Not that it affects my gameplay a whole lot, but I feel guilty while playing for the overpopped faction. I do not want to play for the overpop faction, but I've been playing on this server/faction since last year, I really do not feel like quitting just cuz temporary 4th factioners feel like playing NC. What attracts people to be NC? The starter weapons. 2 things that may possibly attract a new player would be:- Gauss Saw and Bolt action sniper rifle. (these were the two things that attracted me to play NC) So how about we remove these two weapons as starter weapons, and replace the LMG with either the GD-22s or EM6, and replace the BASR with SASR. Even though Gauss SAW is a good gun and fun to use, I would expect a new player to have a worse KDR with it, than using the other 2 empire starting weapons. (requires a lot of investment too) The snipers may be the biggest reason IMO. The BASR makes new players feel bad-@ss. If they changed these 2 things, I'm fairly certain that NC population will go down to be balanced. It will not be a nerf, just some adjustments.
Overpop seems to be a common problem in the game. And which faction is overpop will change at different times. The biggest way to deter Overpop in general: 1) give all factions equal resource points acquisition regardless of territory held 2) remove alerts (or modify them so that they no longer give massive advantage to the faction with the most pop) 3) change XP population bonus so that it awards a MASSIVE +% XP bonus relative to the underpop of the attacker faction in each zone and each region that their target is in. Also, require the zone the target is in is adjacent to a zone controlled or contested by attacker faction
They can't be fixed nor should they. The three faction system balances itself very nicely. No one side can ever just dominate because the other two sides will team up on them. I play all three factions, and besides the total ease of TR guns i dont see a whole lot of difference. Its so close that sometimes i have to think to remember which side im on.
Except when the two larger only want easy fights and go for the weaker. NC on Matherson had this happen the other night. Was about even pop with TR ahead and VS/TR all focused on NC and not on eachother. Happens a lot in alerts too. People don't want to be pushed. They want an easy cert farm where they can point and click. So perfect world, yes all three fight each other. Though you have moments where that doesn't happen because people get a bit mindless.
Yes I am going to agree with SpcFarlen on this, two larger factions tend to team up on the smaller faction, not the other way around. People take path of least resistance and in general do not organize or work well together. There is another problem with your concept there are times (albeit rare) that I have seen one faction over 50%. Where is your argument there? At that point one faction can and will dominate both. If every faction is in the 30's for percentage no problems for me, its when one jumps into the 40s or one into the 20's that the real problems start to show and yes there should be methods to correct this. And it is important to keep in mind this leads to lack of fun for everyone really. This is a PVP game, we play this for fights, not to stand around empty bases. I'd vote for better xp boosts if I had to choose a method for now. And distantly work on making the factions a bit more balanced in terms of weapons and so on.
