Population Inbalance

[capiqu]

I really hate it when I log on to find my empire is less then 20% of the world population. This causes me to almost always just play for less then a few minutes if I play at all.
I have been thinking that a possible solution could be that any server who's anyone faction falls to under 25% of the total world population becomes an open server. This would mean that if the TR fall to under 25% of total pop then the server becomes open to TR from other servers. So TR players from Waterson can then log into Mattherson to help balance out the Population. Once the TR population is over 30% then the server closes again. So all TR from other servers will return to their original servers once they log off.
I think many players and outfits would enjoy this since it would allow them to play their main characters or outfits on other servers. This would offer them a new experience of playing with or against players or outfits on other servers.
Anyway just wondering what your idea of this would be.

[Assist]

Anything to get the TR off of Waterson is a great thing. They're like cockroaches though, get rid of one and two more replace it.

No one wants to go play on a server with low population though, so not sure why TR would leave their unfair advantage on Waterson to go have an unfair disadvantage. There's no incentive to play on a low population faction, and it seems that the developers have no idea how to solve this.

Overall I agree though, I don't play specifically because of the population imbalance on Waterson. Unfortunately it's been this way for so many *months* on Waterson that I'm just sick of it.

[AThreatToYou]

Yeah, VS need players on Waterson.
I'd play VS if I wassn't shoehorned into farming certs for my NC, and I barely play enough hours to get my 5 ribbons anyway.

In either case, when the alerts come, generally it ends up being 33%-33%-33% if it's on Indar at least. VS has always been underpopulated but in PS1, they had ways around this... PS2? No luck for the outpopped faction.

I'm not quite sure how to deal with this aside from XP incentives, spawn time bonuses, and resource bonuses.

[totalBimbo]

we could all just join TR on waterson to address the issue by making the server come to complete stand still. or cry about it some more instead of actually working together on your factions.

[Rivenshield]

They need a cooldown period on empire-swapping. I never understood why they reneged on one empire per server, with all of its predictable side effects. I am more at a loss now to understand why they don't have yet one more simple, proven game mechanic in place that we had a decade ago.

Yeah, yeah; determined griefers and 4th Empire loyalists can run multiple clients and all that. It shouldn't be facilitated.

[Ruffdog]

If its really bad maybe:

Eliminate cooldown timers on maxes and vehicles?
Faster respawning? Or the ability to spawn ANYWHERE?
Lower recharge time on the personal shields?

[ChipMHazard]

One thing SOE might try is offering outfits server transfers, instead of just merging servers which some times just compound the pop issues already present. Obviously some sort of incentive would have to be given.

Other than that there's only really two other things they can do.
-Offer real bonuses for the underpopulated factions.
-Try to prevent/limit faction hopping to the degree that it might be happening atm.

[Shogun]

increase the xp boni and introduce additional bonus levels.
if your empire is underpopulated by a certain rate, you get an extreme xp bonus for a successful basedefend/attack.

maybe the more you are outnumbered, the more different boni you get. there are a few things that can be used as a bonus: resourcegain, cooldowntimers, xp bonus, respawndelays.

the problem is, that these may be helpful for the few underdogs who would fight there no matter what, but i don´t think it can lure in more players of that faction.

another thing that may help: make chars independent of the servers.
so you start the game, you chose your char and then you choose the server.

this way outfits could decide to go for an organised underdog-run.

[Stanis]

With home continents an empire has a very specific goal to defend.
They priorise them - they need them secure to be able to expand on to other continents.

With the way continents are linked via warpgates typically they are being contested by only two empires at a time.


The self-balancing in this is that when a dominant population threatens the other two empires they tend to stop fighting each.

This means the two weaker factions now start to focus on a single target. Who become outnumbered over two fronts.

This check and balance meant that the dominant population might hold more of the 11 continents but there were front lines being contested and a few solid battles underway.


My long term solution to PS2 balance requires a few more continents, well structured warpgate links. Which we aren't getting any time soon.


Otherwise population imbalance as a result of positive feedback loop to the most numerous empire means the constant meatgrinder 3 way has to stop.

[MuNrOe]

Copy Pasted from my posts.

Wow has the game really lost about 2000+ active players since the start of march.
http://sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php?world=all&timezone=0&allfactions=false

There are some servers there that struggle to put up 600 players in prime time.

What would be great is if they merged every server into 1. Upped the player per map count to 2000 . Put in the empire swap time lock out, and added the 4th map and sanc. Then you would get some real planetside action. Where empires could focus the majority of their faction on one map and still put up a decent defense of the other.

Make warpgates what they should be "warpgates" and not spawn places. This game has at least a year untill it would even get close to anything that resembled it. Considering that it is losing 2000 players a month SOE really need to lift their game before it falls flat on its *** from people leaving. Weather that comes from lack of players on certain servers or lack of meaning full content. Either way things need to change.

Here you go dev's let me show you how thats done.
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/NewAuraxianMegaMap_Lattice.jpg
Local lattice is now done time to implement global lattice.

If only they would have listened to the PS1 vets in the first place instead of going around this roller coaster ride of stupidity to come back full circle and agree with us 6 months after tech testing. You guys want something to talk about at your friday night OP's shows or POD casts there you go. Bring this up and stop avoiding it.

Relative population is a symptom. If the Global lattice system was in and many servers merged then this would not even be.

The problem comes back to game design and lack of purpose to fight on different con tenants.

Go back to any time in PS1 say TR had A HUGE pop advantage. What would happen NC would hit a tr cont and Vanu would hit a tr cont. Splitting the empire in two. All of a sudden you have a 50% empire pop reduced to a 25%. Sure sometimes they would both stack and hit the NC or VANU at a point but the fact remained that at some point they had to fight each other. Some of the best fights I ever had were from breaking out of warpgate locks on NC with the Raid forming in the warpgate. Command chat keeping the target quite untill it was called and then hundreds of players all storming off to single cont to break into it.

SOE will look at locking people's empire population and some will log off in frustration if they keep on this same path. Its not the answer.

I mean FFS all these problems were addressed in the original. They did these things for a reason and it all made perfect sense. In short what your experiencing is the game in its current form missing something that was IN THE ORIGINAL!@@!!@ that served to fix this problem.

If there's a problem I guarantee if you look at the original game (PS1) the solution is already there.

[Snipefrag]

I dont buy into 'the sky is falling, so is the population' cries.. Those graphs don't look that alarming. A lot of people are waiting for lattice before running the game up again. With more sensible meta game a lot of the population issues will be fixed as long as the command tools are up to scratch.

In PS1 if one faction had a massive pop advantage and the other two factions were fighting each it was a TACTICAL DECISION to give up the fight and concentrate on the overpopped faction. Most the time it was done, or the overpopped faction would warpgate someone and then that faction would lose whatever cont they were stupidly fighting over and then come out of their warpgate like a swam of angry bees and take back most of the land.

[Canaris]

all this just stems from the fourth faction switching to suit the good warpgates positions, it's the TRs turn for that boost as last go round we were the bitches of the gate rotation, you did hear some crying and sniffles but most of us just sucked it up and continued the good fight. Even with the bad locations the core of the TR stayed put not our fault your factions don't inspire the same loyalty now is it, it's your turn now. So as many of the VS & NC said at the time to the TR "meh not our problem".

Oh and don't get me wrong, I agree whole heartily about same server faction swap times should be set for 12hr or 24hr cooldowns. You log in as your VS just to find your side is taking a beating and then WTJ, nope you made your choice so stick with it and I do hope as more continents are relased and a proper global lattice system is put in place we see less of this.

One more small point the Warpgates on Easamir & Indar need to be swapped around so when you have the North gate on Indar you don't also have the South gate on Easamir like we do now.

[Shogun]

the main problem is the constant meaningless threeway going on.

get your booze ready if you are doing the planetside drinking game, because i´m going to say santuaries!

we need them, and we need to get more continents asap!
low pop empires are no fun if you are ALWAYS up against 2 factions at once. and as long as we can´t throw a faction off a cont, this is always the case.

so people change to a server where they are not outnumbered by two other factions.

[Assist]

all this just stems from the fourth faction switching to suit the good warpgates positions, it's the TRs turn for that boost as last go round we were the bitches of the gate rotation, you did hear some crying and sniffles but most of us just sucked it up and continued the good fight. Even with the bad locations the core of the TR stayed put not our fault your factions don't inspire the same loyalty now is it, it's your turn now. So as many of the VS & NC said at the time to the TR "meh not our problem".


No, I really don't think you guys seem to understand. VS on Waterson has been outnumbered horribly no matter the warpgate. It's not "TR's turn". It's not "the "VS players were all 4th factioners". It's "There are no VS players.".


http://sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php?world=18&timezone=-5&allfactions=false

Take a look at that, then scroll back to see where the VS had the highest pop. Luckily the NC are now falling back to our levels, unfortunately that's only because the TR are gaining even more players.

You people are dead wrong when you think this is a warpgate issue, or some new recent issue. It has been like this on Waterson since release. TR has a dramatic advantage every single day because of their ridiculous population numbers. The only thing that is recently changing is the NC are falling back to their population numbers, while the VS are holding steady at 22% during primetime server hours.


You people that marginalize this anger me! :mad:

[ChipMHazard]

It is however a recent change when it comes to Miller.
There will always be servers where one faction dominates the others. Which is the one where the NC basicly ruled everything at one point and might still be ruling now?

[Ait'al]

The answer to populations problems is too shoot them and kill them!

[Canaris]

No, I really don't think you guys seem to understand. VS on Waterson has been outnumbered horribly no matter the warpgate. It's not "TR's turn". It's not "the "VS players were all 4th factioners". It's "There are no VS players.".


http://sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php?world=18&timezone=-5&allfactions=false

Take a look at that, then scroll back to see where the VS had the highest pop. Luckily the NC are now falling back to our levels, unfortunately that's only because the TR are gaining even more players.

You people are dead wrong when you think this is a warpgate issue, or some new recent issue. It has been like this on Waterson since release. TR has a dramatic advantage every single day because of their ridiculous population numbers. The only thing that is recently changing is the NC are falling back to their population numbers, while the VS are holding steady at 22% during primetime server hours.


You people that marginalise this anger me! :mad:

I could be looking at the states from Gemini server of PS1 looking at that, VS were always the niche faction or least liked and over the development your factions rainbow fabulous approach to recruitment I'm sure turned away many players.
What you guys need to do is rebrand your image.

TR are the stern military red team that people will gravitate towards.

NC are the freedom loving rebels in blue who use everyday equipment turned into weapons and big guns while not usually as popular as the red team they will attract like minded folks in good numbers.

The VS well you're the tech savy but horrible fuchsia team with alien style equipment, now this will attract a niche player base but will put others off in droves. The Uncanny Valley as it's known

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

and if you don't think colour and style has something to do with it you don't know human psychology as well as me.
So what's left to do, well get yourselves a makeover and you might attract more players.
Instead of just bitching to me about marginalising you, use that anger and turn it into something productive get out there and do something about it.

Oh and it does have to do with warpgate position too, look at the stats from the different servers you linked, when the gates moved again you can clearly see players from VS & NC decline slightly and TR boost up. That's not an aberration.

[ThatGoatGuy]

I really hate it when I log on to find my empire is less then 20% of the world population. This causes me to almost always just play for less then a few minutes if I play at all.
I have been thinking that a possible solution could be that any server who's anyone faction falls to under 25% of the total world population becomes an open server. This would mean that if the TR fall to under 25% of total pop then the server becomes open to TR from other servers. So TR players from Waterson can then log into Mattherson to help balance out the Population. Once the TR population is over 30% then the server closes again. So all TR from other servers will return to their original servers once they log off.
I think many players and outfits would enjoy this since it would allow them to play their main characters or outfits on other servers. This would offer them a new experience of playing with or against players or outfits on other servers.
Anyway just wondering what your idea of this would be.

Oh you make me laugh. I was playing all day yesterday, when were you on when you were 20% pop? I was on 3-10 CST which is basically the majority of primetime, and there was NO point in which we were below 30% population. Were you on something like Esamir? Yeah we had lower pop because we were dunking shit on Indar during that alert.

[ThatGoatGuy]

NC are the freedom loving rebels in blue who use everyday equipment turned into weapons and big guns while not usually as popular as the red team they will attract like minded folks in good numbers.

So NS weapons with slugs in them and drum mags with the NC logo?

[Assist]

Oh and it does have to do with warpgate position too, look at the stats from the different servers you linked, when the gates moved again you can clearly see players from VS & NC decline slightly and TR boost up. That's not an aberration.

And look at the stats on Waterson, or on Mattherson. They've both proven that warpgate rotation means nothing. Just because it effects one server doesn't mean it's a general blanket statement for the game. The VS on Waterson gained the north Warpgate on Indar and lost 3% population on average until the next warpgate rotation.

What exactly do you think the VS on Waterson should do to get more people? What is some magic cure that you think is going to gain us these players? Stop trying to play this off as if it's a problem with the players. It's not, it's a problem with the game and the lack of development on population balance since the release of the game. Blaming it on image of a faction is ridiculous, if that were true then why are there servers where VS has higher population? Do you think so many euro's play on Waterson because it's a better name than Miller? Sorry but the branding of your faction image doesn't change balance. It's just like the gun sounds, that's not going to fix population balance. Sure it may change the appeal of a faction but it's not going to magically fix months of unbalanced population.

The problem is they refuse to do what is necessary to make the populations balanced. Enforce legitimate buffs / nerfs based on extreme population differences. It's not a problem of weapon balance, vehicle balance, or color appeal. It's a problem of more people choosing one server rather than another. Why should they choose to go join an underpopulated faction? Moral reasons? Lol, it's a video game, they want to win, no reason to put themselves at a disadvantage from the start. That's the problem that the developers need to address. Increasing XP gain doesn't matter to a new player if he's facing twice as many bullets flying at him. A noob would much rather be on the side shooting twice as many bullets.

So, color? Faction appeal? gunplay Balance? Warpgate? All this has been disproved through the statistics on PS2. It's really as simple as people choose to play on the more populated faction, because there's no reason to help the good fight and join the challenging side. I hope people realize one day that every server has different population issues and the fix that SoE needs to implement to solve that problem should not be a faction specific change.

[Roderick]

I think the only fix for this problem would be to allow your character to log onto all servers.This way if a player or an outfit wants to challenge themselves, they can log onto the server with low population for this empire and maybe the game should offer a better experience bonus incentive to those player for taking on the task to help balance the numbers.

Unless SOE comes out with some form of open server select system to allow players to freely go where they choose, you will continue to see imbalance results and disgruntled players.

[ChipMHazard]

The problem is they refuse to do what is necessary to make the populations balanced. Enforce legitimate buffs / nerfs based on extreme population differences. It's not a problem of weapon balance, vehicle balance, or color appeal. It's a problem of more people choosing one server rather than another. Why should they choose to go join an underpopulated faction? Moral reasons? Lol, it's a video game, they want to win, no reason to put themselves at a disadvantage from the start. That's the problem that the developers need to address. Increasing XP gain doesn't matter to a new player if he's facing twice as many bullets flying at him. A noob would much rather be on the side shooting twice as many bullets.

So, color? Faction appeal? gunplay Balance? Warpgate? All this has been disproved through the statistics on PS2. It's really as simple as people choose to play on the more populated faction, because there's no reason to help the good fight and join the challenging side. I hope people realize one day that every server has different population issues and the fix that SoE needs to implement to solve that problem should not be a faction specific change.

Agreed. There needs to be a reason to fight for the lower populated side and less of a reason to fight for the side with the most players. Whatever the initial reasoning behind players choosing one side over another was, it probably doesn't matter now. It's quite possible that players are simply joining the winning team.

On some servers it might still be a simple question of some factions having many players that aren't able/willing to play as much at this point in time (exam peroid and all that).

[capiqu]

I'm not talking about server mergers or server transfers. I rather stay put where I'm at on Mattherson. But populations are shifting all day long. Now I'm using server names as examples but I'll switch to server A and Server B.
So server A may at one point during the day have a 45% TR population while server B is really in need of TR at that same time only with 22% TR. As I log in, the log in screen could indicate that sever B is open to TR.
Well server A, my server with 45% TR will be boring as hell since most likely 80% of the Tr will be pushing on one direction with overwhelming force and easy wins. Seeing this I can then decide to log into server B.

[Canaris]

And look at the stats on Waterson, or on Mattherson. They've both proven that warpgate rotation means nothing. Just because it effects one server doesn't mean it's a general blanket statement for the game. The VS on Waterson gained the north Warpgate on Indar and lost 3% population on average until the next warpgate rotation.

What exactly do you think the VS on Waterson should do to get more people? What is some magic cure that you think is going to gain us these players? Stop trying to play this off as if it's a problem with the players. It's not, it's a problem with the game and the lack of development on population balance since the release of the game. Blaming it on image of a faction is ridiculous, if that were true then why are there servers where VS has higher population? Do you think so many euro's play on Waterson because it's a better name than Miller? Sorry but the branding of your faction image doesn't change balance. It's just like the gun sounds, that's not going to fix population balance. Sure it may change the appeal of a faction but it's not going to magically fix months of unbalanced population.

The problem is they refuse to do what is necessary to make the populations balanced. Enforce legitimate buffs / nerfs based on extreme population differences. It's not a problem of weapon balance, vehicle balance, or color appeal. It's a problem of more people choosing one server rather than another. Why should they choose to go join an underpopulated faction? Moral reasons? Lol, it's a video game, they want to win, no reason to put themselves at a disadvantage from the start. That's the problem that the developers need to address. Increasing XP gain doesn't matter to a new player if he's facing twice as many bullets flying at him. A noob would much rather be on the side shooting twice as many bullets.

So, color? Faction appeal? gunplay Balance? Warpgate? All this has been disproved through the statistics on PS2. It's really as simple as people choose to play on the more populated faction, because there's no reason to help the good fight and join the challenging side. I hope people realize one day that every server has different population issues and the fix that SoE needs to implement to solve that problem should not be a faction specific change.

Planetside 1 had a very nice system of boosting HP to factions with low pops, maybe that might be better system than nerfing weapons as a whole on one side that's just more populated.

[Snydenthur]

I'm not talking about server mergers or server transfers. I rather stay put where I'm at on Mattherson. But populations are shifting all day long. Now I'm using server names as examples but I'll switch to server A and Server B.
So server A may at one point during the day have a 45% TR population while server B is really in need of TR at that same time only with 22% TR. As I log in, the log in screen could indicate that sever B is open to TR.
Well server A, my server with 45% TR will be boring as hell since most likely 80% of the Tr will be pushing on one direction with overwhelming force and easy wins. Seeing this I can then decide to log into server B.

And after 30mins you'd be logging off and changing to the server that has more players on your faction, since nobody likes to be on the losing side. Trusting players, without any benefit for them, to balance is the most stupid idea ever. It doesn't work in any game, that's why normal shooters usually have automatic team balancing.

Yes, there are some players (like you might be), that enjoy the "challenge", but most of the players wouldn't balance. Underpopulated faction has no chance. They might have the best players in the world, but the truth is, numbers matter a lot more than skill in this game. Especially after the lattice is introduced to the game.

[Ruffdog]

Will people with deeply invested toons be tempted by server transfer tokens? I think they are an inevitable cash grab down the line

[DeltaGun]

and if you don't think colour and style has something to do with it you don't know human psychology as well as me.
So what's left to do, well get yourselves a makeover and you might attract more players.
Instead of just bitching to me about marginalising you, use that anger and turn it into something productive get out there and do something about it.

Yeah Assist, stop bitching and go change the faction colors already. Canaris is a psychologist.

[ChipMHazard]

Right now it seems like some of the low pop issues can be attributed to people not wanting to fight a losing battle. During this alert on Miller the TR pop on Esamir dropped by about 10% when the TR almost got pushed back to the WG.
This of course could also be attributed to there being no real reason to try and fight in an alert that can't be won.

[VGCS]

The biggest limiting factor here is Hit-Registry.

Most of the imbalance seems to be Coast-based a lot of times and "solving it" would require for some East coasters to play on West coast servers and Visa Versa. And that's just not possible in most FPS, and especially not in this one where there's no real scaling Lag-compensation on the "simulated projectile" physics of this game... Tribes has the same issue which makes Automatics instant-win weapons for some people, and instant loss for others depending on Routing & Latency :(

[maradine]

Increase low pop XP bonuses by a literal factor of ten. Make playing on the bitch faction of your server have the rough effect of a double XP weekend. The problem will solve itself in one weekend.

[Canaris]

Yeah Assist, stop bitching and go change the faction colors already. Canaris is a psychologist.

oh I don't need to be a psychologist to see what's right in front of me

When I***39;m Vanu - YouTube

*shudder*

[Snipefrag]

oh I don't need to be a psychologist to see what's right in front of me

When I'm Vanu - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNLNfN-WCZg&feature=player_embedded)

*shudder*

haha, that video is hilarious.. i love anti faction propaganda.

[Lucecarentes]

Ceres VS have also been getting outnumbered for 5 months now, we always have 25-29% pop. We can hardly get enuf people on one continent.
TR have 35-40% every day. Honestly if this keeps up I'll just give up from PS2. It's not fun fighting with only one VS platoon at your side, against 5-10 TR platoons every day.

[MrMak]

Well all that exagerating your faction's weakneses and other faction's streanghts realy payed off then huh?

Seriously if people stoped making loing winded threads about which faction is curently the most OP thing since the BFG 9000 this faction hoping that creates the imbalances would at least slow down.

[martingee]

I think the damage is done, at least on Cobalt.

Despite the TR's favourable warpgate position on Indar we usually only have equal pop to the NC, occassionally outnumbering but not all that often. Saying that the population swings can be dramatic and for no apparent reason. The other night VS were at 41% something i've not seen in a while.

I can't remember what patch it was (GU02 iirc) but when a whole load of people switched to NC their new characters became their main and now, after a few months, aren't switching back. I started on Lithcorp and our merger with Cobalt seemed to help a little but ultimately i think people have ploughed money and time into their characters and the pops are 'fixed'.

I don't have any solutions, no one should be forced to play a particular empire in order to even the fight but as people have said, no one finds it fun to be facerolled time and time again.

[DirtyBird]

On Briggs the warpgate position on Indar dictates the population balance.
The TR will swap to what ever faction holds the position to the north.

[capiqu]

I'll bring this back up for the last time since I'm losing yet a few more friends to other servers. The complain is that the VS have a huge population advantage on my server so as soon as they can they will transfer to another server.
I hear the arguments, some servers have low populations and people want to transfer to higher pop servers or you have friends playing on other servers and you want to play with them. So the solution is transfers that takes care of everything.
However in my situation and in my server the problem is not server low population but a huge population imbalance. So More TR and NC will leave making the VS advantage even greater. Then some Vs will leave looking for fairer fights and on and on and on and on.
I will present this for the last time. Keep the server populations put. Allow the servers to become open servers to characters from factions needed. So if server A has a current populaton of 20% TR which would be lets say under a threshold of 30% that server then becomes an open server. Becoming an opened server would allow TR from other servers to log on to server A until the TR population Reaches 30% again and then server A will close up again. Once you log off when you log on again you will return to your original server thereby not causing a permanent impact on your servers population.

[Qwan]

Wow hearing alot about warp gate positions, and which one's is better, Here's one to boggle the mind. lets say they spread the lattice to all the current continents, line the warp gates and link bases threw the warp gates.

My question is when you log into the game were would your starting point be for you faction. (were going to need those sactuary's back guys)

With the way this game plays and the way it feels sometimes I dont think they should have called this game Planetside, they gutted what made Planetside the game Planetside, though the concept is there. They should have called it something like Global War, or P-Wars, or Faction wars, or Sideplanet, or somthing. But as the months pass, they are slowly giving into alot of the things that made PS what it was, lattice was one of them. I just hope they start to add more of the things that made PS1- planetside.

[Chaff]

.
I got shit for this idea already. But I think adding two more factions (Empires) would shake things up.

The additional Empires would have to be very different. One could be very primal & animalistic. Future-primitive weapons. Bows, lazer swords, more explosives, masters of disguise, cloaking, and guerilla warfare. Perhaps the only Empire than can "climb". .... would ride animals instead of vehicles ?

2nd new Empire could be similar to something along the lines of the Bugs from Starship Troopers. An insect race. Giant beetles instead of MBT. Dragonflies instead of planes,....

The 4th Empire strategists need to be countered by the devs. It's a problem. The issue needs to be dealt with until they can curtail 80% of it. Professional Griefers are a huge part of this equation as well.
.

[BackzBanny]

.

The additional Empires would have to be very different. One could be very primal & animalistic. Future-primitive weapons. Bows, lazer swords, more explosives, masters of disguise, cloaking, and guerilla warfare. Perhaps the only Empire than can "climb". .... would ride animals instead of vehicles ?

2nd new Empire could be similar to something along the lines of the Bugs from Starship Troopers. An insect race. Giant beetles instead of MBT. Dragonflies instead of planes,....

.

dafuq did i just read?

[moosepoop]

increase xp bonus to underpopped by up to 200%. problem solved.

[Selerox]

I think the damage is done, at least on Cobalt.

Despite the TR's favourable warpgate position on Indar we usually only have equal pop to the NC, occassionally outnumbering but not all that often. Saying that the population swings can be dramatic and for no apparent reason. The other night VS were at 41% something i've not seen in a while.

I can't remember what patch it was (GU02 iirc) but when a whole load of people switched to NC their new characters became their main and now, after a few months, aren't switching back. I started on Lithcorp and our merger with Cobalt seemed to help a little but ultimately i think people have ploughed money and time into their characters and the pops are 'fixed'.

I don't have any solutions, no one should be forced to play a particular empire in order to even the fight but as people have said, no one finds it fun to be facerolled time and time again.

I'd certainly agree about NC's population advantage. They've had it for a very, very long time, with VS and TR pretty much equal in population. Thankfully, the NC on Cobalt aren't exactly the best in the world, so that mitigates what could have been a far worse situation.

The 41% VS pop I think I saw as well, and that was only a post-alert thing. I think TR and NC numbers dropped off after the alert, whereas the VS players stuck around.

[BackzBanny]

increase xp bonus to underpopped by up to 200%. problem solved.

THAT'S a useful idea!

currently, you get a lousy 30% xp bonus while having to deal with 48% TR
(while being part of the 28% VS on that continent), which is not worth the pain when you already have +100% with your membership and alpha squad boost.

why is it so shitty to fight in those cases as part of the strongly underpopulated empire?

the nc in that case add another 24% pop, so it's basically a fight NC and VS against TR, as there is one TR soldier for every enemy. seeing that th NC and VS still have some fights between themselves, it's obvious that the TR can steamroll both of them.

any agreements between NC and VS not to fight each other in those cases and push united against the TR would be considerd "lame, unfair and pathetic" by the TR.


in the end this makes me leave the game at that point (i'm vanu), as i neither want to get slaughtered all the time just because of numbers nor want to feed xp to all those TRs. some weaker minded people then switch over to TR, amplyfing the problem.

the result is, the "fight" is shitty for both sides.


please consider that i didn't make up the numbers, they are taken from my server (miller) right now, at the time of this posting.

[Emperor Newt]

imho there are several reasons which make pop imbalance such a problem in PS2.

For one it's the xp bonus. 20-30% bonus xp doesn't make anyone change when you are outnumbere 2-3 to 1. In addition to that the overall underpopulated factions often already have problems populating more then one continent. With the inability to kick a faction of a continent the underpopulated faction will often find itself in a three-way (which in ps2 is a bad thing) and will even more people will abandon the continent.
And lattice doesn't change anything, you still have to hold your connections against both factions.

If they want to do something they need to increase the xp bonus and allow factions to not only be warpgated (which means nothing) but to actually be able to be kicked off a continent.

[typhaon]

Here's your solution...

Legitimize the 4th faction. Make them mercenaries.

There would need to be some kind of "contract" system - where they are assigned to factions based on population as they log in... and well-rewarded for their success.

I'd like to see them as a separate class - with a uniquely potent and useful weapon/vehicle.

Mercenaries would never be able to control standard territory (I'm still imagining a sandbox continent someday!) themselves, as they'd always be fighting for one of the other empires.

[GeoGnome]

What I don't get about this whole debate, is where as you have a lot of the Devs now opening up about balance... there has been no comment what-so-ever on the Pop imbalances, and I can't quite figure out why.

[AThreatToYou]

1. Look guys. I know at least 3 people who have literally turned down playing VS in favor of the NC or TR because their infantry suits look bad and their weapons sound bad. MAX Unit, Magrider and Scythe are fine and cool they all say; they admire them. For blanket even populations and increased consumer response to PlanetSide 2 and the Vanu Sovereignty, my corporate vote goes to a re-evaluation of Vanu aesthetics.
[my proposed change follows the anterior color choices of the existing factions, including VS: Orange and green]

2. Experience incentives should be provided. Aesthetic differences CLEARLY do not account solely for underpopulation. There are game mechanics and Game Theory entanglements involved in faction population. However, I want "Death to the 4th Empire!"
Thus, at least a two hour cooldown timer should be instituted if a player switches empires and then leaves the warpgate with the other character. This is to encourage folks who switch to the underpop faction to stay, and to reduce incentives of leaving home faction in favor of alt alert rewards.

3. In addition, experience boosts to underpopulated factions should be increased; respawn time, resource acquisition, and vehicle timers should also be improved if a faction is underpopulated.

[Angelo]

My no. 1 gripe with the game right now is the pop imbalance on certain Servers. There's only so much you can do when you are outnumbered, even with superior coordination or "tactics".
After constantly fighting retreating battles and getting your ass whopped you can't help but get a little frustrated.

Server transfer tokens hopefully will help (I'm sure SOE will create them in a way that you can not transfer to a Server where your population already is in the majority. That would mean anarchy ^^).

I'd really like to see another system besides the XP bonus for the underpopulated factions though. Because the current system apparently is not working.

[Baneblade]

If the VS changed from purple to black, the problem would disappear pretty quick.

[MrMak]

You mean like they already have for the most part?


Yeah i doubt a color palete change will solve thep roblem........

Also server transfer tokens might seem like they woudl fi the problem but it is just as likely they will make it even worse.

What will the majority of people do? Will they go from a server they are dominating ot a server where their faction is underpopulated? No, most will likely do the exact oposite.

[Baneblade]

No, they are still purple.