Faction System Issue:
 

This was brought up in a quest bug thread on these forums, and got lost in the shuffle. I thought it significant enough to start a thread for it because it breaks a lot of quest turn-ins that require faction.

The issue was originally raised in this thread, and during the course of troubleshooting the original poster's issue, I consulted the faction Wiki and found the following:

1: Ally
2: Warmly
3: Kindly
4: Amiably
5: Indifferent
6: Scowls
7: threatenly
8: Dubious
9: Apprehensive

I didn't originally think that could be correct, as they're out of order. Dubious and apprehensive should not be at the bottom of the list, as they're definitely more towards the middle of the scale as per Live. I've since been informed that the Wiki is true, at least as far as our code goes. The problem is, the scale should actually look like this:

1: Ally
2: Warmly
3: Kindly
4: Amiably
5: Indifferent
6: Apprehensive
7: Dubious
8: Threateningly
9: Scowls

As a result, if we were to code a quest to where someone needs their faction to be >= 6 (in this example, their faction must be "apprehensive" or better), we're actually getting a completely different range, including "scowling".

One example I can think of would be the Protect the Shipyards quest in the Overthere, in which you turn in Sarnak War Braids to Captain Rottgrime. He should normally accept them so long as you aren't below dubious, but if he's coded properly (requiring >=7), then someone at dubious and apprehensive cannot do the quest. (He currently doesn't make a faction check PEQ's latest version of the quest file, but he definitely should.)

Thanks for your time reading this, developers, and thanks for any help in resolving these issues (or explaining them away, if you can tell me why it makes sense and why I'm crazy =P).

This was explained on PEQ a bit ago. Those values are hardcoded into the client like that, so while they could be changed on the server it would mess up the client's ability to con properly.

Dang it. I seemed to remember a reply from you, but couldn't find it when I went looking for it. Additionally, I forgot the explanation lead to a dead end, and was thinking it needed brought up over here.

Thanks (again!) for the answer. At least this post'll serve as an answer to any quest-writers who have unexpected results =P Also, as a point of humility for me...

What if we change the numerical values just for quests?

I had the same thought. Maybe a new quest command to returns more logical values. That way it wouldn't break any existing quests that check for these the way they're currently set up.

I like that idea.

Ok, I added a new quest::factionvalue() function that returns a more logic-friendly measure of faction. Scowling returns 1 and it increases up to 9 for Ally.