[Suggestion] How to solve the biggest problem with Planetside 2

First off, I want to thank the devs for making a game that has so many good points. The fact that it is a FPS focused on PC users, meaning that we have full customization for controls. The fact that there can be such massive fights. The fact that they added they new cross-hairs, which are awesome.

And it's stuff like that latest cross-hair addition that gives me hope. That was an improvement to the game I didn't see coming, and that they didn't have to add. But they did, and it's great.

So, enough of this preface...




Q: What is the biggest problem in Planetside 2?

A: That the faction sides are not always even.



Q: Why is this the biggest problem in Planetside 2?

A: Because if one side has 50% server population, the fights become boring one sided zerg fests. No one benefits. People get frustrated, and leave the server.



Q: Why is this problem hard to solve?

A: Because you can't simply stop a player from choosing a character on the side with most numbers. They might not even have a character on another faction.



Q: So how do you solve the problem?

A: Mercenaries

MERCENARIES

When you log in with a character that is on a side with the highest population, you are given an extra option before you actually log into the game. A pop up box appears, and it says:

"The <<enemy faction with lowest numbers>> is offering to hire you as a Mercenary. Would you like to temporarily fight for the <<enemy faction with lowest numbers>> , and gain double XP?"

With the <<enemy faction>> referring to the faction that has the lowest numbers on the server. The rules that apply when you are fighting as a Mercenary are...

• Mercenaries are essentially the same as their "faction" character. They have all the weapons that their faction character does. All XP gained goes towards their faction character, all items they can buy are from their faction, etc.
• Gain double XP while playing as a Mercenary.
• Do not gain nanite resources normally. Instead, they gain them through kills, assists, etc.
• When you initially log in as a Mercenary, your nanite resources are reset to zero.
• Mercenaries have normal vehicle interaction with the side they are helping. I.E: They can crew vehicles, and have other people crew their vehicles.
• Mercenaries have large color bands on their infantry and vehicle camo. These color bands match the color of the faction they are fighting for. Any normal "faction" color is also changed to the color of the side they are fighting for. (I.E: A TR soldier fighting for the NC will have blue color bands and will have all the normal red on their uniform changed to blue.) This makes it easy to identify a Mercenary.

MERCENARY LOYALTY

Once playing as a Mercenary, you can not switch back your original faction automatically. You must log out, then log back in. On doing so, you lose all Nanite resource you have gained. (This is the "penalty" of betraying your side.) However, it is possible for Loyalty to switch mid game, in which case you keep your Nanite resources.

• Mercenary "Loyalty" is determined in 5 minute steps by the server.
• Every 5 minutes, the population balance of the server is measured. If a new faction now has the lowest population, the Mercenaries receive a warning that they may be changing sides.
• If a different side still has the lowest population on the next 5 minute step, the Mercenaries are told they will be switching sides. (The 3 factions are not told this.) This change is now "set in stone" and will happen regardless of server population changes in the next few minutes.
• The Mercenaries then have another 5 minutes to get ready for their Loyalty to change. They are told what the next faction they are fighting for will be.
• After 5 minutes, the Mercenaries switch sides. A global alert notifies all factions of who the Mercenaries are now fighting for. On the change:
  • All C4, land mines, other deployables by Mercenaries disappear.
  • Mercenary camo instantly changes (,with a corresponding nanite effect), to the new Mercenary banding camo.
• This means that the fastest Mercenary Loyalty can change, is once every 15 minutes. This stops the Mercenary side "flip flopping" constantly when the population numbers are very close.
• If a Mercenary switches back to their own faction, they lose their Mercenary status.

THIS SOLVES THE MAIN PROBLEM WITH PLANETSIDE 2

This change means that sides will now be balanced. Whenever you play, if you are the side with the lowest numbers, you will get people helping you. It means that there will be no more side having 50% population on a server.

It will also add some great stuff to the game. Mercenaries are encouraged to fight well, because they get Nanites from kills. You will see Mercenary NC Harrassers fighting alongside Vanu Magriders. Mercenary TR Mosquitos protecting NC Galaxies. The Mercenaries loyalty can also change mid battle, leading to some incredible situations.


This change could be the single most important change that could be made to Planetside 2. Please, please support it.

The biggest problem is that the game doesn't run properly for a lot people. As such, they stop playing. With fewer players, the faction imbalance becomes much more noticeable.

Cool but confusing, just imagine a bunch of vanu soldiers using their vanu weapons to fight for the NC/TR against other VS, they'll think they are tanking friendly fire.

So that's my only complain, if they must play mercenaries then they must be equipped with their equivalent faction weapons and armor, which should be a problem since all weapons an certifications have an equivalent.

Someone suggested maybe a couple years ago now that there should be a Nanite Systems faction. I believe it was something like, you use your main character and his setup, but that setup would be translated to NS gear, vehicles, armor, etc. When playing as NS, you pick a side and your colors changes to their side. Something like that.

I like having equal populations, but I find that unequal populations are not much of a problem currently on Miller and Cobalt. We have continent locking to ensure there's enough population even during lows so that people can find sufficiently balanced fights. If there aren't enough players, then that's a problem of there simply not being enough players, and I'd rather focus on bringing more players in and retaining the ones we have than having something as awkward, confusing and complicated as what you're suggesting.

Limiting people per region dynamically would work better. E.g. a notification "This region's reconstruction infrastructure is currently overused, you cannot spawn there." You could spawn at the adjacent facility but you couldn't spawn within the region where your faction has much more population.

NO ONE BETRAYS THE REPUBLIC. LOYALTY UNTIL DEATH. STRENGTH, IN UNITY.

Actually, on the days I've been playing (3-10PM GMT) VS have a large underpopulation issue, as bad as 29% across all of Miller Auraxis. The NC/TR also drop underneath my "acceptable" boundaries, as low as ~30%. This is causing issues, but I have no idea of how to fix this.

That's a fairly small population difference compared to the 50% pop the OP is hoping to fix. What sort of issues is that causing? I can find balanced fights whenever

This could be solved by implementing a few things, the end goal being that when you are being shot at you are able to tell right away that it is not friendly fire.

Example: VS Mercenaries working for TR attacking VS normal

• The color of their tracers/projectiles is changed to the faction they are supporting. I.E: All these VS Mercenaries will have red tracers. Any PPA projectiles fired by the VS Mercenary units will ALSO be red, etc.
• When firing, Mercenary units will ALWAYS shoot with tracers.
• Voice macros will play automatically if you are attacked by Mercenaries. For example: A group of VS soldiers are standing in the open, when a VS Mercenary opens up on them. You hear the "VS voice guy" say "TRAITORS ARE ATTACKING US" or something similar. (This should be on a 5 minute cooldown so that it is not constantly being spammed.)

I can not add this to my original post, as the edit time has expired. However, that will hopefully solve that issue.

(Note that Mercenaries can NOT be equipped with the "faction they are fighting with" weapons, because of Cert costs, etc. A VS Mercenary fighting for TR will always be equipped with VS weapons.)

Not only does this idea sound epic, but it would also fix a main issue in the game. I'M IN!

The "b grade" game dev`s don´t care what players like. ..

Still it's easier and less confusing just to equip people with the faction they are fighting with weapons, you don't need to buy anything, if you have the VS battle rifle, and you join the TR as mercenary you'll have the TR battle rifle unlocked for as long as you fight with the TR as mercenary, if you then join the NC as mercenary you'll have the NC battle rifle unlocked, and so on.

Technically, I'm pretty sure it would be a lot easier for the Developers to just let the VS characters keep using VS weapons. That way all they need to do is change the color of the tracers, and which side is "enemy" and which is "friendly".

Having the other factions weapons would bring up all sorts of problems to be solved, such as player statistics, different weapon attachments, problems with using certs while you are a Mercenary, etc.

As long as those extra changes are made (tracers, projectile color, etc) there shouldn't be too much confusion. (Both sides already use NS weapons, so right now you can have sides shooting at each other with NS weapons only.) And of course, spotted Mercenaries will have the red triangle above them, just like spotted enemies. Combined with having the "mercenary color banding" and "color changed" camo, it should actually be relatively easy to identify a mercenary.

However, I'm glad you are bringing this up, it means that people are actually thinking about this topic. Cheers.

This is a good attempt. Problem is that the player that wants to side with the masses is not going to want to be a mercenary. They won't pick that option even if there is a "bonus check" for doing so.
If it was set-up to try to force players to be Mercenaries when a faction had a population level past a certain point that would never go over well with the player base. I know that you did not propose this, but this is the way that would make the greatest impact to game balance.
One thing that needs to be taken in mind is that population size is only somewhat related to side dominance. A side with better players is going to tend to do better than a side that simply has masses of new players. A player with a higher BR is going to be less likely to want to play as a Mercenary for another side because any bonus wouldn't mean as much, they are loyal to their side, and they could be leaders in an Outfit.

And that brings up the issue with being in an Outfit when you are a Mercenary - especially when you are fighting against your Outfit members. I'm assuming you would just have the Mercenary stripped of their outfit until they returned to their Outfit's "side".

I could care less about the double XP, so I would say double my CERTs instead.

I guess the problem would be, who's gear would you be using. I'm assuming that whatever faction would not be very appreciative of their gear being used by another faction.
I see that you have tried to cover that with removing all nanite credit from the character.
I would think that Mercenaries would only have access to default non-faction-specific weaponry.

I think you were first right about the "changing sides" requiring a relog. I think that this would even need to be the case during population shifting. I think it would cause too many issues all around to shift a character from one faction to the other while the character is actively running in the game world.

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Would I use the Mercenary function?
If it was for double CERTS, I would use it for characters that were not in Outfits (more at the ones that are in single character outfits - being in one keeps other players from trying to invite you into one).
My character in an Outfit would never pick this option.
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Mercenaries aside ::

I'm not too worried about the population level any more. I'm not sure how long that I have played. I know that I have played for probably around 6 months or so.
When I first started playing, I would tend to play a character of one of the two factions that I do play depending upon which side had the higher population.
When PS2 went All Access (I'm sort of regretting extending my grandfathered-"All Access" at this point due to multiple reasons not entirely singling out PS2 which has really let me down over the last two patches), I had more character slots to work with so - being an alt-jumper - I made more characters.
It was around the time that PS2 (Non-PS2 players in SOE-land thinks that PS2 is PlayStation 2 - apparently) went All Access I joined a 2nd Outfit that seems to be a pretty good fit for my game play (demanding of some discipline but not leaning not forcing players to have any particular load out or play a certain class for the most part). So I regularly play that character to squad/platoon up with the outfit - I don't pay attention to the population. I also play 2 characters that are VR only for training with classes, weapons, and vehicles - this really has no effect on population one way or the other, but it contributes to population numbers. Then I have 3 other characters - one that I had played with a good bit before All Access so has more BR and CERTs than the other two remaining characters - these I play just to get some time in with the character - and, again, this is regardless of population size - I'm simply playing them to be playing them.

gotta stop ya right there.... They're actually pretty close to even on world-pop during peak hours and have been fairly consistent since January. (with VS taking maybe a 10% difference late at night). Where it gets all imbalanced, is in the Hexes themselves. Some factions hate certain continents and don't really apply themselves there. Some factions would rather not fight a certain other faction if they can help it. Some outfits believe that taking Hexes with mass overpop makes them seem more impressive and "coordinated". And on all sides, there's a real reoccurring theme of the prisoner's dilemma where-in factions in 2nd and 3rd place during an alert will just go straight to taking territory from eachother because they know the instant one of them tries to take on #1, that the other faction in 3rd place just try to ghost cap their Hexes instead of actually joining them in taking down #1. (& there's no personal consequences to avoiding #1, you still get the same XP and stat boosting KPH by farming 3rd place that you get for facing higher risk and taking on #1)


They're even. There's just no real risk Vs reward formula or incentives to make sure the fights themselves make sense

You'll probably find that both play out the same way. If you double the cert gain from a 500XP kill, it will be 4; if you double the XP from a kill that normally pays out 500XP, it becomes 1000XP which is still 4. The only reason to choose doubling XP is to take advantage of the psychological effect of seeing the numbers flashed onscreen.

...3 slots , 3 factions , use it.

That's a good point.
Perhaps there should be an XP/CERTs generating formula that takes that into account. It would generate less XP/CERTs for battling versus 2nd population faction/territory offensviely by lowest population faction and an even less when XP/CERTs battling versus lowest population faction/territory offensively by 2rd population faction. Rewards would be standard for the highest population faction battling either of the other two. Perhaps there should be a greater XP/CERTs reward for the lowest population defending against the highest population faction?

The real kicker would be should this be generated per continent or via the whole world population? or even possibly the "hex"/territory? (or a variable calculation based on all three?)

The "dinging" factor is a great motivator.

The reason that I would go with CERTs instead of XP is because of the BR.

I know the negative side of saying no-XP for being a mercenary, but really the only game mechanic impact of a higher BR is only the related CERTS. The BR (generated by XP) really only impacts ranking - and that's factional ranking and factional rank names - which really shouldn't be gained by mercenary activities but rather only from factional ones.

If it wasn't for the negatives related to saying no-XP gain, so would say "No XP gain and double CERTS for being willing to be a Mercenary". This more accurately reflects gaining better skills and arms while not raising your ranking within your faction for being willing to be a Mercenary against them.

...which means what when hex populations are imbalanced.