IMO PS2 could definitely use some sort of enforced population balance control. From my experience late night - early morning on Connery, ever since about a year ago when the Korean PS2 version was shut down, there has been a massive influx of immigrants. Also from what I understand, these die-hard players weren’t even given any sort of reimbursement for loss of their native accounts. Seemingly most of these continuing players have joined the oppressive TR.This could have been a great opportunity to flesh out the world pop stats had there been a limit set in place beforehand. I believe TR on Connery has had the least amount of population during these hours up until recently (good for them! and to the health of the server). As mentioned, it’s been nearly a year and as time progressed, it seems the population continues to snowball with TR averaging near 40% or higher from midnight up until ~10 AM. Some may argue that it’s to be expected with the local server downtime. If there’s such a multitude of players situated in various parts of the world obviously pop stats will vary. Local server time is a weak excuse to allow blatant pop imbalance. For a faction based game of any nature, not to have any sort of team / pop balance, I see it as a significant oversight. Not sure how this situation was handled during the original Planetside if anyone can mention so. Personally I actually prefer to fight for the underdog faction and enjoy a good challenge. Yet there comes a time when a breaking point is reached. This is when having a masochist mentality to tackle the odds of overwhelming overpop can sustain you so far. 96+ zerg push down our 1 of 2 possible defendable lanes with near half pop to defend!? Awesome! /s If I may suggest, I would propose something along the lines of this- 33.3% world pop cap per faction. 35% Max pop allowed see rules- Only way to exceed this limit is to meet these conditions: 1- You can join a high pop faction if you have a membership. (Caps at 35% per faction) 1.a- If Pop is at 35%, you may enter a queue to join. 2- Currently equipped boosts will grandfather you into rule 1. 3- Non members already logged in until max pop limit is reached can remain as is (until they log out) 4- Obviously increase free character slots. (3 per server) Hoping with some sort of limit as such, this would cut down on “4th factioning” due to snow balled overpop effect and faction flavor of the month instances (New OP toy, etc.).
I would cut my membership and definitely would not buy anymore cosmetics or weapons if they did any of the suggested changes by the OP. Too many paying members like to play with friends will no longer be paying members. Population issues suck at times, they really do. There's ways for the players to mitigate it. You say the TR reaches nearly 40%? Lets say they do. Screw it lets say they hit 45%. That's a 55% advantage the NC/VS enjoys against them. "But they'll never coordinate!" That's BS. The TR/VS had no problem doing it to the NC a while back. But then again they had to. There's a far more elegant solution to overpopulation. You can simply make numbers count against you. Here's how: When fighting another faction, the Server population counts as a modifer to cap timers. For example. Lets say TR has 40% server population and is fighting the NC which has 30%. That means the NC have 75% of the pop that TR has. TR has 133% of the population that the NC has. This means a small base 4 minutes (240 seconds) to capture becomes 3 minutes for the NC fighting the TR, and 320 seconds (or 5 minutes 20 seconds) to capture for the TR in this example. What this does is allows the higher numbers to be spread out. They have to defend territories or risk losing multiples of them at once. They still have an advantage in pure numbers able to be thrown in an area. But because it takes longer to recapture back areas, those numbers are tied up for longer periods. Being as both underpopped factions will have easier times capturing territories, they'll be more likely to gang up on the larger faction. In addition I would triple bonuses gained from being underpopped to sweeten the deal. This is to entice players to play on lower popped factions and the idea is to have everyone keep switching so much that it eventually evens out and there's no point to switching anymore. As for the fourth factioning debate.. its been said before by Devs, less than 1% of the population does this. During the time periods you listed, there is LESS than a full platoon's worth of Korean/Japanes/Chinese players on TR-Connery according to the outfit browser. Check it out next time and add up the numbers yourself. The most I've seen is 2 squads. RTAG and MORI run open platoons so its not just asian players in them. And they're very disorganized. Most people in proxy or platoon VOIP have very prominent Australian, British/European, and Various North American (majority) English accents during those hours (3am-3pm EST). So the immigration issue isn't as bad as you say it is.
My playtime dropped off a few months ago when the pop imbalances and items (they nerfed in the last patch) that were OP became an issue. I logged in for first time in a month (just log in to collect my 500SC, well its been like that for a few months now) and as usual TR were 45% on my server. I am not interested in being ganged 2 to 1 by just 1 empire never mind adding in another, you can talk crap about how everything is balanced but pop says otherwise (PS1 Vet from 2003 I have seen it all before). I cancelled my 12 month recurring sub, I will just pop in and play for free if the pop imbalances improve.
enforcement of world pop balance will only frustrate players, you have to change player habits with game design if you want a balanced game. atm farming is the more rewarding which is why you see your own faction farming with overpop in one hex allowing another faction to farm you with overpop somewhere else while the third faction farms the second one somewhere because the second faction is farming your faction.
Excellent, this is why I love to have this argument and wish something like would happen. At the very least, implement the cap timer buff. Why hasn't this been done already, does this make too much logical sense for DBG? #Wrel get on this. No doubt you have to look at the issue from both sides. Yes it would suck cutting off players from using their main accounts and playing with their friends/outfit. Obviously know what else sucks? Dealing with endless overpop zerg. Would it be hard for people to join together on alts? No, but it's a big inconvenience to them. Most would continue to attribute to the problem because there's no enticement to get them out of their comfort zone. The amount of players during these hours may not make up a full platoons worth of Korean/Japanese/Chinese players? It doesn't matter if they're specifically 'immigrants' or not. From what I've experienced on a near daily bases, a mix match of national groups doesn't matter. With PS2 being a numbers game, no matter how organized a squad/platoon is, eventually numbers will roll whatever stands in the way. Try to avoid the zerg away from the main lines? Pop percentages dictate you'll at the very minimum encounter 2:1 odds. Meh..
Players are going to play where the advantage is. Be it a pop advantage or an OP weapon. No one will want to play an under-pop faction unless there is a clear advantage in doing so. Make it when a faction gets at or below 32% it starts to a get either A: Reduced resource cost. Small at first but builds up rapidly to when a faction goes under 30% they can pretty much endlessly spam MAX suits. B: Flat out damage reduction. Not the biggest fan of this but it would be the most effective. Everyone loves their 1v1 and if they can get a great k/d from playing underpop then everyone is going to want to play the underpop faction.... and then guess what? It stops being underpop'd (and then the advantage goes away).
For those of us running Boosts and Membership (and more boosts). Cheaper resources isn't a bonus. I'm already drowning in Nanites. I can spam MBTs and MAXes. They had this in Wintergrasp in WoW:WotLK. It worked if the populations hit a certain sweet spot. They worked horribly in any other means. If it was below the sweet spot, the bonus was too much. If the other way around, it didn't matter. If it wasn't in the sweet spot, it was frustrating for the side getting pounded/swarmed. That's why I suggest the change in cap timers. This way when you encounter the other factions the game still plays the same. The only difference is high populations will have to wait a little longer to capture bases. This is a good thing. They'll likely move out and spread out to engage in fights. When they spread out their numbers are nullified or at least mitigated. Remember there is more than one continent open and since my suggest applies ONLY to server pop. The under popped faction can simply let the over popped one ghost cap a continent. Those in the overpopped faction who like sitting on bases for 10-20 minutes to capture them can do so. Those who want a fight will go where the fight is happening. If the overpopped faction shifts all of their numbers to where the fights are. The underpopped faction can simply let them take the territories. They'll be bogged down with the extra cap timers. This already happens now. So the status quo there doesn't change. But what does change is how fast an overpopped faction can take territory.
ns faction/black ops module where high br players could be encouraged to fight for another faction as a mercenary was in the works at some point, then the roadmap got beleted
I remember that in WotLK. When they nerfed it to where the overpop basically always won and then came out with faction transfers a short time later... well everyone switched to the overpop faction on most servers, to the point of some servers had more Horde players in Stormwind (Alliance capital city for those that don't know) than actual Alliance players. If they hadn't nerfed it then people would have switched over the under-pop for easy wins until it balanced out. Here in Planetside 2 you already can make a character of a different faction on the same server and just hop over to it almost instantly.
*If* players want balanced pops, then the Devs should try to make that happen. Systems that force players run the risk of alienating players or breaking the game. A better way is often to put in a system(s) that motivate player behavior. Make players want to do (and start to do) what is wanted. I could sit down with a group of Designers and hash this out over a few test sessions. It's just modify gameplay conditions and seeing what happens. I am a real big fan of the NS Mercs idea. Basically any player can play an NS soldier and join any Faction that is below a certain population %. This could really work well if it had a really slick roughneck theme and unique Directives and bonuses. Another way could be to insert War Propoganda as an ad on the edge of the big map, recruiting players for specific underpop Continents/Battles. With listed special Underdog Themed Directives/Ribbons that are completed just doing desired behavior in these underpop fights. Players can click the Propoganda button and sign on for a tour to slog through hell and get the unique payoffs. Lattice really limits how spread out Factions can get. The number of Fronts never gets very high. What I see consistently is the 2 larger pop Factions attacking the lowest pop Faction. It could be a combination of: 1) current Victory Point system (we see a lot more Zergs that push deep toward enemy Warpgates) 2) players wanting to "win" or steamroll or easy farm, etc. 3) Zergs don't have good communication, usually the ones that don't hit resistance and get beat just keep on growing and moving. While the ones that hit resistance and get beat usually break up. Regardless, I am not seeing the 2 underpop Factions "gang up", except for during *some* Alerts (usually the ones during higher pop times). In addition, I am seeing a Faction be the low underpop on one Continent, and be the high overpop on another Continent. As if players see the pops and are choosing to play on the Continent they are Overpop.
