how would YOU handle population imbalance?

[jHats]

Pretty simple fix.

 

For Ilum : Make it instanced like Wintergrasp and put a cap on it. If the republic or sith are outnumbered then they can use companions to make up for the difference.

 

For Warzones : Make every single Warzone Faction vs Faction enabled.

 

There you go. Two simple fixes that would make the game better by 10 fold.

[maradigamer]

Oh yeah, btw, implement free of charge character migration.

 

Oh yeah, this too.

[Avip]

The main issue is illum. Illum compounds the issue by giving more incentive to the overpopulated faction by letting them have more valor per kill while the other side doesn't have a chance in hell to get points back. So now the losing/underpopulated faction has no motivation to pvp there while the already overpoulated/winning faction keeps getting more and more people for the free valor.

 

Some sort of bolstering based on how many more players one side has would be an easy start.

[Fergor]

- Give server balance status so people can see the pops before they join

 

- Remove same faction pvp

 

- throttle Ilum so it's as close to 1 to 1 as possible

 

Basically the only way to get the pvp populations balanced is to punish those that rolled the zerg side. If you want to PvP you'll roll the other faction instead of waiting 2 hours for a queue. Right now BW actually has systems in place to reward the zerg side. It's ridiculous.

[bicuspid]

at this point its unfixable

 

this is like a guy with some sort of easily treatable but ultimately fatal illness, but then they just are like 'ah whatever', despite everyone tell them they should get it looked at

 

we are past the point where there is a cure

[Nisa]

maybe have some sort of instance that pits equal numbers against eachother. you could have like objectives you have to complete all while killing the opposing players

 

hmmm

[Nyliana]

In the same way that early zones were handled, instancing.

 

Make it so the maximum number you can have per side is maybe 50-100 or so? I'm not sure on the exact number that would be appropriate, I'll leave that to people with data to consider. If you were the 101st player for ilum, you'd go to "Ilum 2" for example.

 

This could also be extended to cross server if low server populations warranted it.

 

It might require making ilum instanced, which seems fine to me initially. Again I'm not a game developer, and would hope that BW takes the time to address the issue properly.

[nflstar]

Free transfer from overpopulated to underpopulated.

 

Plenty would take it up.

 

This ^. Most people dont want to be on the over populated side but they also dont want to spend all the time leveling a new character or paying to switch.

[Sabbathius]

Simply give people strong incentive to play underdog faction, that's all.

 

As in, +300% XP gain, and +200% valor gain. Stuff like that. Population will adjust. As soon as it gets within +/-5%, cut benefits, until one side gets huge again.

[Trevalion]

No Instances and Population imbalance is inherent in a 2 faction system.

 

The simple (and effective) fix that has already been posted many times is to simply provide a valor gain buff for the outnumbered faction that dynamically scales based on the imbalance.

 

Make the buff significant when severely imbalanced for the underdog faction.. boom you get reverse farmed when your zerging. That simple.

 

Also, you have to understand that zerging is part of open world pvp. Zerg busting is done by those who dont care about whining and "exploiting" population imbalance but still want to have fun.

[Gavien]

If you don't want population imbalance, you need to shut down character creation for the overpopulated side. That's all there is to it. Will you piss people off? Of course. It comes down to having to just accept population imbalance and piss off the weaker faction, or block creation and piss off some of the bigger population. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[va_wanderer]

lets face it, the main issue with ilum is the fact that on most servers one faction outnumbers the other, which only compounds the issue by making the losing faction start to leave, and drawing in more of the winning faction for easy victory.

 

if you were given absolute power over trying to fix this issue how would you handle it?

 

you can not

-force faction changes on people.

-force server changes on people.

 

this is not a thread to criticise/praise bioware on how they are handling it, only about how YOU would do it.

 

You don't. People want to be on the winning side. The only solution is to allow for a "mercy rule" when server PvP becomes too imbalanced and to merge the imbalanced server into one where the opposite has happened.

 

Without giving the minority faction a chance to work with new blood that's known victory, it doesn't matter what you'll do. Voluntary transferring just will lead to people imbalancing more and more servers, which will gradually kill PvP by leaving nothing but stagnant servers, either utterly Empire or Republic dominated.

[PulseXXX]

- Cap daily valor gains in Ilum.

 

- Make spawn camping impossible

 

- Rollback Valor to post 1.1

 

- Provide HP and damage bonuses based on the amount of time Ilum has been controlled by the other faction.

 

- Provide the community with faction balance data so we can work with BW to develop a solution.

[bicuspid]

If you don't want population imbalance, you need to shut down character creation for the overpopulated side. That's all there is to it. Will you piss people off? Of course. It comes down to having to just accept population imbalance and piss off the weaker faction, or block creation and piss off some of the bigger population. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

people will get over having to play the other faction

 

people cannot get over getting to 50 then realize wow i die as soon as I land on this planet / wow there is nothing I can do on this planet except stand around with 100 others waiting for some idiot to land

Edited January 18, 2012 by bicuspid

[Haeso]

lets face it, the main issue with ilum is the fact that on most servers one faction outnumbers the other, which only compounds the issue by making the losing faction start to leave, and drawing in more of the winning faction for easy victory.

 

if you were given absolute power over trying to fix this issue how would you handle it?

 

you can not

-force faction changes on people.

-force server changes on people.

 

 

 

this is not a thread to criticise/praise bioware on how they are handling it, only about how YOU would do it.

 

Three factions.

 

Problem solved, I accept Check, Visa and Mastercard.

[Gorstog]

They are screwed at this point.

 

They should have kept the balanced at 2/1 max at release. It might have pissed some people off but when it first released people had not dedicated time/resources into growing a character and making personal contacts for doing group activities.

 

Now that the game is around a month old they are just fail. Unfortunately I had no idea of the imbalance until I was almost already 50 and my RL friends were all already IMP's or I would have rather played Republic. Imbalance ruins MMO's. Bioware fails to understand this.

[Juunro]

1) Cross Realm Warzones, drop priority on all other development projects until it's implemented.

 

2) While doing the above, fix your server backend issues so the Warzones don't severely lag for no good reason anymore.

 

3) Ilum should be population capped, the way Tol Barad was, then instanced. So as many instances can be open as there are playing to support them, but they each cap at 50 players per side and each instance can't accept more then +/- 2-4 players more then each team has ready. So, for instance, you have 400 players Imperial Side, 362 players Republic side, it opens 7 50 player instanced versions and one 12 player one, with the 12 player one filling up more as more from the lower faction joins.

 

That, or make Ilum completely irrelevant. Cosmetic items and cash only, no Valor, nothing.

 

4) Cross realm instance queue for both normal mode and heroic flashpoints.

[AdmiralOnasi]

-Republic gains valor at an accelerated rate

-XP boost to Republic

-Republic players get buffed on Ilum proportional to the current ratio on the planet

-Republic gains commendations at an accelerated rate

[Venganzas]

-Republic gains valor at an accelerated rate

-XP boost to Republic

-Republic players get buffed on Ilum proportional to the current ratio on the planet

-Republic gains commendations at an accelerated rate

 

I like this one, this would make republic players like raid bosses on my server (Daragon Trail)

Edited January 18, 2012 by Venganzas

[Tren]

- Allow free faction changes to the lower population faction & let the playerbase fix a considerable portion of the imbalance themselves. Some imbalance will always exist but I do believe I've seen enough posts from Imperial players who would change sides to make a more competitive PVP environment to believe that this would help.

 

- Lock the High-population side on PVP/RPPVP servers.

 

- Cap daily Valor gains on Ilum to discourage excess farming.

 

- Untargetable/Indestructible defenses at "base" locations (landing pads/med centers) with AOE damage that can't be healed through, BUT if an opposing player gets hit by static "NPC" defenses, no players can gain Valor from their death.

 

We have enough instanced PVP, I really don't want to see that happen to Ilum (& a queue to get in for balanced sides a la WG/TB is basically the same thing.)

[Slteath]

I read someone has the idea of Npc at ilum.

 

I was thinking something about this. There are five objective points and two spawn points (one per faction).

 

First, put enough champion class npc to protect spawn points.

 

Second, let's say there are a total of 50 npc ranging from champion to elite class spread out in the zone for each faction. When your faction control 2 objective points, there will be 25 npc at each. If you control 3 points, there will be 16-17 npc for each zone. when you control only one point, all 50 champion/elites will be at that point. That way, even the minority side will have a chance to defend while waiting for reinforcement to overtake the now spreaded-out-defense enemies.

 

The idea is to thru the use of npc, it creates a dynamic balance in the particular fight without adjusting the overall balance which needed much time and caution.

[Roak]

no one wants balanced servers because everyone wants their "rights" to be respected even if that goes against positive gameplay.

 

I made several posts before launch about this.

 

Mistake 1 is making world pvp a weak add on and not designing it into the core game - an mmo is as much about pve as it is pvp, both need designing into the world. You can't just add on something and call it a world pvp system - it should be as much of a part of the core world design as pve mission hubs.

 

Mistake 2 is making the game fixed faction, if you are going to make the game faction based, games that allow the player to choose faction in game rather than at creation often find a better faction balance.

 

Mistake 3 is not enforcing server balance, because people whine - I want to play with person x etc but you wouldn't become the 12th player on a football team against a team of 8, you'd join the 8. If they want it to be competitive, there has to be some control and this can be engineered in to an extent but would require a change in mindset of the modern entitled mmo player.

 

Mistake 4 is making the system always reward, for winning to be worth something there must be an element of loss, even if it is only very minor.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Roak

[Arcalinte]

Even if they fix server population imbalance now the sith highly out gear most republic.

[EcGBorn]

The population will always be different. Even in wow there is a disparity server to server. You cannot change it, but you can make it equal. Bioware still has not done this nor have they shown any effort to do so. And what I mean by equal is Sith Inquister = Sith Sage. Right now Inquister > sage. So why does anyone want to play Republic?

 

Stop with the zerging. The update to Ilum only promotes more one-sidedness.

 

I would hate to suggest this, but allow republic low pop servers to transfer into higher pop servers, and possible low pop imps to low pop imps. (I doubt there are many servers where imps are below republic)

 

The biggest thing I see is that people will play the better classes / sides. Right now imperials have a known advantage. Bioware has openly admitted it, but has done nothing. That's strike one and two. Strike three will be allowing it to continue through January with no action.

[Ratham]

Very easy actually...

 

1.) Limit the number of people per faction allowed in the zone.

2.) Give a hp/damage/healing buff by a % of how out #'d republic is at the time.

3.) Forced re-rolls

 

Oh yeah.. and roll back the servers, all rewards / valor gained by imperials today needs to go away. Even if you fix the population issue but allow them to keep all the rewards, I'll be quitting. I've been here since 2008 following this games development.

 

Dont even think about adding Warhammer's against all odds system to this game.. it does NOTHING to stop farming and faction imbalance.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Ratham