So this just happened on Miller during an alert (4:20 pm)

There are two ways to solve the server sided problem:

• Facilitate the already established players and outfits to switch factions to a lower populated side
• Incentify new players and push them towards the underpopulated sides

Both these things can only be achieved by SOE, there is little the players can do.

For the first part, as a high BR player myself, if I end up stranded in an overpopulated faction and don't have the means to switch my whole character to another faction, then I'll just quit the game. There is no such thing as starting over for the BR50+ people. No amount of exp incentive will entice people to switch factions for anything but a temporary break. The same thing applies for whole outfits. It would be a blessing if a way was available ingame for a whole outfit that wants to challenge itself to go and do a one way transfer to a less populated faction.

It would be nice if the current player base had the means to self regulate their faction distribution up to an extend, internally.

For the second part, it's all about how the factions are sold to the new players and whether disclaimers exist that warn about issues at character creation. Is the recommended server a sufficient mechanism to distribute new players on servers and factions?

perhaps a merge with another tiny server would be benificial? it is common knowledge that on average NC have the pop advantage on most servers. VS are underpop on most tough. dunno about rolling with NC/VS toon during primetime tough, since I haven't played on my own in quite a bit, I miss the comunity spirit of BRTD when I'm not rolling with them.

Outfit wise Miller might lean towards the TR, but TRAM does not equal 50% of the server population. <,< So you speak for yourself and your own experience rather than the actual situation. Fact is WASP has been reaping battlerank 1-30's ever since the warpgate rotation.

I think at least 5% of your pop comes from having the northern warpgate on Indar. Or at least that is why the NC could field just about even population before the rotation. Once we lost that warpgate we lost a good chunk of players, and the current situation when it comes to the alerts does not help.

I'll simply have to beg Vanu that their outfits go fight the TR rather than us. We will all fight, but please focus on the TR. Show them the might of the lancer! So long as we can stand our ground on separate parts of the alert continent the TR combined forces will be spread too thin for them to win.

Exams certaintly are not helping, but as a whole we have lot a lot of numbers as a fraction due to frustration with the game.

Not a pretty truth but there it is.

Disregarding faction loyalty and all that bull for a second, if you reach to a point where you outnumber everyone 4:1 on all continents, wouldn't you consider switching to some other faction that would allow for more challenge besides shelling a spawn room with 40 prowlers or trying to compete with 20 other people trying to kill the unfortunate soul who decides to step outside a spawn shield?

Also, the primary VS target from my understand is the TR, both because they are everywhere so you can't help it bumping onto them but also exactly because they are everywhere, I'd rather they don't win all the time, regardless of who gets to win from VS and NC.

I still don't understand why NC never seem to muster the strength to push from that SE corner, which has definitely contributed to a degree to the latest increase in TR numbers. VS on the other hand are consistently low on all warpgates

You'll see them if you join them. Currently there's just too many front lines on all continents for you to find a specific outfit at any time of the day. It doesn't help that the TR keep pushing people around on at least 2 continents at a time.

We mostly hang on Esamir to try and keep that worthless bonus rolling. it is also the best continent for combined arms play with tanks and harassers. Less so for air, but it's not too bad yet.

4th faction is strong in this one server

It's not at all the TR's "fault" that NC or VS are lower pop as a few have pointed out but surely it is in everyone's best interest that the faction pops are balanced? Two factions working together is something that aside from being distasteful something that shouldn't be necessary for several reasons, the two primary being population numbers (if they're balanced you don't have a problem in the first place) and map design (if a faction is overpopulated compared to the other two the map design should still allow for consistently meaningful battles when, including but not limited to, territory control roughly corresponds to population size).

And speaking from experience with server populations in other games (MMOs in particular) - a server with stable, balanced population numbers is something most people would consider both desirable and a point of pride. If a population imbalance is allowed to escalate it tends to be both very hard to reverse and permanently damage both the enjoyment of and people's faith in the game. The latter leads to people quitting, mostly from the underdog faction(s), which further exacerbates the issue.

Problem is, game developers tend to be very cautious with restrictions and other similarly forceful measures because they're afraid of negatively impacting small numbers of players in the short term for the sake of the server population as a whole in the long term. Bad publicity, I guess. The thing here is, though, most MMOs are still fairly playable with imbalanced populations. Planetside 2 is not. "Too little, too late" solutions simply won't cut it here.

TR loves the North Warpgate.

Before the rotation, TR Briggs usually enjoyed a 21% world population. Since the rotation, TR Briggs in prime time are usually the most populated now and typically take out the ~8pm alerts.

Just played on a Connery Alert (though I think it's 2am local time there) and TR were 51% World pop.

I don't support balanced populations, cos we've seen what happens if we get those. Every rare occasions it has happened, the VS steamrolled all 3 continents and the next day I woke up we had triple caps.

Before gu 2, we regularly had all three. We are a force you NEED to contain for your own good.

They have the best WG in every continent not just Indar

Last night WASP were running an Op on Esamir with 3 squads, we were in communication with LSD and DL and for a very brief time FUSH, continent population was around 50% in NC favour and territory control reflected this, the alert pops up on Esamir and I think great we have a healthy population we will give the TR a run on this alert.

We call our Op around 20 minutes into the alert and do a quick 15 minute feedback session before the players who want to get back out into battle can rejoin the fight and in that time NC population has dropped to 34% with TR at 38%, we had lost half of the territory we were in control of while our Op was in progress and when I checked the map as far as I could tell the only people not at Mani BioLab for a cert farm were guys who were in the NCTO trying to hold a frontline at Nott Amp station.

As has been said that the TR TRAM alliance is not the over-riding factor in TR population inbalances it just means you (hopefully) get a better utilisation of their force. The total number of outfits in the NCTO if we all field our full operational strength is about 600 players, in another thread DotZor says that TRAM tops out at around 1500 players in total but if TRAM is the same as NCTO then on non specified Operation days they won't all be working together so you won't be facing that level of opposition and its the same in NCTO, outside of the pre-arranged Ops nights we might have 3-4 outfits working together so thats probably about 100 guys and that simply is not enough to effect a change in the overall outcome on the alerts.

If faction want to win alerts then the player base of the faction have to understand HOW to win an alert and yes numbers play a huge role in the TR having a bigger chance of winning but if instead of fighting platoons on platoons at major facilities we only have 1 platoon tying up greater numbers at the large facilities so they can't just freely cap and move on and the rest of the forces are out actively capping bases then I think the end result of the alerts will be much closer because you make the TR chase you away from your warpgate if you are pusing the territory into their own lands.

With the change to capture mechanics and standard cap timers it's no longer a major handicap to start a cap on a base with only 1 connection, a single cap point base takes 4 mintues regardless so if we have our team focusing on capturing the smaller bases and only committing enough players to not give large facilities as free caps and keep the TR tied down with multiple platoons facing off to defend a facility we could acheive a lot more I feel, but the level of control over players outside your own sphere of influence (your own outfit and those that agree to work with you) means that when you ask players to get the hell out of Mani Biolab and cap territory you will often get met with a wall of abuse.

Population numbers are definately an issue but so is the lack of teamwork and co-ordination (of which WASP are as guilty of as anyone else) and the fact that players want to play the game in their own way as is their right but if you have the option of a biolab cert farm or getting outnumbered and over-run at most other locations I can see the attractiveness of the Bio Lab fight but I am sure that if we have the 200-300 guys who were at Mani last night out capping bases and making the TR chase them down it would have lead to a much better overall experience because you would have been in with a chance of winning the alert as you take TR off the frontline around the warpgate areas that are in the right mass of players quite easy to contain.

I'm not saying that population numbers are not a major concern but also an issue is how people play the game and this is defiantely a team based shooter that extend beyond your own bubbles of existance as it needs the entire faction pulling together in order to win fights when you are outnumbered and that's where I think the NC need to pick up their game because we have some truly amazing outfits on the NC side and if we all worked together more, either by more outfits joining the NCTO and the members of the NCTO making more effort to co-operate outside big ops or simply by players making more of an effort to play the objectives set by SONY to "win" the game then we would get a better game experience all around and the NC faction will start to grow again but if we keep folding against the TR as I am seeing over the last couple of weeks the reverse will happen (and has been as far as I can tell) so let's make the effort to play the objective not the cert farm and see what we can acheive together working as one team across an entire server - I HAVE A DREAM AND ITS BLUE AND YELLOW FREEDOM FOR ALL!

I'll tell you this, [DIG] has gotten really good at base defence.

Look, there is 3 sides for a reason.
Until the underdogs start ganging up on each other the top dog is going to keep trouncing everyone.

Im not talking alliances but if you have 2 targets to choose ALWAYS CHOOSE TR.

someones here mentioned Synd. As it stands now, former leader barondump, not more active for already long time, outfit is leaded by some other (they do their best) , but former glory under barondump leadership is gone.

There's no magical solution but there is a pretty simple one which can prevent these situations in future: when creating a new character, for example, on Cobalt - remove NC option since they have the highest population on server. Also, one character per server should do the thing to exterminate faction switching depending on current ownerships.

last night on ceres the TR ghostcapped esamir and amerish.

that really shouldnt happen

Yeah, what happened to Barondump? I used to really enjoy fighting under his leadership. He just disappeared.

Also, NC and Vanu just need to team up. Let's just attack TR next alert - stop attacking each other!

I have a solution: Let's all swap to TR so the server is 100 % TR.

Peace achieved, life goes on and everyone is happy!

^this. We Will be the first server With peace underneath the glory of the TR!