The only real fix for faction balance.

[Kiphere]

I'll be honest, theres no real 'good' way to fix faction balance. People are gonna play what they want to play. I don't blame Bioware for the imbalance of the factions and people really like to come on here and say "bioware you ruined world PVP" because every random joe wants to be Darth MaulVaderSithLordPwnface. Blame George Lucas for making Jedi boring.

 

However, it is an issue so here's my suggestion. Nothing complicated, nothing special.

 

Both sides have essentially identical classes. If I play a sniper I can play a gunslinger. The classes are, for all intents and purposes reskinned versions of each other. So...

 

At 50 offer a class swap. There are a few ways to accomplish this imo.

 

Option 1. The easy way: Calculate the population overbalance based on server activity. When it reaches a certain threshold (say 65:35) it unlocks the option in Char select to 'swap' one of your characters from Rep to Emp or vice versa depending on the population balance. you click a thing, it opens the character creation window for that character, you keep the name but reset your appearance with the available races for your Sister class, log in and you're done. You don't change light/dark side, you don't change crew skills, etc. Simply swap skins. Gear would have to be sold and reaquired. Obviously 'new' 50's are the only ones who would even think about this.

 

Option 2. The Hard way: This one is harder for Bioware, not us. You simply allow a complete character change, the option to completely flip your light/darkside balance, all gear is simply 'swapped' to it's mirror equivilent for either light/dark or sister class equivilent gear, etc. This one would be more likely to be used by people since they don't lose anything.

 

Option 3. The Real Hard Way: Same population calc. This time when you 'swap' sides you have to complete a "defector" quest. This quest involves leaving your current class and joining a new class (the sister class on the other side) You go through reassignment on the Fleet of your current faction, they do "plastic surgery" (i.e. open character creation to reassign your race) and you report to the starting area for your class. Your levels are artificially stunted temporarily and gated based on the class quests. you don't have to do any tertiary quests and as you progress through your class quest you are automatically leveled up to X, Y, and Z, level based on the part in the class quest you are on, regular experience gain is impossible. Any equipment you had at 50 on your original guy is banked until you finish the class quests on your new class. This runs you through the storyline. At 50 in your "new" class you can visit a "defectors vendor" who will trade any equipment you have from one class for the same peice for your new class, if you've got Light side gear and went darkside with your new class you can swap that gear as well.

 

This last option offers something to a lvl 50 and thereby motivates them to actually 'do' the faction swap and help balance the server. You get to see a whole new class story line, you sacrifice hardly anything except time, you don't have to actually level, you simply go through the story and it levels you up based on gateway levels to keep it 'interesting' but not trivial (i.e. you're not just a lvl 50 rolling through the quests one shotting your epic bosses) and it gives you the option to actually defect. Those that like the RP aspect would dig it, those that want to be on the lower pop PVP side or help balance things would dig it as they get some benefit from helping, and it help sbalance the server when those things occur making world PVP better and ultimately equalizing queue times and WZ balance (i.e. no more Huttball every queue for Emps)

 

humble suggestions from an amateur content designer.

 

-Lance

[Agemnon]

Really bad from a story perspective, if you're level 50 then you could faceroll through the lower class quests and maybe be done with them in half an hour or so.

[mcfabulous]

what qualifies a server for being inbalanced?

Too many imperial characters made? Is it inbalanced simply because everyone made 5x lvl 4 chars?.

 

How would they track it.

[ToliverGrey]

Easier way.

 

Any Imperial on the forum who complains about faction balance gets their toon forcibly changed over to Republic.

[notebene]

As long as it doesn't open swapping the other direction to allow people to 'bail' on the weak side, I suppose I don't see a problem with it. Though being a story person and really attached to how my character has journeyed to get to where she is, I don't think I'd ever just 'flip' a switch and be someone else. Maybe I'm in the minority there.

 

Why not just allow PvP 'within' the faction, if there are enough folks queued to field a 'Us vs Us' match?

 

Would 'almost' maybe make some sense, as the Republic wouldn't necessarily be inclined to fight within itself as much as the Empire would. Heck, most of my story line is about knocking off people left and right that are theoretically on my 'side'.

[Ossos]

The animation/ability delay affects Rep players more harshly than Imperial players. This has been acknowledged by Bioware.

 

In short: You're abilities are more likely to work if you're Imperial.

 

 

 

Yeah, simply swapping factions, even if offered, isn't a fix.

[FerrusPA]

Yeah, simply swapping factions, even if offered, isn't a fix.

 

It's a start however. There is no real way to fix the imbalance now anyway. BW should've capped the factions per server and be done with it. It would have lead to a lot of whining but then again whining on these forums is like... you know, that proverb about oceans and peeing.

[Bluejayoo]

You could fix the imbalances in Republic and Empire combat performance, and then go back and correct the glaring differences in world design and story quality, then equalize the crafting advantages the Empire has over the Republic mirror classes.

 

That might go a long way to fixing the population problem.

 

I play both sides and I don't blame anyone for picking Empire. Bioware made the faction better.

[Mechavomit]

Just add Blood Elves to Republic.

[Yfelsung]

There's no way to fix faction imbalance, as every faction based game still has faction imbalance to this day.

 

And Empire are only winning 6% more often, so it's not exactly like the pop imbalance is a huge problem at the moment.

 

(6% number taken from Gabe's PvP post on the PvP forums, where he said Empire win 53% of the time.)

[Kiphere]

Really bad from a story perspective, if you're level 50 then you could faceroll through the lower class quests and maybe be done with them in half an hour or so.

 

I guess you missed the part where I said youre level would be automatically lowered and gated based on where you are in the class quest chain for your new class.

 

Let me play it out for you (the hard version).

 

I'm a lvl 50 sniper. I decide i've lost faith in the empire and want to go blue. I meet up with a spy from the republic on the empire fleet. He tells me the risks, yada yada (quest dialogue) I accept and he tells me in order to assure my safety I'll need to go through severe biological reassignment surgery which will weaken me quite a bit but the effects should be temporary and as time progresses I'll regain my strength. He tells me I'll be planted in the republic as a gunslinger and have to prove myself and climb the chain if I want to be a part of the conflict.

 

At this point I accept and the character creation screen opens. It skips the faction and class selection stage and I'm on race/gender. At this point I pick my new race/gender, set up my appearance, etc. You could even change your name. At this point I enter the game as a lvl 1 Smuggler in the normal starting area for smugglers. I have a 'defectors pack' of gear, Orange gear with a level restriction 1-49. At this point I start my class quests as a smuggler.

 

I complete my first class quest, lets say it's expected that by the timeyou've finished your first class quest you should be at least level 4. When I turn in the quest it auto-levels me to 4. I cannot gain experience through any other means, my experience is 'gated' on the class quests. I continue my class quests, every few quests it levels me up to the appropriate level for that quest and gives me a new defectors bag with mods/barrels/etc to update my oranges. I progress through the class quests, leveling and upgrading my defectors gear until i finish the last quest of the last act which dings me 50and renders my orange gear obsolete.

 

At this point my 'handler' meets up with me and tells me he's dealt with all of my previous gear and aquired some similar gear for me. I'm given basically everything I had when I defected but swapped over, light for dark, sniper PVP gear for Gunslinger PVP gear, etc. Everything has a mirror in this game, you just have to swap the peices for their mirror.

 

Now I'm 50, in the same gear I had before but on the other faction. No loss and I got to go through a different class quest, swap sides to help the balance on the server, and everyone wins except the poor programmers who have to code all that crap to make it happen

 

 

MMOs have tried fixing balances in the past with character transfers between servers that were faction specific, by putting World PVP buffs based on how many of what faction were in the zone (i.e. WG in WoW) tried to add an 'appealing' race or class in an expansion (bloodelves anyone?) or just plain ignored it. having a severe underdog in a MMO with 2 factions is detrimental to both factions.

 

In ToR Emps have no one to kill and play huttball all day, Reps can't leave their base in World PVP and have issues doing world dailies. This needs to be fixed 'now' or it's just going to get worse as time progresses, you'll lose subs because people will be frustrated. A number of folks on Emp would be glad to go to rep just to get out of huttball but most of them don't want to re-level a character. Everyone loves the story lines but you can't get 1-50 on just story you have to do tertiary quests, pvp, flashpoints something to boost your level to keep up with the story line difficulty. Thats the part a lot of people don't want to go through again or they just dont' want to invest the time.

 

With a gated class quest leveling process for defectors you eliminate most of the 'frustration' of starting over, offer a benefit to people for defecting, and those things add up to potentially help your balance issues.

 

I don't blame bioware for this, I must say that again. They didn't "do" anything to cause this. people just like the Empire, they wanna be darth ******, once they hit 50 though a lot of people might re-think that decision.

[pangwl]

The animation/ability delay affects Rep players more harshly than Imperial players. This has been acknowledged by Bioware.

 

In short: You're abilities are more likely to work if you're Imperial.

 

+1 This is honestly the real culprit... BW made the Jedi's abilities more 'eye-candy', without realizing that the 0.5sec animation delay (vs. the shorter animation of imps) could caused such a big ruckus in PvP.

[Kiphere]

what qualifies a server for being inbalanced?

Too many imperial characters made? Is it inbalanced simply because everyone made 5x lvl 4 chars?.

 

How would they track it.

 

They watch active player numbers. Say parse 1 weeks worth of data. if for the majority of a 1 week period the population is X of one faction and Y of the other faction you open the defector quest on the high side for 1 day.

 

Parse another week and if it's still over balanced for one side, open the quest again.

 

the quest would never be open on the 'weak' side.

[Yfelsung]

+1 This is honestly the real culprit... BW made the Jedi's abilities more 'eye-candy', without realizing that the 0.5sec animation delay (vs. the shorter animation of imps) could caused such a big ruckus in PvP.

 

Well, a 6% ruckus.

 

Noticeable, but not exactly "big".

 

Even with all the apparent animation problems, if I (as Empire) lost 100 games, a Republic player would have only lost 6 more games than I did.

[notebene]

[starts to feel like Cartman in that episode where he thinks he's dead]

 

Since, as you pointed out, all the classes are mirrors of each other, and it would therefore not cause any sort of weird inter-balancing issue, why not just let an 'Empire vs Empire' match happen if there are enough queued for PvP and no Republic to pick on, or they are otherwise engaged with Empire folks picked out of the queue?

 

No complicated mechanics required?

[PjPablo]

Well, a 6% ruckus.

 

Noticeable, but not exactly "big".

 

Even with all the apparent animation problems, if I (as Empire) lost 100 games, a Republic player would have only lost 6 more games than I did.

 

If there is only 6% difference how to you explain all the anecdotal evidence that there are large faction imbalances?

[FerrusPA]

Well, a 6% ruckus.

 

Noticeable, but not exactly "big".

 

Even with all the apparent animation problems, if I (as Empire) lost 100 games, a Republic player would have only lost 6 more games than I did.

 

The Win/Lose Rate in PvP is pretty irrelevant when Republic players can't even access a lot of group content because there is nobody there to group with.

[Ossos]

Actually it's closer to:

 

Imps win 60% of the matches.

Reps win 40% of the matches.

 

If you're imperial, you are 50% more likely to win the match than a Rep.

 

In terms of Illum, this does not apply.

 

The following screen captures do (try a 30 to 1 faction imbalance).

 

http://i.imgur.com/XqWmF.jpg

http://i42.tinypic.com/32zubzb.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/kFxCn.jpg

[Yfelsung]

If there is only 6% difference how to you explain all the anecdotal evidence that there are large faction imbalances?

 

Because anecdotal evidence is coloured by both bias and emotion, which is why isn't not considered acceptable evidence in any field.

 

Straight from the mouth of the PvP designer himself

In the first week after launch there were over a million Warzone matches played, with nearly half of all players participating in Warzones. Bad news for Republic players, though - the Empire currently leads overall, having won 53% of all Alderaan Civil War and Voidstar matches (across all servers). Huttball has been played the most, accounting for 39% of all matches – and yes, we’ll be adding a new same faction vs. same faction enabled Warzone in the future.

 

They have the ability to see win rates, we don't.

 

Therefore what they say trumps any anecdotal evidence.

[genesiser]

Or they could fix the animation and damage output for the "mirrored" classes so the balance isn't tipped in the empire's favor. I know a few people that started as republic then switched to empire because the class they played actually played better and they want to be the best they can be (trooper vs bounty hunter and consular vs inquisitor).

 

That little thing could be a simple solution to help the faction balance.

[MrMoe]

I can honestly say i wish i would have rolled republic. But atm i dont have it in me to grind another toon with the way the game looks.

If people are given ONE chance to change sides, you would hopefully think i through and atleast I would have no regrets.

 

And from a star warsy prespective, Why the hell wouldnt you be able to switch sides?

[PjPablo]

Because anecdotal evidence is coloured by both bias and emotion, which is why isn't not considered acceptable evidence in any field.

 

Straight from the mouth of the PvP designer himself

 

 

They have the ability to see win rates, we don't.

 

Therefore what they say trumps any anecdotal evidence.

 

So you are saying there is no faction imbalance?

[miliways]

Some interesting ideas, but unfortunately each of the things you described is going to be much harder to implement than you realize, I think.

 

Other than PvP, does faction balance even matter?

 

*crickets*

 

I mean, I guess it sucks for Republicans that there are fewer people around. Otherwise though?

 

The only problems I see are in warzones where we're forced to play Huttball over and over, but they said a new warzone is coming for emp vs emp, so that'll allivate the problem. (I still wanna play more voidstar though!). If anything, the ability to play more voidstar and less huttball is getting some people to roll republic, so that'll help balance servers.

 

The other problem would be world pvp, but I hear that Ilum is kinda messed up anyways, people just flip it more than fighting. I'm not 50 yet (40), so I dunno what to say about that.

 

I'm on a pve server so world pvp isn't really a concern of mine.

 

I guess if you really like world pvp then faction balance is a problem. However... from my experience with wow even on balanced servers pvp in the overworld gets really unbalanced. Even if there are lots of players on your faction, there's no guarantee that they're your level or they're online when you are or they're on the planet you are when you're there, so even with completely balanced factions you can still get rolled by 4 members of the opposing side and left by yourself to get owned over and over.

[Truga]

The only real fix for faction balance? Scrap factions. They're lazy and bad game design that does nothing for the players. Classes are mirrored anyway. Remove factions, give us 4 classes, change our skills depending on light/dark ratio. More light, more rock throwing. More dark, more lightning.

 

Edit: Also, as soon as we get proper space combat (if?) everyone's gonna switch to republic because, frankly, TIEs suck.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Truga

[clocknane]

I'll be honest, theres no real 'good' way to fix faction balance. People are gonna play what they want to play. I don't blame Bioware for the imbalance of the factions and people really like to come on here and say "bioware you ruined world PVP" because every random joe wants to be Darth MaulVaderSithLordPwnface. Blame George Lucas for making Jedi boring.

 

First things first, true, there is no good way to fix faction balance. It is one of those things where if its broke, it is EXTREMELY difficult to correct. However, I disagree with not blaming Bioware for the issue. It is true people will play what they want to play, but honestly, this game was pro empire before it ever launched.

 

Empire classes were showcased first, Bioware even developed those classes first (based on showcasing and the advance class releases). Republic classes had talents that were not only showing improper tooltips, but were flat out broke. Take that with the aesthetic look of the empire design (outfitting, clothing, gear etc.) and it just looks higher quality compared to Republic side. I play a republic character and I can honestly say, I do not regret rolling it, but lets face it, Bioware seems to have spent A LOT more time on empire side compared to the Republic side. Put that with the fact that a lot of MMOPPG players want to play a villainous side because its so called "cooler" and yea, this games faction balance was doomed from the start.

 

Bioware should have taken more time designing Republic. I dare say it seems once they got to designing the republic side they were burned out and rushed through it. Sorry, just how it looks. My 2 cents.

Edited January 18, 2012 by clocknane