[Suggestion] Mattherson Faction Balance

I am embarrassed to say that I have played a lot over the past week, and I have been around since release. On Mattherson, I have noticed that Vanu wins the large majority of Alerts, fueling their cert progression. Someone else did a write up about this before, about Alerts favoring the larger faction. I agree with that statement if the faction is significantly larger. On Mattherson, I believe it is.

From my observations in game, NC is invariably among the lower pops, at 29-33%, usually tied or 1% lower than TR during Alerts. I have never seen NC to have more than 1-2% over TR's population during peak hours or Alerts. Vanu typically runs at around 40%, during the times I play.

Looking at published population statistics, I see that the faction population on Mattherson is about 40% Vanu, and 30% TR and NC. This supports my observations in game.

I would appreciate if SoE would address this faction population imbalance, somehow adding 1-2% to TR and NC over Vanu on the Mattherson server. I do not have many suggestions as how to do this, but here are a few ideas I think might help:

1. Provide a small "underdog" experience bonus dynamically to whatever faction is currently lowest pop on a continent, providing a boost to morale and a greater incentive to stick it out in a losing fight. I am thinking 5%, and definitely not more than 10%.
2. Add to your continent population caps a second restraint limiting factions joining the continent to a 3-5% margin over other faction populations (i.e. if VS has 40% on Indar, and TR/NC have 30%, then only TR/NC players can join Indar until their populations are 32% each and VS at 36%, now within the suggested 5% maximum population difference between any faction).
3. Do not allow new characters of a faction to join a server where that faction has the highest reasonably active gross population (I know, this is a bit extreme, but just a suggestion).

I introduced my brother to the game a little over a week ago. We both enjoy it, but I feel a little let down that out of the dozen alerts we have done, I think we have only got the top reward in one of them. This does not feel to be due to differences in skill or tactics; it feels due to simply being outnumbered.

[EDIT: I do also understand that each faction's Warpgate location is also an issue impacting the ability to take a continent and, granted, I think NC's current rotation is in some of the weaker locations right now. I like the Indar lattice so far. Maybe some changes to the hex amounts per base, balancing distance from each Warpgate to nearby bases in terms of value, and removal of some of the "chasms" that exist on Esamir and Indar coming out of certain Warpgates would also help level the playing field.]

4. Organize and have both underdogs go after the overpopulated faction.

That is, if you're talking about continent over-population. Because if you lose alerts with a 33/33/33 continent population, while blaming a 40% world population, well no, it doesn't work this way and you should blame yourself. Your 2. is a terrible idea because you should never prevent a faction from redeploying massively to a continent for strategical purposes. If you can't mobilize in front of that, too bad. It's what the game's about.

VANU have been winning recently? Are you sure you've been playing Mattherson? Cause every time an alert ends when I'm on, the TR are victorious.

Well since the lattice system TR been winning. I do agree that the VS population is insane at night 48-53% world pop.

Bonuses for losing teams never does anything. Players jump ship to the winning team both to reap better rewards and simply to keep winning. I've never seen loser-incentives bring players over in any game ever. And why would they? If you left the winning team (whether or not they really were or just perceived to be) and went to the losing team, you would get less of a bonus because the teams would be more evenly matched.

The only way that I can see, outside of hard population caps, is to place negatives on the high pop teams. Scaling hp, xp and/or damage reductions when over 36% global and over 40% continent. Want lore? The excessive population is stressing the nanite network and the quality of the re-sleeving process is being negatively impacted.

Players won't leave to get more of something but they -will- leave if staying around makes things worse. Now, this doesn't apply to players who aren't apt to switch teams (see: people staying in abusive relationships) but those seeking power will jump like the boat's on fire. Animals avoid pain, it's only natural.

This morning, Indar hit 71% VS at its peak. Amerish/Esamir that's not a big deal but when there's no alerts, Indar's where the fight always was and probably always will be. Those kinds of numbers are just nuts.

I still don't really understand why Vanu has the pop advantage. I'm putting it down to lots of high quality outfits leading to better player retention or something.

Or you know, they got a good size buff and all the 4th faction that had been playing NC (which was putting the NC pop to around 45% the majority of the day) switched leaving NC in the dust?

It's not hard to imagine the Fourth Faction switching to VS just because of ZOE.

I agree that people just want to have fun and loyalty, sadly, to a faction sometimes doesn't play into that; you go so far as to call people who do this "animals". Just a clarification though, I think the first suggestion which you are referencing does not refer to the "losing" team on a continent in my mind. It refers to the lowest current population faction on the continent. That may change second to second when the percentages display 33/33/33. Additionally, the purpose is to boost incentives to remain fighting for that faction, rather than jump ship to the winning one.

I don't like any ideas that involve changing health levels and firefight mechanics. That is entirely unfair. I would not have an enjoyable experience, personally, if I am told by a platoon commander that we're switching gears to pick on the faction that just lost 10% of its total health, and I would not feel rewarded for killing a bunch of enemies who I knew were not on a somewhat even footing toe-to-toe.

In light of your other points, here is an additional suggestion:

4) Have a cooldown period on switching characters of different factions on the same server. Specifically, if you are playing NC, when you go to the log-in screen to switch to your TR or VS on the same server, you'll see a timer like on all things in game: "30:00" e.g. counting down until you can play that character. Of course, you could re-enter with a character from the faction you logged out as with no cooldown. This has the double benefit of helping eliminate those few organized team killers who clandestinely operate for an enemy faction.

Yeah, that's the tactic in the situation.

You're right. but I do indeed mention I was talking about imbalanced "continent" population during an alert. Those 33/33/33 matches at peak hours are a lot of fun, even if resulting in a loss.
Also, I like my #2 suggestion, certainly more than #3, haha. The suggestion in #2 does not prevent anyone from deploying to a continent. It does, however, increase queue times to join that continent. The large downside to #2 that I see is, for the purposes of keeping continent population continually balanced by waiting for players from lower population factions to join before accepting more players from higher population factions, the continent population may be lower than maximum for all factions at some times of the day.

I completely agree with this. Just like (cough) Starcraft 2, I think each faction does draw a certain "type" of personality. In the least, I would wager each faction each has its own discernible culture and demographic base. As much as I'd like to know "who" I'm playing against, I don't think this is something SoE can steer directly. SoE needs to work with what they can control, and what they control is the incentive and reward system available to each faction that steer the decisions of its players.

Well, we are all animals. There are those who seek to transcend the base nature of man and those who forget it but that doesn't change what we are. To act as an animal is to act according to nature and, as such, seeing people behaving in this manner is unsurprising.

That's the thing. Even ignoring the other 30% population, half of whom are at your own gates, say you're on a 40 v 30 continent. That's 33% more bullets (damage) and 33% more bodies (hp) you're up against. If they lose 10% damage and 10% hp in the process, you're still fighting an uphill battle. Not only would the psychological impact of having negatives work in favor of encouraging the teams to balance the numbers, it would also help mechanically balance the fights. 1:1:1 fights are, as you prefer, fights on even footing. Being at a substantial population disadvantage may be a good ego booster if you win but odds are you won't and it's not even the "fair" fight you desire.

The goal, for dev, would be to properly tune the numbers to keep it fair. And then it's up to the continent commanders to properly allocate their forces. If you know your team is weaker but more populated then you make sure to send more numbers to the right areas. At the basest expression it's Warhammer 40k/Starcraft. Imperial Guard/Zerg (many weak units) vs Space Marine/Protoss (few strong units). And, yes, when a team has a substantially unbalanced global population but is fighting on a 33/33/33 locked continent, they would be at a disadvantage. The key, then, would be to make the global disadvantages small enough to not really make a difference while still making 4th empire disloyalty some with a price.

Faction cooldowns help stop people from team-swapping to milk XP bonuses after alerts but wouldn't do anything to deal with long-term 4th empire jumpers. Those who leave for the current winner and stay for a few weeks. Those are the ones who, and you saw this in PS1 as well, cause the bulk of the population balance problems. To fix that, you need a sting to keep them from changing in the first place. No man, no problem.

@exLupo, if the developers want to do a health differential to "balance combat", then I would be surprised. All I can say is that I don't like it, because it doesn't balance the number of people on the battlefield. I want more people to improve the combat experience due to more equal numbers, which won't be met by introducing handicaps, and to balance the front lines.

And, yes, perhaps the imbalance recently is due to the "fourth faction" (I can't remember faction population balances 2 or 3 weeks ago before the rotation), and perhaps that is the true culprit that needs to be addressed.

5) Rolling back ability to create characters of different factions on the same server.

NC loses because we literally don't give a **** about anything.

The only thing the balance low pop factions is to reduce spawn timers, and resource costs.

Additionally, On Indar, NC has **** WG, so we don't care.

VS have bigger more dedicated outfits. NC has more children / gamers who will float between games.

TR / VS infantry weapons favor spray and pray, and are more forgiving to newer players, leading to more of their army being effective.

ZOE / Lock-down both give huge advantage to Burster MAX. Aegis Isn't super awesome.

Enforcer is amazing now, but nerf inc.

The reason VS have a higher population is due to a constant stream of buffs, interesting weapons and the ZOE. Nothing to do with outfits, the VS has been getting destroyed on the server almost constantly.

*shrug* I'm pretty sure we had a pop advantage before ZOE dropped on live.

As for "Interesting weapons" I can only assume you're talking about the Lasher and Lancer, that's pretty much the extent of our cool toys. And, as much as I love the Lasher, it's really not anything to change factions over. overall I am extremely skeptical.

For forever on Matherson, Indar had belonged to the Vanu, and
they'd let the lesser factions fight over the lesser continents.

Warp Gate changes and Alerts have changed that a bit lately,
but basically, Vanu just sticks to Indar, so of course they win
on Indar, as well as getting the continent lock for 2 months.


That being said....

GINYU FORCE RULES!!

TR winning alerts?
#VGSAVES

I was like "wait what Mattherson?", and then I looked at the dates.

Oh.

Oh.

.....what is an alert?