A Different Slant - Faction Imbalances: Don't Worry
Edited and Published by: Magi
Now I know everyone is just getting off of the high that the Factions Preview Event (FPE) caused, and more than likely you've all read countless numbers of posts and analysis on this and possibly other forums. However, it seems to me that someone ought to be offering some words of assurance to the community, because there is one discussion in particular that I have seen surface in multiple places, and most everyone involved with said discussion is concerned. The foreseen problem I'm referring to, of course, is faction imbalance.
When our own Community Manager, Magi, wrote his first impressions on the new Competitive Missions and Alliance Battles present in the event, he commented on how frustrating it was at times to get into the action at all. Before my guild officially chose Kurzick, I sampled most of the Luxon content, and I have to say I agree with him; I spent 10 minutes at one point trying to get into the Jade Quarry, and while that may not seem like such a long time, everyone knows that after the fifth or sixth time of seeing "no opposing party joined. Restarting countdown," you can become very frustrated.
Many people experienced these kinds of difficulties in the FPE, and have pointed to them as signs that the game upon release will continue to have this problem. I am confident, however, that this will not be the case. I am also confident that by the end of the article you all will feel more at ease on this subject.
First of all, I feel strongly enough in my abilities and intelligence to label myself as average. And as an average person, or in this case an average player, I feel my own actions reflect those of other average players. To put it simply: early on during the event, I noticed that it was harder to get into the Competitive Missions as a Luxon than as a Kurzick, ostensibly because there were more Luxons trying to get in. Therefore, the obvious thing for me to do, if I wanted to experience the content, was to switch sides and try again. This is how I feel most players who just want to play the game will act; they will migrate to the side where they have the better chance at getting to play more quickly.
Unlike in World of Warcraft (which Factions has been compared to extensively as far as faction dynamics are concerned), faction allegiance is not permanent. In fact, the only thing that changing your allied faction seems to have a detrimental effect on - other than making you start your faction farming from scratch - is that you lose whatever town you have control of. Let's not kid ourselves people: very few alliances will ever amass and hold the standing necessary to hold a town. So in that respect very few guilds will be "tied down" to one faction in particular, and this doesn't even consider people who do not belong to a guild, who are free to switch sides as they see fit. This ability to switch sides freely, which is not present in World of Warcraft, is one reason why I feel the factions will never be horrifically unbalanced as far as player numbers are concerned. I do feel that the Luxons will always be slightly more populated than the Kurzicks; there are simply more people who want to be a mecha-pirate on the sunny jade sea than a gothic conservative in a forest.
Secondly, I want to address the discussion concerning the possible emergence of a skill imbalance in the game. As already stated, people like mecha-pirates; they're basically as close as you can come in this game to popular Internet icons (save assassins, aka ninjas). Therefore, many people have predicted that new players will join Luxon, simply because they are more appealing initially. I do believe this is so, however, I don't put as much weight on this point as other people. New players don't stay newbies for very long, given that they are trying to improve and not just riding someone's coattails, getting runs, or buying eBay gold. Once they grow enough as players to come to grips with more advanced game mechanics, there is no reason why they wouldn't just slide right into my proposed vision of faction balance, that is, they'll go ahead switching factions as they see fit. It should also be mentioned that any PvE player worth his salt is going to want to experience ALL of the PvE content, not just that of his original faction. Therefore, there will be constant player swapping and circulation; maybe not everyone will stay on the "other" side, but then again there's no telling how many will.
Returning to the idea of skill imbalance now, I have to say that I'm really not worried about it. I played quite a few Alliance Battles during the event, for both sides in fact, and overall my impression by the end of the weekend was equality. Both factions had good players who knew what they were doing, both factions had new players who ran around using bad skills in worse ways, and judging from the fact that I now hear people on both sides of the fence claiming how overpowered the other side is, I'm going to guess that the truth is somewhere in the middle.
The key here of course is the fact that Alliance Battle teams are anywhere from semi to completely random. This means that, no matter how many top guilds are on one faction, there is no guarantee that you will ever have to face them, and certainly not very often. In a weird twist on my previously stated reason for faction population balance, I believe that the ratio of good players to bad players will be relatively constant for both factions, due to the fact that a faction that wins consistently (over the course of a few days) is bound to attract swarms of players who are getting beaten the worst - namely, the worst players. These poorer players will try to reap the benefits of the winning faction, but in doing so will dilute the pool of truly excellent players, which of course leads to poorer alliance battle teams. And so continues a very nice cycle.
In summary, I feel the two factions will self-balance themselves. The poor players will follow the elite players, making the average skill level of both teams equal, while the vast bulk of the players constantly shift back and forth. This population shift will be the product of too many people trying to get into competitive missions, people who want to experiment with the other side, and the desire to always be on the "best" side. The end result will be two factions who are nearly evenly matched as far as both population and skill are concerned, and when imbalances appear they can correct themselves without spiraling out of control. I hope this analysis of the situation does something to ease your collective minds on the topic, and hopefully I'll see you all happily experiencing Factions' new content.
So what did you think of this article? Did you like it? Did you find it useful? Or maybe you didn't like it at all? Be sure to tell us about it on this thread!
