Aion - The Tower of Eternity

[Draz]

Originally Posted by farlin

What? WHAT WAS THAT? Sorry I must have misheard, I thought I heard a giant faggot mouthing off at me with something he sure as fuck could never back up, but it must have just been my imagination. Because after I imagined hearing that, I proceeded to imagine how good it would feel to break that persons fucking spinal cord over my knee. I imagined how my next step is usually to rip out one of the persons fucking ribs and jab it straight through their nose into their brain cavity. I imagined pulling that rib back out, and then brainfucking that dead faggot through the new massive hole in his face I created.

But I didn't really hear anything, right? no one would be fucking dumb enough to talk to me like that on here

You think this is a joke? If you want to talk like that to me why dont you come here and say it to my face so that I can answer your insults with a swift fist to your nose. Yea you have a lot to say from 432 miles away from me but I bet if my fists were in reach of your face you would be like a tv stuck on mute with no volume button. So do yourself a favor and keep your mouth shut unless you want to die. Next time you think about saying something like that to me I want you to remember one thing I know the guy that created google maps and I can locate you in the time it took me to type all of this up. Dont want anymore problems? I didnt think so......

Lol my my, Do we have a sandy vagina or what!

[Azrayne]

Originally Posted by Mippo

Yes, and my point is that a lot of that happened because of perceived power. Wasn't Alliance the only faction with fear ward which influenced a lot of raiding guilds decisions to roll alliance? As well, weren't their class differences at release such as one side having Shamans and one side having Paladins. Since release, with classes being added to each side and changes to some of the more powerful racial abilities, hasn't the population shifted closer to an equilibrium? The current ratio is likely closer to a 50/50 split with racial abilities having a small impact.

It's once again an assumption that the majority of people are choosing night elves due to their looks, and not because of the more likely reason, people like Shadowmeld. As I said, it's a players perception of power not which race is actually the most powerful. If people like the ability to stealth, which many people do, Night Elves will continue to be a popular race to pick.

From my understanding, the Balaur are also put in place to tie up any remaining balance issues that might occur on some servers. For example, if one side was outnumbered, the Balaur would help them.

Your problem is you're assuming most people go out of their way to research the exact abilities that each faction has before making their choice. That may be the case for the minority on this board and those like us who follow the game for some time, but for people who just grab it off the shelf, or buy it because their friends are playing, or because they're bored, they have no fucking clue which faction has that one extra ability that might turn the tide, they don't know which faction is more or less popular.

They install the game, get to the character creation screen, say 'hey, this character looks and sounds pretty badass' and click the 'creat' button.

You think the majority of the people who rolled alliance in WoW did so because they knew what Fear Ward was the day of release? Fuck no. They did it because 'hey, these purple elves look much cooler than those ugly hunched over green people, and the little midgets with pink hair are so CUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE.' Again, with WAR, Destruction were far more aesthetically appealing (as well as being far better promoted pre-release and in any associated media), compared to how boring most of the Order characters were, and on top of that it draw the lolpvp crowd who love to play the evil misunderstood characters.

The majority of people don't have a fucking clue which faction has the advantage at the endgame when a new MMO comes out, they make their choice within 5 or 10 minutes of first launching the game, and that decision is based on which faction is the most immediately appealing.

[Skrigg]

Originally Posted by farlin

What? WHAT WAS THAT? Sorry I must have misheard, I thought I heard a giant faggot mouthing off at me with something he sure as fuck could never back up, but it must have just been my imagination. Because after I imagined hearing that, I proceeded to imagine how good it would feel to break that persons fucking spinal cord over my knee.BLAH BLAH BLAH

Wow....that is pretty fucking phenomenal. I wonder how big the vein's in this fucksticks head were as he was typing.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Azrayne

Your problem is you're assuming

The real irony is that fear ward was dwarf priest only (y'know, the -ugly- priest race for alliance) and it was joked that dwarf priests had been removed form the game along dwarf mages because of how rare they were.

[Salshun]

During the previous betas, how closer were they on meeting the "servers will be online by time X"? Just curious if seeing someone in here tonight going "oh shit, they're up!" is a possibility.

[Hatorade]

To apologize for the nerd rage brought down on us. Censored for those at work but full pic here. Imogen Thomas is easily relaxed - What Would Tyler Durden Do

[Zehn - Vhex]

They've been up pretty promptly the last few times. Playable is arguable, but at least it's up.

[Mippo]

Originally Posted by Azrayne

Your problem is you're assuming most people go out of their way to research the exact abilities that each faction has before making their choice. That may be the case for the minority on this board and those like us who follow the game for some time, but for people who just grab it off the shelf, or buy it because their friends are playing, or because they're bored, they have no fucking clue which faction has that one extra ability that might turn the tide, they don't know which faction is more or less popular.

They install the game, get to the character creation screen, say 'hey, this character looks and sounds pretty badass' and click the 'creat' button.

You think the majority of the people who rolled alliance in WoW did so because they knew what Fear Ward was the day of release? Fuck no. They did it because 'hey, these purple elves look much cooler than those ugly hunched over green people, and the little midgets with pink hair are so CUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE.' Again, with WAR, Destruction were far more aesthetically appealing (as well as being far better promoted pre-release and in any associated media), compared to how boring most of the Order characters were, and on top of that it draw the lolpvp crowd who love to play the evil misunderstood characters.

The majority of people don't have a fucking clue which faction has the advantage at the endgame when a new MMO comes out, they make their choice within 5 or 10 minutes of first launching the game, and that decision is based on which faction is the most immediately appealing.

Again, you simply have a misinformed opinion of MMORPG players. When I was in Afterlife every member had an @Afterlife e-mail address and we were sent the site information and traffic on a monthly basis. They stopped doing it, but the number of unique hits simply on our guild's website was astronomical. Considering how many websites and sources of information there are out there, and how many hits those websites receive relative to the number of players it's quite naive to say the typical MMORPG player is uninformed and making decisions based on aesthetics.

My roommate who has played WoW for 2 years and is only level 44 researched his character before making it. He actively visits Thottbot, and he is as casual as they come. It really is just a very naive opinion that a lot of people hold with no data or weight to back it up. For example, how do you explain the huge surge in population of Bright Wizards on release despite all the hype about "Destruction"? You don't think their perceived power had anything to do with it or the "flavor of the month" phenomenon that occurs all the time? You think these people all of a sudden think a flavor of the month class looks way more appealing? Come on, let's not be ignorant here.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Mippo

let's not be ignorant here.

hahaha. Omg ahaha. Aaaaaaahhaahaha. Haaaaaah! omg omg...hoooo. I'm okay...I'm okay...

He actively visits Thottbot

BWAAAHAHAAHAHAAHA....oooooh...oh fuck oh god...oh man.

Oh...oh it hurts. Okay, okay...I've got it together now. I'm good man, I'm good.

Whew.

[Azrayne]

Originally Posted by Mippo

Again, you simply have a misinformed opinion of MMORPG players. When I was in Afterlife every member had an @Afterlife e-mail address and we were sent the site information and traffic on a monthly basis. They stopped doing it, but the number of unique hits simply on our guild's website was astronomical. Considering how many websites and sources of information there are out there, and how many hits those websites receive relative to the number of players it's quite naive to say the typical MMORPG player is uninformed and making decisions based on aesthetics.

My roommate who has played WoW for 2 years and is only level 44 researched his character before making it. He actively visits Thottbot, and he is as casual as they come. It really is just a very naive opinion that a lot of people hold with no data or weight to back it up.

Yes, but that research is all being done after release, after the majority have already purchased the game and made their characters. I'm not saying the majority don't make use of databases and community tools and all those sorts of things, just that as a rule the majority of players don't use those things to determine their original decision of which character they want to play.

For example, how do you explain the huge surge in population of Bright Wizards on release despite all the hype about "Destruction"? You don't think their perceived power had anything to do with it or the "flavor of the month" phenomenon that occurs all the time? You think these people all of a sudden think a flavor of the month class looks way more appealing? Come on, let's not be ignorant here.

Don't be obtuse, just because a portion of the population choose to roll an OP class, leading to a surge in popularity, doesn't mean that the majority of the playerbase does the same.


Anyway I'm not going to argue this any further. The exact same thing happened in the WAR thread. Time after time people would come along proclaiming how overpopulated order was going to be, in the face of all of the evidence to the contrary, purely because they wanted to justify their choice of playing destruction. What happened at release? All of these people rolled destruction, which ended up being overpopulated.

The same thing is happening here, people want to believe that the factions will be equal, either because it will make for a better gaming experience for them or because they want to roll asmodian without being on the overpopulated team, so they ignore all of the evidence to the contrary and all of our previous experience with faction based MMO's. Then when the game comes out and it's a 70/30 A/E split they'll all be on the forums whining at NCSoft to do something about it.

Of course this would be a nonissue if companies would stop being morons and pre-empt this issues when they design a game based around faction pvp, but even with it having been a massive issue in every preceeding game in the genre, they still ignore it until it's too late.

Implement XP bonuses, faction transfers, incentives etc BEFORE the game comes out, not after, so that they factor into peoples initial decisions, instead of waiting for the majority to choose their team then making the changes when everyone is already set into their home server and attached to their character.

[Mippo]

A lot of the "hype" for a game is generated through articles about that game which typically holds some sort of information that would influence a player in terms of the faction / class he chooses. There aren't many people out there purchasing MMORPG's completely blind as to anything the game provides.

Warhammer's population imbalances were expected based on perceived POWER of the races and classes. It's why most order DPS played Bright Wizards, they were viewed as the most powerful.

It's impossible to accurately say what the population balance will be. However, you can say that certain factors affect it and by limiting those factors you can at least have a better chance at obtaining equilibrium. Warhammer had different classes, some of which had huge differences in terms of their power. That is obviously going to lead to a population imbalance. Anyone saying the population imbalance in Warhammer was not going to occur was simply being dumb.

The closer the classes on each faction are, ideally they are identical, the more likely the populations will be balanced. Basically you'll have a small percentage that can slightly swing a faction a few percentage points based on aesthetics, but that's not going to cause any game breaking population imbalances.

The biggest problem is actually the players, and alliances forming prior to the servers being released. When a large number of players decides they want to play together, and picks the same faction on the same server, it screws with the equilibrium. If naturally half of the total game population will pick each faction because the classes are identical, the players can cause population imbalances on specific servers themselves. If 200 people all decide beforehand to go to one side, whereas naturally it would've split 100/100 it's now 200 to one faction. I'm sure it will happen on a few servers, but for the most part most servers will end up relatively balanced as most people are coming in fresh.

Therefore, it's far more likely the total game population of Aion will be close to 50/50 although you will have some servers with slight swings in either direction based on alliances forming and joining specific factions on specific servers.

[khalid]

Originally Posted by Mippo

It's impossible to accurately say what the population balance will be. However, you can say that certain factors affect it and by limiting those factors you can at least have a better chance at obtaining equilibrium. Warhammer had different classes, some of which had huge differences in terms of their power. That is obviously going to lead to a population imbalance. Anyone saying the population imbalance in Warhammer was not going to occur was simply being dumb.

You are right, everyone with any sense knew the population balance was going to be skewed in warhammer. However, this wasn't due to the relative power of the classes. When the game first came out, as Azrayne has said, the average player did not have an idea of the relative power of classes. However, ALOT of people noticed that Destro just looked way cooler than the bland order. Order had no human looking tank for one. Elf males looked less masculine than the females. Dwarves werent that impressive either. Compare that to the sweet looking dark elves and black orcs. It was really no contest for looks/feel.

This argument really doesn't have much point. You are saying that most players spend abunch of time looking up information and figuring out which OP class to play when a game goes live. This is just silly. The average player in WoW doesn't even know about Thottbot, let alone uses it their first day of playing.

edit: However, please dont get me wrong. Class balance does play a role in it, as do guilds that join.Many guilds certainly look up the information on which classes are better than others. Hardcore players like us do also. Your mistake is extrapolating this to the masses right when the game goes live. WAR class balance started bad because of destro/order look and feel imbalance, as well as class balance for example. Same with WoW.

[Draegan]

Most people will go by what looks better in their eyes.

[khalid]

Originally Posted by Azrayne

Implement XP bonuses, faction transfers, incentives etc BEFORE the game comes out, not after, so that they factor into peoples initial decisions, instead of waiting for the majority to choose their team then making the changes when everyone is already set into their home server and attached to their character.

Exactly! Best point about this subject. Games must assume that the populations WILL be imbalanced and have ways ready to fix them before the games go live. If WAR had done this to start with, it would have been a much better game. Waiting until 3/4th of order had quit before deciding to do something was entirely too late.

[kedwyn]

The only sure fire way to balance pops over different servers was to do what Final Fantasy did. You could still move to a maxed out server but actually had to have friends there to buy the in game item to move you.

The Aion beta had closed down one of the servers to new accounts (needed a char on the server or it wouldn't let you roll there) when it was at high pop we'll see if they implement that at release.