149496-can-we-please-get-just-one-number-from-a-database-report

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Carbine, could you please run one database query, twice for each server, and divide one number into another for us, please? Because if you do, I think you'll understand why there's a serious problem with the design you've announced for Arcterra.
 
Step One: Query number of hours played, in the last week, by Exile characters that are level 50.
 
Step Two: Query number of hours played, in the last week, by Dominion characters that are level 50.
 
Step Three: Divide the first number by the second number and post it to this thread.
 
I get that you don't want to make any kind of announcements about player population or peak concurrency, that nobody in the MMO industry does that any more. But some time in the next month or two, you're going to release at least three pieces of content that the larger faction can trivially easily lock the smaller faction out of. Now, I'll withdraw my objection if they're closer than we think. I vaguely remember one of the devs claiming, a year ago, that on Entity the Exiles "only" outnumber the Dominion by about 5%, although I never did find out if that was in hours played, characters created, characters above a certain level, or what.
 
But if it's as out-of-whack as we players think that it is, then this will only make it worse. Within a month of drop 7 coming out, there won't be a single level 50 Dominion character on Exile. Nobody volunteers to lose 100% of the time! We asked about this on today's livestream, and the answer we got was that there will never be any kind of "underdog" bonus, that it's up to us to persuade our friends to pick our preferred faction. How do you not see that this has never worked ever before in MMO history, that the perceived "good guy" faction always, always, always outnumbers the perceived "bad guy" faction?
 
Because, you know, we got a reality check on this at Winterfest. Thayd had its Jack Shade effigy lit almost a whole week before Illium did.
			
				
	Edited February 5, 2016 by the infamous Brad	
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A number like the proposed above can quickly be mis-interpreted.  There is a lot of information missing on something like that, how many of those 50s were just building a better house?  How many of those just logged in to raid?
 
I mean, on a new release you are probably going to get raid loggers to log in and try out the new content, but how long will they stick around doing that.
 
At the same time if you try to exclude people from the ratio, what criteria do you use?  Also, if its a 24 hour exclusive lock, what time does the race begin.  What are the active players at that time?  Like I will be able to participate 0 if I'm at work or in a raid.
 
I mean, immediately after the drop - its going to be the larger faction winning.  But I would give it about... a week before it just turns into which side decides to organize raids better  (with an obvious weight to the larger faction, but I doubt it will be as big of a stomp as you are predicting).
 
I have 0 information about any of the stats and what not, just throwing out opinion and potential other ways to look at the situation... Honestly, I would hope that it turns into nice fun races... I remember back in the day when we had some close races in that Malgrave event, it was fun to try to make sure we optimized our strategy -- fun guild activity -- a constant stomp is just another farm thing, which gets boring very quickly.
 
Moral of the story: I know nothing, but hope for it to work out good.	
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			From the stream, it seems like which ever faction doesn't unlock the dungeon first will have the opportunity to 2-3 hours later. So it's a matter of one faction having to wait an extra 2 hours to get in is all... and just because one faction has more play time or higher player concurrency doesn't guarantee collecting enough keys first.	
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			Well, I'm told that we had a test of this when Containment R-12 shipped. I was away when that happened, but it came up in conversation with my guild the other night, and what they told me was that it was months before the Dominion was able to kill that 20-man boss even once. Exiles beat Dominion to the instance every time the event triggered, and kept doing so literally until the gear inside was surpassed by other content. If that was the case, then this is going to be just as bad.	
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We don't know enough about this to ask for hard numbers and know how to interpret them. I understand the concern, but we really need more info.
 
I do wish on the livestream that they had addressed this with a little more seriousness. A lot of people are worried about it, it's generating bad press, and Carbine seems out of touch when they laugh it off and say "tell your friends to play the faction you want". Given the history of the PvP servers, we do know that the "tell your friends!" approach is a little optimistic.
 
If they'd said "we understand the concerns, and we have good reason to think it won't be a big issue to hinder gameplay, but we'll monitor to make sure", that would have been a lot better and more encouraging.	
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Well, I'm told that we had a test of this when Containment R-12 shipped. I was away when that happened, but it came up in conversation with my guild the other night, and what they told me was that it was months before the Dominion was able to kill that 20-man boss even once. Exiles beat Dominion to the instance every time the event triggered, and kept doing so literally until the gear inside was surpassed by other content. If that was the case, then this is going to be just as bad.
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On Luminai exile side we couldn't even collect half of the resources needed for the burning effigy during the Shade's Eve event. Carbine manually turned it on after they accidentally removed the event too earlier.
Back then PvP servers were still highly populated, now it's rare for my tracker to show more than 4 players nearby at contract board in Thayd.
Hope they'll merge servers before next drop.
			
				
	Edited February 6, 2016 by Weer	
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Downtown did say there is a way to "sabotage" the opposing faction by killing the bosses they don't have the key pieces for, so it's possible (hopefully) that this won't just be a straightforward numbers game.
 
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But if it's as out-of-whack as we players think that it is, then this will only make it worse. Within a month of drop 7 coming out, there won't be a single level 50 Dominion character on Exile. Nobody volunteers to lose 100% of the time! We asked about this on today's livestream, and the answer we got was that there will never be any kind of "underdog" bonus, that it's up to us to persuade our friends to pick our preferred faction. How do you not see that this has never worked ever before in MMO history, that the perceived "good guy" faction always, always, always outnumbers the perceived "bad guy" faction?
 
Because, you know, we got a reality check on this at Winterfest. Thayd had its Jack Shade effigy lit almost a whole week before Illium did.
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If only the Chua had spent less time burning down the trees, you could have lit the fire on day one.
 
Having played Wildstar since the 3 day head start, I can say back then faction was never a problem! For the game to prosper it needs to do well with steam among other things, if it achieves that ? Then faction balance will sort itself.....yippee more Dommie scum :(   	
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If only the Chua had spent less time burning down the trees, you could have lit the fire on day one.
 
Having played Wildstar since the 3 day head start, I can say back then faction was never a problem! For the game to prosper it needs to do well with steam among other things, if it achieves that ? Then faction balance will sort itself.....yippee more Dommie scum :(   
 
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