Why Huttball CREATES server/pvp imbalance

[Geryl]

As we all know, huttball was designed to address server population imbalances so that overpopulation on one side would not lock players out of pvp. However, it has had the opposite effect of making population imbalance even worse.

 

Hardcore pvpers want to pvp first and foremost, and they will go where the pvp is. Without huttball, sith pvpers would have been waiting around forever to queue into a warzone... that is, until word got out that "hey, if you go republic you can queue right away!". They switch factions, level up, and the population balances.

 

What has happened now, however, is that those on the sith side (and it appears that sith outnumber republic on most if not all servers) can still queue pvp against other sith. So, instead of being coaxed away to the other faction they continue to grind pvp. So you have a set of hardcore pvpers grinding with each other and they all reach level cap that much faster, and that much sooner than the republic population. On top of that, they all start collecting level 50 gear. Now you have the hardcore pvp population pretty much in one faction, helping each other to level faster than the other side.

 

If they had been forced to pvp level on pace with the other faction then sith would not be so OP; some of the more hardcore pvpers would have jumped faction, and those who stayed would not have leveled so much more quickly than their republic counterparts.

 

Maybe not all servers are suffering from this imbalance, but huttball certainly contributed to those that are.

 

tl;dr remove same faction huttball from pvp, and servers will start to balance out.

[Incomprehensible]

Self quoting from another post...

I don't want them to get rid of huttball, as it's basically the only thing keeping me playing at the moment, but you are most certainly correct.

 

 

Long annoying self quote below...

---------------------------------------------------------------------

0.o

 

Friggan carebears.

 

Huttball is the least forgiving PVP instance I've seen for pvp idiocy. It is the hidden gem of this game imo. Gear, level, and classes mean dirt. Three level 10 players, who know how to place themselves and pass the ball can dominate the game regardless of the rest of the team. This is a game that FORCES you to stop killwhoring and work together to achieve a goal or lose. It's like PVP teamwork bootcamp. All the posts complaining about huttball, those are the crappy pvp players who are sad that kill counters do not score goals.

 

 

Empire has more population. *

Empire plays a LOT of huttball vs empire.

Empire preformed PVP groups spend a lot of time curbstomping empire pugs.

Empire puggers spend a lot of time learning from getting curbstomped by premades.

Empire puggers get is some very good games vs other empire pugs.

Empire players pugger or not, rack up commendations playing huttball vs each other.

Empire players that suck at PVP get their fill of it facing empire premades and go PVE.

 

 

Example: I'm a PVP oriented empire player who has been playing huttball for the majority of my experiance since I was level 10. I hit the valor rank =< level cap. I have to convert commendations and prebuy gear and boxes I could not open or use to avoid the 1000 commendation limit. I had my PVP saber the level I could use it.. 14 or 15 i think? I had my level 20 pvp suit paid for by time I hit 20. I often pug successfully because I'm objective orientated, but if I have a couple friends on vent to group with we are unstoppable.

 

 

 

Republic has less population.

Almost any time republic queues they will be against empire players.

Republic premades get stomped by better geared, more experienced empire premades.

Republic premades have a chance against empire pugs.

Republic pugs have no chance against empire premades or the empire pugs.

Republic players that suck at pvp have to find out vs empire, they are not preweeded.

 

 

Roll it all together...

 

When a Republic vs Empire battle happens:

 

1. Empire is more likely to be premade, we have more premade groups because we have more people, plus our puggers learn to premake groups to survive in huttball.

 

2. Empire players have more teamwork experience. A republic player who does nothing but PVP and an empire player who does nothing but PVP will have a similar number of hours playing PVP in this game, but the empire player will have a much higher occurance of huttball.

 

3. Empire puggers are better than republic puggers. This is really a matter of filtering. We have a bigger base of players and a much nastier method of weening the litter, therefore the puggers we field are better on average than the puggers the republic fields.

The empire puggers who suck will burn out quickly on huttball. Republic players will see them a couple times, if at all before the huttball grind drives them back to admiring the voiceovers in pve land. The empire puggers who keep playing PVP are likely to be enjoying themselves and gearing for PVP.

Republic puggers who suck will have to learn that lesson fighting the empire, they are unlikely to be pvp geared because this is their first taste of pvp. Republic puggers who do not really suck might think they do, fighting the better geared (on average) empire puggers. That causes them to self filter needlessly and exacerbate the population imbalance that fuels this engine of fail.

 

 

 

TLDR

Huttball = pvp bootcamp

 

Population imbalance = Empire Huttball meatgrinder

 

Big population put through the meatgrinder = concentrated empire pvp goodness

 

Simple mathmatically obvious reason for imbalalance in performance between player populations = Jedi tears and cries of imblance between mirrored classes.**

 

 

 

 

* IMO we likely have a larger % of the seriously PVP minded population as well. Not getting into that argument with you though, as the rest of my argument stands without getting into subjective speculations.

 

** Not denying the possibility of animation delays, but I doubt that holds a candle to the differences caused by the cyclic effect above.

[Ceraz]

I totally understand what you are saying, but this is a terrible idea because it would make queue times unbearable. IF open world PvP was existent and mattered with things being captured and mattering to the 'war' (a la Star Wars Galaxies, or even Planetside comes to mind) I could see this happening. As an added incentive, if open-world PvP mattered and had some sort of meaning in terms of the war, I could see population incentives such as XP bonuses or something, like Planetside. Edited January 4, 2012 by Ceraz

[Glor_]

As we all know, huttball was designed to address server population imbalances so that overpopulation on one side would not lock players out of pvp. However, it has had the opposite effect of making population imbalance even worse.

 

Hardcore pvpers want to pvp first and foremost, and they will go where the pvp is. Without huttball, sith pvpers would have been waiting around forever to queue into a warzone... that is, until word got out that "hey, if you go republic you can queue right away!". They switch factions, level up, and the population balances.

 

What has happened now, however, is that those on the sith side (and it appears that sith outnumber republic on most if not all servers) can still queue pvp against other sith. So, instead of being coaxed away to the other faction they continue to grind pvp. So you have a set of hardcore pvpers grinding with each other and they all reach level cap that much faster, and that much sooner than the republic population. On top of that, they all start collecting level 50 gear. Now you have the hardcore pvp population pretty much in one faction, helping each other to level faster than the other side.

 

If they had been forced to pvp level on pace with the other faction then sith would not be so OP; some of the more hardcore pvpers would have jumped faction, and those who stayed would not have leveled so much more quickly than their republic counterparts.

 

Maybe not all servers are suffering from this imbalance, but huttball certainly contributed to those that are.

 

tl;dr remove same faction huttball from pvp, and servers will start to balance out.

 

You know that for the first time in a battleground based MMO the faction with the higher number is on an even field with the other? In WoW, Rift, whatever other MMO has battlegrounds, the side with no pvp queue, is always dominating for the reasons you invoked.

 

Both sides have no queue (or almost none), perfect gearing balance achieved.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Glor_

[Hypernetic]

Self quoting from another post...

I don't want them to get rid of huttball, as it's basically the only thing keeping me playing at the moment, but you are most certainly correct.

 

 

Long annoying self quote below...

---------------------------------------------------------------------

0.o

 

Friggan carebears.

 

Huttball is the least forgiving PVP instance I've seen for pvp idiocy. It is the hidden gem of this game imo. Gear, level, and classes mean dirt. Three level 10 players, who know how to place themselves and pass the ball can dominate the game regardless of the rest of the team. This is a game that FORCES you to stop killwhoring and work together to achieve a goal or lose. It's like PVP teamwork bootcamp. All the posts complaining about huttball, those are the crappy pvp players who are sad that kill counters do not score goals.

 

 

Empire has more population. *

Empire plays a LOT of huttball vs empire.

Empire preformed PVP groups spend a lot of time curbstomping empire pugs.

Empire puggers spend a lot of time learning from getting curbstomped by premades.

Empire puggers get is some very good games vs other empire pugs.

Empire players pugger or not, rack up commendations playing huttball vs each other.

Empire players that suck at PVP get their fill of it facing empire premades and go PVE.

 

 

Example: I'm a PVP oriented empire player who has been playing huttball for the majority of my experiance since I was level 10. I hit the valor rank =< level cap. I have to convert commendations and prebuy gear and boxes I could not open or use to avoid the 1000 commendation limit. I had my PVP saber the level I could use it.. 14 or 15 i think? I had my level 20 pvp suit paid for by time I hit 20. I often pug successfully because I'm objective orientated, but if I have a couple friends on vent to group with we are unstoppable.

 

 

 

Republic has less population.

Almost any time republic queues they will be against empire players.

Republic premades get stomped by better geared, more experienced empire premades.

Republic premades have a chance against empire pugs.

Republic pugs have no chance against empire premades or the empire pugs.

Republic players that suck at pvp have to find out vs empire, they are not preweeded.

 

 

Roll it all together...

 

When a Republic vs Empire battle happens:

 

1. Empire is more likely to be premade, we have more premade groups because we have more people, plus our puggers learn to premake groups to survive in huttball.

 

2. Empire players have more teamwork experience. A republic player who does nothing but PVP and an empire player who does nothing but PVP will have a similar number of hours playing PVP in this game, but the empire player will have a much higher occurance of huttball.

 

3. Empire puggers are better than republic puggers. This is really a matter of filtering. We have a bigger base of players and a much nastier method of weening the litter, therefore the puggers we field are better on average than the puggers the republic fields.

The empire puggers who suck will burn out quickly on huttball. Republic players will see them a couple times, if at all before the huttball grind drives them back to admiring the voiceovers in pve land. The empire puggers who keep playing PVP are likely to be enjoying themselves and gearing for PVP.

Republic puggers who suck will have to learn that lesson fighting the empire, they are unlikely to be pvp geared because this is their first taste of pvp. Republic puggers who do not really suck might think they do, fighting the better geared (on average) empire puggers. That causes them to self filter needlessly and exacerbate the population imbalance that fuels this engine of fail.

 

 

 

TLDR

Huttball = pvp bootcamp

 

Population imbalance = Empire Huttball meatgrinder

 

Big population put through the meatgrinder = concentrated empire pvp goodness

 

Simple mathmatically obvious reason for imbalalance in performance between player populations = Jedi tears and cries of imblance between mirrored classes.**

 

 

 

 

* IMO we likely have a larger % of the seriously PVP minded population as well. Not getting into that argument with you though, as the rest of my argument stands without getting into subjective speculations.

 

** Not denying the possibility of animation delays, but I doubt that holds a candle to the differences caused by the cyclic effect above.

 

lolno

 

Huttball = which team has enough powertech's and sorcerer healers to win.

 

hurrdurr I pull ball carrier 3 tiers up and away from your entire team. Hurr durr we got knocked off, PT charges back up. Hurr Durr one of the other 3 healers is standing behind the goal line and pulls him in for a score.

 

Huttball is a gimmick fest and nothing more. With the right class setup you could literally win huttball 3v8.

[Pizzamuncher]

I would also like to add that Illum adds to this imbalance.

 

As a fairly new lvl 50 i have done Illum three times. Two of those times i got a message from and Imperial alt asking for help to do there quests. I didn't do the zone swapping either time.

 

Yet, on day three we had one Republic swapping with 12 Imperials. The persons response was it was a win/win. That is 6 bags for him (daily and weekly) 72 bags for the Empire side. This increases the gear discrepancy encountered in warzones.

[vindianajones]

All the posts complaining about huttball, those are the crappy pvp players who are sad that kill counters do not score goals.

 

What is with the repetition of this line? I've seen so many people saying things like this. I'm more than entitled to not like huttball because I think it's a lame minigame and doesn't fit into the lore of my character. It has nothing to do with being "crappy" at PvP or not getting ego points for kills. I just can't stand the warzone. Even when I'm winning I don't have a good time. I think it's incredibly stupid. Is that blunt enough?

[AJMTL]

Create new Warzones already Bioware. We're all going mad in here.

[Mugaaz]

Some of your argument is wrong. There is no real PvP gear imbalance between Pub and Empire. Some skill imbalances will be created based on the vast more experience Empire gets at Huttball on the Hutball map, yes. However, Pubs will get vastly more experience at Voidstar/Alderaan than Empire. None of this will create PvP gear imbalance. Even if Empire won 65% of the time it doesn't change the amount of champion bags being opened by Pubs from Commendations, dailys, and weeklys by even 1-2% points.

[Geryl]

I totally understand what you are saying, but this is a terrible idea because it would make queue times unbearable. IF open world PvP was existent and mattered with things being captured and mattering to the 'war' (a la Star Wars Galaxies, or even Planetside comes to mind) I could see this happening. As an added incentive, if open-world PvP mattered and had some sort of meaning in terms of the war, I could see population incentives such as XP bonuses or something, like Planetside.

 

But the very fact that queues for sith would be "unbearable" is why sith pvpers would switch to republic and thus create server population balance, returning queue times to normal for both sides and maintaining balance between them.

[Geryl]

You know that for the first time in a battleground based MMO the faction with the higher number is on an even field with the other? In WoW, Rift, whatever other MMO has battlegrounds, the side with no pvp queue, is always dominating for the reasons you invoked.

 

Both sides have no queue (or almost none), perfect gearing balance achieved.

 

Republic often has queue on my server, sith rarely does. The gearing and leveling is not even remotely balanced and that spills out into open world in the most glaringly opbvious fashion.

[Geryl]

Some of your argument is wrong. There is no real PvP gear imbalance between Pub and Empire. Some skill imbalances will be created based on the vast more experience Empire gets at Huttball on the Hutball map, yes. However, Pubs will get vastly more experience at Voidstar/Alderaan than Empire. None of this will create PvP gear imbalance. Even if Empire won 65% of the time it doesn't change the amount of champion bags being opened by Pubs from Commendations, dailys, and weeklys by even 1-2% points.

 

You get better commendations for better performance, you get better performance from being surrounded by better equipped and more capable teammates rather than getting rofl facestomped by a group of 50s when you have a bunch of 20s on your team. See where this leads?

[DarthBloodloss]

Huttball is lame because you play it 7 times in a row. Any game you play 7 times in a row gets lame real fast.

 

I also do not like it because my main is a Merc and I can't run around and do any damage whatsoever. I must stand still to hurt people. When the ball carrier is moving away from me, I have to move alot and thus cannot attack very well.

 

I'm not saying the game sucks because of this. I'm saying my particular character type is not well suited to this game type. Therefore I do not like the game.

 

Oh and did I mention, they make you play it 7 times in a row?

[Glor_]

The fact is, people queuing for WZ are getting around as much WZ an hour on each side, which means they will gear as fast, which means their win/loose ratio won't be caused by gear. Unless you can prove the proportion (and i said PROPORTION, mind you that this is the only thing that matters, sheer numbers don"t come into the warzone equation) of level 50 among the pvping population is really different from one side to another...

 

If you dont let empire queue vs empire, then you will have all the pubs (funny to use that word for republicans) getting twice as much warzones as imps, which means they will gear up twice faster... This situation is experienced on others MMO's : WoW where the Horde dominated BG's overall for years because they were gearing faster due to shorter queue's, and then winning more because they had better gear further enhancing their gear advantage. Same thing happened in Rift, where guardians were outnumbered (at least on my battlegroup), and winning much more overall. Of course i'm taking the big picture here not the "i know an alliance premade with 100% win", which has nothing to do with the subject at cause.

 

Final note : since empire outnumbers republic on most servers, Ilum will never be balanced unfortunately.

[Bekkal]

The fact is, people queuing for WZ are getting around as much WZ an hour on each side, which means they will gear as fast, which means their win/loose ratio won't be caused by gear.

 

Only if they win. Keep in mind losing now gives substantially fewer rewards. I have lost to Reps less than five times, and I have queued almost non-stop for pvp since I got the game. It isn't even that they are somehow magically all the bad players on the server, rather it is that the Empire players see each other, learn who to listen to, and can pug on a level that Reps are currently reaching only with premades.

 

The "Huttball bootcamp" analogy is actually pretty accurate.

[Serious_Business]

I guess it varies from server to server. I find I win well over half my WZs as Republic. If I'm grouped with anyone, it's almost always a curbstomp regardless of who's queuing on the other side.

[Geryl]

Many people are missing my point here. I am not saying huttball is a bad game.

 

What I am saying is that hardcore pvpers tend to gravitate towards sith side. Given that, and presenting them with the opportunity to queue as often as they want, we are creating a population imbalance towards the sith side. And as another poster states, yes the sith then win more and get more rewards, which makes the server imbalance even worse. Even casuals on sith have an easier time gearing than hardcores on jedi side because of this.

 

And this situation has only makes open world pvp even more imbalanced.

 

Would sith still outnumber republic if this wasn't the case? Probably, but the pvp numbers would be closer and the gear gap would be closer. Even if Republic pvpers geared better and faster, they'd still be outnumbered in open world.

 

The problem huttball was meant to address has been made worse.

[Geryl]

I guess it varies from server to server. I find I win well over half my WZs as Republic. If I'm grouped with anyone, it's almost always a curbstomp regardless of who's queuing on the other side.

 

The only real advantage reps get is that we know the voidstar and alderaan maps a little better. Do you seriously win half of your huttball games? my side wins once in a blue moon, and usually because the sith have afkers lol.

[Atlanis]

Open PvP organised, never noticed it with the sith now i got the Taxi and Portpoinst infront of nice imperial bases all over Tatooine and Alderaan. It is also very fun "guarding" the baloon or the coneectet Datacrons on Tatooine as the normal Imperial ignores the 2 Reps stading on the Crawker or near the tower;)

 

Guerilia is a nice strategy^^

[chungkuo]

We are assuming again that "pvpers" will play the "evil' side again? Seriously? Is there any actual evidence to back up this assertion that is repeated ad nauseum about every damn game?

[Bekkal]

We are assuming again that "pvpers" will play the "evil' side again? Seriously? Is there any actual evidence to back up this assertion that is repeated ad nauseum about every damn game?

 

Disproportionate numbers on pvp servers across all of these games?

[Nastar]

Self quoting from another post...

I don't want them to get rid of huttball, as it's basically the only thing keeping me playing at the moment, but you are most certainly correct.

 

 

Long annoying self quote below...

---------------------------------------------------------------------

0.o

 

Friggan carebears.

 

Huttball is the least forgiving PVP instance I've seen for pvp idiocy. It is the hidden gem of this game imo. Gear, level, and classes mean dirt. Three level 10 players, who know how to place themselves and pass the ball can dominate the game regardless of the rest of the team. This is a game that FORCES you to stop killwhoring and work together to achieve a goal or lose. It's like PVP teamwork bootcamp. All the posts complaining about huttball, those are the crappy pvp players who are sad that kill counters do not score goals.

 

 

Empire has more population. *

Empire plays a LOT of huttball vs empire.

Empire preformed PVP groups spend a lot of time curbstomping empire pugs.

Empire puggers spend a lot of time learning from getting curbstomped by premades.

Empire puggers get is some very good games vs other empire pugs.

Empire players pugger or not, rack up commendations playing huttball vs each other.

Empire players that suck at PVP get their fill of it facing empire premades and go PVE.

 

 

Example: I'm a PVP oriented empire player who has been playing huttball for the majority of my experiance since I was level 10. I hit the valor rank =< level cap. I have to convert commendations and prebuy gear and boxes I could not open or use to avoid the 1000 commendation limit. I had my PVP saber the level I could use it.. 14 or 15 i think? I had my level 20 pvp suit paid for by time I hit 20. I often pug successfully because I'm objective orientated, but if I have a couple friends on vent to group with we are unstoppable.

 

 

 

Republic has less population.

Almost any time republic queues they will be against empire players.

Republic premades get stomped by better geared, more experienced empire premades.

Republic premades have a chance against empire pugs.

Republic pugs have no chance against empire premades or the empire pugs.

Republic players that suck at pvp have to find out vs empire, they are not preweeded.

 

 

Roll it all together...

 

When a Republic vs Empire battle happens:

 

1. Empire is more likely to be premade, we have more premade groups because we have more people, plus our puggers learn to premake groups to survive in huttball.

 

2. Empire players have more teamwork experience. A republic player who does nothing but PVP and an empire player who does nothing but PVP will have a similar number of hours playing PVP in this game, but the empire player will have a much higher occurance of huttball.

 

3. Empire puggers are better than republic puggers. This is really a matter of filtering. We have a bigger base of players and a much nastier method of weening the litter, therefore the puggers we field are better on average than the puggers the republic fields.

The empire puggers who suck will burn out quickly on huttball. Republic players will see them a couple times, if at all before the huttball grind drives them back to admiring the voiceovers in pve land. The empire puggers who keep playing PVP are likely to be enjoying themselves and gearing for PVP.

Republic puggers who suck will have to learn that lesson fighting the empire, they are unlikely to be pvp geared because this is their first taste of pvp. Republic puggers who do not really suck might think they do, fighting the better geared (on average) empire puggers. That causes them to self filter needlessly and exacerbate the population imbalance that fuels this engine of fail.

 

 

 

TLDR

Huttball = pvp bootcamp

 

Population imbalance = Empire Huttball meatgrinder

 

Big population put through the meatgrinder = concentrated empire pvp goodness

 

Simple mathmatically obvious reason for imbalalance in performance between player populations = Jedi tears and cries of imblance between mirrored classes.**

 

 

 

 

* IMO we likely have a larger % of the seriously PVP minded population as well. Not getting into that argument with you though, as the rest of my argument stands without getting into subjective speculations.

 

** Not denying the possibility of animation delays, but I doubt that holds a candle to the differences caused by the cyclic effect above.

 

 

True, on my server the republic wins almost every Alderaan/Voidstar match (even some premades one aswell) but we suck at Huttball...