Population issues and suggestions

[TimoWasTaken]

Originally Posted by Dougnifico

My question is, how in god's name did the VS go from being super under populated and constantly bitching, to being seemingly half of all players?

With SCIENCE!

[kubacheski]

Originally Posted by TimoWasTaken

With SCIENCE!

That made me laugh.

But didnt PS1 already solve this? Is it really that hard to implement exp bonuses based on pop percentages? And you cant really use cont pop locks as the conts dont directly connect via lattice or other means. The pop differences are actually based on this. No connection means go to the cont that most benefits your faction and you ultimately have the upper hand. Link the conts lattice and this is helped. Make more conts and it is helped even more.

Did SOE learn nothing from PS1?

[Dougnifico]

Originally Posted by TimoWasTaken

With SCIENCE!

Fellow TR and grabasstic NC, we must destroy the Vanu cloning facilities/breeding centers...

[capiqu]

VS have always bitch cried louder. Therefor they get pampered everyone knows that.

[omega four]

I think your Option #3 is the best one simply because your other 2 options severely penalize gamers who may have spent money on a certain faction but are then forced to play the other 2 factions instead.

The problem with F2P games is that balance is not the priority of for-profit companies like SOE. Making money is.

Originally Posted by 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.

[War Barney]

Something needs to be done, I've only been playing about a week or 2 granted but I didn't see anybody but vanu win an alert until today and then NC only won by 1% (not really a win just had higher % cap at end of the timer).

The problem is made worse by the players though, or rather by a sad fact of human nature. For example when vanu has 50% on TR has 30% and NC has 20% you would think as a rational person people would think *right lets gang up on VS as that way its 50% v 50%. But what actually happens? TR thinks *oh boy NC is even weaker than us lets get them!* all the while loosing the little they did own to VS (The factions can vary from server to server I guess but on the server I'm on this is the situation 90% of the time).

The problem of 1 faction having more people wouldn't be an issue if people were rational but sadly the bad side of human nature that wants to slaughter the weak like some primitive animal always seems to come out in PS so instead of working together to defeat the big guy the second weakest will gang up on the weakest with the biggest THEN die in turn. I don't get why honestly, do they think that why attacking somebody weaker more of their people will log on?

I do like some of these ideas about respawn timers and resources though, the xp boost is nice thus why I always find the zone where NC is outnumbered the most to fight, sadly though its not enough as while I get good exp per kill at certain times all I run into in those zones is 50 tanks spamming their gun at a base with 4 people in it while 100 scythes scout the land around in-case people try to sneak in from the edge. Respawn timer increases and resource limiting would help the weaker factions have a chance against the bigger one.

I also like this idea of small continents so the outnumbered factions can have somewhere where they can have a chance of a battle with even numbers. Sadly though I think SOE expect people to manage the issue themself by working together, and sadly again its exactly what SHOULD happen. It would be very unfair if say VS had a huge respawn timer and no resources if the 2 underdogs did gang up on them, they would be slaughtered in seconds. However this doesn't really happen so it just screws the whole thing up.


Basically its the players fault... if people acted like rational humans instead of blood thirsty animals the current system would work, but I guess humans haven't evolved that far from wild beasts yet. And no I'm not being philosophical or anything it just seems to be a fact, like sharks when humans smell blood they attack and in PS that means whatever faction has the smallest % gets zerged by the other 2.

[omega four]

Originally Posted by War Barney

Basically its the players fault... if people acted like rational humans instead of blood thirsty animals the current system would work, but I guess humans haven't evolved that far from wild beasts yet. And no I'm not being philosophical or anything it just seems to be a fact, like sharks when humans smell blood they attack and in PS that means whatever faction has the smallest % gets zerged by the other 2.

That's why a particular branch of mathematics is called "game theory" as opposed to "game actuality".

[typhaon]

Originally Posted by War Barney

Basically its the players fault... if people acted like rational humans instead of blood thirsty animals the current system would work, but I guess humans haven't evolved that far from wild beasts yet. And no I'm not being philosophical or anything it just seems to be a fact, like sharks when humans smell blood they attack and in PS that means whatever faction has the smallest % gets zerged by the other 2.

There's the challenge.

Players will do what benefits them the most/harms them the least. If you design the game such that preventing the majority (any) population empire from 'winning' is really in your best interest - then players will do that.

It isn't that people aren't acting like rational humans... it's that they ARE acting like rational humans.

Alerts have become silly exercises.

I can't imagine I'm the only one doing this... other than prime time, when you will see 33/33/33 situations... NC is always the #2 or #3 pop faction in any Mattherson alert. So, I'll happily go to the alert continent... enjoy the 20% bonus XP, along with the under population bonus XP... fighting losing battle to losing battle, doing a lot of reverse spawn room camping (whatever you call it when you shoot from behind the door)... especially in biolabs - you can wrack up just insane amounts of XP in an overrun biolab. In these situations, there is just a silly amount of "high threat" (lol) players that just can't resist wandering into the open and getting farmed - I call it Duck Hunt after the old Nintendo game.

Then... in the final moments of the alert - I log out my NC and log on my VS alt... collect the 20k xp (whatever it is) reward and rinse/repeat with the next alert.

[omega four]

Frankly, population limits is an exercise in futility where an open sandbox game like PS2 is concerned.

PS2 tried hard to emulate "real life warfare" by initially providing an open environment (hex). But then it realized that virtual gaming will NEVER be like "real life warfare". Gamers aren't struggling to stay alive nor fearful of dying as they would in the real world. No, gamers want large battles that are exciting and fast paced. Gamers want large amounts of XPs and certs as rewards for their actions.

So SOE implemented structure to battles in PS2 (lattice). But gamers are still becoming bored with PS2, as they are still not struggling to stay alive nor fearful of dying as they would in the real world during war.

The point is PS2 gamers will NEVER be satisfied with what SOE can offer in PS2. And SOE will NEVER be able to provide an environment to fully satisfy gamers. Because at the end of the day, we're talking about a game. And players will ALWAYS eventually tire and bore themselves of a game.

[moosepoop]

Originally Posted by omega four

The point is PS2 gamers will NEVER be satisfied with what SOE can offer in PS2. And SOE will NEVER be able to provide an environment to fully satisfy gamers. Because at the end of the day, we're talking about a game. And players will ALWAYS eventually tire and bore themselves of a game.

I played cs for 10 years, tf2 for 5 years, ps1 for 6 years.

LOL RONG

[blashyrk]

This thing is really out of hand. Today during alert on Amerish there was 42% TR pop server-wide on Miller, and 48% TR on Amerish.
If you're not gonna do a thing about the pop issues SOE, than please turn of alerts for Miller.
Alerts are always won by the overpopulated zerg scum thus providing them even more certs and better weaponry etc.
I'm seriously thinking about quitting PS2 altogether because of this, you just don't get this kind of unfairness in ANY other game, leading to frustration which is ultimately killing all the fun one can have playing this game.

/rant

Originally Posted by omega four

I think your Option #3 is the best one simply because your other 2 options severely penalize gamers who may have spent money on a certain faction but are then forced to play the other 2 factions instead.

The problem with F2P games is that balance is not the priority of for-profit companies like SOE. Making money is.

I simply do not care if they "may have spent money". SOE released this as a F2P game. They swear by it "not being pay2win". Both paying and non-paying players should get the same treatment, otherwise the game IS inherently pay2win. The paying players already get more certs and resources, the latter already being pay2win as it has direct impact on the game.
Penalizing players with huge pop advantages is the right way to go, and what I suggested certainly wouldn't impact them THAT much either. A respawn timer increase for overpop factions is something that would keep the battles marginally balanced, and currently the level of unfairness the underpop factions experience is unmatched by any other game. It is a broken game this way. It is pretty much comparable to what happens in other games when somebody on the opposing team uses cheats.

This is a screenshot from two days ago on Miller:
http://s10.postimg.org/az6x5l50p/pop.png

[blashyrk]

And here's another one from just now.
This game is beyond repair, it seems:
http://s14.postimg.org/5u61emegh/pop_2.png