Adressing Faction inbalance ?

[Shirolicious]

Unfortunately in the last Q&A I saw no questions asked on Faction balance.

Now, I don't know how its like on other servers. But on Ebon Hall it is pretty clear which faction is the dominating one.

there isn't even a challenge because the Red faction is dominating there and its very frustrating when doing faction related things.

 

I know there is a faction balance system, im just stating that it isn't very effective. I don't know if its because almost all the bots join the blue faction

because red is usually "taken" so its being scripted in such a way to always join blue.. maybe that is part of the problem that is causing this inbalance.

 

It would be really nice to see a change into this system that actually does balance out the factions short to mid term.

[Riepah]

Yehara has Crimson totally dominating, too. Cerulean is mostly for speedhackers in SSP, unfortunately. Not like SSP is really "PvP" to begin with, it's just bashing PvE mobs all day.

 

I've no idea how they expect stuff like Yachun to work anyway, if proper PvP took place with balanced factions.

[Bardo]

It's mostly because of bots/spammers block normal players from joining faction of their choice.

I remember i waited 2days to join the faction i wanted on one of my alts. Support couldnt help, even tho you could login and check the faction chat to see all the spams.

[YamiKokennin]

Same thing for Old Man Cho. Majority are Crimson. Most bots are Ceru. There are some legit players that are Ceru but then no one on Old Man Cho like Ceru people (non-bot) for some reason.

[Riepah]

21 minutes ago, YamiKokennin said:

Same thing for Old Man Cho. Majority are Crimson. Most bots are Ceru. There are some legit players that are Ceru but then no one on Old Man Cho like Ceru people (non-bot) for some reason.

Probably because many will assume that anyone who joins Cerulean only does so in order to "grief" Crimsons who just want to farm their materials, since the game forces everyone into "PvP" zones for that.

I finished off a Cerulean at SSP yesterday who was near our base. I've no idea if it was a bot, goldfarmer or just a legit player - but legit players on the Cerulean side who aren't jerks are so rare, while speedhackers and griefers are so common that I just smacked him because I was so frustrated with SSP in general.

 

Maybe he was just trying to finish his 8 small-mobs daily, in that case I'd actually feel sorry, but I've no way of knowing what he'd do once I turned my back on him.

 

Often enough, I just pass by a Cerulean and don't harm them, only to get jumped by the next guy as soon as I'm in a fight with a mob.

 

 

Essentially, the Crimson faction is full of shady botters/organized goldfarmers in SSP, tons of Summoners who'll appear out of nowhere for an important spawn, only to disappear again shortly afterwards, while the Cerulean faction isn't full at all, but most of those that are in it, are either hackers, bots or jerks. I think the game would profit from removing the factions and turning SSP into a PvE grind fest - which it already is, just with speedhackers and griefers on top.

No factions means that at least everyone can grind in peace, without getting killed with overpowered weapons used by speedhackers.

[YamiKokennin]

Im a Crimson and I have not seen a nice Ceru. Not even once :/ Maybe it's just my luck. And I agree with you about turning SSP into a PvE grindfest.

I ran into lots of Ceruls and they saw me coming, but I always leave them alone as I don't want any troubles, just want to finished my quests so I stay away from them. Afterward, I got back-stabbed by the Ceruls that I intentionally avoided earlier..

I stopped doing Faction after getting all of the required items for upgrade my gears in Misty.

 

I do also catch lots of summoners perma stealth Cerul bots in Misty Woods area, and it's extremely easy to tell (no cat, go in and out of stealth even when it didnt even use seed shroud (dandelion) , and if it catch you or the opposite faction player/npc, it will be in stealth mode 100% and you can't even able to hit it). At the same time, bots don't do the gathering type daily in faction (like gathering gun powder or releasing prisoners). They only do the killing one -- the one that give boss npc give coins and that's it.

 

I guess them bots have infested both factions as of now

[Shirolicious]

well, still needs to be looked at. small bumb

[855967_1452550250]

they answered in some of the previous streams that they have no intention to change anything regarding faction balance.

 

I agree that it need some attention and just passing time won't solve this issue. Here are some Ideas i came up:

 

First thing would be being able to change faction with a whole clan, maybe locked to all 14 days or similar.

Second would be some (minor-) reward increase for winning with the underdog faction.

Third would be the measuring of the balance, just counting character within a faction does not do it! Count something like Quests done by faction members in oPvP regions or soulstones earned by faction in a day.

 

Just some suggestions!

[Chnmmr]

The irony is that I think that if the factions -were- balanced, SSP pvp would not work.  Imagine trying to take out the terror bosses if the opposing side had the same number as you.  It'd be literally 100% impossible.  SSP pvp is doable -because- the factions are unbalanced, albeit only by one faction.

[mradr]

It could still work just fine. Right now on our server Ceru are the ones that own the town. Sooo many of them it's like a 10 to 1. I think the easy solution here is base off how bad the unbalance is. Aka, give buffs if your faction isn't as large as the others so even if you meet a group of them ~  you can still defend your self. Pvp is fun, but only if it's balance in some way. Most games figure out it's best NOT to have factions so that way more people are in combat making the fair value base off your friends or clans instead. That or class base fairness.

 

On the other hand, other games give buffs. For the faction that is lower, they give a pvp buff equal to how low they are. Meaning, if the balance was off 80%, then they give the player almost god like powers to combat that. That way a group of them can't just go on a witch hunt for non faction members. On the other hand, it makes playing pvp areas like SSP harder, and in some cases, either require or give the others players a reason to join lower pop team for the extra powers or better rewards.

 

Ways to promote more players on the other team in a good pvp way even if there are bots:

1) Require faction choice on joining a pvp arena instead. This keeps bots from just taking places form real players. Even if they join the pvp area, they MOST fight to gain points or risk being kick from the game. This is a easy way for games devs to find bots and some games use this tactic.

 

2) Rewards base on faction levels within an area. Another way is to allow lower pop factions access to points even if they can't really do anything about it. A steady stream of points might take longer to get, but still an option to get points is way better than no option at all. Did you at least attack the other faction? Did you at least hit them? Did you bla bla bla - should still count for a number of points. This will also keep bots from benefiting or force them to combat if they want the points.

 

3) Give buffs base off faction levels. If your faction is a lower pop by lets say 20% with in the area that is also wearing the faction clothes ~ then you get a 20% boost on your states within that area as well. This way it'll take that many more players to destroy you forcing more pvp in that area for the other faction. In return for this, (as I believe in a give an take system) they have higher death timers, aka it takes them long to revive, so they can't just keep griefing or using their powers to mess with people if they do lose.

 

[Yetan]

On my server, crimson is dominating, not just by number, more so by gear.  Crimson has been full since the day I started playing, so most new/low level players joined cerulean. There may have been some short windows of opportunities to join them, and many high geared cerulean either switched or stopped playing. This just makes crimson getting more and more powerful over time. Unless they make soulstones farmable outside of pvp content, I don't think faction imbalance will ever be fixed.

[Kayama]

Ok so before the last patch we had like 5-6 ssp channels .....and now we only have 2. WHY? ..... on Ebon Hall  the ratio crimson - ceru is 3 to 1 so all the channels are always crimson 24/7 so we can never actually do ssp anymore wich means hitting a huge brick wall for gear upgrading/craft since the requirements are beyond ridiculous. They said "the system" is capable of balancing faction.... how? the way i see it this system isnt capable of doing anything when someone wants to change faction just ads a low lv alt to ceru  and moves to crimson. Im not even gonna start talking about bots and speedhackers cuz obviously ncsoft doesnt care unless people stop buying coins to make a point here.

Bring back the ssp channels so outta 5 we can actually get 1channel for our faction and do our bloody dailies.

 

[phangtom]

11 hours ago, 855967_1452550250 said:

they answered in some of the previous streams that they have no intention to change anything regarding faction balance.

 

I agree that it need some attention and just passing time won't solve this issue. Here are some Ideas i came up:

 

First thing would be being able to change faction with a whole clan, maybe locked to all 14 days or similar.

Second would be some (minor-) reward increase for winning with the underdog faction.

Third would be the measuring of the balance, just counting character within a faction does not do it! Count something like Quests done by faction members in oPvP regions or soulstones earned by faction in a day.

 

Just some suggestions!

 

Your ideas don't work simply because of the fact that faction population fluctuate constantly. Whilst an underperforming faction shouldn't be rewarded for underperforming that defeats the point of factions in the first place.

 

Furthermore your idea makes the assumption that the underperforming side is only because of  bots and not that people who have no interest in doing open world pvp related task which is by far the worst thing in the game so it's understandable that most will not bother with it. This is evident by the very fact that most people who want to farm SS etc. move to the dominant faction because the whole concept around factions and open world pvp that is tagged onto pve related task is absolute cancer and they want nothing to do with the pvp side of it.

 

Honestly, the only way to address faction imbalance is to make it so that factions isn't pvp based in the sense of being completely pve based with pvp tagged on thus making picking sides irrelevant. If people were to actually pvp at SSP or whatever the way they intended you will find that the game would be complete trash simply because nobody will ever achieve anything. Good luck doing Yachun/Ceru equivalent if people were PvP'ing as intended or mining with the other faction actively stopping you. That very reason is why people flock to the dominating side because it's illogical to actually do factions the way they intended and fight each other because you are just wasting everybody's time.

 

Thus the only way to fix it is to make picking factions completely irrelevant either by making it so it's not massive open world pvp but rather pvp focus tasks in small groups like the 6v6 but faction based or competitive in the sense of factions fighting pve bosses. For example factions compete to see who can compete a dungeon of bosses the fastest.

[855967_1452550250]

You have to take all ideas together, or it won't work. 

 

The fluctuation in my ideas is intended, the staticness is the problem. You can't change faction without leaving your clan or loosing your faction rank. So most ppl are stuck and won't switch. Thats why my suggestions start here. More Fluctuation means more balance over time. If u are not satisfied with your faction as a clan or individual, change it for a reasonable price of cause.

 

But why should someone wanna change faction anyway, if there is no bonus? Atm ppl only change Faction to be in the major faction. By rewarding the underdog and limiting the possibility to change Faction to one time in 14 Days (just example), players and clans will have to think about if it will be good to change or not. A predection of the new underdog/overdog will be hard over time and from now on in Players and Clans hands. With this incentive (whatever it is, maybe depending on health of faction, as more unhealthy as higher the incentive) more fluctation will happpen, means more balance over time.

All in all to make both  work, the actual measurement of how faction population is counted and balanced has to be deprecated. There has to be a new way implemented to check population and health of a faction. For Example: Count the Amount of Soulstones earned by Quests in Soulstoneplains and Mistywood over a period of time and how many Individuals have participated (ex: all 24 hours). Comparing this numbers would give some more accurate values about what's going on in Open PvP. Those two regions are the only ones that matter in case off faction balance. Players that don't participate in this type of content just don't matter at all for the purpose of balancing (ex: bots, pure pve).

 

Result: If a faction becomes the "unhealthy" underdog by these new measurements, Clans or Players would be able to switch into that faction, but not the other way around and hey not unlimted! There is only room just as much calculated by a ratio. This ratio can be simply derived from the new measurements.

Example (simplified and not as accurate as if we take soulstones into account):

 

If the underdog is 1:5 behind, and we have 1000 players of Faction-A and 5000 players of Faction-B that have participated in the last 24 Hours, a maximum of 2000 players can be moved. 

I don't say, that's the best way or flawless, just some ideas to work on. Please don't bring hacks or bots to subject, that's a complete different Problem that have to be dealt with. 

 

But if it's intened by design to not fight each other in open pvp and just let each faction farm it wihtout to interfer... the whole idea of factions becomes absurd. So I don't aggree with all posts that say they don't wanna waste time and pvp and just earn soulstones/moonstones the easy way. *sad*

[Crimsonjrjr]

Server I am on it seems reversed.

 

 

Crimson gain the newbies because of the name and outfit.

 

Cerulean gain the PvP Pro's that could dominate multiple people at once.

[Thaxsom]

They could add more ways to get SS and moonstones that don't require faction content. I would guess as long as progression is being held captive by faction pvp people are just going to go with whichever side wins SSP more.

[babeln]

1 hour ago, Thaxsom said:

They could add more ways to get SS and moonstones that don't require faction content. I would guess as long as progression is being held captive by faction pvp people are just going to go with whichever side wins SSP more.

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