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

[aleiro]

You'd think that if they had half a brain they would have known that the difference between sith and jedi is where they draw the strength of the force from and do something like this....yes have mirror abilities but make them dependent on alignment, not on faction but, hey after seeing some of the choices they have made in this game, by slightly pushing advantage to empire....outrageous respeccing costs, no chance to have more than one build. I am actually amazed that they released the game at all and that we actually have some pvp balance in warzones (after the 50 bracket). Then you can still shoot lightning but you are fighting for the republic, hell if Lord Scourge, the personal assassin of the emperor can fight for the republic and help you kill his old master who is to say that you can't be sith and fight for the republic (with the ultimate goal of crowning yourself)

[aeterno]

Better than a buff would be introducing Ilum objectives that de-facto penalised the overpoulated side.

 

Make the zergling empire itsown worst enemy. Dont allow aoes tag and grab a kill for 200 players. At the same time reward participation, not winning. Give the underpopulated side a bone, some compensation for atleast trying, to entice them to participate even if they get roflzerged.

 

Make the overpopulated side somehow compete against eachother for it. They'll soon grow tired of being on the overpopulated side that can't get dailes done cos there's just too many people trying to farm the objectives. And many will re-roll Republic.

[Ancaglon]

A well written original post. Something like this is needed, and probably even more. For example, in WoW's Wintergrasp, "Tenacity" could more than double the underdog side and they would still lose, because 2 sets of GCD's at equal level can almost always beat 1.

 

PS: Re WoW, at least half the Horde players are playing Horde not to be "the bad guys" but because Thrall's story is more compelling (plus, many major characters on the Alliance side are headstrong idiots, vs. 1 on the Horde side (Garrosh)). So the OP's point about the narrative background rings true even there.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Ancaglon

[Ancaglon]

Oh, forgot to upvote...

[FeeFiFoFum]

OK, if we're going to get all pschychological and wax philisophical heres the deal. Older people play Republic on average. Older people have a better moral compass and refuse to play the evil side. You know how many school shootings there were when I was young? You got it, zero. You know how many metal detectors they had to put at entrances to schools? Zero, again. I could go on and on but you get the picture. Evil has been glorified in our culture as not really evil, just misunderstood. You can date a demon, werewolf, vampire, etc. and they are actually pretty swell chaps. Hell, you can be a singin dancin witch and still be prom queen. I am 51 and was not raised with the paradigm that evil was in any way, shape, or form cool.

 

Bottom line as to the faction imbalance? Our society has decayed to the point where evil is "cool". And that, ironically enough, is most uncool.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#1950s

 

Granted you are 51 and did not grow up with complete access to information that we have now but don't go making such general statements when one simple google search proves you are wrong. Scroll on down to 1970. You know how many school shootings there were when you were young? You got it, not zero. Only wiki too, more searches will reveal much more.

[Tindomul]

Another element that I would like to throw into the mix is the class stories themselves.

 

I participated in three beta weekends the year before the game went live. I experienced 6 of the 8 classes into the teens and low 20s. My original plans were to be a Trooper. However, after experiencing the Sith Empire's class story lines, I was hooked.

 

Tython was a yawn fest. COruscant was meh. Korriban and Dromund Kaas had endless scheming, back stabbing, power grabbing, betrayal, etc. Whether you chose light or dark for your character as a member of the Empire, there was so much more intrigue from the beginning. Maybe I just didnt stick with the Republic classes long enough.

 

I plan on getting back to the Republic classes at some point, but early on the Republic class quests had nothing on the Empire.

 

Some might argue that only a small % of the population ever participated in the beta weekends, and this is true. However, this type of information gets around by word of mouth and can sway people's opinions.

[Stongrel]

Majority of the people playing Empire is due to the main fact that Republic classes/races are incredibly dull and boring in comparison.

 

If Republic gets either wookie, ewok, jawa as races, or any unique variety, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

 

For mirror classes, one side is drastically more entertaining.

 

Shooting lighting out one's hands, or little pebbles and rocks?

[Nvrdie]

What a load of toss in the OP.

 

"Sith are Kool and bad ***.. Jedi are G*y and weak" is how people see it.

 

 

Thats the cause of the imbalance, its a matter of perception.

 

Everyone wants to be a ******.

 

 

You realkly have over thought this.

[Draeb]

THis post wreaks of smugness and is completely wrong. Debs couldn't predict this sort of thing. Its how our society is these days. It was the same with dcuo. Villains there had it easy with queue times because all the noobs feel they wanted to be heroes instead of villains. If you want to blame someone blame Lucas for making the sith more appealing by making movies that made darth vader the hero with an interesting character arc.

[Vlacke]

I agree, faction IMBALANCE on some PvP server is HUGE to the level of being a game breaker, this needs to be addressed.

[Vauleen]

There will always be imbalance. Get over it. I roll on underdog just so that I have a million players to kill. Populations ebb and flow as time goes on. You will see players switch sides and the other side will become the "zerg."

 

They knew this was coming however they decided to not use what they had learned from creating Warhammer.

 

/thread

[sprasz]

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.

 

-----

 

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.

 

-----

 

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

 

-----

 

 

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.

 

-----

 

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 150 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.

 

U are out of your mind. Your saying that RP ruined the balance. and now you want an insain pvp buff.

[Kyanzes]

It's perfectly obvious that the Empire side gets advantages over the Republic all the way. They quite simply favor the Empire side. You don't have to be a genius to see that.

 

So called mirror classes are crappier on Republic side, Empire weapons fire faster in WZ, and how the **** do they deal 14k damage? I have been taken down by imps several times in one shot. ***. Full buff, 14k health and I'm goner as if I'm a L1 player or something.

 

This is a farce.

 

OFC people choose the winner side. The FOTM. The better. The more skilled. The more cool. And I agree with the Empire-hype as well.

 

The Republic is shown as weak, unworthy and laughable in the intro movies.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Kyanzes

[Hardfist]

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.

 

trooper can shoot lightning just fine...

[SajPl]

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.

 

I'm sure the fact that the lightning attack hits faster than it's republic counterpart and that EVERY imperial mirror class has an advantage like that, has nothing to do with the fact.

Edited January 19, 2012 by SajPl

[Roast-Beast]

As a person who always loves the absolute challenge of beating the odds, i love playing as a trooper on ilum. in the morning we get a raid group together, clear out ilum of all the noob traders "traitors" (pre 1.1) and then repeat at night. now, my guild ops in ilum defending the base and we co-ordinate our aoe's into the horde of GIMPS, and wipe about 10-15 a round.

 

 

 

this is creating a imbalance on my server, of more gimps dieing than us repubs.

 

 

enjoy the beating for as long as its dished out, for when its gone you will miss it.****

 

God I HATE PRE 1.1 standing around trading...lol

[cutXthroat]

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.

 

This is personally why I chose republic. I'm sure this is a contributing factor.

[Chia_Pet]

Id be happy if those sith lightning bolts didnt bypass my armor and shields to start. that may have something to do with the imbalance. As a trooper im shocked(pun intended) that apparently in the star wars universe trooper armor doesnt even have the same flame retardant properties a modern day race car driver has... I mean one would think with the non metalic armor and insulating properties of the gear troopers would be a bit more rsistant to the lightning and flame abilities we see in game...

[dexvx]

THis post wreaks of smugness and is completely wrong. Debs couldn't predict this sort of thing. Its how our society is these days. It was the same with dcuo. Villains there had it easy with queue times because all the noobs feel they wanted to be heroes instead of villains. If you want to blame someone blame Lucas for making the sith more appealing by making movies that made darth vader the hero with an interesting character arc.

 

Dev's couldn't have predicted? You mean the pre-release launch data showing Empire outnumbering Republic about 2-3:1 months before the release wasn't a hint? You're delusional.

[dlouismartin]

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.

 

-----

 

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.

 

-----

 

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

 

-----

 

 

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.

 

-----

 

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 150 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.

 

I think you have some good ideas for helping factional balance, but your reasons as to why it exists are just wild claims. How many people did you poll, where is the data to support the theories? I am not going to claim vocal majority, because I think that this happens much too loosely on any forums-- especially this one. I will talk about something that I am definitively familiar with-- my own experience.

 

I choose Sith faction because they had a spy. I love the idea of being a spy. My guess was tht it would be a compelling story. I also liked the idea of not being a slave to the light ad dark side of the force (I didn't research the mechanic) because spy types of motifs are, IMHO, compelling and fun.

[Noeren]

I dont have time to read through 8 pages, but the OP idea is just bad. Edited January 19, 2012 by Noeren

[Magrador]

hm...some cool / good looking armor models would be nice for reps too...

 

at the moment most of the jedis look like roomclearers....or homeless people...

[myolinyr]

As a person who always loves the absolute challenge of beating the odds, i love playing as a trooper on ilum. in the morning we get a raid group together, clear out ilum of all the noob traders "traitors" (pre 1.1) and then repeat at night. now, my guild ops in ilum defending the base and we co-ordinate our aoe's into the horde of GIMPS, and wipe about 10-15 a round.

 

 

 

this is creating a imbalance on my server, of more gimps dieing than us repubs.

 

 

enjoy the beating for as long as its dished out, for when its gone you will miss it.****

 

God I HATE PRE 1.1 standing around trading...lol

 

Where do you play? I want in on that!

[Vlacke]

I dont have time to read through 8 pages, but the OP idea is just bad.

 

Then you must be a member of the Empire faction on the server where ratio is 5:1 so all is good?

[lokivoid]

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.

 

-----

 

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.

 

-----

 

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

 

-----

 

 

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.

 

 

This has nothing to do with why there is faction imbalance. Unless your new to starwars, the darkside has always had a larger fan base. Look at the 501st vs there rebel/lightside splinter group.

 

From a MMO perspective a large number of players tend to also gravitate towards the "evil" team. As the bad guys generally have more appeal towards the gaming community.

 

The other aspect is visual appeal of races. Swtor does not really have much diversity in races so this never really comes into effect.

 

It has absolutely nothing to do with how the devs advertised. There is really not much you can do to fix it.