Suggestion:
Make wait-period for side-switches depend on arena population
- Move from High to Low Side: minimal or no wait period
- Move from Low to High Side: full wait period
- Move from Mid to Low/High Side: short wait / medium wait period, respectively
Ideally, waiting periods would be scaled with the current degree of imbalance, not the degree of imbalance at the time of the last switch the player made.
Why? To improve your odds of finding something to do in the MA.
Here's a situation that occurs every day, but there are others also -
Players in Europe and especially in "Australia and New Zealand" (i don't believe they exist) will have experienced logging into an arena in which the numbers are at/around the daily low. In these situations, it is usual for there to be little or no accessible combat for one of the countries. So you move sides to a country that does have an active fight. And that's great for about 30 minutes - when (e.g.) the US east coast logs in and suddenly your newly adopted side outnumbers both the other sides, combined, by a factor of 3. A lot of ganging and steamrolling ensues, but not much actual combat of any quality.
You can't switch sides for another 330 minutes, so you just log off (further reducing MA activity) and maybe consider another hobby.
Relaxing/modifying the 6-hour waiting period for side-changes to be dependent upon arena numbers could keep the MA interesting for players when numbers are low or ridiculously imbalanced.
This scheme allows players to easily move in directions that improve the arena balance and (presumably) the likelihood of interesting combat engagements.
Opinions?
trog
