More goodies for those of you looking forward to PotBS! In response to whether or not everyone will go Pirate and what impact that will have, Rick Saada had this to say:
“A couple things. You know how when you pick a server in WoW you get a load indication of how packed the server is? We give you four, one for each nation. So when you pick your server you can see if the Spanish are totally overwhelming on a server, and choose if you want to support the opposition or go elsewhere.
There are quite a few national guilds forming, and the various surveys we’ve seen lead us to believe that Pirate/English will be fairly balanced with French/Spanish a bit behind them. But it’s not going to be 90% pirate by any means.
Also, server victory isn’t just based on number of ports held for a moment. It’s a question of accumulating points over time, where you get more points if you hold more ports. So you can’t just sit on 29 or whatever and try to maintain the status quo.”
I’m a fan of the nation meters. Knowing what you’re getting yourself into is definitely an awesome way for players to determine which nation they want to choose. In the beginning I suppose this will have little use to players since people will be creating characters and likely abandoning them the next day, but in the long run this will definitely be informative. The clarification to port battles and winning a server comes from another question posed to Rick as to whether or not one nation can completely dominate yet not cap that last port to maintain a server dominance. Some pretty good information here.
If they truly want to balance sides they need to implement small sliding benefits such as Planetside did, where a outnumbered side may get 1-3% more health for each character depending on population levels, or gain 1-3% quicker XP.
Players by nature will either join the side they mostly likely think will give the most rewards for the least amount of effort (outnumbering the enemies by 2:1 or more), or based on whatever nation they think is ‘cooler’.
Their estimate of Pirate & English being the top picks seems right on, I’m just wondering how they intend to keep French & Spanish competitive and not horribly out of whack.
That’s not a bad idea…. in fact that’s nearly brilliant. I think that would be a very acceptable solution to population problems if PotBS becomes too lopsided.
Perhaps impose more taxes on the overpopulated nations, increase their prices, or as you said give benefits to the underdogs.
I like it!
Ah the Albion zerg all over again.
They need to develop a way to nip that in the bud early.