vocifer, on 24 May 2016 - 09:55 PM, said:
Nvm, I've just thought you'd taken top 100 from every faction, while you did that from all at once. So you were correct.
What it shows is the tendency of smaller units not having a risk to tie themselves with a permanent contract, as it moves from 50/50 the deeper you go.
Yes absolutely ... There are still so many mercs around any of them can easy go permanent without taking the "balance" out of the system. In an ideal setting all mercs would distribute to create even numbers so players of all factions could have opposed matches all the time. But unfortunatly it is highly unlikely that Mercs distribute evenly. As I said earlier there are a bunch of extrinsic factors that influence choice of contract, some of them are applied globally by PGI. Just take the factor new Mechs for instance. The contract runs out, your new Mech arrives, you are most likely to vote for the side you can play your new toy on. Like last week, when the Kodiak came out. Loads of Players bought the new shiny Teddybear, now a new vote for the next contract is due. The first factor that will influence the players choice is will I be able to play my Kodiak. The possible contracts drop form 10 to 4. The remaining 4 however are also influenced again. You may have had bad experience in one, (lack of manpower in FW, horrible Pug support, stupid attack lanes, etc) down to three. Maybe you have friends in one or two, but not the third, then it drops to a choice of two. from a former 10% chance of choice, extrinsic motivation has the power to turn that into a 50% chance.
Now if you consider the first extrinsic motivator is the introduction of a new mech and it has the power tho manipulate the choice up to chance of 25% (yes I know the overall chance stays the same, but from a players perspective the choices limit themselves) chances for a large cluster of mercs in one faction rise dramatically. The motivators in game set to balance the system are not high enough to counter this effect. As even negative contract conditions are not powerful enough to influnce the choice.
(Now many of you know my stand on large units, but i don't want to discuss that here.) So PGI has to implement some kind of solution to create either a motivator strong enough to have the community balance itself:
-Sequence Bonus for contracts, You have not yet played in faction X and Y, choose a contract there now and receive...
-Counter New Toy Factors with contract buffs on the opposing side
-Maybe only single Battle contracts - like the Freelancers
-etc.
or implement a threshold system to autobalance, say take the most recent active player count of mercs and loyalists from the prior week, add them up divide by 10, then add a small buffer to each +5-10%, you should have a ideal distribution number, then limit contracts available according to those numbers.
From the numbers I pulled that would mean a distribution of 1500 Players per Faction (rounded with extra buffer on top)
Clan Wolf has the largest Loyalist population under the top 100 Loyalist Units with a count of 1039 leaving contracts available for 461 Players. (say a large Unit of 300 Players picks that contract, the contract won't be displayed to any unit that has over 161 Players and continues so on)
Suggestions suggestions ...
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