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how would YOU handle population imbalance?


UjellyTrollicus

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Allow BH's and smugglers the choice to change faction or implement a third faction made up of these two classes in open pvp.

 

Sure they would be outnumbered, but they could choose to side with whatever faction they wanted, chuck in some fat bonuses for siding with the underpopulated/levelled side and away you go.

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Give the republic more "appealing" armor (especially the consular armors).

 

just make them more appealing in general ;)

 

When it comes to Ilum, just put up a force field barrier that only republics (in the rep base) can go in/out from. In other words, the Imps can camp all they want outside without getting to do their dailies because no one wanna go out :p

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You do what WOW did in thier open PVP area. You CAP faction populations per match. And you don't do INCREDIBLY STUPID THINGS LIKE give +300 bonus valor per kill with one side having a 3:1 imbalance on servers.

 

That's not open PvP. Tol Barad is not open PvP. It's instanced PvP in every way except how you get into it. But since it only starts at certain times, kicks people out to meet the population limit, actively lets you not enter to enforce it..

 

Yeah, it's not "open world PvP" at all. It's functionally a warzone. And yes, that would fix the zerg problem.

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Really Illum would be easy to make 2 faction that dynamically balance:

 

Basically people can be either New Empire or Rep/Imp. Since the Battle for Illum both Republic and Imperials are fighting to unseat Malak. Have a staging area that lets you pick your faction for the time you are in that area. If it is unbalance you are forced to go on one side. Republic players can defect to the New Empire.

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Now?

 

Give a buff to the unbalanced faction based on the number of Imps vs Rebs.

 

However, it's a situation that should have NEVER happened to begin with. 3 factions are a MUST in MMOs imo. Smugglers and BH's would have been the perfect 3rd faction professions.

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Easy fix for now: Give really unfair buffs to the low pop side and gear them up faster. That might get some people to switch.

 

For outdoor, I would spawn ultra elite mobs to assist the low population.

 

These are crappy solutions but I didnt get us into this mess.

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For balance you either need:

 

1. hard (or even soft) caps on faction populations in a zone

2. diminishing rewards for heavy imbalance or if one side is dominating, and bonus rewards if your faction has few people. If you get almost zero reward you'll stop doing it. Keep the rewards high and the exploiters pile on relentlessly

3. Objectives that spread people out, not force them all into the same place. This gives the lower population side a chance because they can find either unguarded or lightly guarded targets

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I don't think you need to fix the population balance at all. The only thing that needs to be done is to just make PVP faction neutral.

 

Warzones:

You queue up, and you're randomly put on a team either empire or republic.

 

 

Ilum:

The same thing can be done for Ilum. When you zone in, you're assigned a faction based on the # of players on each team. The system never allows more than a +2 or +3 advantage to either side. You're allowed to switch teams once every 5 minutes to allow for people to group with friends.

 

Battlefield 3 essentially does this with US/Russia. It would basically fix all of the population balance problems.

 

Yes, people might cooperate and trade kills. It can already be done via huttball or just making friends on both sides.

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How would i handle it? Artificially buffing the losing side. Lets face it, no matter what you do there will never be perfect balance between ANY faction based game. So what do you do to even the odds when its 1 for ever 5 or vice versa? I would give the side that has less captured points a special summon usable only on that world every x hours. For empire this could mean darth Malgus or a troop regiment. For republic Revan *i wish* or likewise some republic troops mix.
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Well, for starters, I wouldn't market one faction better than the other.

 

And two, I wouldn't give that market-favored faction better versions of the skills.

 

 

And if I WAS that much of a moron, that I did do that - I'd bolster the underdog in the zone. Or not allow one faction more players to be in the zone than the other at any time (I personally like the Tenacity approach better than population locking, but w/e).

Edited by Eraste
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I just think a 'buff' or 'free' pvp gear to the losing side would only promote a back and forth imbalance issue. Much as how people traded caps on illium, they would likewise switch to the losing side for the freebies then cause the same imbalance only for the other faction.
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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 make the daily pvp quest apply to all zones, kill 10 level 50's each day, anywhere, once you kill someone they no longer count towards the quest for the rest of the day. if the imps wanna have a group of 150 in ilum then fine, let republic go gank 50's doing other things

 

but thats how i would go about promoting world pvp, cuz as far as ilum goes you might as well just make it a 40 man WZ and have people queue for it

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I'd probably start by actually making the factions equal so the imperials don't have an advantage at the start with their classes.

 

Then I'd probably make all of the light sabers models and animations for imperials to coincide with the shape and disposition of dragon reproductive organs.

 

That'd fix the imbalance in about the 60 second time it takes for the typical 13 year old imperial to log in, log out and create a new republic character.

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you make the daily pvp quest apply to all zones, kill 10 level 50's each day, anywhere, once you kill someone they no longer count towards the quest for the rest of the day.

 

^^ This ^^ That is true world pvp as well as "forcing" world pvp without having a specific zone for it, which causes the issues we are seeing today.

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Its obvious that in an environment where extreme faction imbalance exists you cannot center rewards around winning since one side will always win and the other virtually never.

 

Dailies should be completed by participating in a certain activity for X ammount of time, win or loose.

 

That way republic players would still do it, even if they got their faces melted off, cos at the end of the day, they'd have something to show for it.

 

 

Current itterations just throw easy progression at the side that already has the upper hand which just compounds the problem in all aspects of the game. Watch the ripples this makes in warzones where imperials will have a big edge in battlemaster numbers due to Ilum.

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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.

 

Implement Mandalorian 3rd faction.

 

- only non-force sensitive characters may apply

- dialogue choice at level 50

- must speak with three separate NPCs confirming player decision

- make all Mandalorian armor in game social armor of Heavy/Medium/Light variants to identify faction more extensively

 

problem solved. problem staying solved.

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remove any type of reward for pvping in illum making it a contested planet where people can just beat on each other for the hell of it...

 

Then all the noob gear/valor grinders will go home and the only people left are pure pvpers.

 

For the faction imbalance... one way transfer will work.

Edited by bnzbacca
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