Hello there wonderful people that bother to read this. Having a good day? I hope you are. I write to you this day to give my insight on the problem with PVP on uneven population ratio servers and in the game in general. As you may know currently have as high as a 3-1 Empire to Republic ratio or vice versa**. It may be higher actually in some servers. This obviously is very bad for Warzones and Ilum alike. So here I propose a fix to the Warzone issue and the server population imbalances.
1. Cluster your servers into "battlegroups". Yes, this is what WoW does and it works great. You allow these battlegroups to compete with each other in Warzones. This makes for a larger pull of players and if servers are chosen so that you try and rig it so you get an even ratio of Empire to Republic it will solve a lot of player gripes; the instant queue into a losing Huttball game for example or the long wait time for an actual Warzone against the opposing faction.
a. Addenddum: A lot of people like Hutbull. Doing this would mean less of it. Allow players to queue separately for Hutbull or just allow us to pick what Warzone or Huttball we wish to queue for. This should not cause any issues if the above system is used. You can make an incentive for queuing for all or random Warzone this way no Warzone is left out in the cold.
2. I really like Ilum and actually like its current setup and I am sure it is a lot of fun on even ratio servers. But servers with uneven faction ratios suffer greatly when it comes to open world PVP on Ilum. Believe it or not the majority of complaints come from the faction with the most people. They complain about their side camping the enemy factions’ base to get valor/kills for daily and weekly, claiming it would be faster if we let them out. The reality of the matter is nothing is keeping the enemy in the base. They can take a speeder out.
The sad reality is they don’t want to leave, they like getting camped, as it’s far easier for them if the enemy comes to them. And with the death wall in place it’s an easy valor farm. I have spoken with the enemy faction while we camp them via /say and they confirm this for me. Why would they take a 20-30 man pvp ops out into the wilds of Ilum when the opposing faction has 2-3 full ops groups waiting?
So how do we resolve this issue? Well obviously an even population would solve the issue entirely for the most part. You may still have issues at non-peak times. Perhaps it is time Ilum became an instance which controls the flow of players but doing that would not be enough. I think focus needs to be put back on the objective rather than on the kills as it is now. You need to make players want to go out there and cap the locations and defend them. I don’t know I have not given the Ilum fix much thought, perhaps an even population is all that is needed.
Thanks for reading my ranting for a bit. Hope you all have a wonderful day. =D
**I honestly do not know if vice-versa is true. I have heard it said that SWTOR is an Empire heavy game and many servers have more Empire than Republic. Is there any truth to this? Or are there just as many servers with more Republic than Empire out there? If so this would mean a server transfer/faction change would certainly be in order and encouraged!
