The only real fix for faction balance.

[Yfelsung]

So you are saying there is no faction imbalance?

 

No, I am saying the faction imbalance leads to only a 6% difference in victory and loss.

 

Meaning the faction imbalance, when talking about class balance specifically, is 6%.

 

Imbalanced? Yes.

 

Massively imbalanced? No.

 

It's a minor imbalance, one that's actually better than a lot of faction based games.

 

For example, according to Warcraftrealms, going by their 2010 data, Horde won 56% of BGs, a difference of double what SWTOR has now.

 

Are you going to argue that racials accounted for 12%?

[Kiphere]

Ok to address a few things.

 

1. Ability delay. Most people rolled their class/side with absolutely no idea this would be a factor. it's not whats causing the 'imbalance' of population. I'm not talking about who wins PVP more, I'm talking about the gross imbalance of "more empire" players than republic players in the game. I appreciate what you're sayin about animation delay but that's not the point of this thread and a completely separate issue.

 

2. "Same faction PVP" That's a temp fix for only one issue. Empire playing Huttball all the time. We already have same faction PVP with huttball and it ends up being one of the only WZs people see if they only run one or two a day, yes same faction WZs would fix that but, again, not the point of the thread.

 

The reasons world population balance is an issue isn't WZs. it's world PVP. go to Ilum on almost any server and it'll either be a ghost town or Empire owned.

 

If it's a ghost town it's cause the reps wont come out and play because they know theres 500000 Emps drooling over the next potential morsel that pops out of the base and the emps have realized theres nothign to kill and gone back to WZ queues or sitting in the fleet pushing the boundries of the chat filter in /1.

 

The way they have the WZs set up right now is fine, it'd be neat if you could run them all same faction but I don't really care about that, story wise I 'like' the conflict between two factions. It's one of the reasons I play these games. I hoped the Empire would have been the underdog which is why I rolled there. If something isn't planned for a balance soon I will simply re-roll on the republic side and level up a gunslinger to match my sniper. I'd like to not have to do that though and go through the entire process all over again.

 

World population balance is an issue and it's not caused by anything other than people wanting tending towards one particular side basedon aesthetics. I can promise you if you poll 100 people on why they rolled Emp you will get very few that say "Because the animations are smoother and I can get my abilities off better" Most people jsut wanted to be darth somethingorother.

[clocknane]

No, I am saying the faction imbalance leads to only a 6% difference in victory and loss.

 

Meaning the faction imbalance, when talking about class balance specifically, is 6%.

 

Imbalanced? Yes.

 

Massively imbalanced? No.

 

It's a minor imbalance, one that's actually better than a lot of faction based games.

 

For example, according to Warcraftrealms, going by their 2010 data, Horde won 56% of BGs, a difference of double what SWTOR has now.

 

Are you going to argue that racials accounted for 12%?

 

That 6% was based on warzones. Take a look at server PVP limited to world pvp on specific servers and you will see the imbalance is MASSIVE. People have even posted screenshots of it. On my server, you can log in on repub fleet at peak hours and see 125 Republics and about 250 Imps if you have a character made on that side too. The faction imbalance is extreme and Bioware really needs to address it quick before this game loses even more subs.

[Yfelsung]

That 6% was based on warzones. Take a look at server PVP limited to world pvp on specific servers and you will see the imbalance is MASSIVE. People have even posted screenshots of it. On my server, you can log in on repub fleet at peak hours and see 125 Republics and about 250 Imps if you have a character made on that side too. The faction imbalance is extreme and Bioware really needs to address it quick before this game loses even more subs.

 

Do you have metrics directly taken from Bioware's servers to confirm your hypothesis of a massive imbalance in World PvP?

 

If we're going to have this discussion, we're going to need hard data.

[Mephismo]

xrealm pvp:)

[grania]

I'll play republic more if they give me some armor options that do not look like brown/ tan/ beige/ kelly green burlap. Easy fix!

[Mobiwang]

Do you have metrics directly taken from Bioware's servers to confirm your hypothesis of a massive imbalance in World PvP?

 

If we're going to have this discussion, we're going to need hard data.

 

Hardly factual, but I don't believe I've ever seen more than 4 republic characters at once in the Ilum objective. More often than not, i see at least a dozen Imps every time I go.

[Kiphere]

another note on 'empire wins X% more' I won't trust any of those numbers until I see some sort of actual logging. I mean, easily half my Huttball games are Emp vs Emp. Does that 6% account for that?

[Yfelsung]

Hardly factual, but I don't believe I've ever seen more than 4 republic characters at once in the Ilum objective. More often than not, i see at least a dozen Imps every time I go.

 

Again, and I'm not doubting your experiences, that's anecdotal evidence and has no place in a discussion.

 

It can be coloured by bias, emotion, even your own perception. We can't trust the accuracy even if you believe you are totally telling the truth.

 

This is why we never use anecdotal evidence in any conversation worth it's weight.

 

In a debate, data is God and everything else is blasphemy.

[Mobiwang]

another note on 'empire wins X% more' I won't trust any of those numbers until I see some sort of actual logging. I mean, easily half my Huttball games are Emp vs Emp. Does that 6% account for that?

 

If anything, that would bring the Empire win X% down since it cannot be more than 50% against other empire.

[Yfelsung]

another note on 'empire wins X% more' I won't trust any of those numbers until I see some sort of actual logging. I mean, easily half my Huttball games are Emp vs Emp. Does that 6% account for that?

 

If you read the quote, you'd see the 6% is specifically only talking about Voidstar and Alderaan.

 

and it also goes over the fact that 39% of all matches are Huttball (only 6% higher than 1/3rd, so again, not as often as people claim).

 

It's all in Gabe's post.

[Ageizm]

I still say just give the republic, and only the Republic, WOOKIES!!!!! Problem solved!!!!!!

[Zeratulz]

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.

 

 

Sounds like this guy needs to be taken to Bioware HQ and given a god damn seat on the board of representatives....This is quite the idea!

[Andryah]

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

 

Agree.

 

 

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.)

 

Sounds about right actually, give or take a few % depending on the server.

 

Which means that this is really a non-issue blown up into an issue by fantasy fanatic over-reactions by players feeling the need to be entitled to have everything their way.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Andryah

[Mobiwang]

Again, and I'm not doubting your experiences, that's anecdotal evidence and has no place in a discussion.

 

It can be coloured by bias, emotion, even your own perception. We can't trust the accuracy even if you believe you are totally telling the truth.

 

This is why we never use anecdotal evidence in any conversation worth it's weight.

 

In a debate, data is God and everything else is blasphemy.

 

I agree to a point. However, when you're speaking about an experience the end user has, it IS colored by bias, emotion, and perception. There IS a faction imbalance. I've seen reports of up to 4:1 on some servers. Even if I were outnumbered 4:1 on a server, but logged on with enough friends that it didn't affect me, I would not care.

 

But in the end, it matters what the player PERCEIVES, not what is reality when it comes to deciding if their play experience is enjoyable and whether or not he or she is to continue that experience.

[Yfelsung]

I agree to a point. However, when you're speaking about an experience the end user has, it IS colored by bias, emotion, and perception. There IS a faction imbalance. I've seen reports of up to 4:1 on some servers. Even if I were outnumbered 4:1 on a server, but logged on with enough friends that it didn't affect me, I would not care.

 

But in the end, it matters what the player PERCEIVES, not what is reality when it comes to deciding if their play experience is enjoyable and whether or not he or she is to continue that experience.

 

But those reports are ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE.

 

So they're worthless.

 

You cannot balance based on player perception.

 

You balance based on data.

[RachelAnne]

Every MMO had at release faction imbalance, it all settled down after a few months. You should just all relax a bit, nobody will play only 1 faction - right now the empire community has many young ones at pvp, I wont be suprised if soon the adults switch to repuplic for pvp.

[Mobiwang]

But those reports are ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE.

 

So they're worthless.

 

You cannot balance based on player perception.

 

You balance based on data.

 

Not all. There have been many people (myself included) that have logged between factions at the same time in comparable zones and have recorded their findings. You notice that the population in Ilum shows 57 republic and log over to 137 imperials. Thats not anecdotal.

 

You HAVE to acknowledge player perception to retain customers. You're arguing stats on paper, but much depends on a player's experiences "real world."

[LeonBraun]

Just add Blood Elves to Republic.

 

lol

[Yfelsung]

Not all. There have been many people (myself included) that have logged between factions at the same time in comparable zones and have recorded their findings. You notice that the population in Ilum shows 57 republic and log over to 137 imperials. Thats not anecdotal.

 

You HAVE to acknowledge player perception to retain customers. You're arguing stats on paper, but much depends on a player's experiences "real world."

 

I disagree. Player perception is flawed. Since it's flawed, you CAN'T fix it.

 

I put up direct quotes as to the win ratio of the factions and people STILL doubt it. I provided information taken directly from Bioware's own servers and people STILL DOUBT IT.

 

So since you can't fix perception, you ignore it. You fix what you can with data and you HOPE perception will follow reality.

 

But, in the end, perception might not follow reality and the last thing they need to do is try to make changes based on people's unrealistic and flawed perception of reality.

 

The human equation is the last thing one should care about, as it's the most chaotic, unpredictable and most prone to emotion.

 

If they make the game balanced by the numbers, the people who matter will change their perception.

 

The people who maintain perceptions and belief in spite of evidence to the contrary are barely human to begin with.

[Mobiwang]

I never said you had to balance around it, simply that you had to acknowledge it. From a design perspective, many "large" character models in games have shorter-than-would-be legs because studies show that people do not like looking like they are running slower than smaller characters even though the movement speeds are the same. Edited January 18, 2012 by Mobiwang

[Vesperr]

I'd prefer something between 1) and 2) :

-Swap character and purge everything quest related.

-Allow to change appearance and (optional) a name (some people pick names based on the faction they play)

-Abilities and universal titles, valor etc stay.

-Datacrons stay (they should be linked to their republic/empire equivalent) coz its lots of work to get all the datacrons.

-Pets affection stay, pet quests and dialogues gets purged (they are based on storyline)

-Swap set items for their equivalent (its harder to do so than purge, but its not that hard and people wont like to have their end-game gear purged, many wont swap characters because of this).

-Character is teleported to the starter planet.

-If character is GM he'll be asked if he wants to transfer his guild, every guild member will be notified via in-game mail that their (now former) GM has transfered the guild.

 

 

 

Basicly the kind of tranfer where you'll lose nothing except that you have to complete your characters storyline (and it'll be easy for lvl 50 character). I've asked some of my guildies and they say that if the above was possible and other guildies wont mind, they would transfer to republic.

 

 

edit: forgot the most obvious part. Faction swapping only from the faction that outnumbers the other one.

edit2: LS/DS could either be set to neutral or left as it was (user choice)

Edited January 18, 2012 by Vesperr

[inseeisyou]

While an interesting idea, your idea of how this would help if flawed in it's premise. Most players *WANT* to be part of the zerg. If you allowed faction swaping, more Reps would switch to Imp than the other way around. ESPECIALLY now that there is this huge, wonderful benefit that BW put into Ilum in their infinite wisdom.

[Jiraiya_Goketsu]

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

 

Or they could just add Lannik to the Republic.

[Mobiwang]

While an interesting idea, your idea of how this would help if flawed in it's premise. Most players *WANT* to be part of the zerg. If you allowed faction swaping, more Reps would switch to Imp than the other way around. ESPECIALLY now that there is this huge, wonderful benefit that BW put into Ilum in their infinite wisdom.

 

He was saying to only allow xfers one way. It may not make a huge difference (I'd be tempted if it meant less Huttball ), but a small difference is still a difference.