Hello everyone!

Today's topic is one that's gotten a lot of talk, that of friendly fire. PvP and faction standing was something we discussed in August 2008 at our House of Commons chat, however the topic still remains popular to this day. After doing some looking around on the matter, I recalled this post:

That was a good answer, but what about Continomans killing each other? You wanted to know, so we decided to talk some more about it. Our question today is this, is friendly fire possible, and if so, how will it affect your reputation with your current faction? Here's what our developers have to say.

Judging from the activity on our evergrowing forums, a lot of you are curious about how friendly fire works in Earthrise, and whether it would be possible or not to turn against your friends at any moment and what the consequences would be. If we allowed friendly fire in Earthrise, then everyone will become a player killer by default and that is something we want to avoid.

In Earthrise, we have turned off friendly fire by default due to the dynamics of combat especially within mass Territory Conquest battles and to allow for a wide variety of area attacks. Players won't have to worry damaging their own party members when hurling massive explosions on the battlefield and thus lose the combat momentum. Still, if they prefer to turn on their own, they can do that by holding an additional button while executing an attack. This enforces damage dealt to every target caught in the attack.
 
When a player deals enough havok among his own flock to be cast out, he won't immediately become part of the enemy, he has to visit the other faction and willingly accept to become a part of it. In some cases where players attempt to shift too much from one side to another and then back (with the exclusion of spy missions), they will accumulate Traitorship. This is a negative score that takes time and effort to clear and as long as players are considered a traitor, they won't be accepted among the other faction members. Such players will be temporarily caught in a very unpleasant situation of being factionless outcasts but it won't take long for an active player to return to normal so they can choose their side again.

So there you go, that's the deal with friendly fire. Now I'm sure you've got questions, comments, and speculation...
Fire away,
~ m.

PS. We apologize for this week's delay, as your worthy and devoted Community Manager was hit with a seriously nasty bout of food poisoning (totally fine now, all good, back 100%) and was unable to post.

Factions wars are different from clan wars - I think. Good news, i'm glad to see there is no friendly fire but instead a force attack button.

Ok good news on friendly fire when we are at war over a territory and also good news if you switch sides you become a traitor this game just gets better and better with each  QOTW


("Glad to see you back moll hope you are feeling better")

I have some questions after reading that...

What happens if 2 guilds are aligned to the same faction when fighting for territory? Do they have to "press the button" and then can do damage to their own or is there some other type of flag for Territorial Wars?
What if 2 guilds that are not aligned to a faction are fighting for territory, do they do damage to everyone without pressing that button?

And as Thatim asks, what about mixed faction guilds?

Kuhal,I think you could answer your own question if you re-read the qotw and read some info on www.firesock.earthrise.com.


When it comes to territory conquest,people will be able to shoot members of their faction without consequences . When you're in the territory which your guild tries to take,you can kill everyone from the enemy guild or  enemies passing by  except your guild(If the enemy guild paid you for sabotage...you're free to press the button and pwn your friends). No FF by default to guild members and faction members out of the territory I am talking for.

I think it's kind of interesting, in a very limited scope.

You could have some serious double crossing going on with clans on the battlefield.  You'd lose a lot of trust, but it might be fun.

Too bad it's going to enhance zerg tactics though.  Might as well add /assist targeting now.

I don't exactly agree with the AoE mechanic.

I think Samo's idea is good, but I'd like to exand on it and say that your party members get dealt damage at reduced values.

Yeah, the first time.  After that it would probably get annoying.