The Fourth Faction is KILLING this game! There NEEDS to be limitations on the use of alts!

It's absolutely rediculous and demoralizing to hop on my server and see see all three continents capped by one faction, the same faction having population advantage on those continents AND having 50% of the population during an alert.
I know I'm not speaking an opinion in the minority here, but our awesome devs have to got put a stop to members of the so-called "Fourth Faction". Just because a certain faction has a demanding lead during an alert or has the best Max at the moment SHOULD NOT DETERMINE THE POPULATION OF THAT FACTION. THIS GAME STOPS BEING FUN WHEN THE PLAYER BASE ISN'T LOYAL TO ONE FACTION ON A SERVER
Now, I'm not going to make "suggestions" or try to tell the devs how to make their own game; They've done an amazing job so far. Any time SOE slips up during the ongoing development of this game I'm one of the few people who pipe up and say "Hold up, guys. The devs have this". This really is the first time I've seen something in the game that makes me genuinely concerned; this could be something that cripples the player count if it's not looked at.
TL;DR: See title.

TL;DR there needs to be a god damn ******* population cap.
A free to play (more new & random players) MMO only-pvp game with NO factional balance measures in place what so ever.

It's ridiculous indeed. 48% TR pop last noon.

Imagine playing Battlefield, WoW, Rift, World of Tanks, Wargame, GW2, Dota 2, Starcraft 2, Team Fortress 2, ANY other online game, without auto-balanced sides? It'd be absolutely awful. And that's exactly what it is like in Planetside 2.
Unacceptable for a multiplayer title in 2013.

Won't happen. $$$$ is the only thing SOE sees

Proud 4th faction here.
I play where the killing is good.
I do not care if you do not like it.
Well ok it makes me happy you do not like it.
Not one part of me is here in this game because of you.
I am not here to support you or your goals.
I am here for the fun of the kill and the thrill of getting away with it.
So if faction A has a better fight going then faction B. Look for me in faction A.
And if all of a sudden faction C heats up and the killing becomes good there. Guess what.

What does 'the killing is good' mean ? Individuals die as easily no matter what the populations are.

Oh and i'm the opposite of you. I always go away from the easy mode.
I have a BR61 VS on Woodman. I noticed that VS has the pop advantage most of the time so i created a TR yesterday night.
I am only one drop but i make sure that i am one drop added to the emptiest glass.

Look, I don't mind if you swap factions to get more action or to have a feel for the other faction's weapons, I don't care if you follow the FoTM group. That is perfectly normal.

Fourth faction is more in term with those who constantly switch to the winning side of factions mainly in alerts which leads to really sporadic population balances. It has nothing to do with switching factions when you feel like playing other factions (excluding to win alerts). I don't know where the generalization came up, we should all technically be fourth factioners then.

You can faction switch all you want, I don't care, you can also switch during alerts, I really don't care. Just keep in mind SoE are going to implement a fix which will hurt the innocent players more because of the amount of jimmies you are rustling by doing so.

Location, location, location......
Wide open landscape, not so good for the solo camper.
Lots of trees,hills, and cliffs... excellent spot for a solo camper.

As for "VS has the pop advantage most of the time so i created a TR yesterday night."
Indeed.
If you are not fighting for territory or a base, population imbalances just means the smaller side has more targets. My ideal fight is being warpgated. Holding on to the last cap point. Let the masses do the fighting as you skirt around the edges killing. This is ideal for me. I do not like being in the middle of a zerg. But i love following a large enemy zerg. The opportunities are endless.

" I always go away from the easy mode."
lol.... in a contest where one dies and one lives.... this concept has no meaning to me.
I am here to kill you any way I can.

I'm 4th faction because I have 6 character slots and use them all

No problem with faction switching at all, but there MUST be a big lock-out on it. In my opinion it should be more than an hour for different faction on the same server (but even a fifteen minute lock would massively help during the critical final minutes of an alert).

No,

I payed for membership and one of those bonuses is extra toon slots.

Trying to limit people into situations they don't enjoy to maintain population balance just results in people going to play something else (and theres a **** load of good stuff to play soon!).

We need to have battles that are fun when outpopped. How to accomplish that? Would it be okay to 'focus' (force) all of one faction into one place (FIGHT AT THIS BASE FOR A 500% XP BONUS!!!)?

I don't know if i am the "4th Faction" but i play all Empires. Not to win an alert or be on the winning side, but playing the faction which i can agree with the most at the moment. Also my characters are on different servers, as you can see in my signature.

I payed for membership too, and this was before the extra toon slots.. Where we going with this ?

Pretty much any FPS places a limit on team sizes and games won't usually start until it's balanced. Just because this is an MMO it does not make it acceptable not to have some sort of limitation. It's not much fun being the underdog constantly, or to watch a hard fought alert slip from your fingers because some people want easy certs on an alt.

Just pause for a second and imagine that everyone thought that way. We'd all end up on one faction and there would be nothing to shoot at all.

As for a bonus... ****... we don't need more zerg mechanics.

Well put.. +1

I'm not really sure a lock that short is gonna help. Right now a lot of people switch in the last seconds just to collect the xp reward and then come back (I've done that few times when one faction had like 80%+ territory). You can see this in the mass inviting outfits, minute before the alert ends they get tons of people online who then go off as soon as they collect the xp.

If you put a 15min cd, that might encourage them to play those 15min making the situation even worse. I would put at least a 4 hour cooldown so that they can't know where or when the alert is gonna be and have to make a choice in advance.

But, everything SOE has done so far seems to encourage faction hopping. Passive certs make you create as many characters as possible, account wide unlocks make it easier to play those characters and finally alerts make you switch to the winning side. Couple that with the nature of the game: numbers>everything and you have a problem.

The problem with 4th faction is.. on one server, I unwillingly became one. I had a VS on Helios and an NC on Connery. Now I have a VS and NC on Connery after they merged. They're alts of mine that I may spend a few hours a week playing - but I log in almost every day to collect certs. I don't join one or the other depending on who's dominating, I tend to favor my VS there since my main on Briggs is NC.

I wouldn't want to make it inconvenient for me and players like me to log in quickly to collect my certs if I just happened to choose a time when there was an alert. I do believe there is a problem with people using alts to jump on to the faction that's dominating an alert. I've always been in favor of a disincentive - an XP penalty for being in the overpopulated faction. If there was a 50% disparity between playing on the underpopulated faction on a server versus playing on the overpopulated faction, those that are prepared to jump may think twice. I typically make a lot more XP from simply participating in the alert than I get at the end of one.

There is a population cap. 660 ish per map.

I'm confused what your suggesting then. If there are only 300 Vs and 200 Nc, Tr should not have more than 300 players, what does that acheive but underpopulate the maps as a whole?

The solution is some sort of mechanism that adds disadvantages (e.g. to spawn time or resources, hopefully the resource revamp will add some system of logistics that does this) to having a larger force. Currently there are only advantages, and population imbalances, without strict mechanics that basically prevent people from playing the game. These will remain a fact of life in the game.

the only thing i wouldn't mind seeing is a timer on switching empires but only if within the same server. 30m wouldn't be overkill and might persuade people to keep fighting for their faction. and it lets them go play on another server if they want while they wait to switch.

I got auraxium membership and have no toons. There should be a swap timer or only 1 faction per server limitation (like WoW does or did it at least).