What can SOE do to help fix population balance issues?

I agree and of course, that was just a out of the blue idea without any testing or extensive thinking hehe. I guess what I mostly notice is that even if VS have 25% world pop, that's usually more than enough to work on at least 2 continents full force. What really hurts them is the fact that their trying to split between 3 and soon to be, 4 continents.

Is there a second miller server I'm not aware of?
The one I'm playing on usually has VS around 28% and TR around 40+%. NC are somewhere in between.
I guess it very much depends on which time you play at but i haven't seen the VS have the highest pop in quite a few months.

That aside.
There's many possible band-aid fixes that could be used but they wouldn't address the problems.
I think the first step would be to recommend servers based on empire choice when creating characters.
A server that has a low NC pop would be recommended for new NC characters.
Over time that might fix the population issues.
Small XP bonuses won't cut it at all.

Personally i don't think there's an easy fix to this.

The 3 ways I can see to assist low pop empires is

1. XP boost. more then the current tiny bonus
2. reduce respawn timer
3. innate health bonuses.
4. reducing vehicle acquisition timers

#3 would have to be subtle if done at all.
Reducing resource costs for vehicles removes any tactical advantage to the resource meta game not that anyone really cares about that.
I do agree Rheyde, xp bonuses need to be adjuested. An extra 15% xp when you are getting steam rolled by the other 2 empires by a factor of 4:1 is just insulting.

I've got no clue where you are pulling your numbers from. Prime time Friday night VS had 1 cont pop locked ant the other 2 had ~10%-15% of the conts population. I'd say the VS didn't even have 1000 on full stop. The other 2 empires could probably pop lock 2 conts but there is no way that VS could.

For the a low pop empire to be able to pop lock 2 conts at 25% world pop the other 2 empires would have to have all 3 conts completely pop locked. What is happening is the other 2 empires are probably getting enough people to lock 2 conts and the low pop empire is left with 1 good fight and those that aren't lucky enough to get on that one cont are left out numbered some times 10:1

looking at the numbers right now Waterson is the only one really hurting like this, Briggs is close but just that NC just dominate there.

22 39 39 -Waterson

31 32 37-Cobalt
37 30 37-Mattherson
28 32 40-Helios
32 25 43-Briggs

Hell, you can't even create a character on Waterson. I've just created a new account and Waterson is't even available to create an account even if you are VS. The VS have no hope of even increasing the numbers.

But I can. So I am.

Yeah I'm on Waterson. Odd that you can't even create a VS char lol... no wonder... VS is leaking and never getting new blood?

Anything that penalises users or affects the gameplay is not a viable solution. It has to be a bonus for helping out the little guy.

Anything that affects a faction only is not a viable solution as some servers will always favour on faction due to snowball effect, and top gate rotation. Briggs VS just took a hit from the rotation, and we were well behind NC before that.

These are things you must take into account before posting ideas otherwise they just look uninformed and whiny.

The xp bonuses have gone up to a max of 50% now btw.

The spawn and aquisition timers are decent ideas, but with the fairly low values they have already, to create a significant difference those in other factions would need to be penalised, which is a bad idea as it reduces the fun of people in those factions.


The best solution I can see is upping the xp boost from a bonus, to being a controlling value. Look how many 4th factioner have been swapping during alerts for the cert points, there is obviously enough players whose loyalty can be bought with extra xp. The question is how much? Up the bonus from 50% to 200%, to let people know of its existence, then watch the 4th faction take advantage of that and by equalizing the pops, lower that 200% back down to the 50% or so that it currently is.

Depending on how you do the calculation (such as +200% only being reachable if you only have 10% population share on the server), any sort of XP bonus becomes self-correcting. As the 4th faction jumps on that +200%, it quickly reduces itself to +100%, then down to +50%, then down to +25%.

It's why population deficit bonuses are a good idea. They are naturally self-limiting.

Note: If it is true that you cannot create a Waterson VS character, then I would file a bug report. Because that is a severe oversight and the developers need to fix it so that you can always create characters on the under-pop faction.

You may not have noticed, but the bonus given to low population factions was doubled a couple updates ago. A faction that's outnumbered 4:1 would probably be getting closer to a +50% XP and resource bonus.

But, as I've said, and Higby more or less confirmed in the last AGN Spawn Beacon broadcast, these bonuses are consolations, not incentives.

Increasing those bonuses to absurd amounts isn't going to work, as I've also said before, because that bonus dries up the closer to balanced populations a server or continent gets. That makes balanced populations an undesirable goal for those people most motivated by the bonuses.

Are you sure you're not just looking at the recommended list of servers?

Edit: I've just created a VS character on Waterson, so... yeah... You're doing something wrong.

I lost my glasses on Saturday and apparently there is a "view all servers" option on the character creation screen. Matt Higby corrected me, thanks Matt. Still means that we are steering new players away from servers like Waterson even if they want to be VS.
Its funny because of my situation the bonuses look pitifully small. With both top level subscriber bonus combined with alpha squad bonus the bonus is smaller and I understand that is how it should be so that I'm not making massive xp for having bonuses multiplying other bonuses. I'd give up all the bonuses to have even pops.

Yea Higby pointed out my mistake too. I lost my glasses on Saturday and went to the optometrist yesterday for an exam and new glasses. The receipt is as long as my arm.

As I've said it is still stupid that they are steering players away from the servers that need them most. The player, at that point, has already picked their empire. Right now they are being steered to lower pop servers with no consideration to higher pop servers with very low pops of the empire they've selected.

I know I'm blind at the moment but new players probably won't spend very long on that screen to even look for a option to see other servers.

-put a queue once a faction have 50% pop on a continent.
-make a temporary alliance system for the 2 outnumbered faction.
-put a system broadcast, like "VS needs more men, NC traitors will be rewarded"

Pop won't be balanced unless drastic action is taken like damage bonuses/penalties:
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/population-balancing.109735/

What is best globally is not best for the individuals; thats how the problem started, and it can also be used to solve it.

They may well know unbalanced populations give the higher rewards, but how many 4th factioners do you think will go and unbalance the pops so other players can reap the rewards? I think if would be very few.

All they will see is hey, 200% on that faction, thats well worth swapping, hey 100%, well not so good but still worth swapping, 50% well I like that faction anyway so may as well swap.

VS is chronically the lowest pop on my server. Go there during an alert, and it's just TK's and vehicle TK's... no wonder nobody wants to be in that faction. Easier to lone wolf than get near any "friendlies".

Well at the latest Squad beacon Higby touched on the issue. Talking about the population imbalances and how game play is very different across the different worlds due to the level of organisation. Waterson would be a lot worse off if the VS were not coordinated as much as they are. In some ways this will become less and less of an issue as we start to merge more servers because there is more and more content. But I hate thinking about having to wait months or years for that to happen.

First thing they should do, IMHO, is at character selection factor in average population of an empire when suggesting what server you should pick. For example :

Waterson has a high over all population but has the lowest VS pop compared to the other empires across all servers.
Player's first suggestion is that they create a VS character on Waterson.
The larger the difference in average % population the higher the recommendation for that Server to be listed in the recommended servers and the higher on the list it should be.

If the average % pops are within a few points then the over all population would take priority but as the % difference gets larger the more effect it has on the servers standing.

To boot they could indicate to the player, at character creation time, that creating a character of that empire on that server will gain a bonus xp. This doesn't change anything really. The bonus is already there. It just puts it in the face of the player at the time of creation.

I'd even go 1 step further and say that new characters on low pop empires for that server get an additional amount of bonus xp up to BR [n] maybe 20? Enticing even more new blood to that server/empire.