What can SOE do to help fix population balance issues?

VS just don't appeal to me. As you stated above, enligtenment doens't cut it. Not in a MMO FPS.

If you are looking for why VS has low numbers, look no further than the faction description during character creation.

You know you make no sense right ? Even if i WAS lying (which i have no reason to) you are here whining about what ? That you are 3% less than the NC on the entire Miller Server ? Or perhaps because on other servers you are 10% less ? SO WHAT ? The VS always take that to their advantage since the TR are always fighting the NC so the VS cap bases behind our backs.

My bad, i forgot to edit the post and it makes no sense i know, anyway i just want to clarifiy that the VS is the least populated on Miller most of the time, doesnt matter if its the most populated at 5 am or something like that... between 6 and 12 pm cet time the VS has the least population by a large margen and it ******* sucks, and again, i dont want to whine about anything, just want to clarify the VS is the least populated on Miller.

Allow free server transfer for the most populated faction to servers where that faction is underpopulated and give players some time to decide which outfits are going to transfer. If there is still imbalance after that time, then just transfer random players by force...

Rolling new character on a recommended faction gets you a bundle of free weapons for that character only. Recommended being a faction that needs more people on a server.

A faction that is overpopulated on a continent suffers longer Infantry respawn an Vehicle acquisition timers. Overpopulated being more than 40%. With the penalty getting worse as it gets higher.

they're already doing it....

they're not banning any of those ESP'ers & subtle botters.

Two methods that come to mind:

1. Force population balance during a continental alert. Example: if the alert is being held on Amerish, then the population must remain relatively even on that continent or more players from the higher population factions simply can't join. There would of course be a minimum number of players that could join the continent from all factions.

Population issue can be annoying, but I feel that the problem is especially noticeable (and frustrating) during alerts, since the faction with the largest pop usually wins the alert and gains bonus XP simply for starting with an advantage in the first place.


2. Allow players to join a severely underpopulated faction as a temporary character that starts with 10,000-20,000 certs. All XP gained (+ bonuses based on performance to the empire) would be granted to the players main character. Another option would be to simply allow your main character to temporarily switch to the lower population faction and have access to all equivalent unlocks/abilities.

Players that decided to help out the lower population faction during a time of great population disparity would receive a 20% XP bonus on top of their regular XP gains. This feature could not only help to alleviate balance issues, but it would also give players a chance to experience what it's like to be a part of the other factions and maybe even show that the 'Grass is not always greener'.



The reason why I recommended these methods instead of trying to entice players to join the lower population with sign-up gifts/bonuses, is because populations fluctuate throughout the day. During prime time on my server, the NC usually outnumber my faction 2:1, but much later at night things seem to stabilize. The 2x above methods would work to correct population imbalance at all times of day.

Please give a release Date for the Server Transfer Token . The Problem is i am in Europe and I play on Connery West USA . I can not kill People with full of Ammo. If i play my new Caracter on Cobalt EU , i have unlocked all Weapons from my NC on Connery but all Gadgets not the self.
Release Date Quick , and i can Play my old perfect Caracter from Connery and its so easy to kill TR or Vanu on Europe Server.

The best way to fix pop imbalances is a scaling reduction in spawn times and even a scaling increase in shield pools. Yes, that means VS on waterson will be harder to kill. Considering there are less of them, they need to be. The scaling should be based on continental pops, but triggered by global pops. An empire that is evenly or even overly popped compared to others doesn't need a shield bonus, even if they're outnumbered on the continent 1 to 10. A respawn timer reduction might be okay though.

Pop imbalances aren't going to just magically disappear, and unless the exp bonus is ludicrous, like literally 100%+ bonus, no one likes losing and dying against insurmountable odds all the darn time. They need to be more combat effective on the continental scale, but only because the global population is tipped heavily against them.

I think it's because a huge outfit or two went to one of the 3 factions or two of them.
And then the VS is getting hammered nonstop. Many leave to matterson where they have a chance.
Since on Matterson, VS is more populated and it appears fun. (Hell, they can offer some of them server switch to Waterson VS and it would actually help some)

Now, when you make a new character, since Waterson is highly populated (just not towards the VS), they don't show the server to create a new character, you would have to click on show all.

Then people don't like getting curb stomped over and over by 2-3:1 ratio of players nonstop every single day. So more and more players leave the game or go on another server. These are usually the ones who spent little in the game.

The ones who spent a lot are still there with their ~20% population.


What they need to do is make it where what you spent in SC on a weapon, you can get the equilvelent on another faction.
Maybe all those overpopulated NC, VS, TR, may switch servers with their guns. THe truly dedicated ones will most likely not switch since they put in all their certs into their classes.

This may help a little, then also add in FREE character transfers to underpopulated servers. VS has the lowest of all population, but this may help them be close to the others. And then, maybe, just maybe, the ones who left the game because they really didn't like being curb stomped with out of proportion odds, they may come back and the population may become more equal.

Also, they should show on the character creation screen the daily average. Some people don't really like playing on the overpopulated faction, and may actually join the underpopulated one for more killings or just the fact, they rather have everyone a bit more balanced.

But until then, i really do not see what they can do to get more into VS on Waterson.
Especially since they gave out a crappy weak sauce MAX weapon...

Bonuses to health and/or damage are a bad idea. I just can't accept that a player would become a super soldier just by being part of an underpopulated faction. That just doesn't seem logical, even if you want to claim "Nanites!"

I think there's some merit to the observation that low population bonuses aren't displayed when a player creates a new character, and that leaves population percentage as one of the deciding factors for new players. After all, who wants to play the outnumbered faction if there's no apparent bonus for doing so?

Of course, with continent-level-only bonuses, what could you possibly display on the character creation screen?

One possible solution could be a double-layered approach. Give a bonus based on global population and an additional bonus based on continent population. (Divide the current bonus in half, though; a +50% bonus due to low global population and then another +50% bonus due to low continent population would be absurd.) You can then display the global population bonus on the character select screen.

Personally, though... I think negative modifiers are the strongest motivator. Positive modifiers decrease as populations balance, making a move toward balance an undesirable goal for the people who would be most motivated by those modifiers. Negative modifiers also decrease as populations balance, but they make a move toward balance a desirable goal.

You could maybe combine the two (positive and negative modifiers), balanced around 33%. Factions below 33% population gain a positive modifier. Factions above 33% gain a negative modifier. This could even be combined with the double-layered approach I mentioned above. This would allow members of a globally over-populated faction to play on a continent that has fewer members of their faction, potentially offsetting the negative global modifier with a positive continent modifier.

A few weeks ago they doubled the bonus XP for low population. Nothing's changes, as far as I've seen. How much more would SOE need to increase that bonus before people finally realize that's not the solution?

There would need to be some mechanism to keep squads, platoons, and outfits on the same instance. Manually switching instances (which is possible in Neverwinter) is nice, but becomes a hassle for large(ish) groups.

there is nothing sony can do short of making one faction overpowered. This is a community problem and a generation Y problem. All the gen y kids have a very herd like mentality due to social media. They tweet whatever they think is the most overpowered faction and all go toward it. They leave when they even smell a slight disadvantage.

They should have never made this free to play. I like the guild wars 2, where you buy the game and no sub fee. It keeps the kiddies out, and the people who actually want to play, in.

I think we will see this from now on, until gen Y looks back and see the damage they have done to the gaming industry.

Right now on Miller/Esamir the TR have 52%, the NC have 21% and the VS have 27%.....That's not the bad thing. The bad thing is when almost ALL of the TR decide to attack a single base....That's also why i logged out

Actually they do that so the VS have some very good weapon stats and then they can claim it's all balanced and have no reason to buff us

interesting ideas. For the 1st one they'd have to do something about lurkers. IE what stops someone from starting 4 PS2 clients on a second machine to clog up another empire.

The issue I'm talking about isn't daily fluctuations but actual long term population problems. Again VS on Waterson as an example has not had, from the data I've been able to collect, a pop above 28% for well over a month. Normally it is sitting at 22%. Currently on Waterson the population trend for VS has been getting slowly worse. I want this game to succeed but for me it isn't very fun being constantly steam rolled by another empire that has 2:1 pop advantage forgetting the other empire that also has a 2:1 advantage. To often I log on to see the VS opting to choose a dead cont to take over for some capture xp with no resistance. I want fights. I don't want to ghost cap empty conts. I don't want to blow gens & SCU for xp.

Incentives to play the underpopulated faction do not work. That plan doesn't work NOW, with most players well below BR 100. How's your plan going to work when most players have kitted themselves out the way they want and certs are almost superfluous to them? Even as it is now, I play more for fun, not for certs -- as it should be. Being ridiculously outnumbered isn't fun.

The only true fix I've ever seen suggested that doesn't involve tearing apart the server communities (making characters portable and having you log in to different servers / instances where your faction isn't overpopulated) is to institute a queue that prevents severely overpopulated factions from growing. Unfortunately, many players are dead set against this -- primarily because A) they don't play a badly outnumbered faction, or B) they only play during prime time when factions are relatively even on many servers. Well, in the case of A, your biased opinion is noted but shouldn't be given much weight at all. In the case of B, this queue wouldn't even affect you since it's only for severe imbalance, not small differences, so your complaint is invalid.

Perhaps they can but they don't WANT to, they want to be on the team with crushing advantage.

That will get people quitting faster than anything you could imagine, it almost ruined Guild Wars 2 World vs World. Faction incentives need to be something global, not something that radically upsets the balance between player's skill as individuals.

You do know that the higher the number the better right? Numbers smaller than 30% indicate a problem, numbers around 25% are a problem. Welcome to Miller VS. How can you claim Miller VS has had the highest total pop? During primetime we usually struggle to even get 30%. Usually VS has between 25-30% during primetime. Saturday for example TR had a whopping 43% global population during primetime.

Add in 500 Certs for randoming and you have a lot of ppl create a random character.