We need faction lock to happen

Fur_like_snow

Nermy wrote: »

Eirella wrote: »

I'm not sure how faction locking would prevent this.
I mainly play EP, but last night me and a few guild-mates hopped on our DC characters to help them out because EP owned the entire map + emp and scrolls .
I don't know anyone that switches to the winning faction, that's just boring.

Yes but you get the best rewards for being on the winning side.

By best rewards do you mean the same decon junk that has been in the loot table and not the new sets that players actually wanted? If ZOS would have fixed this issues I’d say you’d have a point but that’s just not the case..

Sacredx

TheYKcid wrote: »

Sacredx wrote: »

Change it so that ... the low pop faction is awarded bonus AP % to encourage natural balancing. The bigger the imbalance the more the %.

Problem solved. Balancing the natural way, not forced, easy to implement. No locks required.

I'm pretty sure the low pop bonus already doubles your AP gains, in addition to boosting faction score? Either way, I'd prefer any AP-scaling mechanism to reduce AP gains on the dominant faction instead. AP is already flooding the game economy and we don't need any more inflation on that front.

Also, people respond more strongly to disincentives than incentives when it comes to curtailing certain behaviours, even if it leaves a bitter taste. But what works, works.

Sure, as long as there is an incentive to balance the factions. The final numbers are up to the developers, but I would expect a good difference, say 25% extra for each bar difference to the lower pop factions, not 5 or 10% which would be too low.

This is off topic but I wouldn't worry about AP flooding the game economy. If you do some basic numbers a normal night's AP session is maybe 200k AP. Camps and port stones are like 20k a pop and all the other things, potions, siege that you got to spend AP on. By the time you 'cash in the AP' it might only be 150k for the night and at 5:1 ratio to gold which a lot of players use to 'cash in' it's only 30k equivalent gold, not something that will flood the market, more like a drop lol. Not to mention the amount of pvpers is also 'a drop' compared to pve numbers.

Zukasha

Aside from bars being not a very accurate population indicator, that would be a bonus of 75% at max, which is still less than the current bonus for low pop - and even those current 100% don't do anything for balance.

Which proves that balancing populations via rewards doesn't work.1st many players aren't able to make much AP (if any) when heavily outnumbered, so they still gain more on a high pop faction. 2nd if players play on a certain faction only for the increased rewards, they'd want to maintain the bonus = keep the population imbalanced, otherwise they leave and nothing is gained in the long run. 3rd not enough players care about AP. I don't think easy AP gain is the main reason for faction stacking. Easy wins are (more referring to winning "fights" than campaigns, though the latter might play a role too). Nobody likes getting farmed and so people flock to the side where this is less likely to happen. Even if it means those wins are achieved against NPC only. The AP are merely a nice side effect of those "wins".

I think dynamic caps would be the only solution to population imbalance, but implementng it properly would take too much effort, so it is not going to happen. Which might be the best, because based on ZOS' record we would likely get a "not so proper" system that could end up being worse somehow.

Sacredx

Zukasha wrote: »

Aside from bars being not a very accurate population indicator, that would be a bonus of 75% at max, which is still less than the current bonus for low pop - and even those current 100% don't do anything for balance.

Which proves that balancing populations via rewards doesn't work.1st many players aren't able to make much AP (if any) when heavily outnumbered, so they still gain more on a high pop faction. 2nd if players play on a certain faction only for the increased rewards, they'd want to maintain the bonus = keep the population imbalanced, otherwise they leave and nothing is gained in the long run. 3rd not enough players care about AP. I don't think easy AP gain is the main reason for faction stacking. Easy wins are (more referring to winning "fights" than campaigns, though the latter might play a role too). Nobody likes getting farmed and so people flock to the side where this is less likely to happen. Even if it means those wins are achieved against NPC only. The AP are merely a nice side effect of those "wins".

I think dynamic caps would be the only solution to population imbalance, but implementng it properly would take too much effort, so it is not going to happen. Which might be the best, because based on ZOS' record we would likely get a "not so proper" system that could end up being worse somehow.

I don't follow. The current bonus is hard to get and gives double faction points, which gives no incentive to balance the factions, quite the opposite in fact (faction stacking). My proposal is an active easy to get AP% bonus instead that is adjusted regularly based on the pop difference.

Zukasha

Low pop bonus gives double AP in addition to the scoring bonus (x2,5) and on certain campaigns/factions it is not that uncommon.

Joy_Division

Jimmy_The_Fixer wrote: »

Nermy wrote: »

Eirella wrote: »

I'm not sure how faction locking would prevent this.
I mainly play EP, but last night me and a few guild-mates hopped on our DC characters to help them out because EP owned the entire map + emp and scrolls .
I don't know anyone that switches to the winning faction, that's just boring.

Yes but you get the best rewards for being on the winning side.

The rewards suck, nobody cares about them. People tend to swap around for gameplay reasons and not because they’re chasing a carrot.

False. If you're not chasing the 5 extra repair kits and few extra thousand gold, you need to take an economics class or something to appreciate how many goodies you get for hopping on that alliance bandwagon

Sacredx

Zukasha wrote: »

Low pop bonus gives double AP in addition to the scoring bonus (x2,5) and on certain campaigns/factions it is not that uncommon.

My understanding is that you need 3 hours in a row of 1 bar while other factions have more to get the bonus, which is very hard to get.

zyk

Lots of players get end of campaign rewards on all of their characters for geodes. Especially PVE players. It's become one of those standard grind things like writs and daily randoms.

So yeah, the current reward system contributes to faction hopping for sure.

Zukasha

Sacredx wrote: »

Zukasha wrote: »

Low pop bonus gives double AP in addition to the scoring bonus (x2,5) and on certain campaigns/factions it is not that uncommon.

My understanding is that you need 3 hours in a row of 1 bar while other factions have more to get the bonus, which is very hard to get.

I don't know the exact requirements to get the bonus, but i think it is less than 3 hours until it kicks in (they reduced the time at some point) and a faction don't need to be at 1 bar, it depends on the difference to the high pop faction (not sure if absolute or relative difference, but certainly based on the actual player numbers, not on displayed bars).
And hard to get or not, the bonus is still in effect quite frequently and it does nothing other than keeping the scores a bit closer, despite the huge AP bonus.

I get what you are trying to achive with your proposal, i just don't think it would work for reasons i have already stated (and which you ignored).

Mayrael

I really miss faction lock, this hopping back and forth depending on winning side is really bad. It's being abused both in IC and Cyro (when there is opposite faction group there, why fight them when you can join them?).

I'm not for making it 30 days lock. 1 day lock would be enough. First toon you log in during the day (resets at the same time every day) locks you in that campaign to it's faction.

This way it won't be possible to switch every few hours as it is now but will still allow all of us to play every faction in campaign they like.

Sacredx

Zukasha wrote: »

Sacredx wrote: »

Zukasha wrote: »

Low pop bonus gives double AP in addition to the scoring bonus (x2,5) and on certain campaigns/factions it is not that uncommon.

My understanding is that you need 3 hours in a row of 1 bar while other factions have more to get the bonus, which is very hard to get.

I don't know the exact requirements to get the bonus, but i think it is less than 3 hours until it kicks in (they reduced the time at some point) and a faction don't need to be at 1 bar, it depends on the difference to the high pop faction (not sure if absolute or relative difference, but certainly based on the actual player numbers, not on displayed bars).
And hard to get or not, the bonus is still in effect quite frequently and it does nothing other than keeping the scores a bit closer, despite the huge AP bonus.

I get what you are trying to achive with your proposal, i just don't think it would work for reasons i have already stated (and which you ignored).

That's fine, you are entitled to your opinion. I think it will work and it is certainly better than no balancing at all, which is the current state of the game.

RedGirl41

no