Population issues and suggestions

[blashyrk]

Hi, I'm making this pretty much redundant thread (as already everybody is aware of the population issues) not because I want to spam, but rather instead of whining I'd like to give a few suggestions as to how to resolve this issue and to see if others agree with me.

Now, I'm aware that, ultimately, pop imbalance is not anybody's fault directly, not SOE's and not the players' who probably don't even think about it when they're choosing their faction.

But, in my opinion, it is the single most game-breaking factor in the entire game.

There is little that can be done about it, though, but I feel that some sort of balancing might be in order.
For example, 10 mins before writing this post, on Miller the pops were 28% VS, 38%, 34% NC). But there was 50% VS pop on Esamir!
So each of the 3 continents had above 50% population of a single faction.

I can't understand the mentality of players who WANT to be the vast majority, I can't really see it being fun for anyone above the age of 12.

Ok, enough about that, let's skip to the suggestions.
1) In the situations like I described above, where each faction chooses to outnumber everyone else on a particular continent, I really thing that some sort of automated continent pop balance system (like team balance in canonical FPS) is needed. Maintaining at least 2 continents on an even balance, and dump the rest of the majority players on the 3rd continent, that's what they mostly like to do as it is.

2) Impose harsh punishment on the majority pop faction's players while rewarding the underpop faction even more.
For example respawn timers should be dependant of the pop status, if there is 66% of players of faction A on a continent as opposed to factions B and C pop, players of faction A should have DOUBLE the respawn timer duration. I think that also resource costs should be variable according to the pop %.
XP bonuses for the underpop'd should be directly proportional to the other factions' overpopulation, reaching even 100% XP bonus or more.

3) Some sort of server interconnection where you'd get to play with your character on different servers, or an automated system that will choose the server for you based on the servers' pop numbers.