Faction imbalance

Hi Everyone,

I'd like to have a discussion regarding what I consider to be a problem. I hope that everyone will add to this discussion as OBJECTIVELY as possible.

The image below is at the heart of the discussion, which is an imbalance between players that have joined the two Factions.



As you can see, there are more Light than Dark players, a shade over 49% more. That percentage has actually risen from a previous mark of 34%, as to why I cannot explain, but it has occurred.

The game has a few balancing mechanisms, the two most relevant to this are:
1. The CP bonus
2. The recruitment incentive for new players

The CP bonus acts to increase the CPs generated by players in the less active Faction. Players in that Faction may receive up to 45% (at last test) additional CPs, but not to exceed the CP cap for any given difficulty or battle mode.

The recruitment incentive is a bonus that new players receive if they join the Faction that has less active members. (You may recall seeing this when you first joined Battle Conquest, it is a few fragments, equipment pieces and faster research for a few days.)

At first glance, these look like they might solve such an imbalance...but they don't. The CP bonus attempts to address the symptoms (CPs) and not the problem (number of players) and fails for a few reasons, which I can get into if anyone needs a detailed explanation.

The recruitment incentive doesn't work because...well, it hasn't. For whatever reason players are still joining the Light Faction in greater numbers than the Dark Faction even with this mechanism.

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Looking at that image I'd like everyone to think about whether that is the kind of game that they want to play...regardless of Faction, because I think it impacts us all.

As a player, are you OK with outnumbering or being outnumbered on the order of 15 to 10? Do you think that such a difference fosters the best gaming experience for all parties?

Please, put yourself in both parties' shoes and think hard on what you believe to be most fair...knowing that you could have been either party.

Thank you all in advance.

-Ysosad

Below is a synopsis of ideas that players have had regarding how to promote better balance.

Each is followed by some potential issues that may arise...it is not necessarily comprehensive.

After suggestions is a section that addresses concerns that are not related to a specific suggestion. They may question the merit of balance or the relative cost of attaining it.


Suggestions:
Alternative 1 (credit to Pyr): Allow the game to progress as usual. The losing Faction receives a 5% CP bonus in the next war cycle which can exceed CP caps.

Consecutive losses add an additional 5%CP, 3 consecutive losses would yield a 15% CP bonus.

Unanswered Questions:
1. If a Faction that has lost consecutive wars were to finally win. Does the bonus reset to 0%, decrease by 5%, or give the losing Faction a 5% CP bonus?
2. In the event that Factions are roughly equal in activity/players, why should the Faction that tried harder be penalized for the losing Faction's lack of equal/superior effort?

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Alternative 2 (credit to tommarkc): Balance Aether rewards to reduce the incentive of joining the Faction that is trailing AND have the Capital Armies deal more damage to the side with a player advantage, having a preference for Bonus regions when they do so.

Unanswered Questions: Is part of the imbalance truly related to Aether rewards and, if so, is it significant?
Would changing the way Capital Armies have an impact in membership balance?

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Alternative 3 (credit to ysosad): Keep the recruitment bonus that new players are offered for joining a Faction with less active members. Further, if a Faction becomes outnumbered by a great enough differential, only allow new players to join the Faction with less active members until the differential returns to an acceptable imbalance.

Unanswered Questions: Is it fair to force people to either join a certain Faction or not play at all?

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Alternative 3.1 Same as Alternative 3, but players may use 'reset' to join the other Faction. Players are conspicuously informed of this option soon (not to exceed 24 hours, no less than 1 hour) after joining either Faction (E.g. in-game prompt, in-game message, etc.).

Unanswered Questions:Is it fair to force people to join a certain Faction?
Will this make players not want to play at all, not knowing that there were other options when they saw the recruitment screen?Maybe, but I think if that is the case that it is much less than the eventual attrition that the Faction with much less players has will have...and ultimately both sides if imbalance were to go out of control.

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Alternative 4 (credit Metalsiagon): Allow players, for a meaningful price in gems, to transfer their account to the other Faction. Additionally, when there is a player imbalance the Faction with less players with have an "extensive bonus" to join the Faction.

Unanswered Questions: Will this mechanism be allowed to further the imbalance (going from the less active alliance to the one with more)?
Does the recruitment bonus not work well enough because the reward is insufficient, or because it is not meaningful/unimportant to a new player?

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Alternative 5 (credit uflb999): Remove or adjust the CP limits for each battle mode so that players from both Factions can generate more CPs, particularly the top-tier players.

Unanswered Questions: Would this be applicable for either Faction and, if so, would this perhaps not serve to exacerbate the CP difference and not address the membership imbalance directly?

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Alternative 6 (credit to clambam): Add a third Faction that new players can join. Current members can delete their accounts to join the new Faction, receiving gems to help start them out in the new Faction. This amount of gems varies from person to person dependent upon their progress.

Unanswered Questions: Might these lead to a perpetual war (without other changes) where when any Faction gains a slight edge the other two temporarily ally to prevent that Faction from winning?

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Concerns and Answers to Them:

C: This discussion is premature.
A: The discussion is never too premature, it is a discussion. It would be more irresponsible to not have the conversation, have the problem continue/get worse and we have 0 ideas on what to do.

C: Changing this will lead to a stalemate.
A: If the game leads to a indefinitely long stalemate when the players are numerically even then the game has a design flaw somewhere. Basketball has an eventual winner in every game, the game isn't meant to be played 6 on 4 and neither should this one. Allowing a 6 on 4 situation is as bad a design flaw as encouraging it to be that way.

yea all that would be just slowing/making impossible to one fraction winning

for me it would be better if lost fraction would get like 5% more cp on next map and i mean caps too so for example insane would be ~140 max

if thesame fraction will lose twice it would be 10% so 143 per insane while the winning fraction will got still 130 cap than if that losing fraction would win the bonus came back to 5% if it would win 2 more times (2:3) it will be %% to winning-on-start fraction

this way it will be possible to win and the next maps will be more and more equal

{edit}
it has 3 mechanizms the pony walks some time in one hex so it hits more light than dark now (shorter way )

about recruitment the the morality of people sometimes make the difrence and they always join light side ( like myself) there are some pepole on opposite side but mostly teenagers and they mostly go in inactivity after about a month and well there are no many new people


about bonusdes to losing fraction well i tshink they are not ok now i would just throw them out as i wanted that on olympus but well ...

Im torn. On the one hand I welcome that this is not the stalemate it once was, but on the other hand being that severely outnumbered doesnt feel good either.

I wonder why the light side does seem more appealing to the majority of the players who stay and actually contribute CP?

Btw Aether rewards for losing faction are ridiculously low. Even as a top ten contributor of the dark cause, i will only get 45. Not even the crappiest of all aether items would be available to me.

I was just thinking about that some days ago and I agree: there should not be a stalemate, but that imbalance simply isn't fair.

I found an idea for repairing all that, which includes 2 changes:

1. As main reason, I found problem in Aether. Just look at the rewards! Every single player who have 40k+ fame on victorious side gets more Aether than no.4 player on defeated side (50 vs 45). Are you joking?!?
At least add more reasonable changes, give at max 25% lowed rewards to defeated side, not more.

2. The whole thing should go into stalemate of keeping regions, just the same that happened on Olympus before capital fell 1st time (well, reason ther was different). Dark side just camped at regions pretty close to light capital, which made light side without any (good) bonus regions. I guess this could be repaired by adding AI faction which always attack winning side (which side have more regions), clearing % of their CPs on an regions for a greater amounts. AI faction will attack mostly bonus regions.


So reason why people keep joining light side is pretty higher and unballanced Aether rewards, I guess

well yor 2. point would make impossible to win

ohh or maby not that would cose game mor tactical like i we dont need those regions to get to capital so they could bew still dark so with good tactinc the losing fraction could still be attacted by that third one hmm i like that idea very much

Light with 20+ CP = 404
Light with 20+ Fame = 20783

Dark with 20+ CP = 272
Dark with 20+ Fame = 23271


Hades world open for: 10 days


Given this information, I would suggest we wait until at least a month past world open (not every player logs every week, let alone day) and see how numbers compare. I'm sure many other players will be able to smash the 20cp barrier by then, at which point we can work with some useful information.

Remaining objective, I would say that this complaint is a few weeks premature given that CP was reset only 10 days ago.

Pyr wrote:

well yor 2. point would make impossible to win

ohh or maby not that would cose game mor tactical like i we dont need those regions to get to capital so they could bew still dark :Dso with good tactinc the losing fraction could still be attacted by that third one :Dhmm i like that idea very much

Hmm yes by cutting regions you could get over my idea... maybe instead of counting number of regions it might be count only the regions both factions can reach for fight? It will work, I guess.
And my 2nd idea does exactly opposite than making inpossible to win. It will give a bonus enemy against a winning faction. It will surely force winning faction to defend bonus regions which possibly have high upgraded bonuses. Defend it and you will become weaker advancing to the capital, or leave it, leaving gold spent for bonuses and fast march to the capital, so not more bonus regions will be wasted.
How much CPs will that AI drop will be calculated by how good are factions doing.

Dobraine, that poves to me dark side have players who arent fighting much, but just sitting on their fame throne, collecting ressources a few times a day. Whoever is really here to fight and play, and is not specialy tied to a faction, will rather join light side. So instead of counter attack we can more expect even bigger hit.

I believe the cp bonus to either side was reduced in an effort for stalemates not to happen. Secondly lighties have always outnumbered darkies. From when I first started playing which was months and months ago. Numbers doesn't mean a side will win.

Pyr wrote:

yea all that would be just slowing/making impossible to one fraction winning

Something going unchecked can be as bad as too many constraints. I think it is important to consider what needs to be balanced and when such mechanisms come into play.

Pyr wrote:

for me it would be better if lost fraction would get like 5% more cp on next map and i mean caps too so for example insane would be ~140 max

if thesame fraction will lose twice it would be 10% so 143 per insane while the winning fraction will got still 130 cap than if that losing fraction would win the bonus came back to 5% if it would win 2 more times (2:3) it will be %% to winning-on-start fraction

this way it will be possible to win and the next maps will be more and more equal

Say a Faction has a 15% bonus over the caps, what would happen when that Faction finally managed to win? Would it go down to 10%, 0% or would the other Faction get a 5% bonus?

Also, say the winning Faction did so through greater effort, no numerical advantage, is it fair to penalize them for winning on even playing terms?

Pyr wrote:

about bonusdes to losing fraction well i tshink they are not ok now i would just throw them out as i wanted that on olympus but well ...

I actually agree with you on the CP bonus, which might seem odd considering I made this thread.

Dobraine wrote:

Light with 20+ CP = 404
Light with 20+ Fame = 20783

Dark with 20+ CP = 272
Dark with 20+ Fame = 23271


Hades world open for: 10 days


Given this information, I would suggest we wait until at least a month past world open (not every player logs every week, let alone day) and see how numbers compare. I'm sure many other players will be able to smash the 20cp barrier by then, at which point we can work with some useful information.

Remaining objective, I would say that this complaint is a few weeks premature given that CP was reset only 10 days ago.

That fame is for about 40,000 inactive members, it has almost 0 applicability (and is extraordinarily misleading) when talking about a particular point in time, be that in the past, currently or in the future.

There have been matters which have been discussed after even less time, even seen changes implemented within that time. 10 days is 30 cycles, 30 days is 90 cycles. Let's not pretend that this doesn't have any consequences for that period of time, stick a tack in it and just move it along.

I can think of few more important matters to discuss and no reason for why we shouldn't do that, do we have something to lose by doing so?

Nobody is saying that what we discuss should be implemented tomorrow, let's not be afraid of having the conversation or attempt to dissuade people from contributing.

Scaren wrote:

I believe the cp bonus to either side was reduced in an effort for stalemates not to happen. Secondly lighties have always outnumbered darkies. From when I first started playing which was months and months ago. Numbers doesn't mean a side will win.

The CP bonus is a half-measure that does not fully address the problem under the best of conditions, and fails entirely when the factions are drastically different in terms of active populations.

If that has always been the case, then I would contend that it has always been an unaddressed problem.

"Numbers doesn't mean a side will win." - Then I'm sure you won't mind them being even, realizing then that we won't have to worry about whether numbers make a difference or not¹. Then it can be left to the members' drive, persistence, skill, etc.

This is not about who will win, it is about giving both sides an equal opportunity to do so. Allowing one side a 50% player advantage is an incredibly large difference...it is not something that you just shrug off.

^{1: I'm not saying I support the Factions being exactly the same...I'm saying the degree is simply too much and because it is unchecked it could actually get worse.}

So i'm confused on what you are suggesting to balance out the races. If people are more attracted to the light faction and the races of the light faction I don't see an easy solution. The dark side already has the beginner bonus.

Scaren wrote:

So i'm confused on what you are suggesting to balance out the races. If people are more attracted to the light faction and the races of the light faction I don't see an easy solution. The dark side already has the beginner bonus.

The beginner bonus is ineffective, particularly if people disproportionately choose one Faction over the other despite it's existence.

There is at least one "easy" solution, though perhaps controversial:

I. The beginner bonus comes into play when the difference between active players in each Faction is equal to or greater than XX%. However, if this disparity exceeds YY% then recruitment into the more active Faction is suspended until the difference drops below ZZ%. (e.g. at 10% difference the beginner bonus activates, it will cease if it falls below this threshold. If the difference should ever exceed 25%, new players may only join the less active Faction until the difference decreases to 20% or less.)

It would place a cap on membership differential, while also not preventing a difference from existing.

I'd thought of one other possibility as well, but I think that would be equally controversial or worse....and I'm going to withhold that one for the time being.

I'd like there to be an option to filter players of a certain activity level.

Ie.
Last login
- Today
- 2 days.
- 1 week.
- 2 weeks.
- 1 month.

Rather than trying to speculate with assumptions, vague theories and otherwise.

Can the Devs give us a SOLID ACCURATE answer on how many 'active' players that are currently on both sides?

As it stands now, Light does have more players with CP contribution players than Dark. What the actual CP totals for each side are, are anyone's guess.

There should be a mechanism for a transfer of all progress/gear to another side for a cost of gems or at least a way to change races without a loss of building/research progress. High enough to not make it easy, but low enough to be reasonable.

That would probably help balance it out a little, but its not an easy problem to begin with, and would most likely require some form of extensive bonuses to Dark players starting off to attract more people to their side.

I understand the concern here, but isn't the stronger side MEANT to win?

The last thing I want to happen is to go back to the 6-8 month stalemates where noone ever wins.

FYI, I'd be saying this regardless of what faction I was in.

I must say I'm surprised that Dark isn't doing better considering how badly they steam rolled Olympus multiple times over.

Perhaps the 'recruitment' incentive (bonus for choosing a particular side when you first start playing) could be increased a little?

The ratios are unfair, yes. When I first came to Hades, I thought the balance would be nice. Olympus had too many darkies and Erevos had more lighties...turns out I was wrong.

My best suggestion is to take caps off or make them larger, so the skilled players of both factions can kill more and generate more CPs...

XViper wrote:

I understand the concern here, but isn't the stronger side MEANT to win?

stronger by cps? or by numbers? Isn't it better if one side wins by effort and not by doing less than enemy but just having more fun races(eg elves)? (=more people join that faction or switch from worse races)

XViper wrote:

I must say I'm surprised that Dark isn't doing better considering how badly they steam rolled Olympus multiple times over.

RG alone negate whole Olympus CP output.. this actually made me go count cps..

Metalsiagon wrote:

There should be a mechanism for a transfer of all progress/gear to another side for a cost of gems or at least a way to change races without a loss of building/research progress. High enough to not make it easy, but low enough to be reasonable.

in current situation.. Well. Dwarves/elves seem nice, skellies were nerfed, demons don't get any love, orks are more of a myth than anything. Remember bc2? Almost all darks went either light or chose undead. No fun playing the worst race.
This solution would definitely change people numbers, just the result would be even more imbalance.

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Ok it's not accurate but i think clear enough, cutting off the low-cp noise... COMPARING CP OUTPUT.
dark guilds with over 1k cps -> 1433580 total cps + guildless over 1k -> 49459, total 1483039
light guilds with over 1k cps -> 1859803 + guildless over 1k -> 115612, total 1975415 <-- 492k cps more than darks

people in dark who got at least 100 cps: 216, in light: 313
(no matter what's the cutoff, same 50% overpopulation stays..)

average dark player earned 6866 cps, light - 6311 cps. so each dark player earns more.. 555 cps more... with those horribly low cp caps... If caps were raised, it'd be more like 2k cps per person earned on darkside... yet the number of dark earners is way too low to compete.

Imagine, one side earns 500 cps more per person, hundreds of persons... in only 10 days.. It's logical that this side would be winning the map, right?   

If numbers were similar, eg 200 lights 200 darks.. totals would be: 1.373M for darks, 1.262M for lights. So 111k advantage instead of 492k disadvantage like it is now.

We already know who will win, even with darks doing their best. It's not that fun or interesting.

players, devs, for a start, at least acknowledge it's a valid problem... which needs talking about.The 50%+ population imbalance is breaking the game.
Having to do with both sides/races imbalance (which makes new players join light, or older reset to it), and cp system which just doesn't benefit the underpopulated faction. What's the use of cp bonus if we cap either way..?

I believe that most people don't choose their own race(humans) in fantasy games so that might explain most people not playing the human race. I guess elves are appealing since lots of people choose them.

Fyrr I do acknowledge that is a problem. But I also don't see a great solution besides getting more players and increasing the benefits for joining the side with less active players. At the same time it's hard to put in a cp bonus for either side with all the inactives. Maybe if they went off cp rankings.

Fyrr, i agree with your comment about CP caps, if i bring an army that can win an insane on Hades i get the max, that was not the case on Erevos. Not sure why the CP rewards per AP were changed? i thought they were pretty good as they were.

It is a misconception that there were more dark players on Olympus, there were actually more light players there, just the dark players were more active/motivated/whatever. Maybe those Olympus light players are now more motivated?

It does seem strange that things are so unbalanced now, but yes the lower caps mean that the CP bonus has really not much effect, you can hit the CP cap with 5 or 6 units, but you cannot generate more CP if you are already at the cap.

I am not a fan of the CP bonus anyway, it is a stalemate device. Although I don't like losing I can stomach it and prefer not to go back to how it used to be in Erevos before moving to Olympus. So long as there is a solution in the near future to level things out (perhaps after the capital falls).

What that solution is I don't know, but if things don't balance out then perhaps a good solution would be to have a third faction, with new races. Changing race would I suggest be done on the same basis as those who had multiple accounts, you can cash in your current race for gems to help kick start yourself in the new race, but certainly not just be able to transfer accross all upgrades/troops/equipment...else imo there would be far too many people transferring to the new faction....else perhaps putting a cap in place as to how many people could join the new faction.

With 3 factions then there would be more of a self balancing act in place (without stalemate) factions would see the need to fight harder against the stronger of their two enemies, but also see the temptation of crushing the weaker one, if one faction was much too strong as we see now, then the other two could broker a truce and unite to fight against them. This of course would lead to more intrigue, paranoia, backstabbings and double crossings....sounds like lots of fun to me

3rd faction is a nice and fun scenario, but I have great doubts about the workload it would entail to design a balanced third faction with 3 new races equal to those already existing, unless the third faction is only a faction where both of the preexisting factions are allowed to enter, darks and lights alike. An reset function wouldnt be needed just a mechanism to voluntarily change faction to the dark/light peacekeeper faction.
And since we havent even established balance between the 6 races we've already got, a 3rd faction with 3 new races is a nice suggestion for the very distant future.

Claudandus wrote:

3rd faction is a nice and fun scenario, but I have great doubts about the workload it would entail to design a balanced third faction with 3 new races equal to those already existing, unless the third faction is only a faction where both of the preexisting factions are allowed to enter, darks and lights alike. An reset function wouldnt be needed just a mechanism to voluntarily change faction to the dark/light peacekeeper faction.
And since we havent even established balance between the 6 races we've already got, a 3rd faction with 3 new races is a nice suggestion for the very distant future.

A 3rd faction certainly isn't an overnight solution, it would take a lot of developing (although I understand devs have already been working on a 3rd faction?), but it would be a good long term solution, removing the need for CP bonuses and adding much more intrigue and possibilities to the game.

Three possible races:
Skaven
Slann
Dark Elves

Dismantle or remove the guilds(and guild members) that are inactive or have left the game completely. We can't see the forest because of withering trees. The same should be done to all players that hasn't logged on for ages, it will probably make the loading times better and give us and the dev's a better picture which will make it easier to identify faction imbalances now and in the future.

Boboknack wrote:

Dismantle or remove the guilds(and guild members) that are inactive or have left the game completely. We can't see the forest because of withering trees. The same should be done to all players that hasn't logged on for ages, it will probably make the loading times better and give us and the dev's a better picture which will make it easier to identify faction imbalances now and in the future.

It's not as easy, due to the "recent" merger.

This was my reply to Ysosad in-game, modified a bit for forum.


Essentially it all breaks down to: we need more time to verify any kind of 'active' population difference between the two factions because the data is a tad too murky.

There are players, such as Elventheelf who log on periodically to gain a few thousand CPs once in a blue moon...and in ten days it is likely we miss many players who do play the game, however irregularly.

I also don't believe 20CP is a great floor to go for, even in counting active players. I imagine 100 to be a more map impacting number...that seems to work out to be around 1% on a hex. (though I believe 1% is a bit more...but regardless...)

Having the ability to remove players from the equation who haven't been active in three weeks/1 month would be nice when we reach that point.

21 days would be an ideal reference point I imagine...and again at a month. I simply don't want people to get riled up about something that may yet prove to be false, as it strains the factions and developers in ways.

The argument could go either way in time, once we have useful data...and i'm not adverse to change, I'd simply rather verify our information before pressing for it.