I've been thinking recently that dividing the players by faction (Alliance/Horde) is fundamentally a bad idea, exactly because it leads to team imbalances. I'd like to see a system where players (or guilds?) get randomly assigned to Red Team or Blue Team on a week-by-week basis. If it screws the plot justification, so be it -- it's a price I'd be willing to pay for a PvP environment that isn't unbalanced 2:1.
It's interesting to think how you'd plot-justify that sort of mechanic. Maybe the guilds are mercenaries, and every week there's a conflict between two megacorporations, and the guilds for some reason don't get a choice of which to work for?
Maybe players do get a choice of which to work for, but different megacorporations offer different contracts to each player. So if you really want to group with your friends, you can do it but it'll cost you.
(And, if it costs you: is the cost "you get 20% less money from the contract", or "your enemies get special awesome guns because they're outnumbered"?)
The Warhammer live team have already started offering incentives (+20% xp and honor for a week) for people that attempt to rebalance the most egregiously unbalanced servers.
Guild Wars has a nonfactioned PvP setup that is quite good as well, though every single combat zone is instanced. So that pretty much ruins the MMO "feel". Actually, in retrospect, one of their expansions did add factions, but you only work for your faction in one specific PvP venue; most of the games are unfactioned. And of course, even the factioned PvP is instanced, so the only effect of being outnumbered is that you have shorter queue times.
If someone disconnects in 1v1, you shrug your shoulders, chalk it up as a win, and move on.
DotA in its normal form is 5v5, so you have 9 other people to worry about. Generally none of them will feel any strong sense of team loyalty. The odds of one person leaving before the end of the game is quite high, and it can easily skew the rest of the match.
If I had a fixed team of 5 to start with, that would resolve the issue, but I don't.
Comments 9
Reply
Maybe players do get a choice of which to work for, but different megacorporations offer different contracts to each player. So if you really want to group with your friends, you can do it but it'll cost you.
(And, if it costs you: is the cost "you get 20% less money from the contract", or "your enemies get special awesome guns because they're outnumbered"?)
Reply
Guild Wars has a nonfactioned PvP setup that is quite good as well, though every single combat zone is instanced. So that pretty much ruins the MMO "feel". Actually, in retrospect, one of their expansions did add factions, but you only work for your faction in one specific PvP venue; most of the games are unfactioned. And of course, even the factioned PvP is instanced, so the only effect of being outnumbered is that you have shorter queue times.
Reply
I guess the other battlegrounds work better, since they're small enough to have dedicated teams.
Reply
Reply
DotA in its normal form is 5v5, so you have 9 other people to worry about. Generally none of them will feel any strong sense of team loyalty. The odds of one person leaving before the end of the game is quite high, and it can easily skew the rest of the match.
If I had a fixed team of 5 to start with, that would resolve the issue, but I don't.
Reply
Leave a comment