Winds of Fate II - Upper Abyss Faction Incentive System
If you didn’t cared about Abyss sieges before, this little update might certainly make you.
Following the lore, both the Asmodians and Elyos have setup strongholds in the Upper Abyss to not only keep the Balaur threat in check, but as well as one another. Your faction’s stronghold can be now be upgraded to provide great benefits to the entire faction, and you can do so based on the victories your faction has achieved in the Upper Abyss.
Note: This incentive system is for the Upper Abyss only
The incentive system works with a level format, from the basic 1 to the max of 8 (it will never go below 1). Every time your faction flips a base, an artifact or a fortress, your faction scores achievement points, which will be updated into that cool little window. With enough points scored, it will level up; however, with gains also come losses. If you lose a base, an artifact or a fortress (by either the opposing faction or Balaur), you will lose achievement points. And with enough losses, you can drop levels.
NCsoft has made the Balaur pretty active since the new Abyss patch, so there’s little worry of a stagnant progress unless all players have no lives.
Most of the benefits are revolved around portals to other regions, special NPCs and instance entry count buffs. The most notable ones are probably the following:
- Eternal Bastion; grants additional entry count (Level 8 benefit)
- Augment NPC; lower augmenting costs (Level 8 benefit)
- Bloodmark NPC; 42% discount on BM related purchases (Level 6 benefit)
- PVP buff NPC; self-explanatory (Level 5 benefit)
- Kaldor portal; self-explanatory (Level 4 benefit)
- Flight-time buff NPC; increases flight time recovery (Level 3 benefit)
Note: The instance entry count buffs granted by the benefits are unique as they increase the default entry count (eg. if you had an instance boost pack, your default EB entry count would now be 3/3)
An upgraded stronghold also directly affects the bases and artifacts when captured, the NPCs guarding it will be stronger and they will also give out special quests whereby upon completion, will award more achievement points for your stronghold.
tl;dr - If you played games like Starcraft before, this system is pretty much mimicking it. Your participation and activity strengthens your base, which in turns benefits everyone in the faction. If you want to preserve and maintain your benefits, then you have to keep showing up.
Servers who currently own the UA fortresses will benefit greatly in the long run. The overall changes will also allow fortresses to change hands easily unlike now, as the basic benefits involve an infiltration portal to within the opposing faction’s fortress during siege.
This is NCsoft’s method of keeping the Abyss alive.