Boost XP for underpop factions by .5% for every 1% they are below the highest pop faction.

IE: If on a server the populations were: NC: 40% TR: 32% VS: 28%
Then TR would get 4% xp boost, and VS would get 6% xp boost on the server.
Discuss.
Would this be enough to help out the underpopulated/give incentive to the underpopulated factions?
Or would this cause too much damage to the game and be abused?

I say that it would help. I highly doubt even a 10% boost at 20% out popped is going to detriment the game. If they are going to be overwhelmed, give them a mediocre at best bonus. Something to make their efforts a bit more worthwhile instead of facing the looming wall of zergs.

I remember what it was like when TR dominated waTRson with overpowered harassers and strikers and I got nothing. I fought for my faction, stayed loyal, and was never rewarded, just farmed. It's not fun. That is not justification, it's just that I know the feeling.

Currently, I am a NC BR100 on Waterson which NC regularly dominates population during prime time currently. I even command some of the troops that overwhelm them sometimes.

I am bored and I feel almost guilty during primetime.(almost) Sure I get a few extra alert points, but I would rather be contemplating my foes next movements or fighting him at his maximum strength. Which I cannot do if he is forced to stay in one or two bases while the rest of the zerg swarms around him.

Help out my enemies devs.

You must be new here, but they already do this on each continent. If you look at the population on each amp you'll see a tiny percentage under each population. The two lower factions usually get a percentage boost based on the current continent population difference.

I got a 39% bonus for population the other day - If I wasn't having fun that wouldn't keep me around. It needs to be close to 100% when your out numbered 2 to 1 by a faction.

If I am fighting in a hex where I am outnumbered 5:1, I want 5x the XP. That be fair, right?
Or you can buff my HP by 5x and my damage by 5x. Then that be fair, right?

Or you can penalize the zerg. Cut their XP to 1/5th, or cut their HP and damge to 1/5th.
But the devs said they won't use the stick... so here we are stuck with pop issues.

I would personally prefer to see a negative % reduction applied to over populated factions.

This would I hope encourage players to not play on the high pop faction (by players I mean 4th factioners) because the reduction would be great enough it wouldn't be worth it.

It would benefit players to play on even populations.

I think this sort of system could work, I admit maybe not. SOE I feel however should trial it over the course of a few weeks to see how player movement between factions is affected

Did you notice the BR 100 and 62 days played?

The only way to fix it is to penalize the zerg. Giving the underdogs some XP advantage isn't going to do anything. Getting your flak armor faster than you normally would? Yeah not gonna make a difference when it's a 3:1 zerg.

Nerf the XP of people participating in zergs and it'll disincentivize (word?) that behavior.

talking away is always a horrible option, "Hey you! STOP PLAYING OUR GAME! Go and give Warframe your money!"
Health boosts is the worst option PS1 did it and so did wow, you get solo wrecking balls running around licking hammers instead of interesting guerrilla gameplay.

XP/resource boosts is always the best as it should scale with all players (certs need to do something useful for maxed out players too).

there should be seperate bonuses for server, continent, and hex. they should be able to go negitive, but the sum of all three should have a minimum of zero.

Cept that 4th factioners are a negligible amount of players. This has been proven by a dev and has yet to be disproven.

And this does nothing but punish players who happen to have invested into a faction that just happens to be popular at the time. I rolled on NC on Genudine in Beta when we were 5-10% lower than the other factions. Why should I be punished simply because two server mergers later, NC got bloated? Well the answer to that is I shouldn't.

The proper solution is to make the carrot bigger. We get bonuses right now for being underdogs, we should just increase those bonuses. Get so high that if you're 10% lower than the other factions, losing gets you more than their wins. This helps alerts be worth doing and people will stay logged in.

See the problem with alerts isn't fourth faction. But people quitting mid alert:

Lets say the alert starts, NC has 35%, TR 30%, and VS 35%. If halfway through the alert, a quarter of the VS leave, and half the TR leave. The numbers skew to NC 45%, TR 20%, and VS 35% (numbers are rounded to nearest whole number just as it is ingame). Now notice something... VS lost a quarter of its pop.. but didn't lose ANY percentage. NC gained 10% without anyone logging on to it.

It looks like TR logged over to the NC in that example, but the math will prove that isn't the case. Try it. Take those numbers 35, 35, and 30. Assume 35% is 1000 players. And go from there. Your numbers will be off a little from mine since I did some rough rounding, but you should be within 0.5-1.0% on every number.

But you don't have to take my word for it. A dev already stated that the issue with alerts is people quitting mid way. Not fourth faction. If it was fourth faction. Lets say one quarter of the TR and VS went NC. Population would be like this: NC 52%, TR 22%, and VS 26%. So I really doubt 4th faction is that bad as I've never seen population shifts like that except for during primetime changes very very late at night. And we know that isn't fourth faction, thats a cultural-geographical issue.

No, small XP bonuses are not worth being spawn camped or out-zerged everywhere you go, with any weapons that get stronger in numbers(launchers/AV turrets/MAXes/air/etc.) defeating any chance of overcoming sheer pop disadvantage with tactics.

I got to about +100% once on an Amerish alert. Making XP like that is incredible even when you're getting mobbed

If you give me even a 1000% boost to XP, that just means I'm logging out sooner during an alert where I'm overpopped and getting farmed.

Boosting XP for the underdogs, even by a lot, will not help anything.

Also, penalizing the zerg is not "punishing players who chose a particular faction" - it's penalizing players who choose to participate in zergs.

I was thinking that, but I don't know if that would hurt the people who just want to play.

I wonder if having more freedom to move around continents, hexes, etc when you "redeploy" would help if you are underpopped. Most of the time, you have no resources since your warpgated or whatnot. It'll let the underpopped faction help band together a bit more to actually be able to defend-- resulting in a more satisfying fight for both teams.

This is pure idiocy. If I roll from a biolab outpost to the biolab once we've taken the outpost, and suddenly half of my faction sees 'OOOH BIOFARM' and turns up, are you seriously suggesting I should just leave? Spend my time running away from my own faction? Never move to support my teammates unless they're outnumbered, regardless of the strategic significance of what they may be attempting to take/defend (just a note here that contrary to bull**** forumside crybabies, it's VERY possible to fail to take a base despite having a higher population, and possible to lose one in the inverse manner)...

And next I'd really like you to define what you mean by zerg. We now have lattice lanes to ensure that during prime time splitting up squads is almost worthless as it's likely that at every front line base there'll be at least one organised group already... People have such a ******** idea of what is zerging at what is teamwork. A hint for those suffering this: being on the end of teamwork feels exactly like being on the end of a zerg. No one has ever successfully defended a tower and pushed the enemy force back, whilst talking to their teammates about how good the teamwork of the opposition is. Meanwhile, the number of times where getting facerolled straight out of a tower is credited to teamwork rather than 'zerging' is virtually nonexistent.

The game isn't deep, interesting, or strategic enough to incentivise 'positive behaviours' (i.e. not zerging) over 'negative' ones (i.e. zerging). It's simply whichever tool does the job fastest that's employed, and 95% of the time, that means 'zerging' (by one definition or other). The fix for this isn't arbitrarily kneecapping the winners simply for having more people, nor giving a reacharound to the losers for getting facerolled. The fix is to implement metagame that makes battles a little deeper than your average Total War campaign mode autofight of 'Multiply number of soldiers by veterancy by number of units. Compare results and dictate victor.'

/Rant.

Yeah, then what fix do you propose?

What sort of xp bonus would make it worth my while to run into a hail of bullets and high explosives with no chance to survive or get any points?

You can only take xp rewards so far.

The fixes we have continually been suggesting since beta. If you'd like to search 'metagame' on the forums, you'll find enough of them.

A pretty brief summary would be continent locking, meaningful resources+logistics, metagame competition elements (i.e. WDS) that don't massively reward and promote population stacking, and a complete ground-up redesign of the map divisions, so that we neither have the lettuce nor the hex system; instead a dynamic map that creates weaknesses for overpop factions whilst providing underpop factions extra strength (strategically speaking, NOT this bull**** 'make me 5X as strong idiocy').

Here's an idea: Take the OP's idea, except make it subtract .5% for ever 1% over the defending faction in a hex. That way when the TR roll into a base defended by 6 guys with 2 full platoons, they're earning a miniscule amount of XP. This encourages their zerg to break up and go find an even fight, without penalizing the entire faction for simply logging in. TARGETED penalties allow us to punish JUST the zergers, which would be a better solution.

Would you do it for 200% xp bonus?

I sure would try
Since the time dead will negate the time getting that one kill.


But to help the underpoped faction, they could also lower the spawn time for them
Or raise the spawn time for overpopped factions in specific hex fights

That's another good idea. Increase the spawn timer by the % you outnumber the defenders. That way it slows the neverending flood of mindless zergdrones flowing in.