149732-faction-split

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			With how the state of the game is in terms of population, what's everyone's thoughts on eliminating the great divide between exile and dominion? Lore wise it wouldn't make much sense unless it was along the lines of "Both factions face a greater threat and become allies to prevent universal destruction" or something like that. It worked amazing in Rift when Rifts population was dwindling, I just don't see the point in splitting up the already low player base in half.	
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We might get more players with steam launch =)
Anyway, personally I like factions, and I like pvp =)
So I would like to keep factions, just give Dominion some race that players find attractive to play (since chuas don't seem to be enough :()	
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			Tea makes a good point with the Steam release. Here's hoping they put together an amazing cinematic to hype it - one that features the Dominion. I love my Exiles, but all the cinematics so far tend to swing too far towards the "plucky ragtag band of misfit heroes" and visually imply that the Dominion are "the bad guys".	
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All the Dominion races are very attractive and unique. It's probably because Exiles are more popular in the media and Dominion are shown as snooty badguys. I'd love a Steam launch video that stars the Dominion, but that's wishful thinking. :)
 
lol, Kal and I are on the same wavelength about Steam's launch
			
				
	Edited February 17, 2016 by Tawa	
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			I think you can maintain factions but dissolve the wall when it comes to pve content.  allowing cross faction queueing, grouping for raids, and even guilds would only benefit the community imo.  but if it is not done, it wouldnt impact me at all.	
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			The game is built around the factions. It's not a good or feasible option to toss them. Making a 3rd party faction (such as the already in game and 100% lore approved C.o.G.S.) where players can cooperate and do content together might be a good option though.	
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			I have no say here, but just to join the conversation: I'd like the language barrier to be removed and allow cross-faction queuing for the appropriate instanced PvE content.	
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I'd like to be able to queue cross faction for Dungeons and Adventures but not for Raids or PvP. No Raids because it's normally a guild related activity and it would take away from "Exile/Dominion first!". No PVP because there could be the instance where one faction team is split across both sides, they can still communicate through a faction circle or guild to sabotage one side. :( And that's not cool.
 
But for dungeons? Yeah, would be fun and effectively double the pops for both sides.
 
Addons have already removed the language barrier in the game, mostly for RP purposes. Let's me hang out with my dirty Exile friends and hear their jealousy over how nice my clothing looks. :)	
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			In my opinion, faction locks are an old concept and quite stupid. Yes, lore wise it's fine, but gameplay aspects suffer! If Carbine will change things like dungeon queuing, I'm really interested in the story behind it. Why do an Aurin and a Chua try to protect the scullcano Lopps? The language barrier is totaly wayne (lore wise).	
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In my opinion, faction locks are an old concept and quite stupid. Yes, lore wise it's fine, but gameplay aspects suffer! If Carbine will change things like dungeon queuing, I'm really interested in the story behind it. Why do an Aurin and a Chua try to protect the scullcano Lopps? The language barrier is totaly wayne (lore wise).
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The game is built around the factions. It's not a good or feasible option to toss them. 
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Addons remove the language barrier: Totally. I use one that does. But, I'd prefer the barrier be removed from the core game so the players who don't use and/or know about addons don't encounter the barrier. (I don't have any hard data in front of me on this topic, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the majority of players don't use addons.)
 
Lore explanation for both factions consolidating resources to take on a mutual threat: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Classic, simple, and true.
 
At any rate, the Dominion rules. Hail the Dominion.	
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Addons remove the language barrier: Totally. I use one that does. But, I'd prefer the barrier be removed from the core game so the players who don't use and/or know about addons don't encounter the barrier. (I don't have any hard data in front of me on this topic, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the majority of players don't use addons.)
 
Lore explanation for both factions consolidating resources to take on a mutual threat: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Classic, simple, and true.
 
At any rate, the Dominion rules. Hail the Dominion.
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So I would like to keep factions, just give Dominion some race that players find attractive to play (since chuas don't seem to be enough :()
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With how the state of the game is in terms of population, what's everyone's thoughts on eliminating the great divide between exile and dominion? Lore wise it wouldn't make much sense unless it was along the lines of "Both factions face a greater threat and become allies to prevent universal destruction" or something like that. It worked amazing in Rift when Rifts population was dwindling, I just don't see the point in splitting up the already low player base in half.
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			At the very least, I'd like to see the barrier removed from housing. 	
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In most games I've played over the years, I've been pretty straight-forwardly "Factions MEAN something!" I'm pretty sure that's because I played WoW for years, and it was FOR YOUR SIDE and if someone played both sides, they were TRAITORS and if you found them on their Traitorous alt, you hunted them down. I felt like that here for a long time, too...but I actually really like the way Blade and Soul does it. You have your faction (Red vs Blue) but that only really matters if you equip your Uniform. Otherwise (even in said Uniform) you can queue into anything with them, talk to them (just not in the opposing Faction Chat Channel), duel them, trade, buy/sell, etc (though Clans/Guilds are still restricted by Faction, which I am ok with).
 
I'm not sure if that could be worked into WildStar, since there's already the strictly faction separated places, but even if the Barrier isn't totally removed, I think it'd be a benefit to at least be able to speak to each other (I have to assume that we have Translators of some sort), and Exile Humans basically ARE Cassians, so they'd speak the same language and if that's the "common" language, then so would the others have learned it. I like the way WoW handles that for their separate races (but they don't do it for Faction). Each race still has "their" language but they also have a Common one (Human vs Orcish) but here it would just be Cassian or w/e.
 
If someone's still hardcore against Factions intermingling at all, put it in the Options. Don't wanna queue with the Cassians? Fine! Select the box in the Dungeon Finder that's something like "Same Faction Only" or if you don't want Filthy Chua running all over your furniture, have an option for that in your Sky Plot's privacy options. Circles could probably be fair-game but leave Guilds Faction-separated.
 
I personally think pretty much all of the Dominion Races are decently fugly and that's the main reason I've never made a Dommie. I don't mind being the "bad guy", I prefer Sith over Jedi and it's great fun to be various sorts of Villains...but I want to like what my character looks like.
 
Edit: I don't actually know how hard ANY of this would be to implement...computer stuff is, frankly, Magic to me and whenever I try to learn its just static noise.
			
				
	Edited February 17, 2016 by Kavi	
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To me it seems like there are such simple solutions that wouldn't hurt the lore or dissolve the factions.
Any or all of these changes would benefit me personally and I can only assume there are others who could benefit from at least one of these ideas.
I don't think they would hurt the integrity of the game itself in any way and they give each player a choice on whether or not to segregate themselves. (I do not know how hard the changes would be to make to the actual game though).
 
Get rid of the language barrier so we can more easily organize world events like WB's, Lightspire and GotG.
Add a checkbox that would allow cross faction queues for dungeons. If you don't check it you won't have to play with the other faction so that will solve the "purist" issue.
Allow cross faction mail for anyone on your account friends list including your own account - This will help people that want to have alts on both sides, I myself would love to mail some money to my new Dommie alt.
Allow cross faction housing, maybe by invite or with a check box that allows you to choose whether or not the other faction can visit.
Make a friends/allies list for guilds, that way if one guild was "friends" with another guild of the opposing faction they could still raid together at end game. This would help the "dual" guilds who actually started on both factions so that they could remain one guild essentially.	
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I would like to add that a small part of why I got tired of WoW after ten years of playing it is how ridiculous it was for the war to go on that long, especially with all the many times the factions worked together to save the world from some huge threat. Felt too artificial for these two factions to still be fighting each other. But, it's not called Uneasy Peacecraft. 
 
Would be nice if, when we get post 50 expansion content in WS that the two sides start to work together more. Maybe not allies, but OK enough with each other to do some dungeons and raids together. 	
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All the Dominion races are very attractive and unique. It's probably because Exiles are more popular in the media and Dominion are shown as snooty badguys. I'd love a Steam launch video that stars the Dominion, but that's wishful thinking. :)
 
lol, Kal and I are on the same wavelength about Steam's launch
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I would like to add that a small part of why I got tired of WoW after ten years of playing it is how ridiculous it was for the war to go on that long, especially with all the many times the factions worked together to save the world from some huge threat. Felt too artificial for these two factions to still be fighting each other. But, it's not called Uneasy Peacecraft. 
 
Would be nice if, when we get post 50 expansion content in WS that the two sides start to work together more. Maybe not allies, but OK enough with each other to do some dungeons and raids together. 
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Chua are supposed to be the Dominions answer to the cutesy feminine race that every mmo has. Although 'genderless' they are most definitely male; they look like males, they sound like males; Carbine need to add some feminine options (non cash-shop) if they want them to appeal to a wider audience. 
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 But, it's not called Uneasy Peacecraft. 
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I think its more about how evil Domi come across not just in their looks. Quests where you make sacrifices and impale skulls on spikes. While I hate bringing up WoW when you play Horde they seem sympathetic (when you play as them) or you can at least empathize on how they could make some of the decisions they make.  Even Chua feel evil. 
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I would like to add that a small part of why I got tired of WoW after ten years of playing it is how ridiculous it was for the war to go on that long, especially with all the many times the factions worked together to save the world from some huge threat. Felt too artificial for these two factions to still be fighting each other. But, it's not called Uneasy Peacecraft. 
 
Would be nice if, when we get post 50 expansion content in WS that the two sides start to work together more. Maybe not allies, but OK enough with each other to do some dungeons and raids together.
 
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The game is built around the factions. It's not a good or feasible option to toss them. Making a 3rd party faction (such as the already in game and 100% lore approved C.o.G.S.) where players can cooperate and do content together might be a good option though.
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There is most definitely a war going on through the quest narrative. The moment you land onto the shores of Whitevale, you'll see one big burnt down exile camp transformed into a Dominion hub, and next to this camp we have the Granok town under siege by dominion. Auroria has exile attempting to poison a entire town through the farmers. It's primarily with Wilderrun and afterwards we see the narrative switch. Suddenly with Wilderrun we're racing the opposite faction to the Everpool sanctum, but when we finally get there, we're introduced to the real threat properly for the first time. The strain. It's honestly from this point onwards where we really start diverting from the Dominion vs Exile and on that point I'll agree. I honestly don't even expect for there to be much more Dom vs Exile since we have been introduced to the primary threat of Nexus, aka The Entity. There will always be an ongoing war behind the curtain, but we probably won't be experiencing it for as long as we're trying to deal with The Entity. 
 
I'd like for both factions to work together with this goal in mind. Have like a subsection for both Exile and Dominion that can set aside racial differences and focus on the primary objective at hand. Tensions might be high in this temporary union, but it's a necessity if we want to defeat The Entity. On the surface both Dominion and Exile will be at war, but secretly this small 'guild','clan','union' etc. is working towards a different goal. A goal we've come to know of since Wilderrun and the storyline quests. The strain is a much more pressing issue than a faction war for as long as we're on Nexus. 
 
That's how I'd present it at least. The Dom vs Exile is very deep rooted into the story whether you like it or not. Question is rather if we care enough about it to either ditch it entirely, or at least attempt at making a worthwhile small retcon. 
 
Edit: Make it a option to become a exile or dominion which are flagged for PvP against each other. Do it like BnS. I generally speaking have a big dislike towards BnS, but I thought being able to choose between 1 of 2 opposing factions by equipping a piece of clothing to be really great. It still has that faction pride behind it, but it's a choice now. 
I honestly do hope they can make it like BnS in that respect. It was actually quite clever, or so I felt. You were even notified if either faction were at a disadvantage and you would be unable to join the overpopulated one. 
			
				
	Edited February 17, 2016 by Razhork	
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The thing is there isnt much of a war. We might disagree on a few things but we fight the same enemy PVE wise. PVP can still be split between those who just dont want to play nice etc etc. But for PVE I dont see why they couldnt bridge the gap for the health of the game currently.
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I have no say here, but just to join the conversation: I'd like the language barrier to be removed and allow cross-faction queuing for the appropriate instanced PvE content.
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Yeah, faction-apologists might talk a lot about how the game is 'built' around the factions, but it really isn't. The LORE is built around factions. Except not really: the lore is built around the notions of the Eldan being gods and the Eldan NOT being gods. The Exiles and the Dominion are both the direct and opposite conclusions of those two notions. The plot of the game itself challenges the notion that the Eldan are gods, to the point where the space-popess mentions that Nexus has brought a lot of troubling revelations. Not exactly the thing you'd say if the Eldan had indeed achieved godhood by any definition.
 
The gameplay is just a victim of that adherence to an archaic design paradigm. There's literally no reason for both Exiles and Dominion players to NOT BE ALLOWED to play together when they ALREADY DO:
 
- Defenders of the Grove has BOTH FACTIONS FIGHTING TOGETHER AGAINST THE STRAIN.
- Siege of the Lightspire has BOTH FACTIONS FIGHTING TOGETHER AGAINST THE STRAIN.
- The whole north of Isigrol is dedicated to BOTH FACTIONS FIGHTING TOGETHER AGAINST THE STRAIN.
- In Farside we see both factions having bases side by sid to fight the Ikthians TOGETHER.
- The overworld is plagged with neutral towns both sides can visit where you can't shoot each other (if the Lopp treatise is anything to go by, anyway).
- There's a dissonance in the game's storyline, where the Entity and the Strain are worked up to be this monumental threat to all of Creation, yet the sides still take potshots at each other while fighting it. We could be fooled into thinking the Writer couldn't make up their mind about the actual danger of the Entity, but the nature of this quests is much simpler: they are included there because the Writer remembers 'Oh, right! There are factions. I should Make Them Matter'.
- All factionally diverse storylines and quests stop being so once you reach Whitevale. Both sides will do the same thing in the same order, fighting the same enemies and coming with the same solutions. Which bring me to...
- Factions do not actually matter after the faction war has been stablishes as the setup, the starting point of the Wildstar LORE and not as its default status. It's a backdrop for the actual conflict (the Eldan projects and the Drusera-Entity war). 
 
The game can built on it in any direction it wants. The Writer could put all the chips on how much Factions Should Matter, as they seem to want to do with the zone mechanics of the next drop; or they can go the RIFT route, creating a lore explanation to justify tearing the faction wall down in gameplay; or they can just ignore all that and just provide players in PvE servers to enjoy the game without having to worry about playing a side they don't like because their friends are there, or because it has a better population or whatever.
 
But it doesn't matter how you see it or how much you like or dislike the faction divide. It is enforced in gamepaly to artificially divide the playerbase, but that serves no purpose. There's no difference between the sides more than the aesthetic and the ideological. The quests don't care about the divide later except for the purposes of who you are allowed to party with. All quests are the same. All dungeons are the same. All adventures, raids and storylines are the same but with swapped protagonists. Its only purpose seems to be a hassle to players who want to play both sides. There's no redeeming value in this mechanic except on PvP servers. And how many people play in those, these days?
			
				
	Edited February 17, 2016 by Ildur	
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I like factions but it's not good for a low pop game. I'll give it more thought if it's still a problem after the Steam release.
 
Chua are stereotypical mad scientists, typically these look like weedy dorks so if chua looked like humans they'd be kind of hard to tell apart unless they have a moustache/hair tie, both of these options are in the game. Carbine should add space elves/luminai if they want to broaden the Dominion's appeal, worked for the Horde.	
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Just add boobs to chuas. I'll bet Dominion side gets more attention from players then.
Because adding boobs to anything, get's peoples attention.
Not gonna post examples. Sorry.	
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I'd like to be able to queue cross faction for Dungeons and Adventures but not for Raids or PvP. No Raids because it's normally a guild related activity and it would take away from "Exile/Dominion first!". No PVP because there could be the instance where one faction team is split across both sides, they can still communicate through a faction circle or guild to sabotage one side. :( And that's not cool.
 
But for dungeons? Yeah, would be fun and effectively double the pops for both sides.
 
Addons have already removed the language barrier in the game, mostly for RP purposes. Let's me hang out with my dirty Exile friends and hear their jealousy over how nice my clothing looks. :)
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my opinion, be it an unpopular one:
 
Keep the factions across the board.
I do not want to get involved with the Exiles at all, and like to be a Dominion member.
Both sory wise and gameplay wise I find it great that we're seperate.
Aurin and Mordesh are the biggest reason I do not like the Exile side at all, even when I have an Aurin alt myself.	
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Wow, no, seriously, don't -- not if you're going to continue to allow open-world PvP, especially not if you're going to incentivize it at some point in the future. I have never seen a PvP game that allowed inter-side chat that didn't routinely and regularly blow up with racist, homophobic, sexist trash talk. You would need six or ten times the moderation staff you have now to keep inter-faction chat from driving decent people away in droves. Inter-faction chat in a game with open-world PvP would drive me away pretty quickly.
 
Yes, it's possible now with an add-on. But it's rare enough that the other side can hear you that it's not attracting every bigoted foul-mouthed immature troll in the world, it's not obvious to people who completely lack empathy that this is a place they can come to make other people feel bad. Let's keep it that way, please?
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I wouldn't use Rift as an example. Trion just couldn't be bothered with fixing it so they just removed factions. They systematically removed any mention of a faction conflict when they revamped zones, contrary to their own lore.
 
I would hope Carbine have more integrity.
Trion have no integrity or pride in their games
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Chua are stereotypical mad scientists . *snip*
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It's just nothing but selfishness on some people's parts, players AND whoever is responsible for keeping the divide at Carbine, I'll lay it out as basically as possible as to why in point form bellow. Some people would rather see the world burn to the ground around them than admit they are wrong or compromise even the slightest.
 
Pros:
- Lowers queue times on all content
- Makes pugging large group content much easier (raids, wold bosses etc)
- Means players can play and experience both factions without having to look for a second guild
- Means player created events in housing can be enjoyed by both sides
- Probably more...
 
Cons
- But, but, LORE! I might have to group with a race "I" don't like while I'm ERP'ing!
- Nothing else?
 
The majority of the player base couldn't give two shites about the lore or could at the very least compromise for the good of the game. I have almost no idea what's going on in the game and I don't really care. All I know is there is a pointless faction wall up that's splitting the playebase in a low population game for no sane reason.
			
				
	Edited February 17, 2016 by H3rboss	
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It's just nothing but selfishness on some people's parts, players AND whoever is responsible for keeping the divide at Carbine, I'll lay it out as basically as possible as to why in point form bellow. Some people would rather see the world burn to the ground around them than admit they are wrong or compromise even the slightest.
 
Pros:
- Lowers queue times on all content
- Makes pugging large group content much easier (raids, wold bosses etc)
- Means players can play and experience both factions without having to look for a second guild
- Means player created events in housing can be enjoyed by both sides
- Probably more...
 
Cons
- But, but, LORE! I might have to group with a race "I" don't like while I'm ERP'ing!
- Nothing else?
 
The majority of the player base couldn't give two shites about the lore or could at the very least compromise for the good of the game. I have almost no idea what's going on in the game and I don't really care. All I know is there is a pointless faction wall up that's splitting the playebase in a low population game for no sane reason.
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Really couldn't of said it better myself. The only reason the divide is still going on in WoW is because the player base is large enough to support this. Swtor also has the divide still but I mean, that game is 100% about story and lore whereas that's only a portion of Wildstar. People are keeping their chin up about the steam release and that's okay, look at the glass half full if you wan't, but I foresee the same thing happening as f2p where we get a spike of players and it drops shortly afterwards.
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my opinion, be it an unpopular one:
 
Keep the factions across the board.
I do not want to get involved with the Exiles at all, and like to be a Dominion member.
Both sory wise and gameplay wise I find it great that we're seperate.
Aurin and Mordesh are the biggest reason I do not like the Exile side at all, even when I have an Aurin alt myself.
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What if they added a "Faction Purist" button that automatically rejects party invitations from the other faction, jumbles their chat with the alien font, hide their houses on the Visit button and make the matchmaker look for other "Faction Purists" when you queue?
 
Or "Lore Purist", maybe, depending on how they'd go about it.
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What if they added a "Faction Purist" button that automatically rejects party invitations from the other faction, jumbles their chat with the alien font, hide their houses on the Visit button and make the matchmaker look for other "Faction Purists" when you queue?
 
Or "Lore Purist", maybe, depending on how they'd go about it.
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Why is everything some elitist conspiracy to you? removing factions would not bring any new players, nor is there any evidence it would keep a significant number of players who wouldn't leave for multiple other reasons in any event. 
 
This has nothing to do with "purity". the Game is built on factional conflict, the game would be fundamentally different with out separate factions.
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Even though I personally dislike the idea of changing such a core part of the game, especially when there has already been lore faction-hate established by the game at every turn.. I do understand the need to 'evolve' the game model into something that might.. well work better.
 
The main idea is to make tasteful changes that serve the well-being of the game, putting aside personal opinions and figuring out what will function best for the game itself.
 
In the past it was mentioned multiple times that at least the faction restrictions between alts should be lifted (meaning you could exchange items between your alts regardless of their faction), or to be able to create cross faction circles.
 
There have been many good suggestions actually.. the real question is what is Carbine planning to do?	
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			Some people say the conflict is heavily shown throughout the story, others say it isn't. Clearly no one knows what's going on with the lore so can we just scrap it and join forces?	
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I am still tore between the idea myself. Some good ideas for and against.
 
If I had to pick, I would say have it like The Secret World. The faction only really matters in PVP. All three factions can group up, be in the same guilds but in Warfronts and etc it was Templar vs Illuminati vs Dragon. I loved that system	
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Some people say the conflict is heavily shown throughout the story, others say it isn't. Clearly no one knows what's going on with the lore so can we just scrap it and join forces?
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I am still tore between the idea myself. Some good ideas for and against.
 
If I had to pick, I would say have it like The Secret World. The faction only really matters in PVP. All three factions can group up, be in the same guilds but in Warfronts and etc it was Templar vs Illuminati vs Dragon. I loved that system
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What are the good points against dropping the faction wall? So far I haven't seen anything past "but lore!" (Which again, is Carbine's so they could write in any reason they could think of anyway)
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This has been discussed for over a year now. If you want them, go find them.
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			There is more to factions than lore. I and many others chose Dominion because it was the hardcore side, more guilds and players with similar interests. Some of us like supporting one "team". With decent pop you don't need a 50/50 split, you just need enough players to sustain a decent variety of guilds with different schedule requirements. But pop has been too low for so long now that many Dominion players, even guilds, have switched to Exile. If this doesn't change after Steam I'm for removing the faction wall/adding a third, neutral faction that any player can join.	
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Circles could probably be fair-game but leave Guilds Faction-separated.
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I have no say here, but just to join the conversation: I'd like the language barrier to be removed and allow cross-faction queuing for the appropriate instanced PvE content.
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I'm just gonna throw it out there that this option would actually be a huge waste of time as there would be so little people that would actually use it and I guarantee that those that don't want the split wouldn't even use this option after a short time anyway as they soon realize they are missing out.
 
If it's super quick and easy sure, throw it in, otherwise don't bother wasting the dev teams already VERY precious time.
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Carbine should add space elves/luminai if they want to broaden the Dominion's appeal, worked for the Horde.
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Edit: @PlasmaJohn...the guilds probably wouldn't really be a big deal, but I just thought that since we still have Faction-specific areas, like Thayd and such, I assume those would stay hostile to opposites in an effort to keep the lore as-is somehow, despite guild affiliation, and it might hinder some activities/actions.
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I can see faction specific areas like the capitols and regional bases keeping their guards hostile.  I can't really think of any guild function that requires a city based mechanic.
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Yeah Luminai definitely wouldn't work as a race unless you completely disregarded established lore.
 
Expanding race/class options would help, I bet. I'd level a draken esper in a heartbeat (right alongside the mordesh esper I desperately want...).	
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We might get more players with steam launch =)
Anyway, personally I like factions, and I like pvp =)
So I would like to keep factions, just give Dominion some race that players find attractive to play (since chuas don't seem to be enough :()
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			They don't even need to remove the barrier, they just need to remove the language thing, and let us group together, in queues for PVE content and raids. 	
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What are the good points against dropping the faction wall? So far I haven't seen anything past "but lore!" (Which again, is Carbine's so they could write in any reason they could think of anyway)
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Guys, guys! Remember the emperor Myrcalus? He might be corrupted by the strain and this info is hidden from the public. And once he knows about Drusera, he decides to travel to planet Nexus and absorbs her with the hope of curing the corruption. Basically, dude thinks he can become god. Anyway, that would lead the Dominion into a civil war. One side is the faithful follower who wants to save their leader, the other side simply thinks he's gone mad. Maybe that's when the Exile decides to support the Domies who want to overthrow the emperor. This is going to be a new story arc dungeon called "The fall of Myrcalus" that, once completed, will allow you to join the third faction called Ex-minion (lol). Then both Domies and Exies can raid together happily ever after ... wards. Heck, they might turn Myrcalus into a raid boss even.
 
Ok, ok, calm down, it's just a joke. LOL.  :P
			
				
	Edited February 19, 2016 by GGGGGGG	
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"They should remove the faction barrier, screw the lore!"
 
And then...
 
"They can't add luminai to the Dominion, think of the lore!"
 
I detest aurin, both the way they look and their lore. More importantly they appeal to some types of players, Dominion to others. But if pop still stays low after Steam then I guess factions will just have to go, painful as that is. I want what's best for the game.
 
I'd never roll a luminai but if Carbine want to broaden the Dominion's appeal they'd help, just like adding blood elves to the Horde made that faction more popular. According to WoW lore the blood elves were supposed to be rare too iirc? Either way, gameplay is always more important than lore, I'm sure the writers can think of a more or less decent excuse to add space elves.	
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The population imbalance will never improve too much because of aurin. Unless, as many have said, a new cutesy race is introduced to the Dominion. It also doesn't help that Chua are the only race that don't have two genders (as far as customization goes), which makes even less sense when you consider the fact that Chua are apparently suppose to be the Aurin equivalent on the Dominion side. Oh, and the Exiles are always being showcased instead of the lower population faction. Cause that makes sense.
 
As much as I like the idea behind the factions, the game would probably be much better if they were trimmed down, allowing both factions to directly communicate with each other with out the need for addons, and having the ability to queue together and whatnot. There could still be some restrictions that retains the 'factions' but giving both the ability to actually paly together would no doubt help everyone.
 
 
Also, why does everyone want Luminai??? They are basically just elves AKA humans with long ears. Why waste the potential for having a new, unique race? A plant-like race like the sylvari would be far more interesting, and would fit the roll of a 'good looking' race to those who don't like the Dominion races ( although Mechari clearly already are the best looking race in the game).
 
 
Just give Chua more options for appearing either male or female.     And give Mechari voices.
			
				
	Edited February 19, 2016 by Mental Surge	
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Faction imbalance is only a problem if the population is low, a game with decent pop don't need a 50/50 red/blue split since there are enough players to do everything even if you play the less popular faction. This game's population has been too low for too long to support two factions, there aren't many Dominion guilds left so some players will choose/switch to Exile even if they want Dominion because they can't find any guilds with a raid schedule that suit them. Steam might fix this but if it doesn't, removing the faction wall is probably for the best.
 
Chua do have two genders as far as customization goes, of the 9 faces 3 have eyelashes if you look closely. They're mad scientists, if chua looked like humans they'd be weedy dorks in lab coats and kind of hard to tell apart at a glance unless they have a moustache/hair tie and both of those customization options are available. The game's writers and artists understood the mad scientist stereotype perfectly, too bad a lot of the players don't. Chua are the aurin counterpart, not equivalent.
 
I agree it's backwards that the more popular faction get more PR.	
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			I don't understand the whole steam thing. I mean cool release it on steam but can someone explain to me how this will hopefully fix population? Legitimate question, maybe I'm not thinking about it right but the one major benefit and the only one I can see is marketing right? I mean Wildstar was marketed pretty damn well for f2p, how many people missed this because it wasn't on steam?	
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Luminai.. every single time we chat about adding a new race, they are present as a choice.. and of course they provide the most heated arguments. :)
 
It might seem like just 'humans with long ears' to some.. but there is a huge following (and tradition) in games behind wanting to play as the elf.. and the Luminai are as close as it gets.
 
I would rather not open up a talk about their lore (make them experimental clones if you want to) but we should mostly focus on that everyone and their grandmother will want to play as one.
 
Can you actually imagine a Dominion side packed full?.. Isn't that the idea?	
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Faction imbalance is only a problem if the population is low, a game with decent pop don't need a 50/50 red/blue split since there are enough players to do everything even if you play the less popular faction. This game's population has been too low for too long to support two factions, there aren't many Dominion guilds left so some players will choose/switch to Exile even if they want Dominion because they can't find any guilds with a raid schedule that suit them. Steam might fix this but if it doesn't, removing the faction wall is probably for the best.
 
Chua do have two genders as far as customization goes, of the 9 faces 3 have eyelashes if you look closely. They're mad scientists, if chua looked like humans they'd be weedy dorks in lab coats and kind of hard to tell apart at a glance unless they have a moustache/hair tie and both of those customization options are available. The game's writers and artists understood the mad scientist stereotype perfectly, too bad a lot of the players don't. Chua are the aurin counterpart, not equivalent.
 
I agree it's backwards that the more popular faction get more PR.
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I don't understand the whole steam thing. I mean cool release it on steam but can someone explain to me how this will hopefully fix population? Legitimate question, maybe I'm not thinking about it right but the one major benefit and the only one I can see is marketing right? I mean Wildstar was marketed pretty damn well for f2p, how many people missed this because it wasn't on steam?
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			No one in this thread has tried to argue that dropping some faction barriers would bring in more players. We suggest it as a QoL improvement for existing players. More people available to do things with = better experience.	
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You can make a chua with one of those three faces and a hair tie, pink for extra effect. You can make a chua with a moustache/beard. Most options are neutral. Like I said, the game's writers and artists understood the mad scientist stereotype perfectly and that is one of the main reasons players pick chua. And as for the voice/underwear arguments, all races currently sound like they have placeholder voices and chua shouldn't be wearing underwear anyway.
 
Even though there are casual, semi-hardcore and hardcore guilds available the lack of guilds is an issue for the semi-hardcore. Semi-hardcore include a wide variety of days/hours and levels of discipline (attendance, experience, mistakes made etc.). I'm not saying removing the faction wall will bring in more players, I'm saying it's not good for a low pop game to divide its playerbase.	
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No one in this thread has tried to argue that dropping some faction barriers would bring in more players. We suggest it as a QoL improvement for existing players. More people available to do things with = better experience.
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Also, why does everyone want Luminai??? They are basically just elves AKA humans with long ears. Why waste the potential for having a new, unique race? A plant-like race like the sylvari would be far more interesting, and would fit the roll of a 'good looking' race to those who don't like the Dominion races ( although Mechari clearly already are the best looking race in the game).
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All Carbine has to do is tweak the lore a bit.
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If by "a bit" you mean completely.
 
I think there are better options than suddenly creating a massive population of what, to the Dominion, are the children of gods.
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			You want to solve the faction imbalance and bring in new players?  Make the Lopp a Dominion only playable race.  Well, it may actually cause a faction imbalance in the other direction.  	
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The Luminai we get to make can be of a "weaker" bloodline, but still have the traditional space elves look as the rest of their brethren. There I made that up in like a minute. I want them to fix my side, rather than play with the hillbilly faction.
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They really should make it so people could group and join guilds crossfaction. Don't have to change the lore or anything else, and it can be roleplayed as mercenaries working for the other side or whatever.
 
As it is, there are 300-400% more players on the exile-side compared to the dominion. Pvp is dead unless you like waiting in que for 5 hours for every match so mixed teams could help that at least a little. Most guilds are halfdead with usually only a few people online except during raidinghours in raidingguilds. And there are no average raidingguilds progressing GA as far as I know, only a few hardcore-guilds farming/progressing DS remains the rest have died because of lack of people, and there's not enough people to form new guilds either for the same reason. Very hard to find a puggroup for GA too, if there is one it's often likely to end up as lfm for an hour and then disband because it couldn't get enough people. Farm DS-trash? Might get 2-3 people if you lfm a few hours. Doing a worldboss? Probably won't be able to gather more than 10-12 people and have to wait for exiles to show up to be able to kill it. And people leave the game or reroll to exile just because of the lack of people, too, making things continuously worse.
 
So as it is, I STRONGLY recommend all new players to play Exile instead of Dominion, unless crossfaction is enabled. At least on EU-servers.	
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			It's bad but it's not THAT bad. PvP queues are 10-15 minutes usually and win/lose is 50/50 despite the Dominion being a shadow of what it was. Guilds aren't progressing properly because power creep has more or less trivialized the current content, just as with vet dungeons GA pugs are looking for "fast runs" and even one of our casual guilds has killed Avatus.	
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Guys, guys! Remember the emperor Myrcalus? He might be corrupted by the strain and this info is hidden from the public. And once he knows about Drusera, he decides to travel to planet Nexus and absorbs her with the hope of curing the corruption. Basically, dude thinks he can become god. Anyway, that would lead the Dominion into a civil war. One side is the faithful follower who wants to save their leader, the other side simply thinks he's gone mad. Maybe that's when the Exile decides to support the Domies who want to overthrow the emperor. This is going to be a new story arc dungeon called "The fall of Myrcalus" that, once completed, will allow you to join the third faction called Ex-minion (lol). Then both Domies and Exies can raid together happily ever after ... wards. Heck, they might turn Myrcalus into a raid boss even.
 
Ok, ok, calm down, it's just a joke. LOL.  :P
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I have no say here, but just to join the conversation: I'd like the language barrier to be removed and allow cross-faction queuing for the appropriate instanced PvE content.
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Cassian Highborns. What you're describing is a Cassian Highborn. Cassian Highborns are from Luminai bloodlines that became too "diluted" to be considered Luminai, and many still have pointy ears or wear jewelry to emulate pointy ears.
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Just going to give this another post since the faction divide is still something I think is really unhealthy for the game. I'm having a very hard time getting any group content done on my dominion character and I hear more and more of players thinking about rerolling exile.
 
At the end of the day a faction divide is completely pointless if the game ends up with only one viable faction because of it!	
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It's bad but it's not THAT bad. PvP queues are 10-15 minutes usually and win/lose is 50/50 despite the Dominion being a shadow of what it was. Guilds aren't progressing properly because power creep has more or less trivialized the current content, just as with vet dungeons GA pugs are looking for "fast runs" and even one of our casual guilds has killed Avatus.
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Exactly. The problems people are pretending are due to population are actually due to role incentivization. PvP queues pop about as fast in W* as they do in SWTOR (Jedi Covenant x Entity). Other queues pop less frequently, not for lack of people queued, but for lack of healers and tanks. Incentivize support roles better and that problem is solved.
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FFXIV made support roles wanted by making Role Wanted: Healer/Tank/DPS in the random queues that gave you a bonus reward for queuing up as one of those. Most of the time it was Tank, with occasional Healer. I played as a tank and loved the instant pops.
 
Don't really have any sort of daily bonus for queuing up other than the goodie bag for queuing for every single vet ( where everyone would vote disband on ProtoAnything )
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			Yus, give me more stuffs. I like stuffs.	
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