#1 Thing to fix in this game

I wont name servers or factions because this has nothing to do with any 1 faction, the problem is this.
"Population balance"

It doesnt exist and its pushing away a lot of people, its the same on every server just not always the same faction
there is always one faction that out pops the others, why ?

Because of "organization" currently on my server one faction has some excelent players and some very well organized outfits, because of this the remaining 2 factions pretty much get ***** all the time by them, infact its so bad ive considered switching to play with them because im tired of losing.

But thats the problem, thats what others are doing, there joining the winning side, its a natural human reaction, no one wants to lose all the time!.

Now before some noob comes in here and says well get organized blah blah blah, you cant make people play better,you cant make people be organized even if you try, my current outfit is one of the only outfits i see do the alerts and try to stay organized, but when your not only out pop'd 2 to 1 and against a couple platoons of Br100's that are well organized, its not a fight, its just getting farmed.

Theres 2 ways to fix this as I see it, either institute population balances forcibly both for server and continent.
( for this to work continent wide you need to have a set pop size say 2 platoons, that after 2 platoons from each faction are on a continent you start balancing withing %10, excess people will have to fight on other continents
which will keep all areas in battle)

OR buffs / debuffs for over popped or out numbered factions.
Example, lets say your outnumbered 2/1 on your server, well then you get a buff making you weapon damage do
2x the damage, now that may sound extreme but it wouldnt be very long before the population balanced itself, you wouldnt be forcing people to balance but as long as pop stayed within %5-10 there would be no buffs.

But regardless something has to be changed.

the number 1 thing to fix in this game is it's glaring lack of nudity...

SOE why ya gotta be such a prude?

What do we want!?

Genitals and ragdoll physics!

When do we want them!?

As soon as optimisation is complete and the devs have enough spare time for a realistic sausage animation!

If PS2 had avatar/body customization everyone in game would look like this:

We're 1 year in and I think there are significant and glaring balance issues.
I think SOE is slow to act on balance issues.
I think there are too many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to balancing items.

I think SOE has gone too far in the effort to let every class/every vehicle do everything.

I agree, game needs to be more sexy. Pin up decals where a nice start.

Anyway...

Nah, I think optimizations and continent locking and new continents are the #1 and #1 priorities. Both #1.

Pop balance would be just fine if vanu were purple again. Add some more teal, but make them purple damn you!

So, basicaly you got severely outplayed by superior players with superior skill, organisation and ability to apply numerical superiority to a sittuation and you ask for a ballantly unfair edge over these through game mechanics so you can 1v2 everyone because your faction doesn't participate in allerts?

Haven't you seen the female VS players backsides by now???

Shoot them in the bum in the warpgate and watch that booty bounce!

Well, we have at least 3 character slots. (I have used 2; VS and NC . TR are dead to me.) Soooo..... heres an idea. As you log on, the server decides which of the factions need you the most and blocks the other 2. That way, the battle will always be even.

Cant play with your friends? Too bad. We are trying to make the game fair for everyone. Deal with it because at least you wont be holding hands with your ingame 'bro' while the server underdogs go to hell.

Anytime any entity, be it a gaming company or a Government, attempts to artificially instill 'fairness' into its society it breeds trouble.

For one thing, is fairness even possible? Let's say they 'fix' the game so only the same exact numbers of people are in every battle. Is it 'fair' for a high BR player to have the advantage of better armor and weapons over a new player? Is it 'fair' for a more skilled player to fight a lower skilled? Is that the game ya'll want to play? One where every single fight is a match fight between exactly equal oponents? Because if so...well...I'd suggest investing in Street Fighter. Planetside 2 is not the game you want.

Anytime you have large numbers of people doing battle with a wide variety of weapons, there will be an imbalance; be it population, skill, weapons loadout (ie, infilltrator v Liberator). There is no way to 'balance' that and yet keep PS2 as...PS2. Frankly, if I wanted to play some arena match game where everything is balanced, I'd play Street Fighter, or CoD. Or tiddly winks. But even in those games, there won't be a real balance because one of us players will be better then the other. And that would be....unfair.

SOE makes 1 fix, 2 things get broken. It just doesn't work out well, does it?

SOE is too afraid to piss off the last paying subscribers.
Instead of enforcing more balanced populations (which could be done rather easily by adapting the already in-place queuing system: you have to wait to go to continent if full OR if your faction there has already more than X percent over the others; and you are still queuing to top if you subscribe) they do nothing.

At least a little step in the right direction would be to void alert rewards if there was no real opposition to fight. Maybe not void completely but significantly cut them down. And if you (for whatever reason) change sides during an ongoing alert you get absolutely nothing as long as the alert is running - not even "regular" XP for kills/capping and stuff.

But the results of SOE's standing idle by policy here we can all witness... everyone flocks to [insert most overpopulated faction on your server here] and it only gets worse.

No need to be an elitist ******* who wants his teeth out of his mouth.

reread the OP and honestly say that is not what was implied in the OP

I'm speaking generally to you.

I can fix most of the population imbalance problems in one easy go

- Take away the population counter

Perhaps then less people would worry (blame/moan/whinge) about the state of balance being the harbinger of all ills and instead concentrate on how they themselves added to the effort that evening.

I know people will say hiding a problem isnt a cure and thats generally a good philosophy to follow but having those stats visible are daily reminder and something which can make players dissatisfied with the game if they feel downtrodden and hard done by night after night, especially if they arent great players to begin, making pop stats on balance something not adding value to the overall experience.

Could they be assumed from the imbalance bonus or maps? maybe but needs calculations and most dont like that, will people notice on the continent takeovers? only if it was a bad case, even very overpopped servers their team loses continents, and ofc there will still always be an undercurrent blaming pops for their bad night of gaming but at least it wont be in ya face so much every day.

Ignorance is bliss right? Its not like we have much choice which server to play if we do log in to see pop stats out of whack. Get rid.

Um. No?

The numbers problem is apparent and compounded by the lattice.

If you're constantly getting wtfacepwn because the other guy always has two platoons to your one at the three places the lattice dictates you can do something, then it has nothing to do with the graph at sign on.

They should double the xp bonus that the underpopped faction gets right now - so if its 40% it goes to 80%. Plus add bounties for killing overpopped factions players. Bounties begin if one factions population exceeds 38% on a continent.

The #1 issue with Planetside 2 is no wobble physics on the Flash Poke'Ball antenna thing.

FIX NAU SOE