POP Imbalance. Fixes?

Hello all,

This thread is based on curiosity more than anything else, but in past few months we have seen more threads concerning pop imbalance then sunlight. This seems to be a MAJOR issue for alot of folks (I personally never really see it on Helios during prime time), and it is an understandable frustration. Like most posters on these forums, these masses of threads are typed out by those wishing to lambaste us with complaints and ranting feelings, and they offer zero to no solutions to the issue. They are just empty words of frustration.

So my question is this: What are your ideas on how to fix this issue? We all already know that it exists, so please no more complaining. Lets dedicate a thread to applying real, effective, and fair thoughts concerning this issue, and maybe we can all come up with a good solution.

Mirror the under-population incentives with over-population xp penalties.

If that's not enough, implement health and/or damage adjustment to the under-populated empire.

IMO this implements a sever penalty for the individual which is NOT just. I do not believe that I, as an individual, should not be able to compete, or gain less rewards, simply because a ton of 4th factioners jumped onto my ship. I understand where you are coming from, but i do not believe that this is a fair solution. it REALLY punishes those who are faction loyal.

No penalties to over popped factions, simply increase xp reward for being underpopulated, both for continent and for world population

Offer the ability to retain BR/Cert total from a character on an overpopulated server and move to an underpopulated. So a BR50 NC on overpopulated server can create a BR50 TR on an underpopulated.

The biggest reason for people to stay on an imbalanced server is because they don't want to start over from scratch. Letting them keep most of their work would go a long way to volunteer server changes to help balance out the population.

soe will be paying a team of south korean starcraft wizards to play vs on us servers

they're fairly confident that nobody will want to be on the side that they aren't and vs will be 4th faction central in a month.


srsly though, xp penalties? going to penalize me for playing NC since nov 20th? :/

You do have a point. Playing NC is punishment enough.

So far the carrot hasn't done much, although admittedly it's a pretty anemic carrot. I'm just suggesting a little application of the stick. If the penalty is mirrored to the incentive, it will be largely of minimal impact.

Easy fix was available during the marketing phase... had they not played up the NC to all be badarse freedom fighters, and made TR and VS look like generic bad guys (referring to the CG trailer in particular) then maybe NC would have a few less people.
But as for current options... maybe they could release a patch that added some sweet new faction-specific stuff for TR and VS, wait a week or so for the fourth faction drainage to occur, then release the NC content. I dunno, I'm just idea-spewing.

XP doesn't matters when 2 people are shooting you.
Zergs will still farm as they do now.

Or the system needs XP nerf or overpopulated factions, or HP/Damages buffs.

2% HP (for infantries and vehicles) and XP buff per pop % diffecrence compared to the most population faction is interesting and will balance the [factions power]/population.

If a faction get 50% of the pop and yours get just 25%, it's normal to be 2 times toughter no? There will still be 2 guns directed on you head whearas you can just shoot at them 1 by 1.

If you plays STR, you know that 2 weaks units kills a stonger one.

It very simple can't have the same character in the same server to prevent 4th faction plain and simple just move the 4th faction to another server done.

And how will that work for those in Oceania where there is only the 1 server being Briggs?

Well it the only way to solve population problems most of the population issues are from 4th factions that make an alt on the same server. They really can't do anything but who know maybe someone has a better idea then me lol.

NC were VASTLY underpopulated at release. Server POP imbalance is nothing new. pop imbalance being in the NC's favor is actually relatively new. It started with the VS being overpopulated (for various reasons), then the 4th factioners went tot he TR because of the mag nerf and the whoopsie prowler buff. Now they are with the NC for various reasons. So no, advertising is not the problem as the NC were clearly the least favorite at release when most of the advertisement was going on.

penalties disincentives faction loyalty. And IMO the fourth faction is one of the largest threats to the game. Pop imbalance probably would have been a much smaller issue if sony didn't decide to let people have multiple characters on the same server. Very very stupid decision.

The TR and VS really didn't get much marketing at all.

I am from Briggs, and I would way prefer 1 char per server. At first I didn't like it, but I got used to it, now since they allowed multi chars, it got worse.

maybe check this out?
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...ing-population-imbalance.116855/#post-1585393

I play Vanu on Helios, and there are times where both us and TR are vastly outnumbered by the NC. The only thing that keeps me from looking for another server is that I've a lot of weapons and certs on this one, and there's no way to transfer characters at this time.

Off topic. What movie is that in your sig? I remember being in love with that movie as a kid and i remember that scene specifically. Now its driving me nuts and i cant remember the dang name!

its the same with most of the servers. At a specific period there will be spike in NC pop.

Connery is 1 of the example, during primetime NC spiked to 45%-50%, then TR spiked to 45% during the day. The large contribution to the TR population are the Chinese.