I hope that there will be systems in ESO that will help promote Faction balance. The danger of Faction imbalance in ESO is very predictable and clear.

I think its safe to say that most people (and especially people interested in PvP) will be playing the Ebonheart Pact. Not only the Ebonheart Pact has the awesome warrior-Nord race from Skyrim (wanna take a guess how many people will want to play as Nords because of Dovahkin), but also the Dark Elf race that was always popular as well as Argonians which (along with the Khajiit), are the most unique-looking race. Not only that, but the Ebonheart Pact is the most warlike Alliance, and that always attracts the PvPers.

I dont want to see happen in ESO the same thing that happend with SWTOR. For those of you that never player SWTOR, the Empire faction predictably outnumbered the Republic by a HUGE margin. Bioware failed completely to recongnize the obvious problem and it became a serious issue. In ESO it will be even worse because PvP is open world, so a popular faction in many circumstances can just steamroll everyone else.

Even if there are limits to how many players can participate in battle, PvPers will still pick the Ebonheart Pact as their home because of their warlike nature. It will basically be the old World of Warcraft all over again, where true PvPers used to always pick to play as the warlike Horde while the Alliance would always lose in most Battlegrounds (thankfully its more balanced now because of many things that Blizzard had to do throughout the years to get factions balanced in PvP).

I hope Zenimax takes Faction Balance seriously. Otherwise are are going to end up with something like 5 Ebonheart for every 2 Aldmery and 1 Daggerall. That would be terrible for a game with open world PvP like ESO.

There are serveral things Zenimax could do to promote Faction balance.

I think the most obvious would be to:
1) Give substantial combat bonuses to low population Factions - This way low pop. factions can be competative.
2) Allow Faction change through a quest availiable at early levels - This way everyone can play their favorite Race and still join an under-populated Faction in order to receive the combat bonuses mentioned above.

This two things combined would surely lead to VERY balanced Factions.

I would like to hear what other people think about Faction Balance and how we can preserve it.

Daggerfall has Orcs and Redguards and you say the Pact is the most warlike? PvP is split into smaller "campaigns" so I don't think balance will be a big issue, and if it is I'll fight you all on my own.

Edit: Oh and learn to use the "search" function this has been discuses many times.

Its funny that you mention the Daggerfall because I think we can all agree that would be the LEAST played Faction.

Edit: Faction Balance has NOT been discussed. Stop being a troll.

Source?

We are the "human" faction we will have soldiers.

Here is an unoffical poll
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1436553-what-faction-is-everyone-joining/

but seriously, we dont need a poll to know that Daggerfall will be the least played Faction.


The point is that Factions WILL NOT be balanced. and thats a problem, but there are many simple solutions.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1437633-worried-that-ebonheart-will-just-permanently-own-cyrodil/page__st__120__p__22151552__hl__faction%20balance__fromsearch__1#entry22151552

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1437562-dominating-faction/page__p__22103755__hl__faction%20balance__fromsearch__1#entry22103755

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1433516-faction-restrictions-and-server-types-a-new-poll/page__st__150__p__22011658__hl__faction%20balance__fromsearch__1#entry22011658

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1431475-daggerfall-covenant-wont-be-popular/page__st__30__p__21975290__hl__faction%20balance__fromsearch__1#entry21975290

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1424106-faction-to-faction-speechlocked-territories-poll/page__st__60__p__21922179__hl__faction%20balance__fromsearch__1#entry21922179

Not being a troll and Infact i resent the fact that you name sling for someone telling you how to find the info you look for.

Cryodiil has more in common with Wintergraps then Vanilla WoW's Hillbrad Foothills.

What do I mean?

Winter grasp is technically an open world battleground but it is slightly locked-down.

Cryodiil will have a player limit and may even have a ratio limit for the three factions.

Also, the MegaServer may level things out even further being that they have a deeper pool of players to pick from.

Who knows, I'm honestly not worried of one faction dominating all of Cyrodiil consistently. Also, you'd have to imagine that the two weaker factions may even team up on the stronger faction to break a stalemate. I honestly think the DAoC PvP dynamic still works and why wouldn't it?

Edit: braceyourself.jpg "The WoW Kids, are coming"

From everyting you posted the issue how to balance Factions has only been discussed once. Now go away and let people discuss how they feel is the best way to balance factions.

At first, for a while, sure. But given enough time the underdogs will just get sick and tired of losing and start to roll characters on the winning side which further perpetuates the problem.


Tell that to the Middies on my server cluster who are constantly being dominated by Albion, and have been for years. No, there needs to be more of a system in place than "Let's just hope they team up on the big guy".

I think your overreacting a bit I am only trying to help you find the discussion you seek, opening many threads about a topic been discussed will only result in closing of the thread.

1. Yes that could work.
2. No. Never.

Factions have been discussed to a tiring end and there are already many threads on the topic so please use the search function next time rather than making a whole new pointless thread.

Urrrm.
It will be balanced by campaigns.
/Thread.

Yeah, I think that will probably happen. It is only rational that people will want to play on the winning side. Personally I dont think that self-regulation will work. ESO needs active systems to help with Faction Balance.

Apparently they have only been discussed once before. Dont confuse dis-similar threads. This thread is focused on talking about solutions to the predictable faction imbalance.