Who Is To Blame For Server Imbalance: We Are

[Jxspyder]

We are to blame but they did make the empire seem more appealing to players me.

 

I think:

The animations are cooler

Ia has the coolest ship in the game.

They also seem to get cooler clothing.

They also get better companions. Example: Khem val pet of tulak hord who eats force users. Or a talking lizard who seems to have lost his mind (Qyzen Fess).

 

So while it is true we are to blam empire just seems to be more appealing for the players me.

 

I fixed that for you. You're trying to use this thing called a fact, but you keep accidentally using an opinion instead.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Jxspyder

[Arsonn]

I'll admit, I started out Empire. I wanted to play an inquisitor. Leveled it to 38, realized how most of my groups were filled with inquisitors, marauders, warriors, assassins, and rerolled republic as a smuggler.

[Omnifiend]

I fixed that for you. You're trying to use this thing called a fact, but you keep accidentally using an opinion instead.

 

Fact: The majority of the player base agrees with him. Evidence: current faction imbalance.

[Ghaiana]

Of the 10 people I know in real life who play SWTOR, all 10 rolled republic as their mains, none of us has complaints about the server imbalance. We're all mainly PvE players, although most of us like to do a warzone at times.

 

Most of us have an Empire alt somewhere, but we haven't noticed really big difference between Empire/Republic on the servers where we play, max about 60-40%.

[XxPetexX]

They failed to make two attractive factions. That is their fault.

 

other than that I agree. What they have to do now though is act.

 

Do something to make republic a more attractive option

[Jxspyder]

isnt bioware to blame for two completely uninteresting storylines (consular + jedi knight), plus a HUGE ARRAY of ugly hideous armor and gear (everyone but soldiers), on the republic side?

 

I still don't see how the JK story is "completely uninteresting." Have you even gone past the first 3 levels?

 

Yes it was the players who gave the Sith the coolest ships and companions...and armour, and abilities. What else did I miss? Oh ye story.

 

See, you're trying to pretend these things you are saying are facts. They're not. They're actually called an opinion. That's pronounced o·pin·ion. It means you're stating something you believe, not something that is indesputably truth.

 

Sorry, you just seem really confused.

 

Fact: The majority of the player base agrees with him. Evidence: current faction imbalance.

 

You're misusing the word fact. See above.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Jxspyder

[Shumney]

Yes it was the players who gave the Sith the coolest ships and companions...and armour, and abilities. What else did I miss? Oh ye story.

 

Point of all this, is BW didnt force anyone to go to either side, the choice was the players.

 

And the point that if BW locked out one faction or the other, it would be hell on Earth.

 

So pick your poison; roll on an underpopulated side and cry because BW 'forced' you to, or let them pick for you and cry about that.

 

I think Im going to site the SWTOR forums on my Philosophy of Sciences term paper. Lots of good material comes out on here!

Edited January 25, 2012 by Shumney

[Jxspyder]

They failed to make two attractive factions. That is their fault.

 

other than that I agree. What they have to do now though is act.

 

Do something to make republic a more attractive option

 

No they didn't. They just failed to make both factions equally attractive to every single person. Though if you expected that.....I'm sorry that you hold unrealistic expectations?

[Zatoni]

That the playerbase is slanted to one side isn't anyone's fault, because it is not inherently a value-laden topic. Picking a side shouldn't have any greater impact in moment to moment gameplay than picking a race. This is a game, you should be free to play what you want, at least to the extent of making what amounts to a cosmetic choice during character creation (because really, with all of the classes being mirrors and the gear system being what it is, you essentially only choose a side for aesthetic reasons.)

 

There are ways to design around unbalanced sides. Ideally, you avoid the whole problem by making it easy to cross sides or matching up 3 factions, or spread out to various objectives, so that the imbalance is more fluid and able to be controlled by the players. Barring that, cross-server warzones could increase the availability and matching for everyone, while instancing or stat bolstering can be used to balance open world RvR on servers with huge imbalances.

 

There are ways to design around the potential conflicts that arise from the value-neutral issue of a faction imbalance. That Bioware has chosen to do this by

 

a) Limiting WZ selection choice and making one of the random WZs same-faction enabled and

 

b) More or less completely failing to comprehend how an open world PvP zone like Ilum functions, or should function,

 

is the problem. People picking a side they like more shouldn't be an issue, it's something a competent system designer should accept and account for when they adopt a hard-set, two faction model for the game.

 

Failing to account for it, or making only poor, token gestures at accounting for it, are design failures.

 

TL;DR - Faction imbalance isn't anyone's fault. Faction imbalance being a problem is the dev's fault for failing to incorporate real solutions into the game's design.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Zatoni

[Ghaiana]

They failed to make two attractive factions. That is their fault.

 

other than that I agree. What they have to do now though is act.

 

Do something to make republic a more attractive option

 

Republic is nice, but really you should try yourself and not just 3 levels. The consular story is great for example. And playing an evil jedi knight is a lot of fun.

 

Oh..and I was reading here yesterday about someone who said that projectile had ability delay, that's just a lot of rcap. That spell has one of nicest animations in the game imo, I really hope they don't remove that for the sake of pvp'ers.

[Genesizs]

maybe a nicething to think about for future releases as well to resolve matters now ...

 

 

is

 

 

to have some kind of blue/red bar on servers so you accualy can see how many subs are on that server per faction ..

blue representing republic ofcourse red empire

 

==============lllll=============================

 

 

i think Aion had this on there websites you could see wich faction was over populated over teh other faction .. i think ?

 

also a nice thing to have some sort of armory or some kind of webpage that at least can shot the server pop for faction ?

 

maybe just an idea .... just sayin :s

 

not sure if it accualy would solve it , couse maybe some people would join the faction that has more players :s .... but well i would definetly choose republic as started faction if i knew , i progressed to much on my empire characters to play republic .. just playing for the story now on alts on republic now and then ..

Edited January 25, 2012 by Genesizs

[WFSWTOR]

Bioware can't fix server imbalance, not ever, because we as players decided as a majority to go sith instead of republic, so please stop complaining about a problem Bioware did not create.

 

Anyone care to prove me wrong?

 

nope i think you are correct. I created characters with both types of factions not sure if many other people did.

[gbrecht]

Allow Free Faction switching for empire level 50s.

[Commogroth]

Anyone who thinks this isn't Bioware's fault is incredibly ignorant. It was their design choices and their marketing that made the Sith more appealing. We didn't tell them "Hey, make every marketing cinematic depict the Sith as incredible ******es." We didn't tell them "Make the Sith a more aesthetically pleasing faction, give them more interesting stories, give them slight mechanic advantages over their mirror classes, and make them an all-around more appealing option to play."

 

Anyone who thinks there is no way for Bioware to remedy this issue is equally ignorant. Incentives, such as increased exp/valor gain for those who roll on the underpopulated side, have proven to help fix the situation in previous MMOs. Furthermore, a 3-faction system has always proven to be more balanced, and some creative writing and effort on BWs part could split the Imperial faction into those that support the Emperor and those that support a usurper. Even if you limited this splitting of the Imperial faction to just Ilum (i.e. having you choose a side when you zoned in to Ilum), it would greatly help boost the open world PVP experience. And then there is the obvious, but costly and time consuming, option of actually creating a new faction.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of other fixes out there too, but those are just off the top of my head. The point is that it is on Bioware to fix. People flocked to Sith for specific reasons, reasons provided by Bioware's design choices and implementations. Bioware made Sith more appealing. Period.

[Jxspyder]

Anyone who thinks this isn't Bioware's fault is incredibly ignorant. It was their design choices and their marketing that made the Sith more appealing. We didn't tell them "Hey, make every marketing cinematic depict the Sith as incredible ******es." We didn't tell them "Make the Sith a more aesthetically pleasing faction, give them more interesting stories, give them slight mechanic advantages over their mirror classes, and make them an all-around more appealing option to play."

 

Anyone who thinks there is no way for Bioware to remedy this issue is equally ignorant. Incentives, such as increased exp/valor gain for those who roll on the underpopulated side, have proven to help fix the situation in previous MMOs. Furthermore, a 3-faction system has always proven to be more balanced, and some creative writing and effort on BWs part could split the Imperial faction into those that support the Emperor and those that support a usurper. Even if you limited this splitting of the Imperial faction to just Ilum (i.e. having you choose a side when you zoned in to Ilum), it would greatly help boost the open world PVP experience. And then there is the obvious, but costly and time consuming, option of actually creating a new faction.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of other fixes out there too, but those are just off the top of my head. The point is that it is on Bioware to fix. People flocked to Sith for specific reasons, reasons provided by Bioware's design choices and implementations.

 

And anyone who thinks that the Sith Empire being more attractive an option is a tangible fact is just as, if not more ignorant.

 

 

 

Bioware made Sith more appealing. Period.

I refer you to the top of the page, in which we go over the difference between facts, and opinions. You also might do well to look up the meaning of the words Subjective and Objective, and how they apply to your arguement.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Jxspyder

[Zatoni]

Furthermore, a 3-faction system has always proven to be more balanced, and some creative writing and effort on BWs part could split the Imperial faction into those that support the Emperor and those that support a usurper. Even if you limited this splitting of the Imperial faction to just Ilum (i.e. having you choose a side when you zoned in to Ilum), it would greatly help boost the open world PVP experience.

 

To build off of this post, there's a pretty obvious choice here: BW has been pushing to make the post-50 game focus on "third faction" threats (to make dev time on endgame instances shorter, I imagine), and indeed seems to be setting up the Hutt Cartel as a more active antagonist in the endgame.

 

So when they redesign Ilum (and if they're smart, they'll redesign Ilum sooner rather than later), add in a third Hutt Cartel faction on the planet, that either side can ally with. Maybe make it so that the side that's overpopulated on Ilum gets some sort of incentive (bonus valor, etc) if they decide to go do some freelance mercenary work for the Hutts.

 

And anyone who thinks that the Sith Empire being more attractive an option is a tangible fact is just as, if not more ignorant.

 

Server populations don't lie, bro.

edit: and I say this as a level 50 Shadow who found the Repub side and story pretty entertaining.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Zatoni

[Waldorf]

Don't be stupid, of course it Bioware's fault.

Can we add XP/valor bonuses to incentivise players to join the Republic? NO

 

Stupid fanbois...

[zandadoum]

See, you're trying to pretend these things you are saying are facts. They're not. They're actually called an opinion.

 

this is where you fail.

 

we're talking about popularity of empire/republic.

 

popularity is NEVER a fact. it is the sum of many opinions.

 

and most opinions i have read so far do all agree: republic armor, companions and most importantly story SUCKS when compared to the empire.

Edited January 25, 2012 by zandadoum

[Uvirith]

Secondly, was it the players that made Sith stories, animations, gear and environments more interesting?

Matter of personal taste, I for myself find republic more appealing than sith in terms of armor and story (although Im empire, guilds decision)

 

Was it the players that created significant differences in the mirror classes?

 

Prove it. I bet 100k credits I have evidence for the exact opposite of everything you say.

btw, did you know that empire thinks republic has the edge cause their aimations work better?

[Tolil]

The ignorance in this thread is quite astounding. How on earth can you blame the entire player base for a design decision made by the game's developers?

 

It was the designers that didn't put any mechanism in place to avoid or negate the issue. It was the designers who didn't give the players a visual representation at character creation of the faction population of the server.

 

TL;DR - Faction imbalance isn't anyone's fault. Faction imbalance being a problem is the dev's fault for failing to incorporate real solutions into the game's design.

 

I didn't read every post in this thread, but this quote sttod out as the best reply I saw. Population imbalance should never be a deciding factor during character creation, simply because the problem should never exist in the 1st place.

[Ansultares]

What is imbalanced and what most people will complain about is Open World PvP, a.k.a (sk)Illum.

I've never cared much for dedicated world PvP zones.

 

Either it's designed into the game through overlapping faction content and neutral content available to both factions, or world PvP is basically dead. Dedicated world PvP zones just feel so gimicky.

 

DAoC did it well, but DAoC was three faction and the world PvP zones were extensive.

 

btw, did you know that empire thinks republic has the edge cause their aimations work better?

Wait, doesn't Republic think Empire has an edge because their animations work better?

 

/mindbottling

Edited January 25, 2012 by Ansultares

[Viikuna]

But I agree, the player-base is completely to blame here.

 

 

BioWare can however, make faction Y or X look more attractive than the other one. Which i would say is the reason for the current imbalances between faction populations.

 

Low lvl Sith armors: You look like a sith (in my opinion).

Low lvl Jedi armors: You look like a poor drunkard (in my opinion).

[CygnusMX]

There are 8 storylines/8 classes

Republic & Empire choices.

Personaly I want to try them all.

Evil always seems more interesting but I chose Republic even though I chose Bounty Hunter In Beta.

 

I'm looking forward to my next charactor In the Empire....after that I'm looking forward to creating another Republic charactor.

I'm sure eventualy in time people will have both Empire and Republic charactors just to experience the entire game.

 

The game is only 35 days old, Many people are savoring the story and journeys.

But alot of people would rather be evil or on the darkside and I see the attraction. but it will probably start evening out after awhile.

[Zilkin]

Bioware can't fix server imbalance, not ever, because we as players decided as a majority to go sith instead of republic, so please stop complaining about a problem Bioware did not create.

 

Anyone care to prove me wrong?

 

Of course you are right, but guess what this is a game and I'm going to play it the way is the most entertaining to me, and right now thats playing Empire. I've tried Republic but those stories just bore me to tears. I'm not payed to fix population imbalances, actually I'm pretty sure everyone here is paying BioWare to do that and many other things.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Zilkin

[Jandi]

How exactly are Empire storylines more interesting? If you know anything about the Sith, you know what's coming 2 hours into the game, many bullies trying to backstab you, then crying for mercy. Writing evil is impossible for people who aren't familiar with psychology, you see it everywhere in media.

 

Artwork? That's completely a matter of personal taste, thus entirely subjective. The BH/Agent stuff looks awesome but the SW/INQ raid gear? Ridiculous. As to for environments? How many gloomy and dark corridors can you shove into the game? A lot, apparently.

 

The same theme runs throughout the entire game, blind loyalty of the soldiers and petty Sith squabbling over meaningless crap, thinking they are the next Emperor because they can shoot lightning from their fingers which, apparently, every acolyte can manage. Malgus is the only Sith with an actual spine, and doesn't hide behind titles or lackeys.

 

I say this after completing all but the Agent storyline and so far, story-wise, the Sith Warrior is the most fun, in my opinion. Sith Inq is interesting, but rather repetitive and the companions, apart from Talos, are completely uninspiring.

 

People choose Empire because they want to be bad-asses but the truth is that the Empire is a collection of bullies. If BW has the sense to just allow faction switching, the tables would most likely be turned. However, that is highly unlikely, considering the storylines, so we are stuck in our factions.

 

If they had a spine, though, they would implement it like they did in EQ2, where you retain your class etc but must do a betrayal quest. They could make it only available after you complete your class story. It would mix it up and make the game more interesting but I know it's never going to happen.

 

You can make all the excuses you want, blame BW all you want but the FACT is that choosing a faction is a matter of taste, your taste, or your guilds. I play both sides, but my main is an Inq because my guild leadership chose Empire and I don't really mind what side I'm playing on. We are all still people.