Addressing balance, a different approach.

[GenocideDevice]

The original War had serious faction balancing issues. The largest of which was faction domination. I have previously described this issue in terms of system dynamics. Basically, War has an input/output problem. Inevitably, one faction will begin to dominate on a server through shear population (input). As the population of the dominant faction grows, the minority faction begins to experience increasing losses. The more they lose, the more they quite or move to a server where their faction dominates (output). What War experienced that eventually caused its demise is when these servers flooded. Eventually there wasn’t enough people in the opposing faction to play against and the game became boring. At that point, even the dominant faction began to depopulate and eventually there weren’t enough paying customers to support it.

There have been multiple attempts to address the faction domination issue. These all failed for various reasons. A third faction would take a complete replatforming and was hence impossible. Attempting to balance power towards the minority faction only slowed the inevitable zerg, but regardless, forced the minority faction permanently on the defensive which isn’t much fun.

So what to do? We could force faction balance by simply insisting that players apply for the faction which is currently in the minority. This will likely be unpopular but could potentially address balance. The problem is that this doesn’t address outflow. One faction or the other will at least temporarily be in the majority which could mean domination and the outflow of players on the minority faction. So this will likely be unpopular and it only addresses the input side of the issue.

We could try first come, first serve, server caps but I would think this would likely be impossible to implement. We would have to know what the likely max cap of the minority faction would be at high capacity, and this would likely put off other players from the dominant faction. This means more people would eventually abandon the dominant faction and could potentially reverse the problem. Again this is only input control.

As an alternative, rather than changing the input we need to prevent output. We could change the flow of the total population. On this I have a few ideas that have their potential flaws.

We could allow cross faction servers, where you can only select the available faction currently in the minority. This is obviously not going to be popular with faction loyalists but I believe most players will be willing to switch hit. Now, some might be resistant to being forced to play only what’s available on their server. This also sets up cross faction tensions where one minute a player is getting spanked and the next they how have to team up with their tormentor. This could potentially effect output if players are rage quitting after having to play with the guy that was just talking smack from the other faction. I, for one, think this will have far less an impact than, you know, constantly losing all the time. The one problem I have with this is, why not just rage quite, wait a minute and jump on the winning faction when it opens? I can only say that with a system like this, it will likely be difficult (though not impossible) to time such a jump successfully.

Or perhaps it can be addressed internally, with the RvR lakes and the war campaign. Perhaps instead the open RvR lakes, the RvR lakes could be closed. Full Squads could be made a requirement and the amount of squads on the field could be caped. Anyone else who enters the field could be “chickened” or simply thrown out of the RvR lake. Perhaps they could be allowed to provide ordinance support, but otherwise, they’d have to wait for an opening. Once a map is completed, the queue could be reset to give other squads a shot. This would encourage team building and team play. It will also, however, be quite unpopular. One of the best parts of the war campaign in general was the RvR lakes were completely open. You just jump in a squad and jump right in.

I'm open to suggestions a tweeks though. The target it to prevent output "Rage quitting."

[Dominikwt101]

the best suggestion i can think of would be to change the debuff a faction gets for fielding a larger force, rather than increase dmg taken it could instead reduce the rewards obtained by this faction thus promoting more even fights rather than the 220% aao rushes that tend to happen at between 3pm-12pm gmt.

hope fully a few more ppl will provide input to the discussion this idea was kinda off the top of my head :p and to be fair has probz been an idea before but i only found about return of reckoning a week or so ago so

[warkaiser]

the best suggestion i can think of would be to change the debuff a faction gets for fielding a larger force, rather than increase dmg taken it could instead reduce the rewards obtained by this faction thus promoting more even fights rather than the 220% aao rushes that tend to happen at between 3pm-12pm gmt.

hope fully a few more ppl will provide input to the discussion this idea was kinda off the top of my head :p and to be fair has probz been an idea before but i only found about return of reckoning a week or so ago so

The issue with this is that half of a reward is better than no reward, and (most) people won't switch to the other side just to risk gaining no reward out of it.

To the OP - I've been thinking about this and something that sort of goes along with the idea of cross-faction play is if at all possible to implement, sort of a Mercenary system would be pretty cool IMO. Done via some sort of quest, or a pop-up (similar to the scenario pop-ups we get), players would be offered the chance to switch to the side which currently has a much smaller force, and allow them to temporarily switch their flagging so that theyre now hostile to their own faction and are rewarded with increased gains (xp, rr, inf, medals) while flagged as a Merc.

I personally would love a system like this during those times when there is just nobody showing up to fight us while attacking keeps and taking BOs. I would be able to get in on some fighting and still progress my character rather than having to switch to a different character on the opposing side.

In all honesty though, I doubt something like this could be done, or at least done properly, and it still doesnt get to the real root of the issue: Lack of players for several hours at a time, and not enough on each side both showing up for RvR.

[dur3al]

To the OP - I've been thinking about this and something that sort of goes along with the idea of cross-faction play is if at all possible to implement, sort of a Mercenary system would be pretty cool IMO. Done via some sort of quest, or a pop-up (similar to the scenario pop-ups we get), players would be offered the chance to switch to the side which currently has a much smaller force, and allow them to temporarily switch their flagging so that theyre now hostile to their own faction and are rewarded with increased gains (xp, rr, inf, medals) while flagged as a Merc.

I personally would love a system like this during those times when there is just nobody showing up to fight us while attacking keeps and taking BOs. I would be able to get in on some fighting and still progress my character rather than having to switch to a different character on the opposing side.

In all honesty though, I doubt something like this could be done, or at least done properly, and it still doesnt get to the real root of the issue: Lack of players for several hours at a time, and not enough on each side both showing up for RvR.

So basically everyone would only play one side faction, and then go merc for extra rewards..

[Ossos]

To the OP - I've been thinking about this and something that sort of goes along with the idea of cross-faction play is if at all possible to implement, sort of a Mercenary system would be pretty cool IMO. Done via some sort of quest, or a pop-up (similar to the scenario pop-ups we get), players would be offered the chance to switch to the side which currently has a much smaller force, and allow them to temporarily switch their flagging so that theyre now hostile to their own faction and are rewarded with increased gains (xp, rr, inf, medals) while flagged as a Merc.

I personally would love a system like this during those times when there is just nobody showing up to fight us while attacking keeps and taking BOs. I would be able to get in on some fighting and still progress my character rather than having to switch to a different character on the opposing side.

In all honesty though, I doubt something like this could be done, or at least done properly, and it still doesnt get to the real root of the issue: Lack of players for several hours at a time, and not enough on each side both showing up for RvR.

So basically everyone would only play one side faction, and then go merc for extra rewards..

is not what we are doing?
x-realm the best you can ;p (remeber only is bad if your a pug)

[Deyvetown]

Or perhaps it can be addressed internally, with the RvR lakes and the war campaign. Perhaps instead the open RvR lakes, the RvR lakes could be closed.

Please do not do this, my method for getting into ORvR (both on the og WAR and ROR) is to just start an open warband of myself, walk into the RvR lakes and start attacking/healing things. The Warband gets full almost immediately every time.

[Waaghaa]

As I see it, the problem with x-realming, which tbh is the main problem, comes down to a single question, why do we have the option to have both destro and order characters?

As long as we have that option, it really doesn't matter what penalties are enforced, people will still x-realm.

[sabat80]

Unless it would be possible to put a lock on reward based on IP or network card?

If you log to the other side you are not receiving exp/rr for X hours in the Tier where you were logged in?

It allows people to play on both sides and in different tiers if they want to? but stops them from keeping characters in keeps and just login for defense.

[Akalukz]

3rd Realm Monster play, the game already has the capablities (skaven) just need to flesh it out and increase the pool size of the skaven.

[Bulgril]

We should implement an NPC bot system that would locate and assist dominated faction players in an RvR area.

It could actually be fun, like elf shadows commando missions, berserk killer dwarfs incursions, flagellant imperials... they would join the individual player or group upon quest activation, or dialogue prompt as they enter the area, and then either fight in the open or attack the opposing camp.

We'd have to downlevel guards in the opposing faction camps, though.

We could also, alternatively or at the same time, artificially increase pressure on the dominant faction, and erode it: say, we enable destruction camps to be taken by order, deactivating quests, until they actually take the camp back. We move re spawn to the previous camp, wherever this happens to stand, and maybe make respawn more expensive.

We up level dominated faction npcs...?