Domination 4

[Lord Christhoper]

I agree with that. Too much empty parishes, not only domination happen on last normal sv too. I had to go economic because nobody close to attack to get my next villages.

[Lord Christhoper]

and should be not rewards of winning house! perhaps there not everyone will be cowards and stay all high ranks in 1 house (h19)

[Cregor]

Limiting player count per faction and faction count per house will not make the game more competitive.

I simply don't understand how you can think that.

The rules of this Dom world are very similar to the rules of Dom1.
The map is the same, the house/faction sizes are the same.
TeamSpeak existed back then.
Most of the players already knew the other players.
Plans were laid before the server launch.
... and yet ...
that world was highly, even extremely, competitive.

What accounts for the difference?

Primarily, its the number of serious players (versus the size of the houses).

You are partially right, in that there are still enough real players that the world *could* be competitive if the real players just magically decided to evenly divide themselves into 2 (or even 3 ?) houses. (In no scenario is there a need for 20 size-60 houses.) But that just ignores human nature. Once the first house has taken 75% of the players who really matter (plus some solid 2nd or 3rd tier players), there just isn't enough left over to form a viable opposition.

Look at it from the other side:
If we went in the opposite direction and made the houses, say, 12 factions of 40 each, then the entire playerbase that mattered would be in a single house. Hard as it is to imagine, it is theoretically possible to make these Dom-worlds (slightly) **less** competitive.

I am not claiming that making the houses smaller would necessarily be **sufficient**, but it most certainly is **necessary** ... unless FF can somehow conjure up another 50 or 100 (or 500) serious players.

FF can keep beating a dead horse, but it seems to me that acknowledging your shrinking playerbase, and making adjustments for it, is the obvious smart play.

[DekeYoungAtlanta]

I simply don't understand how you can think that.

The limiting factors in competitive balance in the current SHK game is not the raw number of players, but the number of active political groupings (usually based off of TeamSpeak servers).

At the Launch of USA-4 There were 5 political groups in play that organized well in advance of the server launch. Since the ERA rules limited Houses to 3 factions and limited factions to 20 players, these political groups planned in advance to control multiple houses before the server launch. My group claimed 3 houses, other groups each claimed 3 to 5 houses. Within a few days of the launch there were no unclaimed houses for casual players to join.

So if you reduce the numbers of factions per house or the number of players per faction, you are actually going to reduce the number of players that can be part of the glory race.

In the Domination 4 case, the core group behind House 19 put their best X players in House 19 and the players above X were placed in sister house 7. If you drop the size of X, it will not stop the core group from controlling the map, it will just force them to create 1st tier, 2nd tier and 3rd tier houses. The end result is fewer players with the perception that they can make a difference.

Deke

[WaywardChampion]

I think that a better solution is just to scrap the concept of houses and factions altogether on the dominion worlds and just make it a "King of The Hill" world where it is everyone for themselves and there is no trade or cooperation between different players.

Make the map like concentric rings where placing a village in each different ring requires that a player has achieved a certain rank and holds a specific number of villages, but also limits the number of villages that can be placed in each ring so that a players villages can't be grouped together in one place.

As a reward, at the end of each day reward wheel spins based on the number of villages, parishes, counties, and provinces controlled, then have a special bonus for the player who is king.

This is likely to be a VERY fun, entertaining and competitive world.