-There should be an exp penalty for overpopulating other factions in a continent, just like when we get + exp for having the lowest pop. Sometimes it gets REALLY ridiculous when other factions has +10-15% pop or more on a continent, excpecially on alert times. This would make them switch to other continents where they could progress faster (imo this would effect randoms mostly). -Another problem caused by overpopulating is alert wins. 90% of the times the faction wins with the highest pop. For example on Miller alert time is free exp for TR ALL DAY. VS, NC is just there to annoy them. This should be added to give them less exp, for just being the higher pop faction if they won 3 times in a row or etc. As they win the exp they gain would be less every time (until a limit of 2k? idk), while the other two factions gain would remain the "same". So forum creatures, what do you think about this?
10-15% extra pop? Wow... what a massive imbalance. You should visit Waterson sometime. TR have 50% of the pop while VS and NC are stuck at 25% each. That's an imbalance.
Its not fair to punish players for the choices of others and this idea will never gain traction for this reason. Example: When I started playing in beta, faction populations were pretty much even. Later on the NC gained a monstrous population advantage, after that the VS had their turn, now the TR is seeing a bit of a population advantage on my server. I've always played TR, I'm loyal as a soldier gets. I have my mates, I know my faction and it's outfits very well and as a faction the Briggs TR core has worked together long and hard to become a cohesive fighting force. We've just had another warp gate rotation and now we're back in the north again. What you're suggesting is that all the long term TR loyalists of Briggs take an experience penalty because we have some 4th faction fluctuation at the moment. How is this fair for players that have stuck to our guns in good times and bad? Are we meant to abandon the characters we've invested 500+ hours into just because a bunch of new people are trying to cling onto the success we've worked to create for our faction? If anything they just need to make the under population benefits too good to ignore for new players. They also badly nees to rework the resource system because it gives clear advantage to the team which is already dominating the map in terms of territory control and population.
That would mean giving the losing factions more XP for trying to win, then the ones that won. In alerts and otherwise. However, it would introduce new issues, such as everyone running to one faction to set up a win and then running to the losing factions for the rewards. There's one thing that would fix everything and that's being locked to one faction that you've chosen. Permanently or for a day or so after each login. I thought my point was very clear: 10-15% is normal deviation. It's not a massive imbalance, it's just a slight imbalance. An imbalance that can be won over by showing some skill and less whining. 25% imbalance and above is too great to remedy only with skill and should be given proper attention to. The reason I only quoted that, is because that is the axial point of your whole argument. If that point is not strong enough, everything else is just a waste of forum space.
Until they realize that there SHOULD NOT be an option to create a different faction character on the same server OR switch during alerts....i say yes.(OR lock down overpopped factions, so new ppls can only choose the low pop ones.) I have to agree with you in some things, but the 4th faction is a big problem but with this we would have at least get some "balanced" pop / cont and less lay back & "switch 4 free exp" imo.
Yep that's true, and it's always comes down to this...why can we create different faction chars on the same server. But at least with this every faction could benefit from them not just the overpopped ones? It's just a dam example and you have a problem with that! If i write 50, than that's the problem...so you know what i don't even care...
I don't think this is true. If one faction is horribly under populated they would get an exponentially large boost in xp. This would cause people to switch to the underpopulated faction, lowering it's boost in xp. It will swing back and forth until some equilibrium will be established. You might still have a slight population discrepancy, but it wouldn't be more then a few percent. If one faction would start winning more alerts due to the cooperation of the outfits in that faction for example, more people will flock there. Raising the xp bonus for the factions losing the population, and thus making it more tempting and rewarding to fight for the underdog. And people will start to go back to the under populated faction for the bonus they are getting there and thus equalizing the populations and lowering the bonuses the underpopulated faction had. If the people would switch at the last minute of the alert where one faction is winning, then you still have the mechanic in place that only rewards you the full xp if you were doing the alert for the majority of the alert time. So last minute switching will give them nothing and this behavior is already discouraged. However, I don't think restricting the freedom of choice is what is in the best interest of the game. There are quite a few people that like to play another faction every once in a while. And penalizing people for things that are not their fault is also a no-go. You shouldn't penalize, you should make them want to join and fight for the underdog. And not force them to do so.
Last time i checked the reward is proportional to the time spent with your char in the game, so switching in the last moment gives you next to nothing, like few hundred xp. that's assuming people will spread evenly but they won't. Given that many people don't care about alerts/stay where they are seeing the poor chances of winning the alert, as a result you get a 50% pop on the alert continent and moving up, as the players from other factions after being curbstomped few times quote Cartman 'screw you guys, i'm going home' and bail.
Uhm, 10-15% is NOT a small imbalance. Say one faction has 25% pop and the other had 40% (15% imbalance). The overpopulatedfaction has nearly DOUBLE the amount of players.
This. Exactly this. The faction loyalists will always be the faction loyalists. What needs to happen is the 4th faction needs to be utilised as the games balancing mechanism. They're practically mercenaries fighting for whoever provides the greatest return for their time anyway. If SOE really played their cards right they could turn the 4th faction into a celebrated group of players that bring fun and balance to the game ratherthan being the scourge thats threatening to ruin it. Just imagine creating a character as a "mercenary" rather than choosing a faction, and being force redeployed to the lowest population faction whenever required for a fat exp reward. It would be quite fun and would help balance the game.
It's not the cooperation of outfits that's a problem. People just abandon factions when they feel like they're losing or anticipate that they'll lose, they go over to the wining side for free stuff, causing a snowball effect. It also applies if people think they everyone else will flock to the other faction as well. The underdog bonus would have to be massive, seeing as the current +50% capped bonus doesn't do anything of note and it's already a fairly massive boost. As long as it's not +500% or higher, I doubt it would make much of an effect. The bonus has to be large enough to outweigh the victory rewards while being in the overpoped faction, but that would cause a lot of controversy, even though the underpoped faction deserves every point of experience gained. The alert rewards would likely have to be redone too. Getting completely steamrolled (and thus, left without any stance in the alert) gets you 1000 XP, which would mean getting 5000 XP with the x5 boost of being underpoped. Getting only one objective nets you 3333 XP, with the x5 boost it would be 16665 XP. Wining nets you 10000 XP, so that would mean that if you overpop the opponent enough, you'll get the most XP, which would still be an incentive to zerg to one faction. In essence, the lowest XP you gain for participating in the alert would have to be raised to 2000 minimum. All in all, I doubt SoE will do it. I thought they removed that because everyone complained about getting DCed before the alert was over and losing all of their XP. The freedom of choice is not restricted by just having people choose daily as to what faction they want to play for the day. That would solve a lot of 4th faction issues and keep faction stability in one fell swoop. In addition to XP bonuses to underpoped factions, all factions on each server would even out within the week of implementation. Faction one: 25%. Faction two: 40%. You're right, that is a 15% imbalance, but you forgot the 3rd faction, that would have 35% in that case. In that scenario the two biggest factions would be at each others throats and the smallest faction would nibble away at the sides of both, still doing fairly well in the game. It's a tried and tested scenario: people tend to flock to the biggest XP farm, AKA the biggest fight. The smaller faction wouldn't put up that big of a fight and thus would be forgotten in favor of an other fight. However, I was talking about the other two factions getting underpoped by 25% compared to the leading faction: 25% / 50% / 25%. That's a massive imbalance, as one faction is fully capable of going against the other two factions with numbers alone. That is what we, in Waterson, face just about every day for two thirds of the day and the only way that we could ever win against that is if the two underpoped factions would call a truce -- hasn't happened yet. Sorry, but no. That would break the whole artistic idea behind the game.
