There is probably a thread about this but my scan through the search didnt bring up anything.

Based on what is known and speculation how do you think both the classes and the Alliances will be balanced? Classes will be different than other MMOs because of the openess of the system. And from what i have seen as far as the alliances, some factions may have a much bigger population than the other ones, a problem that is currently affecting WvW in GW2.

The megaserver should solve the problem of faction imbalances by allocating more people into the channels they're needed most in to even out the numbers on all sides, as for overall faction numbers across the entire game every poll I saw put Ebonheart at the top, probably because of Skyrim's popularity with everyone, especially newer players to the franchise. I plan on going Ebonheart but that's because I like lizardmens and I'm an Argonian to the bone.

As for classes..who knows. I can't really see any one being at the top considering all the different skill lines that all classes will have access to, we haven't seen enough of any individual classes special skills to really say if there will be an op one or not. Sorceror didn't look particularly devastating in anyway to me, but I'll be maining the class because I am a wizard to the bone next to Argonian.

Yea i understand the megaserver solution but that doesnt account for an issue where 2/3 of the entire game are on one faction. At that point there is no way to correctely allocate people to different channels, the only solution i guess would be people on said faction to be in a constant queue. And knowing people, they would quit the game rather than move to a new faction with a race they dont like, like you said yourself, your arogonian to the bone.

Classes i just think will be much different overall because of less CC building, maybe that will help in the end. At least in an ESO game it will be viable to be a mage.

there will be no ques. the megaserver will just keep making copies of the zone(s) as needed. also cyrodiil won't be affected at all by faction population. as each faction is alloted equal numbers inside each instance of cyrodiil.

Well, I don't think the numbers support Ebonheart Pact being at TOO big of an advantage over the others, or hell even at one at all. Its probably closer to pretty even honestly.

The problem is though, we don't know anything about racial perks or whatever incentives (if any) there is to be any other race, and right now we just have everyone wanting to be the races they favor most. Trust me, since its an MMO you're going to see a ridiculous amount of people choosing their race/faction over perks like racial abilities and stuff, because the majority of MMO players will min/max or take the most op thing possible for their build, and this will change the faction numbers for better or worse. If there turns out to be one racial that shines above all others(human and night elf racials in WoW for example), that faction will be the biggest.

edit: There's also what that guy above me said. The megaserver will handle all of it like I said in my first post, it'll just keep making sure you see pretty even numbers.

I am speaking for hypothetically here.

Lets say there are 2000 players who want to play in Cyrodil right now in PvP. 1000 are ebonheart 600 are aldmeri and 400 are Daggerfall. Now lets say you devide each of these by 50 people per channel. You can see where i am going with this. Eventually it isnt possible to balance it. So my question is if i am understanding this correctly how would they deal with such an event where people like Ebonheart so much that the entire game is incredibly unbalanced. You would basically have at some point 400 people in ebonheart who are fighting in their channel with no challenge or those people are placed into the existing channels giving a slight advantage in each channel.

with a system like this skill balance is more important than class balance. as long as there are no must have skill trees it should all work out. the one good thing about this type of system is even though the most damaging spell comes from tree A if a player uses a combo from tree B and C it can work out better than just straight up using A. i found this to be very fun for awhile in TSW. picking the skills and combining them in my "deck" to come up with some nice damage output while keeping myself alive

Ok balance issues, there are only your basic class skills after that everyone from any alliance can have the same skill set. In truth there will not be a class as such but a skill line. Nightblades will have the stealth skill line or something along those lines, but they will be able to use healing spells, destruction spells heavy armour and two handed swords if they so choose.

Mages could dual wield two daggers laced with poison wearing medium armour.

The tanks or warriors could wear light armour and staffs.

So ZOS will not have to balance a class system like DAoC had to just individual skill lines which will be a lot easier to do seeing that all the alliances can have the same skills.

I am kind of curious how they are going to handle it. At some point there will be CC builds, it happens eventually it will just take longer. Are they going to monitor things like the forums to find out what is being used too much?

As in the majority of computer games I'd expect issues of balance will be either solved by community ethics or remain unsolved. If you play team based FPS games on public servers, there is usually an unwritten law implied, that newer players join the losing/fewer player/handicapped team. Up until the scores or teams seem to be balanced again.

So far 3 way faction works.. Planetside 2 and TSW for example, its self-balancing. Gears are how they can [censored] it up totally, hopefully they take it easy with gears.

Its something what we've debated alot here... it could bring this game down.

Agreed, gear-creep is the worst .

Hmm I actually suggested they should make "retreat" if your side is losing badly, you could retreat from the campaign and strengthen the rest.

I dont think community ethics will help in this game, some people like my freind for example so want to play a Dunmer that hes willing to not play with the rest of us in our friend group who want to play in Daggerfall.

PS2 is a great example, it doenst always work IMO. VS so outnumbers nc and tr on the server we are on that its tough to play and we kind of quit playing.

PS2 worked better than most MMOs. People notice immediately they're gonna losing and quit. 3 factin PVP is hard to predict for a player, thus people keep playing.

It would be great of the lower factions could make temporary peace and gang up on the higher populated faction. In GW2 that im playing now, our server is in second wtihin our tier, but instead of the server in 3rd helping to fight off the guys in first, they attack us so they can try and not be in last place.

Basically there needs to be a reason for a guild to stay in campaign even they know they're getting asskicked.

Fingers crossed Zenimax gets it right.

This, pretty much.

The system is organised into campaigns (which are extremely large instances that last a heck of a long time).

Each campaign will be filtered by the megaserver to make sure factions are evenly balanced (including taking into account things like inactive accounts or players that spend more time that others logged on).

I suppose they can always rely upon tenacity buffs or something but that just doesnt always work out.

Yep.

Actually I think its simplier than I thought... its just how they build each campaign. Player doesnt know if their side has more players than the other two... as long every side wins, who cares.

Lol, its not fun knowing you cant lose. I like knowing i can lose or win just the same. I like knowing i have participated in the demise of my enemy and then going onto the forums to say how much better we are. What i hate though is logging on day after day to know that overall our faction losed constantly because we are outnumbered all the time. I know the megaserver is suppose to take into account a bunch of factors but if the game as one sided as i believe it will be, i just dont see how its going to fairly place the extra people from the one faction and keep it balanced within each campaign.