BioWare: Here is what caused the faction imabalance and here is how you fix it.

[ProfessorWalsh]

Hello BioWare.

 

You, by now, know exactly who I am and have for some time. During the build up to launch I warned you, time and time again, about the faction imbalance. I was told, by the devs no less, that there absolutely no chance of a gross faction imbalance.

 

I was correct, the devs were wrong.

 

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With that out of the way I still want to help.

 

So I am going to explain exactly what caused this imbalance and exactly how to fix it.

 

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I give this information freely with only the hopes that it fixes this game before it does reach a catastrophic point of no return.

 

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The Cause:

 

The cause of the faction imbalance was the pre-game hype. The Sith had a poster boy who was powerful, nearly unstoppable, and seemingly unassailable. The Sith were touted as unbeatable, unstoppable, and victorious conquerors. The Sith were never decried or vilified in any way for their actions during the course of the pre-game hype and in fact were treated like paragons.

 

One of the largest contributors to the faction imbalance was the character by the name of Darth Malgus. He was, at first, a nameless Sith that players could project their own self onto. Many players psychologically considered "themselves" this character when they were visualizing the Old Republic. This set down preconceptions which BioWare only inadvertently continued to fuel.

 

Players identified with individual characters in the trailers. Fans of the Sith identified themselves as Malgus, fans of the Jedi identified themselves as Satele, and fans of the Trooper identified themselves as the Trooper from Hope for example. It was because of this that Hope was the leading cause of the faction imbalance that came from the three cinematic trailers.

 

In "Hope" the message to the players inadvertently was as follows: "The Sith are awesome, and in a one on one fight will beat any Trooper and any Jedi. Two on one they can (barely) defeat a Sith."

 

This was actually fueled by Gnost Dural's timeline histories where he stated (regarding the events of the GHW) that the only way a Sith ever lost was when another Sith turned on them.

 

BioWare went out of their way to list off every important Sith they could, but all Republic heroes were either dead (Master Ven or Master Allusus) which sent a psychological message out: "If you want to be a hero to the Republic, you are going to die."

 

The Sith were never soundly defeated. The few times they were "defeated" it was either because of overwhelming firepower or because of extreme sacrifices. The Republic on the other hand was soundly defeated, time and again, in the pre-game hype without any similar sacrifices on the part of the Sith Empire. In fact it looked easy.

 

This sent another psychological message to the player base that was in some ways nearly subliminal.

 

The Sith were also highly defended by the devs in the pre-game build up. They were touted as "not being evil" and even Gnost Dural never used strong negative language when speaking about them. There were no real downsides to the Empire ever shown, while the flaws of the Republic were often pointed out by BioWare devs.

 

The flaws of the Republic included such things as "Poor leadership" (the senate) and "Massive dissension" within the faction at its core. The Jedi being painted as being disliked by their own faction only added to this dissension and caused many people to rally against the Jedi classes in their own faction while no such phenomena was occurring on the Sith side.

 

This was readily apparent by the massive rivalry and "sniping" going on between the Trooper forums and the Jedi Knight forums.

 

There was time to fix this with counter-hype pre-game, but BioWare chose not to, and thus we have now a massive faction imbalance.

 

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How to fix it:

 

At one time counter-hype was a viable answer to the issues. That, unfortunately, won't work now. There is only one way to fix the issue now and normalize population numbers and it, unfortunately, is now a gameplay issue.

 

The gameplay issue, however, only rears its head in one situation: "Open World PVP" and thus efforts should be concentrated there.

 

The population imbalance does impact PVE but to a far lesser extent and in Warzones, aside from gear issues caused by the recent exploits, the impact is non-existent.

 

If the Republic (or the Sith) are outnumbered by 100% or more in server population, or at least population on that world, they need to receive a buff that lets them compete. If there are 90 people on Ilum and 60 of them are Sith then the Republic classes need to be able to handle themselves literally in 2:1 encounters.

 

This can be done with a buff that is adjusted based on population numbers for that planet (and instance of that planet):

 

The majority of players won't pay attention to the mechanics of such a buff and if the population gets out of hand, as it has on many servers, where the Republic is outnumbered 5:1 or more and Imperial players start seeing Republic players who are jumped 3:1 and then see the Republic player win they will re-evaluate their faction choice.

 

This could cause an auto-correcting population shift.

 

This has to be a buff that adjusts itself constantly based on population though. If it is not then it would cause a catastrophic swing as we saw in Warhammer.

 

My suggestion would be a buff that increases damage and damage mitigation as well as grants a limited resistance to CC based on the population numbers.

 

Something like (the following is an example only):

 

If one side outnumbers the other side by 50% (IE 50 Sith and 75 Reps) then the lower population side gets a buff that increases their HP and Damage by 20% while also giving a 20% chance to ignore/break a CC.

 

If one side outnumbers the other side by 100% (IE 100 Reps and 200 Sith) then the lower population side gets a buff that increases their HP and Damage by 40% while also giving a 40% chance to ignore/break a CC.

 

And so on, and so forth.

 

This has to become a priority and implemented within 45 days if the game is to have a chance at stabilizing.

 

If you don't do this BioWare, then do something else, but whatever you do the clock is ticking. You have probably less than two months before this becomes a catastrophic issue.

 

Edit:

Had to fix a typo. Sorry, I wrote the post early in the morning / late at night.

Edited January 19, 2012 by ProfessorWalsh

[Reye]

It could also be because Bioware shows favoritism to empire when it comes to gameplay.

 

much like every MMO, the "Bad Guy" is always overpopulated.

[Armaso]

Spot on, well done.

[Drokisannath]

The majority of players won't pay attention to the mechanics of such a buff and if the population gets out of hand, as it has on many servers, where the Republic is outnumbered 5:1 or more and Imperial players start seeing Republic players who are jumped 3:1 and then see the Republic player win they will re-evaluate their faction choice.

 

No, they will leave the game and they would be right to do so.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Drokisannath

[Asnine]

Or just offer faction transfers / copies

 

OR give a 50% XP/Valor boost to the underrepresented side. I know I would definitely switch to repub if it didn't take as long to grind to 50 all over again (and yes, I am working on a Repub alt after I do my dailies on my main.........too bad 1/2 of the time my *********** wins don't count towards the daily)

[Chelsai]

No, they will leave the game and they would be right to do so.

 

Really.. so if you aren't constantly overwhelming your factions opponents to "WIN" 5:1 ratio, Imperials will leave?

 

LOL ok-- then see ya and thats the START of a faction balance

[Isharel]

Very well written I agree with the fact that in every MMO the company favours the "bad guy" faction. Look at Chris Metzen and his open favouritism for the Horde. A bloody company needs to be neutral. They can't pick sides. It's like a non-neutral court. Implausable.

 

My side of the story:

 

Eversince ToR was announced, I planned on beeing a Jedi. From Day 1. Didn't give a single thought to any other classes, regardless the hype. I will enjoy the moment a Sith impales me clean through if my character's death saves atleast a single life of another player. Speaking from the point of view of a Roleplayer, that is. That is all. Ta-ta!

[YanksfanJP]

You can write all the walls of text you want. The reason Empire outnumber Jedi is because they can shoot lightning or they have a Boba Fettish.

 

period.

[Ritalynn]

Giving bonuses to lesser played factions is the dumbest thing that can be suggest...

 

 

"yes we know you like playing thi side but this side is 50% more powerful"

 

yeah.. smart decision...

[Derfmiolleh]

Good read. I agree with you on the cause of the Empire overpopulation but I'm not so sure about a buff. I don't like the sounds of it. Right now all of the Republic players are tuffer, more original and have more heart than any Imp. No kidding, I'm proud. I just don't think I like being "helped"

[Kimasoko]

Not to mention class "mirrors" favor imps along with any othwr difference in the game

[Highfives]

There is only one reason for the imbalance and it's the "Sasuke"-generation, people who think being an uncaring jerk and looking like an evil guy is cool.

 

People look at Vader or Maul and say this is cool I want to be a ****** evil guy and this is the only reason for the imbalance.

[Torsie]

Nice idea, but wrong.

 

99% of the people who play this game have never read any of that, never looked into any of the blurb or the beta stuff.

 

In fact half my server can't read any western European language anyway.

 

But you are along the right lines.

 

The Empire look cooler

 

 

Thats all

 

The bad guys ALLWAYS look better than the good guys, which is enough to make people go with them.

[BoDiE]

Utter tripe. It was inevitable as most hardcore pvp players are always baddies.

 

Swg imperials

Wow horde

Dcuo villains

Rift defiants

The list goes on.

In fact the only MMO I an aware of where this trend is bucked is in Star trek online and that is for reasons I won't get in to.

 

Faction imbalance is none of bioware's doing. To claim this is to have a lack of understanding of MMO dynamics.

[zegota]

Giving bonuses to lesser played factions is the dumbest thing that can be suggest...

 

 

"yes we know you like playing thi side but this side is 50% more powerful"

 

yeah.. smart decision...

 

It's either that or a faction cap. Take your pick.

[punman]

If one side outnumbers the other side by 100% (IE 100 Reps and 150 Sith)

 

Math fail

 

I stopped reading

[Drokisannath]

Really.. so if you aren't constantly overwhelming your factions opponents to "WIN" 5:1 ratio, Imperials will leave?

 

Yeah, that's what the majority of players does. I'm not saying it's good, i'm saying that they would be right to quit if the developpers are dumb enough to try to fix it this way.

[Epicopter]

It's probably too late for even that, I already know several level 50 Republic on my server rerolling Empire because they are frustrating with the state of their faction.

[Reigha]

I agree 99% except cut the buff and make the pvp zones instanced so there will be only allowed 1 for 1 that joins, i dont like wow but their pvp zone system is working great for them and its something that would be worth looking at

wtb more republics i can premade with

[Vyral]

You'd think Bioware would've learned from Aion with respect to letting faction imbalance completely ruin their game. Guess they were too busy polishing those fully voiced quests. Priorities.

[ComeAndSee]

Another contributing factor is from WoW where people viewed the Alliance as being full of kids + noobs and the Horde as being mature + better players.

[WonkaWally]

Summary of OP's original post : " Bioware I was right, you were wrong. The Immense

 

population balance was caused due to a Sith Poster".

[CrimsonFire]

So the more ppl that play my side, my character gets nerfed? Nah. You're not taking in to account already created characters along with even number encounters.

 

There are much smarter and better solutions to this issue.

[Biohack]

Well, while I understand what you're saying and do agree that something must be done to increase the Republic populations, I think that increasing damage or damage mitigation for the underdog will only perpetuate the problem. Here's why: If a Republic player gets buffs to where it takes 2 (or more) Empire players to take them down, then the Empire will call more friends. Once the Empire buddies show up, and they will, we'll be right back to square one.

 

A more balanced and longterm approach to this, would be to add an experience and/or monetary gain buff for the underdog faction on the server. Maybe only experience since a monetary gain could imbalance their economy, and we also don't want that. However, if the GTN's in the game became a true "Galactic" Trade Network and ALL of them in the game worked for both sides, any single faction monetary perk would not imbalance their economy because it would eventually balance out to both sides.

 

But most certainly an experience boost to get more 50's on the underdog side would have a great impact and would be an incentive for new players (and possibly existing) to roll on that side. It should be made visible at the server select screen. It wouldn't even have to be anything dramatic either, a mere 15-25% experience increase would be enough to get the attention of most players.

 

EDIT: Dark Age of Camelot did this back around 2001 and was one of the best (if not THE best) PVP MMO to date.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Biohack

[Irenicus_Jon]

I am so tempted to reply with something like this:

We are Sith. We are legion. We smell your fear.

 

On a more serious note, population imbalance hurts both sides in open PvP. On my server in Ilum, we controlled the entire map and had the republic trapped in their base (not camping their spawn point) so it turned into a mexican stand-off as neither side wanted to engage the other (we didn't have the manpower to spawn camp them admist their respawning turrets of doom, they couldn't step out because they'd be slaughtered in seconds). End result: nobody had any fun or gained much valor so instead we enjoyed the 5 fps lagfest.