Stop the NC migration to Helios!

Comparing this FPS to others is more like comparing apples to oranges. There are many and far reaching differences between this game and other FPS games, beyond the obvious that being you are in fact in first person and it is a shooter.
Other FPS have locked populations in very low ranges 2v2 10v10 and so on. Here we are talking about 220v220 on a locked continent after the continent locks actually start to have an effect on the game, which will happen after the next server merge.
I don't think temporarily locking the production or transfer of a given faction on a single server is going to cause any problem what so ever.
However as I stated before I'm not advocating forcing anyone to do anything, I'm in favor of incentives to get people to move to servers that can benefit from their presence.
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Agreed, I would rather give incentives to play other factions that are underpopulated. As much as I would rather not restrict people in choosing which side they want that doesn't mean that if one faction is over say 40% of the server pop that they couldn't lock it until it lowers.

Gavyne, as quoted by Jube, this is not a typical FPS. Locking a faction from simply "creating" new characters of the overpopulated faction while providing free transfers, and hopefully incentives for the underpopulated factions, would not kill the game. Also the "losing faction" argument is somewhat misguided since in the end you really can't "win" in this game other than the new Alerts or winning a particular fight for a base. And as for the Aesthetics, that is your opinion. I am American, I am a gamer, and I prefer TR. I think the NC look boxy and bulky and don't care for it and the Vanu just look... weird, although I think they have the coolest looking infiltrators. People have different tastes.

We already told SOE that Genudine + Helios would result in an NC overpop, which is surely did. And I suspect Helios + Connery is going to have the same results though VS vs. TR might even out more in numbers vs. each other.

This is balanced by the NC's complete idiocy.

I dont think the issue is as huge as its made out to be, but im not on every night either, i take breaks for weeks sometimes.

As to the Idiocy of the NC, well, sense launch id noticed the population was usually VS<NC<TR with NC usually losing, which many attributed to the poor placement of the SE warpgate. I personally felt that our losing was more due to the more organised groups on the other two factions, while NC had few, if any, that i saw. I could rarely push a flank without running into EXE, DPS0 or some other that does not come to mind atm.

Now we have a few big (zerg) guilds which is great, people with rather open doors willing to let in anyone with the mental capacity to listen and stay with the horde. Alas that now we have NC<VS<TR and slightly organised pop so we tend to do a bit better.

Im sure if the issue is as big as some make it out to be, SOE will have something in the works, the most simple of which would simply to not allow more then X number of NC/TR/VS on any one continent. Have faith!

I for one would love some VS to shoot on Waterson. If it gets real bad guys, NC and TR pop on Waterson is even now. Not enough VS to shoot yet though!

Today i was playing at helios at esamir, i couldnt forget the wings of liberty campaign. TR was terran and VS protoss and the NC was the zerg.

You're not alone in having skewed pops post-merge,, NC on Cobalt is atleast 10% higher than the others at all times. Wierdly, its the VS (2nd place for pop by about 5% more than TR) who seem to hold the most teritory though.

Gavyne - I don't think VS appearances make as much as difference as you, and a other on this forums, believe.

I think this 1) because I enjoy they way that look (not so much relevant). The only thing I think looks cool about NC is their max, and maybe a heavy assault with composite. What I am saying is not every American male enjoys blue and stern right-wing views. I, for one, enjoy reading science fiction and work with technology, so naturally VS appealed to me moreso, despite the real reason for choosing VS was a group of friends.

2) When the Magrider was really OP -- guess what faction on Genudine was stacked? When the prowler farmed infantry like a sick joke, TR was not overwhelmingly populated, but matched the other two factions (SOE only let the prowler dominate for so long). Not to keep harping on this point across threads but the NC scat/splat max was overpowered for 5 full months before they did anything about it. The "4th faction" goes where the easy kills are. SOE was hesitant to nerf the NC MAX, and as a result we face a really skewed population, as those 4th faction kids finally anchored down on NC.

I think this game, in terms of balance, is possibly at its best as of GU06. But they HAVE to enforce character creation/log-on locks if we ever want to see balance again. Equality is something all three factions agree, is what this game needs.

We have HAVE to lock-out non-premium members when the server is skewed. Look, I am (kinda) sorry to the battle rank 5 free-to-play NC that might be locked out of their server. But you know what? He is battle rank 5, and can easily (and should just to get some reference) re-roll to VS or TR on the same server.

Additionally mentioned in this thread an idea that I enjoy is giving a bonus to transferring factions. If SOE plans on making the technology to do a cert reset, then they can transfer a players certs, SC, and used certs to an BR1 with the same name on a different faction. It might be unfortunate you have to start at BR1, but with 10k certs to spend you aren't truly a BR1. This obviously wouldn't appeal to higher ranks, but all those sub 20BR's might consider 1k certs a tempting offer.

Unfortunately, the NC are not the only ones with their fair share of idiots. Just hop on Miller TR, and watch them go from holding an entire cont, to getting camped at the WG... in less than an hour. Yes, some folks are so 'special' that they fail to appreciate the need to cap and hold control points.

As everyone who has been reading this thread knows I play TR on Helios. Last night something occurred that give me a glimmer of hope.
The alert came at prime time on Indar. The continent locked for the NC and VS almost immediately at 33% each. The TR still could only muster up 30%. We fought a containing action for an hour and thirty minutes until the VS made a tactical error that allowed us to take a commanding lead in territory and we ended up with a victory. It was the kind of battle that I think all of us are looking for in this game, long and hard fought.
Does this mean that a server merge will solve the population problems on Helios by forcing continent locks and therefore fair fights?
Perhaps.
But I can't help thinking that merging Helios and Connery will create major problems for the NC, (Who will have a extremely large population) They will encounter continent locks on at least two continents for most of the day and certainly at prime time, which will result in people not being able to play with their outfits.
Of course the obvious answer to this is that Sony is developing new maps and this will alleviate some of that problem, but will put the under population factions back at square one. Yes we will be able to get a fair fight during alerts, but what about the other folks who are stuck on the "Non-alert" continents that are overrun with NC? Will it be fun for them? I doubt it.

Still I now have hope that Sony will figure out a way, either by incentives or just better PR to even out the faction populations and make the kind of fight we had last night happen more often.

Ya sadly most of my faction is sticking to Indar right now since we finnaly got it locked. Considering how long its been since anyone has locked it, I'm not surprised that people dont want to risk losing it.

Plenty of us want more fights on other contenents, just with our general pop (around 4-5pm yestery as an example, global pop was 22%vs, 33% tr, 44% NC) we have a very hard time being able to split out numbers between more then one contenent without simply getting rolled.

First: Bah. Don't be a hater


Secondly:
Fedoras. Fedorasfedorasfedoras. And either more alien tech or some style elements that are unique. Right now we are purple bland humans with some tech, make it more extreme.

New sounds for all VS weapons. They sound like toy guns but look awesome.

Make our MAX fly. Seriously, just do it.

I was at Jube's side for that fight and noticed that the 33% lock in prime time made a huge difference. We had a 3 squad platoon and spent the entire alert defending at the front lines (until a push in the last 15 min). Alot of NC were locked out of the alert and had to miss the XP, and settle for capping desolate other continents. If there was a population control that prevented one faction from tipping the balance to one side, everyone would get to be involved in the alert and everyone would be happy. SoE could just say that when something like 40% of the registered characters belong to one faction, that faction cannot have more characters made on that server. To weed out the fairweather players, inactive characters that have never had a membership or SC items are deleted after 2 weeks of inactivity. this will keep the population fresh, active and in balance. When that factions numbers drop below 33 % again, then people can create more characters. The population cap per faction is good, but only durring peak hours, otherwise the NC run 60%+ most of the day.

Yet, the continent alert fights have shown populations at 33/33/33 for two straight days on Helios... Saturday and Sunday. Now if you're looking at the pop at 3 AM like some guy did, posting a screenshot taken around that time then yeah the NC was about 45% while the VS was at 29% and TR at 25%. I don't know what you expect SOE to do to force people to play at 3 AM on a West Coast server...

Well said Foamy, the very lack of any population control makes the game rewarding for only NC more than 60% of any given day. The population as it is now literally prevents any competition for the NC and VS and TR have no options but to retreat if the NC chooses to zerg one or the other...sometimes their numbers allow them to dictate both.

Join me on Waterson... pretty even fight between the NC, TR and VS it seems, especially during continent-wide alerts. Though VS since to have a 5% population disadvantage, it aint as huge as the gap on Helios.

Seriously it's more fun here on Waterson. Created an NC toon there and never looked back.

And to add on... more battles on all 3 continents on Waterson. Helio's downright boring having all 3 factions bogged within Indar most of the time. lol.

Create a new toon now on Waterson during the Double XP, you'll have no regrets!

Gavyne is right. It doesn't matter that you can't really "win." Let me explain, I have many friends that game irl. Anytime they get an mmo guess which server they pick? The biggest. Guess what faction they pick? The biggest. So many mmo's have died and fallen that their reasoning is that when populations inevitably drop they won't be so undersided that they'd lose. Better to join the numerically strong faction than play a lower pop faction who will in the future end up being an even more lower pop. I got them into ps2 and guess which faction I had to really push them to not join?

Let's put it this way. They don't even like the most populated faction but all wanted to join it for one reason. "It had the biggest pop." People really do pick factions based on that number.

Not saying people don't pick it for that reason. I am saying that before the alerts there was no real ability to win. You would fight over land and that was it, having a bigger pop overall didn't really matter except to give me more people to shoot at. But now there is a way to win and the overpopulated faction, in most cases, has the clear advantage and gets a reward for being overpopulated. Personally I think the alerts have just exasperated the problem. Also all you are doing is making my point for me why they should just lock the overpopulated faction from being able to create new characters. I am not saying that the old ones should be kicked off or have to switch.

A common practice in the few games with factions that understood pop imbalance was that if one was so many % over the others it got locked until the others caught up. I don't want to punish people who are already here, that makes no sense but something needs to be done because people get tired of being completely steam rolled. Before the Alerts it wasn't too big of a deal, but now the NC on Helios (replace over populated faction with server here) basically get free 10k exp in most of the alerts. I will say there have been a few they haven't won but for the most part they do.

Anyway, all I am saying is what everyone else is saying. This... needs... to... be... fixed... I personally don't mind being on the lower pop faction because I get more targets to shoot at and I will always get action but the rewarding of simply having a bigger Zerg needs to stop.