Faction Balance Feedback

[wary vault]

Hey everyone, especially the devs —
I wanted to bring up an issue regarding faction balance on Eu. Right now, out of the five factions, only two (Spain and Pirates) really dominate. The other factions either don’t have enough players or tend to struggle because their average skill level/experience is lower.

My suggestion would be to give the stronger factions some kind of drawback, or to buff the underplayed factions/give them certain advantages. This could help spread players more evenly and make the overall gameplay experience more balanced and enjoyable for everyone.

Thanks for reading, and I hope we can see some improvements in the future!

[hasty dome]

Yhh, since factions can kickout other guilds from faction, i definetly see there a way to abuse it to not get drawbacks/get buffs

[brittle sedge]

I think this is EU1 Server🙈

[brittle sedge]

This is a example: a guild needs to prove that it has the ability to earn achievements in order to remain within the faction. Port battles are one such proof, especially as a way to show the top-ranking leaders that the guild can be trusted.

[marble saffron]

Dang. Thats a lot of Spanish ports. There are hardly any on na1

[last bay]

I think they implemented it already
Especially different protection window as losing faction gets longer protection (7d for ex) while winning guild is way less (maybe 24h)

But might need more drastic measure

Such as increased rep needed to switch to military. I believe guilds that try to switch to winning faction should have members with at least 50 rep or maybe more to that faction

[broken fox]

As a NA1 player, it’s very strange seeing Spain all over the map 😂

[broken fox]

That’s not a solution imo. People already join pirates in droves because they don’t want to grind out the 33 rep for the other factions. I don’t know how it looks on other servers but on NA1, pirates are by far the largest faction. Increasing faction rep requirements would make it even harder for non-pirate guilds to recruit new players

[last bay]

prob demerits being pirate not hard enough? 🤷

[broken fox]

I mean... pirates have advantages and disadvantages.

I think the barrier to entry is more or less its own thing though in this context

[last bay]

you cant add entry to pirates or trade union cuz thats the entry point for pirate/trade unions

[broken fox]

I agree with you there. I’m just saying I don’t think it’s a good idea to raise the barrier for entry to the others because that will discourage more from joining. I honestly think it could be lowered to 30 or perhaps even 25

Alternatively, just add more ways to grind rep. I don’t think doing the tavern missions takes that long but to new players it can seem daunting, especially if they don’t know which missions to avoid.

I’d bet there’s a good portion of people who go “screw that I’ll just join pirates”

[last bay]

maybe the better thing is to make ppl that gone pirate is no turning back, hard to back to normal 0 0 0 rep
cuz right now leaving pirate guild resets it
so its like permanent choice and hard to overturn decision that make ppl think twice

[broken fox]

Not sure I follow

You’re suggesting leaving a pirate guild shouldn’t reset faction rep?

Or that leaving a faction guild shouldn’t reset it?

[last bay]

both actually
for military ppl should be prompted if they want to reset all back to 0 assuming they have positive rep with their military, or keep current rep
For pirates no, they have to climb it back up. no reset. meaning that they have to grind over missions again just to return back to normal, make people think twice. plus alert of joining pirate guild "are you sure?" and explain this

[broken fox]

I think “yes” to keeping non-pirate positive rep by choice if they want to, but “no” to pirates having to climb all the way from -100 or whatever.

If pirates don’t get a reset, they’ll be far less likely to leave pirates which will amplify the issue since I doubt most players that join pirates early will have a good grasp of what no reset entails… they’ll just stick to pirate forever while other faction players are able to move around

[last bay]

thats why we should put a notice like "Are you sure?" since it gonna make things harder to leave, as it is kinda permanent decision

true, people tends to not leave pirate then but new ppl will get discouraged joining, because no turning back

right now people can just join pirates and leave afterwards and have no issue, so they can hit as they want, leave as they want, but with no reset, they can't leave as they want to, hence the urgency of the choice

[broken fox]

I get the idea, but I think the effect of discouraging pirates from leaving the faction will outweigh the effect of discouraging them from joining

[weary widget]

Agree for EU1 not sure about other servers, just add a flat negative effect based given to a faction that has 40% or more of the ports

[alpine hinge]

Pirate guilds can only hold 1 port anyway so there is balance there, but the other factions can hold as many as they want, which is really crazy.

[solemn snow]

They really just need to make it just as hard to create a pirate guild as it is to make a faction guild and there wouldn't be so many pirate guilds