Risk of Unbalanced Servers?

[Sledgecrushr]

Theres a flip side to this as well, imagine you are with the dominant empire and the fight is on a continent that is pop locked. Will you be happy being stuck with hacking empty bases?

[GLaDOS]

We really need to wait until at least open beta, maybe the full release to see if this is true. Until then we can only speculate.

[ratfusion]

An earlier poster had it right, this same concern applied to PS1, and it turned out to be a non-issue. For the most part it seemed to naturally work itself out (to the surprise of many), and the incentive system seemed to tweak it just right.

There actually seemed to be a roughly equal inherent draw to each faction. I think we were all shocked that so many people wanted to play with those assholes in XX empire, or wear the ugly colors of YY empire. I expected my ZZ empire to have 80% population on looks alone.

Follow the PS1 model and there is no reason it shouldn't work as well this time.

[Symmenix]

The best part is when the two underpopulated factions are fighting the overpopulated one, it forces the overpop'd one to spread thinner.

[Eyeklops]

You would be amazed at how well the empires were designed to keep an even population. When the population is medium-to-high, the largest imbalance I can ever remember seeing was only about 5 or 6 %. Now late at night, when the pops get low, it's a mixed bag. One day it will be Vanu with high pop, the next NC, and other TR. I do however remember many, many months of low pop nights dominated by TR population, on the order of 50% TR. Also, what some people have mentioned above, when one empire has a serious majority of the pop, the other two will tag team the "big guy". IMHO, this is the primary reason having 3 factions works much better than 2.

[MCYRook]

There are 3 factions, and one thing that does is it alleviates pop imbalances - much less of issue than if you have just 2.

In PS1 on Werner, there was a time when the TR would pretty consistently have 38-45% global pop. But they didn't dominate the world map all that much, because there still were 62-55% combined NC+VS to oppose them. Granted, it wasn't super for NC/VS to have to mostly fight TR day in, day out, and sometimes it would be one of the smaller empires getting double-teamed by the TR and the 3rd empire. But eventually, it gets to a point when the 3rd empire has to turn against the dominant one again.

It only really becomes a problem when one empire gets >50% consistently. That would be more than 1.5x than what they ideally should have, tho, and the law of large numbers should prevent that.

[ringring]

Why did your friend say the server will be unbalanced? I assume he means the population split between the different empires?

There are several responses.
Firstly, there are three empires. If one becomes dominant they will tend to be the 1 in a 2 onto 1 situation. This is the reason for three empires.

Second, did he say what he did because he thought he thought one empire looked fantastic but at least one of the other two didn't? Well, everyone will have a favourite but these will tend to balance out.

Third, if imbalances exist but aren't rediculous this gives more opportunity for empire wide strategy. Strange as it may sound.

Fourth, 3 empires on one continent on the server isn't unknown territory. Planetside has been doing it successfully for years and plateny of ex-players understand how it works and how to play.

Fifth, there are ways for the devs to give minority empires a boost, such as a dynamic xp %age boost per kill to the smallest.

In short, it will be fine.

[Ivam Akorahil]

Balance is for wussies, in world history NO battle and NO war ever were balanced

should get used to enemies outnumbering and worst case scenarios, practise your skills, get in outfits, go military and tactical. like history shows with the 300 spartans (it were actualy around 1000) killing a total of 230000 persians, its obvious that quality > quantity

if one keep losing then something is wrong with them and not the server or the enemy beeing OP

my 2 cents

[Wrath]

from what I remember from playing PS1 most of the time imbalances happened when one of the heavy weapons was viewed as being the better I can remeber a few times vanu getting a surge in players during the day they where trying to balance the lasher.

but these people who jump and change empires arent much of an issue because they tend to be low skilled players looking to gain a bit of an advantage.

[KTNApollo]

Hopefully there's a pop limit on continents so you can't have more than 666.33 players from a single faction on continent.

[Carnage]

Higby said there was the possibility of an empire having more then 33.33% of the pop, whatever it is, no team should be able to have more then 50% of the pop, I suspect 40-45% will be max, meaning they will still be outnumbered by the combined total of the other 2 empires... short alliances are not out of the question... and anyway, a single night of war with a push from players on another continent could quickly reverse any unbalance, shit could literally change in 24 hours as ppl log off and on...

[KTNApollo]

Originally Posted by Carnage

log off

PlanetSide

wat.

[Boomhowser]

end of the day thiers no point worrying about this until game goes live,

However should it then go imbalanced I hope that they dont start allowing server transfers as it creates more problems than it solves.
Majority of playerbase that transfered would head to where their faction is winning which tends to create larger disparity in populations and has been to known to mess up Servers that didnt require transfers in the first place.
Sure we all have noble ideas of how people would flock to help out their brethren but face it we are dealing with human nature so not gonna happen :/

[Carnage]

Originally Posted by KTNApollo

wat.

log off;
Verb 1. log off - exit a computer; "Please log off before you go home"

PlanetSide;
PlanetSide is a massively-multiplayer online first-person-shooter computer game published by Sony Online Entertainment and released on May 20, 2003.

PlanetSide chronicles the efforts of three factions as they fight for territorial control over ten different continents on the planet Auraxis. Players take on the role of individual soldiers fighting for one of the three factions within the game, and can specialize in various fields such as combat vehicle crewman, infantry, invisible infiltrator or a variety of combat support roles such as combat medic or combat engineer. The game is played primarily in a first person perspective, with the option of third-person.


Elmo needs more time spent at sesame street me thinks...

[Loco]

Originally Posted by Carnage

Higby said there was the possibility of an empire having more then 33.33% of the pop, whatever it is, no team should be able to have more then 50% of the pop, I suspect 40-45% will be max, meaning they will still be outnumbered by the combined total of the other 2 empires... short alliances are not out of the question... and anyway, a single night of war with a push from players on another continent could quickly reverse any unbalance, shit could literally change in 24 hours as ppl log off and on...

While I agree that no team SHOULD have more than 50%.. that seems like it would be hard to enforce. Lets say an outfit has a raid night. They have 40 members that show up and try to take on an empty continent.

So at that point they have 100% of the pop. Then one NC shows up. Would the 40 person outfit be forced to purge 39 members?