Underpop bonus - a joke?

Which is why I specifically mentioned "the lionshare wont have fun", theres always going to be someone who enjoys it for one reason or another but the goal is to make as many people enjoy it (and more often than not that means giving them something they dont ask for).

Hells Yeah! Thats one way of helping the underpop!

We have been discussing this since beta.

XP bonus does nothing. Period. People barely look at it, if they are doubleteamed or heavily overpopped players won't give a damn about the bonus, they will just switch faction, fight on another continent or log off.

Reality is the most numerous factions should have a penalty on ananites gain and respawn time, and this should be adjusted per territory, not on global level.

Current setup is just sweeping the problem under the carpet and pretend everything is alright.

[...] XP boost does nothing

It does something! It rewards the loyal players with bonus the can not or only limited obtain during normal gameplay. Feeling rewarded increase fun for those players. Increasing narnite income by a fair amount would help also to create a more balanced powerlevel.

Get the XP boost... and put it in the trash bin...
What the underpop side needs is a DAMAGE... DAMAGE BOOST...

So you feel rewarded because the few kills you made while being spawn camped yield a bit more XP and you end up with that extra cert?

Which would completely destroy the game as equalized fights would be dominated.

Damage boost will not make much effect if the continent population difference is not much high, this will only help on those times a faction have like 25% more players than the others... This will convince ppl to join the underpop side to not get mauled by pistols... There's no better way to balance population... It works in WoW... xD~

It would drive players away. The number one thing for underpop factions is that you need a different character to fight for them. If you could use your existing character with all unlocks as some sort of merc to fight for them to balance pop everything would work out, but as long as you have several characters for several factions you will only get a small portion to switch.

we already know that there is a big chunk of players who will switch factions from overpowered item releases. and these players are way enough to significantly scew the pop balance.
but even this is only ~15% of a servers pop. the other 85% play their faction for a different reason and you only need to get 3 to 4% of the overpop faction to switch to create balance.
this is 30 to 40 people of a 1000+

TL;DR getting only a small portion to switch already is enough

Yes, but this is a multi staged problem.
First: Help remaining players stay. It is allways better to have players online instead of logging out, or worse, switching away from underpop. Here some serious XP and narnite boost will defenitly help.
Second: Balance pop. This is the hard one. Obviously, player dislike one fraction due to design, balance or community. I hope DEVs have some answers here.

Doing the math:
Every player logging out lowers the number by one for one fraction. Every player switching makes a difference of 2, since he is now activly fighting against. Having only 3% swapping creates from a balanced 33/33/33 a semi-bad 30/36/33; 6% swapping generates a allready messy 27/36/36. This effect does not include log-outs yet...

1) Yes! One part of planetside is progression. Even the odds are unfair, i am partially willing to keep on fighting if i am seeing progress in terms of XP/Certs. I think a lot of players have short term, cert based goals. Increasing the difficulty by facing multiple opponents globaly should result in more reward.
2) Ok, but same logic can also be applied on overpopulation. See a fight one vs two, on glabal scale: The two players field double the health, gunpower, narnites. They can spawn more tanks more efficient and more frequently. They can chose different classes and vehicles, teamwork (more efficent).
This completly destroys fights in the same way you fear, and moreover, never gives the single player a chance to win any alert. The overpoping fraction can allways field more soldier (the have overpop...) to balance against the higher damage output per player. While i am not a fan of this because it is basicaly nerfing fraction HP, it has to be considered as a approach of balancing.
Maybe instead of increasing the damage, a heath boost could be applied

Does it even matter getting a let's say 30% bonus if you cannot kill nor destroy anything because you are repeteadly being pushed to the spawn room by overwhelming enemy forces? In the end you get more XP without bonus but fighting a fair battle.

Then the game does not keep track of any relevant stat besides the idiotic KDR: the number drops very low when you are zerged.

This ****** game designed encourages stupid behaviours like people trying to snipe or get 1 more kill fighting from the spawn room, instead of trying to retaliate, set a defensive perimeter and resecure the point.

PS2 does not encourages players to stop zergs, to be where they are needed, It rewards people for trying to zerg and to give up when they should get up and fight.

I am afraid Roxxly you can tell DBG too little too late, the damage is already probably too far gone.
I raised this as an issue 12 months ago and also got a CSR/DEV response promising they recognised the problem and were doing something about it.
Well you didnt and VS across all servers are having issues with population, its not like we cant all see it.
I have stopped playing VS on Miller recently because being 2 to 1 against TR and NC is just not fun and thats what a game is supposed to be about.
I now play TR on Cobalt where TR pop is regularly a lot higher and VS on that server are under popped as well.
I have added to the problem I know but I have paid for this game to support SOE/DBG since release, however now I have cancelled because of this issue.

SOE made this mistake on PS1 with TR, they tinkered and broke that empire, made it unbalanced and not fun to play so the players drifted off to play other games. It effectively killed PS1 in a matter of months, the effect was drastic. DBG are making the same mistake.
The below is image is typical of the population levels on Miller, I take one every day I log in, it never changes.
You need to fix VS or face the same consequence.

The game keeps track of hundreds of stats. you are just only paying attention to K/D

Consider these charts.
https://www.ps2alerts.com/
http://ps2.fisu.pw/population/?world=0 scroll down to the bottom and select each faction over different time frames to see trends.

VS statistically does have considerably fewer players, but they also win considerably more alerts.
The only thing that the data shows is that "fixing" VS means nerfing them.

What "fix" did you have in mind? And what stats do you have to support your position?

Yeah, it keeps track of tons of stats... that are only visible on external sites. There is no ranking for the best defenders, healers, tank busters, scouts etc... It is still a poor system that puts emphasis on bare killing.

I dont have a fix in mind, the issue has been caused by DBG they need to fix it.
My life is way too busy to worry about stats on a PC game I play on my downtime, what I do have is screenshots going back over months randomly taken to show the constant low VS pop on Miller. I also raised a post on this issue myself nearly 12 months ago as I said above.

If you play VS on Miller you would be saying the same things we are, the same things I hear weekly said within the DIG platoons, people are getting fed up with it. Do not get hung up about alerts, this is about the general gameplay.
I am just logging on to play now and yes guess what VS 20% pop.
This issued put the final nail in the coffin of PS1, it will do the same to PS2. The game fails with just 2 empires believe me I have bought the t-shirt.

only thing i can think of besides xpbonus you may add a nanite generationbonus so players can use more consumeables .. maybe decrease spawntime so players can get back to important areas back quicker ..
the rest however simply lies in the skill and organization of the defenders ..
otherwise add some sort of npc´s for the underpop period ..
... passive shield boost?
... passive heal and repairboost for medic and engy?
... passive resuplyboost?

hard to say ..

You haven't even mentioned what's broken for them to fix though. As far as the numbers show, VS winning with less population, a nerf is in order if anything. And if it's about the fights, you win 35%+ of all alerts on Miller, so you have to be winning fights. What else do you want besides to be winning fights?

almost all Miller VS alerts are won between 2am and 2pm as the pop is so low that going against underpop means zero fighting.
during higher pops tho VS underpop just means free real estate for minimal effort.

i see alot of over pop and under pop on connary but its mostly vs and nc that are over popped and the TR that are under popped . this is mainly becuse of the well known bises of the devs and the weapons and such that they put into the game allways being better for these 2 factions over the TR, and before someone says " tr has good weapons " yeah we do but compared to some of the guns that have come out for the other factions we get the **** end of the stick most of the time.
i play all 3 factions and have tested and played with most if not all the guns and i can feel and see the diffrances.

take for instince the new BRs that came out. NCs ammo for it goes though people to hit people behind the first person. percing rounds, no other faction has this. and by all standerds this should of been given to the TR, and the NC should of gotten the exsplosive rounds that the TR have. or this type of ammo should of been given to all factions for certen guns not just one gun on one faction. it breaks the balance of the game.

but back on point

alot of the pop is also leaveing the game. players are not happy about alot of the changes that have been comeing into the game resently and there not happy with the dubble teaming or there just plain tiered of playing becuse the game is becomeing stale. its the same battles every day all day. theres realy no change in how the game is played. go to hex take point guard point fight off enamys. move to next hex repeat.

the new air event is " ok " at best. mah at most. not many people fly in this game and the ones that do. well you can tell who they are. most people i have seen at the new " alert " spend it on the ground picking off aircrafts with strikers or anti air weapons.

add to it that connary is over filled with asian players that should be on the server closet to them but deside the NA server is the best and closest. when in reality its not. and you have a general list of issues there. that have yet to be addressed.

in the long run there is no incentive that will ever make people join a dieing or dead faction on any of the servers. there going to either go where the most pop is allready which means easy wins of alerts and contanent locks. or there going to play on whatever faction has the most over powered broken weapons