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

[Dashall]

This is my 3rd game in a row where it was utterly predictable, I'm not sure you have the rationale right though.

 

WAR: Completely obvious people would pick Destruction. It was hyped and the 'good guys" were mocked deliberately by the devs. This appeared to be intentional to combat what they thought was the WoW Alliance imbalance that would port to their game. Did that matter? Probably not. it was likely the look of the characters.

 

RIFT: Similarly obvious people would choose Defiant. This did not seem to have any specific Dev propaganda for either side but one was typical fantasy goodie goodies and other was an edgier, techy, flavored faction.

 

SWTOR: Blindingly obvious where all the kids would go.

[mufutiz]

Another reason for the faction imbalance was the faction imbalance.

 

Yep, you read right. Long before guild deployment the perception of players was that the more dedicated, ambitious and possibly capable players would choose Empire.

 

 

Especially on PvP servers it was the not so unspoken truth that the "hardcore crowd" was rolling the Dark Side. So for the majority of players who had not completely made up their mind yet it was either join their ranks or - presumably - get squashed by them.

 

the 2:1 faction ratio numbers came up way before the game launched, and most people felt the safe way to play this game was to roll Empire, not just for being on the zerg side but also the one that would still prosper when a lot of people would not continue their subscriptions after the first free month, which is happening in every new MMO.

 

 

The tragic thing is that the trend is continuing for the very same reason and Bioware is not only not helping the Reps out, from the looks of it they are determined to aggravate the situation by working AGAINST giving players peace of mind and incentive to roll Republic. For example announcing mutiple(!) upcoming same faction WZ's or giving us the Ilum experience in 1.1.

 

 

I absolutely applaud the thread starter for this post and his constructive ideas how to fix. There is but a glimmer of hope left in me, but if you asked me to bet money on it, I would gladly bet on rerolling Empire. Sad but true.

[magnuskn]

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

 

That's a fallacy. Horde was vastly underplayed for years, until Blizzard released the Blood Elves in the Burning Crusade expansion.

 

---

 

As for Prof Walsh's suggestion: Implementing a buff based on the population present in a zone is not a new idea. WoW had this for years in the Wintergrasp open PvP zone. On paper, it sounds like the best idea, but there is a problem: Crowd control. If seven people beat up on you, you will be crowd controlled during 90% of the encounter, so it doesn't matter if you have seven times the hitpoints they have and do seven times the damage.

 

But, yeah, faction imbalance has to be solved. You and others ( me included ) pointed out to BioWare how one-sided their hype was for the game. At this point, I think it would be better to give the Republic a few crushing victories in the storylines to come. That should cause some rethinking on part of the players, as there are people who want to be on the winning side.

 

I must admit, it is a bit disheartening that so many people seem to prefer a vile dictatorship over a messy democracy.

 

Keep fighting the good fight, Prof!

Edited January 19, 2012 by magnuskn

[Knifewrench]

People who believe in Good are casual and ignorant.

[Merss]

This is a good idea, but it is stupid in its practicality. Don't ever assume you know what players will think or do.

 

In my opinion, if I see that the Reps are taking on Sith 1:3 with these buffs, I'll either wait until there are more Reps on Ilum, or I'll do WZs. I'm not gonna get ganked 1v1 by super Reps.

 

Pretty much this.

 

The Op's post about the psychology involved in the pregame hype is interesting, but I don't agree with giving power buffs to republic players. If you buff the underdogs damage and mitigation they will be unbeatable in small engagements - I don't think either side like this idea, essentially it means that Sith players have no choice but to Zerg them to win.

 

XP or valor gain buffs are a better Faction wide incentive.

 

The best solution I've seen is the current system used in WAR

"Against All Odds" If a players faction is outnumbered in their local area(maybe divide ilum into 3-5 zones as its pretty big) their valor gain is increased proportionally (x2, x3, x4).

 

This is great for geared and skilled players as they can avoid the Zerg and use hit and run tactics to win. It's hard but the game recognizes the player's achievement with extra rewards.

 

For the not so skilled players - you need more defences, turrets, secret passages(?) and other terrain crutches the underdog faction can fall back to or hide in if outnumbered to artificially buff their damage/defence if they can use the location to their advantage.

 

This kind of stuff helps balance the population because they make it actually fun to play the underdog- rather than just making pvp no fun for the IMPs.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Merss

[Bronx]

They really should have had 3 factions to align with, that would have helped to resolve complete faction imbalance.

 

OGM This is so full of win. Imagine if the Hutts had their own faction. BH's, Smugglers and a melee third class. This game would be so much more full of win.

[mufutiz]

The only real way to fix a faction imbalance after release is to open up free transfers and really just hope for the best. They could also lock any new characters being created on the Empire side on the servers where the difference is extreme.

 

How is that going to fix any imbalance?

 

You just redistribute the imbalance from one server and let another die instead. It will not work.

 

 

Pre launch/launch was the time to fix things - before they got out of hand.

[Bibdy]

The pre-game hype thing is utter nonsense. The utterly overwhelming majority of gamers today don't follow a game's development prior to its release. They get sucked in by the immediate advertising and word of mouth spreading close to and after its initial release.

 

There's certainly some truth to people getting lured towards the Empire by their bad-*****ery vs the Republics 'seen it all before' good-guy motif as depicted in the opening cutscenes and during the first few levels of playing a character on either faction.

 

But, hey, given that population imbalance isn't a problem except in PvP, it makes no sense to penalize PvErs for these problems.

 

Placing a population cap on Ilum is the first, best initial step to getting people to switch. I'm sure constant Huttballs against other Empire is also starting to take its toll. Transfers will take a lot of time. I certainly don't want the job of the guy that has to deal with all of the flag switching between the different stories by flipping faction.

 

Empire players need to see, and accept the fact, that if they want a balanced population NOW, they need to just bite the damn bullet and reroll.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Bibdy

[Halvos]

How is that going to fix any imbalance?

 

You just redistribute the imbalance from one server and let another die instead. It will not work.

 

 

Pre launch/launch was the time to fix things - before they got out of hand.

 

That was pretty much my point. They're basically at the damage control stage.

[Talkative]

Hard pop cap every world at the population of the less numerous faction.

 

Trust me when people are told they can't leave fleet and queues are 30 mins they'll reroll.

 

But the devs are idiots. This complete inability to make PvP work is just the surface. Apparently they can't do Ops either.

[EzoEo]

Why are you shocked? Stormtrooper armor didn't do a darn thing against rocks and rope flung by little, furry bears in ROTJ. You should be happy that it stops anything at all.

 

That's just because Ewoks were OP and needed nerfed

[Finreal]

My Guild was going to roll Imperial, due to the obvious cool factor that the faction exudes. However, once we discovered that Imperial was going to be the ezy-mode side, we bit the bullet and chose Republic.

 

Warhammer uses a system that gives better renown (read as valour) bonus depending on the the faction imbalance percentage. It works in some ways but often doesn't solve the problem. Who cares if you can get a bazillion XP bonus if you can't kill a single ezy-moding zerger.

 

Phychology can help to an extent though. Hardcore PvP guilds thrive on farming huge numbers of unorganised scrubs. It's called Zerg Busting. If one side is percieved to be the ezy-moder side, the true hardcore guilds will roll the underpopulated side because that's where the challenge is. This may ultimatley help balance some of the PvP servers. (allthough the lack of server forums prevents the ridiculing of the ezy-mode side)

 

TL : DR

 

If you play on a faction that outnumbers the other, you are an ezy-moder. Contemptable and most likely skill-less.

 

If you play for a faction that is an underpopulated. You rellish a challenge. Every kill you get is worthy of praise. Every death you suffer is a testiment to the spineless nature of your ezy-moding enemy.

 

If you truely enjoy a challenge and consider yourself skillfull. Reroll to the underdog.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Finreal

[DaoJones]

It's funny, but back when the game was in development I was sold on the Trooper the minute I saw the first rou8gh play videos. They looked awesome, played awesome, and felt awesome. Soldiers that can go toe to toe with Sith and win? Sign me up!

 

Then, I started watching the publicity videos. In the early ones the Troopers were completely ignored (the sacking of Coruscant? Agent, BH, Sith, Jedi), but even worse were the later ones.

 

In Hope, the Troopers start off looking like bosses, but within 30 seconds they get their clocks thoroughly cleaned by the Sith - to the point where they're just offhandedly captured and executed en masse. Then, they're rescued by ONE Consular, and suddenly they're winning. Even the main Trooper's moment in the sun (the grenade to the face of Malgus) was largely ineffective; it was Satele Shan's attack that won the day. Summation: Troopers are goons that can't win without a Jedi present.

 

Then, in the last video where we got to see the Smuggler in action, how do Troopers fare? Two faceless goons escort the Smuggler while the base gets attacked. BOTH Troopers get dusted by an exploding door, and what does the Smuggler do? He just turns around, whips out his pistols, and frags the attackers basically single-handedly (the story Trooper shoots in the background, but it's barely noticeable). As they escape to the ship, what does everyone do? The Knight and Consular fight the Sith, the Smuggler prepares to fly them through a Sith armada, and the Trooper... uh, the Trooper warms up the guns. He also helps Satele on board.

 

Truth is, EVERY video we saw showed the Trooper as an irrelevant class, while the Jedi retreat and the Sith are shown as absolute monsters who tend to win whatever fight they pick (on Coruscant, on Korriban).

 

People say "no one paid attention to the pre-release marketing", but that's absolutely not true. People absolutely DO pay attention to pre-release marketing; if you disagree, there's several firms on Madison Avenue who would like to explain to you how advertising works.

 

I ultimately picked the Trooper anyway (and I'm glad I did, because it's a great class), but the fact that the Republic were positioned as squabbling losers while the mighty Sith were positioned as unstoppable conquerors was not lost on me or the people I play with.

[Cuervoe]

I first need to say; The Sith won. /applause

 

The current proposed “fixes” do not solve the issue.

If you want to find out where the problem lies, look at the classes/specs with the greatest numbers. Ask yourself what makes them so popular. I do believe that the imbalance has less to do the cosmetic aspect of the factions(lore/story/appearance) and more to do with the mechanical game-play. The problem is not so much about who looks cooler, but who does better for less effort(we are a lazy species). Do not treat the symptom, change what is causing people to choose one side over the other.

 

Not all mirror classes are the same; they have different mechanics. The majority of players play to win. And those players will choose the class that has the greatest advantage. And by looking and their choices, you can see which class/specs has that advantage.

[Xzenorath]

Fix it the same way WoW fixed theirs.

 

Come 1.2, give the Republic new awesome races and give the Empires more blue, green & red humans.

 

Just like the blood elves drew a lot of people over, adding cool new races to the Republic may make people want to roll there.

[aginormc]

you are high on your own ego.

[Omenator]

WRONG. In WoW vanilla, Horde was so underpopulated it wasnt even funny. Get your facts straight.

 

People started flocking to the Horde quite later on. The beginning of the change happened when people realized that Will of the Forsaken was by far the most imba racial around.

 

What brought the populations back in line was the damn blood elves. They ruined the Horde. Prior to that, the Horde was ugly.

 

RE: Buffing Rep player XP to get them to 50 faster, no thanks. My Guardian is already over leveled for the planet I am on because I am enjoying the quests so much I am doing them all.

[SevTrando]

It's funny, but back when the game was in development I was sold on the Trooper the minute I saw the first rou8gh play videos. They looked awesome, played awesome, and felt awesome. Soldiers that can go toe to toe with Sith and win? Sign me up!

 

Then, I started watching the publicity videos. In the early ones the Troopers were completely ignored (the sacking of Coruscant? Agent, BH, Sith, Jedi), but even worse were the later ones.

 

In Hope, the Troopers start off looking like bosses, but within 30 seconds they get their clocks thoroughly cleaned by the Sith - to the point where they're just offhandedly captured and executed en masse. Then, they're rescued by ONE Consular, and suddenly they're winning. Even the main Trooper's moment in the sun (the grenade to the face of Malgus) was largely ineffective; it was Satele Shan's attack that won the day. Summation: Troopers are goons that can't win without a Jedi present.

 

Then, in the last video where we got to see the Smuggler in action, how do Troopers fare? Two faceless goons escort the Smuggler while the base gets attacked. BOTH Troopers get dusted by an exploding door, and what does the Smuggler do? He just turns around, whips out his pistols, and frags the attackers basically single-handedly (the story Trooper shoots in the background, but it's barely noticeable). As they escape to the ship, what does everyone do? The Knight and Consular fight the Sith, the Smuggler prepares to fly them through a Sith armada, and the Trooper... uh, the Trooper warms up the guns. He also helps Satele on board.

 

Truth is, EVERY video we saw showed the Trooper as an irrelevant class, while the Jedi retreat and the Sith are shown as absolute monsters who tend to win whatever fight they pick (on Coruscant, on Korriban).

 

People say "no one paid attention to the pre-release marketing", but that's absolutely not true. People absolutely DO pay attention to pre-release marketing; if you disagree, there's several firms on Madison Avenue who would like to explain to you how advertising works.

 

I ultimately picked the Trooper anyway (and I'm glad I did, because it's a great class), but the fact that the Republic were positioned as squabbling losers while the mighty Sith were positioned as unstoppable conquerors was not lost on me or the people I play with.

 

OH! Don't forget the EXCEPTIONAL class video where the main goal of the trooper is to die for her cause! -.-

[KalamMerkor]

Some people that don't know the genre might have been influenced by pre launch videos, but most people know the genre, it just happens a lot of people would rather be Darth Vader or Fett rather than Han solo or Obi. That's the choice isn't it, and to be fare most of the jedi on my server seem to be making dark side choices so its not a surprise.

 

Imbalanced sides can actually be an advantage as long as they aint all camped in once space, which I hope the hot fixes will deal with. I played SWG for four years and the rebels on my server had a large disadvantage for a long time, but the underdog spirit builds fighters and we one more fights than lost.

 

I do however like the idea of a third neutral faction but the class choice for each faction would then be limited.

 

No drastic changes are neccesary, just more warzone maps for people who can't handle odds, pop caps, and proper movement between locations.

 

Kalam

[Red-Patriot]

working as intended? http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19030604/patch11.png

[Nikushim]

I've logged into the game and have checked out just about all the end game armors for the both sides and all proffessions and just from looking at that, i asked myself (with the ONE exception being the endgame Jedi warrior armor where you look like a space age samurai ) why the hell would anyone play Rep with such ugly looking armors?! Really, the Sith's lvl 20 pvp armor looks like a condom suit, but at lvl 40 you get that nice sleek looking black robe and can get a black facial mask to go with it! What do the Jedi's get? Something that look like a napkin wrapped around plastic (and the counselar looks like it is wearing beggars clothing)

 

Personally i like just about all armors the Imps can send my way, while only a fraction of those of the Reps even touch a sense of my 'Oh-shiny' sense at all!

 

Not to mention what someone said about the videos, which i watched maybe 20 times before i decided to get the game. The siths in the coruscant video is awesome! They way their have their ship come straight into the building and how malgus just stands there cold. How they run out of the ship with the lightsabers. What does the Jedi have to counter with that?... Yes, a skinny chick which needed the help of a trooper to body ram the sith!

 

If they want to balance the factions about abit, make sure they are both equally aestethicly appealing! Jedi's look like ****! Sith looks like they could wreck the world! Fix that nd you'll have at least one player here that would flip sides in an instant!

[Westinftw]

Sorry, but this 'buff' is too complicated to work effectively unless you're in a constant state of 2:1. Think about it: You're a Shadow and two Imperials are coming at you. If for some reason those two Imperials are headed your way but are too far apart, you're going to effectively **** all over one before the other gets to you.

 

Not to mention, you're going to have stealthy Pubs like me using Shoot First on the stragglers away from the herd. It sounds good on paper, but the variables to consider are far too great for it to work. This is why faction imbalance is so disastrous.

 

I do agree with you on the Empire favoritism pre-release, though. That sucked.

[Fetor]

I don't remember what MMO is was, I think DAoC, but their solution to help with imbalance was to give a XP boost to the under populated faction. That way that faction would level faster and it would be an incentive for new players to join that faction.

[rivnen]

Wow, when I first entered this thread I expected a QQ *****torm and was pleasantly surprise dot find something different.

While your solution sounds good and would work I'm afraid Bio ware won't do it because of the massive qq from the imperial side when 1 republic player does manage to outlay 5 imperials. The forum complaints would be (unbelievable though it may be) far worse then the current situation. The best solution will be to unfortunately let itself even out over the next 6 months as the majority of the player base get settles.

 

Your solution is the same as the "bolster" effect they used in pvp creating the massive discrepancy between levels from abilities and gear except it would be the difference of numbers getting more faster with less cool down iasues

Edited January 19, 2012 by rivnen

[Marisblood]

I agree all the post. Is dam corect. The problem can be the same as in old wow. When the sun of one developers with hi rank in the company enjoyed to play warlok, the respective class was OP for 1 holle year and they stated they did that because the son of respective dev was celebrating his bday so they recognized they did that with purpose.

So, do we have a similar case here?

Let find out.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Marisblood