The faction trend problem

Mess Room
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The trend in factions do change every time a major update or an event happens depending on the server and the timezone but this is getting out of control lately unlike before where you could get a good match and win even if the faction and campaign you are playing is not part of the trend.

Some of the worst offenders right now include,
Pacific where Axis is trending there for months with Allies having much worse equipment there than Normandy.
Tunisia Allies dominating to the point that playing Axis there is just unplayable.
Berlin with Soviets very infested with noobs while many of the Axis sweats there as finished grinding Normandy for awhile and its very unplayable for Soviets.
Normandy recently became a huge sweatfest favoring Allies more since the announcement of the merge and the Paratroopers update.
Moscow and Stalingrad are much more balanced in terms of population and skill level of the playerbase.

The recent rapid trend of events despite the reinforcements received ones don’t ask for a win came to the point that people will just play the easy faction and easy campaign to get easier points. I don’t trust the merge is going to fix this as its going to be split all over again in BRs anyway even though atleast for example all Soviet players will just play in a single nation instead of three campaigns instead of what we are having now where more experienced Soviet players play Moscow and Stalingrad while the noobs play in Berlin.

I know some people always want something to grind instead of enjoying the high level equipment they unlocked like I do but this faction trending issue needs to be addressed.

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I think that dividing the poor player base across multiple campaigns is a problem that needs to be addressed first.
The “nomads” who have no love for a faction and will always flock to the team that can win need to be addressed, but perhaps that is a separate topic from the above issues from the developers’ point of view.

Currently, there is an anomaly in some campaigns where one team is almost unmanned. It is impossible to predict at this time how the nomads will play the game after this is removed.
What will they think when they have to deal with good human players on a reasonably frequent basis, as they usually continue to cultivate against bots? Maybe they will quit the farm and start working out with their favorite team.
Or if “nomads” make up 90% of the player base, the merge will completely destroy the game. It may become a joke that you have to play with the Japanese in any campaign to play the game.

In any case, how to distribute users among teams, how to improve the imbalance of the game is a question that the developers should think about after the merge.

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im going to give up pacific allies

i would like to grind to get jhonson lmg
but
every match is cancer.

in a blink of the eye
you are on 500 points of reinforcments.

and the no rally point culture… :rage:

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Well. As you stated there, its no wonder that Germans prefer Berlin and Soviets Moscow and SG.
Soviet tanks in Berlin suck except for the T-34-85 and IS is buggy and clunky. You also get far less uncommon stuff there as Soviet excluding planes and tanks. PPD, PPSh, PPS, Fed, AVT, AVS(?) and the MGs exist elsewhere as well and Moscow even brings you the early PPD. At the end, you really just grind for PPS43 and the RD and neither late-game MGs are worth it.
Axis at least get Normandy but traded Ju188 and StG for King Tiger and inf FG/II and so far, only the Panther feels buggy.
The same goes to Tunisia Axis. Most of their stuff is copy+paste from Moscow, their planes have been nerfed for no reason (and where about to get nerfed again for no reason) and the Semo got tweaked so many times, I dont even bothet with it. Allies at least have some British stuff and a Drummie Tommy. And Pacific is just boring wiht Japan being slightly less boring than US.

Ive finished three camapaigns, Allies Africa and Berlin Germans and now have to decide wheter go with Tunisia Axis, boring-ass Pacific in general or Berlin Allies and I dont know whats worse.

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I think Pacific is now trashed.
Allies are unplayable and playing in Japan is too boring.
I pray that merging will fix this, but I also don’t think merging will solve that much.
If anything, the Japanese will only be matched with low BR US forces, which will further fix the situation.
Everyone who wanted to grind the US may leave the game.
I have made suggestions like this in the past. I think there needs to be a system to make the matching fair, even after the merge.
Fairly match the number of players - English speaking section / Suggestions - Enlisted

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I am not a pro gamer by any means, but im trying to understand the concepts your talking about, so please dont take any offense I just am trying to understand the player. I beleive i have played against you all , so it helps to understand the people. Ok so I am a “noob” in the game. I probably would be a “nomad” I prefer factions but play any. I try to do every battlefield I can. Why dont frustrated players of quality like you guys not playing the matches? Is there a difference in ranking and structure, I dont have a clue so Im trying to learn, but I see in the matches what you are saying, and extremely valid end results. Thanks for reading, just trying to be a better compettitor.

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Since I’ve been grinding both sides of Berlin recently to get pre-merge unlocks, you might find the stats interesting.

Axis: 132 matches, 83% winrate. L29.
Allies 154 matches, 61% winrate. L35.

Two observations:
1.) If you play allies, expect to sweat and carry the team a lot as you have a lot of bots and useless idiots vs. full stack teams. You need to pull hard, otherwise most of the time you have no chance.

2.) If you do that, you can actually level up pretty much the same pace or maybe even faster than in the axis campaign. The reason is that on the axis side, you cannot rack up easily such high scores as on allied side due to your teams being generally more competent and there’s more contest on who farms the soviet kills.

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My definition of a “nomad” does not simply refer to someone who wants to play for any faction.
I am referring to people who look for the most popular faction at the time and always belong to it.
For example, someone who is not so interested in the Tunisian Allies, but plays in the Allies because all the Axis are currently bots.
They may have various reasons: they don’t want to lose their experience boosters, they choose a strong team because they will lose no matter how hard they try in a team full of bots, they want to have fun and earn points against bots, and so on.
Why they behave the way they do, what they want, and what the game needs to improve to achieve healthy matching is something that the development team needs to address.
For example, as in the suggestion thread I raised above, you could always adjust the matching so that there are an equal number of human players on both teams, or if people who don’t want to fight humans are building up a full stack, you could add a PVE mode to make the normal matching healthier, or you could make the experience booster only consumed in matches that are won. Maybe make it so that it is consumed… or something like that.

Once the split campaigns are merged and the player base is unified by camp, the “nomad” problem may be somewhat eliminated, but in any case, we will have a clearer picture of what the development team needs to do after the merge.

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I’m not sure, if I understood the question 100% correctly, but I will try to explain.

Imbalance of factions has always been a problem. There are several factors. The most important is probably the low number of players in the game overall and them being spread out over many campaigns. When there aren’t enough players at any given time to fill a team in a match, then the game will fill the remaining player slots with bots, to reduce waiting time. Bots are pretty weak. While individual skill matters a lot, and sometimes even a single player can carry a team to victory, those teams with fewer bot players in it, always have a distinctt advantage. So, popular or trending factions are stronger overall.
But what makes a faction popular? Again, many factors:

  • Factions are more or less popular depending on the time of day, probably because some countries or regions of the world have preferences for certain factions. For example, when it’s evening in Russia, expect more Soviet players.
  • Imbalance of faction equipment. When a certain faction is perceived as being stronger, then players, who only care about winning, will prefer to play those.
  • When an update adds new levels to a campaign, then the faction with the more interesting toys gets played more. For example, in a past update Axis in Normandy got the Panther and Allies got the M10. Panther is clearly better and also more iconic. So those players, who had already unlocked everything else in these factions before, tended to grind Axis first and Axis was the stronger team for a while, until they all got their Panther.

Once a faction becomes popular enough, there is a kind of “tipping point” and the imbalance of players gets worse very quickly. This faction is now trending.
At first, only the opportunists and eternal noobs will stop playing the weaker faction and switch sides or go to another campaign. The losing side will start losing harder. Now the more determined players start playing that faction less and it gets even harder. By the end even the nomads and hardcore fans of that faction will be frustrated enough and leave. Only bots and total newbies will be left.

Nowadays, we have another factor, that contributes a lot to the trend problem:
The frequency of events, in which players have to reach a certain amount of battle points per day. Many players, who have nothing else to grind anymore and are only interested in the event rewards, or aren’t really in the mood to play, but also don’t want to miss out on the time-limited rewards, will want to get done grinding the battle points as quickly and easily as possible. Therefore they play a trending faction, where they can mow down a large number of bots.

But trends can easily come to a sudden end. This can be the result of an update or a large number of veterans being done grinding the trending fashion. Unfortunately, trends don’t just usually end, but they reverse instead. Right now for example, Allies in Tunisia are totally dominating. Only a month or so ago, the situation was the opposite and Axis were dominating almost as hard.

The coming merge of campaigns is supposed to take care of this problem. The rationale is, that even when there is some imbalance in the popularity of a faction, that there will still be enough players, so that bots should become a rare sight. But the OP is concerned, that players will then be spread out over several battle ratings instead of over several campaigns. And so a faction may dominate in low and mid BR for example, but get stomped in high BR.

This is my understanding of the situation.

I myself am also a nomad by your definition. I play every campaign except for Stalingrad and Pacific and I play every side pretty much evenly. But even I only continue to play Axis Tunisia, because I am close to unlocking the GranatbĂĽchse and I suspect it will become useful after the merge. It is a miserable slog and I only play them with XP boosters.

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I think the big merge they’ve been talking about would be the proper solution here. If, instead of having all these campaigns to level the same stuff a billion times, we get “factions” to level up instead… It will probably consolidate the player base enough to actually fill up the teams.

Once that happens, most of us should already have decent equipment ready for every faction. But who knows, an annoying imbalance might form anyway. For example I think the Japanese are vastly inferior. Almost all the equipment kinda sucks on Pacific.

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Current system yes its a problem
But after the merge germany must be a trend and more than half of plauers must play it regularly. Unless we will face with balance issues

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Can shittalk about Reto but it was a good idea to let Soviets fight Yankees and Germans.

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Cry me a river, Allied equipment in pacific outclasses just about every Japanese campaign level from eary game to endgame.

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are you sure ?
japanese smgs are competent enough
the long distances make bolt action more preferable than semi autos.
and allies dont have a true lmg. :face_with_monocle:

and the bomb on planes are weaker than the japanese,

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what? some of the jap equipment is extremely good especially things like the type 5 tube (literally a bazooka but better), type 96 LMG is fantastic while their semi autos aren’t slouches either with true allied advantage being tanks

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10 round type 4 vs 30 round full auto m2 carbine
Ha go with one hull mg vs m2 with two turret mgs
M1 garand vs bolt action rifle
Johnson rifle vs 5 round type otsu which is the same as early level type hei
45 acp smgs which kill in 2 hits while Japanese smg take up to 4

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you talking about end level m2
shit sights by the way .
the only rational use an m2 has is semi automatic fire,
with the rate of fire unnerfed unlike the m1 carbine

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was going to try and do a formal argument against you but sadly you just revealed you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, as ostu and hei only have the dispersion similar while the ostu has the fastest firerate for any pure semi autos in game while also having the fastest reload. oh also the johnson rifle has to pay for a long reload for that 10 round magazine so not really worth it.

no nambu is 2 hit to down if you hit the torso and not the limbs

but what do i know, i only reached maxed level as japan

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got it that’s not me. I play all sections but i do the random. I enjoy all the teams, so no nomad (not sure if its a double negative. ) I get the point the situation is more complex than I thought. I really figured everyone just played like me i.e. random team in section and whichever section you liked. Thank you this does help.

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well the hei sucks
dont know if it recieved a buff lately.

but when i was grinding japan
was shit

like wasting all the magazine in one guy.