131563-lets-talk-about-population-exiles-vs-dominions-page-2 (2024)

Exactly right. So any incentive would need to:1) Actually drive new players to roll on the faction with the lowest pop2) Not *cupcake* off the opposite faction3) Not *cupcake* off lowest pop faction when the bonus wears offI think a very minor XP bonus fits those categories.The keyword in what I posted earlier is "scaling".Just to make it more clear I'll give a concrete example (keeping in mind all numbers are illustrative, what's important is the concept):Day 1 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 65:35 => XP bonus for Dominion characters under level 50: 2%Day 2 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 60:40 => XP bonus for Dominion characters under level 50: 1%Day 3 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 56:44 => XP bonus for Dominion characters under level 50: 0,2%Day 4 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 55:45 => No XP BonusDay 5 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 50:50 => No XP BonusDay 6 - Faction ratio Exiles:Dominion 40:60 => XP bonus for Exile characters under level 50: 1%

Edited September 15, 2015 by Plexieglas

They actually take it away by sheer virtue of their inclusion, because the Dominion is not making any attempts at all at re-educating the Chua into a civilized and peaceful species (by your definition of 'Dominion peace', anyway). They are a race of murderous hamsters who see it as okay to kill each other as a means of societal and political advancement, that destroy planets for spurious reasons and who have no regards for their safety or that of others. No orderly society would accept them without trying to tone down their sociopathy. There's no indication that the Dominion is doing this. In fact, judging by how every Chua character acts in the game, the Dominion doesn't care as long as they provide them with their industrial expertise. That's the opposite of nuance, I think.The only reason the Chua work conceptually into the Dominion is because they are the cartooniest villains in a collection of cartoon villains.Edit because I missed a word. Oops.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Ildur

You guys are going to get this thread moved again. Do you want to argue lore (every. single. time.) or do you want to talk about ways to balance the population?

There are, but in my opinion this is the one way in which the Lore can contribute to the faction imbalance problems rather than ameliorate them: by pretending that each side is something that it isn't, to attract players who would stay away if the actual situation were presented to them without being painted over, then hope they'll stay as they learn the truth.

Yeah, that's fair.But the fact is that queues not popping is an issue of the population dropping below a critical threshold whether there's an imbalance or not. The population will increase when the game goes F2P, hopefully by a lot, and that will solve the PvE side of it--if it doesn't, they can open up both factions to the same queue and leave PvP flags off inside of the instanced PvE content. If the population doesn't increase when the game goes F2P, the whole conversation is moot.The PvP side of it is more difficult and probably ought to boil down to an owPvP bonus based on the imbalance within a particular zone--not in terms of population but total PvP gear iLevel imbalances, calculated only among those flagged for PvP.

In all fairness, the first sounds way more interesting and involving than the latter.

It's all interesting and involving until Godwin gets a black eye and a mod comes in to shut it down.The latter may at least give practical benefit.

I fail to see how that doesn't provide nuance. The Chua are maniacal (bad), but they provide great technological advancement for the Dominion (good). Again, it's a means to an end for the Dominion. The Chua's actions among themselves does little to disrupt the Dominion's plans, and fact, could very well be essential to the Chua's work in a Darwinian sense that the Dominion would be weakened if they were to interfere with it. Does Dominus see them as productive members of society or just a tool? Again, nuance that could be explored but isn't.That, and Chua are only one part of the picture. They don't single-handedly remove nuance from the Dominion regardless of their mentality.I don't really see that as very cut and dry, but I'll step away from this topic at phandaal's request so this doesn't get moved.

id be cool with that if i could have a cyber punk version of my norn mesmer...and just as tall :DNothing is going to change much for players decision to pick a faction if they can't properly pick a race and class they want to play.. I dont think carbine realizes how much these race/class restrictions are hurting the game. I can quickly make one faction look less appealing over the other because they have to go with the second best race to go with the class they want to play.. if it was open on this front players might be more invited to more tolerable of the factions since they can play what they want.

Edited September 16, 2015 by Rebel Angel

Sylvari style new race for Dominion would be awesome.

I'm still waiting for my Draken Medic. T_T Y u do dis Crabine?!

I just want to point out, that Aurin are not as over populated as some in this thread state... according to Carbine themselves... If my Google-Translate-Fu is accurate.. Youmukon is saying there are more Humans on Entity than Aurin, and about the same on Jabbit..https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/131628-pourquoi-si-peu-de-gens-sur-le-serveur-pvp/?p=1364033Translated relevant bit:For XIV, it is to want to isolate European statistics, but it is a minority of players, if you add North America and you weighted, the result is not the same. The West, not Europe. For WildStar I was curious, I looked on Entity, and there are 15 Humans (Exiles) more than Aurin, so same result as Jabbit Wholesale (again, only characters level 50 and active) .

id be cool with that if i could have a cyber punk version of my norn mesmer...and just as tall :D

Mechari esper for president! Oops... I mean... Give me Mechari esper! If they had given me Mechari esper the following would have happened:

• very unlikely to have played exiles much
• wouldn't have thought combat is snooze easy even in dungeons at times because engi was OP as a mofo in the beginning
• would have heard the awesome holocrypt more because esper freeze and cast is like asking for death and difficulty (esper has been adjusted, we are talking early game, first 3 months)
• maybe I would have stuck with the game more if I never ended up at most bosses duo-ing the last 5% and thinking "this is not that hard"

In conclusion. Give me Mechari esper so I can die more like I did in my first two beta weekends. Dying often was fun! (I'm just having fun, I honestly don't know what they can do for balance tbh. I like the Dominion except for Ilium. That city is designed in the most unfriendly fashion from the perspective of getting stuff done as a player)

Carbino already stated that there are currently no plans to make changes to race/class combos. (To illustrate I believe it was TT who said it requires a lot of work to create the new animations)Moreover, even if we had new possibilities and free faction transfers tomorrow or with F2P, I don't believe it is a solution as the damage is already done. There needs to be an incentive for new players to roll on the less populated faction, and it needs to be cheap and not require a lot of time and resources to implement.

Edited September 16, 2015 by Plexieglas

So I ask again, what "incentives" do you think would be not only fair to the larger faction, but enticing enough to lure both established and new players over?Therein lies the crux of this entire discussion, and it's been woefully short on truly equitable suggestions.If we're not getting new races, racial unlocks or even account-unlocked pets and mounts - what else is going to make it worthwhile to move?I didn't bat an eye at just packing up and sides, even after over a year on Exiles, with four level 50s and tons of money, dyes, mounts and pets - but not everyone is so willing to leave all their hard-earned stuff behind.And we can't just rely on new players to "make the right choice" because no matter what, the Exiles are still going to have loli-catgirls. Regardless of any evidence to the contrary, the Aurin Appeal is something that has to be taken seriously - mostly because there is no similar appeal on the Dominion side.

I'm sorry I should have referred to my earlier post in which I did respond to your initial request for real suggestions, unfortunately it seems these type of posts get quickly burried by posts about lore and class/race combos and lose visibility. I've quoted the post below, please let me know what you think!In addition, the key comment I have on your message is that I believe it is wrong to balance factions by making existing level 50s transfer, we should use NEW players joining the game to balance the factions by giving a small incentive to roll on the faction with the lesser population.

Edited September 16, 2015 by Plexieglas

We are already getting an XP increase with F2P.

Considering that one of their animators left to other projects I could see it an issue.. but then why create new animations when the animated sequences are already in the game for other races.. just port em over and adjust for the rigging so they dont look all goofy.. sure it takes time but this is something that they need to really look into.. we may lose new players because they can't decide on what they want to play. I almost didn't play this game in the beginning because of this very reason had I not found a happy medium which was difficult at first I probably would have stayed playing the game i was before the release of ws. Im sure carbine will eventually come around to tackling this after the game finds its chi in the future. Especially since now they can make a small fortune off of old players swapping out races to what ever they want to play as well as being more attractive to future prospects.

Hi everyone. I'd like to add a perspective to this discussion: the one of the (hopeful) masses of people that will be flooding into Wildstar with the F2P release.A little background on me: I played Wildstar during the early beta and, while I thought it was awesome to see a sci-fi MMO getting prime time and loved the general concept, I wasn't too excited by what I played though and found things too grindy for my taste, so I left before open beta and didn't come back. Fast forward to now and, with a random inclusion to my Humble Bundle from a while back and with the concept of F2P, I decided to register and give things a look over, both before and after the conversion.While I don't represent everyone, I wanted to add the voice of someone who is generally clueless about WS lore and story except for what I've seen in promotional videos and the basic tutorials for both sides. I'm also coming at this from my tendencies to play either cutesy or strong women characters and tend to play the "good" side, so I think that puts me squarely in the camp of "default-exile-aurin". As such, I want to mention what I would like to see that would make me give the Dominion more than a passing glance.(FYI, most of this has been said in one form or another earlier in this thread, but I still wanted to put it into words directly from one of the new folks giving WS a look.)First, I think that the lack of attractive options within the characters of the Dominion. I've noticed that the lack of distinctly "feminine" options are missing from most of the races in the Dominion (There are more bald-head options for one race in the Dominion than for almost all of the Exiles.) Similarly, many of the faces seem to suffer "perma-scowl". Trying to create female Drakan that looked the way I wanted reminded me of trying to create a female troll in WoW: only one face available that wasn't "evil", and then most everyone using the exact same face. While some folks have mentioned adding a new race similar to WoW's Blood Elves would be a step in the right direction (I agree on this as well), even just adding more options to the current races would make it easier for folks to create the characters they want. (I managed to run across an old design schematic for female mechari faces that included almost 20 different variations, but only 7 made it to the final game, most of which don't even have a recognizable face.)And yes, adding female Chua (or at least more female hairstyles/fur colors/voices) would help.Secondly, what's my motivation? Thee's a lot made in the video trailers about what the reason for the Exiles fighting is (run off by the Dominion, found a new home, protecting new home from Dominion) but, from everything I've seen, the only motivation the Dominion seems to have is "chase exiles." I'm never really explained what reason I have to care about why the Dominion is on Nexus, or what the goal is. I'm a sucker for a good story, and I don't mind playing the bad side to get it (Hello, SWTOR's Imperial Agent) but the way I see it, the opening of the game is supposed to sell me on the story the side offers, and the Dominion's story seems to be (based off the new PTR intro area) "We chased Exiles to this planet, and then we want to beat them up and take the planet because reasons! EXCITING PLANET BELOW!!" Is there some impending thing that is happening on the planet? Some new rare resource to fight over the planet for? Some super weapon to turn the tide? By the way, why are we chasing these Exile guys? All of these aren't really addressed in those first crucial levels. If they are explained later on, then that's a shame because I'm not as likely to put up with a bad story if the intro doesn't hook me from the beginning. (I think this could even be added in at creation. They added videos for classes and paths, why not factions?)Thirdly, I do think that having very clear bonuses for factions with less members would be an incentive from a gameplay standpoint. While I may play an Exile, I'm much more likely to also roll a Dominion if there is an advantage due to having less people around. This can be as simple as an XP boost or faction buffs (earn more gold? better success at crafting? HP/Damage buffs bigger/lasting longer). I'm not sure how the PvP system in WS works but, if there are rewards or tokens for PvPing, give more to the side with less people. Make these things adjustable with the population imbalance so that, should aurin take over the world, killing them all on your chua becomes a highly profitable venture. Adding specific faction rewards would also be great (FFXIV has had problems with getting players to play as tanks, so they created exclusive mounts for players that played a certain number of instances as a tank.) Having these benefits listed each time you log in, or listing them at creation would make sure players are aware of the bonus they'll get.Unfortunately, most of these things are not things that can be changed without some major content additions and development time, and definitely not changed prior to F2P launch. However, I put these suggestions there in the hopes that, should WS be planning for content additions/expansion packs in the future, these will be looked into to help level things out, and waiting for these expansions isn't ever too late. (When WoW launched, Horde was always gainfully (4:1 on some servers) outnumbered, but adding Blood Elves evened out the population a lot, even that late into the game).Granted, this is just my opinion, but I always like the underdogs (even if the underdogs are the mighty galactic dominion) and hope things change to give me and mine an incentive to pick the red pill over the blue.TL;DR: Adding more feminine character races/options, better defining the Dominion story to new players, and providing clearly-defined benefits to being in a smaller faction would help convince some players to join the Dominion instead of the Exiles.

Can confirm. My first 50 was a Chua Esper.

My first beta character was Aurin esper. I just really wanted Mechari so I became Mechari engi after 2 betas. It was night and day, not even funny.

I really appreciate your perspective on this subject. I'm assuming the same is true now, but in beta, I noticed a trend of female players tending to flock to the Exile side for similar reasons.Personally, I play Dominion (I just really love Draken) but I can understand why more women would be drawn to Aurin (especially lore-wise).I really want more feminine options for Chua, but some people seem to think that the race would no longer have gender neutrality. Personally, I feel many cosmetic things about them scream blatantly male to me. The worst part of it all is that they gave the player one of the more masculine sounding Chua voices when there's perfectly good examples of more ambiguous NPCs.As for your Dominion motivation quandary, the Dominion revere the Eldan as gods. Nexus was thought to be their homeworld. The Eldan were responsible for forming the Dominion, and they see Nexus as theirs because the Eldan chose them. The Exiles found Nexus first and want to claim it for themselves, hence the conflict.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Spider Bro Jenkins

Yup. Going from Esper to Stalker was like "WHATTTT is this!? I can MOVE while attacking??" It was glorious.

Still think Rift's strategy works the best to solve faction imbalance: cross-faction grouping/guilds/instances/etc.

Cross-faction guilds...pardon me while I vomit at the thought. I don't know if that was a well-timed pregnancy-induced nausea, or what, but yeah...Edited to add: I wouldn't mind if they could queue into dungeons/etc with both factions, that's probably a really good idea that'd help immensely, but not the guilds...that thought just, yeah. Ew. It's the same with cross-faction housing, in my mind. I don't mind if it's a thing, but let me choose if I want Chua in my forest.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Kavi

Add a bonus to XP, Gold, CREDD, Reputation,whatever the case may be for the lower pop side.

I'm all for this, I know several Exiles who want to play with me and my guild but don't want to reroll or are too committed to their bunny girls :P cross faction guilds would be awesome:) My guild's a bounty hunting rp guild, I'm sure we could make it work :D

I happen to really like the concept of the drakens and yes they really do need more attractive options.. especially since this game somewhat heralds their sex appeal.. as in the draken bar sign and the nude pic thats pinned onto the speaker decor item. I think carbine should capitalize a bit more on this with the character creation models.

I think there are many interesting opinions and suggestions here.Too bad the outcome is very similar to this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/39un03/repopulating_the_dominion_post_your_ideas_here/

Let's just hope someone at Carbino has put this issue on their map and intends to tackle it after F2P, untill then I'm afraid the Dominion needs to sit tight!

Sorry about the ~snip~I agree with a lot of what you said. The part I have an issue with is the part I didn't snip. Mainly: Making the proposed buffs 'adjustable', that would be hard to do mainly because taking away incentives because they decide population is balanced would cause a table flipping riot on the forums. People would be outraged. (Take away someones damage buff? Seriously?)Have you seen what the XP rate is going to be with F2P? or bonus weekends for XP?? It's close to being too fast now and during the F2P betas I had to skip huge portions of the game to remain even close to the area levels.I play on a PvE server but:They pick a race to kill and you get bonus gold or whatever? I'm rather appalled by that suggestion and it offends me that ANY race should be bullied. The rest of your post I rather agreed with, particularly as to the reason the Dominion are chasing the Exiles and the fact that the Dominion have pretty awful choices in the 'looks' department.

I don't think there would be table flipping over losing a 1% xp boost while levelling because the factions are balanced.I share your concern about XP rate being too high and levelling too fast through zones, obviously numbers can be (easily?) tweaked to work around this. I still think this is the proper way to balance factions. I invite you to read my post athttps://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/131563-lets-talk-about-population-exiles-vs-dominions/?p=1364593for a concrete example.

Ok, ok, maybe table flipping was a slight exaggeration :Pbut the truth of the matter is that people will rage quit over some pretty insignificant things and taking away something that they 'always had' would be bad.XP 2%Rested bonus??guild XP 8%XP Flasks??Authenticator 2%That's a lot of XP gain (sorry I'm at work could someone please fill in missing data??)

Edited September 17, 2015 by Khandi

The total number you're looking for is here "a metric buttload of XP buffs."On a double XP weekend, with all those buffs in place and then doubled, you could make level 14 without leaving Tremor Ridge, in like ... an hour. Or blow through Wilderun in thirty five minutes.Oh. Wait. Now that I say that out loud it doesn't sound so awful. :lol:

I remember back before The Burning Crusade was released, the Alliance outnumbered the Horde. Blizzard knew that the reason why Alliance was outnumbering the Horde was, because they had the adorable/hot/beautiful races, while the Horde got the animal (tauren) en the monster looking races (Troll/Undead/Orc) . To lure the players to go join the Horde, they gave them a beautiful race and gave the Alliance a tentacle face creature. Everyone that has played from TBC untill now, probaly knows that the Blood Elves made the Horde faction very popular, soo popular that Blood Elves is one of the most played race in the whole game.I do not know how they are going to fix the faction imbalance, but its proven in most mmorpgs, that players like playing a beautiful creature that looks alot like a human. This is why Aurin is soo popular. So I have to agree with alot of the people here that maybe adding the Wildstar version of a Blood Elf might be the cure to fix this imbalance.Unless they add a new race or lock character creation (never going to happen) untill both factions have a 50/50 amount of players (Aion did this when it was released.) I doubt we are going to see a fix. I reckon we should wait untill the F2P has launched and hope that majority of the new players are not Aurin lovers (not going to happen XD.)

Agreed but this is an entire other issue entirely and can "easily" be solved by balancing numbers..For example: Reduce authenticator XP from 2% to 1%, and use the 1% to give scalable extra XP to the faction with the lowest population and for characters below 50.The numbers are indicative, assuming proper tweaking, what do you think of the concept?

Ok so this is an argument that gets mentioned a lot throughout this entire thread, many people seem to support the notion.I'll try to explain why I believe this is the wrong approach into solving population balance, I do however agree it is most likely the original cause of the inbalance.In an IDEAL world, faction-based MMO's like wildstar would launch with factions having equal amount of attractive races and new players making their decisions evenly resulting into an equal balance.In a REALISTIC world, one faction will always be (slightly) more attractive than the other (does not matter if its race, lore, other...)1) Introducing new race(s) is not a long-term solution. Imagine Dominion getting a new amazing race tomorrow, and Exiles getting something stupid. New players rather choose Dominion than Exiles now, however after X amount of time Dominion outnumbers Exiles and the balance drama starts again. Even if the faction "attractiveness" would be balanced 50/50, and new players join each faction equaly, the current gap will still exist.The same logic can be applied to changing lore, allowing additional class/race combos.2) Lock character creation as you mentioned is indeed too disruptive.3) Cross faction PVE/PVP: Is a solution but aside from pissing people off, it is also not viable in terms of cost, resources and development time.

Once again you take away from someone. How is that fair?I really do understand the issue, we've been talking about this for a long, longtime. I've been here since November 2012 and there are plenty of people that have been here even longer.You cannot take away from one and give to another or simply give to one and nothing to the other. Well, actually you could but it sounds totally unfair.Personally, I believe the issue to be the races looks on the Dominion side, coupled with the rather in-your-face 'You must obey' that turns people off. The Exiles have much better looking races. Once you get outside Whitevale there is no real difference in the factions.

Where does this even come from? Such a weird claim to make. :p

I was thinking of 0.1 to 3% XP bonus for characters under level 50 on the less populated faction. Numbers can be tweaked.

I don't think levelling players would make a big deal of losing 1% of bonus XP because suddenly the faction populations are close to even.It is of course important to be transparant about this and state during character creation that the bonus XP you receive for levelling on the less populated faction is not permanent and may shift according to the balance. If this is clearly mentioned I don't see a problem.Regarding the fairness of it all, I bring back the point that balanced factions are in the best interest of everyone.Equal guild recruitment pools, pvp waiting queues, pve groups, ...I don't think the average level 50 Exile waiting 2 hours in queue for a warplot or battleground (=exaggeration) is going to make a big deal out of dominion players under level 50 getting 1% extra XP.For that matter, I don't think anyone would make a big deal out of an opposite faction getting 1% extra XP during levelling, and possibly losing the same XP buff the next day. I could be wrong though and I can't predict how the majority of the playerbase would react. This is just my opinion.

Read the rest of the thread to get an idea;)You are right though it is entirely subjective, some people find Dominion more attractive and others Exiles. This is fine, on average though more players choose for Exiles.There will always be a faction that new players select more on average, even if we would make make changes to races/class combinations/lore/other... aside from taking a lot of development time it would not help us in the long run.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Plexieglas

It's not "better looking" ... the simple, indisputable fact is that loli-catgirls have a HUGE following, not just here, but across Nerd-dom, and as I've said before the crazed furball Chua and hunchbacked/saddlebacked Drakken do not even come close to the appeal that the perfectly-formed, tail-waggling bunny-kids have to that huge segment of people.There will never be parity so long as one side has an exclusive on the cutesy, woodland fauna.And at this point, the only currently-in-Lore races that I can remotely see as being able to equal things out are the Lopp and the Luminai, neither of which are really suitable for player races. Lopp are neutral and don't give two figs about the Dominion - and Luminai are way too rare.

They put Aurin in one basket. Then they added the elf race in that same basket. There is no way to fix this imbalance without being "unfair" to the more populous side. A new race that is much more attractive for Dominion while releasing a neutral average option for exile can be seen as not fair to exiles. Xp or gold bonuses, same thing. Abolishing factions partially to allow PvE cross faction queues will not solve things. Why? Because what you're lacking is guilds and friends to play, is not enough to just have more people to play with that you can't make friends with. A dead server does not get revived by having the ability to cross server queue, seen that before. Similarly unless you make guilds and guild chat cross faction, cross faction queue won't be a large enough incentive. And that part seems to make people throw up. There is no way to make everyone happy. Carbine has to man up and come to a solution that will help and live with the fact that it will probably get them grief and anger from all sides to some degree. Or they can have a very low faction and pvp players can suffer. Cause on a PvE server it's bad enough, but same faction pvp doesn't solve open world pvp dilemmas. We haven't had to deal with those yet cause the pvp server died hard. Either way, like a parent, someone is gonna hate you no matter what you do. Can't win in this one. And it's nobody's fault but Carbine's. Time to man up. I don't see things being amazing and fixed by f2p. I do foresee them trying to do things too late. When people are already 50 and nothing but a new race will tempt them to restart on the other side.

Two years. That's how long it takes to get tired of the Exiles.Trust me. I have irrefutable proof of this. :lol:

To chime in with my relatively short opinion on this (which i thought I posted before, but seems not):IMO, the main hope Dominion has is that the Exile side becomes unstable with the influx of new players, and most of them decide to come to the side that has less lag because of fewer people around.That isn't to say we're screwed if we continue to be low pop, it's actually way better for us now than it was around drop 3 (the dark days). In fact, if you're thinking about checking Dom out but fear we're a ghost town, it's not that at all— we actually have 30-40 players in the WSRP channel on a given night, which is saying a lot. But as far as 'balancing' populations, I believe it's gonna take performance issues to equalize things, not cosmetic or lore changes.Also suspect that over time some Exile players will get bored of space bunnies and start moving over. That could create a snowball effect of renewed interest in the Dominion as a kind of 'unexplored' side of the game. But that might take a long time to happen, if it does.also: Chua have WAY cuter animations than Aurin. You people are nuts. :p

Edited September 17, 2015 by EsperXIV

Chua need more female options :pIdk about getting bored. If Fran is anything to go by, she's played space bunnies for 10+ years without a hope of changing. Hehe

I play both sides :ph34r:

Would definitely continue playing Dominion if they made some sort of Dark Aurin.At this point it looks like I'll pick up Exiles when F2P hits.

I distinctly remember horde still being pretty popular before TBC. Besides, up until that point, you had the paladin and shaman being faction specific, so there's a class issue thrown in there as well. I don't believe race aesthetics alone cause faction imbalances as much as people think they do. Especially when I see things like this:

I would like to see his source, but I don't recall seeing THAT many aurin before Pergo Rowsdower Warhound became a ghost town. As an experiment, I just did a lap around Thayd on the PTR and counted how many players were playing each race. Final count I had was 1 Granok, 5 Mordesh, 6 Humans and 5 Aurin; which seems to hold true to the above quote. I even counted myself among the Aurin because I was playing my Aurin esper, which isn't even my main. Aesthetics are really subjective and I'm not sure you can make a solid case for them influencing faction balance to a great degree.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Ratstomper

The levelling stories from Whitevale on are pretty much identical. The only incentive I can see for doing it is because there are people you want to play with on the opposing faction.I already have a level 50 Dominion toon and have banished one of my other Dominion alts to Warhound to make room for another Exile. Don't see myself switching back to Dominion.

You may not like it, but no amount of XP or bonuses are going to convince people to switch factions. And established imbalances are incredibly hard to counter population-wise, because new people want to play where they have the most opportunities (read: the most people).The most impactful and immediate solution that will also continue to work indefinitely is to remove the faction barrier from content. And guilds need to be included in that, because so much of this game's content completion, culture-wise, revolves around premades. People complete dungeons in premades. You can't queue into raids, so if you want to be able to take advantage of the benefits of cross-faction grouping, you need the structure of being able to be in the same guild.

We Aurin kidding you:)

I think there's more to it than that. Sometimes you just get tired of the same old, sometimes it's nice to feel like you've got a fresh start with a new community (for various reasons). I've definitely swapped between Horde and Alliance in the past, without needing new lore or leveling experiences, or even knowing people. *shrug* Maybe I'm just alone in this.

Naunet i agree with ya 100% on this no amount of buffs can save a declining faction.. no if you want the dominion to have a good and strong following there has to be a hook that players can identify with an a larger scale. If not players will be turned off by the overtones of such a fraction. Lets face it the exiles feel more sci fi than the dominion since they seem to strongly reflect firefly mottra. The dominion need an equally strong hook to get players interested especially if this game is going to grey out what is good and evil between the fractions. No in order to find balance in this current state there needs to be the offering of a 3rd fraction and a reason why some would leave the exiles .. the dominion already has their excuse why some would stop supporting their ventures.

I disagree 100%;)I do believe a small incentive (in the form of a 1% XP levelling bonus or similar) may convince more NEW players (on average) to play on the faction with the lowest population.

Lore-wise this is exactly why I like the Exiles better; I personally find them likable and can identify with them more than the Dominion. They seem more emotionally and ethically defined than the Dominion. It's hard for me to say because there's really no part of the Dominion's raison d'etre that I like and I had just assumed there were people out there who just found it more fun to play the bad guys, or maybe don't actually see them as bad guys (I KNOW these people are out there, I've had debates with them). It's a weird thing to think about, because obviously I don't like them, but that may not be the reason others don't play them as much.Do we have any statistical sources to back up the claim that exiles actually outnumber dominion or is this anecdotal? My main is on Warhound, the population of which is 3 tumbleweeds and a rowsdower, so I don't even get to see exiles.

A third faction would just make the situation even worse. A game with an already small population cannot afford to fracture its effective population even further.1-2% XP gain is not going to be enough to motivate people to play on a faction they perceive to be less populated and thus less able to support their end game interests.

+ It is not a realistic solution. We need to think a little bit in terms of time, resources and development time. 3rd faction, new animations for new race/class combos, new races, all fall in that category.We need a solution that is relatively easy to implement if we ever want to see something before the end of the year. (~I hope)

Edited September 17, 2015 by Plexieglas

A third faction could work just fine. Split the Aurin off into their own faction and everyone else can beat on them. Oh wait, that's still two factions:)

There are sources which rely on some form of evidence, but none of them are absolute in leading to a conclusion. Most often it's [who] comparisons across different locations (generally leveling zones and capital cities), screenshots of major social hubs, number of guilds, activity within guilds and difficulty of recruitment, number of player events, PVP queue times, etc. etc.The evidence is there and it's pretty damn hard to ignore, IMO. I'd also point out that this isn't a case of one side being a bit larger or seemingly more active... I'll jump on Doms in the morning and see maybe 5-10 people in all of Illium. I'll go to Thayd next and see like 30-40. That doesn't correlate to a direct x3, x4, x5 kind of difference in numbers, but overall I would guess the Exiles outnumber Dominion somewhere in the 2:1 realm, maybe a bit less.As far as third faction, no thanks from me. I'd much rather see the faction wall drop with the launch of an expansion, and have the storyline elaborate on either independent groups, splinter factions, or something else that players can join if they really want to 'belong' to a political theme.I'd also ask people who hate the idea on basis of precedent lore to consider, just consider, that with an expansion the devs may have planned all along to change the situation on Nexus. There's this big war raging across the galaxies for however many centuries, yet it's completely not a focus of this game... why? Everyone from both sides have come to this all-important origin site where godlike beings once lived— is it so hard to accept for a moment that maybe we all came here with a purpose? A destiny? And that destiny is to battle something greater than us, to participate in something more epic than this dragged-on, neverending, harmful and (to me) pointless war?Think about it!

Edited September 17, 2015 by EsperXIV

introduce two new races and give the Dominion the cute one.and get rid of the aurin.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Mental Surge

Maybe in some future 'expansion' there could be some changes in the factions attittudes. Like, we could discover some secret Eldan message in Nexus, pointing that the actual Dominon emperor corrupted the faction to serve his own interests and both factions try to stop him, resulting in his death and opening up some space to change the whole 'evil' thing that is associated with Dominon, making them to have just different opinions and plans, instead of just this "we own everything" rage.I'm still trying to learn more about the whole lore of the game, but I think this kind of change would be more accepted than making a whole new faction or neutral race.

As an Exile player, I personally feel bad for the dommies but don't pretend you are the only ones with que issues, most of the time NA exiles from lfg chat groups as well.Now to the Aurin, I am a furry, don' hate. But *cupcake* I don't see how that should completely influence my choice of race. UGH, I really dislike Aurin not because of the race, but because it angers me how so many *cupcake* people play them. IMO they are to small, have boring lore, a sh*t ass queen. and Whatnot, but ZOMG they got dem sexy talls and boobs so I guess that means everyone must play them.\GAAAAAAWD.Clarification: I do not hate people who play Aurin, I just wish less people did.

Edited September 18, 2015 by GorenKillChua

When I started playing it came down to which looked better (to me) Mechari or Mordesh female. I went with Mordesh. After a year I tried the Dominion in the ftp beta. Ended up liking what I saw and rollling two Draken females and a Mechari on live.Carbine could give the Dominion side a "beautiful" race without having to create a new race. I don't know if it would fit into the lore, but they could "find" an enclave of Mordesh that either avoided or were vaccinated against (or genetically resistant to) the contagion. If I understand correctly, the Mordesh were quite beautiful before being afflicted with the contagion. Wasn't the contagion the reason the Mordesh were kicked out of the Dominion? Put in the original, pre-contagion Mordesh and the Dominon is convinced that group cannot get the disease. The animations could stay exactly the same. The Mordesh on the Exile side would stay there because there is no cure (yet) once infected with the contagion. There are humans on both sides so why not Mordesh.I have no idea what to add to the exile side. Maybe a unisex counterpart to the Chua.

Playable freebots. I'd play those so hard! Robots that look like actual robots, not the stylized Mechari stuff!

Why the Aurin hate.. Carbine has said that they're not the most populous race anyway..

I dont think giving them XP or currency bonus will convince the majority of newcomers to join the Dominion, I am new to the game and If I read this forum or found out that the Exiles outnumbered the Dominions by alot, then I would join the faction that would provide me the best chance to enjoy the game. The fact is when you have a big population you will easily be able to find: a guild, people to play around, server wont feel empty, stuff on the marketboard, a group for raiding and PvPing.I can not speak for everyone else, but as a newcomer, after reading this thread, I am most likely to join the Exiles, even though the Dominions are the faction that I was planning on playing. Past experiences have taught me that low population factions are a pain in the ass, you can not do anything and you can not find anyone.If they want to fix this, they need to give Dominion a new race before F2P (not going to happen) or merge the factions toghter and make it so the faction stuff only happens during PvP. Otherwise I see no solution, because people might join for 5% XP bonus, but they will not stay.

we need something like blood elves on Dominion Side.I remember Burning Crusader where everyone suddenly rolled Horde cause the blood elves were there.

I would like to add that the previous Emperor was overthrown because he was horrible. I don't remember the details (if they were shared at all) but it was said he nearly bought the Empire to ruin. I get the feeling the current Emperor is trying to right the wrongs. Though there's some interesting lore stuff surrounding this guy that I won't spoil here. Your comment just reminded me of this. I would like to think the Dominion is trying to turn over a new leaf, but ever time something lore pops up, it just paints the Dominion as even worse and it makes me sad.:(

Nuuuu don't do that! I love Freebots and would have to play an Exile. T_T But seriously, they are my favorite race in the game.

+ There is the post from someone from Carbine who stated Exiles outnumbered Dominion 60 to 40. Without any further details (whether or not it were active accounts, EU/NA, ...)I imagine since this was a while back the balance has shifted more towards Exiles.

Thanks for the interesting feedback! The general opinion in this thread seems to be the way to balance is making new races, class combinations, lore changes, dropping faction walls, ... (check one of my previous posts to read why I think these are not a sustainable solutions)To respond to you Laerune3, you may be right. And there is no way I can know for sure a small XP bonus incentive for new players on Dominion will work. Some people believe it will (I'm one of those) and it seems far more easier to implement than the other suggestions I have read so far.I'd also like to add that the average new (F2P) player does not read forums or subreddits to inform themselves of most populous faction, so I think your own personal example applies to a smaller margin of the playerbase. As you correctly understood, the goal is not to touch level 50 players, guilds, faction transfers, but use new players joining the game to balance factions. If a new player first logs in, sees the Aurin, but then sees a small message that he could get a scaling 1% XP bonus for choosing a Dominion character... => I think most people will think twice, and this small shift is what we need to balance populations slowly, but for the long-term.Just to make it clear for others, we don't need EVERY new player to be convinced by the XP incentive. Some people couldn't care less about an incentive and would roll on the most populated faction regardless, others like the Aurins and join Exiles, other players already have friends on the most populated faction and roll there, this is ALL fine. We just need more new players on AVERAGE to join the lowest populated faction.As mentioned earlier, a percentage based and scaling levelling XP bonus would need to be carefully chosen, low enough to not cause a riot of unfairness and high enough to actually convince enough new players on average to join the least populated faction.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Plexieglas

As it's been pointed out before Luminai would fit perfectly and they're already part of the Dominion. People throw arguments that they're suppose to be rare, but then again same can be said for Blood Elves and pretty much every Exile race.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Brobot

This is funny, because I'm NOT a "furry" in the least bit, and yet I like Aurin as much as I like humans. Humans, being (literally) the only race that I've ever wanted to play when given a choice. For well over 20 years of fantasy games. Their lore and culture is fine, and their Queen having a large potential conflict on her hands, is another thing that makes the Aurin interesting to me.Also, I find it a bit pre-mature to claim that there's a legitimate issue with the population, until we see what F2P will do with the Dominion side's numbers. Which aren't nearly as dire (on Entity at least) as people like to claim. If there's no issue with getting instance groups/PvP queues with the "then" hypothetical growth, then any further complaints are pointless. In addition to being nothing more then a personal projection of laughable bitterness over "you not picking the cool kids faction". Acting as though your choice of faction says something negative about you as a player. Which is the same brand of foolishness that people try to pull with post-BC WoW and the choice of faction.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Dharnell

lulz.....aurin are not what real furry want.................they want chua. they are not animal enough they are just humans with tails and ears stuck on.

Guys, I think it is impossible to balance factions around highly subjective things such as attractiveness of Aurins or Chuas.Even if by some miracle both factions were equally attractive and new players joined both factions equally, the gap in population as it exists today would not be closed.What we need it as scalable solution that increases the incentive to join the faction with the lower population as the active faction's playerbase drops. (comparing to the other.And before you suggest it: Making Dominion races very attractive and scaling them to be more ugly and evil as the population evens out is not realistic.

1-2% is just a suggestion, it is the concept that matters. The% needst to be high enough to offer enough incentive and low enough to not *cupcake* off the other faction.

My guess is confirmation bias.

It's not Aurin hate and it's not any kind of bias. You guys keep coming back around to that, and except for those folks who are obviously just teasing or being funny, no one is "hating" on Aurin.I mentioned (maybe in this thread, maybe a different one, we had a couple going there for a while), that back at just before launch (the Open Beta period, when the servers and forums were PACKED every day), the numbers were something like 62-63% of the entire player base were Aurin. I'm not making that up, and I know there are more than a couple of old timers who were around back then who will back me up. Now, that's obviously changed a bit as the year+ has worn on, but if the first launch was any indication (and there is no reason to believe that the second launch will be any different), then the chances are pretty good that something very, very similar is going to happen.We've already heard from several folks in this thread who are petty much sold on the Exiles for NO REASON other than cosmetics. I promise, once the floodgates open to the legions of credit-cardless teenie-boppers and other no-money-having young players, the ranks of the Exile-Aurin are going to burst at the seams.That's not being hateful or biased. It's flat out experience, from someone who's been here and seen it happen already.You say we're putting "too much emphasis" on cosmetics ... but let me ask you, what's the first thing you do when you start a new game? Make a character, right? And if you know absolutely nothing about this game except the character select screen, how do you choose what to be?By what looks good and/or appeals to your sense of aesthetics. In other words, the cosmetics.

Edited September 18, 2015 by TexArcana

I wouldn't choose based on xp boosts, personally. Looks. Class choices. Principles/lore/concept

Yes, and what I'm saying is that aesthetics are going to vary wildly from person to person. Can you draw very broad assumptions about particular types of players? Maybe, but are those predilections enough to sway faction balance so much that there are twice as many of one side as the other? I'm not convinced.Besides, I remember seeing metric assloads of Chua, and dominion in general, at launch; So much so that I worried this might turn into another horde vs alliance where the horde is wildly more popular than alliance is. I remember Walatiki matches where you'd be fighting 6 rodents on the other team. Chua have a neat hook, the rest of the dominion races... not so much, not as much as the exiles... but it's not so much to do with visual aesthetics as thematic ones, imo.EDIT: typo

Edited September 18, 2015 by Ratstomper

Oh, the Chua were absolutely Number Two most popular back then, and yes, I remember entire Chua PVP teams, just as you do.And absolutely the thematic elements of the Factions are going to play a huge role. The "Firefly" feel of the Exiles is more than enough to lure away everyone who isn't into the loli-catgirls. Heck, that's what brought me in to begin with and kept me there for years.The Dominion just flat out does not have the same combination of alluring races and themes and, at this point, pre-relaunch, there is likely nothing to be done to help things out except a massive PR push by the actual player base to encourage newbies to go Dominion.

I definitely think that's what we're seeing here. The exiles have a clear purpose and goal and are likable. At first glance, the Dominion feels kinda one-dimensional; like their purpose is just to oppose the exiles. They feel more like a foil than a proper faction to me, but again that could be my own bias.EDIT:Question for posterity: Which do you mean brought you in? The firefly theme or the loli-catgirls? :P

Edited September 18, 2015 by Ratstomper

The Firefly theme, mostly. I do have an Aurin character, but I am an Alt-O-Holic, so that should be no shocker.

Whenever I've started a new game in the past, I usually try to look up what trailers/lore I can find about the story/races/etc...but sometimes, I don't feel like it and I just wanna jump in and make a character. That's the point where I spend 4 agonizing hours on the Character Creation screen, trying to decide what I want to play. Most times, if there's a faction choice, I go with what my husband plays because we enjoy playing together...but he doesn't play WildStar. It's not the classes that influence me most, not even the lore (though that's a huge point)...it's how the character looks. If I'm going to "be" this person, I want to be comfortable/happy with their appearance. Not in a sexual/lolicatgirl/omghe'ssohot way (zomg boobs and tails... <_<) but in a purely aesthetic way. Is that race too tall? Too wide? Too short? Are they awesome, lore-wise but their customization options suck hard? (I love love love Mordesh...but they're too tall. I adored gnomes, but they're too tiny. Dwarves are awesome but the females look so egh. Humans are humans are humans. Trolls are wonderful in both genders but females only had one good face. Tauren are awesome in almost every way, but I won't be happy playing a cow person for very long. And on and on...) What if I find that perfect character combo but it ends up that their animations are awful and it ruins it for me? I'm pretty sure a lot of F2P-ers won't bother to look up lore/trailers/etc before making their choices. They'll probably just log in and see what class/race/appearance options they like the look of best.I'm a costume/housing nut, so appearances mean a lot to me in games.For myself and a lot of my friends who feel this same way, an exp/rep/renown/etc bonus to the "losing" faction would mean absolutely nothing. Especially with the already 2% bonus from 2-step, not to mention the coming subscriber bonus, and the flasks and settler bonuses, etc. Not to mention how easy it is to lvl in general, especially on the PTR. We'll play what we feel comfortable playing and that's that.I will admit, if the Dominion had some race that didn't look so goofy to me, or if the human females at least had some better hair options (I never play Male. I'm not one myself and I just feel no connection to any male character I ever make) or maybe if the Draken did, I might get over my bias and try out the Dommie side. Would I like Chua still? Cupcake no. But I'd be willing to give that side a chance...unfortunately, I just can't seem to make one I'm happy with. That's not to say I've not seen some fugly Aurin, Humans, Mordesh, etc. before...there've been plenty of times I've seen another character and wondered how someone could be happy playing that...but that brings back personal opinion again. We've all got different tastes.It's not even just that the Exiles are easier to relate to/lovable. In SWTOR I played Sith side. I did both light side and dark side, and the Republic was so...boring, even though I'm more of a "good guy" at heart. There's just something about the Dominion that I can't quite describe that pushes me away. I'm sure they're not all cartoony evil whackamoles, or sinister, or justs world dominating blowhards. In fact, that's probably not that many of them at all. Every faction has its grey side, and I've seen some Exile NPCs/Players who were quite decidedly not "good" guys. I've tried making Dommies before...but that animation on the character screen...they look so...so snooty. That instantly turns me away all over again.All I can say is maybe add some better customization options or a "better" race, or something. At least some new hairstyles or faces or something.Edited to add: There was a time when I absolutely loathed the Aurin purely because of the RPers who played them...you might remember. The time when all the females (who are supposed to be the leaders of the race, strong-willed, etc. and yes, I know there are always exceptions but when EVERYONE is the exception...) were all stuttering know-nothing teenagers who couldn't speak a word w-w-w-w-w-ithou-ou-out sou-n-n-ding l-l-ike -thiiiiiiis. There were also the Aurin players who fully embraced the Love-everyone-no-matter-what lifestyle, and openly cupcaked on people who dared to RP as not liking the Dominion who...yknow...ruined their home planet and killed their families, but no, we had to love them or get poo'd on because that's how the players wanted it to be.I almost deleted all of my Aurin just because of them. I didn't wanna be at all associated with it.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Kavi

And here I was instantly attracted to the Dominion because of the snootyness :PI vote for more snooty! :D

Edited September 18, 2015 by ZuberiGF

Got a response from TT on today's stream!

Damn 12 pages....I don't really trust population responses like that ^ ever since back in the day when we all had ghost servers and the response we finally got after months of silence was that "it's not as bad as people say it is." Looked around on Rowsdower NA (PvP) and saw 5 people in Illium.... (tumbleweed)EDIT: This isn't me saying I don't trust the Devs, this is me saying I don't trust their tailored responses that someone higher up fed them to feed to us.

Edited September 18, 2015 by henzilla

While I haven't followed WildStar from the very beginning, I was around watching trailers and the like before the first launch. Based on the Exiles and Dominion trailers, I instantly knew that Exiles would be the more popular faction. This was actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to join Dominion. I think my boyfriend tried to argue that some players like intentionally playing the bad guys, but I could just tell by the trailers that Exiles would be the more numerous. Now what made me fall in love with Draken was the Warrior flick. There's a scene with a blonde Draken fighting in shorts, and I just knew I wanted to be a blonde and pink Draken. I didn't really have fun playing as Warrior though so I'm now a Stalker.As for actually playing the Dominion, I get the feeling that our faction is a bit of an afterthought to serve as a antagonist to the main faction. I mean the reason we're fighting on Nexus makes sense, but the 300 or so years spent chasing the Exiles when they clearly wanted to be left alone just seemed ridiculous to me.One thing that I think would really help Dominion is to have more storylines from the perspective of the Lowborn. I mean, we get Toric but that's about it. I would like to learn more about how Lowborn feel and why they wouldn't just run off and join the Exiles.

There's really no shame in not trusting the devs when they give an answer that could mean almost anything.I'm pretty sure they could give us %Exile vs. %Dommie were they inclined to actually let us see the numbers and have an informed discussion.

But that would be actual, statistical, numerical information ... and Lord knows, Crabino has never, ever been forthcoming with any actual, statistical, numerical information.

Edited September 18, 2015 by TexArcana

If I remember correctly, Hycrest Insurrection, the first Exile Adventure, is almost exactly that (at least during one of the paths chosen) and you're helping a bunch of Dominion Farmers escape their homes/fields/soldiers

They did state 60:40 some months ago. I imagine it is more Exiles now.

You know what would REALLY help? And I know I'm just spit-balling, so bear with me:Swapping the level-placement of Auroria and Ellevar. Deradune is fine, because it's not all as bad as Ellevar in terms of "we are the evil bastages of the universe" department. But Ellevar ... holy crap ... you start off with two big, fat "evil/churchy" storylines: the "convert the Lopp to the Church" and the "Our guy just poisoned a whole village of Pell!"Now, I like both just fine, but honestly, the heroic activities we do in Auroria make us feel like we're making a difference, that we're helping the citizens and clearing a path for future growth on Nexus. Also, we get to fight EVIL EXILES who are doing awful things to the lowborn and trying to encroach on our lands. It shows a dark side of the Exiles *and* sets the feeling that maybe we (the Dominion) aren't just a faceless Evil Empire. We're made of individuals, not just Legions.Ellevar is one of the biggest reasons I tried the Dominion way back and never returned. Our faction is responsible for AWFUL things there and I had a tough time eventually plowing through it to get to the better parts, where I felt like a hero, not an impotent witness to genocide.EDIT: Maybe that's why I had an easier time getting through Deradune. You fight Exiles there pretty quickly, and the Mercenary Granok is doing terrible things while you hunt him down. I don't mind the war-starting with the Falkrin nearly as much as the genocide of genuinely friendly Pell. I mean, let's face it, the Falkrin are jerkbags.

Edited September 18, 2015 by TexArcana

I think the chasing the Exiles for 300 years fits the Dominion modus operandi quite well. They don't just dislike sedition, they can't even abide it's existence and feel the need to stomp it out, even if it means spending centuries. If I had to make a case for the Dominion, I would say they're right about pretty much all the facts. The Eldan raised them up, mixed with their genetics to create the Luminai and, if you consider the Eldan as gods, then yeah the Cassians (and rest of the dominion by proxy) are divinely appointed as the rightful rulers of the galaxy. If Carbine doubled down on that kind of idea, you may see more draw to them.I watched the Meet the factions videos again and, while I think both videos fit the humor and even demeanor of the factions quite well, the dominion one didn't really show much... what's the word... impetus(?) on the part of the dominion. For them it's a moral, religious crusade and Malvolio is sitting around drinking wine and the most you see of Cassian soldiers are them walking around in their armor trying their best to look cool.I think some people do just want to play the bad guys to be ironic or just think it's more fun, but I guess that's maybe not enough. Although, I suspect the imbalance isn't as bad as some people claim and will probably continue to do so until I see some solid evidence.

I'd argue that Ellevar is actually better than Deradune in the moral department:- The evil guy who poisons the Pell is immediately brought down to justice.- Your attempts at converting the Lopp don't end up in a fight. You just go there, tell them "Join us!", they tell you "No, thanks." and then you reply "Okay, bye!"- Toric's brother is a fanatic of the Eldan and this fanatism is shown in a bad light: he goes insane while pursuing Augmentation. By contrast, the NPC you help earlier also starts being a fan, but becomes utterly disgusted as you discover what the augmentation process does.- The Ikthians are there to show how much bigger jerks they are.In Deradune, meanwhile, you have the draken piling up skulls of their enemies, a taste of idiotic Dominion diplomacy (even if the Falkrin ARE jerks, that doesn't excuse the Dominion retroactively), and the Chua experimenting with the local wildlife in a way very similar to augmentation (but played for jokes so it's totally fine, I guess).The only bit I recall where the Dominion is doing something good there is in the reservation area, which is similar to the Pell plot in Ellevar.

Except they have the most important fact wrong: the Eldan did not ascend to godhood. This is made very clear across the game's plot* and even on the Vigilant Declaration story, where the Mechari and the Luminai have no idea what the silence after 'Yo, we are gonna become gods. Cya' meant at first. They only concluded it meant what they thought it meant because they failed horribly at logic (or for ulterior motives that aren't specified: specifically, cementing the Luminai as the ruling class because of 'divine rule'. Why they needed to do that is anyone's guess).There's also another problem and is that, even if the Eldan ascended to godhood, does that makeeverything they did BEFORE becoming gods divine retroactively?This is, once more, shown in the game datacube entries to not be the case at all. This is the second biggest and most glaring flaw in the Vigilant Declaration (the first one being the lack of logic). If the Eldan weren't gods before, how can the Luminaibecloser to the gods than anyone else if the Eldan weren't gods at the time the Luminai were created? By all the Vigilant Church nows the Eldan could have ascended into a form of cheese.A third problem arises from the question 'what if there are other gods?'Because if there's more gods out there (and there could be, as the Vigilant Declaration stablishes that a race of people can ascend to godhood somehow) then...doesn't the whole 'we must rule the galaxy because the gods told us' facade kind of crumbles down? What if there are other, bigger gods who ate the Eldan? What is those other gods gave their own mandates to their own races? Who owns the galaxy?No matter how you look at the Dominion, the only way to accept them as the guys 'on the right' is to ironically fail at logic just as Jarec the Vigilant did. I'm not sure how Carbine could fix those problems without having the Dominion enter a reform period where they conclude that the Eldan weren't as peachy as they thought they were.

• Unless you dance around the technicality that the Drusentity is made out of 6 Eldan and that totally counts for 'the Eldan achieved godhood'.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Ildur

It's been way too long since I did that quest chain buuuuuuuut... IIRC you're chasing him because he escaped while being used as bloodsport for a Luminai.Then there are one or more datacubes sprinkled around discussing how the Luminai aren't entirely mentally stable.

Too deep for me. I wanted to play robots with t&a. I find good guys boring, firefly boring and stuffy empires hilarious. Also sleeping in dusty tents isn't my speed.Edit. Also everything is character bound. So I can't ever take any alts seriously with all the dyes and mounts and gear on Daemona. Just no.

Edited September 18, 2015 by DeaHamlet

Nah. You're chasing the Granok because he serves as a scapegoat. The whole situation was engineered by Agent Lex, who killed the Luminai that was supposed to hunt down the Granok in the bloodsport you mention. Mercenary Arkos (the Granok in question) gets blamed for the murder and eventually killed by Lex, to hide his tracks. All in all it was an ICI operation, done to get rid of a traitor. The Luminai in question was a member of house Chaul, the house of the last Emperor (who was suspected of murdering his predecessor and was eventually dethroned rather violently by the current Emperor).

• Gasp* Those are fighting words, Ma'am! Fighting words!

Edited September 18, 2015 by Wylf

Am I gonna end up being some bodyless Mechari head on a stick now? LolIt's true. I was bored. I like Andromeda, dark matter, killjoy, star trek, red dwarf... On and on with the sci fi series. Firefly just didn't happen for me. Meh meh and more meh.

Well, to each their own, I suppose. Although this...

... would look great on my housing plot.

With the mention of the Dominion being engineered more as a foil to the Exiles, I feel more and more like the Dominion is going to see a rebellion story line, and I'm hoping it's sooner than later that it happens.I've mentioned it before, but I feel pretty confident in it now: Nexus Dommies are going to realize how big screw-ups the Eldan were, and the rest of the Dominion is going to scream heresy and things'll go to sh*t from there. Nexus Dommies can totally still be snooty, it's kind of in their blood, but it will give them the opportunity to become good guys in their own right. Maybe the anti-heroes of the story, because honestly, anti-heroes have always been one of my favorite tropes. See: pre-Cata Sylvanas. I feel like this would fix the major problem people (like me) have with rolling Dominion.

This thread is somehow still going.

I'm not saying I agree with it and Idid add a caveat about how "IF you believe the eldan are gods". They were certainly powerful and showed quite a bit more prowess than other beings in the galaxy, but whether or not they were actually gods is irrelevant to the discussion. The Dominion don't have to beright, they just have to becompelling.

So I made a Mechari engineer and she doesn't give a danm about eldans or any other dead people, she is all about punk rock and robots and you can't tell me otherwise. And with that I fixed all my problems with the dominion. RP is the answer to EVERYTHING

Answer by @Youmukon (French Community Manager) about this situation on the French forum:

They will wait the F2P to see if there is a problem or not about population.If there is a problem, they will do something (too late?). For them, population should change after F2P...Other thing, he said that the problem is not Aurins because for example there are only 10 more Aurins than Human exiles, not 10% but only 10 characters (active players) in EU Jabbit. No number about Aurins vs Chua or Exiles vs Dominions:/For the moment no merge of servers between PvP and PvE, F2P should grows up the population inside this 2 servers (well we will see...)The most important is not to have a perfect balance between populations but enough players in each factions.Source (in french):https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/131628-pourquoi-si-peu-de-gens-sur-le-serveur-pvp/

Edited September 19, 2015 by Cataract

I already cited it... for all the 'Carbine doesn't say anything about population' complaints ... the response showing that all the "Aurin outnumber everyone!" complaints are bogus.. was completely ignored... facts will not be factored into the ongoing "Blame Carbine" discussion apparently.Even when Carbine flat out says the population imbalance isn't as bad as the doomsayers claim (see someone asking TimeTravel earlier in this thead).. it's ignored as "Can't trust Carbine! They're lying about it!"So, why would they continue to respond/acknowledge the perceived issue.. if when they do... they're ignored or brushed off as lying to us?

Edited September 19, 2015 by BigDamnHeroes

The order of events is:Draken set up Bloodfire Village in DeraduneGranok lead by said mercenary make landfall in Deradune with the intention of invadingPlayer character heads off attack and captures mercenaryAgent Lex suggests to Clanlord Makaza that mercenary be used as prey for a visiting Lumenai's hunting tripMercenary escapes, seemingly with help, kills LumenaiPlayer character hunts down Granok and captures him. Agent Lex kills him. Tells player character this was a setup to kill the Lumenai who was an ally of a rogue cassian House.In other words, If we're talking about justifications, the Granok DID invade Deradune, but Agent Lex decided to use his capture to further his own ends and clean up an internal Dominion matter. Honestly its probably my favorite storyline in the entire game XD

I see no reason to say they're lying, but I also think they've far from provided enough information to disprove people.TimeTravel says the faction divide is "not as bad" as the forum thinks, but that is nebulous and vague. What exactly is "not as bad?" If the forum thinks the divide is 80/20 (which I've seen suggested in the past), 70/30 is "not as bad", but that doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. There is potentially a very wide gulf between "not as bad" and "not bad".And the data Youmukon provided is very specious. It's only level 50 players who are only active and only play on Jabbit. Why only level 50? The faction divide isn't a problem only at that level. Why only active players? The faction divide could've been a contributing factor to many players leaving. Why only Jabbit? The problem doesn't just exist there. He gives a sample size, but it's a sample size that only looks at a very small piece of the picture.But, more than that, I think Youmukon is actually providing more credence to the Aurin problem, not less. If you compare Wildstar to other MMO's statistics, Humans are typically the most played race:WoW: +3.75% (US & EU average, though this isn't official data)FFXIV: +4% (MIdlander & Highlander Hyur)GW2: +17%The only MMO I could find where another race outnumbered Humans was FFXI with Tarutaru +2%, but that's been back and forth.While these numbers may seem too close to really have any impact, you also have to consider that most of these games are ones where every race can play together. It really doesn't matter that there are more Humans than Charr in GW2 or that there are more Tarutaru than Hume in FFXI, because they all can join the same guilds, play in the same dungeons, raid together, etc.. But... more Aurin than Human - even if it is just barely with this small sample size - does suggest that that could be a contributing factor to the factional imbalance, which is problematic for a game that splits its playerbase into two separate groups.Granted, I don't have enough data to prove this is actually an issue, but the point is that Carbine hasn't provided enough data to prove it's not, and the data they have provided leaves the door open to confirming players' speculations.

Edited September 19, 2015 by Cantatus

Bear in mind that was only for a single region as well."For XIV, it is to want to isolate European statistics, but it is a minority of players, if you add North America and you weighted, the result is not the same.The West, not Europe.For WildStar I was curious, I looked on Entity, and there are 15 Humans (Exiles) more than Aurin, so same result as Jabbit Wholesale (again, only characters level 50 and active) ."The issue seems slightly moot considering we have such low population numbers to pull from. The best we could do at this point is pulling from closed beta stats, but there's not guarantee people arent just trying other races out while they have the chance. I do think Youmukon is right, though; overall population is more important than balanced population.

only if you never, ever use the group finder.this weekend i made a new char on both sides. on exiles i got a protostar after 15 minutes, several times. on dominion it never once popped over 8 hours of gameplay. roles chosen: healer+dps

The point would be that even with imbalance, if the population grows it will ameliorate queue problems on both sides unless that imbalance is SO severe that it's 100% Exile/0% Dominion. Which pretty clearly it isn't.As for "the Aurin problem", as far as I can tell, the complaint is that a lot of people like to play them and a few other people want those people to stop doing that.This does seem like a problem, but not one having much to do with Aurin.

Yasfan said it better that I could. Wildstar will get more mileage from overall population than from balanced population at this point. I think waiting to see what the numbers turn out to be is a good idea.

RPers tend to prefer being the good guys, so there's that.

Excuse me but you clearly haven't been Sith side in TOR :P.

Honestly if Carbine would just make the game more alt friendly with cross faction mail, account abil/ amp unlocks and acct wide rep, the faction balance would take care of itself. As for me I think I'll be switching to Dom for the pvp. Have a Draken slinger and Chua engie already.

Edited September 22, 2015 by Sixgun387

I'm new in here, already playing beta.. can't wait for full f2p lunch so I can jump in PVP server finally.I will definitelly support dominion side :P they rocks!

Get rid of Aurin and we will be perfectly fine.

Dominion here is not like Imperial side for swtor. you can't be a "good" dominion player.removing aurin wouldn't change that.

They just need a cute humanoid type of race, a Aurin like race. Polls and census have shown mmorpg"s players prefer to play a race that they can relate to themself, that is why the most human looking races like Elves and half animals (basicly humans with animal ear and tails) get picked alot by gamers.I think Carbine was hoping on Chua being THE RACE to lure the OMG SOOO CUTE! crowd and as someone who is part of that crowd, they did lure me to the Dominion. Then I tried Exile and met the Aurin and went OMG SOOO CUTE!Personaly, I wish we picked the factions and not the races. Just open all races to all sides (its common in a war to have traitors) and let us pick the faction based on lore.

Dunno why Aurin are so popular. I prefer Human/Cassian ladies.

In case you hadn't already noticed ... You're playing a game with internet weirdos - that's why!!!! :P

Anime.Cosplay.Conventions.Furries.Neko-Catgirls and their fans.Loli Fans.And then there is the assorted oddball like me who made an Aurin, but role-plays her as a Lopp, since that's the closest I could get.Meh. I try not to judge. As I've said, my only beef with Aurin is their existence makes any kind of faction parity impossible, since the cutesy race will always draw more people than the savage race.

The problem with the savage race...I love Draken females...is the limitations on class. I want to be an Esper Draken.I've decided to give Dominion another try once it goes F2P so I can avoid the tutorial. I'll do a draken stalker.

Edited September 22, 2015 by Alaricsevgirl

If you think people threw a stink over the holocrypt and sprint changes...imagine the uproar this would cause XD

Well, yeah ... but it's for the betterment of the entire community!;) :lol:

Who can say no to that face?

I could say the same thing about Chua! They aren't cute or funny...they're just little rat/hampster people who burn down perfectly good places and like to make things go boom. They're the goblins of WS! As an aurin player (who's not a furry, loli-lover, etc.) I can't take anything you say seriously when you RP as a Lopp :PAs it is, I've seen plenty of beta players who are waiting for F2P to go Dominion, so hopefully all this saltiness over "the aurin plague" will go away...at least, for the most part. It really is getting tiresome...I've seen a few devoted Dommie/Chua players become very hostile when someone expresses any interest in the Exile side, especially when it comes to Aurin. As fun as it has been the past year+ to joke about the war being Cat-girl vs Space-rat, the level of bitterness it's devolving into isn't something I want to see the new players be pulled into. Have you read some of the posts from new/incoming players asking what Faction people prefer and why, or what they should play? The first few posts are almost always something very salty and anti-aurin specifically. It gets kinda hard to encourage them to try both factions and see what fits them best when you're hit instantly with that saltiness and would rather respond in kind, instead of...yknow. Encourage people to play what they want to.

But what if you let people play what they want to, and they decide to play something other than what you want them to play?

)

;)

Then you've gotta live with that (even if they choose to be a Chua!)

( I'm none of those. I AM NO ONE!