Faction Ratios = a problem

[solidkjames]

I think in the long run it will balance itself out. The empire story is great but honestly I enjoyed the republic side just as much in beta. This game is so amazing I will roll a republic toon as well. But in a sense the Republic should be the underdog and outnumbered. It is a small group of Rebels trying to take down a large empire ruled by an Emperor.

[Truga]

I think in the long run it will balance itself out. The empire story is great but honestly I enjoyed the republic side just as much in beta. This game is so amazing I will roll a republic toon as well. But in a sense the Republic should be the underdog and outnumbered. It is a small group of Rebels trying to take down a large empire ruled by an Emperor.

 

Wrong age, sir. Republic should be just as big, if not larger, at the time we're playing in currently.

[LeSamourai]

Where's your metrics to show this 3:1 ratio?

 

Hutball?

 

But seriously, OP is right. If I play my Empire toons, I get ~10 min waits for PvP...almost ALWAYS Hutball. Hop on my Republic toon, insta-join, hardly ever Hutball.

 

Just go create a toon on some higher cap servers/your own and log in during peak/off peak hours in a couple places to confirm it yourself. I easily spot 1/2 to 1/3 the number of people during PEAK hours on the Republic fleet/Courascant compared to Empire fleet/Dromund; starting areas are even worse with usually less than 50 people in each Republic area...often 120+ in Empire ones.

 

As for the reasons behind it: I don't think you can outright say its because of the "badboy" aspect of the Empire; heck I think Republic has some badboy classes itself (Trooper/Smuggler).

 

I honestly think its due to beta feedback regarding classes/story and how Republic has the shorter end of the stick in that regard. That, plus the Republic planets at the start have some HUGE distances to cover for questing (yes, Empire does too, but generally on average not as much). I've timed 1-10, and 10-20 on a couple classes on both sides, and Republic definitely has the longer level time (skipped heroics, skipped flashpoints, skipped PvP; no bias in that regard).

 

It's VERY evident when comparing Republic force classes to Empire force classes: Korriban vs Tython.....I can 1-11 Korriban in a little over 2.25 hrs (more people on as well, so heroics are instant); Tython takes closer to 4+ (less people, longer waits for heroics). Ord is a little less, more like 3 hr range, but still longer than Hutta (with less people).

 

And this is all coming from someone who wanted to play Smuggler since day 1 of this games announcement (no longer doing that)

Edited January 3, 2012 by LeSamourai

[Vindor]

Empire side got at the very least twice as much player as republic on my server. No articles or anything can deny that.

 

And honnestly after leveling 3 char including one to 44 republic side and now trying empire i honnestly cant blame the players.

 

Bioware screwed up, they need to learn from WoW (apparently they like that ) and add a fotm race or something republic side in the next XPAC ( if the game isnt another war online or aoc by then )

[Jackobite]

new years night, its bloody quiet I log into my guy on Empire /who 50, it shows up the first 100 results.

log into rep /who 50 shows the 27 people at lvl 50 republic.

 

I threw this out on general and the answer came back that our lvl 50's were out partying and the empire guys didnt have a life!

[Boefje]

It's called freedom of choice.

No game developer, bank, government or any other institution has the right to deliberately

force anyone make a specific decision simply because of an reason called "favoritism" which in legal therms it's translated as "discrimination".

 

In our case, server ratios CANNOT be balanced by the game developer itself, because it's player's decision only, to choose that to play. If Bioware or any other game developer, would make rules about the issue, the above statement would become active, as who will be choosen to play what and WHY?!

 

The only way they could balance the ratio is to auto transfer people cross servers when a server ratio becomes unbalanced but this will cause a mega rage.

[Auxili]

NEWS from this week's articles posted by bioware:

 

Bioware has announced they'll be adding more same-faction PVP Warzones. This is being done so Empire doesn't have to wait in queues anymore and can play a variety of warzones, rather than just hutball.

 

I'm curious how Bioware is going to counteract this. The people who reroll from empire to republic help balance the server, improve the economies on the republic faction, and improve the potential for decent world pvp.

However, these people wouldn't have swapped if there were many same-faction warzones to play on the empire side.

 

Having more same-faction warzones will exacerbate the faction problem, as rolling Republic won't have any benefit over defaulting with Empire. This will make faction imbalance even worse, which will outright kill world pvp and illum pvp.

 

 

TLDR

Now that more same-faction warzones will be added, the only incentive players ever had to roll republic on a PVP server is being removed. Thus, faction imbalance will get worse unless Bioware has something up their sleeves to make Republic an attractive choice for pvp guilds and players.

 

Could bioware shed light on this subject? I'm curious what's going on in their head.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Auxili

[Daecollo]

Faction ratios on any pvp server is at least 3:1, favouring the empire. I've been doing /who on many pvp servers and this ratio is very clear and immediately noticeable (not theory).

 

 

Is something going to be done to 'attempt' to bring faction ratios closer together, to at least 1.5:1?

There are many reasons people are rolling Empire - it's not just the 'bad guy' appeal. Bioware can do many things to make the Republic more interesting and appealing for neutral players.

 

To start, level 50 republic armor is really ugly. I don't mean to be negative but this is pretty undeniable (before 50 its fine). Notably the jedi armors.

The republic fleet is ugly with a lot of unused space and stone walls. The empire fleet is crammed with detail.

There's nothing I can think of that's better on the republic side than on the empire side.

 

If bioware has stated they aren't going to be doing anything regarding faction ratios, then I'll be fine with that, so long as I know. It prevents me from wondering about it.

 

(this thread is not about "whether or not there is faction imbalance". Leave that to another thread if you wish to question the facts, thanks!)

 

 

Simple, do what everquest did.

 

 

Add Betrayal Quest, a quest for your character to betray to the opposite faction, classes are mirrored (and being fixed and balanced atm) to eachother, so nothing will change.

[ProsaicProse]

Maybe Empire outnumbers Republic on some servers (PvP servers), but in my experience, it seems the opposite is true (RP servers). Edited January 4, 2012 by ProsaicProse

[Auxili]

Maybe Empire outnumbers Republic on some servers (PvP servers), but in my experience, it seems the opposite is true (RP servers).

 

To people reading this: this is not true. RP-PVP servers have more republic players than normal PVP servers, but that only bring the ratio to ~2:1, as opposed to the usual higher ratio. Yes, I've done the counts over the past week.

 

In WoW, a 20% faction difference was a big deal. A 100% faction difference was a huge deal.

There's no reason why 2:1 should be considered "good enough" by anyone who wants this game to have decent longterm pvp and world pvp.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Auxili

[Aerodi]

After a week of fleet comparison my server is at about a 2.5/3:1

 

I ended up rerolling my 50 on the republic side due to my disdain for huttball. While that fixes my pvp problem, the fact is, this is now impacting the leveling and pve side of the game. Like most US East servers we're always "heavy" in the evening, but even so the lopsided population makes finding flashpoint groups very difficult. Usually if you run a flashpoint as republic you are the only ones running that flashpoint as you can tell by the upper left social numbers.

 

This is without a doubt swtor's biggest longevity problem and I haven't read anything suggesting they have a plan to remedy it.

[swefefez]

Easiest way to remedy it, is to come up another play-fight warzone for empire aside from Huttball. I doubt that the whole facing-the-own-faction is a problem, but Huttball is.

[Daecollo]

Only way to fix problem = Betrayal Quests.

[Auxili]

Easiest way to remedy it, is to come up another play-fight warzone for empire aside from Huttball. I doubt that the whole facing-the-own-faction is a problem, but Huttball is.

 

No. This will just make the Republic side an even bigger ghost town than it already is.

 

Please Bioware, shed light on this issue!

[Auxili]

After a week of fleet comparison my server is at about a 2.5/3:1

 

I ended up rerolling my 50 on the republic side due to my disdain for huttball. While that fixes my pvp problem, the fact is, this is now impacting the leveling and pve side of the game. Like most US East servers we're always "heavy" in the evening, but even so the lopsided population makes finding flashpoint groups very difficult. Usually if you run a flashpoint as republic you are the only ones running that flashpoint as you can tell by the upper left social numbers.

 

This is without a doubt swtor's biggest longevity problem and I haven't read anything suggesting they have a plan to remedy it.

 

Exactly. It's such a big problem and it angers me to see that people say it's fine the way it is. a 2:1 ratio is horrible for any mmo. I can't understand why people want it to get WORSE

[Fergor]

Want to balance factions? Do two things:

 

1- remove same faction PvP.

2- enforce equal sides allowed in Ilum.

 

The pops will balance out on PvP servers fairly quickly.

[Auxili]

Want to balance factions? Do two things:

 

1- remove same faction PvP.

2- enforce equal sides allowed in Ilum.

 

The pops will balance out on PvP servers fairly quickly.

 

I agree about Illum. I'm shocked Bioware is allowing zergs of empire in to defeat the low amount of republic in the zone.

 

And then there's a third thing they can do:

3- Split server population cap amongst republic and empire.

That'd solve the problem in a jiffy

 

At the end of the day, you gotta choose if you want:

More empire-versus-empire warzone pvp, or

More world pvp and even faction-vs-faction warzone queue times for both factions

 

You cannot have both. More empire-vs-empire pvp warzones will kill world pvp, and I'm not looking forward to it.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Auxili

[TheRealRainier]

WoW, Warhammer, Rift, and probably a whole lot more I'm not thinking of have all had certain population trends in common.

 

PVE Server -- "good" guys outnumber the "bad" guys

PVP Server -- "bad" guys outnumber the "good" guys

 

This is not unique to SWTOR, and therefore its highly unlikely to be related to how "cool" the class stories are. The fact that this discussion takes place on the PVP forum skews it to people that are more likely to be on PVP servers and experience the second phenomena above. I play on a PVE server and Republic has long queues, implying we are missing some Sith counterparts

[shadowAI]

I hate my gunslinger look/story, but am forced to play it. It also has inferior game mechanics to the sniper (cooldowns, animations, instants). The fact BW havent changed a cooldown (takes under 5 seconds to fix) to be identical between mirror classes means they dont care at all about mirror balance.

 

If they do allow more imp vs imp warzones (not only huttball and another). I think most gunslingers will go back to their snipers.

Edited January 4, 2012 by shadowAI

[Auxili]

Bioware wants the empire to have a better pvp experience, and they're implementing more same-faction warzones because of this.

However, they have not done anyone to support the republic and their ridiculously small population count (compared to empire) on pvp servers. Why does bioware feel the need to support Empire pvp, but not Republic pvp?

 

 

So a question:

Bioware is fixing pvp server woes for the Empire by adding more same-faction warzones.

But what is being done to help pvp server woes for the Republic?

Edited January 5, 2012 by Auxili

[Tricsun]

Want to balance factions? Do two things:

 

1- remove same faction PvP.

2- enforce equal sides allowed in Ilum.

 

The pops will balance out on PvP servers fairly quickly.

 

While i agree with enforcing equal sides, doing it on Ilum isn't an answer. They're to late for it, they should have enforced faction balance across the servers.

[Adastrus]

I just have to say... smuggler class story is awesome and a ton of fun.

 

 

Also, what kinds of ideas do you guys have for "better world PVP?"

 

Destructible stuff seems fun; maybe have a place with great farming for mats, and you can destroy the other factions landing pad for a day or two? Of course, this would suck for me, being a republic privateer (not a republican, heh).

[Elytharra]

You have the ability to see every character on a server at the same time and count them?

 

How?

 

Hint: I'm getting at the fact that personal experience/anecdotal evidence is worthless.

 

Hard metrics or nothing. Anything else is just conjecture.

 

Stop being a complete jerk. You can do a "/who 50 Sage", etc. and add them all up. It's very easy. Just because you don't have the intellect to figure this out doesn't mean the rest of us didn't. And he's correct. The top 5 PvP servers have Imp:Rep ratios of from 3:1 to 6:1 at all times of the day.

 

BioWare totally dropped the ball on balancing the side. EVERY single person awaiting this game knew the Empire side was "cooler" with lightning-shooters, "being evil", better gear, better classes, better stories, attracting better PvP players, etc. They needed to add a ton of "super cool" stuff to Republic to balance it out, but they didn't. Ah well, what's a few hundred thousand lost subs, huh?

Edited January 5, 2012 by Elytharra

[Rykko]

BioWare totally dropped the ball on balancing the side. EVERY single person awaiting this game knew the Empire side was "cooler" with lightning-shooters, "being evil", better gear, better classes, better stories, attracting better PvP players, etc. They needed to add a ton of "super cool" stuff to Republic to balance it out, but they didn't. Ah well, what's a few hundred thousand lost subs, huh?

 

Add to this the fact that the lead writer in a story driven MMO only ever talked about his Sith characters pre-launch and the fancy expensive trailers show the Republic being slaughtered even in the one where they're supposed to win.

 

This imbalance was manufactured and predictable to everyone except to the raft of Sith fanbois on the writing team.

 

Whilst it doesn't matter so much for PvE beyond lag in fleet stations, it is a disease that will eat away at the game for PvP once the majority have finished leveling.

[LionRampant]

empire buildings/story/classes are just done better. Play coruscant and play dromund kass and tell me what you think

 

Both are completely *********** horrendous.