Dobzse wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:55 pm
Templa wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:13 pm
Hypothetically speaking:
It would be enough to implement a system that reduces renown and medals gained through kills. Or impliment a system like in GW2 where you get more exp/drops if you switch sides to a better balanced server state. But that sounds really hard to implement, so the first idea would probably be easier. Many established guilds have x-realm capabilities AND are not against switching sides. So that WOULD be the easiest solution, that will still open up saltmines. The really bad population topics mostly pop up during NA times where the population dies down to a mediocre level in terms of enjoyability.
It's pretty much in the hands of the player how balanced the game is, let's say 80% plays destro, than that's how it is and Order will have no fun/chance to siege in lakes. It's the responsability of the player to decide if they want to switch sides or not. The system can only give so much incentive, because if one does not want to play Order and can't login on Destro they won't login at all, right?
So would you rather play in empty rvr lakes where nobody bothers to fight back ? It's not like you are being told you can't play the game, you just have to play on the other side. Let's say you enter this Red/Blue team game where you have 10 Red players and only 1 Blue. Nobody is either forcing or telling Red team has to switch, how long will the player in the Blue team will play the game? maybe 5-10 deaths ? or he does not even join at all seeing that the game is rigged because it does not force the teams to balance out. I'm pretty sure it is a simple game design question and we all know the correct answer. But giving this decision to the players hand is probably not a quality of life answer.
I think your idea is a good one as it promotes a fair and balanced experience for all players. My question is how would you implement something like this? Ofcourse, we can look to other games for examples of how to solve the problem. My main concern is that not all of them are fully translatable to an MMORPG. let's consider a couple of examples:
In games like that feature mirrored teams like unreal tournament, quake, and Halo, having someone switch sides to balance out the teams isn't much of a issue because there is no learning curve. Yeah it might be a little annoying but it doesn't dramatically change the gameplay experience. In warhammer online, classes aren't identical. You can't easily switch teams because you would have to relearn / rebind abilities. Let's consider a RR80 marauder being switched over to the order side. Firstly, which class would they end up being switched to? Would they remain the same class or would they switch over to an order counterpart?
Another concern is the game itself is heavily reliant on teamwork and team compositions. Swapping over a lone or random group of players wouldn't necessarily balance the teams as you need coordination and team comp as well. The obvious solution would be to balance groups of people as opposed to individual, random players but that solves only one issue.
What I would like to see is a third playable faction that functions as team balancing mercenaries. They have this feature in the game planetside 2 and it works really well. Not only does this team of mercenaries play on the side of whatever faction is under populated, they are stronger and get access to a bunch of rewards. I believe something like this would work for warhammer's lore. However, it would require creating new classes / new races as certain existing races would never work with the order and vice versa.
Ultimately, I do like the idea of players naturally balancing out sides. I would happily make an order character to play while they were under populated. It certainly beats waiting in queue forever. However, I don't have the time to level up another character. It has to be incentivized with faster renown, experience, and currency rates. It's the only way I'd ever be able to reasonably level up a character for the opposing faction.
