I would like to suggest max-capping faction pop at 35%. Having very skewed populations situations is just detrimental to the gameplay. This is a game all about population and lemmingflow, and a skewed balance ruins that. "But, it's only a problem during offtime! During primetime numbers even out." Well what is the problem with implementing this then? If it only affects off hours? (Which it don't. There are severe faction-pop problems on primetime too. Even primetime in this game has become off-hours.. Let's try to salvage it..) "But I want to play with my friends and outfit!" Well so does everyone else, but unfortunately the flipside is that no one gets to play: It's EXTREMELY unfun sitting spawnlocked in underpop, or not having the pop to do anything meaningful. You're just fodder scooting from underbrush to underbrush trying to get clear of the spawnshield while being pummeled by 80% pop with hesh, bolters and AH. And it is also EXTREMELY unsatisfying aiming at a spawnshield just waiting for someone to peek out. Or just idle behind a corner for that one guy who chickenrun out of the spawn when it flips.. If everyone would just remove their trollhats I bet that the answer you'd get is that everyone would rather play ANY faction rather than not play at all. "But in lowpop, when people leave a faction the balance is greatly affected as a result" Yes. Pick randoms from the most-popped faction (which is above 35%), or the last logged in, or the first logged in or whatever; and boot them out. Make them relog. YES I KNOW: It's a totally bad move, but population balance is a nightmare. In these situations where the pop is so skewed there are no way to fight, and we are limited to: 1. High pop players joining lowpop factions. This is the good solution, but will never happen because very few players are willing to join the underdog/loosers. 2. Lowpop players joining the highpop faction. This is a bad solution. 3. Lowpop players stop playing. This is also a bad solution, but most likeliy the outcome. 4. Forced factionbalance is implemented. This is the only solution as far as I can tell.
Well it doesn't really matter tbh, as is evidence of the current faction caps, which are technically even more restrictive than what you suggest. The problem is with 3 factions it's impossible to make the pop equal on a continent scale and expect it to create balanced fights. In fact if you remember, the fights were more fun and balanced when we didn't have the cap! This is because pop balance on a continent level doesn't ensure pop balance in a hex. For example pop can be 33 33 33 and if 2 factions are fighting each other, the third faction could be ghost capping both. Or if there's a double team, the third faction is facing 66% with 33% pop. Again not fair. The best thing to do is avoid these things, they cause only frustration and accomplish nothing good. Instead of forcing people into balanced fights through vain attempts that just make the situation worse, it's best to provide incentives for fair fights.
Faction queue was one of the worst things to happen to ps2, and you want to make it stricter, no thanks! The fate of this game relies on population, if there is noone to shoot then you log off. They reduced the continent pop from 2000 to a pitiful 900, and some nights we don't even reach that because 2 of the factions are held captive in Wrel's Space Prison. The game was at its best before the faction queues. There were times when TR had 60% pop (TR were the OP faction back then) but vs and nc would focus them and it would balance out.
I've said it elsewhere, but I'll say it here too, multiply the exp gain for being underpopped by a factor of 10. Nobody is going to change factions for a 5% exp boost, some will change for a 50% boost. We don't need that many to change factions, given that each who does is a +1 to the low pop and a -1 to the high pop.
I completely disagree with everything of course. ATM NC has 41% pop on my server. They're dominating every fight and they are NOT challenged by the combined might of the underdogs VS and TR.. People will always choose the path of least resistance and for VS and TR against the zergtrain of NC is just to avoid it. Thus they end up fighting eachother. There are two fronts atm on miller: One where VS and TR are more or less spawnlocked in the NC zerg engagements, and then there are the VS/TR fights that actually were decent fights until the NC overflow who got tired of staring at spawnshields pulled a bastion and started shelling the VS/TR battles.. It's just cancer. Players will never balance the game themselves. They will always choose to be **** if given the means to do so. How anyone can claim that ANY attempt at balancing faction pop is a bad move is beyond me. How you in a game with three factions, where population is the most important resource, can cry about sitting in a queue to join your overpopped faction of choice is beyond me! I almost exclusively play the least popped faction on Miller, and I'm almost always playing VS. And I've NEVER been in a queue. But if I wanted to be sat in a HESH tank alongside 6 other, spamming the outside of the spawnshield instead of staring at it from the inside, then YES; I think I damned well should deserve to be sat in a queue for it! And were it up to me I shouldn't even be given the option! EDIT: And no: there are no way to organize a unified TR/VS front against NC. Again people will choose the easiest way. It's supposed to be a game, not a job.
Yeah people play to have fun. What's fun about being stuck in a 30 minute queue to play a 9 year old game that's already in dire need of pop? And again, balancing a continent is not a successful way to created balanced/fair/fun fights. That fact you're complaining about measures that are already in place to an even further degree than you suggest is already proof the system doesn't work. Also important to note that most "fair fights" due to the base design that typically heavily favors the defenders usually have around 55-60% pop from the attackers. When it hits 70% that's when the attackers are almost sure to win, although there's some bases (such as containment sites) which favor defenders so much even that isn't the case. So no, while seeing 50-50 in a hex or 33-33-33 on a continent might make you feel better, it's far from creating fair/balanced fights. Only in games like battlefield or call of duty is that going to work, because there's only 2 factions all fighting in the same hex. For a game like planetside, there's no meaning to add flat pop restrictions, if that wasn't made abundantly clear by the ones we already have. Instead we need more incentives to have fair fights. This could be done by redesigning key elements of gameplay, or simply finding a better playerbase. But let's be real, it's a deep problem that's not going to be solved by just sticking a pop limit as already exists.
Well I'm not suggesting a pop-queue. I know there is a pop-queue, and apparently it's not working. People will rather sit 30 minutes (alledgedly - I've never sat i a queue ever) to join their overpopping faction rather than playing instantly on a lower popped faction and thus helping balancing the game out. Again; given the means most people will do ANYTHING to scrounge any sort of benefit to leverage their advantage. No one wants to be on the "loosing" team. But most people don't understand that the "loosing" team are loosing because everyone wants to be on the "winning" team. Drop queues and implement hardcapped faction balance instead. There is no real gain/loss at swapping factions in this game so if it's needed to maintain a fair balance I can't see why not. Today, primetime sunday, NC has 43% on Miller. VS and TR in the low, low 20s. VS was 21% at the time I logged out I believe. VS has at the time of writing 144 players online. TR 171 and NC 224. It's impossible to play against NC for either TR and VS as NC will just popsync and zerg every fight.
Well everyone has a "main" character they are working on. If I log in and I want to do my TR carbine directive, but the game says: 'SORRY TR HAVE 35% POP PLEASE WAIT 40 MINUTES TO PLAY' ... well any normal dude would probably just go play another game. The worst thing is sometimes a faction has little to no fights, or is the overpopulated one but getting double teamed - and the game prevents me from actually balancing the fights by switching to that faction! What???? That would make the experience even worse, as well as the balancing. Most people wouldn't even play. You're saying you want to keep the system that doesn't work, and just make it worse by simply preventing people from even entering queues. Basically just telling them, go away. Sick. Idk if you noticed but PS2 needs pop lol. And how would that resolve the problem that balanced continent pop does not create balanced fights - in fact it often favors unfair fights. I just don't understand why some people can't seem to grasp that equal pop on continent level =/= equal pop on hex level. And equal pop on hex level =/= fair fight. Come on. No it's not. Assuming you leave NC on the offensive, and they attack both factions, NC would actually be at a disadvantage. Since defending bases requires less pop than attacking, and NC would basically be double teamed. I'm fairly certain there were more fun and fair fights in your scenario than had the pop been 33-33-33.
Or you can remove faction queues and focus on making zergs less effective + make fights where you're out-popped (and to a lesser extent, fights where you're overpopping) more fun, and letting me actually do something instead of being locked in a spawnroom. Getting locked out of playing the game only means I'll switch off to play something else, and faction queues don't even balance the fights out : you'll still have zergs dodging each other even in a 33%/33%33%.
Here's a question for you: An alert is going. All factions have 33% population. One faction is winning, as is standard in such situations the rate of people leaving from the two losing sides increases (and the join rate of the winning side doesn't really increase). This causes the most common way of overpopulation as the winning side rises above 33% population. Are you going to start kicking players from the higher pop faction? Are you really going to punish even more players who join later by not allowing them to play the faction they want and forcing them in extremely long queue's? Wouldn't it be better to make being underpopped a fun experience? Solve how spawnbunkers are set up so you can't be spawncamped as easily. Decrease resource costs when you are outpopped for X time to make it easier to fight back. Add systems that progressively increase the more outpipped you are, such as the ability to drop-pod into an increasingly large area around the spawn or the ability to spawn vehicles using an outpopped ANVIL system which increases the distance you can pull them the more outpopped you are (the system I proposed years ago and was instead added for outfits). Changing how capture timers work when outpopped such as allowing players to add time to the capture timer if they kill infanty and vehicles so they don't need to hold the points in order to maintain the base. There are dozens of ways to make it more fun to be outpopped. Even things like directives, tracked data like KD (or rather tracking and displaying things other than KD) and how rewards are offered can have massive effects on how being outpopped is treated. Each of these methods is superior over punishing players for joining a faction that is overpopping, an overpop they never caused no matter how you look at it.
This. Capping the overpop is already something Planetside kind of does with the faction balance queue, which sucks to sit in and is even worse when there's only one continent up. Hard capping the population would just make people log off or stop caring. Plus, it would remove one of the advantages of membership (the ability to skip queues) so you know they'll never do it. Increased XP bonuses, access to unique assets or cheaper nanite costs... hell add directives, ribbons, and XP rewards specifically for fighting on in spite of outpop! The outpopping faction already has fun by virtue of a better chance to win and bigger, better fights. If you make it fun for the other side, maybe the outpopping faction will find their unstoppable zerg stymied more often?
Nope. It's all bogus. Been playing underdog all day on TR Miller as VS actually was severely overpopping for once (go figure), but then to see what the queue fuzz is about I tried joining VS with 39% pop (TR/NC both at 30%) and I instantly logged into esamir no issue. Not a single queue. Lowpop faction balance needs a system to enforce balance. It's virtually unplayable as it is on lowpop with forcemultipliers being ridiculously OP as there just aren't enough coordination and resources to take down a bastion or a collossus or what not. And when it's pulled on the overpopping faction too it's just a nightmare for everyone else..
