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

[fungihoujo]

 

Sage vs. Inquisitor is all a matter of damage type- Elemental damage bypasses armor, kinetic damage (what Sages deliver) does not. Taugrim's guide for Trooper PvP isn't a bad reference for that sorta thing, describing how damage gets delivered, what armor/shielding stops and what it doesn't.

 

http://taugrim.com/2012/01/04/guide-to-bounty-hunter-powertech-trooper-vanguard-mechanics-and-pvp/

 

No, you are wrong.

 

Lightning does ENERGY damage, not elemental- this is the EXACT example of things Republic has wrong. I have my character sheet open right now- armour mitigates Kinetic and Energy damage the exact same, and doesn't mitigate elemental damage or internal damage.

 

We have one ability- a dot called affliction- that is internal. If we go madness, we get death field, and full madness gets you creeping terror- these also do internal. Lightning spec's final talent is also internal damage.

 

Out of those bypass abilities- two are dots, two are final abilities in the tree (while most good pvp builds involve not getting that ability)- so the only ability that you're going to see an SI bypassing your armour with and doing considerable damage is Death Field- and for all I know, JC might have an instant AoE that does internal/elemental damage themselves, I honestly don't know. Also, other than affliction which is small damage dot anyway- all these abilities have a CD of 9 or 15 seconds, so can't be spammed.

 

I however can admit I don't know what the mirror does- most of you Republic cannot admit that and simply say stupid things like lightning abilities are all elemental when they are ENERGY!!

 

 

The only ability that I can't confirm right now is Chain Lightning. This ability also has a 6 second CD, but on the tree doesn't say what type of damage it does- it's possible it does elemental- even so, on a CD, it can't be spammed either.

[TheGreatNeechi]

[Wall of Text crits you for OMGWTFBBQ!!11]

 

Now that we got that out of the way, I appreciate the fact you wrote that, and while I did read it I'm sure as hell not going to quote it.

 

It has nothing to do with hype, and everything to do with story.

 

A quick summation: We all know how the story ends. The Republic wins, the Empire is destroyed utterly. The story of the Republic victory has already been told; it's old hat. The Imperial defeat, however, is a story relatively unexplored. People want to hear that story.

 

How exactly does someone live in the evil Empire? Is the State's actions hidden from the general population? Or, does the population's culture accept them? Is it about propaganda? Or, fear?

 

We all know how life is in the Republic. That's not a story we want to hear. We want to hear how people cope in the Empire, what kind of choices people are forced to make, because it is impossible the entire Sith Empire are bloodthirsty xenophobes. The Sith believe themselves above everything. How does an Intelligence Operative deal with working with Sith?

 

We all know credits will buy a Bounty Hunter, but how far can a Sith push until the Hunter turns on its master?

 

That's why you have population imbalance.

[Kuari]

Frankly I question the extent of a population imbalance. How much is it imbalance and how much of it is lack of leadership. Republic is clearly outnumbered on Crucible Pits, yet they still bring the numbers they need. Someone needs to ask why.

[Zaaxinator]

i thought it would be cool to have a neutral faction, take the smuggler and bounty hunter out of respective sides, and add 2 more classes maybe the melee sword/staff class everyone wants and one other. then make a republic agent, and an imperial trooper. idk just thoughts. i would like to be a bounty hunter not limited to empire... come on a lot of the republic commando arc troopers became bounty hunters after their military time.

[BewareTheDrow]

Great post OP. Pretty much spot on.

[EternalFinality]

The fact that the Jedi are a weird creepy sexless cult doesn't help things.

 

People want a light saber and magic powers - they do NOT want to be Jedi.

Edited January 19, 2012 by EternalFinality

[Kellindell]

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.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=101553

 

You sir are correct.

 

Also, much like when the WoW devs admitted they played horde when all the horde imbalances were at an all time high (will of the forsaken, enhancement shamans with hand of rag, warstomp, AV dismount tower etc..) people saw it for what it was. The developers played one faction, and that faction never got nerfed because the Devs didnt want to be at a disadvantage.

 

Pre launch in several interviews Devs either said very pro Sith things (I had a huge thread about this pre launch) or admitted to playing Sith. I begged the Devs to not go down this road like WoW did, but sure enough here we are.

 

Add on to that they are adding more same faction warzones, which means their is no reason to have that second under dog faction anymore because you can just fight each other. As the OP said, lore wise the Sith only lose against other Sith.

 

Anyone who cant see that is what happening here is blind or a Sith and doesnt want to draw attention to it.

[Kellindell]

The fact that the Jedi are a weird creepy sexless cult doesn't help things.

 

People want a light saber and magic powers - they do NOT want to be Jedi.

 

Romance giving you darkside points definitely hurt the population. People come to bioware games for a handful of things, romance arcs is one of them. People dont want to eat darkside points for engaging in a feature of the game.

[Kalaesk]

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.

 

 

Couldn't read the rest, my unwarrented self importance scanner was off the charts.

[Kuari]

Anyone who cant see that is what happening here is blind or a Sith and doesnt want to draw attention to it.

 

Or can see most of the stuff being spread is misinformation and cherry picking...

[hiddenpuudji]

while i agree that there is some fixin to do, i don't think a faction buff is the way to go.

[SilverWF]

So many fails from so serious company ><

that's happens if housewives are taken for the development of AAA-projects

[Poisonedwell]

Warhammer online did this and it worked fairly well.

[Ancient_karp]

Warhammer online did this and it worked fairly well.

 

Late in the life of DAoC they also did this. Underpopulated realms were given bonus xp, bonus rp, and a free level every 3-7 days. It helped balance a LOT.

[Tikreity]

before it does reach a catastrophic point of no return.

 

yeah dude your 2 days too late.

 

You want to fix it WITH EASY solution? something they can apply tomorrow?

 

put a limit on people joining, whatever lowest populated side is the limit, if 50 reps in there then 50 imps can join THE REST JOIN A QUEUE.

 

simple as above.

 

make instance 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 for all other imps who wana join and go do their dailies until their queue pop up.

 

this will solve population problem - will let everyone do their dailies - will encourage imps to reroll reps and even further balance the server and PVP in general.

 

and guess what? they can do it NOW it doesn't require nothing.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Tikreity

[fest]

If you played Empire to 50, and Republic to 50 you can see all the love went into the Empire stories, zones, class animations.

 

I don't understand how you can't love every single facet of all of the Republic stories. The Empire one I would consider better then the republic ones is the IA. And that's only barely better.

[Boba-The-Fett]

I found your solution reasonable, but the reasoning for the imbalance not entirely true. I wanted to be a bounty hunter since day one, and it had nothing to do with the empire (technically the bh doesn't even care for the empire). This goes for my friends as well. A few of them really like the sith and have wanted to play as one since the beginning, while other friends did not have very much of a preference on what side to chose. This made them end up choosing empire instead of the republic because they want to play with us, making the empire even larger. I still plan on playing the republic at some point, along with my friends, and I believe they will balance out a bit as more people end up wanting to try out the other side with different stories and environments.

[SilverWF]

what a reason to create created before things?

 

Is it hard to take working well system and put it in your project?

 

Guild bank, Customisable UI, Population balanse system, Perfect auction and many more.

There is many pretty good variations of that items, but this "developers and designers" (that hardly needs to be faired) creates something their own, but this didnt work! ><

 

now, they just copy some WOW/WAR/LA2/Aion/... stuff and say us "Hey! Love us! We've maded new patch... No! this is addon! Continue your subscription!"

 

a universe of Star Wars was placed in the hands of amateurs in the MMO and now everyone saw this.

A huge pile of money was spent on something that nobody needs - voice conversations. Now, everyone just skips it!

 

Congratulations Bioware, you are shamed yourself.

 

Lucas Arts, say "thanks" to the main designer of SWTOR at the day after tomorrow ^^

[Jessedw]

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

 

People say this, but in WoW Alliance was always the overpopulated faction. Back then it was because we all wanted to be the "Pretty" ones...now it's because we want to be the "bad guys".

 

In everquest I don't remember seeing very many people rolling the evil classes/religions

 

I don't think one thing has anything to do with the other. I think it is like the OP said and is about the image. It would be curious to see how a video of 1 jedi destroying 2 sith would have affected faction balance instead of the 2 republic against the 1 sith....but I guess we'll never know.

[Jessedw]

Another solution is to allow people to defect...for Smugglers and BH this would make the most sense since they are pretty much faction neutral from the start...but you could work in a quest line for each class to defect i'm sure...I could think of a few good ideas

[Abanoth]

I can't speak for others, but the hype didn't make my decision for me, and anyone who does fully commit to something based on trailers is probably the same guy who voted for Obama because of 1-3 word slogans and Oprah (and will do so again this year).

 

The only reason I rolled Republic is because the Smuggler is there, and I've always liked the idea of a normal guy with a blaster tossed into a galaxy full of supersoldiers and space wizards.

[Ethurian]

Bioware's overuse of yellow hues especially in the Republic fleet station, and other areas (including player skills) is what quickly turns me off from being republic side.

 

Not to mention how lame the majority of the Jedi classes look, armor wise. Wedding dress Consulars and Samurai Knights - uh, no thank you.

[Vlacke]

Frankly I question the extent of a population imbalance. How much is it imbalance and how much of it is lack of leadership. Republic is clearly outnumbered on Crucible Pits, yet they still bring the numbers they need. Someone needs to ask why.

 

On many EU PvP servers imbalance ratio is huge, to the extent of being unplayable.

From what i heard situation is somewhat better on US servers.

[Tikreity]

People say this, but in WoW Alliance was always the overpopulated faction. Back then it was because we all wanted to be the "Pretty" ones...now it's because we want to be the "bad guys".

 

In everquest I don't remember seeing very many people rolling the evil classes/religions

 

I don't think one thing has anything to do with the other. I think it is like the OP said and is about the image. It would be curious to see how a video of 1 jedi destroying 2 sith would have affected faction balance instead of the 2 republic against the 1 sith....but I guess we'll never know.

 

no alliance were the bad guys

[Russell_Solo]

The only reason I rolled Republic is because the Smuggler is there, and I've always liked the idea of a normal guy with a blaster tossed into a galaxy full of supersoldiers and space wizards.