I understand that there's still a population problem on most servers, so instead of having a handful of players playing freelancers, here's 2 ways you could improve this system. Option 1. Make freelancer NSOs the default faction for new players, their rifles aren't bad, they're supposed to be the middle ground weapons anyway, they get to play on all factions, and could have an easier learning curve when it comes to infantry play... not so much Dervishes or MAXes though. But they get to see the other factions weapons and general playstyles and faults firsthand. Option 2. Give severely underpopped factions a buff, like 10% more hp per 10% underpop. So if the most populated faction has 38% server population, and the lower popped faction/s have 28% server population, they'll get 50 more shields, 50 more health, and 10% more health on vehicles. Freelancer players would be more rewarded for playing option 2, but option 1 would definitely fix the population curve, and probably be easier to implement.
Option 1 wouldnt be good. You are putting new players in a bad (outnumbered) position. Option 2 wouldnt be good either. Just straight up buffs wouldnt be very fun to fight against and it would likely attract people who want to use it for farming rather than pushing. You are better off by making being outpopped fun instead. - nanite cost reduction for easier access and lower risk to force multipliers. - the ability to exit the spawnroom in ways that cannot be spawncamped. A simple drop-pod system from the spawnroom can help and the more outpopped you are the farther you can drop. - add ways to stop the attackers without needing to fight to the points and hold them with less players. For example by an attrition system where time is added to the cap timer for every infantry/vehicle kill, more time added the more outnumbered you are. If it is fun to be outpopped than population differences stop mattering so much.
But who are the underpop? VS. Who are winning the majority of primetime alerts? (usually by a landslide) Also VS. What is the only faction that you are allowed to play if you don't want to spend 45 minutes in space prison? Yup...VS. As far as I can see the only problem with the underpop is that it is causing so many TR and NC players to be stuck in wrel's space prison. So rather than buffing the winning faction, and only allowing people to play the winning faction, we should relax the faction thresholds so people can play on the losing factions. Not only would this make the game more fun (because you are playing the faction you want, and not queueing.) But it would also make the primetime alerts less stale and more competitive, because TR and NC pop advantage would make up for not being VS. The devs could balance the faction threshold around primetime wins, when VS average out with a similiar primetime victory rate as the balanced factions we know the faction queue threshold is in the right spot.
decrease nanitecosts increase nanite gain increase xp gain as bit of additional motivation for novice players reduce spawntimes MAYBE increase shield regeneration rates, decrease time for shield regen activation outside of combat, increase passive heal and repair rates .. stuff like that DON`T add buffs like extrahealth, damage, RoF or resistances ...
Maybe if VS wasn't outpopped all the time, the newer players wouldn't get deterred by getting outnumbered and actually stay in the game in it's entirety? And the people who have been getting outnumbered for years would soften up? And they wouldn't just push ghost caps until overwhelming odds came in? Honestly, TR and NC have the same problem VS has, the only difference is, VS vets have already farmed to death, so pushing TR and NC into a farm is easy, then nobody wants to leave because of directives, and they're ghost capped. Alerts don't mean much to anybody anyways because of the trivial buffs, if you've noticed on Oshur, TR gets the vast majority of wins because it's a bonus that matters, and they also have 35-40% of the ps4 server population at all times. From your gripes, I think you're a more objective based player than a "kill kill kill" player, you should probably play VS.
If either/both options were added, it would be MUCH easier both in work, and in actually solving the problem, than gimmicks that might work. Don't get me wrong, the alternate drop pod system is cool, and I'd love to see it added, but I think the rest would be extremely hard to implement into the game, and might not even fix the problems.
That's the beauty of it, the directive system has already made farming a priority to the majority of players in the game, AND this incentivizes others to play the underpopped faction, 100 hp isn't even game breaking, it's literally 1 more shot to the body, 2 more shots if you're a heavy. It would give outnumbered people a small buff, and Esamir was supposed to give 50 extra shield to players anyway, you don't hear a peep about how "broken" that is at all.
Why not look at the reason/s for the population disparity rather than trying to fight the symptom with arbitrary and more than likely ineffective bonuses? Imo TR and NC have more 'fun' toys to play with while VS pretty much only has a handful of infantry weapons to pull people in. For example a pilot is likely to find it more rewarding to use a Banshee/AH + whatever than being stuck with a PPA and for all the complaining about Magriders being amazing, there sure as hell arent a line of people waiting to use it either compared to the numbers that both the Prowler and Vanguard gets on a daily basis. I am not at all surprised that VS wins alerts either, not because ermagerd imba OP but because infantry play is like the VS experience and where the majority of VS players can be found which is both a boon and a curse, its great to have bodies to throw on a point but its a curse if you want to use vehicles and dont have a semi-large personal group of people to roll around with because unlike NC and TR, you are likely to be outnumbered by the NC/TR vehicle hoard both on the ground and in the sky... unless you are in a VS vehicle zerg that forms every now and then ofc or perhaps Emerald or which server that has a large VS pop. For example last Saturday you would have to increase the number of unique Magrider drivers by ~60% to get up to similar Prowler/Vanguard numbers and like ~28% more Scythe users to reach Mossie/Reaver numbers. VS has less population so it makes sense that they have less vehicles too but I will point and laugh at you if you try to make the argument that these % differences are only because of that because the pop difference is not THAT large or it would show up in all kinds of stats aside from these. For example, VS had just slightly more Lightning drivers than TR had last Saturday(4 more!) and NC had 14.6% more than VS(212 more). Similar results if you look at Liberators and Harassers with the difference between the faction with the most and VS being in the 12-13% range. Its probably just because the VS unique vehicles like Magrider and Scythes are so A M A Z I N G and competitive that they see such a big difference in users compared to the other factions equivalents.. surely there could not be any other reason for it. I will admit though that I chose to use the % to be more chocking than it has to be since it can be kinda relative, a 60% increase in Magriders to get up to Prowler/Vanguard numbers is 'only' like a 35% decrease/difference if the Prowler/Vanguards were to reduce their numbers down to the Magriders. Its still a big difference either way though. The TL;DR is that players who enjoy playing with vehicles, especially MBTs, will likely drift away from VS as the faction unique stuff you get dont seem to be worth having to deal with the Magrider and any benefit you can make up for the Scythe doesnt seem to be worth it either otherwise the user numbers for these would be much more in line with all the shared faction vehicles.
I think they should increase the XP bonus you get for being an underpop'd faction. I remember checking the numbers a little while ago and we VS were down by 100 players on a continent (this including the NS players I believe) and the XP bonus we were getting was only 1%. Wtf???
This is where the 10% to vehicle health would come in, 10% of extra magrider hp could incentivise newer players to actually use it, and possibly be able to fight the other MBTs, and that handful of magrider pilots would have to be outnumbered to be dealt with. Same goes for all other vehicles in game. This would be an easier buff across the board than trying to constantly tweak the ES vehicles to be more user friendly.
Not to mention if both options were implemented, it could potentially give newer players more health to actually fight enemies, which would give them that "feelsgoodman" oxytocin win feeling that they could at least have in battles, maybe not in alerts, but enough to where they'd want to keep playing. And it's not such a crutch to where they'd be lost without 100 or 200 extra hp, just enough to give them some wins instead of consistently dying when they're new to the game, which does dissuade the majority of the quitters, either that or possibly swarming bases and never fighting due to being on the overpop team. Ergo, this not only helps with population inbalance, but with the new player experience as well.
Lower pop should get cheaper vehicles and faster spawns and more nanites, cheaper maxes. Over pop should have slower spawns more expensive vehicles and maxes.
Faction strength comes and goes. You can switch factions or change your goals to accommodate your weak position, but modifying the game so factions with less fodder are a little more bullet resistant doesn't help anyone play better or smarter. I believe it's much easier to auto assign players when a faction player count is low.
Continent pop on Miller VS tends to be slightly behind, but more often than not when any base is taken it is with 70% overpop or more. By any faction. You got zergs avoiding each other like the plague and going in circles most of the time. Giving someone bonuses for underpop in a base (not globally) would help here no matter what. I despise those zergwheels chomping on smaller squads that have no chance whatsoever, it is boring, mindless and absolutely ****. Anything that might shake up that, sign me up for. Just once I'd like to be there with my squad of 4 people against DIG (or CTIA on TR side; or BHO for the other factions) with 60 and give them a piece of my mind with 99.9% damage reduction or something. Just out of 110% destilled spite. Would feel great, but never gonna happen.
weirdly enough i don´t disagree with this .. thinking of Warcraft 3 style army taxation to kinda decentivice large army zerging (but not making it outright impossible) to balance the consitency of attack- (or even defense) waves ... it should however happen primarily on big popgaps like 65/70 to 35/30 ... were as a low pop of 40 to 60 gets already its nanite+ spawn bonuses ...
