On Waterson VS always have a population under 30% while our NC population can at times reach 45% with TR somewhere in the middle. It goes without saying that VS often have trouble with alerts on Waterson with the occasional triumph while NC win nearly every alert. If this game is won merely due to whichever faction has more people then what is the point of it all? As much fun as skirmishing can be sometimes people want to win.
Basically this. Also sometimes I enjoy to be outnumbered. Infact I think perfect population balance would be boring as hell. If the Vanu have twice our numbers so be it. I try to fight for two then.
What people enjoy "sometimes" may be one thing but I am talking about what is happening 100% of the time.
Pissing who off? The people causing the overpopulation? I highly doubt a fix would piss off those who are being outpopulated.
The moment you say " Sorry fellas, glad yer like poser metal but ya cant roll NC here becasue we already have to many smurfes" The forum will be flooded why crybabies claiming that all their "friends" play NC. Todays gamers want anything anytime everywhere and expect being succesfull with it. Also many people feel safe in numbers on a subconcious level. So they want to join the most numerous side, the largest outfit etc etc.
What do you mean there is no easy way to fix it? All games have team based pop. balance. If 20 people can play on this map, Maximum 10 can go in one time and 10 can go in other team. So if 2000 players can be on one map then allow a maximum of 666 players on each team (empire). If that map is full move on to the next one ( or wait in ques) .
Well that's not an issue for a session shooter like say, TF2 because both sides have access to the exact same classes and weapons. Regardless of whether a player gets shunted to the blue or red team they still have access to everything and get the same gameplay experience. The point is moot for Planetside 2 though, because the factions are different and the game is about more than a single match. People are invested into their characters and outfits. Asking them to go play on the other team is tantamount to treason for many players, and they would lose all the progress they have made on their character, and not be with their outfit and friends. That's what previous poster have meant by pissing players off. As for the capping you suggest, it already exists in PS2. Each faction is already limited to 666 players each. Currently, you get queued if the continent you're warping to has 666 of your faction on it. The reason you see pop imbalances is because the servers aren't full much anymore. So something like 200/200/600 TR/NC/VS would end up displayed as 20%/20%/60%. So now, if you want a solution to this problem, please suggest one that does not involve forcing players to switch factions like other games do. It also should not prevent players from actually playing the game, no one wants to wait around all day.
And then that casues loads of people to be unable to play at all on there server with friends with there outfit or whatever and no way am i playing anything other than my tr ive spent 400 hours and lots of money on, if i couldnt log on because VS/NC dont have enough pop but theres room on the server i would be pissed, theres allready pop caps on continents, but stopping people from playing completely because they just happened to get stuck on an over populated faction is bad. I play TR on miller and i do want the pops to be more even, but i also dont want to be told LOL nope you cant play try again in a few hours.
yes..it is a zerg game...not a skill based fps...go to Woodman...i hear the VS pop is half the server..am making my VS alt there to lv fast and cert up...why cry about it...we all know the game sucks but its just a game where you try to shoot someone.
uhm... because SOE can't hold a gun to new players heads and make them choose to be on the lower pop.... on avg... people are cowards who like to hide in larger groups. This affects character generation and the effects are obvious. What is SOE supposed to do? Honestly? There are hard cap limits to pop size but if noone wants to play, lets say NC on Miller (I don't know actually) then there is nothing that SOE could do to miller to balance it out short of limiting VS and TR player counts to NC's lower player count... meaning smaller populations all around, and more queueing to join servers.
What are they supposed to do? Tell people "oooh no you can't play because poor VS needs more people!"
They don't know how to fix it. They failed miserably at designing the game from the beginning to not have this issue, and now that the game is in the stage its in, they are having a really hard time figuring out how to fix it. There have been a lot of solutions, but most of them would make a lot of people rage. My guess is, they will just have to do a few of them, and live with the consequences. For the greater good, many must suffer kind of thing.
Just start logging off OP. Make matters worse. Few people care to balance teams for some reason. Start looking for new games to play. I figure when BF4 hits PS2 will be finished anyway. It may be a smaller scale, but at least you don't have to fight 300 players with 3 squads.