So it seems 3 sides has no magic ability to control imbalance. When you point that out, they claim 3 sides has nothing to do with number balance. Then they later turn around because they say 2 sides wouldn't work because it would lead to side number imbalance.
Even though 3 sides is not supposed to have anything to do with balance and doesn't seem to maintain side balance itself.
Then they say 3 sides is to create more fights. But with theses numbers there is often only enough players for one great fight and that is often on a segment of the front that one of the 3 teams can't get to and is excluded from the action.
Two sides would not have balance problems any worse that 3 sides, but would have the advantage that any fight along the front would be accessible by all players on both sides.
Ideally the system would be configured to handle either mode. But the real problem with two sides is that it would take non-trivial software development to rework the win-the-war logic to handle both modes. That is probably more coading than can reasonably be expected at this point in the games life-cycle.
So yeah, really small maps are probably the second best choice.
Actually I think the problem is low numbers, which magnify the side imbalance. Seems to be human nature - most people do not chose a side in order to try to even sides out, they just fly where their friends or familiar names are, or stay with the same side out of habit.
I *just* logged in now to check. There is a new map up, the previous map was reset 32 minutes ago. Current arena pop is 12, with 7 flying for Bishop, 4 for Rook. I was the only Knight, and I had just popped in for a quick check. So basically its a two-sided battle right now, and the sides are out of balance by almost 2 to 1.
I think Hitech as settled on 3-sided as the best option among all the other options, and I wouldn't expect a large effort from him to change to 2 sided at this point in AH. I don't think its that difficult to find a fight either, you just have to be willing to switch sides and jump in, if your current side is being iced out or ignored. But that's easy for me to say here, it's a little different when it comes to doing it in the game.
Myself, I'd like to try 4 sides (Diamonds, Hearts, Spades and Clubs), and MUCH larger maps (so 6 or 7 players couldn't reset the map in the wee hours when no one else is online to organize a defense).
I'd like FOUR fronts instead of three, with lots of areas of very closely spaced bases for fast fights. It would be interesting to shake things up and break up the chess piece loyalty, but I'm sure it wouldn't take long for new loyalties to crystallize and the same types of imbalance problems to show up.
