Frankly it's unacceptable that the Sith outnumbers Republic 2-1 on many servers. This will just lead to the same kind of absurdity seen in Warhammer Online. Did you learn nothing from that game? All the sexing up of the Sith has just made it worse - how can the same mistake be made twice?

WHO had to add xp bonuses etc for the underplayed Order side a few weeks after the game started, for me SWTOR it needs to go further and penalties need to be added to the Sith players.

I'd start with giving out only half the medals to Sith who are on servers that outnumber Republic by more than 30%. Then maybe think of a system to slow down the pvp queues for them. Huttball allowing same factions sounds great until you realise that it's stopping these people from being stuck in queues - that is precisely what is needed here in order to make some Sith get sick of the wait and reroll. Not only that but with so many Sith v Sith huttballs games going on they'll soon get far better at that warzone.

People need to be penalised for rolling Sith or it will just get worse. Not some wishy-washy Republic xp bonus added too late. Act now or this game will go the same was as WHO - great pvp ruined by faction imbalance.

Frankly it's unacceptable that the Sith outnumbers Republic 2-1 on many servers. This will just lead to the same kind of absurdity seen in Warhammer Online. Did you learn nothing from that game? All the sexing up of the Sith has just made it worse - how can the same mistake be made twice?

 

WHO had to add xp bonuses etc for the underplayed Order side a few weeks after the game started, for me SWTOR it needs to go further and penalties need to be added to the Sith players.

 

I'd start with giving out only half the medals to Sith who are on servers that outnumber Republic by more than 30%. Then maybe think of a system to slow down the pvp queues for them. Huttball allowing same factions sounds great until you realise that it's stopping these people from being stuck in queues - that is precisely what is needed here in order to make some Sith get sick of the wait and reroll. Not only that but with so many Sith v Sith huttballs games going on they'll soon get far better at that warzone.

 

People need to be penalised for rolling Sith or it will just get worse. Not some wishy-washy Republic xp bonus added too late. Act now or this game will go the same was as WHO - great pvp ruined by faction imbalance.

It really isn't that bad tbh and I'm loving being republic

Frankly it's unacceptable that the Sith outnumbers Republic 2-1 on many servers. This will just lead to the same kind of absurdity seen in Warhammer Online. Did you learn nothing from that game? All the sexing up of the Sith has just made it worse - how can the same mistake be made twice?

 

WHO had to add xp bonuses etc for the underplayed Order side a few weeks after the game started, for me SWTOR it needs to go further and penalties need to be added to the Sith players.

 

I'd start with giving out only half the medals to Sith who are on servers that outnumber Republic by more than 30%. Then maybe think of a system to slow down the pvp queues for them. Huttball allowing same factions sounds great until you realise that it's stopping these people from being stuck in queues - that is precisely what is needed here in order to make some Sith get sick of the wait and reroll. Not only that but with so many Sith v Sith huttballs games going on they'll soon get far better at that warzone.

 

People need to be penalised for rolling Sith or it will just get worse. Not some wishy-washy Republic xp bonus added too late. Act now or this game will go the same was as WHO - great pvp ruined by faction imbalance.

It isn't even launch day yet, the numbers for both sides will bounce around like crazy, there are massive amounts of story options that one can do. Many have already stated they will have both sides, no need to cry to the devs and demand those who wanted to pick Sith get punished because you feel there is an imbalance that is out of control already. So far I'm lookign at WoW from vanilla day one when for the first year the balance for both factions was crazy untill people found what they liked and which side they liked the most; nothing new and still way to early to even cry about it.

You can not force people into a particular faction. Also, you can not punish a player for choosing a particular faction. Doing so is nonsense.

What we need is a third faction.

Lets wait a month after launch to begin calling out imbalances. A lot can change when the floodgates open.

There is really no reason to believe that the numbers will magically fix themselves. If it's 2-1 on many servers now, it'll stay that way even after the launch.

The problem is there is nothing to prevent it. The only drawback is playing Huttball over and over - but like I said that will actually be to the detriment of Republic players as they will be playing a lot less Huttball and will end up getting steamrolled most games (this will happen anyway of course).

I saw what happened to WHO, was there right from the start and it was so obvious right from the start that the faction imbalance would seriously hurt the game. Something needs to be done quickly or any open world pvp will be a joke.

You can not force people into a particular faction. Also, you can not punish a player for choosing a particular faction. Doing so is nonsense.

 

What we need is a third faction.

 

Lets wait a month after launch to begin calling out imbalances. A lot can change when the floodgates open.

They aren't going to add a third faction so no point wishing for that.

You can punish the player for choosing a particular faction. With so many Sith it will be harder to "stand out", therefore only getting half the medals sound fair to me.

Waiting around doing nothing is nonsense - we've seen what it did to WHO. If this game flops because of faction imbalance it'll be a really needless tragedy.

There is really no reason to believe that the numbers will magically fix themselves. If it's 2-1 on many servers now, it'll stay that way even after the launch.

 

The problem is there is nothing to prevent it. The only drawback is playing Huttball over and over - but like I said that will actually be to the detriment of Republic players as they will be playing a lot less Huttball.

 

I saw what happened to WHO, was there right from the start and it was so obvious right from the start that the faction imbalance would seriously hurt the game. Something needs to be done quickly or any open world pvp will be a joke.

But remember WhO was only one of a few games with factions that did not listen to fans or the tech team. WhO's major error was it favored one side only even at alpha, beta, and at launch and after during patches they favored the one side. WhO did it to themselves, and tried to fix their own blunder by trying to have others join the opposing faction with a generic xp buff, when everyone new the better items and endgame for WhO was obviously the promoted Favorite from the start.

As I said, still to early to even state what is imbalanced or not, I kjnow I'll be rolling both sides and seeing light and dark sides on all classes and factions to see how the story works out.

I agree with the OP. Now I don't have the end of the world mentality when it comes to this. What I AM worried about more than warzones is Ilum. B/c there is such a high pop cap on Ilum, that really opens up for unfair pvp. Think back to SWG (at least on my server) when There were 3 Imps for every Rebel in Restuss and they held it for days on end. Idk why, but being imperial makes people feel cool.

Here's a good review from Taugrim on this issue, he states numbers and stats and it's sort of scary. http://taugrim.com/

Where does this train of thought where minorities should be rewarded for being minorities come from?

I think we all paid for the game here, why should I be put at a disadvantage because the faction I chose was more popular. Putting said advantages and disadvantages like what the OP is suggesting further imbalances the game on a grander scale by pushing players into a participial direction.

Most people will follow the path of least resistance and by adding in artificial imbalances so that more people choose a particular faction is terrible design.

Imbalance in a semi balanced game to create population balance is bad.

Faction caps would make more sense but prevent friends from playing together potentially. A third faction, while a pipe dream, makes the most sense given the game world and possible implementation.

Where does this train of thought where minorities should be rewarded for being minorities come from?

 

I think we all paid for the game here, why should I be put at a disadvantage because the faction I chose was more popular. Putting said advantages and disadvantages like what the OP is suggesting further imbalances the game on a grander scale by pushing players into a participial direction.

 

Most people will follow the path of least resistance and by adding in artificial imbalances so that more people choose a particular faction is terrible design.

 

Imbalance in a semi balanced game to create population balance is bad.

While I agree with this mentality for real life, you know that game mechanics beat realistic-ness. I agree that the republic shouldn't be getting xp bonuses or anything, but there NEEDS to be something that evens out the play balance when you have worlds like Ilum. If you have 2-3 Imperials for every Republic player thats going to have huge consequences for both sides. Imperials will start getting bored that there aren't enough enemies and Republic players will start to get discouraged that they don't have enough friendlies. SWG saw this as well.

My server is pretty well balanced, almost a 1:1 ratio with slightly more republic players so I'm not feeling this. But I can't imagine being on a server that is 3:1 for Imps. That would just simply not be fun, there HAS to be incentive to even the game out, but you're right xp bonuses aren't the way.

Easy solution is to cap populations on the servers, and it turn cap the populations in open world pvp zones such as illums and outlaws den. When it comes to true open world raiding on ouposts and cities we will have a peoblem.

However dont make more of this than it really is. Wows pvp servers are and were unbalanced since its inception and for the most part did fine.

You cant penalize people for their choice because you want them to roll a specific faction, that would cause imbalance, alot more imbalance then a population imbalance.

I personally choose sith purely because I want to play an agent, maybe if the republic had the exact same class on there side I'd be a rep. ( and no, not smuggler )

OP, it's not completely BioWare's fault. You keep saying to them "didn't you learn with WAR..." Well OP, didn't you learn from WAR? Why don't you and your buddies reroll Republic? I mean that is a fix that is fully available that doesn't require extra work from BioWare.

What makes you think I didn't?

It's going to take a LOT more than that however. This is something that the players themselves cannot fix. I saw entire guilds rerolling on WHO but it was too little too late.

What makes you think I didn't?

 

It's going to take a LOT more than that however. This is something that the players themselves cannot fix. I saw entire guilds rerolling on WHO but it was too little too late.

Actualy player made problems have a player made solution, it is actually that simple, you are just afraid to realize that and soly want BW to bow down to your wants of punishing others because you happen to be on an imbalanced pvp server and possibly got ganked/camped for a bit and the back up you had wasn't enough.

Still to way early to cry about imbalances, SWToR is not remotely close to WhO in any way shape or form, its safe to walk outside with out the tinfoil hat.

Easy solution is to cap populations on the servers, and it turn cap the populations in open world pvp zones such as illums and outlaws den. When it comes to true open world raiding on ouposts and cities we will have a peoblem.

They can't cap severs atm. I haven't even got into early access yet (hoping today), but being told I can't play on the same sever with my friends is a bigger **** you then this wait. Yes I'm going sith and tbh I didn't pick em. I wanna play all sides so I really don't care. But that the side my friends chose and there no way I'm playing on a different sever to em that kind of pointless in a MMO.

However having a same number cap on Illum might be a fairer way to go. ie if 10 republic join then only 10 sith can etc.

There is really no reason to believe that the numbers will magically fix themselves. If it's 2-1 on many servers now, it'll stay that way even after the launch.

Where are you getting these numbers from of the ratio? Do you have data or are you assuming? Just curious.

The only drawback is playing Huttball over and over - but like I said that will actually be to the detriment of Republic players as they will be playing a lot less Huttball and will end up getting steamrolled most games (this will happen anyway of course).

I know this is just me and I'm not representative of everyone, but I won 11 out of 13 warzones last night against imperial - from all the warzones.

The imbalance helps Republic in a few ways, one of them being fast queues.

Frankly it's unacceptable that the Sith outnumbers Republic 2-1 on many servers. This will just lead to the same kind of absurdity seen in Warhammer Online. Did you learn nothing from that game? All the sexing up of the Sith has just made it worse - how can the same mistake be made twice?

 

WHO had to add xp bonuses etc for the underplayed Order side a few weeks after the game started, for me SWTOR it needs to go further and penalties need to be added to the Sith players.

 

I'd start with giving out only half the medals to Sith who are on servers that outnumber Republic by more than 30%. Then maybe think of a system to slow down the pvp queues for them. Huttball allowing same factions sounds great until you realise that it's stopping these people from being stuck in queues - that is precisely what is needed here in order to make some Sith get sick of the wait and reroll. Not only that but with so many Sith v Sith huttballs games going on they'll soon get far better at that warzone.

 

People need to be penalised for rolling Sith or it will just get worse. Not some wishy-washy Republic xp bonus added too late. Act now or this game will go the same was as WHO - great pvp ruined by faction imbalance.

2 faction PvP MMOs just don't work, end of story. You can add as many bonuses or penalties as you want, people will play the faction/class they want.

TOR PvP (specially OW PvP) is already failing and will only get worse, as it always does in 2 faction PvP games.

Players generally don't change side to help balance, they change side to join the faction that wins the most, in this case, the Sith Zerg.

What if more Republic players step their game up and help out?

On my server, the Republic has some talented PvPers. It's a shame they can't get more of their own to fight alongside them. I bet they have plenty of people grinding their brains out in PvE though.

...but as others have said, 3 faction system would be better and it is still too early to tell how things will ultimately shake out.

Last time an MMO introduced a 3rd faction they started to die out faster then any other MMO created (CoH/V).

2 Faction MMOs work fine, its how they are managed by the devs and the players. WoW is the most successful with 2 major factions and they have the biggest balance issues when it comes to their PvP server populations, ToR will be fine, as well it is STILL far to early to make any real judgment so the foilhats are not needed.

WoW managed to survive when most of the popular PvP servers were Horde almost 2:1 to Alliance.

Most PVP servers in WOW are an absolute joke now. If you are Horde on a PVP server, you're a bigger carebear than someone playing on a PVE server.

I see an expansion in the future...

A third nation that is neutral that can be a collaboration of both Empire and Republic characters, in other words Bounty Hunters being for hire would belong to this neutral state, along with Jedi and Sith that don't agree with their states but believe in the unification.

Meh. Not really.

I think the faction imbalance is right on the spot, for one the Republic in itself is massive, the Empire dominates in strategy.

So if the Empire side is 2-1, more bodies to rack up among them...

Where are you finding the population numbers?

Taugrim has a good breakdown based on what guilds are where and their numbers. Read his top entry concerning Empire imbalance. The only servers it doesn't account for is RP-PVP.