Faction imbalance a social issue? Requiring a social solution?

[omeomorfismo]

Sorry, no. It wasn't the "most powerful by very faaar." And as someone who main'd Alliance Priests and Warlocks since vanilla, the Horde (made up mostly of undead) always had an equivalent of "EMFH". They've always had essentially two PVP trinkets against us. Orcs made it a extremely difficult for our rogues. Tauren were the only race that had a stun CC racial, and only the Horde had racials that actually contributed to DPS. Then TBC came around and Blood Elves (the future most popular race) were given an AoE silence. Horde for a very long time were given all the offensive and PVP oriented racials while Alliance consistently got lame defensive racials. That's a fact.

wat? in wotlk having all the best weapon racials wasnt dps gain? rotfl
and no, wotf wasnt an equivalent if emfh, never. to the contrary, it had the same downside of the human's one, but only freed from fear/sleep/charm (instead of everything) for most of their existence....

[Diaphin]

No game developer will ever make 100% of its players 100% happy 100% of the time. This community wants so many conflicting things that the fact that he's able to do anything at all is honestly kind of impressive. Limit Max could have Ion's position and most of this forum would still complain about every fucking change he made (or didn't make).

He keeps barely anyone happy though. Everyone hates the loot changes from Shadowlands, everyone hates the current kiting-focussed design of m+, everyone hates the state of class balance, everyone hates their lazyness with the upcoming raid sets, everyone hates the fact that blizz ditches customization and heritage armors, everyone complains for years about the state of faction imbalance and he does nothing. He actually even keeps making systems which were well received worse.

[Razion]

Yeah and it only took them like what? 10 years to nerf arcane torrent...I'm surprised Shadowmeld didn't get nerfed because guilds liked to use it in mythic+ competitions.

Yeah, Shadowmeld seems a lot more immediately impactful to a meta than Arcane Torrent. They say Arcane Torrent restricted design space, but considering Solar Beam at a lower CD is still in it's probably more a case of pushing Balance representation with that as something unique it brings, or maybe they're hoping Shadowmeld being replicated in other ways (like invis pots, Invis, Vanish, Feign) means a slower adjustment of the meta could mean they can take longer before nerfing it, so maybe they're hoping they can implement that when factions are more equal. Could be the meta shifts at the start of one expansion suddenly, during those points when guilds are most in a position to swap factions, and those kinds of mass migrations I think are most of the problem because if they were to react to that it'd have to be, well, kind of quick right?

But, y'know, if they want to equalize the factions more, I think for the average (casual) player things like a cool new race is the kind of thing that can get more people playing the faction on a more permanent basis. Races are introduced in pairs though, so if Horde for example got something cooler it probably would have the opposite impact - so that's tricky.

[Amunrasonther]

wat? in wotlk having all the best weapon racials wasnt dps gain? rotfl
and no, wotf wasnt an equivalent if emfh, never. to the contrary, it had the same downside of the human's one, but only freed from fear/sleep/charm (instead of everything) for most of their existence....

Weapon racials only helped specific classes within specific specs. They meant nothing to Alliance casters. Blood Fury and Berserking helped ALL of their race's classes and all specs. And you missed the part where I said I mainly played Alliance Priests and Warlocks since vanilla. Will of the Forsaken essentially gave Undead two trinkets to break their fear and charm effects (and also become immune so that it could be used pre-emptively). For Priests, Psychic Scream was their ONLY defensive for so long and it was easily negated.

Alliance didn't get racials that CC or cause damage until what.....BFA?

[huth]

So are we ignoring Goblins on KJ or Dwarfs for even this last raid? Dwarfs got patched, but racials can still impact the competitive environment because of the differing perks and powers they grant (which is why they got patched). Please don't ignore the history of racial relevance in raid tiers, it's important to keep these things in mind when considering why the teams swap to these factions for competitive progress reasons.

It's disengenuous to say it no longer matters when entire guilds will swap servers and all race change to make use of one benefit, like Rocket Jump, or Stoneform, and so on. Each expansion has had different racial metas for different reasons. Consider the impact these choices have on raid teams please.

And you still don't get it. Yes, those existed. They didn't affect the population balance. That's the point.

[Gorsameth]

Cross-faction gameplay should be, exclusively, a gameplay feature.
Never a lore direction.

I don't think the people asking for cross faction play would care 1 bit of the players were independant heroes while the NPC's and story remain Horde vs Alliance.
Heck the devs already did it during Legion, 'we' formed the class halls because the Horde and Alliance didn't want to get along despite the Legion invading.

- - - Updated - - -

And you still don't get it. Yes, those existed. They didn't affect the population balance. That's the point.

wasn't there a there a swing of top guilds switching to Horde for KJ and the snowballs has been rolling since?

Note, not talking about the overall player balance. But the high-end raiding one.

[Argorwal]

I don't think the people asking for cross faction play would care 1 bit of the players were independant heroes while the NPC's and story remain Horde vs Alliance.
Heck the devs already did it during Legion, 'we' formed the class halls because the Horde and Alliance didn't want to get along despite the Legion invading.

- - - Updated - - -

wasn't there a there a swing of top guilds switching to Horde for KJ and the snowballs has been rolling since?

Note, not talking about the overall player balance. But the high-end raiding one.

Pretty sure only 2 guilds changed for KJ because the first round of nerfs removed the reason why it was necessary which was a way for priests to handle the random spawn locations of the orbs in the dark phase.

It was 1 race for 1 class, and I think one of the top ally guilds just didn’t bring a priest.

[Kyriani]

One solution out of it would be to take elven civilizations which are very alliance themed, away from the horde and exclusive to the alliance, and build a new concept on the horde with the blood elves and Nightborne that is more unique, then promoting both sides for what they are.

This is not a solution because it would never happen or even be considered. There is no scenario where Blizzard would remove a race from one faction or force them to switch to the opposite faction. None.

And honestly, there's nothing Blizzard can do in-game story-wise that would fix the issue. Is it a social issue... now, yes. The bulk of people looking to push endgame are already on the Horde now, so those who want to push that content and have access to that pool of people are going to go Horde. No story elements added to the game for either side is going to change that.

And while, yes it is a social issue now, it didn't start as a social issue. I honestly am not sure what Blizzard can do to fix it. Alliance High Elves are not going to fix it. Story elements are not going to fix it. Aesthetic elements are not going to fix it. The only thing that I think has any chance of working, and I do mean a chance, not a guarantee, is giving the Alliance some sort of stupidly unbalanced advantage in endgame content for a long enough time that things shift while also disallowing faction swaps to Horde for a time. And even that can backfire horribly.

If Blizzard did do that, either endgame people would swap en masse, and end up just giving us the same issue in reverse, or they could give Blizz the finger and say nope nope nope, dig in their heels staying where they are comfortably set up, and allowing the issue to remain. Even locking faction transfers to Horde isn't necessarily going to do anything since that wouldn't stop people from just flat out rerolling, and many end game oriented players have no qualms about doing that.

Any suggestion that something be "removed" from the Horde is a non-starter. It isn't going to happen. Blizzard would rather leave things as they are than alienate the Horde player base.

[Advent]

He keeps barely anyone happy though. Everyone hates the loot changes from Shadowlands, everyone hates the current kiting-focussed design of m+, everyone hates the state of class balance, everyone hates their lazyness with the upcoming raid sets, everyone hates the fact that blizz ditches customization and heritage armors, everyone complains for years about the state of faction imbalance and he does nothing. He actually even keeps making systems which were well received worse.

Citation needed on this. People have got to stop saying things like, "Everyone feels like X", because they have no way to quantify that. It's a dishonest argument that can't be reasonably backed up at all.

[Hastis]

Faction imbalance= better perks (most ppl nowdays want to do max from everything) > top guilds switch to horde and many streamers their fans want to play with their "idols" whatever.

[username993720]

I don't think the people asking for cross faction play would care 1 bit of the players were independant heroes while the NPC's and story remain Horde vs Alliance.
Heck the devs already did it during Legion, 'we' formed the class halls because the Horde and Alliance didn't want to get along despite the Legion invading.

I don't remember that part. Were the class halls formed because the lack of Horde and Alliance cooperation?

[callipygoustp]

From the start, Blizzard should have mirrored the racials on each side.

[huth]

And while, yes it is a social issue now, it didn't start as a social issue. I honestly am not sure what Blizzard can do to fix it. Alliance High Elves are not going to fix it. Story elements are not going to fix it. Aesthetic elements are not going to fix it. The only thing that I think has any chance of working, and I do mean a chance, not a guarantee, is giving the Alliance some sort of stupidly unbalanced advantage in endgame content for a long enough time that things shift while also disallowing faction swaps to Horde for a time. And even that can backfire horribly.

Because it is a social issue now, and you need to approach it as such. That it started as different issue isn't important.

[Kyriani]

Because it is a social issue now, and you need to approach it as such. That it started as different issue isn't important.

I'm not so sure. I'm hard pressed to think of a social answer to this social issue, that isn't just removing or fundamentally altering the factions from what they currently are (which I don't see ever happening) or allowing cross-faction grouping (which is something that could happen, but the devs seem reluctant to do).

And if Blizzard did allow cross-faction grouping, what happens if we start seeing the bulk of the groups in group finder advertised as "no alliance pls". That's a real possibility with how tribalistic we real life humans can be.

[huth]

I'm not so sure. I'm hard pressed to think of a social answer to this social issue, that isn't just removing or fundamentally altering the factions from what they currently are (which I don't see ever happening) or allowing cross-faction grouping (which is something that could happen, but the devs seem reluctant to do).

And if Blizzard did allow cross-faction grouping, what happens if we start seeing the bulk of the groups in group finder advertised as "no alliance pls". That's a real possibility with how tribalistic we real life humans can be.

Frankly, i think what they're hinting at here is that cross-faction grouping may be unavoidable.

As for what happens... yeah, well, sure. But that'll only get less if you shove the two together, keeping them seperated definitely won't help.

[Shockzalot]

OP, you realize in SWTOR 90% of the players were Empire....right? Did you even play that game? It doesn't sound like it because Illum consisted of 100 emps camping 10 Pubs in the base.

[Exodeus]

Who wants to play with Gnomes?

[dwarven]

Adding mecha gnomes certainly didn't help anything.

[Magical Mudcrab]

I think it's pretty evident that faction imbalance, while initially a gameplay issue, has formed into a social issue over time. A lot of people seem to be stuck in the mindset that it is necessarily a gameplay issue and point to times when a faction was preferred over another as reasons for the imbalance (i.e.: some have pointed to the dominance of EMFH in WotLK and, more recently, Goblin racial for KJ); however, these events have become less common and the effects of racials less pronounced over time as racials have had most of their power taken away. Currently what you will find is that both factions do have healthy populations, but appear to have different goals, with the Horde appearing to be more goal oriented (i.e.: they easily fill the top 100 Mythic guild slots, and I believe are also the top faction for PvP at the moment). Unfortunately, this dominance acts like a self fulfilling prophecy as players will be attracted to the dominant faction (for their area of interest) which causes the Horde's historical dominance to make it difficult (if not impossible) for the Alliance to meaningfully grow (i.e.: why would a top Mythic guild go Alliance if the majority of players to pull from at that level are Horde?). At the moment there doesn't seem to be an explicit need for a cross-faction solution for the majority of players, but given the status of the Alliance's high-end raiding scene, it may be something worth looking at.

[FossilFree]

Warmode on, factions on. Warmode off, factions off.

Problem solved.