The only real fix for faction balance.

[Kiphere]

never let the low pop side have the option of changing. Thats just compounding the issue.

 

As for "the faction balance in games always recitifies itself" sorry but that's just blatantly wrong. I've been playin MMOs since M59 and the most 'notable' faction based game as much as people hate to hear it referenced is WoW. Faction imbalances did not 'fix themselves' and most servers stayed horribly imbalanced and still have to this day even with faction specific transfers.

 

In relation to "people want to be part of the zerg" I agree and disagree. When I talk to folks in /1 or /gu I hear more people saying they would gladly swap sides to balance things out for world PVP/WZ queues but they have no urge to level up again. that's actually the most common answer I get when I ask the questions related to this topic which lead me to the solutions I posted.

 

The easy eay for Bioware is the hard way for the player which makes it less likely to succeed. It's a bandaid on a wound that needs stitches but even a bandaid helps a little. Players are less likely to 'work for it' to change, and they sure aren't gonna give up their stuff in most cases.

 

The hard way is a little harder for bioware and a little harder for bioware but easier on the player which will increase the number of people who take advantage of it.

 

The hardest way for Bioware which includes the long write up regarding going through the class quests in a gated form with orange gear, and some specific quests added in for defection will include the most work for Bioware but offers the most benefit to people for swapping sides. you get to basically play another storyline, skip the more grinding aspects of the game, get back to 50 and have not lost anything. This will be much more appealing to people and I have a feeling a large number of folks will do it.

 

it's a lot of work for bioware so I don't expect them to really take my idea and run with it but if they want some help, I'm a project manager by profession focused primarily on IT projects that has a firm grasp on how to work with multiple teams to get things done, feel free to PM me with a job offer and I'll make it happen for ya

[Kiphere]

Also, as a side note: I'd love to see some bioware released numbers on server population balances. "Active at peak X% rep Y% emp" etc.

[Yfelsung]

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.

 

But what would acknowledging really accomplish?

 

It'd just be more fuel for the fire.

 

Faction based games approach equal balance over time, naturally, without any needed help.

 

When WoW came out, Alliance outnumbered Horde 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 on some servers.

 

Blood elves get added, Horde outnumbers Alliance 2 to 1 or 3 to 1.

 

Worgren get added and it swings back, with current WoW pop numbers somewhere around 1.5 Alliance to 1 Horde.

 

Any attempt to balance a population backfires and just swings it in the other direction.

 

It's better to let it naturally settled out then to try fixing it and just reverse the pop imbalance.

[Kiphere]

But what would acknowledging really accomplish?

 

It'd just be more fuel for the fire.

 

Faction based games approach equal balance over time, naturally, without any needed help.

 

When WoW came out, Alliance outnumbered Horde 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 on some servers.

 

Blood elves get added, Horde outnumbers Alliance 2 to 1 or 3 to 1.

 

Worgren get added and it swings back, with current WoW pop numbers somewhere around 1.5 Alliance to 1 Horde.

 

Any attempt to balance a population backfires and just swings it in the other direction.

 

It's better to let it naturally settled out then to try fixing it and just reverse the pop imbalance.

 

My suggestion sort of inhibits a while swing and opens up balance faster which will have less of an impact on subscriptions.

 

by parsing the population balance once a week and opening the defection quest only to the over populated side you don't risk a massive swing to the other side. You could even limit how many people are able to take advantage of the defection before the quest becomes unavailable again, or simply open it for a day, parse the next week and see what happens then open it for another day, etc. It will give a more rapid balance and an ongoing system to keep it balanced. it also stops the potential for 'odd man out' balance issues.

 

Lets use the Bloodelf example since it's one a lot of people will recognize. At the time Bloodelves were introduced alliance did out number horde game wide.

 

However there were a number of servers that were horde heavy and not only did the pretty little twink elves swing the balance on most servers it horrendously overbalanced the horde heavy servers to the point that one of them went from high to low population within 3 months from people transferring off or rerolling because of how bad it was. it was a long and whiney process as the forums were constantly blazed with angry people begging for something to be done.

 

This is an opportunity to learn from other games mistakes, put a system in that self balances without dramatic changes and persists for the life of the game to compensate for any additions down the road that might swing the balance one way or another.

[Yfelsung]

My suggestion sort of inhibits a while swing and opens up balance faster which will have less of an impact on subscriptions.

 

by parsing the population balance once a week and opening the defection quest only to the over populated side you don't risk a massive swing to the other side. You could even limit how many people are able to take advantage of the defection before the quest becomes unavailable again, or simply open it for a day, parse the next week and see what happens then open it for another day, etc. It will give a more rapid balance and an ongoing system to keep it balanced. it also stops the potential for 'odd man out' balance issues.

 

Lets use the Bloodelf example since it's one a lot of people will recognize. At the time Bloodelves were introduced alliance did out number horde game wide.

 

However there were a number of servers that were horde heavy and not only did the pretty little twink elves swing the balance on most servers it horrendously overbalanced the horde heavy servers to the point that one of them went from high to low population within 3 months from people transferring off or rerolling because of how bad it was. it was a long and whiney process as the forums were constantly blazed with angry people begging for something to be done.

 

This is an opportunity to learn from other games mistakes, put a system in that self balances without dramatic changes and persists for the life of the game to compensate for any additions down the road that might swing the balance one way or another.

 

So you don't think that a limited option faction change that only one faction can engage in at any given time, and one that will get cut off as balance approaches, won't enrage this community in such a vortex of tears that it's like has never been seen before?

 

I mean, dude, look at the little things people whine about.

 

People would spontaneously combust if you option was implemented.

 

You cannot add a feature with that kind of limitation.

 

If you add a feature, it has to be usable by everyone, else you create rage.

 

The best option is to wait a few months, see what the community is doing by itself (as people will naturally reroll other characters on the other faction) and THEN if there's still a problem, introduce a VERY SOFT TOUCH approach.

 

But we need at least a couple months to determine the data and the trends.

 

WoW survived 2+ years with 3 to 1 server populations, SWTOR will be fine while BW waits for the data.

[Kiphere]

I don't disagree with you entirely. I just like coming up with solutions.

 

My personal feelings on the matter? I don't care. I'd rather NOT level a republic guy up from scratch but at the end of the day if I get that annoyed at playing huttball 7 out of 10 matches I'll do it. Hell, I'll probably do it anyway just so I can run around and actually have some one to kill on Ilum.

 

 

I don't want same faction PVP in 'all' WZs, I like the concept of factions against one another and doing it in world pvp is just... bad. Capping world pvp areas so the maintance remains will just piss off the Emps as they'll have to wait in a queue and no one likes payin to wait in line.

 

I personally don't think it will resolve itself, it will be violent swings one direction or another like WoW had where the majority of the time it's poorly balanced population wise with brief interludes of balanced populations until the next event occurs to blast the balance in one direction or another.

 

I see what you're sayin that people would ***** that they want to defect but can't cause they're on a lower population faction. it would be granting an 'option' and element of gameplay to the side with more people which might even make more people roll that side just to level up and eventually defect, I hadn't really thought of that possibility.

[ultraoptms]

Well, I don't really think anything can be confirmed w/o empirical data; Problem is that BW won't provide empirical data. One work around that I can see is to have multiple people log instance population numbers simultaneously on a server at multiple times throughout the day over multiple weeks. Even then, those numbers won't be as good as anything that BW could provide. Edited January 18, 2012 by ultraoptms

[jfahy]

I have a compulsive need to correct peoples' math, so here it goes.

 

A 47%-53% win ratio is a 6% difference only if you look at it as superficially as possible. What it actually means is that Darth Dave wins 53 times for every 47 times Jedi Joe wins. 53/47 is 1.128, so the imperial is winning more than 12% more often.

 

Looking at it the way one other poster did, by the time Jedi Joe has lost 100 times (about 189 fights), Darth Dave has lost 89 times.

 

Second, I do evaluation of training systems for a living - and we study peoples' perceptions and opinions all the time. The techniques used are different than in objectivist quantitative analysis, but they work when applied properly. The idea that "it's trickier to measure so we must pretend it doesn't exist" is utter nonsense.

 

 

(The biggest problem, I think, is that these faction setups absolutely do not move naturally toward balance. They reward winning, and that means if you see 51 reds fighting 49 blues, the smart move is to join the reds. The only reason they don't diverge toward 100 vs. 0 is that some people on the losing side are stubborn, and that game developers keep intervening, with varying degrees of success, trying to make 50 vs. 50 happen.)

Edited January 19, 2012 by jfahy

[jfahy]

It was probably a mistake, announcing the faction win ratios that one time. It'll encourage new players to join the winning side, exacerbating the problem...and speaking for myself, if they never mention those stats again I'll definitely assume it's because the disparity is getting worse.

 

(If they announce the stats again and they're closer to 50-50...well, that's so improbable that my first reaction would be to wonder if they're cooking the numbers.)

[Mossesman]

Its incredibly difficult to solve the faction imbalance issue, because at the end of the day its the players choice of what faction they want to play in. All Bioware can do is to try and encourage people to try and roll more characters of the other faction.

 

A possible way they could do this is have a 5-10% xp/valor bonus to the faction with the lowest pop?

[andrantos]

My only thought was doing something kind of funky - essentially making factions on each server independent of one another such that...

 

You could group factions across servers such that they share warzones and Ilum. For example, Imperials from Server A would be clustered with Republic from both Server B and Server C. Imperials from Server B would be clustered with Republic from both Server C and Server A...

 

And then of course rotate and adjust clustered server factions on occasion. Odd, yes. Effective, I dont know?

[louisfriend]

it's also silly to be talking about faction balance in a game that's only a month or so old.

 

6mo a year out. and if it gets to like 70/30 split ...then maybe they need to worry.

 

but if it's like 55/45 or even 60/40 that's prob within the margins

 

 

i think there are some annoying. class imbalance faction issues. the speed to dps of some action/ability load times. or certain claims that mirrored abilities on republic side don't stun as long, or dps as high etc.

 

those will get worked out sooner or later.

 

 

but as far as the numbers go. anything outside of a reasonable temporary "underdog" type buff in limited situations. and it really doesn't fix anything

[jfahy]

A possible way they could do this is have a 5-10% xp/valor bonus to the faction with the lowest pop?

 

On the PvP side I think I'd go much higher. Imagine there's 5 of you and one of them in Ilum.

 

Your zone (de)buff: "You vastly outnumber the enemy. This victory deserves no praise. Valor gains reduced by [brutal amount]."

 

Their zone buff: "You are vastly outnumbered. It takes balls of steel to confront odds like this. Your Valor gains are increased by [huge amount], and you get [---] Valor just for damaging an opponent."

 

There would be exploitation loopholes to close, but if you care about the long-term health of the PvP game I think that's the way to do it. Make it totally not worthwhile to zerg an outnumbered side, and make it really, really attractive for the smaller group to show up...because otherwise, most of them will stay home and then everybody loses.

Edited January 19, 2012 by jfahy

[Kyoushima]

I couldn't agree more with OP. Having the option to defect would probably help rectify faction imbalance to some degree at least. Not to mention the opportunity to RP as this sort of Revan type character. I got a 50 Sith Assassin that I wouldn't mind defecting into a Jedi Shadow just for the sake of helping to balance my server.

As cool as the Empire is I just don't feel any personal connection to it like I do with the Republic.

[NuanceNW]

Imbalance is not a technology problem.

It's a sociology problem that stems from free will.

[NDiggy]

Possible Solutions:

 

1) Cap faction populations on imbalanced servers. No server should be more than 2:1 in either faction's favor.

 

2) Talk to some of the larger Empire guilds and offer them a free transfer to Republic with some other added incentive rolled in to make it worth while.

 

3) Alliance needs better looking gear. Specifically Jedis need better looking gear.

 

4) Fix all the abilities from mirror classes that don't mirror each other. Some Empire class abilities are simply better than their Alliance counterparts due to animations, mechanics and CDs even though they perform the same function.

 

5) Same faction Warzones. Pretty easy to implement, but it would shorten queues and they already have Huttball operate in this manner so making the others like that shouldn't be hard, even if its just a short term solution until pops balance out.

 

6) People forget that PvE gets hit hard as well by having a low pop for your faction. Make all GTNs cross faction. It would help the economy out greatly. It still wouldn't solve LFG issues though.

[NDiggy]

it's also silly to be talking about faction balance in a game that's only a month or so old.

 

6mo a year out. and if it gets to like 70/30 split ...then maybe they need to worry.

 

but if it's like 55/45 or even 60/40 that's prob within the margins

 

 

i think there are some annoying. class imbalance faction issues. the speed to dps of some action/ability load times. or certain claims that mirrored abilities on republic side don't stun as long, or dps as high etc.

 

those will get worked out sooner or later.

 

 

but as far as the numbers go. anything outside of a reasonable temporary "underdog" type buff in limited situations. and it really doesn't fix anything

 

Its never too early to start worrying about faction balance. My experience has been the sooner you start working to alleviate imbalance the better the game will be in the long run. You don't just let something like this fester until its out of control and then try to fix it. Small tweaks now can make a big difference months down the road.

[MrFailSauce]

it's also silly to be talking about faction balance in a game that's only a month or so old.

 

6mo a year out. and if it gets to like 70/30 split ...then maybe they need to worry.

 

but if it's like 55/45 or even 60/40 that's prob within the margins

 

 

But it isn't a 60/40 or even a 70/30. On a bunch of PvP servers it is more like 85:15 or even worse. That is a serious enough problem that it makes it much harder to be republic. Hard enough that I'm not sure that we can expect it to balance out by itself; not without some help from the devs.