Suggestion: How to encourage skill balance between factions

[NemoSD]

On several servers, the Imperial Side is getting trounced in GSF, which leads to fewer queuing, resulting in longer waits for both sides, and for the Imperials, a spiral of losing as people give up, after failing to break 100 points in 90% of their matches. How is this problem resolved?

 

After some thought, and consideration, I came up with this idea as a possible means to resolving this issue.

 

On a per server basis, once one faction averages 65% of the wins over a week period, the losing faction is granted an underdog bonus. This bonus results in increased credit, experience, and requisition rewards.

 

This serves two functions. It will encourage the opposing side players to perhaps switch sides to get the extra credits, which could help balance out win/loss. It would give the underdog faction's regulars the rewards they need to upgrade their ships instead of slogging along with 200-300 requisition rewards per match as it is now if you are on a losing faction, and finally it might give people a reason to keep trying, because they are still getting decent rewards. As they try, they gain skill in the game, and this can help naturally balance out the two factions.

[IceGanon]

This would require coding and would never happen. At least, I would expect some sort of match-making service before this. Sorry.

[Armonddd]

This would be so much easier to implement if it were done on a match-by-match basis, and would also make a lot more sense to your average player.

 

The real question is, what kind of an underdog bonus do you provide? Having nodes suddenly provide more points per second doesn't make sense (and also won't do much if you can't get one). Buffed ship stats will be awkward to understand and would simply encourage certain teams to afk until the score is 500-0, then use their buffed stats to crush the competition. Extra requisition earned won't make players feel less frustrated about their lack of productivity in the match itself and thus would encourage leeching (because you can't really increase requisition earned without making it a flat bonus to the losing team, since a dominated team doesn't earn req in almost any other way).

 

I would love for there to be some kind of underdog bonus, because 1000-50 matches get boring, but I just haven't had that lightning bolt explaining how it would work well in practice.

[Tenacity]

Y'know, it seems like the faction on any particular server that dominates ground pvp sucks at gsf, and vice versa. Wonder why that is.

[Verain]

"Ok guys, we owned them hard enough on our imps last week. This week we all play our pubs, who have the bonus."

[Armonddd]

"Ok guys, we owned them hard enough on our imps last week. This week we all play our pubs, who have the bonus."

 

In fairness, not everyone would do this. A lot of people are diehards for their faction, and a lot of others have (or will have) mastered ships on one side and stock ships on the other, and won't want to switch.

[Ramalina]

Well maybe detailed scoreboards will help. Kill farming is actually pretty crappy req gain, if you want to farm req the thing to do is let sats change hands a lot of times.

 

The real trick is getting the heavy scouts in a pug to not rabidly attack the nearest red dot. Persuasion tends not to work well, so in general I switch to defending, and only respond after a sat has gone neutral if my team is ahead by 300 points or more. Then at least I'm a little less effective at helping stomp the opposition.

 

Really there is as much of a motive for sportsmanship in maximizing your own req gain as there is in feeling empathy for the other team's players.

[DEATHICIDE]

Something I have noticed on both Harbinger and Begeren Colony (which I think is a good thing btw)

 

Certain guilds who are cross faction are getting together and grabbing the daily on both sides rather than just one.

 

I am happy to see this as it increases the chances one premade will encounter another premade, it gives the imperials more players which the desperately need, and it gives the new players some limited access to the advice of veterans in game, as often the good players will start to bark in ops chat why things are or are not working out in the match, and are more often than not correct.

 

This lets both sides feel the win glory and loss sting equally a little bit more, and sometimes a player who won 1 match, then lost 5 more will still hang in there through those losses, when without that win, they would have thrown their hands in the air.

 

Another phenomenon which I also like, is the "noobs" from the empire getting fed up and rolling republic alts to chase a win when they get fed up with a losing streak on the empire side.

 

That keeps the new players playing GSF, and I see it as harmless as weather they know it or not, they are really only on that Pub alt to learn some tricks, because clearly they'd rather be on their imperial, and will return to him again.

 

Best way to deal with this, is do what a bunch of players I know are doing right now, hounding their peers to play GSF on both sides, even if it's only to grab the daily because over time it adds up, and everyone likes 2 flavors of ice cream, so why not?

 

End of the day, faction balance is always going to be a player issue, and the only way to remedy that is by changing the way players are going about their game.

 

Over all I think things are improving on this front, and I expect that to be even more so come the next patch.

(Of course, reminding the new players that the bonus req comes from satellites and not kills in domination matches doesn't hurt either)

Edited February 2, 2014 by DEATHICIDE

[sentawan]

Y'know, it seems like the faction on any particular server that dominates ground pvp sucks at gsf, and vice versa. Wonder why that is.

 

It is definitely like that on Shadowlands.

 

Currently there is already a matchmaking system. It just doesn't work to well because people give up on it due to the learning curve. Once f2p is allowed, the matchmaking system will work better. It worked really well the first few days of preferred until newbies found the steep learning curve unappealing. Regardless, you can hold your own with skill. I've been leveling imp alts after mastering 4 ships on republic side. I don't have a problem most of the time with new ships unless it is primetime and most of the enemy players are using mastered ships.

 

I do not think it would be hard for them to implement a system that rewards 50% more requisition to a faction that is underplayed. They do keep track of those stats.