Knights vs Demons vs Swarm (and Spirits)

After writing the classification of massively multiplayer games and reading about 6 hours about Camelot Unchained I realized that I need to collect and update my ideas about my dream game. Especially because currently I have little faith in Camelot, for the same reason why every faction based PvP game failed: players aren't loyal to their factions. It's most visible in EVE faction war where most players have alts in opposing militias, playing the one with the most rewards. In WoW, while Wintergrasp or Tol Barad had any relevance, they were often dominated by one side, because the other gave up on the optional feature. In the games I've know of (and Camelot isn't an exception), the factions are mirrors of each other with only lore differences. They mean nothing to the players who openly talk about "mobs", "content", "l33t", "pwning n00bs", "ilvl" and other meta-gaming terms, showing that they are rather interested in the social or competitive aspect of the game than in roleplaying in its World. There is nothing that keeps them in one faction when it is losing or can offer lesser rewards than others. It doesn't mean that developers can't balance the game in a way to avoid a faction being exterminated, typically with rewards for joining the one behind, but it means that you can't care less if your side is winning or losing.

My long-held idea is now complete. Please note that the idea itself is about factions, not game mechanics. You can design any kind of combat mechanics and graphics on top of it, from cartoon superhero FPS to dark fantasy turn based card game. The factions have completely different gameplay and philosophy, that lock the players to the faction: they simply love to play this way and would hate to play the other ways, so they are this faction, for better or worse. The basic setting is simple: the factions fight for territories that become vulnerable according to some timetable. Territory control give the faction access to resources and buffs in PvP in that territory.

How do these factions fight?

• Knights, the achievers: the knight gameplay is most similar to (old) WoW gameplay. There are distinct classes with min-maxed specialization: tanks, healers, glass cannons and crowd controllers. While individual performance matters, even the best of the best is nothing alone, while a team with good synergy is strong. Adding more teams (zerging) doesn't add synergies, two teams are just two teams next to each other. Tanks have abilities to keep the enemy in place at the cost of them being locked to them, healers heal them up, CC-ers keep other enemies than the target away from combat, while glass cannons deal most of the damage at the cost of being one-two-shottable if the tank and CC fails or they position wrongly.
• Swarmlings, the socializers: lore-wise they are beasts, fighting with fangs and naturally attained spells. They don't have many abilities and the mechanics are simple. There is no specialization among them, a more advanced swarmling is just bigger and stronger in everything. They fight in large groups (zerging), but they don't have to care about UI management as their strength is automatically gained from the swarm. Nobody in the swarm can die as long as the swarm itself is alive, as the swarm (swarmlings within range of each other) have shared HP. When the swarm is on half HP, it does half damage, so damaging the swarm weakens them, but no individual member is suffering for his bad luck or incompetent play. Similarly, there is no reason for a swarmling to be anti-social with another: every +1 swarmling makes you stronger by adding to your HP pool. Having the "shoot nearest enemy" spell on autocycle, and just chatting with friends while watching the combat visuals is completely accepted "competitive" play for swarmlings. The swarm either dies at once, or dissolves as more and more members run away to save themselves.
• Demons, the killers: lore-wise they are lone demons. While they can form small guilds, they can't unite their forces. They are hindered by "demonic greed" a stacking debuff they receive from every demon nearby. Guildmates have weaker debuff, but still only a handful demons can work together before they become completely useless due to the debuff. On the other hand demons are strong. A single demon has 50-50 chance against proper 4 man knight unit (tank+healer+DPS+CC) of the same skill or against a 10-man swarm. Demons live and die by their skills, the proper execution of combos (like stun plus slow buildup avoidable huge damage) and the proper choice to engage or flee.
• +1 Spirits the explorers: they are a strange addition to the game, as they can't conquer anything. They probably don't want to, because they are explorers. They are combat-unable faction with strong abilities to run away from combat.

How do these factions claim land?

• Knights: They conquer land by building. After they destroyed the strongholds of enemy factions, they must gather and move resources and build a fort WoW Garrison style. Their task to build strongholds are huge compared to other factions, but so is the prize: a well-advanced fort, staffed by well geared and skilled knights acting as a unit cannot be conquered by demons and the swarm must outnumber them 30:1 to win.
• The swarm captures land by ... swarming. After destruction of the enemy stronghold, swarmlings just have to be on the spot while a capture slider is filling (the more, the faster) and a living hive is built which has automatic, unmanned defenses protecting itself even when no swarmling around, and merging its HP with the swarm when it's nearby. There is one mechanic to prevent the swarm razing enemy forts just to grief (Demons can grief, swarm can't): hungry swarmlings can't attack structures. The land can't feed a huge swarm, they must either spread out to farm, opening them up for small gangs of knights and roaming demons or they must use rations from their hive. As hives grow, they give out bigger and bigger rations, so to be able to effectively siege, swarmlings must protect their captured hives long enough to be able to give out big enough rations for a siege battle.
• Demons are unable to team up for a siege, so they can't really fight a properly formed knight army or a large enough swarm. They win territories by either finding undefended ones in the back, or wearing down the defenders by picking them one by one while farming forcing them to just go away - and due to no fast travel, being too far to fight when the timer is up. Demons don't have to build anything to own land, any land unclaimed by the Knights or the Swarm belongs to them with a defenseless demonic pillar growing on the stronghold spot. The longer it's there, the more powerful buff it gives to demons and more HP it has, but it sill can't defend itself, demons must show up and PvP to hold it. When the server starts up, every land outside faction safe zones are demon land.
• Spirits don't own land besides their safe zone, which is in the middle of the map, while the other faction safe zones are on the edges, far from each other.

Character progression, death penalty, time spent outside battles for territories:

• Knights: During breaks of fighting they have lots of tasks to do: gathering materials, crafting gear, upgrading the fort, killing natural monsters for XP. One can spend 10+ hours a day for years as a knight and still have something to do. The XP they gained is permanent. Gear is lost upon death and lootable by everyone. Looting takes time and interrupted by damage, so can practically done only upon victory. Fellow knights are noble, if they loot a corpse, the gear is automatically returned to the owner in damaged form. If enemies loot it, it's lost. Powerful gear acts as artifact for spirits.
• Swarmlings grow naturally while fed and shrink when starving. On death they reset to basic swarmling, but it's not a big loss, as even the most powerful elder beast has just +100% damage and +200% HP (which is only relevant in single combat, as in group the HP is shared) stronger than the most basic newborn. When they grow, they also get a slow visual upgrade which they can't lose and make them look more and more badass. The only thing to do for swarmlings outside of combat is killing natural monsters for food, but as I mentioned, it's really optional as the reward is small. One can be (and most will be) small swarmlings playing casually, socializing most of the time and playing only on big, timer battles.
• Demons progress their character by killing other players. They can't just farm the same noob or alt again and again, they must roam and find new ones to kill. Their strength grows by every kill with no limit, but they can lose a big part of it upon death. Multiple deaths can push a demon back to newbie state. They are anti-social, they are the only faction where killing another member is possible and it's even rewarded: killing a fellow demon gives the biggest reward to killer - and even larger penalty to the loser.
• Spirits spend all their time outside of combat (unless they are caught) and their whole play is about exploring the land, while finding relics. They must also find mana stones to eat. With every relic delivered home, their HP and ability power grows, along with their capability to search relics. Upon death, they lose the relics they carried. For them, the other factions mean obstacle in their quests, as relics are seen as valuable building materials (or gear) by knights, huge chunk of food for swarmlings and powerful temporary buffs for demons. They are seen as thieves by other factions, creating interesting dynamic.

What is their UI look like?

• Knights: Various windows and spreadsheets to properly manage various progress paths, buildings, resources and inventory. Outside of combat they probably don't see much from the World. In combat they have their map, their spell hotbar and group UI, similar to WoW.
• Swarmlings: can switch between two modes. The normal mode has the minimap, the spell hotbar and a swarm counter, showing how many other swarmlings are in range. The combat mode is an RTS topside view where they can pan and scan to see the whole swarm and the battlefield, but of course they can only control their one swarmling.
• Demons: have similar to the Knight combat UI, but they have various cooldown meters and combo counters and ability telegraphs on the ground, rather a WoW UI with the top raiding addons.
• Spirits: have no minimap or any windows, only the spell castbar. They are probably locked into FPS view or closely behind-shoulder view. They have to do everything by seeing and interacting with the World. Their only "senses" are the ability to see their city beacon on the horizon to find the way home; a sunbeam-like effect showing the direction of nearby artifacts; and a danger sense that places red shadows to the distance where hostile players are.

As usual, everything on my blog is free to take. If you are a dev seeing potential in this, use any element in your game!