If you're familiar with Fallen Earth, then you probably already know the story of the existing factions that have spawned amongst the mayhem of the apocalypse--the CHOTA, Enforcers, Lightbearers, Techs, Travelers and Vistas. You are probably also familiar with the faction wheel--while players are able to move around the wheel, changing factions with (quite a bit of) time, not all factions can get along in the wasteland and not all factions like to share!
Enter conflict towns. These locations serve players by providing directed PvP with a storyline--each faction wants to gain control of these towns, but only one can claim ruler at a time!
Conflict towns have a neutral design--no faction is given preference over another, leveling the playing field and enabling some good quality, fair PvP action. Conflict towns are made available for any faction to take over, and it's possible for a single faction to take over more than one or all of these towns at any time.
During the creation process, one of the most challenging parts of crafting a conflict town is developing the chain of faction missions--ensuring that all faction missions are challenging enough for the specific faction and that no faction has an advantage over others.
Currently, there are a total of nine conflict towns located throughout Sectors 2 and 3 in Fallen Earth. If you haven't ventured out to them yet, definitely do so.
Claiming a conflict town
Each conflict town is designed to allow any one of the six factions to gain control over the town. In order for a faction to do this, they must complete certain missions at the faction camps surrounding the town.
Benefits of controlling a conflict town
If your associated faction manages to beat out those other pesky factions and claim control over one of these conflict towns, you'll gain access to several merchants and some handy goods! ...trust us, it's worth fighting for.
Once your faction has claimed a particular town, you will be able to complete certain town missions, enabling you to upgrade the supplies merchants sell and increase your faction's defenses of the town.
A deeper look into conflict towns
To give an idea of what players can expect and to highlight a couple of the active conflict towns in Fallen Earth, Content Team Lead, Marie Croall, will delve into a couple including Tinkersdam, Windfarm and Park City.
Tinkersdam
Tinkersdam is built in the center of an industrial park and rather than having a town that the players can control, they only have to hold a small part of the overall town--the water treatment plant. In addition to that, the faction camps are built into the town itself, rather than surrounding the town. The story for Tinkersdam was fairly simple with the factions trying to win favor with the local settlers to acquire access to the water treatment plant.
Tinkersdam was the first conflict town my team implemented. It was very much a learning process as we figured out the tech. At one point, we had all of the questors showing up as three giant bees. The layout of the town went through several revisions as we tested and learned what made playing in the town environment fun. This town is also the first appearance of Oliver and Stan Lackey-- two settlers who are traveling through each conflict town looking for a safe place to settle. Oliver and Stan change and play unique conversation for each faction version of the town. We were so happy with the Lackeys that they also make appearances in a few other Sector 2 conflict towns.
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Windfarm
Windfarm is a town taken over completely by the Union and is hostile to players in its neutral state. The factions have come to Windfarm to drive out the Union and gain access to the Bunker and whatever usable parts GlobalTech left behind. As players take back the town from the Union, they find more details about what the Union was using the Bunker for and what role they play in Sector 2.
Windfarm was the first conflict town my team implemented to use a level as the primary battleground. We used the same level as the Hoffa Bunker, specifically so players could take advantage of the bottleneck that can occur when at the bridge into the underground facility. Balancing each faction's position relative to their mission targets increased in difficulty when we added the level as some faction camps were just going to be closer. Because of this, Windfarm ended up being the most heavily tested conflict town we implemented as we spent weeks making sure that the challenge level was equal for all the camps.
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Park City
Far from major settlements and built from the remains of a pre-fall GlobalTech resort and campground, Park City used to be one of the safer places for weary settlers. Unfortunately, between the Judges, vicious mutant creatures, and some leftover scientific experiments gone wrong, the settlers needed help and the factions were only too happy to help. Each faction looking to not only increase their territory in Kaibab, but to recover information from the GlobalTech buildings and learn more about the throwbacks and super soldiers that have started to close in on the settlers.
While all the conflict towns have unique design features, we really changed the conflict town layout significantly for Park City. There is a central town for players to hold, but there are also additional camps with merchants and guards in the forest as well. In addition, each faction has two camps they can seek refuge in. We wanted to break the central locations up to keep players moving through the forest and cut down on the amount of time they could spend in one safer location.
The mission structure varies slightly in Park City as well, as players have to complete four missions to receive the items necessary to complete the one faction mission that gives control point for the town. We did this to give players a solid reason to complete all of the storylines presented in the town.
We designed Park City to be the last conflict town in Sector 3 and wanted to make it as large and involved as possible. The team was all about incorporating some interest objects and scripted events that help create a creepy atmosphere of oppression. One of the most effective of these is the "whispers," bursts of radio transmissions that show up in the players' chat log, replaying a scientist's last conversation. Park City was one of our most ambitious conflict towns, and we're still very pleased with the final result.
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