So where I'm from (Mattherson), we have a big pop imbalance problem. It's hard not to miss the TR tears flowing on these boards on a daily basis, showing screenshots of VS/NC/TR 45+/35/20. It takes away from many players enjoyment of the game, not just on the underpopped side, but also the overpopulated faction. A lot of people have thrown out various ideas and some rather draconian suggestions such as forcing large groups to another server. Here's something I thought of that I hadn't seen suggested before (unless I just missed it). Server recommendations work. I noticed that Mattherson went to "recommended" status not too long ago, and with the MLG weekend, I think we picked up a fair number of new players - my killfeed certainly suggested a lot of fresh blood out there. I've seen charts that show servers responding to this status with steady growth. Why not also have "recommended" factions? And to make it more interesting, why couldn't the underpopulated Terran Republic Army offer a signing bonus of 1000c to any soldier willing to pledge their allegiance? Instead of kicking players from a server they want, or from a faction they have become invested in, lets guide new players to the factions that need help the most. If they still want to be a Mattherson Vanu, that's fine, they can do so. But if they go red, they also get a bonus check of 1000c to buy a sweet weapon and not be on the bottom rung. I know it'd take a bit of coding to come up with objective ways to determine which pops need to "draft" new players, but I think it could help deal with population issues in a relatively harmless and "organic" fashion. I'd also rather not see servers merge as a solution, unless that truly became needed, because I don't want to feel that my Planetside is shrinking. Thoughts? Agree? If so, thumbs up and tweet this to @mhigby since I am not sure how often he gets over here..
I never was a fan of higby asking TEST to move to Waterson... I want to make our server better, not just ship outfits away
Reward underpopped faction better. Put minor restrictions on EXP gain of overpopped factions. Scale respawn times so that underpop/overpop affects gameplay less. Make the information on this available to all. Watch as problem resolves itself! Recommended faction/server does nothing for lower-pop servers (eg. Briggs, my server) because the stream of new players is more of a trickle. The trick will be leveraging the 4th Faction. If you can use the power of the 4th Faction to undo the problems they create, it will all work out.
Or, you know, sharing cert GAIN over all characters, coupled with big XP bonuses, will at least get the 4th faction joining the underdogs. It's fairly simple.
I beg to differ. This will exacerbate the problem...not being a jerk, but think about what will happen in an alert the second one faction has an advantage. Seriously...what you've just done is created no penalty for switching to your alt in order to level up your main. The overpopped factions will just get bigger. I'm not trying to be a dick, but this idea is completely counterproductive. It'd effectively be putting an XP penalty on the underpopped faction. You may join the underpopped faction for the challenge, and there would be a number of players joining you. However, the VAST majority would use it as grounds to farm with the biggest team...the big get bigger, the small get smaller.
As a veteran of the NC over-pop on Mattherson, I agree 110%. I feel that rewarding the desired behavior is the right way to go here. It's a free-to-play game, so SOE needs to keep some of these choices directly in the player's hands. Nothing wrong with a little incentive though. (To clarify, I think this should be a one time award per account. And it may need to be split up so they get 250 every 7 days for a month, as long as they continue to be active during that time.) Good suggestion Mustarde!
What if we considered alerts are a bandage over a gaping wound, namely people not caring about playing the game as it was intended to be played in the first place, BECAUSE Cert-farming goes entirely against capturing territory ? While the first alerts were cool, and pop issues werent much of a problem since the continent used to be at full capacity, the newly introduced ones were nothing short of stupidity.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize the NC were paying TR. Might as well on Mattherson though, seems like non-primetime alerts are NC vs TR on indar, Vanu doing whatever the alert is.
Yep and why should it be anything else? 903rd repeatedly tries to get TR in alerts and the majority of the time, nobody gives a damn. Especially if it's a biolab alert. Can't say I really blame them though when we have mid 20's and VS is rolling with mid 40's or higher all the time. I mean what is the point? No matter how well you do VS will eventually throw multiple platoons of ZOE maxes at you. Hell, even if your 2-3 squads you can expect to be hit by forces of 2-3 platoons constantly. Then they will /yell about how great they are through the whole thing. So yea, no one on TR really cares about alerts anymore for the most part. Last night was pretty funny because their was an Esamir alert and almost NO TR played it. I think we had like 4% pop on Indar to VS having over 60. When the VS came back from their "dominating victory" they were complaining about TR not showing up. I thought it was pretty damn funny.
Remove alts on same server. There i fixed 4faction problems, where is my paycheck http://i.imgur.com/W0lR1hW.jpg
I don't think forgetting the ability to make separate accounts really deserves a paycheck somehow. This would initially annoy people who can't play their characters anymore (i.e. lots would quit) and subsequently only affect people who unlocked (non-faction) stuff with SC.
I think we've seen that incentives do not work. More experience just doesn't compensate for trash gameplay, which is exactly what you get when every encounter with one or more factions is just you getting swarmed until they get bored and move away. It's the same with continents: I'd rather fight on Indar and have less of a bonus than fight on Esamir/Amerish and have +50%, because it's not fun, not entertaining, not even worth being present for. I wouldn't log in for it. Now time and time again that's becoming the case with the game in general: I want to play it, but I log in, try a few fights here and there, realize it's utterly futile and wonder why I bothered. Adding SC for it? Well I have SC. It's still ****. This is the thing they're going to have to fix, unless they want to just force balance by preventing people from playing: it should not be a pathetic, time-wasting experience to play this game outnumbered. With very few and far between exceptions that's exactly what it is. Until this ceases to be the case, the problem is going to continue self-reinforcing. They will have to make actual gameplay changes such that simply overwhelming things is not a suitable way to capture or defend. Recommended factions, while not a bad idea, I don't think would solve the problem. It could help and they should do it, but there needs to be more done than just that.
Briggs is being killed off by VS over population atm. 7pm prime time. Scary after or before prime time if you play TR. NC use to be over populated now a down. TR has worse warp gates with not Esamir or Armerish bottom warp gate + low population before last warp gate change + resources now it's gotten a hell of a lot worse. Soon it'll be only VS and NC as TR are bleeding out on a daily basis players. I've been monitoring numbers and is slowly on the decline. I realize it's the same on other servers but different factions. SOE has to fix this now or it'll loose more players. I have all faction toons on briggs, but I only play the low populated one to help out and love the challenge. Needless to say my NC and VS toons are the lowest ranks of the 3.
Should just put in what was in the first Planetside to encourage population balance: Two hour timer switching between factions on the same server; activated when the player leaves the Sanctuary. Negative experience penalty for overpopulated faction. Change the alerts: get rid of cross continent alerts and "dominating" victories on servers with huge population disparity. Quit pretending that these are won with tactics and they might as well say, "free certs for playing overpopulated faction." Since this game is a cert grind, the insane amount of free certs just given to overpopulated factions compounds the problem further.
Population imbalance is by far the biggest problem with this game. Though, to be honest, there are so many others. But, it's easy. Don't allow more of one faction on at any given time then another. *shrug*
Well coming from SolTech NC and always being on the low side of pop compared to the VS swarms (they weren't the best anyway) I agree the Vanu overpop is just frustrating especially for my outfit Jackie Chan Stunt Team since we are trying to restart and run pub squads but hit walls of spandex and glowing purple high heel crabs is just frustrating especially when they start to gloat about how amazing they are and say " remember ScatMAX's " whenever we mention ZOE MAX's.
I agree that other solutions have been thrown out there - and I like some of the other ideas such as less XP for being overpopped, and restricting alts on the same server. But compounding the problem are new players coming to the server and joining the already overpopulated faction. What I'm trying to suggest is an idea that funnels more new players into a faction that needs bodies. On some servers, it'd be Lord Vanu giving a signing bonus, on others, the Freedom council. On Mattherson, the Republic Army. And I think it should be certs, not station cash. What I like about this idea is that it has more carrot and less stick. While we all want this problem to get fixed, more sticks will make it a painful process for many of us, such as being forced to put alts on other servers (I know some people who would be enraged by this), or having our XP/hr get slashed drastically just because a bunch of 4th factioners won't leave the server. Somewhere out there, there is a graph showing population changes based off of having your server "recommended". It's substantial. Imagine if you can use fun graphics and a cert incentive to further encourage players to join those who need it most. And once you hit a given threshold, the bonus expires and options become even again. Yet, if you have a VS Mattherson friend and want to join him/her, you will always have that ability to do so. More carrot, less stick.
