BioWare: Your Response Regarding the Population Imbalance?

[inseeisyou]

You do realize they have like 2 people browsing these forums..and they don't even reply unless it is to moderate you and give you a warning.

 

One of the many reasons this game will be short lived unfortunately.

 

ZERO community interaction is without a doubt the largest reason.

 

I haven't even heard any acknowledgment that this is a problem to them.

 

They won't acknowledge problems there are no solutions to. The only real and viable solution is to give some sort of incentive to Republic players and this would upset too many Imperial players, which as has been pointed out are the majority of the player base.

 

BW would rather lose a handful of Republic subs because they don't like the imbalance than risk angering the majority. Look at the Ilum changes - massive valor bonuses for the side which can control all the points. Major advantage for the side with more players. Republic is usually forced to group up in one ops to have any chance. Meanwhile there are lots of small groups of Imperials running around capping the points IN ADDITION to the huge ops groups.

 

So now there are no only more of the Imperials, but they have Battlemaster gear to boot!!!

[XxPetexX]

Was just online on a few servers actually to checkl the faction imbalance.

 

At approx 15.30 on servers Bloodworthy and Chuundar there was between 30-40 ppl in the republic fleet, on imp 130+...

 

Ofc this is a problem, anyone claiming it isn't is either playing imperial or are extreme fanboys.

 

It's not small imbalance we've got here, a small imbalance in factions is to be expected but when the imbalance is SO big then you have clearly failed to make one side attractive enough.

 

The major prolem here is how much harder it is to find groups for republic players at any hours. The faction imbalance wouldn't have been such a HUGE deal if there was a dungeon finder.

 

But I can literally spend an entire day just spamming LFG or LFM and maybe go on 2 flashpoints.

 

You may argue that BW has no control over what ppl choose to play, true true. But they can have a look at this problem and say "ok, we have to do something to balance this out somehow, because those playing republic deserve the same quality of gaming experience as the imperial side".

 

As it stands now us playing republic don't have equal oppurtunities to find groups, not even CLOSE

Edited January 23, 2012 by XxPetexX

[ToliverGrey]

Really?

 

You really think they couldn't have capped the amount per server until things got smoothed over? Well you have really low standards then.

 

BTW it is too late to even do this now, it should have been done before as a precaution until things got quiet. Now look...everyone is gonna quit because of the ENORMOUS imbalance.

 

This isn't a small imbalance here, this is out of control imbalanced.

 

Sorry, but if I bought the game and it told me "You cannot play as the faction you wanted to." I would demand a refund and recommend to all my gamer friends to avoid that game.

[CharagonIGN]

It's not BioWare's fault that more people play Imp. It's is their responsibility to address the issue and mitigate it so those who chose Republic can play the game as intended.

 

 

Capping servers of one faction won't work, but capping the number of players each faction can have in Ilum would. Likewise, enjoy those Huttball games, guys.

[XxPetexX]

It's not BioWare's fault that more people play Imp. It's is their responsibility to address the issue and mitigate it so those who chose Republic can play the game as intended.

 

 

Capping servers of one faction won't work, but capping the number of players each faction can have in Ilum would. Likewise, enjoy those Huttball games, guys.

 

A dungeon finder would help really.

[akavari]

Really?

 

You really think they couldn't have capped the amount per server until things got smoothed over? Well you have really low standards then.

 

BTW it is too late to even do this now, it should have been done before as a precaution until things got quiet. Now look...everyone is gonna quit because of the ENORMOUS imbalance.

 

This isn't a small imbalance here, this is out of control imbalanced.

 

Go ahead and put that cap there and watch everyone just go to a different server.

 

I know for a fact i was rolling empire even when all my friends said they wanted to be republic so a cap wouldn't stop me from taking my ball and going to another court.

 

Now your back to the same problem only you have to many republic and not enough empire.

 

Good work.

[Reiella]

And server capping would just inflame the player base. Capping has the potential to prevent people from playing together on a chosen faction. If they only allow 1000 Sith/Republic per side until the caps are met and Republic has 1000 while sith has 875 and my friend wants to play with me, he couldnt until the sith reached the cap. The friend could just decide he wasnt going to play the game then if he couldnt play with who he wanted to. Capping would be the worst thing they could do. Balance will work itself out eventually.

 

On one of my Rift servers I play on there are more Guardians then Defiants by about 4:1, yet on another the population is 2:1 in favor of Defiant but still balanced more or less. Same with WoW, i play on a server with 12:1 horde vs alliance and another that swings the other way with 10: 1 in favor of the alliance, and on yet a 3rd server that its almost perfectly even, and neither Trion or Blizzard has taken steps to "balance the servers". Faction balance is 100% determined by players. Artifical caps or forced balancing will just lead to mediocre servers.

 

What is important, however, is balancing encounters.

 

Blizzard has taken steps to balance the battlegrounds, for instance, with the cross-server play, which greatly normalizes the population disparity.

 

In their psedo-BG open world objectives, they give advantages to the outnumbered [or at least the losing] side to try to even up the gameplay.

 

But ya, balancing at the population level for a server is a bad idea.

[Rhyys]

I've been playing Republic on a pve server and haven't pvp'd yet, so the imbalance hasn't affected me yet.

 

I played WoW on a low pop, Horde heavy server. One of the ways they fixed the PVP imbalances in Wintrrgrasp (I believe this is the same concept As Illium), is if the attacking faction lost multiple times in a row they got a buff, and each time they lost the buff grew. At some point it becomes so great the defending faction couldn't overcome it with sheer numbers. This gives the smaller faction a chance at winning if at some point.

 

There is no quick and easy answer. As long as there has been mmo's thrre has been faction imbalances. Just the way it is. You can't make peeps roll a side they don''t want.

 

To me this is a lot less drastic and distruptive than server caps or some of the other things suggested on the forums.

[grinkor]

Easy fix, let republicans play wookie and whatever Master Yoda race is (not that easy cause it probably involves a lot of art work but it would probably help in the long term). Edited January 23, 2012 by grinkor

[Tobaswolff]

What is important, however, is balancing encounters.

 

Blizzard has taken steps to balance the battlegrounds, for instance, with the cross-server play, which greatly normalizes the population disparity.

 

In their psedo-BG open world objectives, they give advantages to the outnumbered [or at least the losing] side to try to even up the gameplay.

 

But ya, balancing at the population level for a server is a bad idea.

 

The implementation of balanced factions by blizzard took years. Their best move however was Blood Elves. A single appealing racial appearance helped balance faction populations over night.

 

Bioware: Wookiee Jedi please. The community hath spoken.

[Seriousgoat]

Does this imbalance come as a shock ? Ofc majority want to be the bad guys.. and BW can't do **** about it ))

[Umbral]

I'd like to see where you got your hard data proving this, because I would argue you pulled that out of your *** and it is in fact the complete opposite.

 

MMO factions don't balance over time, this is complete BS that you pulled from nowhere. In fact there is more evidence that this NEVER happens.

 

Players getting used to the imbalancing? Have you even been to Ilum yet? You would really get used fighting 20 versus 3 every day? I call BS on that too.

 

Balanced is boring? Must be an imperial because if you were getting base camped 20 versus 2 as a rebel, I wonder how long you would embrace the imbalance.

 

Dumbest post I have read in awhile.

Years of DAoC showed this to be a fact. no *** needed, thank you very much. Besides, it's inevitable that they will need to make cross-server LFD que tools and PvP Warzone que tools. It's stupidity not to have them already. It's going backward in mmo evolution, which is plain D - U - M kinda dumb. Edited January 23, 2012 by Umbral

[grandmthethird]

there has always been a balance problem in teh starwars galaxy, it started with the films

 

in the fist 3 films there was loads of jedi's and the republic was strong

in the last 3 films the jedi were almost all wiped out and the empire had dissolved the senate

[Noth]

The implementation of balanced factions by blizzard took years. Their best move however was Blood Elves. A single appealing racial appearance helped balance faction populations over night.

 

Bioware: Wookiee Jedi please. The community hath spoken.

 

That will never happen as the owner of the Star Wars IP declared it to never happen again.

[RocNessMonster]

Servers that are overly populated on one faction should have some sort of open cap, sorta like FFXI did it. If there is too much of an imbalance you should only be able to be invited by another player to that faction, but not allowed to randomly join the server.

[grandmthethird]

Servers that are overly populated on one faction should have some sort of open cap, sorta like FFXI did it. If there is too much of an imbalance you should only be able to be invited by another player to that faction, but not allowed to randomly join the server.

 

would not work, the game is story driven, ppl would be very upset paying for a story driven MMO, to then be locked out of some of the story's.

 

too many PvPers seem to forget so much was spent on teh PVE part of the game, that any fix would have to not affect the PVE

[RocNessMonster]

would not work, the game is story driven, ppl would be very upset paying for a story driven MMO, to then be locked out of some of the story's.

 

too many PvPers seem to forget so much was spent on teh PVE part of the game, that any fix would have to not affect the PVE

 

How would you be locked out from getting the story? You'd just roll on another server. It's not like there is any benefit from having a Republic and Empire character on the same server. If you're already on the server then there is no issue, you could always invite yourself.

[grinkor]

Wookie commando

Master Yoda's race Jedi sage

Robot warrior / commando (who wouldn't roll a ****** sniper robot like the one in Mass effect?)

 

and to further imbalance things again...

 

Kaleesh to empire (preferably cyborg Kaleesh like General Grievous)

 

And yes, i know that from a lore point of view some of my suggestions are a bit retarded but that should not stop them from taking the right business desitions. Right now they need to give players a really good reason for rolling republic. Republic races are a bit meh atm.

Edited January 23, 2012 by grinkor

[ProfessorWalsh]

Update:

 

Gabe Amantangelo of BioWare did an interview and at one point mentioned the Populaiton Imbalance.

 

 

He confirmed that BioWare is planning *something* but not what, and he did confirm the existence of the population imbalance.

Edited January 26, 2012 by ProfessorWalsh

[SpawnMorePsi]

Lots of Imps in this thread not getting the Fuzz. The problem isn't PvP (Yes, yes, Illium is imbalanced, w/e). The problem is PvE. I play on a sever, that now got "Standard" Population. Peak hour at the republic fleet? 15-20 players. Have a Sith toon on the same server, Their peek hour? 200+.

 

This brings some heavy problems to the PvE, as It's impossible to get Flashpoints groups, you can't really find people to quest with and the situation as a whole is hopeless.

 

PvP on the other hand, Is a completly different story. Hardly lose a game. As we're so few, everyone knows each other in the WZ, Everyone knows what to do, and where to go. Then we're a well oiled war machine just roflstomping the opposition.

 

How to fix this:

 

There got to be a server out there with less Sith then republic players, or an even ratio. Start merging these with high Imp:Rep player ratios. This will at least even things out.

 

Everybody wins on this, too. The republic players are all of a sudden able to PvE, and the Imp players will not have WZ queues approaching the absurd, and when they get one it might not just be Huttball for once.

[ProfessorWalsh]

Lots of Imps in this thread not getting the Fuzz. The problem isn't PvP (Yes, yes, Illium is imbalanced, w/e). The problem is PvE. I play on a sever, that now got "Standard" Population. Peak hour at the republic fleet? 15-20 players. Have a Sith toon on the same server, Their peek hour? 200+.

 

This brings some heavy problems to the PvE, as It's impossible to get Flashpoints groups, you can't really find people to quest with and the situation as a whole is hopeless.

 

PvP on the other hand, Is a completly different story. Hardly lose a game. As we're so few, everyone knows each other in the WZ, Everyone knows what to do, and where to go. Then we're a well oiled war machine just roflstomping the opposition.

 

How to fix this:

 

There got to be a server out there with less Sith then republic players, or an even ratio. Start merging these with high Imp:Rep player ratios. This will at least even things out.

 

Everybody wins on this, too. The republic players are all of a sudden able to PvE, and the Imp players will not have WZ queues approaching the absurd, and when they get one it might not just be Huttball for once.

 

There are no servers that I can find that actually have a higher Republic population regularly than the Sith population. Or at least one where the Republic population reaches the level of the Sith imbalance on most servers.