When people complain about population, they're probably not talking about world population.

I dont think anyone is talking about restricting it just making it not profitable in terms of XP. If you are a huge zerg your XP will be split among the battle participants. Likewise if you are a outnumbered defender the XP is split so you get a larger share. This should encourage large platoons to actively find good fights instead of ghost capping or adding to an already huge zerg.

Fine for them to mess with XP but we don't want any further restrictions on freedom of movement (like the lattice). The joy of this game is in seeing a wave of galaxies dropping platoons into the base you are defending (even if you know you are about to get destroyed) or being in those galaxy waves and storming an objective in force to overwhelm the enemy.

It's the ability to see those things. The FREEDOM of it. If we all wanted to play exactly even battles we would stick to Battlefield.

It's just a fact of life that most of the battles aren't even. And outfit coordination leads to large groups of people attacking particular spots.

I'm really glad you're looking into this.

The issue of the massive TR swarm (for example) rolling over a series of lightly but bravely defended bases, while a massive NC swarm (again, just an example) wanders up a parallel lattice lane is a massive problem, and leads to the small groups of people trying to defend their territory rather than mindlessly and obliviously attacking, to become highly frustrated.

This is essentially lattice's biggest flaw. The very fact it causes these massive blobs to form, is the same reason that a great many people who are actually trying to get something done and defend territory get frustrated. The idea that "lattice has made defending more possible" is absurd.

The chokepoints and big fights where a swarm can be stopped are still in the same places as they always were (without this strange magnetic attraction to the crown). In short, nothing much has changed, except that the number of people likely to form the bulldozer that ruins your day is larger.

Rather than trying to prevent these large blobs from forming, why not simply give options to beat them with a small force... For example, if they could be cut off and starved of resources (no MAXes, sundies, tanks, aircraft, grenades... just blood and bullets) this would make the swarm something that a small group actually have an impact upon.

This would mean that you would have to introduce a mechanism whereby resource supply can be cut, and changing the way players essentially carry unused resources around with them, to give them a "carried pool" of a far smaller amount of resources than are presently available to the player.

Automatic "reinforcements needed at X facility" messages but only to players within the overpopulated-region, maybe with the addition of a tiny XP boost (10%?).

That was a flaw under the old hex system as well. Changing from lattice back to hex doesn't magically fix the problem. At least with lattice, the two zergs are more likely to hit a bottleneck somewhere that forces them to grind together.

The big problem, as others have mentioned, is the handing out of a static base XP amount to everyone who happens to be in the hex. Which means that on a large facility, you can get 1000 XP for doing absolutely nothing except showing up. That encourages some really weird player behavior, like ESFs that show up at the last minute, or players that never get out of the passenger seats, or huge zergs that simply run around ghost-capping.

I suggest a few things:

- If a territory is cut-off from the warp-gate, you should not be able to use it to take additional territory. This has been a big flaw since game launch as it allows zergs to simply avoid each other and travel around. With that change to capture mechanics, small forces can pinch off the ability of the zerg to take new territory unless they defend their supply lines.

- Reduce drastically or entirely remove base capture XP. Let the players decide where they want to go instead of standing around waiting for the kibble to drop out of the chute. Players won't want to stand around doing nothing if they're not getting a reward. They'll be free to push up to the next facility or branch out once the fighting is over.

- Bring back the requirement that attackers have to keep people on the point in order to keep the capture moving. But reward a trickle of XP every 10 seconds to those within range of the capture point (4 points per 10 seconds). A capture point with no attackers on it should flip back to the defender's control after 20 seconds.

I don't think I suggested a return to hex at any point. Just because I dislike the lattice system, does not mean I think hex is the right way to go. Please do not think that everyone who is anti-lattice, is also pro-hex. There are other options and ways of thinking about the issue.

This was indeed an issue with the hex system as well, but lattice has increased the magnitude of that particular problem.

I would disagree that the flat XP handout is the main issue here... I would suggest that it's the fact that people like an effort free feeling of victory.

The best way of dealing with this would not be handing out XP proportional to numbers of players present, but rather handing out XP based on the intensity of the fight, while providing methods to a smaller defensive force, of breaking up the large swarms, or reducing their combat effectiveness.

To that end, I'd probably also want to give XP out for a valiant defense, even if the defenders lose.

This is something I was also thinking about, and I agree. I would suggest that rather than saying you can't cap more territory from cut-off areas, instead say that you can only cap territory from cut off areas, if it reconnects the cut off area to the lattice.

^This and the ability to broadcast chat across all friendly connected areas is something i really miss from planetside1 (/b chat) you cannot underestimate how useful it is to know what is happening in regions away from where you are, this alone (imo) is one of the key things missing from communication in planetside2, it is not enough to communicate only in the local hex group (/region) we need to be able to warn friendlies of large groups of enemies approaching/passing through.

Command chat in general needs some reworking, ideally all chat should be prepended with the continent that the commander is on to make it easier to follow who is where and what is happening where. eg "[Esamir] iccle: we need help at xxxx". I would also suggest that command voice chat be limited to only squad leaders (ie only squad leaders can hear it) Often in large fights our teamspeak comms is very busy and having several commanders talk over us in game is more irritation than help.

The MMO landscape is litterally strewn with the hulks of MMO's that spent all their development effort chasing "Forum Balance" PS2 is fine. Folks that want big fights will come here, it's done as well as it ever was. The answer to how do you even battles is to work on your soft story telling / faction propaganda SOE and support your large outfit leadership...

Also you may want to look into ways to teach new folks exactly how beneficial being in an organized squad / outfit is.

SMED SPACE BATTLE PLX....
I NEED ME A SPACE FIGHTER...

A thought that I had on this as I was working through the thread: if we weren't stuck in constant 3-way battles, this wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue. Hopefully the continental lattice allows some 2 way fights.

Further, if bases actually mattered, people might be more inclined to defend them. PS1 tech plants: mossies vs reavers. That made a difference. Lightnings vs Magrides. That made a difference. Amp stations that granted shields, that made a difference. Biolabs cutting spawn time, that didn't matter as much, but some, I guess. Interlinks granted radar. That **** mattered. No one ever says: hurry, we need to get to Eisa so we can get that tech plant benefit (partially because the Lightning is a pretty bad *** little tank, partly because there's no heavy fighter.) Hurry, we need to get to the amp station so we can ... have turrets that don't overheat as fast? What?

Finally, partial-cap exp based on how long you fought in the hex that is granted whether you're there for the flip or not is a fanastic idea, especially if we get the sliding scale of base-cap xp that depends on how much actual combat took place.

This strikes me as a really cool idea, but they would have to be incredibly careful on how they implement it. Could be the griefiest tool in history if you get the wrong guys in there.

The problem with the spawn changes you talk about is that they completely negate tactical gameplay at the empire level. If defenders can just bounce back and forth between bases, it eliminates (dare I say) what little metagame we have. If the VS have the NC held up on one front, and launch an attack along another, that insight and organization deserves to be rewarded - and the NC should have to do some work to react, rather than just respawn.
And gal bombing and artillery = not fun.

This is a great idea. It would be terrific if a small (or large, whatever) outfit could drop into a base and do a PS1 gen-hold type thing that would cut off the front lines. With lattice, this would require multiple gens dropped, and that would be a fascinating dynamic.

Great thread.

Ok, here is my opinion about this.

We're talking about balancing a fight. As someone before stated with big precision, there are many types of players in the game, all with their own personal objectives and ways to have fun. IMO it is not possible to come up with a solution that would motivate everyone to do this instead of that. I fear that XP boost isn't really a valid incentive to make a battle balanced: all still stays in the hand of players, and most of them prefer an easy win instead of an uncertain fight. What we would need here is a fight managing system that is beyond players will but still does not limit them.

Let's try to forget XP for a while and think about something else. Let's think about a fight: what is involved in a fight? Well, attack, defend, kill and respawn. While the first 3 things are totally player driven, respawning is not. I mean, when we die we always have to chose a spawning point and wait some seconds in order to spawn. This is interesting, as spawning time does practially regulate the fight rythm.

If we assign to each hex a spawning timer modificator based on the specific faction's presence in that hex in relation to other factions presence, we could have a situation in which overpopulated faction will respawn more slowly than the underpopulated one, generating some presence balance over time in the hex.

Obviusly, if the situation is that a big group of attackers comes to a nearly undefended base and sit around the spawn room, this "spawning timer modificator" trick would only make defenders die faster and attackers get more XP from that. That's why I'm thinking about a "gather reinforcements" feature. This could be a player generated mission, or even an automatism of the game.

When a spawn room is besieged by a large group of enemies a special spawn mode could be selected by defending players. Let's call it "Ultimate defence measure". Players that accept to spawn in that way are gathered in a "spawn buffer" and do not spawn istantly. The "spawn buffer" fills over time gathering a certain amount of players and when the right amount is reached (or after a certain amount of time), all players drop pod at the same time over the besieged spawn room!!

This isn't like CODx or BFx where the game automatically balances out teams--nor should it be. It's a 2000 player map there is no way it can be, nor should it be balanced except by player leader agreements. Seldom fighting a fair battle (in either direction) goes with the game type.

I like the earlier suggestion of rewarding no XP to any kills made from inside a spawn room.

However I think you need a little more to shove people out of spawn rooms than XP incentive. The idea of giving every base a spawn shield generator sounds good. The cap time acceleration implemented in biolabs if all points are owned was a really good idea, perhaps it could be used again.

For example; say attackers own a base's capture point and the timer is counting down from 5 minutes. If taking out the spawn shield generator would significantly reduce the timer (to like 60 seconds or something dramatic) that would encourage defenders to actually push out of the spawn room lest they all die and lose the base instantly.

I think most people are chasing XP and so they need to change it to encourage defense change the XP so that if you're just massively over popping five people you get a significantly smaller bit of XP, Try to fight with a group that was also large.

The reason we talk about XP as a behavior modifier is because it seems to matter to a lot of players. Often during ops, you will hear the platoon commander say:

"as soon as you get the capture XP at this base, move to XYZ"

Without the presence of the base capture XP, or minimizing it to dramatic effect (1/5 the value of what it is now), the platoon commander is going to have an easier time telling their troops that:

"fight is done here, no more XP to be had, let's go to XYZ"

The issue at hand is how a smaller force reacts to a larger one. what I'm suggestion mostly now, is that forces after certain triggers (a certain sized enemy force present in give front line bases) get to circumvent the current rules and spawn in parreal not mearly linearly 'earlier' bases. so it acts a force mutlipier when an smaller empire needs it, but not when its the larger force.

As to metagame, got a lot to go on that, I have that in mind (as usual) and aim to work on a full argument as to my position. Like my logistics one (which I dare say, argued the case successfully) it'll go on the SOECC first, then this forum a few days later. I will be disapointed in myself, if its not up within 10 days. I am just very busy atm.

I think to put ti bluntly we share the same concerns, and systems carefully considered and balanced , in regards to spawn logic change, artillery and some form of 'airstrike' we do not currently have, adress the OP's concerns, aid not harm metagame and would be fun if currently unconventional to play.

Indeed my goal here, is to try and propose systems that act to mitigate overpop, local or global by giving the smaller side scalable and subtle force mutliplers .

Don't think people won't take to thouse playstyles. Plenty of people enjoy niche roles. Again I present the case of PS1 as thats in vogue.

Indeed, pity they are so rare. The community has quite a few good minds in it, too often lost in the cacophony.

Just came back from yet another alert where TR has 20% more pop than us on Miller.

I wrote a suggestion for a fix here: https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/population-balancing-throttle-system.145245/

Sad you still allow this to continue, SOE. ******* sad.

About the spawns:

Remove the shield on the door, set up a wall outside the door (to act as a shield vs direct line of fire), or add doors that can open/close or like in PS1 let the shield/door be hackable, so that enemy can gain entrance and take the spawn down.

The biggest flaw the way I see it is that the faction which has been overrun is not forced out of the base. Now they can just keep on spawning/zerging and not really do anything that actually helps the fight. They are just fast spawn kills as soon as they exit the room. If the attackers could get inside and take the spawn down people would be forced to spawn at other places to regroup and make a more organized attempt at taking a base.

Rushing ahead of the zerg to take down a gen / spawn was always a nice tactic in PS1, I don't see why this can't be implemented in PS2. Can't really blame the zerg for zerging or expect them to change much regardless of xp incentive, take away their spawnpoint however and they are forced to choose a new one. In effect that is what you want. People to make a decision upon where to spawn next and not just auto spawn at the same place. They would actually be forced to look around on the map and see whats going on.

Continent-specific XP boosts for the smallest faction should be insanely huge.

+500% XP or something. If I'm in the largest faction, I don't care because I'm winning, but if I'm in the smallest faction and always losing... it's nice to have some incentive to keep fighting. Something like +20% just doesn't cut it.

Make a resource meta game that is viable and worth maintaining that awards both the player and the group as a whole.
That will give incentive to not hole up in a single base, spread out a bit more and give more depth. It gives tangible assets to protect and gives meaningful value to those who protect those assets, rather than the next lattice link.

Alliances
If there were a mechanism that allows two factions to work together for short periods of time in specific areas to take on the highly overpopulated faction it might make interesting game play. There are examples from history to base this on.