Addressing balance, a different approach.
Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2016 11:16 pm
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."
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."
