Teams won't happen, probably ever. If there is a teams server, they need to hard-code an autobalancing formula that will reward exp bonus based on population deficit, probably recalculated sometime between every week to every month (automatically). In other worlds, assume population between factions is 10/30/60. Then faction 1 would get some massive bonus (warning: arbitrary numbers) like 200% bonus exp, faction 2 would get something like 100% bonus exp, and faction 3 would get 0% bonus exp. Again, arbitrary numbers... but some sort of formula that would award exp bonus based on population deficit.
As we can extrapolate from the most recent patch on red, exp bonus absolutely (and directly) correlates to a higher population. I would expect a similar thing on a teams server, both with incentivising new players to roll on the underdog faction as well as encouraging players from the dominant faction(s) who are on the fence to reroll to an underdog/underrepresented team. In addition to this correlation between exp bonus and population growth, there is a natural power gain for a faction that is able to exp faster, since levels directly influence character strength and the ability of that character to further equip/defend itself.
The only problem with something like this, is that you would need a precise way of defining population within each faction. Do you want to take a weighted average of the levels of the active players during peak hours, or what is the best way to capture this value? After you have defined the "population" variable appropriately, you only need to come up with a formula to auto balance.
I personally dislike FFA pvp because in practice it is anything BUT free for all. It also has the inherent disadvantage of not having any (immediately obvious) ways of hard-coding in some sort of population balance mechanism. All that said, I played on SZ during live and that was the least balanced server I have ever played on ... and definitely still the most fun. Teams FTW!
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05-23-2014, 07:23 PM
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