But of course!

No, I am not advising that they abandon their current server idea. I was just tossing out an example of how one game/system attempted to balance stuff. I do not know gaming server mechanics and server technicalities. I know the mind, hence my profile job description. A bit of the mind has to do with what many others would look at as "irrational" (beliefs). Point is that I would LOVE for a balancing feature. I think the best way to have balancing is in marketing and getting people to get over themselves. I would toss a dog a bone and permit the other faction which has far less numbers to begin with certain perks or at a higher level to start with. However no, I would not permit them to have higher req generation. Some things of life are "not fair", period.

If the devs took your idea into consideration and had it so that the game adjusted req garnishment based on player numbers than fine. That still won't settle the problem of gross imbalance. As it has been stated, req won't win you the war but military prowess (numbers) will. Yes, req will help field a better army but a noob in a tank is simply a more difficult noob to kill, not a better player. I agree, mostly, with what you are saying. I just can't agree to giving a faction greater req because they have less numbers.

Ok let's recap...
You have argued that smaller factions should not have more req generation because things shouldn't be 'fair'...
but then you also have said that you want things to be balanced and that smaller factions should be viable, i.e. that things SHOULD be fair...
Later you point out that with my suggestion things still won't be completely fair?!
You're all over the place!

You contradict yourself at every turn, and obviously prefer arguing based on blind faith rather than presenting a rationale for why you think my idea wouldn't work, or why a different idea would be better!
Please don't take this the wrong way, but if I didn't know better I'd imagine that rather than one single human being writing your posts there was a gaggle of bickering religious zealots unified only by the desire to disagree with something they don't like the sound of!



Of course I'm aware that even in my suggestion one side will still be at an advantage due to having a larger army, there's little that can be done to prevent that outside of filling the game with npc troops to make up the numbers or imposing some method of population control on the factions.
Incentivising one faction or another with perks like the increased EXP gain (the usual route) or level boosts as you have mentioned is hardly likely to work and I say that with some confidence since it has been tried on numerous occasions by different games, never with any success.


However since Req gain is tied to player actions it actually exacerbates the population differences since a faction's req gain increases in a direct proportion to it's population.
This means that an army twice the size of another will on average get roughly double the req income, which obviously exacerbates the population difference.
A noob in a tank is still a noob, but it's still a tank!
Obviously this can be used to help balance things up, which I think is very important (and with very good reason backed by real world observation) since simply allowing imbalances to exist would be disastrous to the game as a whole.

My idea won't completely level the playing field, but then it's not intended to, it's intended to make playing an outnumbered faction more viable by using a similar balancing system to tabletop 40k.

We will see how it all turns out when the game arrives.

Indeed we will.

Actually I'm quite curious about what the devs will decide on to handle having a game with wildly different faction sizes and I'll be watching with interest as we find out more about the game mechanics and the overall picture comes into clearer focus.

Now I know that the Nids were mooted as a way of keeping larger factions in check, but as I mentioned in my main post I can't really see them working as intended, but ofc that's just based on what I've heard so far.

Infact they could easily make it worse either by feeding the larger factions should they scale to match faction sizes, or by disproportionately affecting the smaller factions if they don't.


In the end all that matters is that we all get a fair fight since unfair games don't survive long.

My idea would be to implement a reinforcements type of buff in each pvp zone. If each pvp zone had a faction counter and your faction was completely outnumbered then your faction would get AI npc who would run, shoot, fight and kill other factions just as if they were real players. Also do not nerf classes after launch just because some people of another race or faction complain that they are overpowered, find the proper class balances before game launch and leave it at that. Warhammer Online made a huge mistake when they nerfed the Black Ork Tanks because some people from the Order side started complaining about them. They lost a lot of people after that nerf. There is certain reasons why devs make certain classes a bit more powerfull than others and it is for unbalanced population control. These are just my thoughts take what you will from them.

WAR was supposed to use mirrored classes as balance, which gave players the idea that each class should be exactly as powerful as it's counterpart - As you point out that was a big mistake.
That said you never know how the classes will balance up until you have seen them played by a great number of players of all skill levels, so some balancing may well be needed later on down the road.
It is important though that balancing is done because the numbers support it and not because it is the winge de jour, that I completely agree with.


I would hesitate in using NPCs as a balancing mechanism as is likely to lead to unintended consequences.

There are several obvious ways that they could be used:
As Call-downs to help in assaulting an area.
To represent weaker units like grots, cultists, guardians and scouts/servitors on the battlefield.
As extra static defenders to help weaker factions hold territories, and
As regular patrols spawned from frontline bases.

But everytime I find myself thinking about these I always come back to the problems with computer controlled opponents, i.e. they are predictable and generally easy to kill, they tend to have problems with pathing and make very unintelligent decisions when they encounter terrain, not to mention taking up processing power and slowing the game down.
These issues make them poor choices for regular frontline troop replacement IMO.

The weaker units may still work as calldowns since they will arrive in the thick of the action and as such won't be bothered too much by pathing problems, but forcing the computer to render and operate an extra bunch of grunts, probably at the peak of a battle wouldn't be a good thing.

Extra Defenders are a better option as they will be largely static and will likely have very obvious areas of cover meaning that programming a reasonably 'smart' AI for them will be much easier.

They do bring with them a heap of extra balance issues though since ideally you would want NPC defenders to be significantly weaker than players (with maybe a couple of exceptions) to encourage player involvement, and by making them able to take the place of players you could easily run into situations where they are too op at one task and too up in another and balancing them would just make more work for the devs.

Ok a lot of my ideas have already been said so I will just write a bit more to contribute to this cause, I remember Miguel saying:'War isn't fair' or isn't balanced so I think by that he was implying there will be stronger races e.g. chaos and marines have better general better armor ballistics strength and are more popular...

So they would have already foreseen the trends and I'm sure they already have a few counter measures. Something I know of is that the Tyranids will not only be at everyone's border every so often but the devs will also have direct control of the Tyranid, hmm, swarm so to say in that way they can put a lot of pressure onto the space marines. So I have a problem, not really with racial imbalance towards gameplay, more about the lore. I mean I don't give a shit if Eldar is the smallest faction we will be victorious anyway. The big problem for me is will the F2P players bulk up the Ork faction enough to make them the biggest faction?
I'm not too sure about that, something I would definitely consider is NPC Ork defenders and gretchins back at the bases also a lot of dakka dakka(automatic turrets as well as player controlled.)

Now for some speculation
You can also think of the space marines since they have 4 chapters there, they should have up to ~4000 marines not wanted to put a cap on them more letting them be that big.
This planet could be of higher priority to the imperium than to the Orks, all they want to do is smash and chaos is there to incite heresy and the Eldars goal must remain hidden from spies that might eaves drop on this channel

And as you said let's wait for the game to come out and like Rockagrand have a little faith in the devs. Who all like warhammer for what it is I just really really don't want to see another warhammer game failing..

After playing a lot of DOW 2 recently, I can testify that Relic did a fantastic job harnessing the essence of the Eldar combat style. On a general basis, the larger your army, the worse it will do becuase the way the army works has nothing to do with how large it is, but rather how coordinated it is. A very large Eldar army can get decimated very quickly if you just throw it at the enemy like they were Orks, but a group as small as the 4 easily managed heroes can win the entire campaign on their own... the other races take much longer.

As far as war not being fair, they weren't talking about how a race will purposely be made stronger ot weaker than the others, but rather the tools and mechanics they utilize will not be equal. A SM will have better armor and a bolter, an Eldar have fleet of foot and mind war. An Ork will have a 'uge choppa, aCSM a Tzeentchian shroud.

I'm all for a passive balancing mechanic once it's been demonstrated ingame that such a mechanic is needed,

I love the idea of the smallest faction gaining req faster, even if they bleed players like a stuck pig,

Me and the dozen or so eldar remaining will simply spawn HQ units with our massive req point/per person average and stride the field like gods lol (not seriously)

I think you guys are looking at this wrong.

Undeniable that the lowest population is prolly Eldar. How to balance? Don't make their objectives the same as basic Cap and Hold objectives. Make the Eldar a completely infiltration faction that has hidden objectives and agendas that are feasible for a smaller faction to successfully complete.

Example: A hidden webway system that once all capture points are secured, the Eldar can strike anywhere at will and secure larger objectives through speed and shock. To obtain the webway they would have to coordinate capturing small remote points on the surface and deep points in the underworld. After a coordinated Raid to get all webway points they then mass infiltrate to a point designated by the field commander and BAM... instant overwhelming odds if done correctly.