Ranking the Factions (and their conflicts)

[Sload]

So the attached .pdf contains a proposed way of conceiving of factions, mainly for handling conflicts between them.

In summary, the primary factions are the guilds (category A) and the houses (category B). The secondary factions are factions like the rest of the original game's factions (category C). Tertiary factions are localized factions that exist to complete a specific, small-scale story, like the IAS (category D).

Conflicts between factions should be horizontal (you can only join one house, for example) or descendant - a category B conflicts with a category C, but not vice versa. This is one rule, not sufficient but I think necessary, intended to keep players from accidentally locking themselves out of a quest line. Additional rules will be needed to handle conflicts across categories. For example, they should occur at high ranks of one faction (so the player is more likely to have finished the other faction), and prevent low rank quests in the other faction (so that a player does not get halfway through an engaging narrative and then hit a road block they accidentally set up for themselves). In general, conflicts other than the simple and well-understood lock-out of the great houses should be handled with a great deal of thought and care to avoid pissing players off (Not can tell you all about the Writ for Baladas Demnavanni). A way to handle this is to have some of the lesser-category factions be secret (such as Daedric cults or the Twin Lamps), so they will know about your higher-category faction membership, but those factions won't know about your membership in these factions.

We also need to be conscious about whether a new faction falls under Category C or Category D. Does the faction exist to tell a small, single story, or is its narrative large enough to have multiple locations? Twin Lamps is a good example of a borderline case.

An example of this that concerns me is the Helnim branch of the East Empire Company. Especially with the end of the vanilla/TR distinction, the Bloodmoon EEC is an excellent example of a Category D faction - it exists fundamentally to provide a framework for the Ravenrock quest-line. Unless I'm badly misunderstanding these myriad EEC quests TR has put in Helnim, it seems bizarre, "moddy," and possibly non-functional for us to include any other EEC questlines without significantly changing the way the Solstheim EEC works. I'd suggest that a very simple solution to this is changing the Helnim EEC's identity so its no longer an EEC. I'm also a little baffled, though, that anyone confused the EEC for a faction that needed more quest locations.

[rot]

Since in some cases it's hard to give clear warning of the consequences of the quest through in-character dialogue (eg Demnevanni), how does an OOC messagebox sound? In the same vein as 'Your journal has been updated'.

'Completing this task will limit your progress through the ranks of %Faction!' or the like. No warning, or a more subtle variation, if the faction is a secretly joinable faction that the player doesn't yet know about?

[Theo]

I think that the whole point behind Sloads classification of questlines was to divide them into groups according to their importance, so that player could be blocked off some minor quests, but only to a acceptable degree. Your actions should have some, even unexpected, negative impact for you after all, but it should not be a too big of a deal.

Implementing some type of ingame warning as you suggest would be not only immersion breaking, but would cut a lot of the excitement and thinking along the lines: "By doing this, am I not going to piss faction X and guy Y off?"

[rot]

so that player could be blocked off some minor quests, but only to a acceptable degree. Your actions should have some, even unexpected, negative impact for you after all, but it should not be a too big of a deal.

The point of blocking low-level quests as I understand it is, on the contrary, to block the faction questlines (when it's necessary) *early on* instead of letting the PC play through them until an illogical breaking point (eg the NPC who was supposed to give you quests is dead).

I agree that any OOC warning is immersion-breaking, but the way factions conflict in vanilla is either through bugs, or consequences so poorly thought-out that for all intents and purposes they're indistinguishable from bugs (Thieves Guild/Fighters Guild). Players are not used to intended drastic consequences in faction conflicts, so if that's the path where TR is going with its questlines the players must be informed at some point.

I also find it infinitely more immersion breaking to have, say, the leader of the Imperial Cult become head of the Tribunal Temple without anyone batting an eyelid.

[Theo]

Well, I do not think we are in disagreement in anything you wrote, I just think that if the questlines will be planned properly no such warning message will be necessary.

[Sload]

I also find it infinitely more immersion breaking to have, say, the leader of the Imperial Cult become head of the Tribunal Temple without anyone batting an eyelid.

This is, fortunately, one of the easiest conflicts to resolve. There are two clear options; personally I have no preference:

-Have the IC and TT be as mutually exclusive as the houses; once you join one you can't join the other.

-Have the IC and TT both have clear and obvious stages of 'lay service/initiation' and 'priesthood.' Have achievement of priesthood in one make it impossible to either join the other; if the player is already in both, once they achieve priesthood they can't progress to priesthood in the other.

More complicated (and contingent on specifics we don't have nailed down yet) are questions like - Imperial Legion & Indoril/Telvanni/Dres; Twin Lamps & Dres; IC & Indoril; etc. These are much grayer conflicts and much harder to determine.

Can anyone comment on the Helnim EEC; specifically, why we have a second EEC location at all, how it is intended to interact with the ravenrock EEC, if it wouldn't be better to give it a new, more local name, and if it still makes sense with a helnim 1/4 the size of the current city.

[Yeti]

-Have the IC and TT both have clear and obvious stages of 'lay service/initiation' and 'priesthood.' Have achievement of priesthood in one make it impossible to either join the other; if the player is already in both, once they achieve priesthood they can't progress to priesthood in the other.

I support this course of action. It allows players the chance to experience a little of both major faiths before deciding which religious path their character will ultimately embrace. Leaves more room for role-playing and all that jazz.

Can anyone comment on the Helnim EEC; specifically, why we have a second EEC location at all,

I'm guessing it was included just for the hell of it. Someone observed that Helnim was a considerably large Imperial settlement and thought "Hey, the EEC is Imperial. Let's put one of those here, since God knows we're too impatient to wait until a better location for a EEC opens up.

To be fair, it does make sense for there to be strategically-placed EEC offices spread across Morrowind. The faction needs bases from which they can enforce their monopolies and exploit the province's untapped wealth. Ebonheart had a non-joinable EEC office, and since Helnim in its current form is quite bigger than Ebonheart, adding an EEC presence to the city probably seemed reasonable at the time.

In hindsight, a major EEC presence in Telvanni lands is probably no longer desirable. Why would the Telvanni let a pack of bothersome outlander merchants flaunt their authority on their home turf? In the end, too much outlander interference in Telvanni District will create the perception that the lands of the Mage-Lords are solidly under the Empire's control. Having the EEC go about their mundane business freely in such an alien landscape is akin to having purposeless Imperial settlements like Bal Oyra flaunting the hostile terrain of the District.

how it is intended to interact with the ravenrock EEC,

I'm not very familiar with the exact details of the questiline, but i believe it refers to the Raven Rock branch in dialogue at some point. They don't interact to any reasonable extent as far as I can remember though.

I believe the "old" idea was to have a mainland EEC that would function much like the FG, MG and TG. The player would do jobs at various offices spread across the province and advance accordingly through the organization's ranks. Based off what you've written, sload, I imagine this won't be the case moving forward. This is likely for the best. We already have plenty of more interesting and relevant factions to work on without wasting time on the ECC. Any work we would have spent on EEC questlines should be redirected to the Great Houses and brand new location-specific factions like the IAS and the aforementioned Daedra cults.

if it wouldn't be better to give it a new, more local name, and if it still makes sense with a helnim 1/4 the size of the current city.

I don't see the justification for creating an additional unique local faction for Helnim. We already have an IAS planed for the town. Anything more than that would place too much importance on an otherwise inconsequential settlement.

Once Helnim is shrunken, it will make even less sense to have a major mercantile-focused faction based in it. With that said, it would be a terrible shame for the current EEC quest work to go to waste. Some effort should be taken to salvage it, in my opinion. We don't want to alienate the few questers we have by throwing out their work completely. I have no idea how, or even where we could repurpose the quests, however. House Hlaalu, which is also mercantile-focused would be a option if it's lands weren't on the other side of the province.

[Theo]

Or maybe just translocate the EEC to Ebonheart?

I agree completely that new and original content should take a priority over extending existing factions. Not only new factions are more favorable for public release (everybody is looking forward to join house Dres and Indoril and explore Kemel-Ze), but they are also ultimately more rewarding for questmakers to design and implement.

They should also take precedence in defining the range of possible conflicts with traditional factions. When questmakers start their work on Fighters Guild, the setting should pretty much be defined by the more specific local connected questlines.

I recall that it was a general consensus during questing of map 1 stage, that our "duty" is first to make sure all the familiar factions are there on the map 1, before we even consider thinking about new ones. And by all people meant ALL.
That is why quests for following factions were being planned and implemented on map1: TG, FG, MG, Imperial Cult (!), Temple (!), even Imperial Legion was planned (!?!)

This resulted, to my opinion, in several negative phenomena:

- Most of the old faction quests is filler and uninspired (Thieves Guild and Mages Guild in Firewatch in particular. Fighters guild, on the other hand, could be taken as an example how things could be done.). Not all quests should of course be a part of some exciting plot and storytelling, but there should be some payoff even for mundane tasks other than "Here is your gold for my five pieces of muck!".

- Because those factions were designed and implemented first, they did setup the stage and limitations for other more important factions.

- Before we even got to doing the interesting stuff (cult of Molag Bal) for map 1, questers were already needed to implement quests for exactly the same guilds at map 2.

[Gez]

"It doesn't make sense to have the EEC in Telvanni lands!!!"

The East Empire Company is a monopolistic mercantile enterprise chartered by the Emperor and managed by a board of directors appointed by the Emperor. The Company has sole authority to trade in certain goods, like flin, raw ebony, raw glass, and Dwemer artifacts, and it also enjoys favorable tariffs and regulations for import and export of other common and exotic goods, like kwama eggs, marshmerrow pulp, saltrice, and Telvanni bug musk.

They are here to buy stuff from the Telvanni. The Telvanni accept their presence because they fund themselves in part by selling bug musk to them.

I haven't looked at the Helnim EEC questline, so I will not comment on that point, but their existence in the area is justified.

Re: Temple and IC. No matter what the fancy name of the rank you have in the Cult, you are still not part of the clergy proper.

You have already risen to the highest rank available to a lay servant of the Imperial cult.

Priesthood would be something beyond being a lay servant, and it would also be super-boring because it'd mean preparing sermons and celebrating mass on a regular schedule instead of going out, exploring cool new places, killing funny-looking critters, and taking their +1 stuff of epicosity.

I don't really have a problem with people joining both IC and TT. Really, what is the problem? The only restrictions Beth made was between the Great Houses and between the vampire clans. I think we should keep it this way.

[Sload]

I'm guessing it was included just for the hell of it. Someone observed that Helnim was a considerably large Imperial settlement and thought "Hey, the EEC is Imperial. Let's put one of those here, since God knows we're too impatient to wait until a better location for a EEC opens up.

To be fair, it does make sense for there to be strategically-placed EEC offices spread across Morrowind. The faction needs bases from which they can enforce their monopolies and exploit the province's untapped wealth. Ebonheart had a non-joinable EEC office, and since Helnim in its current form is quite bigger than Ebonheart, adding an EEC presence to the city probably seemed reasonable at the time.

...

Once Helnim is shrunken, it will make even less sense to have a major mercantile-focused faction based in it. With that said, it would be a terrible shame for the current EEC quest work to go to waste. Some effort should be taken to salvage it, in my opinion. We don't want to alienate the few questers we have by throwing out their work completely. I have no idea how, or even where we could repurpose the quests, however. House Hlaalu, which is also mercantile-focused would be a option if it's lands weren't on the other side of the province.

Given that all elements of this faction (there are like 4 different questgivers, IDK why I haven't read the google doc thoroughly because I find it difficult to follow) are currently well-along the process of being made, I think it would be much better, unless these quests are awful, to keep them faction extent and make it Helnim's thing. No reason to cut it unless its actually content that we would be embarrassed to have in this mod; we just need it to make sense with the larger picture, which is that EEC as a joinable faction exists to facilitate the Raven Rock quest-line, and cannot be put to any other purpose.


Gez, I've been ignoring you a lot but I'm going to say this to try to not have to do that anymore. Your posts in the halfway house (and in general) might not be so terrible if you read Adanorcil's "Visions and restrictions: a proposal" thoroughly and from now on made reference to vanilla Morrowind more judiciously and less judicially.

Beyond that, obviously the EEC needs to be present in the Telvannis district; it does not need to - and should not - have quests, which is a decision based on entirely different criteria, and the purpose of this thread. You'll find that when you can't quote anyone but instead have to "paraphrase" the thread, you probably actually have the wrong impression of it.

[Gez]

Here's your quote, then:

In hindsight, a major EEC presence in Telvanni lands is probably no longer desirable. Why would the Telvanni let a pack of bothersome outlander merchants flaunt their authority on their home turf? In the end, too much outlander interference in Telvanni District will create the perception that the lands of the Mage-Lords are solidly under the Empire's control. Having the EEC go about their mundane business freely in such an alien landscape is akin to having purposeless Imperial settlements like Bal Oyra flaunting the hostile terrain of the District.

[rot]

The late vanilla IC questline was added as an afterthought and does indeed suit a 'champion' more than a 'Theurgist' or 'Primate' (which are the ranks you achieve, and no, not [url=http://wakpaper.com/large/Primates_wallpapers_116.jpg]that kind[/url]), and this is to a large extent true of vanilla TT too. However TR's version of the TT will hopefully take the time and have a little more depth to it, so even if the IC stays the same and just has its ranks renamed, it will be incompatible from the Temple's point of view.


Re:EEC, while some of the quests are generic enough to pass off as misc (fetch a dude's fancy pants in Tel Muthada), some are so specifically connected to the EEC (dwemer artifacts) that they just can't fit another faction. Those specific quests: can serve to emphasise the capitalistic side of the Empire without involving the Hlaalu for once; aren't bad designs; and are already done, which is really all the justification needed for having EEC quests in the first place. What is, and perhaps should stay, specific to Bloodmoon - is the faction being joinable.


edit- overview of the EEC quests, I'll let whoever knows them better correct,
done or almost
FlinGalore, Lorus1, Lorus2 - misc merchandise quests
Zare1 - misc fetch quest
Mero1 - Helnim-specific
Cule1 - EEC-specific (dwarven artifacts)
Cule2 - Helnim-specific, EEC-related? (diamond mine)
not done
(claims never put up) Lorus3, Lorus4, Lorus5 - Helnim specific, perhaps EEC specific?
(on hold by Rats) Mero2, Helnim-specific

[Yeti]

If the EEC is to have a location in Telvanni lands, which I admit makes sense given their role in the bug musk trade, Firewatch would be a much more logical place for a secure modest-sized office. Doing quests for the EEC in the area, but not as an official member rising through the ranks, could be a good option if a joinable faction isn't desirable. On the other hand, we could make them available to members of the Raven Rock branch, but not offer any further ranks.

Do the people who made the Helnim EEC quests have access to Halfway House? It's probably advisable to have them weigh in on these quests.

Is Helnim still going to have a diamond mine in the redesign? What happens to its FG, IC and TG quests? Now that we have a good idea of the changes we want to make to our Telvanni lands, perhaps a review of all our quests in the area, similar to the reviews we need of our old books, is in order.

[Theo]

Now that we have a good idea of the changes we want to make to our Telvanni lands, perhaps a review of all our quests in the area, similar to the reviews we need of our old books, is in order.

I will try to put together this list now.

EDIT: First part done for guild quests.

[Sload]

edit- overview of the EEC quests, I'll let whoever knows them better correct,
done or almost
FlinGalore, Lorus1, Lorus2 - misc merchandise quests
Zare1 - misc fetch quest
Mero1 - Helnim-specific
Cule1 - EEC-specific (dwarven artifacts)
Cule2 - Helnim-specific, EEC-related? (diamond mine)
not done
(claims never put up) Lorus3, Lorus4, Lorus5 - Helnim specific, perhaps EEC specific?
(on hold by Rats) Mero2, Helnim-specific

Thanks for this. Cule1 is pretty hard to justify without some EEC involvement, but maybe there's a way to rework this so it works. We need to figure out what this is if its not a joinable EEC, and then see if we can fix that. Otherwise they're apparently not EEC required.

[Yeti]

Is there any reason you didn't include the Helnim faction quests in your review, Theo, or have you just not gotten to them yet?

[Theo]

I did not get to them yet. Plus I personally tested all of the map 1 quests, but I am not so familiar with map 2 quests, so I think somebody else should pass his judgement.

[Theo]

Ok, including summary of Telvannis misc. quests.