New Alert XP distribution mechanics encourage mass flight to likely victor

I think they need to do two things:

1. Remove the 50% cap on low population XP bonus.

This bonus should increase exponentially in my opinion. Right now, there's a point where you get 50% experience bonus for being under pop, and if you continue to be even more underpopulated, there's no further bonus. Once that maximum 50% is reached, it doesn't matter if the enemies pop increased by another 1%, 5% or 20%, you're still only getting that 50% extra. By uncapping this low pop bonus, eventually you'll be getting to the point were every kill you manage to get will net you as many points as them killing you 2-3 times.

2. Alert participation bonuses and low population bonuses should be multiplicative, not additive.

So right now, if you have a 20% alert participation bonus and a 50% low population bonus, you'll be getting an extra 70% XP. I think this needs to change so that the low population bonus applies to alert participation XP. So under that system you would be getting 80% XP bonus for playing the underpop faction during an alert.

Combining 1 and 2, you may soon find that players on low population factions during alerts would be getting 80-200% XP bonuses when fighting severely outnumbered, which would definitely help stem the flight of players to the likely victor. Eventually, people will realise that leaving to fight on the overpopulated faction with only a 20% bonus from alert participation, will probably not net them that many more CERTs than if they remained on their main toon with a very high combined alert and low pop bonus. Not to mention the benefit of fighting outnumbered means lots of things to shoot at.

Yesterday morning NC got a dominating victory during a alert with 26% population. Bet all the 4th faction players didn't see that coming.

What me f*** up the most is, that since I have a nVidia GTX 770 installed in my rig (nVidia is a Partner of SOE and this game) instead of my old Radeon HD6870, I have random game crashes!

So in certain circumstances, I will fight an alert and maybe got a crash 15 minutes before Alert ends, while attending to it the rest of 1:45h. After login I will get only 12,5% of the Alert XP...

I know, that there a certain thoughts, SOE made this change, but personally I think, the mechanic of the 4th factioneers wasn't wiped out with it

Thnx

Let's check the facts from http://sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php?world=25&timezone=8&allfactions=false. Here's 24h graph from Briggs a week ago before GU13:

Here's last 24h from Briggs:


While it certainly seems that TR population has decreased after GU13 I fail to see any evidence of significant TR overpopulation before GU13. Could you post similar 24h graph showing TR overpop since I just can find it?

Really? SOE just implemented server recommendation based on selected faction and it seemed to help on most of the servers. Why couldn't SOE adjust respawn timers or locations based on population if they wished to make fights more even? Is it impossible for them to dramatically increase XP gain on lower populated faction in order to make it more desirable for 4th faction?

While you might be correct about turning early to alert the numbers have always been the single most important factor on winning the alert and highest populated faction has always had advantage. I don't think that populations will balance if nothing is done, on most servers population balance was getting worse before GU12 which changed the way on how servers were recommended.

Something like this would be good but i also like to add during the warning of a incoming alert it should also warn you that once the alert starts you cannot change your faction during the alert and you get the 15 minutes to decide if you should play your best/favorite faction. Then once the 2 hour timer starts you are locked into the faction you are currently logged into until the end of the alert and you cant just log out and switch because changing faction will be disabled (changing characters that are on the same faction is allowed).

Also as mentioned above besides the incentives mentioned if those cant be implemented or tweaked some way than give lower pop factions more incentive to stay on the lower pop instead of logging on and then sign in on the outnumbered faction to get that easy win. Another solution is to give under pop faction a health boost if enemy faction pop reaches over 40percent on world/continent

But Seriously never seen 50 percent vanu pop even when zoe were OP as hell on introduction (Briggs Server) but now its like all new players on briggs are playing vanu. I dont mind being underpopped but when one faction hits 50 percent world pop you know something is wrong.

For now im hoping its because people want to try the new VS audio for their guns on alts but dam the population seems to always skew during a alert to at least 40 percent vanu world pop. just before the alert it was even 30 percent each faction roughly in the world with each continent being slightly different but after playing for like 10 hours i have noticed that the vanu seem to be way over poped during alerts. For now I hope I am wrong because if pops literally stay at 40+ always during alerts (especially since i like fighting over it) I may stop playing this game despite how much i love this game.

I was under the impression that NC and TR had a lot more low BR players because they have Mattherson as their recommended server to fix the pop issue. Been noticing a lot more low BRs in the past month or so. As for Vanu I wouldn't really know, since you only see friendly BR if you on the giving or recieving end of teamkilling. But if you say there's a lot of the low BR Vanu, a bunch of them are probably 4th faction. Plus, Vanu on this server are very nocturnal. We've always had a much higher pop at night. I think most of us are older and don't have a bedtime We have some European players, but generally I think we're just night owls. Most of us in my outfit live on the east coast, and we're pretty much 24/7. Nightmare is also pretty much 24/7.

Actually Vanu's biggest strength on Mattherson is the large number of organized outfits, most of which are actively recruiting. We usually have 2 pages of platoons that are open during a prime time alert, not even counting all of the private outfit OPS platoons. Because of this we can divide platoons up and push a lot of places at once. TR used to have that kind of organization, but since The Enclave left, they haven't really been much of a threat. NC has never gotten their **** together. NC had 40% server pop during a prime time global biolab alert today (4th factioners are going NC now?), they were winning with 6 biolabs, TR had 2, and VS only had 1. Shortly before the end of the alert, a lot of VS went to Amerish and got all 3 biolabs from NC and ended up tying with them (the NC got one more from the TR and ended up with 4. The TR had even pop with VS and only got 1 lol) because we actually care about continents other than Indar during global alerts. Vanu do definitely zerg, but we're smart about it. NC and TR just push one place really hard, get tunnel vision, and lose track of everything they're losing. VS will pull out and go somewhere else when a battle is going nowhere. NC and TR usually just end up fighting each other rather than us, allowing us to take even more territory.

The problems on Mattherson are not pop related. VS outfits just have more history here, and we have more players with command experience. Funneling more BR1s to try to even out the pop isn't going to fix anything. Honestly the only thing that would fix Mattherson is if entire TR and NC outfits and their players were transferred over here from other servers.

Sorry, double post

Having a powerful GPU is irrelevant if your RAM or some random driver is causing you to crash.

The VS on Connery and Helios were underpopped by as little as 20% with NC having 60% and noooow the NC come out whining and complaining give me a break. Gee it wouldve been nice having this put in when we were underpopped, but we still won alerts with strategy instead of complaining about numbers. I hope they put in pop balance but I will be sure to get my sweet sweet revenge on the NC for months on abuse I will find you and I will Tbag you.

I don't understand how you responded to my post this way. Of course the issues re pop related, and yes your understanding is correct. Were you even on last night when from 8pm to 2am the TR were running around 26-29%. Friday night.,.

Yes, the reason TR has more low BRs is because its the recommended server. That doesn't mean they stay TR. These newbies seem to be quitting the game after 1-2 weeks, which is standard, or they are switch factions when they realize how hard it can be for TR,. SO we basically have a constant stream of low experience players, even when the pops are even.

The "vanu just have l of experienced outfits" argument is fine, but its not negating the pop issue. If the vany organization has any effect, its that the vanu outfits are just convincing low BR terrans to re-role as vanu or on another server.

Mattherson is a badly population balanced server right now. And frankly, all the balancing that GU12 and GU13 is implementing is either having the opposite of the intended effect (GU13 anti 4th faction alert change) or is providing loads of inexperienced low BR players that are really just meat bags (GU12).

VS on mattherson will continue to bring up the organizational issue, but its so far gone on this server that there is barely a point to be made. VS just bring it up to make themselves feel better at this point. Most VS i talk to in game realize how horrible the populations are.

I have no idea how server transfers will work, or outfit transfers etc. God forbid they make them open transfers though....

until that website can be customized to filter out players below certain battle ranks, it wont hold much value.

So far it's the best available information about server populations. It's not perfect but it's much better than screenshots because it's shows the population balance over the time instead of a snapshot. Off course the amount of population is not the only thing that decides the outcome of the alerts, there are also other factors but in my opinion population is the most important one.

Said this before:
To me the alerts should be about competing with the other factions on a somewhat forced, relatively even basis, while having incentives to participate when doing so. Make it fun for all players - no more cont priming insta alert wins, no more alert mass over population faction, no more 4th factioning to grab rewards.

20mins before alert start, announcement that alert is going to be on the particular continent. Vehicle purchases are suspended on the continent, so players don't waste their resources/timers. 10mins before alert starts on the continent, players are redeployed and locked in the warpgate. All continent territory turns neutral (grey). At alert start the warpgate is unlocked, bases can now be captured as normal lattice rules, capping takes half the time as it is neutral and unoccupied. Players get the free, fast base capture XP straight away.

Faction population limits of max 40-45% on the alert continent, to keep it even, and discourages 4th factioning. To get participation in the alert, increase overall XP rewards during the alert by 25-50%. Scale up as necessary for underpopulated faction. Reduce alert winning XP bonus, participation XP will more than make up for it.

Does the new XP system determine the percentage of XP that your character obtains based on the side they are on, or based on their participation location?

I would hate to sit for 2 hours in a biolab just to get the full XP reward, when I could be taking adjacent territories to relieve pressure, increase resource gain, and create a cap-negating buffer around the biolabs.

It's apparent Mattherson is back to it's old ways from prior to GU12.

This was tonights tech plant alert. Pops were not terrible until about halfway through the alert when TR and NC pops took a dive and VS skyrocketed. Looks like I'm going to start spending the majority of my time on Waterson again.

Simply give changing factions a 8 or 12h cooldown. Sure it's free to play yada yada yada and won't help because people will just make alt accounts but I say: let them. At least it makes it a little bit more of a pain for them because they at least can't use their NS weapons and camos from their mains (or would have to re-buy them on each of their accounts).

Pretty much any solution - even one that is only partially effective - is better then what SOE is currently doing: sticking their fingers in their ears and humming loudly all the way to the bank.

Lack of incentive? Half of the time when I defend some small base on Amerish (VS Miller here), I glance at the "+53% XP" or similar display above the minimap, smile happily and stock up on another set of AT mines. Incentive enough for me.

What I wanted to say is, that beside I know it IS a nVidia driver problem (haven't occured with my Radeon before), game crashes happen and they will ruin your afford maybe, brought to an alert...