So far the devs have stated that the tyranids are the balancing factor. No avatars , bloodthirsters or similar units at launch. Possible in the future but not the main focus. The question remains how intelligent the tyranids will be. If they are like orks in space marine it would be too easy.
Well I look at it a couple of ways. If a server is comprised of 30% SM, 30% Chaos, 25% Orks, and 15% Eldar then the simplest way to fix it would be to cap character creation on the first 3 and give incentives for people to create Eldar characters. Something small like limited XP bonus for leveling or something of the sort. This way there is a chance to balance out the faction counts and it makes it fairly easy to fix. Now if you have the scenario of 20% SM, 50% Chaos, 15% Ork, and 15% Eldar you could offer people with Chaos characters a free server change. Most people may not want to do it but again you could offer incentives to change over to another server so that things get balanced. A lot of people would see this as unfair but I have found that small rewards outweigh punishing people by forcing moves. Not to mention, if they are not moving with the awards being available then they have no right to complain about those who do accept and move. Of course the easiest way to remedy this in a WvW sense would be to put everyone across all servers into a single queue and pick them that way. I know it will still run into unbalanced faction counts but it could alleviate some of the issues.
Except that we can't have faction caps because this would lead to a shitstorm of epic proportions from the Marine players. It would be like taking away the favorite toy of a five-year-old.
The solution is simple and already found by the devs: Tyranid swarms will attacks the faction with more players who's dominating the battlefield; 'Nids have various units who could jump or shoot players in top areas who seems unreachable; The more stronger is the faction, the more tougher and larger will be the swarms, maybe adding some epic or elite units supporting the zerg; No ragequit will be allowed by the Emperor!
Will the server(s) be able to handle such a capacity? From what I understand Eternal Crusade is modeled very closely to that of PS2. While majority of the time PS2 runs pretty well. In major conflicts, its hard on most PC's. Now add hundreds if not thousands of tyranids which need to be rendered into the game & told what to do & how to react to the overpopulated faction. The reason I suggest hundreds or thousands of tyranids is the overpopulated faction is likely going to number in the hundreds. For the tyranids to be a threat they will at the very least need to number 1 to 1, if not 3 to 1. I see performance taking a major hit. Things like render distance etc would have to be sacrificed.
On the other hand if the Tyranids attack the largest faction (lets says SM's) then the SM players will more than likely kick up a stink as to why do they have to kill 'Nids when all they want to do is PvP? End of the day the player wants to play the character/faction that appeals to them. Being penalised to play a faction you love and paid for will really piss people off. Yes you can introduce forced player pop caps and sacrifice some of the player base. Yes you can forgo the forced player cap and introduce artificial barriers which can range from minor (do nothing to stem the tide) to extreme (players quitting because the barriers are stupid). End of the day you lose players no matter what route you take, you just have to chose the one with the least attrition which is why instanced PvP is so popular. It forces the population balance at the expense of waiting in a queue. This is the biggest problem facing open world PvP. One side will always be larger or have the better or organised player base and they will roll the other factions. Then at a different time of day another faction will dominate. This means everything you worked towards one night is gone the next night when you log on. The only semi-solution I can come up with is treating EC like another other FPS shooter. Chose an arbitrary number for each faction and have people fill it up, once the caps are reached open up another 'game' and fill that one up to cap and so forth. Instead of an open world server where you can (in theory) have the entire player base in one area, split it up but keep the sense of large scale combat but doesn't stuff up game balance. Off the top of my head I can't think of a MMO that does open world PvP well. Edit: Another idea, which won't work due to costs, is to hire workers to play the underpopulated faction to keep a sense of balance. Yes that's right, hire people to play the game.
We don't kow yet how many the 'nids will be, but I seriously doubt that will be thousands for obvious problems at the server stability: hypothetically they could be only one or two hundred with some powerful elite units amongs them. IMO that will be enough to make the stronger faction taking care of the "problem" without sacrificing too much resources that could be used against other players factions. It's only a personal opinion and of course the devs have to test the potential threat caused by the 'nids in battle.
I think an excellent solution to this problem is a very minor thing that most people seem to be ignoring. Resources, think about it, so what if there are 40-50% space marines if they cant produce the bullets or tanks to field them all. Sure let every fanboy play Space marine, but it'll just tank the resources available to that faction for every additional player. Suddenly the Orks and Eldar are fielding tanks out the ass and the SM become the grindy squishy infantry army of the server. Suddenly the numbers become a detriment rather than a bonus.
Devs have stated that the dominating faction will come under increased attack from Tyranids. Should their forces be stretched too thin over too many fronts, a devastating 'Nid horde attacking critical locations miles away from the frontlines could go unnoticed, and depending on how supply mechanics work in this game that could have huge consequences for the whole faction as the number of available vehicles/spawns/purity seals dwindles away, and you're forced to stuff the majority of your players into a PvE encounter away from the other factions to prevent huge losses across the board. They've said they'll avoid putting tyranids in 3-or-more-way battles for performance reasons, meaning that the 'nids will (probably) only harass objectives that you think are 'safe' since they're not next to enemy races' zones of influence. You think your campaign is going fine and dandy as you nab more artifacts/land/whatever from the other races until a 'nid swarm supported by a swarmlord pops up to steal half of your territory off you. Frankly I think this will work well, since the 'dominating' faction will have to throw away its advantage to stop being eaten alive by the Tyranid threat, giving other factions a chance to take advantage of the diversion. All that remains to be seen is how well they can implement the mechanic so it acts as an effective balancer.
