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You know what sucks as a small faction? The fact that you can't actually hurt a larger faction.
By "can't actually hurt" do you mean that you can't cap them, or that you can't inconvenience them long-term? I'm curious whether your concerns are more with winning a battle or with winning a war.
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Think of it this way: A large faction presently may have several raiding teams each operating at different times. Imagine if they were all operating under the same banner, but based in their own stronghold. If you got hit by a larger faction you could at least fight back by hitting the stronghold of that raid team. Oh sure, another raid team could turn around and come after you, but they are likely to have their hands full with the guys they just hit, too.
Major flaw here is that if you break up your factions by raid team availability, you're more or less broadcasting when particular holds will have actives in them. When the message log is clear enough to say "OS Beta has taken your standard at 15:00" you can be pretty confident that the OS Beta hold is asleep at 03:00. That's arguably a bigger deal even than splitting the petshield between multiple locations.
I do think you're right to focus on expanding faction breadth (and I see you've been beating that drum for a while) but what you're describing here sounds a little too much like a stick and not enough like a carrot for my liking. It's the difference between "you're too big, fix your shit so that you aren't ruining the game for other people" versus "you're big enough and strong enough to expand your scope of influence." But it's a small distinction and I may just be being bitchy.
What if raising your faction's strength granted you the ability to plant a secondary outpost, and having that outpost up actually boosted the value of your primary stronghold? Better forts/ward, improved MP gain, ebony/ivory tower-style soak boosts, special auto-spawning pets, whatever. That would make it feel a little more like a strategic option that you've earned as opposed to just approaching too-big-to-fail status. It also makes faction warfare more of a multi-stage war, since clearing the secondary base will put your target on their toes while giving you a better opportunity to clear their main hold. (I'm thinking outposts would have a longer cooldown period than the 24-hours-or-recap setup that holds work on.)
Regardless of how you ultimately go about splitting up factions, I have two suggestions on rider clauses. (1) Factions cannot have multiple bases on the same plane. (2) Factions should be either forced or strongly incentivized to start out on their home plane. It doesn't necessarily need to be permanent, but there should be a clear migration of good & evil factions from their home turf to Valhalla as a breath matures, and dedicated neutral factions should have a window to seize the most attractive parts of the prime.
The trouble with this vassals idea is that we're suggesting that large invincible factions voluntarily reduce their invincibility for the smaller gain of having another bolt-hole available when theirs is downed.
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Believe it or not, the game already has a point where once you reach a certain membership size, it is more advantageous for you to split into 2 factions and continue operating as 1 (as allies). This point is when your ward hits its cap in size.
I've really got to disagree there. The benefit of everyone piling into one stronghold is that the sheer dead bulk of players is a lot harder to overcome. With enough tanks and petmasters, it becomes really difficult for a raiding faction to clear the way for their own petmaster. With so many players in one spot, the chances that someone will be active and defend are also increased dramatically.
The whole pitch here is:
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Some factions are just too big to fight, which makes them "safer" since only a few factions can hope to go against them.
So giving up that safety isn't going to benefit the big guys. I don't really see people jumping on board the vassal-train as suggested, except for roleplay reasons.
I like the concept, it just needs more incentive behind it. We need to make splitting your forces more valuable, otherwise people won't do it.
This would be a great time to look into the territory control metagame. Infusion got scrapped because it was too slow and clunky, with little benefit to show for it pretty much except for tile-swapping the various libraries.
Several things would need to happen here.
1) Controlling territory would need to provide direct, tangible benefit. XP boosts, defensive/safety properties, RNG tweaks, something that makes it a hot commodity.
2) Acquiring and maintaining land mass should in some way be related to placing strongholds about the map. This creates a drive to divide your forces into smaller sections. Sure, they're more easily raided--but those sweet sweet territory benefits make it worth your while. That's going to make a faction/alliance/whatever spread their forces as much as they can get away with.
3) This has to be done in a way that doesn't completely drown ferals and micro factions in the ensuing wave of continent-spanning mega factions. Perhaps even making the map of such a size that it can't all be controlled by several factions, and shifting focus from kill-kill-kill to capture-control-maintain. The current complaint about large maps is that people get lost in them and there's nobody to interact with. However, if you can interact with the land itself, and squabble with those difficult-to-find enemies by taking their territory, it gives you enough action to mitigate that ghost town feel. Someone might try invading your territory, and while the character can run home to cower in a stronghold, the land itself is always available for you to reclaim and counter-attack. Land can't hide from you. With a big enough map (and decay mechanics which limit the amount you can have at any given time) there would be lawless backwaters where ferals and microfactions fly under the radar.
Personally, I'm in favor of factional land control mechanics being accessible to all characters and classes, much like building the fortifications of a stronghold. That way, you don't have the problem of several overworked and disguntled infusers doing thankless tasks in the boonies at the cost of their own XP gain and character progression.
I've always been a fan of more resource/land oriented alternatives, much like Lychwood posted about. I also love the vassal ideas. However I don't think any of these will really solve the problem, just expand its scope.
What I do think that we need is more ways to inconvenience bigger factions. Raids are mostly all or nothing. Dropping glyphs might be a minor inconvenience, but I'd like more ways to strategically harass and sabotage. A trap mechanic that will increase ward damage 24 hours from now (pre-raid preparation). Use renown to summon an NPC to help your raid somehow. Set fire to their SH so that forts cannot be repaired.
Sure, some of these ideas can help the big guys just as much, maybe more. But it might give the smaller guys a chance.
What I do think that we need is more ways to inconvenience bigger factions. Raids are mostly all or nothing. Dropping glyphs might be a minor inconvenience, but I'd like more ways to strategically harass and sabotage. A trap mechanic that will increase ward damage 24 hours from now (pre-raid preparation). Use renown to summon an NPC to help your raid somehow. Set fire to their SH so that forts cannot be repaired.
Something I liked from breath 3 was how ward strength was based on infusion, and how a ward could be weakened over time by a dedicated infuser. Corruptors were especially good at this with their Unholy Stain skill. I'd like it if Unholy Stain could come back in some form, but in order to properly work like it did last breath, other players would need some way of countering it other than waiting around for it to wear off (much like how stronghold auto-infusion worked).
I guess it'd be cool if Archons and Wizards had something they could do in order to have some lasting effect on other faction wards, too.
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