131563-lets-talk-about-population-exiles-vs-dominions-page-5

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Get a maintenance bay, you two. 
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Get a maintenance bay, you two. 
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Organics, no class. 
 
I'm spoken for. 
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You are simply delusional if you think it isnt at least A reason. All you ever see from the exiles are Aurin, from the forums and in game. There's always a thread about how unforunate it is that Aurin cant be certain classes, etc. It would not surprise me in the slightest if Aurin are the number one reason people play Exiles. Dirt anime cat people.
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I've gone blue in the face talking about how bad the "Two-Faction" system for MMORPGs is.  It needlessly splits the playerbase and dev time for lore reasons.  Wildstar is NOT a pvp game, even though there are PVP servers.  It's 99% PVE, and the design choice of splitting the players into two factions needless hurts the game. And for what?  Lore?  Because other games did it?  What wildstar needs to do is what RIFT did:  remove the faction barrier.  Allow players to group or raid with players from either or both factions. We're all doing the same quests for end-game anyway, and both factions are equally threatened by end-game bosses and characters.  
 
Sticking to the two-faction system is bad.  WoW can get away with it because they have a bazillion players. But even they have implemented mercenary mode(where players from opposing factions can be on the same team) in PVP to speed up queue times.  Carbine needs to realize that if they want their game to continue to survive, they need to make compromises. They already did so by going to F2P. They should recognize the flaws with the faction imbalance as well, and take steps to demolish it.   	
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I've gone blue in the face talking about how bad the "Two-Faction" system for MMORPGs is.  It needlessly splits the playerbase and dev time for lore reasons.  Wildstar is NOT a pvp game, even though there are PVP servers.  It's 99% PVE, and the design choice of splitting the players into two factions needless hurts the game. And for what?  Lore?  Because other games did it?  
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I'm an Aussie and I originally rolled an Exile and Dominion hero but from looking at this I may as well delete the Dominion one as I wont have anyone to play with.
 
As echoed by most here restricting guilds to one faction is just unnecessary and splits the player base and is something that REALLY should have been addressed before going f2p!
 
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What torture? I have yet to see any quests on Dominion side involving torturing someone, even interrogation quests are pretty tame.
 
My thoughts on population imbalance, it might have helped Dominion somewhat if every goddam trailer wasn't Exile focused. Naturally people are going to go Exile side because the trailers make it seem like they're the main characters in all of this.
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Agreed.
 
As a result of factions, we have the effective result of two MMOs that are half the size that they could be... but share the same name. And eat into each other's resources (two MMOs on each server, so... queues).
 
They've dug themselves into a lore hole on this one though.
 
Lore wise the only faction that can win is the Dominion. You have a galactic empire versus... some refugees on a 200 year old broken down space ship and some small vessels on the side. And Lore wise, while the Dominion does a mix of good and bad, its intentions towards two of the Exile races are outright genocidal (Aurin and Mordesh). Diplomacy could solve this for the Aurin on terms NOT acceptable to any player that likes the Aurin for anything more than "I haz bunnygirl". And much as we make fun of Aurin players, players who chose it for its lore actually do exist in big enough numbers for this to be an issue. Diplomacy could not resolve the Mordesh issue - a cure could, and that would essentially result in them being a race that was halfway between the Vulcans and the Romulans... which is not a good place to be in terms of dramatic potential.
 
You really can't merge these factions as the lore exists... and if they pay too much attention to their background lore - the Exiles would be dead because the Dominion should have a galactic fleet showing up any day now (other space ships are coming and going - all the neutrals for example, so the Dominion should be able to get a few hundred thousand arkships here now that its on the map).
 
...
 
So we should merge them, for the sake of the game.
 
But for the story... we're in a bit of a logical pickle. All of the logical resolutions are extremely unappealing to the playerbase. Even Dominion players would lose out lore wise if the fleet that should be here, was here. So we're already ignoring that bit of lore...
 
But a merger would be a shark jumping level of ignoring lore because unlike ignoring the galactic fleet... this would happen to a live game and not in the background...
 
Somebody should have really stopped them BEFORE this got too far, and told them to just make a story about 'the people of the galaxy have found the planet of the ancient progenitors, and you have have decided to go or been tasked with going there and kicking butt.'
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I've never liked two faction games, either.
 
However, this is really a much simpler fix.
 
Dominion just needs /some PR/. Some. Any.
 
The PROMOTIONAL CINEMATIC FOR THE GAME has 20 seconds of Dominion content, and they are /directly the antagonists/ of the 'heroes' of the cinematic.
 
Guess what? You paint someone has the badguys, people treat them that way. Gee, I wonder why...
 
If you want more Dom population, just toss out some Dom-focused cinematics that /don't/ fixate on how arrogant/psychotic/cold/bestial we are.
 
Chua /can/ be adorable.
Mechari /can/ be incredibly humane
Draken /can/ be very peaceful
Cassians /can/ be very reasonable/humble
 
The marketing materials ONLY display them as evil, cold, or violent.
 
The marketing materials ONLY display the Exiles as heroic, put-upon, and adorable.
 
This pop imbalance is what you get. (when combined with one faction having 'catgirls' LITERALLY playable)	
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			/bump to clear the spam	
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Agreed.
 
As a result of factions, we have the effective result of two MMOs that are half the size that they could be... but share the same name. And eat into each other's resources (two MMOs on each server, so... queues).
 
They've dug themselves into a lore hole on this one though.
 
Lore wise the only faction that can win is the Dominion. You have a galactic empire versus... some refugees on a 200 year old broken down space ship and some small vessels on the side. And Lore wise, while the Dominion does a mix of good and bad, its intentions towards two of the Exile races are outright genocidal (Aurin and Mordesh). Diplomacy could solve this for the Aurin on terms NOT acceptable to any player that likes the Aurin for anything more than "I haz bunnygirl". And much as we make fun of Aurin players, players who chose it for its lore actually do exist in big enough numbers for this to be an issue. Diplomacy could not resolve the Mordesh issue - a cure could, and that would essentially result in them being a race that was halfway between the Vulcans and the Romulans... which is not a good place to be in terms of dramatic potential.
 
You really can't merge these factions as the lore exists... and if they pay too much attention to their background lore - the Exiles would be dead because the Dominion should have a galactic fleet showing up any day now (other space ships are coming and going - all the neutrals for example, so the Dominion should be able to get a few hundred thousand arkships here now that its on the map).
 
...
 
So we should merge them, for the sake of the game.
 
But for the story... we're in a bit of a logical pickle. All of the logical resolutions are extremely unappealing to the playerbase. Even Dominion players would lose out lore wise if the fleet that should be here, was here. So we're already ignoring that bit of lore...
 
But a merger would be a shark jumping level of ignoring lore because unlike ignoring the galactic fleet... this would happen to a live game and not in the background...
 
Somebody should have really stopped them BEFORE this got too far, and told them to just make a story about 'the people of the galaxy have found the planet of the ancient progenitors, and you have have decided to go or been tasked with going there and kicking butt.'
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			Bump to clear above several pages of spam	
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			bump - back.	
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I think it's more the case that the Exiles are the "good guys" and Dominion the "bad". This seems to be especially true of PVE servers, you'll find most gravitate towards being the good guys whereas on PVP servers you'll get a better mix.
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I've gone blue in the face talking about how bad the "Two-Faction" system for MMORPGs is.  It needlessly splits the playerbase and dev time for lore reasons.  Wildstar is NOT a pvp game, even though there are PVP servers.  It's 99% PVE, and the design choice of splitting the players into two factions needless hurts the game. And for what?  Lore?  Because other games did it?  
 
What wildstar needs to do is what RIFT did:  remove the faction barrier.  Allow players to group or raid with players from either or both factions. We're all doing the same quests for end-game anyway, and both factions are equally threatened by end-game bosses and characters.  
 
Sticking to the two-faction system is bad.  WoW can get away with it because they have a bazillion players. But even they have implemented mercenary mode(where players from opposing factions can be on the same team) in PVP to speed up queue times.  Carbine needs to realize that if they want their game to continue to survive, they need to make compromises. They already did so by going to F2P. They should recognize the flaws with the faction imbalance as well, and take steps to demolish it.  
 
 
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MFW the topic of future expansions is brought up in a WildStar thread.
 	
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MFW the topic of future expansions is brought up in a WildStar thread.
 
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Well - It is a possibility. The game appears to be doing well right now outside new players and PvP. (BG forums are filled with a singular complaint right now.)
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			They're fixing the rune issue in an upcoming patch. See the tradeskills forum - they pinned their plans.	
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They're fixing the rune issue in an upcoming patch. See the tradeskills forum - they pinned their plans.
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Samething happened in NCSoft's game Aion.
 
Nothing was done till it was too late.
 
Eventually they tried merging servers and balancing by population. Failed.
 
Tried adding incentives to play the less populated side. Failed.
 
At the end of the day most players will choose to follow the path of least resistance...the most populated side.
 
For PvE...doesn't as much.
 
For the pvp contingent....good luck. But most already know where this will end up.	
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Oh good.
 
So we're still nowhere near an expansion though. But on the bright side, at least Blade and Soul is almost here!
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I really doubt we are at risk of losing too many players to a badly animated (*) softcore porn game. If we were, Second Life would have killed WoW a decade ago...
 
(*) The walk cycle for females in that game has so much twerking going on if a real life woman tried to do it she'd snap her spinal chord...
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There really is only three things that could be done development wise to balance the population.
1. Lock Exile till Dominion's population balances out, This of course will *cupcake* off a lot of players and could easily blow up in their faces.
 
2. Remove race restrictions for the factions, you would be surprised and probably saddened by how many people are just Exiles because they wanted to be Aurin. This would also *cupcake* a lot of people off.
 
3.Dump the two faction gimmick entirely, and just have PvP be guild wars. This would absolutely *cupcake* people off, but it's pretty much what structured PvP is currently anyway, having the player base segmented is just redundant for anything but the story, and even in that the two sides have been forced to work together already.
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They're fixing the rune issue in an upcoming patch. See the tradeskills forum - they pinned their plans.
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*sigh*
 
The Dominion side is alive and well. There might not be *as many" players but there are still a whole hell of a lot. Illium is swarming, every leveling zone is packed.
 
"I'm gonna delete my Dominion toon since I'll have no one to play with" is a crock. Of *course* you'll have people to play with. Even when things were bleak there was STILL people to play with.
 
If you don't like the Lore, that's fine. I totally understand that - but not playing Dominion *now* because of a lack of players two months ago, well, that's not only extreme, but a little silly.	
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3. Let all races be all classes. If someone want to play a certain class but their first choice of race doesn't offer it and their second choice race happens to be Exile...
I mean, right off the bat, if one faction is being shorted on races and customization many people will choose the other.
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			Disable aurin creation until populations even out (This is me kidding by the way in case it wasn't 100% obvious). All joking aside incentives would be ideal... XP, currency, loot, and/or reputation bonuses for the lower side scaling based on the severity of the imbalance would be my suggestion.
			
				
	Edited October 11, 2015 by Nexxa	
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I hate aurin. But Mordesh and Granok are awesome.
 
Chua and Draken are not aesthetically pleasing to me.
 
So I rolled exile.
 
I honestly thought the exile pop would be lower. I figured people would swarm chua draken and Mechari 	
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I honestly thought the exile pop would be lower. I figured people would swarm chua draken and Mechari 
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I have lv.50 characters on both sides that I actively play. I can barely tell a difference in population between the factions at this point because there's so many on both.
 
From my experience, I have found the Dominion lore significantly more interesting than the Exiles, but I like the under-dog feeling the Exiles give too. Honestly there is no reason why you shouldn't play both sides and just do what you want each day you play.	
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Yeah the unfortunate effect of them ONLY ever focusing on Exiles every single trailer.
 
Do the Hyrcrest quests on Dominion side, and you'll see the Exiles are pretty evil themselves. Developing plagues and spreading disease amongst the farmers and livestock so everyone dies a slow agonizing death. Really peachy the Exiles are.
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			Damn carbine and their bias. Srsly, look at all those elevated treatments the Exiles get. Even the freaking recent F2P cinematic features almost exclusively Exiles. Dominions appears as psychopathic bunch of bullies (facepalm). I dare say that Brightland fed them a good chunk of plats for that *cupcake* propaganda! Hell even the pre-launch interviews sound like fabricated fiction to 'villainize' the Dominion. You can find the interviews here.	
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After years of playing the "Mary Sue Favored Faction" in WoW, as a Horde player - it is interesting to see what its now like to play an MMO on the faction its devs don't care as much for.
 
That said... its not actually as bad as Alliance has it in WoW. WoW's Alliance has been getting junky writing, lack of lore, and underdeveloped NPCs since the first expansion launched and its a sore point for Alliance players...
 
Dominion has a better writing team. Read the quest text and that is just plan obvious. Even if its the same writers, for some reason they flesh it out better Dominion side. But the marketing team and other public faces of this game clearly favor Exiles.
 
Everytime you get one of these two faction games, people's biases will come out - and that includes biases among the developers and company producing the thing.
 
Yet one more reason to not do game design this way. I love this MMO, but having two factions was a mistake that will haunt it for as long as its a live game.	
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			In World of Warcraft the devs at least had a reason to be constantly 'bigging up' Horde-side, at launch there were -far- more Alliance-players and while I don't have the numbers in front of me, I'd still assume that's the case even now. If Exiles really do outnumber Dominion so much, it would make sense for Carbine to be giving similar treatment to Dommies in this game really, so it makes little sense if they're doing the opposite.	
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