Uncooperative Players and Population Imbalance
Posted by Nuke in Warhammer Age of Reckoning, gaming
I suppose I was being too harsh on Order players on the Bretonna server. It’s just that it can be frustrating when you try to play like a good teammate should, but no one else on your side appears to have the desire or the wisdom to do as well.
Resounding defeat after resounding defeat because Order can’t operate as a team becomes frustrating because teamwork is such an integral part of the W:AR game design.
It’s especially maddening when, in contrast, you often see Destruction players appear to naturally co-operate. To make matters worse, on Bretonnia, Destruction has the superiority in numbers (like on other servers). Numbers coupled with teamwork make a lethal combination.
While Mythic can’t do much about uncooperative players, they can do something about the population imbalance. I hope they can work in some sort of system to ensure more fair game play.
Culling the numbers of players on the numerically superior side until the numbers are more or less even would be too draconian. But they could implement something like boosting abilities, the effects of buffs or perhaps some character stats of the numerically lesser side as long as an imbalance exists.
Another alternative would be the ability to call in temporary reinforcements in the form of NPC units that can make an appearance for a limited amount of time.
While they do have defenders which appear at the objective points after it has been held for the pre-requisite time, they’re limited to patrolling the objective areas and they’re about as smart as a sack of rocks. Perhaps having temporary NPC units which are attached to certain players and can be directed like pets might work.
Whatever the solution, giving balanced bonuses to the smaller faction would at least give them some sort of chance of victory and not be steamrollered by superior numbers over and over and over again.
I’ve been in games where Destruction outnumbered Order by 2 to 1, sometimes even 3 or 4 to 1 on a regular basis. In the long run, it ends up being no fun for Destruction players if there’s no worthy challenge to be found in the battle and it certainly isn’t fun for Order to lose every single time.
Discuss this post in the forum - (1) PostsTags: bretonnia, chaos, destruction, empire, order, population imbalance
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you cant expect much out of a pick up group(pug) i am sure the destro side has the same problems, but i think they win more because of the classes we end up facing (more healers, and more tanks) we really need to get in with a group of people or a guild to be able to be a more co-ordinated team. As for incentives for server balance they do have things in place (heard them discuss it on a podcast) they have xp bonuses they will give to people who join a underpopulated side, they also talk about server caps being side restricted (ie a server can hold 1000 players, order gets 500 and destro gets 500, therefore if destro is maxed it gets queues and if order is low they can get on without the wait) its also kind of good because in theory we wont have to wait long for rvr scenarios to go since there should be alot of destro people waiting to play. man i cant wait to play tommorow!
True, I really should expect the worst from the general casual player population on the servers.
I was invited to a guild called “Freakin’ Awesome Guys” (yeah, the acronym is FAGS). I’ve seen them around on Bretonnia regularly, they’re pretty effective, but I’m not sure I want to stick with them. They do organize raids, have a schedule and use Ventrillo, so they’re more organized than other guilds that have shot me invitations.
I’ll try installing Ventrillo and going on a few raids with them, see what they’re like “in person.”
ive seen those guys too, how are they? man i need to play! i am going to be on in a bit just eating and talking to my girlfriend now, so ill see you if you are on tonight (sat sept 27)
Sorry to have missed you on the 27th. My IM client seems to be disconnecting a lot from Yahoo’s service without my knowledge.
I didn’t see any online messages about you logging in so I guess I might have logged out before you logged in.
i have 3 of your characters on my friend list, and didnt see you on them. i also had my yahoo closed down (need the memory! because my computer is the old) i managed to get to level 12, and had a good play session, ill be back on thursday to play so hopefully we can link up then
I logged in as Radryn and realized that Hidden mode was turned on for him. I used /hide to escape from the spammers during solo play. I’ll have to check the rest of my character accounts and make sure they’re not hidden as well.