I hope anyone from the developer team has seen a post like this one at least once. SOE, players are massively legging it from the battlefield. They bunker up on their own continents (with 60% pop there) or they go AWOL capping empty bases for free points (they can do this with their monitor turned off). So a minority of their brethren are left to face the zerg. And soon there will be more continents, so every player can hide in his/her own base and no game between them will ever happen. Yesterday I was playing off peak time (the time when outfit experience makes up for game mechanic loopholes) and for 2 hours the only choice I had is to stand up to 45% to 24% enemy flood on one cont, or go to another and join a massive ally column conquering an empty forest. MY SUGGESTIONS: Can you somehow reward players more for standing up to the opposition? Not chickening to another cont? A per-continent balance bonus is one idea. Or maybe doing for base capture points the same as you've done for base defence points (no lump sum of points awarded at cap, but bonus for actually fighting there).
the biggest problem with fighting outnumbered is that you run out of resources and then there's not much you can do.
Yes, that too, but then the resources bonus might help. There is a resource + certs bonus already for server underpopulation, why not so with continents? The fact that lone wolfers left on a cont blow all the resources on tanks, that they are going to lose anyway, and there's not enough left for Sunderer to spawn from.. that's a tactical thinking problem... Anyway if they were less scattered they would be more likely to learn from others. I'm after a mechaninc that prevents that scattering.
I posted my suggestions along these lines in this thread: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/population-xp-bonus-suggestions.60090/ A per-continent XP/resource bonus that's actually big enough to encourage players to move around to balance populations would work wonders.
I've read your thread. (This is my 3rd one on this, 'cause they usually go unnoticed to the bottom of the list) It's good to hear that someone sees the current system is a 'self-destabilising' one. I think the devs should understand that this is a problem. Now, in a continent uderpopulation bonus like we propose I'd personally leave the percentages up to the developers (after all it'd be their potential sales money being gambled, if they set it to 300% XP). Although I agree with you, that no one would ever get such a high bonus because the self-balancing effect would work so well. Please, everyone liking this idea, can you bump this up? I've seen SOE listen and implement a lot of what the community has suggested, we just need to outshout the 'my gun is underpowered' threads. And I don't want to play on empty continents!
Do you have any arguments to back those 2 words up? I for one totally agree with OP, 15% vs 15% vs 70% on every continent is no fun at all, not for the attackers or the defenders.
Even the 10% difference in population bonus isn't worth it if your faction is getting stomped. Okay, I get 3% more xp (sometimes), so what? I can go to another Continent where the distribution is more fair and rake in points without getting curb stomped by a zerg. A conquered Continent requires a HUGE force redistribution to come into to unlock it. If they are only getting 3-5% higher bonus for coming in on a stacked server, why should an outfit do that? Hell yes I wanna pull my outfit to a server and wreak havoc everywhere and reap the rewards of being organized instead of following the zerg. This just doesn't need to be a stupid number bonus, just more than an old dried up bone, maybe an apple?
You're kind of right that 3-5% is not going to lure anyone. How about 50%, then? I think there is a huge weight there to be moved about in the form of non-outfit, casual players. Another thing is: when you wan't to just go on a killing spree with your outfit, how do you feel if there's nobody there to 'wreak havoc' on (you've just warped, say, to Esamir and have 60% pop in your favour). This happens a lot on my server. Doesn't this feel dull to you? Even on the winning side? And when the pops are roughly even, this is when you'll reap potentially higher rewards for being organised. What's the point of being organised if there's no opposition...
Exactly, if you just follow the swarm, there isn't much fun. Granted, I follow the swarm a lot, but I also only get 5 fps in huge fights. So I'll sit on a hill and have my gunner snipe planes and people from buildings. I'm still participating, but just doing whats possible for me. However, I have taken my 5 man outfit and guarded bases against mass populations by ourselves with maybe 2 or 3 others running around doing random things not in our outfit. I've also ran with other outfits and secured half the Continent on a warpgate locked Continent with a higher population than us just by us being organized and rolling fast. 50% might be a bit high, but a bit more would help. You can buy anything at the warpgate, so being organized would help. Now if we can figure out a way to shut these morons up who certed into CR positions and bark orders and cause me to send nasty tells to them telling them how much of an idiot they are with less polite words.
Honestly, I think such a system could even work if giving drastic XP rewards. Actually, the more extreme the XP reward, the more likely it will do what it needs to. I'm talking like giving (per continent), and XP bonus equal to that of the difference between your faction and the most populous faction's percentages. Example: Indar has 35% VS, 40% TR, and 25% NC. In this case, VS gets a 5% xp buff, TR 0%, and NC 15% xp buff. In realtime, based on the population percentages. This will quite rapidly alter the population balance as NC members rush in to capitalize on the XP bonus. I think we can all agree that a 33% on all sides on any given continent is the idea balance.
