The problem: server factions have no incentives for the players to keep them balanced. Resulting in one numerically dominating faction on nearly every server.
The fix: allow the player base to see their servers player faction percentages. Incentivize keeping server factions balanced population wise.
Server-wide bonuses to xp, increased gather amounts whatever you need to do. So the players WANT to keep the factions balanced population wise.
Second, faction population balances to war contributions. If your faction is twice as large as others. Your war contributions are cut to 50% value. And if your outnumbered 2 to 1. Your war contributions are doubled.
That way everybody wants to keep the server balanced within a certain percentage. And you don’t benefit as much from having huge numbers.
Other than that, the only problem is Ego, but that’s incurable. But this would help loads.
I totally agree and it’s weird that AGS hasn’t made any comments about this as far as I can see.
I’m on a pretty well balanced server (4/4/3), with 4 zones in a war state. The game is fun and alive.
They have to do something with faction balance and these transfers, or all servers are going to end up dominated by a singular faction.
I’d love to see something akin to switching factions:
‘You cannot transfer to a realm where your faction is the most popular, without changing factions’.
The idea of giving economic, strategic and maybe even direct PvP combat bonuses to those in minorities is excellent, because you allow for faction balance to be a natural consequence of the game mechanics. It’s much better than forcing or restricting player deicisions. It allows for the players to “choose” whether they like being in the majority (with the benefits that it brings) or in the minority (with the bonuses that it brings) better.
Many good ideas have been suggested in regards to what bonuses specifically, but here’s a few:
Damage reduction (combat), faction standing (stratgic) and XP (both character and trade skill XP - economical) bonuses to players in the faction with many less players online than the other two at a given timee.
The bonuses should scale according to the intensity of the disparity. If the player’s faction only has 5% or less of the online players, the bonuses would be at their maximum. If that percentage raises to, say, 20% or 25%, the bonuses would be lower.
A minimal “good balance” bonus should be given to all players, of all factions, when there is a good proportion of players distributed among the three, say, each having from 30% to 40% of online players. That would ensure there is an incentive to maintain a good balance.