1 side would always have more players and the complaints would begin.
You cannot auto place players for balance because players would leave who can't fly with squad and friends.
The side who is about to win typically attracts more players, thus creating embalance.
"Spies" would be more prevalent as you'd only need to do it to one team.
Generally the lowest # team is not always getting gained or losing the war.
The lower #s team can gain the advantage by attacking the side who is busy attacking the other in a big furball.
3 sides means at some point the other 2 teams have to fight each other if they want the win. The lower #s side or side with least bases can use that opportunity to take bases back.
2 sides is not the issue.
Base distance, layout, and size of maps is. Maps like Bowl MA where players are scattered everywhere and there are 120 bases, and you cannot easily roll to fight both sides at the same time. maps that have 22+ miles in between bases. Maps where players can easily find the action and get into a fight.
There will always be side embalance, but it doesn't mean one side will be better than the others. The sides actually become pretty even in the afternoon.
When you are talking about low #s. Its really beneficial to have a smaller map with bases that have a good layout so all teams can fight each other and you can reach a fight where the other teams are fighting. That's what really makes the fights fun.
Thanks for the good post. I guess I am falling into the "grass is always greener" paradigm. You make the point that, with only two countries, there would tend to be a large imbalance between the two sides. I may be idealistic in thinking that people would generally leave side balance to themselves.
This is my second point which it looks like I forgot...
I want to preface this next bit. I don't have any experience developing games.
What I have come to understand is that there is some give and take between a game developer and their player base with regards to game balancing. Game developers can hard code things into their game to promote a more balanced gameplay experience for the player.
A good example of this in AH is ENY. ENY exists to balance an engagement by two countries and this is hard coded into the game. If one team has a significant amount more players, those players must use less effective aircraft to offset their numbers advantage. On the other side, the players also have the ability to influence mechanics that are hard coded into the game. In our example this means the player can swap sides, move to another area of the map (
was local ENY introduced?? I am not up to date), or deal with the ENY penalty.
Another example of this is the plane META that exists within the MA. META stands for most effective tactic available, and this META is affected by changes that both the developer and player make. HTC limits the META of what planes people fly with the mechanic of perk points and players are limited in what aircraft they fly, to an extent, by what opponent players are flying. If perk points did not exists most people would be flying around in a 262, and because I have seen mostly late war monster aircraft in the MA I am more inclined to fly a late war monster to keep up with the competition.
So, the META of the game as a whole (how bases are taken, plane choice, ACM, etc.) is a give and take between what tools or mechanics the developers give us and the choices we make as players. Going back to my original post, maybe this is not an issue for HiTech to solve. He has clearly given us the tools to solve it, but we as a player base still chose to play the META as it is now.
One thing I have noticed that has changed in the META is the head-on pass. In the limited time I have played recently I did notice that I still have yet to fall victim to a HO. This is certainly a situation where the META has been influenced by the player base.
A question for everyone:
Do you think that a large majority of what can be considered "problems" with the game are a symptom of players not driving a change in the META?
