only would they have to compete (in a sense) with other player factions, but also against the established ones. As some NPC factions may be able to get along, ally or at least have uneasy truces with one another (according to the lore), a similar system might have to exist for player factions as well.

Imagine if you will a reputation/karma system that exists at more than a personal level. Not only would you have your own viewed standing, but also that of whatever group you happen to be a part of as well. Fall in with a bunch of other players who like raiding caravans and cannibalizing settlers, then don't expect a warm welcome (save from a flamer) from many major settlements.

In theory player created factions should be separate from guilds/clans, as there really should be ways to form discrete groups of players as well as larger collectives (alliances/factions) as needed. Several smaller guilds who work well individually and share similar enough goals (and kind of get along) could get together and form a faction thus.

Sounds messy doesn't it?

really like this, I have also written some previous posts that have similar ideas.

I would really like a ranking feature when joining a faction, maybe raising to the point of captain (paladin?), or other high ranking officer positions and when reaching those you will be presented with harder missions, but more money. Maybe also add some sort of karma inside the mission, if you end the mission in a way your faction like, you will get some extra.. eeh... ranking points (like if you get 10 ranking points you will advance your first rank, then for the next rank you need 100). If you end it in a way that the faction does not like they will subtract points for you (ending bad could be, killing an innocent victim and take all his money/belongings >,>).

I hope there will be flexible missions from the factions, so they can just randomly create one for you. And that if you get a higher rank you might even get to have some guys with you on a mission (NPC.s or actual players). I also thought that maybe they should have a fixed number of players that can obtain the absolute highest rank, so there can be some competition about those places (if you stop doing missions for a while you will be brought down a rank and someone else will take your place).

too tired atm, cant think of more things to write about the npc factions >,< maybe ill write something later

I can certainly see there being generalized faction categories BoS, NCR, Raiders, generic Wastelanders, etc., but it might be difficult to implement a free-for-all faction system. It boils down to reputation vs karma from my point of view. While you might be favorable to one group, and even revered, another group might perceive those same actions as reprehesible simply because they were directed toward the "wrong" target. I'd absolutely love to see an insanely complex system of interactions of this type.

Regarding groups like the BoS, I do think that players should be able to rise in rank within these organizations, but only to a point. If you limit the number of higher positions, you create an alpha class that locks out the vast majority of players - especially those that come to the game later in its development.

I don't think they should differentiate guild from faction. Having raiders and BoS in the same guild would simply be unfathomable.

good thoughts. I really like the idea of smaller guilds forming alliances to gain influence. I would be happy to see similar mechanics in game. "What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?"

Absolutely, they should have a reputation system (like the old games), as if you are friendly with raiders, the reputation for probably all "friendly" factions will be dropped heavily. But that might only be the joinable factions, so you could still walk into a town, but if a guard (belonging to a faction that hates you) spots you, they will attack. So if you have that system you can still have outskirts where there are no guards and there are questgivers there, giving out lowpaying quests but they are mostly used to increase karma for a faction.

Karma in my perspective is how people look at you in general. (having a high karma will have an ill affect on raiders while someone else, maybe a trader will like you more if its high.)


I kinda hinted on that with my: , maybe raising to the point of captain (paladin?) , Paladin within the BoS would be the ultimate feat, but I would not want 400 people having that position, that would only look weird i think :/
Captain could like be the highest pos in a normal faction. Your "alpha class" sounds interesting too.

Awesome stuff.

I lean towards the NPC-factions more. Maybe even SOME variation of player-factions as well.

I just think it will be kind of an immersion-braker, when you check the Faction-list and there are hundreds of factions like:
Yanks
Finns
Swedes
DragonSlayers
1337
SuperAwesome
Roboterrrzzzzz
ZzZXxXZzZ
That's the kind of things I want to avoid. Not very fallout. But instead, forcing the player to make signifigant choices and making you a part of a faction depending of his actions, sounds effin' awesome. Depending on who you are and where you start, there would be decisions to make. Depending on what you do, you might end up with BoS or the Followers of Harold. Then there could be wars between different factions, and you would level up on the factions ranks when completing quests and stuff like that.
That way you could have more power inside the faction, and can decide certain things considering the faction.
Death is certain, Life is not.
-Augustus Hill

whats wrong with swedes >_>

but yes, when people make stupid names for their faction it does look ugly.

Paladins are one of the three groupings within the BoS. Scribes research & record, Knights craft & develop, Paladins protect & train. In my opinion you should be able to ascend from initiate to any one of these three ranks within the BoS without any worries about how many of each there are. Beyond that there should be some limiters to how many people, if any, would be able to attain higher ranks. Elder should be unattainable, IMO, unless there's going to be a unique system for player developed content.

I was just referring for making country-specific factions in a game placed in america.

Im a finn myself. ^_^
Death is certain, Life is not.
-Augustus Hill

I know about the professions.
You could say that there are 2 groups, knights and scribes, knights become paladins later on.

initiates, apprentices then journeyman scribe/knights then senior scribe/knight then head scribe/knight

Scribes (sit and research, might go out on a missions together with knights to do some field research or something) so they are kinda boring to be.

Then the best knights are promoted to paladins, their ranks are junior, senior and head paladin. Then if they survive long enough they might get into the council (they become an elder). I think these would be quite boring to be as well since no combat would be available.

So the useless classes (in my eyes at least) to obtain would be scribes, elders and head paladin. They are useless to obtain just because you won't be doing any combat with them... you would only sit indoors, deciding what others will do.

Unsure of head knight, but they also decide what other knights should do, don't think they do much grunt missions...

Then there are many other subclasses inside those classes, depending on where in the US you are. But the ones I have listed are like the main base.

My point is that there is no use to become head knight and higher, head paladin and higher and scribes or higher since you will most likely not do much combat with them and I don't think I want random people to decide what others should do...

Now, you could become some sort of commanding officer (senior paladin/senior knight), so you get to have lower ranking knights/paladins to go with you on missions (if none of your soldiers die at the mission you get more xp/money/something else?). The normal soldiers just get to go on a much hard mission but they will earn extra cash/xp/something else. Well, the commanding officers can just do normal missions to, but only they have access to be commanders on the battlefield.

And the commanding officer spots should be limited to some extent, so there always will be people beneath them. Maybe even add that to the palading spots, so being a palading might be something special.

well... at least this is my idea...

Some kind of sensible upper limit for joining a NPC faction may be worthwhile of course. Why? Mostly for story based reasons. Hard to push the story forward with NPC groups & factions via game updates, if the players have replaced the important NPCs.

Treating guilds themselves like factions is certainly an interesting idea. It may cut down on the complexity overhead a good bit if so. You definitely do not want to end up with any weird logical faction problems like horrific raiders being all buddy-buddy with the BoS.