Strategies for Creating Equilibrium in both Factions and Campaigns

Grimhallow

Hey Everyone,

If you don’t know me- I’m Grim. Most people probably know me as a solo/ small group stamblade. I make youtube videos sometimes. A few relevant background notes about myself. I’ve never cared much for the faction war itself, and I also haven’t cared for which campaign I am in. I only care about one thing: good fights. As a secondary thing, I am mildly motivated by nice AP ticks, and I’ll drop by keeps that are already being captured to syphon the ticks.

For those of you who do care about the faction war, I have a few suggestions that I want to run by you, as I think these changes will benefit both the serious faction campaigners and the small group and farming communities.

THE ISSUES IN THE STATUS QUO


1. The Risk of being locked into faction stacking.

For people who value the campaign, I understand that you want faction locks. I personally think they are a bad idea, especially after we have spent all this time being able to play with our friends on any faction. I personally hope they re-reverse the faction lock, but since faction lock is here for now, we need to give players reasons to choose the losing faction from the last campaign, without incentivizing losing, for the purpose of creating a numerically balanced playfield.

Solution: Make Low-Pop Bonuses Scale, that way you get low pop sooner, but the effect is less dramatic and scales higher and higher the lower the population descends. This guarantees that players will flock to campaigns where they are outnumbered, balancing the faction distribution. The pop lock remains focused solely on population, but now there is a reason to pick the faction who has a lower population. Don’t make low-pop bonuses dependent on being outnumbered, make them scale directly off of how populous the server is.

Example:

(This applies per-faction, not for the server as a whole).

Server Pop-Locked (no AP bonus)
Server 75% full (12.5% AP Bonus)
Server 50% full (25% AP bonus)
Server 25% full (37.5% AP bonus)
Server empty (50% AP bonus)

I realize that this system gives certain timezones advantages when it comes to becoming the emperor. But currently primetime is unplayable, and off-hours are dead quiet. I feel like the sacrifice is more than worthwhile. This will incentivize people to play in both the emptiest factions, as well as in the emptiest campaigns. Speaking of…

2. Nobody plays the secondary campaigns.

Self-explanatory. It may be nice for people to add why they don’t play those campaigns, but I have a feeling it comes down to incentives. Campaigners have no reason to campaign there, 1vXers have nobody to fight, and farmers don’t make enough AP per hour.

Solution: Incentivize other servers. I have two ideas on how to do this (besides the scaling low-pop bonus, which will draw farmers and small group to 7-day).

a. Possibility One: Dispose of the idea of home campaigns- you can earn campaign rewards in every campaign you participate in. The easier change, but likely mildly less effective for career campaigners.

b. Possibility Two: Combine the scoreboards of the CP campaigns, so that there is effectively one campaign leaderboard with two servers (and two Emps). I think this would be the more effective idea, since it will force guilds to track two different battlefields and give them reasons to play across several servers, reducing the lag coming from 90% of the PvP population crowding into one server. However, it comes at the cost of the 7-day campaign that nobody plays (in other words, the only realistic way to get Emperor if you only have a week to play, etc).



My big question is; why can’t PvP guilds participate in two separate campaigns?

What would incentives PvP guilds to invest time into several campaigns equally?

InvictusApollo

I'm sorry Grim but I don't think that better rewards/bonuses will draw enough players to a losing side. They could draw only people who haven't decided on which faction they want to play. It would be another reason for them but it would have to compete with the distribution of characters among the alliances. For example someone who has 4 characters in AD and only two in EP might be more inclined to join AD on their favourite campaign.
Good idea, but it won't be enough.

PS: Thank you for teaching me how to counter those tanky stamina users.

dtsharples

Combine the US & EU servers so there is a constant supply of players in every faction.
No night-capping, no morning zerg across the map.

NBrookus

Better rewards won't attract people to the winning side fast enough, when it's a 30 day change.

I would like to see the "other" campaigns incentivized but I'm not sure how to do that effectively. You can't increase AP -- noobs/pve'ers will go there to get their caltrops and will be farmed, which will be very un-fun. Many people are swimming in geodes already. The other rewards are hardly worth opening your mail for.

Perhaps we could:
7 day CP locked - enhanced rewards*
30 day CP, not locked
7 OR 30 day no CP, not locked

*Enhanced rewards might include the chance to drop arena weapons as they did a long time ago. THAT reward would be worth opening! It gives a place for faction loyalists to fight, and there are probably enough of them to fill it up nicely. The "default" 30 day CP will still have many fans. No CP players aren't locked out.

What do people think? Would this be attractive enough to spread the population out some?

Grimhallow

That's a good question. I guess it depends on the person. Maybe there is a better question that we could be asking.

1. What would make you personally play the 7-day campaign?

For me, a 25% increase in AP would be enough to play it as soon as I have top tier campaign rewards from my 30 day campaign. Right now the 7 day campaign offers 15 transmute geodes for top tier right? And the 30 day provides you with 50? I think increasing the 7 day rewards to 20 transmute crystals per week would be enough to get me to home it.

2. The more important question is, what would make your guild switch to the 7 day campaign?

To this sadly, I don't have an answer. For my little guild, we decide in the moment where we are going. We have as close to zero campaign loyalty as you can get. We just go where we think the best fights are.

I'm interested to hear your individual and guild feedback.

VaranisArano

The issue I've always had with my guild swapping to the 7 day campaign is that we roll the map. No offense the regulars on PC/NA Shor, but the last time half our Vivec raid went over there, we got called a "zerg" with only 12 players because we were taking keeps one after another.

Unless guilds on all three factions swap over to the 7 day campaign to balance us out, we just wind up taking the whole map and ruining it for the folks who enjoy smaller scale fights on the 7 day campaign.

That being said, I'm a faction loyal player for EP who finally gets to play with other EP players who arent hopping over to fight for AD or DC every other night. Why would I want to play somewhere other than the faction locked campaign?

NBrookus

7 day is 10 geodes unless they changed it recently; you net more on 30 day. Still can't store them though

Went to Shor tonight. 4 of us and saw one other EP. Saw about the same number of total DC. AD had about 20 with only one "large" group in there.

It doesn't get much more dead than that; even IC is busier.

Grimhallow

With all of these excellent points made, I think it’s probably going to end up being a lot of little things.

You can attract PvE players by providing more geodes for the weekly campaign, lowering the commitment. I honestly think 20 is a good idea, given that we are trying to incentivize the dead campaign. If it’s so good that everyone moves over then we just tune it down slightly, but it doesn’t seem like the worst case scenario would be any better than now, except that there are less geode hunters haha.

Same concept with the AP buff I think. Tiny adjustments in the way low pop works, maybe change the scoring mechanism works (since nobody pays attention to it in the 7 day anyways).

The ultimate solution to lag on account of population would just be to “buy better servers” (but yeah right). Otherwise, allow the clients to do a few more calculations (maybe rotate which calculations are done client side so it’s easier to catch cheaters? I don’t know how that stuff works- who cares, it’s not the point. Make it work.). I’d honestly rather suffer the occasional cheater that I can report then be cheated by lag on a daily basis.

Ghostbane

Cadwell Stone
200,000 ap

Allow yourself to experience another alliance. Current leaderboard and reward history will be lost if activated.

EdoKeledus

The system of point should be reworked completely to be scalled with the server population, night and morning/afternoon have less population and should not have more influence in term of points than prime-time. I don't say you have to play in prime-time but the fewer players there are, the less influence there will be if your faction overcrowded.
Basically make the system of point more dynnamic

You can't play in prime-time.
No problem, rewards won't be changed and the fun should be preserved.

You only want PvDoor in dead time .
No problem, you can do it but do not expect anymore to overtake the two other factions so easily.

It should resolve a lot of issues between the factions and the players themself, make the battles for the first place harder
and legitimate the winner(in my opignion).

Mr_Walker

EdoKeledus wrote: »

The system of point should be reworked completely to be scalled with the server population, night and morning/afternoon have less population and should not have more influence in term of points than prime-time. I don't say you have to play in prime-time but the fewer players there are, the less influence there will be if your faction overcrowded.
Basically make the system of point more dynnamic

You can't play in prime-time.
No problem, rewards won't be changed and the fun should be preserved.

You only want PvDoor in dead time .
No problem, you can do it but do not expect anymore to overtake the two other factions so easily.

It should resolve a lot of issues between the factions and the players themself, make the battles for the first place harder
and legitimate the winner(in my opignion).

So basically disincentivise off peak play even more. Genius!

usmguy1234

NBrookus wrote: »

Better rewards won't attract people to the winning side fast enough, when it's a 30 day change.

I would like to see the "other" campaigns incentivized but I'm not sure how to do that effectively. You can't increase AP -- noobs/pve'ers will go there to get their caltrops and will be farmed, which will be very un-fun. Many people are swimming in geodes already. The other rewards are hardly worth opening your mail for.

Perhaps we could:
7 day CP locked - enhanced rewards*
30 day CP, not locked
7 OR 30 day no CP, not locked

*Enhanced rewards might include the chance to drop arena weapons as they did a long time ago. THAT reward would be worth opening! It gives a place for faction loyalists to fight, and there are probably enough of them to fill it up nicely. The "default" 30 day CP will still have many fans. No CP players aren't locked out.

What do people think? Would this be attractive enough to spread the population out some?

Yes, I would be all over that if they brought arena rewards back.

Mr_Walker

Unlock campaigns again, bring back arena weps for top 5% and make them unbound (and thus sellable), but if you swap faction during the campaign you lose all rewards.