Pop imbalance destroying any fun on Briggs, that's assuming people can log in (fix your shiz Sony). Every night VS is barely making 20% faction pop, this is just making people not want to play on VS at all. It's clear that the xp bonus for the under-populated faction is inadequate. There is not enough incentive to play VS because any xp bonus the under-populated faction gets is almost completely negated by the simple fact that being outnumbered that drastically means you get far less xp to start with. There are less targets to revive and less chance of being revived if you're dying while always losing territory. Your life expectancy is far shorter and any vehicles you pull are almost instantly destroyed by the hordes of air and other vehicles you're against. The idiotic resource system is also a strong disincentive to playing under-populated factions when it can mean your already weak faction is able to pull vehicles far less often. If there is no change on Briggs, VS will cease to even be able to hold their own gate let alone contest alerts or hold enough territory to fund resource demands already exacerbated by the fact your vehicles die so quickly when outnumbered this badly. I also feel that when a faction does reach grossly imbalanced numbers, such as 40% or higher, there should be imposed some penalty on them as well as whatever incentives you give to the underpopulated factions. A longer respawn timer, an XP penalty or simply divide the resource gain by whatever ratio the faction is over ideal 33% pop balance. I.e 40% pop would get 33/40 or 82.5% resource gain over what they would have gained at 33% population. The under-populated faction would get a boost to resource gain, 22% population would mean they gain 33/22 or 150% of their normal resource gain. Whatever happens, it's quite clear that the current system of giving an xp gain incentive for playing under-populated factions is not working to combat the natural tendency of people to flock to the perceived strongest faction.
Similar on Connery, for TR at least. I know VS have had issues with low numbers too. The numbers have been with the NC, 40%+ to 29% TR on many nights when I log in (MST). It certainly isn't fun, and if I do hop around and find a en even numbered match, it typically doesn't last long. I don't know if this is just a swing of sorts or an indicator of bigger issues with this game.
I assume you are talking about right now. Welcome to off hours Briggs, where the pops don't matter and a three factions could barely muster more than one or two platoons :|
I like being underpop. Get with a good platoon, and there is profit to be had. Also, I like knowing that the guys around me are all in this desperate battle together, and we're all for one and one for all.
Even in peak hours, the VS pop rarely gets over 30%. Even then, that's only for the hours from 7-10pm AEST. The rest of the time it's usually NC with grossly inflated populations. This results in no fun for anyone. NC get to sit around spawn rooms as they steamroll base after base and VS usually get disgusted about getting swarmed 2:1 odds at every fight they log off.
I also don't mind an uphill fight, but when it's 2:1 odds at every base and you can't do **** because whichever lattice you push or are being pushed on, you're unable to achieve anything because you're always facing overwhelming numbers. I'm in one of the leading outfits, we get **** done, but less and less of us are even logging in any more because it's moved from being a game of skill to being a game of trying to cap stuff out of the way before the NC zerg can redeploy and wipe your squad off the map with their 3 squad numbers. We rarely even have our Tech plant most of the time, so it's even more one sided unless we drive MBTs from our gate. The numbers we're facing on Briggs are completely anti-fun, in every way. So much so that it's just driving people away from playing VS at all.
IIRC, the Briggs Vanu used to be the overpop a few months ago or so. I guess they just got fed up with the Log in times :| But yeah, Connery TR and Waterson VS feels your pain.
I don't think there is anyways to fix the pop issues. Last night on Mattherson on Amerish the pops were 33/33/33 and every battle was 9:1 fight... Even with the even pops, it was just 3 zergs steamrolling 3 different lanes.. So you could either be outnumbered 9:1, or outnumber the enemy 9:1, or cap a base with no enemies detected. I just logged out.. playing was pointless.
Every empire on every server now makes the same mistake.... instead of ganging up on the biggest empire, they gang up against the smallest. I've seen way too many fights where the underdog could easily take something back with a little bit of coordination, but they simply give up and go someplace else instead. Introduce your leadership to the concept of Disposable vehicle strikes. Get a 1 or 2 squads to go to a nearby base, or back to the warp gate.... pull a big bunch of vehicles, and coordinate a strike against the enemy flank. They don't need to wipe out the enemy forces, they don't even need to survive..... their only purpose is to disrupt them as much as possible, taking out a bunch of them in the process. That forces them to turn around, taking focus away from the base/spawns, letting your empire push in, or push out depending on where they are. A 6-lib air strike, even before the buffs, would be a game changer. Even a group of tanks sneaking up behind and focus firing vehicles down can usually nail 5 or 6 enemy tanks before they realize they are in trouble.
I think the upcoming resource revamp will solve some of these problems. I believe the correct way to fix pop imbalance is not with XP tweaking, but resource tweaking. Vehicles are force multipliers. A system needs to be made such that the under popped side has more vehicles. To prevent vehicle spam, the over pop faction needs to get a resource penalty. If you want to steam roll the continent in a zerg, you will face nothing but Max suits and tanks.
Perhaps in addition to the boosts for being underpop, they could add boosts for actions against the overpop faction (IE if NC were 40%+ pop, VS & TR players would get a boost for killing NC, capping NC held bases etc). This might help encourage the two smaller factions to spend more time fighting the larger faction?
One of the most successful pushes I have ever seen at "low pop" times was when a pub platoon leader ordered everyone to fall back to the warp gate and pull MAXes, then went on a walkabout crash-roam with them. Anyone who died was ordered to spawn engineer or medic until their MAX timer was reset, and they just kept randomly walking the lattice, without any real regard to where they wanted to end up or where to go next. It started with just 10 or 20 MAXes, but soon infantry and armor were balling up with them too, following them wherever they went. It's called initiative. When you seize it, things start to happen.
It's the main reason I've pretty much stopped playing. I'll probably re-join once the resource revamp goes through. It's tactical sense to attack the weakest enemy. Attacking the strongest is hard, especially during such stupidity as WDS. Because you get the best chance of winning by attacking a smaller faction, it means the smallest faction will pretty much always see the biggest action. The only way to get the two big factions to fight each other is to pull out completely - which is kinda defeating the point of the game. Back at the first WDS, SOE put forth some suggestions to fix the issue but never implemented them. Here's the big one: * XP bounties: earn more xp for attacking the most populous faction. I'd also suggest: * XP disincentives: earn less xp for attacking a seriously underpop faction. So if... NC have 40%, TR have 35% and VS have 15%: NC vs. VS: VS earn bounty xp as well as underpop bonus. NC earn three-quarters xp for fighting the weakest faction. NC vs. TR: NC earn standard xp. TR earn standard xp plus NC bounty xp. VS vs. TR: VS earn standard xp plus underpop bonus. TR earn standard xp. I'd also like to see xp for simply showing up for factions that are seriously underpop (<20%). A flat rate xp ticker per 10 seconds for being in a contested hex and not being in a spawn room / protected area. Limit this to hexes contested by the most populous faction. So in the example above, all VS would be earning an additional 0.5xp/second simply for being in the same hex as the NC. Reason being: when you're outnumbered 5:1, your opportunity to even earn xp goes out the window. If SOE want people to hang around and be 'something to shoot at' for the other players, they should really be paying people for their time. Otherwise you can pretty much expect that 18% to quickly dwindle to 10% and lower as people just get bored and go do something else, which in turn leads to the overpop faction being bored because it's just ghost-caps.
Depends what gets your boat floating. I joined VS for the low population and am thoroughly enjoying it. Much more fun to have a zerg stamping on your face than to be in the zerg and having no one to shoot at
Yes, if it were closer than the 20% VS pop to 50% NC pop mismatches we sometimes see on Briggs, I too enjoy being on the lower pop team. VS tend to have the higher skill players and we can compete when the population ratios are 30:37 or similar, but when it's 2:1 or worse like it sometimes is on Briggs, you can't do anything but give up in disgust and play another game. I've been playing other games a hell of a lot lately...
