134964-faction-balance

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			Last time I checked, everyone and their mother was Exile. Does it look like we're going to see some Dominon reinforcements with the F2P? I don't know what to roll.	
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			Does not look like it's improved. At least on the EU servers. Exiles starting zones are riddled with bunny/cat/whatever-girls. The Dominon starting zones... not so much action there.	
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			Even if Exiles have more people, it doesn't mean you have to roll one. For some content (like PvP) quality > quantity, even if that means waiting 2 more minutes for your queue to pop !I'm making a char on both but mainly gonna play Dominion I think, so far doesn't look like it's "just a barren wasteland".	
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I'll probably have both factions on my character list, however, if Dominion is just a barren wasteland I likely won't play it.
 
I prefer Exile anyways.	
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Both sides have received reinforcements with F2P from what I can tell from brief periods in the game.
 
I doubt the imbalance will change much though.	
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A poll I've had running for a few days now shows the faction balance to be a bit better than people think.
 
http://strawpoll.me/5610160/r
 
55/45 isn't bad.	
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As long as Aurin exist, Exiles will always have larger population.
 
Underdog charm and race people consider very appealing because people are people.
 
Dominion basically need Blood Elf equivalent to tempt Aurin players into fold.	
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I havent played exile yet on NA, but all the dominion zones I've been in (and especially the arkship, obviously) have been packed.
 
Then again, I'd never felt like the faction difference was a problem, I've always been dominion and was able to do my attunement just with pugs during drops 4 and 5. It's possible I just don't care about population as much as other people?
 
Either way, zones are packed from what I can tell NA side	
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Last time I checked, everyone and their mother was Exile. Does it look like we're going to see some Dominon reinforcements with the F2P? I don't know what to roll.
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I think its a lot worse than that poll suggests.
 
You go to any tier 3 pve contract event like SW, Guardians of Grove, Lightspire right after the dailies reset and the difference in the amount of Dominion vs Exile players is pretty obvious.	
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A poll I've had running for a few days now shows the faction balance to be a bit better than people think.
 
http://strawpoll.me/5610160/r
 
55/45 isn't bad.
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to add:
 
I believe on one stream they talked about adding more "cute" customization options for chua. If anything that would help. Chua are already popular but I always see the same like 2 faces when people are trying to make a cute or friendly looking furball. I'm all for more customization so, that'd be cool.	
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Even if Exiles have more people, it doesn't mean you have to roll one.
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			Maybe after this tragedy of a launch is over they can start thinking about adding new races. I hate to say this since I really dislike the anime/furry cliche that is the aurin but evil aurin for the Dominion might be an option they should consider. 	
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Chua polls indicate that 100% of chua roll on Dominion.
 
Non-chua are irrelevant, except as test-subjects.	
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A poll I've had running for a few days now shows the faction balance to be a bit better than people think.
 
http://strawpoll.me/5610160/r
 
55/45 isn't bad.
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Chua polls indicate that 100% of chua roll on Dominion.
 
Non-chua are irrelevant, except as test-subjects.
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			I miss the old C.H.U.A. posts :(  he was awesome .....	
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Poll not take into account that most of population don't go to forum.
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			Doesn't matter. You can't play cause of lags anyways.	
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Poll not take into account that most of population don't go to forum.
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			So is no one going to mention the fact that OP's picture is a tits-selfie? This ain't Facebook. Go home profile picture, you're drunk.	
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Actually, I'm Dominion :3
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			 The trailer did no good to advertise the dominion..  If I had never heard of the game before and saw the trailer the first thing that would pop in my head about wildstar is that its a space western where you beat up robots, shoot demons in the face.. and play kick ball with diabolical rodents.. all while wearing a cool western had and being friends with a cyborg zombie and dating a space bunny chick.. lol 
			
				
	Edited October 1, 2015 by Rebel Angel	
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 The Dominon starting zones... not so much action there.
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It's an interesting problem that goes beyond race options, although the cutesy furry types tend to be overly popular (look at Tera and Elin). One thing WoW has shown is that people like to stack factions. There are servers with 90% horde and servers with 90% alliance, and those are the biggest servers too. Being on the higher population side does come with some advantages usually. The auction house is better, finding a good raid guild is easier, there are more competent PvP players etc.
 
No idea how to solve it outside of forcing players to pick Dominion, which is a terrible idea. Hopefully the few Wildstar servers by sheer chance end up reasonably balanced. Because once players notice an imbalance it tends to start a self sustaining loop of bigger getting bigger and smaller getting smaller.	
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As long as Aurin exist, Exiles will always have larger population.
 
Underdog charm and race people consider very appealing because people are people.
 
Dominion basically need Blood Elf equivalent to tempt Aurin players into fold.
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We had a thread discussing faction balance in this sub-forum which lasted over 20 pages (https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/131563-lets-talk-about-population-exiles-vs-dominions/).
 
The proposed solutions we as a community had gathered were the following:
  1) Increase Dominion attractiveness by introducing: new race/lore changes (seems to have the most support)
  2) (Partially) Break down faction walls
  3) Implement scale-able incentive in the form of a (XP) buff, for characters under level 50 on the faction with the least active population (least popular)
  4) Free one-way faction transfers
 
If you have too much time and read my posts there, you'll see I'm a big advocate of option 3. Option 2 and 1 are not realistic in terms of time and resources. Furthermore I don't think option 1 (as again being proposed in this thread) is a long-term solution. Option 4 is a possible cut in the revenue so hard to sell to management.
 
It is extremely difficult (read: impossible) to perfectly balance a subjective matter as "race/faction attractiveness", on average, there will always be more players joining one faction over the other. Even if this was possible, it would not close the current faction gap.
Introducing a new race is not a scale-able solution, if it succeeds at making the dominion more attractive, this will eventually (could be in 1 month, could be in 3 years) lead to the Dominion active population overtaking the Exile population, then the problem starts again.
 
If we see this is becoming a problem after X months, I believe the correct and easiest way to handle this is a scale-able incentive, most likely in the form of an XP buff.
Here is an example:
 
Day 1 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 65:35 => XP bonus for Dominion characters under level 50:     2%
Day 2 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 60:40 => XP bonus for Dominion characters under level 50:     1%
Day 3 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 56:44 => XP bonus for Dominion characters under level 50: 0,2%
Day 4 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 55:45 => No XP Bonus
Day 5 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 50:50 => No XP Bonus
Day 6 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 40:60 => XP bonus for Exile characters under level 50: 1%
			
				
	Edited October 1, 2015 by Plexieglas	
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I played a few hours yesterday dominion side and saw a single Chua player. I don't think they are that popular.
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 The trailer did no good to advertise the dominion..  If I had never heard of the game before and saw the trailer the first thing that would pop in my head about wildstar is that its a space western where you beat up robots, shoot demons in the face.. and play kick ball with diabolical rodents.. all while wearing a cool western had and being friends with a cyborg zombie and dating a space bunny chick.. lol 
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It's an interesting problem that goes beyond race options, although the cutesy furry types tend to be overly popular (look at Tera and Elin).
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I don't think "underdog" plays any part in it. The majority of people tend to choose either the evil faction or the better looking one, I think this game is somewhat balanced keeping those two seperate. Adding a "blood elf" type character to Dominion would tip the scales, much like it did in WoW.
 
 
I played a few hours yesterday dominion side and saw a single Chua player. I don't think they are that popular.
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i was gonna state that as well.. the forums appear to be a bit better balanced with factions.. unfortunately its not a reflection of the virtual world.
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			I like how the Dominion chars look badass on the trailer, but wished they had more screentime. Here's hoping for a trailer that tells the same story from the perspective of the Dommies that appear until they reach that final confrontation. :P	
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			I watched all the promo vids and looked at web sites before signing up and doing character creation. Just from what I saw, my thoughts were: Dominion=bad/ugly/mean stuck-up a-holes.  Exile=good/cute/nice/sympathetic.  Also, I can't understand how MMO's constantly miss that a majority of their players want "pretty girl" characters. And, all the female gamers I know also constantly are pleading for more dresses, more feminine clothing, etc. GW2 recently put out a wedding dress set, and every actual female on the game instantly bought them, dyed them various colors, and started wearing. Why? Because they need more dresses and feminine clothing. Anyway, back to WS, the character selection just has too few choices for 'good looking' in the classic, human sense. If they want more Dominion players, they need to add some better looking class/race, and soften up their image a bit. Someone above said they could re-vamp the Dominion story from their point of view, and that would be a good idea--something to give them a decent sense of rightness and sympathy from players. Look at how WoW does Hoarde and Alliance--really a perfect example. 	
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I dont agree with that. The amount of Aurin players on the forums are just as prevalent in the forums as they are in the game. 
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