Bioware flat out said PvP servers have population imbalances.

[leddhead]

Wait, do you have a problem with imbalance?

 

Because if I read this right you joined a server that you knew had Imperial outnumbering Republic, and you made an Imperial. Sounds like you helped create the problem, or at least added to it.

 

Please tell me I am reading this wrong.

 

 

I'm not denying a thing of that, I did just that, But I have never argued the fact that it does need to to be fixed, actually read my posts properly please.

 

You would see that I am in fact suggesting a decent temp solution that would make the whole stacking of sides moot until a better solution eg,cross server que, came around.

 

<add>

I wasn't exactly going to join republic if I knew it was a slow progressing faction and aside from that my RL mates were ALL imperial, as a bonus we get to win more often and get faster ques so technically I was being smart with my money. That said it is a issue I would rather see fixed in future as it kind of ruins it for the other side.

 

That was the whole reason I suggested something in the first place as it is pretty obvious to me why its so over imbalanced, every one who did know would have had similar thinking patterns to me when choosing the side so its only going to get worse unless something is done sooner.

Edited March 6, 2012 by leddhead

[terminova]

And then proceeded to laugh it off as only mattering in Ilum, which they're removing. That doesn't fix the problem, though! Some steps need to be taken to make republic better than empire in some way, so we can have more than ONE 16man operation guild on our faction (and we only manage to get the 16 1-2 days a week).

 

I heard them talk about outlaw's den fun, with 25v25 and other smaller deathmatch stuff. Sounds amazing, but with the lack of republic players (and a lot of the good ones quitting due to no arena) its something I've never experienced.

 

Do something about PvP server faction imbalance in the near future please. Or at least tell us you're doing something besides cross-server warzone queueing (which is a must for a ladder system regardless of server pop).

 

World PvP is the only place faction balance actually matters with respect to PvP...anywhere else it doesn't.

[antiviolence]

And then proceeded to laugh it off as only mattering in Ilum, which they're removing. That doesn't fix the problem, though! Some steps need to be taken to make republic better than empire in some way, so we can have more than ONE 16man operation guild on our faction (and we only manage to get the 16 1-2 days a week).

 

I heard them talk about outlaw's den fun, with 25v25 and other smaller deathmatch stuff. Sounds amazing, but with the lack of republic players (and a lot of the good ones quitting due to no arena) its something I've never experienced.

 

Do something about PvP server faction imbalance in the near future please. Or at least tell us you're doing something besides cross-server warzone queueing (which is a must for a ladder system regardless of server pop).

 

Ok... and your solution to this problem is?

Bioware can't fix population imbalance because it's up to the players which side they chose to play. Nothing can fix this problem unless huge guilds decide to move to the lesser faction.

Edited March 6, 2012 by antiviolence

[leddhead]

Ok... and your solution to this problem is?

Bioware can't fix population imbalance because it's up to the players which side they chose to play. Nothing can fix this problem unless huge guilds decide to move to the lesser faction.

 

I already suggest a easy and temp fix to the issue with out limiting any faction or class choices.

 

I will say it again, Temporary Team Swap is the only solution for now that won't piss everyone off, Removing incentives pisses everyone off and just ruins the ENTIRE fun from doing it.

 

The best and fastest way to combat this problem until a better solution be found is to just auto balance the sides. Everyone gets to keep staying in the faction they choose and people are happy, obviously the gains would carry over to your appropriate faction alignment.

[AdmiralOnasi]

And then when Republic has an over population boost the Imperial side? At what point do you stop boosting? Soon that server will be full with que's because everyone wants to max out, with tons of credits, valor and such. Then when they do offer transfers, these will destroy the economy of other severs.

 

Also what number is "significantly higher"?

 

"Significantly higher" is more than 2:1 (my server is almost 3:1), and you should stop boosting when the population is consistently underneath 1.3:1. And if you want to talk about the economic implications of this, think about this. Some servers might actually HAVE an economy on the Republic side with more players.

 

You wanna know how bare the GTN is on my server? I recently broke down and switched to Biochem from Cybertech. I sold an entire cargo bay full of Scavenging and Underworld Trading mats on the GTN to make room for the incoming Biochem/Diplomacy mats. Every one of my auctions sold in under a day except for one, which I reposted and it sold the second time. I made close to 500k credits.

 

Then, when I was leveling Biochem, I checked the GTN several times for mats that I was short on. You know how many pages of Bioanalysis mats there were? Two. The pitifully small supply and super high demand made me think of bread lines in Soviet Russia or people trying to buy plywood at Home Depot before a hurricane. The economy on my server is dead, and I'd rather take the risk that your murky, nebulous threat of stagflation would happen if it meant I could actually get what I need on the GTN and have people to play with.

[ZORG]

Just think with the new lagacy system I can have a smuggler with limited BH skills.

 

My First toon to 50 was a zabrek trooper 2nd was human Sage

I also have a 43 human Smuggy and a zabrek BH.

So its even concievable that my BH has some trooper ability.

 

Its all depends on what toon BW makes me put as Parent Character.

 

I would be kewl to start playing my sentinal with BH AND Trooper skills. Hes still LVL 1 awaiting the legacy system.

 

Mix and matching PVE skillsets cross faction is what i am looking to see....

 

Perhaps my last spot will be an Imperial agent with Jedi Traits. Maybe some Double agent story arcs later on in the year.

[warmark]

I very well remember this same discussion/complaints about server imbalence in both WoW and Warhamerr over the years. The ironic thing is which side has the imbalence has often changed. I have noticed as time goes on people get tired of playing a side or want to be the underdog and switch sides, i can see this being especially true when imperial players decide they wish to experience some Repubic story lines. It would not suprise me in six months people are complaining that the Republic outnumbers the Empire, things have a tendency to work themselves out.

[BurningChick]

A subtle effect of the population imbalance is that the majority (not even a huge one, but still a majority) players who play to win play Imperial -- a disproportionate number of Republic players are not in it to win, but for gits and shiggles.

 

A side effect of the overall popularity of the Imperial side is that it's tough to play through the Republic's group content -- some worlds, even on mid- to high-population servers have too few people to reasonably play through Heroic content.

 

What BioWare needs is a system that dynamically boosts / decreases rewards for each side based on population.

[Lumanotti]

..... Edited March 9, 2012 by Lumanotti

[Morulma]

This has to be your first MMO if you are surprised the "Evil/Edgey" faction has more players on a PvP server....

[DalrisThane]

Deleted. No point. Everyone is TLDR these days. +See Sig. Edited March 31, 2013 by DalrisThane

[amnie]

This has to be your first MMO if you are surprised the "Evil/Edgey" faction has more players on a PvP server....

 

I don't think anyone is .surprised. about it, but that doesn't mean that it's a bit... well.. let's just say it's not much fun, on either side.

 

I don't even feel like doing anything pvp-related on my imp chars because a) the player base of the zerg has the typical zerg-mentality and b) huttball all the time

 

the bad thing? well, they will change all warzones to 'same faction games possible' which means the former-imp players I met who switched sides... yeah.. that will no longer happen. every single player I met who 'switched sides' did so because they didn't want to play huttball all day long.

 

what does bioware do? basically they said 'well, the reps are the carebears, and carebears don't like pvp' (d'oh)

 

it's bad enough the player base apparently thinks like that, but didn't bioware create this game? shouldn't they KNOW it's really.. uh.. not that easy?

[Lumanotti]

..... Edited March 9, 2012 by Lumanotti

[fordpre]

So please tell me what exactly bioware can do to fix faction imbalances? Should they delete a number of lvl 50 empire toons and tell people they have to roll republic? Should the stop all new toons being created as empire and force all new toons to be republic? Should they faction change without your permission and move people from empire to republic? Maybe they should move people around the servers to spread the population 50:50 without the permission of the players? Maybe ya know drag a few people over from pve servers to level out the faction imbalances?

 

Its outside of bioware's control. They could possibly add incentives to play republic ie make republic players slightly more powerful I am sure that wouldnt have every pvp empire player whining OMG OP republic, QQ QQ QQ some more.

 

As a non PVPer I know myself and others like me get sick of constant PVP whining and ************. No matter what happens someone is "OP NERF NAO!" etc. Maybe if instead of this you instead come up with a sensible thread with some SUGGESTIONS as to what bioware can do to incentivize people to roll republic it could be something simple like more valor or slightly higher drops when lootable player corpses come on the side with the lower population. Or maybe consider how you could approach this as a community.

 

Finally there is a perfectly good PVP forum why fill up general with yet more pvp whines ?

[Morsk]

So please tell me what exactly bioware can do to fix faction imbalances?

Players put companies in a very bad position on PvP servers. No company likes promising things it can't deliver, but many players demand these PvP servers and won't buy a game without them, yet PvP servers never work. All PvP servers do is split the community by drawing the players dedicated to PvP away from PvE servers. But dedicated PvPers like playing with each other, not against each other, so they all pick the same faction.

 

I suppose players unhappy with this could protest it by refusing to play the unpopular faction on PvP servers, and then maybe players and companies alike would give up on faction-based PvP, and move to forms of realm-vs-realm combat where population balance has a chance of happening. Or something. But as long as people ask for and expect faction-balanced PvP servers, they're setting themselves up for disappointment.

[Destoroyah]

Population Imbalance is the number one thing that makes open world PvP in my opinion never work as there is no real way to deal with the issue in a fair way.

 

It's my opinion it's better too allow a ever increasing/decreasing pop cap always on battlegrouds instead that allow the population to be roughly even give or take a group or two. So if the overpopulated side wants in they got to wait in a que until someone on their side leaves or the other side brings in more people to raise the cap. If the under populated side sees a drop the cap is decreased for the other side, but doesn't boot anyone just the que for people waiting to get in is higher. Their are other ways they could maybe pad the threshold to allow more from the que to get in, but you get the concept.

 

It's the under populated side that gets the overall shaft in Open PvP and isn't their fault they got less people to pull from, and allowing the other side to 2-4:1 is only going to drive away the already small pop more as no one likes being is a situation they know they will almost definately lose. If the over populated side don't like the que then they can always reroll to the other side.

The problem is that these games need Hard Coded features inplace. As someone said down the road it won't be surprising to see a large portion of the overpopulated side roll chars on the underdog side in a attempt to address the inbalance only to find they shifted the balance the other way and the side they left is now the underdog side. Same goes for server transfers as this more often then not only serves to aggrevate the current problem or shift the issue to the other foot. Another reason for hard coded features is that there needs to be a way in the game itself to shift power to whatever side is weakest at the time. This was especially true when I was playing warhammer as there were times in the day when the imbalance was more promenient for one side then the other. Relying on dev monitered fixes are not the answer as they often work too slow and are unwilling to deal with the ever changeing PvP landscape.

 

As for trying to incent more players to the under populated side there is no real good way to do so that doesn't involve taking away challenge in game or off setting balance. Basically the only real stuff your see is increased XP gain, maybe faster pvp gearing, and gimmick toys to play with.

 

Question - One thing I'm confused on is I thought huttball was supposed to allow republic and empire group together and was supposed to be a bit of a melting pot, but all the games I get into seems to be the team HAS to be all from one faction. So if there isn't enough republic qued the few that are got to wait for more to show up to feild a full team.

If this is the case I think they need to alter it and add more melting pot style games So the lower population can at least experience PvP at their timezones.

Edited March 7, 2012 by Destoroyah

[amnie]

of course they shouldn't FORCE people, but I actually think putting a lock on char creation when the imbalance is higher than say 2:1 yes I'm definitely for this.

 

 

my point is, bioware ACTIVELY makes people think 'empire is more interesting'. the only thing they deny is that they spent less love on rep side (oh yeah that totally explains why you see EMPIRE emblemes mirrored on the republic fleet) .. not once have I see them actually say 'republic is a lot of fun to play!' ..