I have a simple proposition that would fix one of the worst problems with this game: Give a huge XP bonus to people who are fighting outnumbered on their continent, so that people are always drawn to the places where their faction needs the most help, and forming a giant zerg to farm kills actually gives a much bigger reward to the people you are trying to dominate. We see this all over the game now, that every faction just has one continent where they have the highest population and are sweeping the map, the other factions are stuck with a tiny bit of land, they can't effectively push out of their gate because even if they do start to capture territory it isn't long until the zerg just takes it back, and eventually everyone simply leaves for another continent, because there is nothing that compells a reasonable player to just let themselves get stomped on. There is a simple remedy to this: Every 1% of difference to the highest populated faction yields you +10% XP bonus. That may seem like a lot, but the whole point of it is that the bonus does insanely huge when one faction outnumbers another by a lot. The idea is that if your faction has 12% on a continents population and the enemy has 67% instead of going "Screw that, we'll never even get out of the warpgate, and have no resources" people should go "Heck yea! 550% XP bonus, I'm there!" - at the same time everone on the other faction with the huge zerg is going to be looking at the map and going "0% bonus, damn, I'm not getting good XP here, I'm going to look for a continent where we have fewer people" Once people are used to chasing the big bonuses eventually you'll see the XP even out, because people will naturally try to even out the population. If a faction is outnumbered on the server in general they might be able to maintain a 10-20% bonus on all the continents, but that's OK, it will bring more people to the faction, since rolling a new character will always be the quickest on the servers where your chosen faction is weakest also. People are selfish, they want the big bonuses, this system leverages that to get them to balance the game. If a faction tries to zerg somewhere they create huge rewards for their opponents, and an incentive to match the attacking force. If the people on the other faction all rush to cash in on the bonus the bonus disappears, but the battle is now balanced. The biggest XP will go to the people who are the quickest to respond, and that also creates a nice incentive to actively look for places that are in trouble. Meanwhile the system is pretty much abuse proof, since a faction can't create big bonuses on purpose, since that means leaving the balanced continents, so the people making it possible to get the big bonus aren't getting any XP - once again, selfishness leveraged to keep things in check. If they implement server transfers and finally stop acting like an MMORPG and start acting like a Shooter where you can switch servers when you feel like it this effect will kick in game-wide and even balance server populations.
I like your suggestion, but i don't think it will result in more battles or structured play. You will have succeeded in spreading people out, but there will be no more epic battles, or there will be 1 zerg per continent, per faction. To limit zerging you would probably want to implement exp bonuses for hex / facility zones. That might encourage people to attack/defend specific facilities.
That's not something that's out of the question, there could very well be an XP bonus for responding to a certain location as well. I think base design needs to change before defense becomes viable. The giant problem with defense right now is that when a big enemy army crashes a facility they are past all the shields and on the cap point before anyone could possibly respond in force, so the defenders are pretty much forced to defend from the outside in. If you respond quickly, the attackers are still in the base when you try to take it back, and they end up owning the base and having a huge force in there defending it, while you end up the attacker against a well fortified base. If you just wait until it flips and they move on you can take it back when its empty.
Yes, continent population should give a decent XP bonus. Counterzerg mechanics are good. Maybe even the hex chunk you're in should do something - reduced XP in the Zerg against empty bases, normal XP in balanced combat, and increased when the underdog.
I think any lack of population on a continent should be rewarded with a ressource / XP boost. As it is now there is only a XP boost for lower population on the whole server. But since it's mostly the case that the population is splitted to Vanu having the highest population on Esamir and NC the highest on Amerish noone gets a boost at all, since the overall population on the server seems balanced.
The XP boost for server pop is also so small, it's not really worth it. XP bonuses are only effective if they are big enough that people actually change their behavior to get them. If they are so small that people will ignore them they have absolutely no effect.
Well they are effective at what they are meant to do. To balance new players into factions. On most servers all factions have 33% population so it works. I agree though that it is a problem that the populations between continents are not balanced. I was thinking before if maybe resources should be given based on all areas owned on all continents instead of only the continent you're playing on but maybe SOE has bigger plans when they introduce the new continent and the lattice system.
Well, I just remember the game being a ton of fun in early Beta when there was only one continent. Nobody could leave, so it was always a 3 faction fight, never just a one sided giant domination. Any time you focussed all your efforts on zerging one faction the other would come in and take your stuff, so defending was also more viable.
Wouldn;t that just move the zerg around quicker? Possibly even leaving midfight when everyone else arrives and the xp drops again?
In theory with a system like that in place you wouldn't really ever see the uberbonuses crop up since people would actively seek to balance out the population. I think of it as a pendulum that slowly but surely is going to lose its momentum until all the movements are nice and small, giving a little bonus here and a little bonus there but keeping things pretty even overall.
